DR. RATZ:If the police according to their opinion in an individual case, consider protective custody necessary, then I believe that the protective custody towards a foreigner cannot be judged differently than towards a citizen of Germany.
THE PRESIDENT: I asked the question whether that right as affecting an individual could include the whole civilian population.
DR. RATZ: It probably depends on the individual case.
THE PRESIDENT: No, let me put a case to you. Germany goes into we'll say, Albania and Germany decides that for security it is necessary to confine all the civilian population of Albania in concentration camps, and she gives the reason that it is necessary for security. If she acting within the principles of international law?
DR. RATZ: I believe that in this example Germany is acting contrary to international law because the question of whether this is done for security reasons and whether certain police are taken for security reasons can be debated. After all, we must use a reasonable measure in considering this question. In this example it isn't reasonable or objective to assume that the whole population of a country should be simultaneously committed to protective custody.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, let's change it and say all the male population.
DR. RATZ: In this case I must use the same judgment as in the first case.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what's the answer?
DR. RATZ: My answer is that this measure is also contrary to international law because there is no objective and reasonable cause why a measure of that extent should be taken.
THE PRESIDENT: Then Germany's decision wouldn't be final; it could be examined and perhaps reversed?
DR. RATZ: I haven't quite understood your question, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Is Germany's decision as to the need for security final? Is the question clear?
DR. RATZ: Yes, your Honor. The decision is final if the sovereignty of Germany is not removed.
THE PRESIDENT: No, the sovereignty of Germany is there. I mean Germany is in full occupation. She can do anything that she chooses. We are trying to find out what she can do without violating international law. What is your answer as to whether she could confine all the male civilian population?
DR. RATZ: My answer is that this general measure is a violation of international law. However, if Germany continued to exercise her sovereignty, it would not be necessary to punish her for this measure from an international point of view because here the limits of power and right have been exceeded so far that they must be considered as falling into the scope of sovereignty. In other words, without any doubt here we have a violation of international law; but as long as Germany continues to exercise her sovereignty, there wouldn't be any court which would rule about it.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not talking about enforcing rights; I'm talking about complying with or violating international law. Perhaps nothing could be done about it; but would it be right or wrong according to international law?
DR. RATZ: A measure of such a general nature would be wrong in my opinion.
THE PRESIDENT: That goes too far?
DR. RATZ: In my own opinion it goes too far because Germany never would her entire male population into confinement without differentiation.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, let's change it once more, and I won't interrupt you again. Suppose Germany in Albania said, "For security it is necessary to confine all Jews in concentration camps, male and female." Just give me a short answer, if you can--does that violate international law or not?
DR. RATZ: My answer remains what it was before because according to any reasonable appraisal of the state of afairs we must describe this measure as being unjust.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, then that is a violation of international law in Albania?
DR. RATZ: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: We're in Albania, you know, at the moment.
DR. RATZ: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT. You think it would make any difference whether we were in Albania or the Ukraine?
DR. RATZ: That doesn't make any difference at all.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, I'll drop it at that point.
DR. RATZ: I shall continue with my statement now. The concentration camp system was only the frame within Dr. Pook practiced his medical speciality. There existed just as little technical or logical connection between his activity as a dentist and the administration and management of the concentration camps as vice versa between the commandant of the concentration camps, on the one hand, and the dentists and their sphere of activity and the dental stations on the other. That is why it is all the more impossible to construe a criminal responsibility in this case.
However, I should like to do an additional thing and deal in more detail with the sphere of Dr. Pook's activity and specifical ly with the concentration camps. I must do this because I want to present and prove that Dr. Pook's assertion that he had had nothing to do with and knew nothing about the crimes committed in the concent ration camp is credible and correct.
The criminal system which undoubtedly did spread in the concentration camps as far reaching degree is, as has been noted, not indentical with the concentration camp system. The criminal system is a part of Himmler's system of annihilation. To a certain extent Himmler used the concentration camps for this; but also had other tools which he, unlike the concentration camps, party created for this purpose; for example, the Einsatzgruppen of the SD.
Himmler's system of annihilation was camouflaged by a double protective cloak; by a system of deception and confusion and a system of secrecy. Himmler deceived and confused the minds of his adherents and of the entire German public through promises of indealistics aims were based on illusions, which no doubt held much appeal, such as obedience, honor, loyalty, readiness to make sacrifices for people and fatherland. At the same time go deceived them by knowing how to keep strictly secret his true intentions and the crimes committed while he was pursuing his true aims.
He welcomed the concentration camps as tools because here he already found an external facade at the same time a system of secrecy. One cannot identify the concentration camps with Himmler's system of annihilation, just as one cannot identify the Germany Wehrmacht with the crimes which have been committed under the cloak of military necessity.
The defendant Pook stated in his interrogation that to be sure he had several times inspected the dental station in concentration camps at the order of Lolling. On these occasions, however, he never saw any atrocities. The actual protective custody camp of the concentration camp in question he only entered accompanied by a member of the staff; and then he was only allowed to go to the dental station. Then he expressed his impressions and views concerning the concentration camps and repeatedly protested that he knew absolutely nothing of the criminal happenings or conditions in the concentration camps and therefore he was not conscious of any criminal guilt because he was active in Office D/III.
Your Honor, I have stated that the concentration camp system and Himmler's system of annihulation may not be identified with each other. In order to emphasize the credibility of Dr. Pook's assertions that he knew nothing of concentration camps crimes of a criminal system, it is my duty to prove:
(1) that actually such a non-criminal concentration camp system did exist and (2) that Dr. Pook during his activity as directing dentist in Office D/III of the WVHA actually must have had this system in mind.
In order to present this evidence, I have submitted in my document book, Number II, a number of affidavits and transcripts from the trial before the IMT.
I take the liberty of concentrating all this voluminous material in short description which is substantiated in every detail by documents and which should show that picture of the concentration camp system as it as a rule actually existed; as the uninitiated into the concentration camp crimes saw it; and also as the defendant Pook saw it in his activity as directing dentist. Dr. Pook was not a partner to this but a victim of Himmler's system of deception and secrecy.
May it please the Tribunal, unfortunately I am unable to give any short description because otherwise my statement would exceed the prescribed time limits. I regret this because upon presentation of my document book I was also limited with regard to the extent of the documents and the size of the document book. At that time I was unable to give you an index about the documents which I submitted. I there must ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of the full contents of my statements.
THE PRESIDENT: You have only two minutes. Perhaps you'd like to start at page 27 tomorrow morning.
DR. RATZ: Could I perhaps utilize these two minutes? I shall then have reached the end of a paragraph, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: All right. I thought you were at the end of a paragraph.
DR. RATZ: May it please the Tribunal, I now have reached the end of the first part of my statements, and I should like to sum up the following. First of all, the defendant Dr. Hermann Pook cannot be charged with the total responsibility for the criminal acts of others. This is in view of the fact that in Office D-III of the WVHA he was active as a leading dentist. We are shocked and rightly by the guilt of persons who were arrested. In order to reach the persons who are really guilty of the crimes committed, we should construct a case. It is already clear from the prosecution that the defendant Pook had the misfortune to have a job in Office Group D of the WVHA.
The establishment of the concentration camps as such was not contrary to law. The practical execution of protective custody was not criminal in its customary sense. In view of the existence of a secrecy system, the defendant Pook must be believed when he says that he did not have any knowledge of the crimes which were committed in the concentration camps, spontaneously or systematically or singly or en masse. A criminal guilt of the defendant because of his activity in the concentration camp system alone is out of the question also because no international law existed against that. Concentration camps existed a long time before 1933; and under other names they still exist today.
We must also consider that we cannot proclaim the defendant guilty and sentence him on the basis of a retroactive law, as I have already pointed out to the Tribunal in my opening speech. Therefore, for the defendant Pook in examining the fact of whether he has rendered himself criminal, there can only be an individual guilt on the basis of the German penal laws which existed at the time when the crimes are alleged to have been committed. This individual guilt and the determination of that guilt is the subject of the second part of my exposition.
THE PRESIDENT: We will recess until 9:00 o'clock tomorrow morning.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess until 9:00 o'clock tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 19 September 1947 at 0900 hours.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Oswald Pohl, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 19 September 1947, 0900-1730, Justice Robert M. Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Take your seats, please.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal II.
Military Tribunal II is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
DR. RAUSCHENBACH (For Defendant Hans Loerner): If the Tribunal please, I shall not read my final plea on behalf of Hans Loerner. I assume, of course, that the final plea will be translated into English in due time for the Court to read it before it considers its verdict.
I would like to refer to one point which arose from a discussion yesterday on the occasion of the plea by my colleague von Stackelberg on behalf of Fanslau. It seems to me that an error occurred about the beginning of what was described as the open budget of the SS. He said, on behalf of August Frank, which is also contained in my plea for Loerner, that the open budget with the Waffen-SS existed since the beginning of the war. I believe that was the time concerned.
DR. VON STEIN (For Defendant Eirenschmalz): May it please the Tribunal, I should also like to say that I shall not read my final plea orally for the reason that I am not in a position of reading everything in the brief period of time allocated to me. I should appreciate it, however, if the Court would read my plea carefully. There are a number of technical expressions about construction matters, and this makes the plea somewhat complicated terminologically. I need not reply to the final statement by the Prosecution, and that is all I have to say this morning.
DR. RATZ (For Defendant Hermann Pook): May it please the Court, before I continue reading my final plea, I would like to make quite sure about the correctness of my calculation as to time, I read yesterday from five to half-past five, and therefore I should have a full hour at my disposal today.
May it please the Court, about the personality of the defendant, Dr. Pook, I do not think it is very difficult to determine Pook's character, his ideas, his motives, and his attitude toward human beings. The personality of a defendant is difficult to ascertain if his active political work for National Socialism or his voluntary membership for many years with the SS should incriminate him. No political idealism or fanaticism became fatal to Defendant Hermann Pook, only, although, this might sound absurd, his passion for horseback riding. The Rider's Association of Berlin-Lichterfeld of which he was a member, was, in the year 1933, transformed into the SS-Mounted Unit almost from one day to the next. The dentist, Dr. Pook, was not only an enthusiastic motorist, but also an enthusiastic rider, and had become thus an SS-man almost without knowning how it happened.
The testimony of the witness, Von Woikowsky-Bideau, given before the trial of the I.M.T. I have included in my Document Book No. II, page 165 to make it quite clear to the High Tribunal why the SS cavalry was expressly exempted when the IMT declared the SS a criminal organization. The witness testified that in the years 1933 and 1934 the riders' associations were transferred bodily either to the SS or to the SA the location of each individual association being decisive for the choice of either one of them. No coercion was exerted to enforce such membership of the SS, that is true, but everybody declining to join the SS together with his association would have been excluded from all sports activity; he would have suffered no loss, but would have been forced to renounce his passion for riding. The aims of the SS cavalry did pertain exclusively to sportsmanship, the SS riders were not active National Socialist, but pronounced sports fans.
At the wedding of Prince Bernard of Lippe, afterwards Prince Consort of the Netherlands, a delegation of the Berlin SS horse unit, of which the prince was a member, was present, undoubtedly no invitation to this wedding would have been sent out if the SS cavalry had been looked upon as being anything but harmless sportsmen.
Thus the Defendant Hermann Pook, though entirely without initiative on his own part had mounted the political horse so to speak. But by no means did he consider it his ambition to ride this horse for any political purpose. After a period of only two months he was assigned to duty as a dentist within the Mounted SS and had to carry out successive dental examinations of the members first of the company and later on of the regiment. Apart from that, he devoted himself to his extensive private practice as a dentist, having no interest and cherishing no ambition in the political field.
His membership in the SS, even only limited to the Mounted SS, however, was to produce further fatal conseauences for him. As a member of the SS following the outbreak of the War, he was drafted and assigned not to the Wehrmacht but to the Waffen-SS. That means: his joining the "Waffen-SS was consequently an involuntary act enforced by the State, so that by virtue of the verdict of the IMT the Defendant Pook is exempt from conviction of membership in a criminal organization.
Regarding exemption of the Mounted SS and the forced draftees for the Waffen-SS, the records of the SS, Document NO-2460, Document Book III, are relevant. After completion of a short military training Dr. Pook was detailed in the medical office of the Waffen-SS. He appeared particularly qualified for duty to the central office because of his maturity of age, his professional skill, and his successful practice as an independent dentist for many years.
One might say it seems rather likely, or it might be that the de fendant, because he was a fanatical National Socialist, was used in the medical office of the Waffen-SS.
This objection can easily be refuted in the following manner.
1.) Dr. Pook was only for a few months working in the medical office of the Waffen-SS Department for Dental Service, and then he was ordered to establish a large dental station for the Berlin Garrison. In May 1942 the new station was opened with twenty-six rooms, and began to operate, and at that period of time Dr. Pook resigned formally from the service of the medical office. I do not think that a dentist with political tendencies would have had the inclination or the capabilities to organize an enterprise of this magnitude and significance.
2.) In my Document Book III I have submitted a number of affidavits from which it becomes quite clear that the Defendant was an efficient dentist who loved his profession, who did not care what social position, religion or race a patient had, and who looked in his profession only for one thing, which is the right attitude; he only looked at the patient to help him, which was to him a difficult but satisfactory and happy task. Had he been an active National Socialist he would surely not have thought of the idea to entertain friendly relations with a half Jewish patient such as Kirchheim as late as 1942, and demonstrate this friendship in public life by talking to Kirchheim in the open street in SS-uniform near an SS-agency for half an hour, although everybody in that neighborhood knew that Kirchheim was a half-Jew. This is only one example but a very significant one.
The defendant had been drafted into the Waffen-SS, and now he was a soldier and no longer captain of his soul. He could be used today as a dentist and be sent into battle tomorrow, and day after tomorrow be sent back to a dull office to look after files which bored him.
In point of fact, at the beginning of 1943 he was transferred from his wonderful activity as a man in charge of the military Post Dental Station at Berlin to a combat unit, and as the dentist in charge he joined the SS-Division Hohenstaufen. Soon afterwards he became again a pawn on the chessboard of the military service, for at the beginning of 1943, in the same capacity as chief dentist he joined Office D-III of the WVHA. Now he had really landed in a dull office, but he was fortunate enough again to become the man in charge of a large dental station, which was the garrison dental station at Granienburg. We have heard how the defendant explained on the witness stand that this activity with the garrison dental station claimed his energies mainly, and for that reason on certain days of the week he never went to the building of Office D-III, We have also heard that he then continued with his private practice in Berlin-Lichterfelde in the evenings during the week and on Sundays.
The question whether the Defendant Hermann Pook was a soldier or bureaucrat according to his character and inclination or whether he was an active SS-man, National Socialist, or really a dentist, one can without hesitation answer by saying that he was a dentist. A particular criterium for Pook's personality are his relations with Lolling, with whom he had no satisfactory relations personally or socially. Lolling was obviously the typical representative of SS ideology in the medical field, and the willing too, and confidante of Himmler. Lolling dismissed condescendingly Pook, the dentist, in his anteroom, When Pook entered Lolling's offices he could observe how secret files were hastily put away in order to hide them from Pook's glance. Among Lolling's personal friends there was many a man, but Pook was not one of them. Pook was a conscientious dentist and an honorable man without any idea of what was happening backstage in the SS-Hierarchy.
It was obvious Pook could not and did not use Lolling as a confidential friend, and it was also obvious that in the dental field there were no crimes which had to be kept secret.
In the dental field he only needed technical advice. It might be assumed that Lolling esteemed Pook as an export, otherwise he would not have worked against Dr. Pook's transfer as leading dentist to the Prince Eugen Coros in the autumn of 1944 behind Pook's back.
When Dr. Pook was ordered to become leading dentist in Office D-III of the WVHA, it did not influence, I would like to point out, Pook's membership in the Operational main Office of the SS. His personal file was kept in Office XIV of the Dental Service and not in tho Personnel Office of the WVHA, he would have been promoted by Office XIV, not by the WVHA, if he had not remained in the same rank which he held when he joined Office D-III as leading dentist.
If I say that the defendant, Dr. Pook, was a dentist and nothing else, even when he wore the uniform of an SS medical officer and even when he worked in the Office D-III of the WVHA, that does not mean that I want to describe him as a colorful professional dentist merely. In the medical trial the defendants were always charged with the fact that they had forgotten what a doctor should feel ethically and psychologically, that they were only too willing to obey their superior officers in the case of experiments, and that they had not remained faithful to the Hippocratic Oath, which stipulates that doctor should always help and never harm.
As a dentist Dr. Pook was also a doctor, and the Prosecution could not claim that he had been an inferior doctor or that he had not observed the Hippocratic Oath. The sacred duty to help and not to harm is the duty of a physician in all situations of his life. This duty apolies especially if and when through a military order he comes into contact with a circle of unfortunate people, such as in a concentration camp, when he is transferred there as a physician or dentist, or if, as the leading dentist, he had been out in charge of the professional supervision of all concentration-camp dentists. I am bold enough to state that to a physician or dentist it might be particularily satis factory to work among these unhappy people, and that the decent and honorable dentist might consider his activity within a concentration camp as a work of idealism toward these unfortunate creatures.
What finally remains to be said about the character of the defendant Hermann Pook?
He never held an office in the Party; he never participated in political activities; he never mingled with the mighty of the Party , nor was he known in the WVHA. Among the defendants of this trial he only knew two people personally. As Leading Dentist under Lolling, he would have had the opportunity at least to work in his profession, to show initiative, and to let himself be driven by his secret activities, to propose dental experiments, to inspire spontaneously other concentration camp dentists toward such experiments. He did not do anything of the kind and was only too happy not to receive any other orders, but the subaltern ones in Office D-III and to be able to escape every day anew to the dental chairs in the Post Dental Station in Oranienburg and in his office at Berlin- Lichterfelde.
3. It would be impossible for this Tribunal to hold all the defendants collectively responsible for the murders and atrocities committed in the concentration camps, I also think it is impossible to decide the question of guilt or innocence merely on the basis of knowledge. The decision can only be whether these criminal acts concern the responsibility of this defendant. That is to say, what authority did this defendant have? How did he use his authority?
One cannot throw all these defendants into the abyss simply because a general crime was committed in Germany. This becomes clear from the fact of the overlapping of authorities, confusion and secrecy on the part of many concentration camp officials. The RSHA was the agency with political and police authority. Perhaps under the increasing pressure of the war and growing danger from the opposition, this office deviated from the original principles in the treatment of prisoners, whereas the WVHA quite obviously had a very different interest in the inmates from the political or punitive one. It was interested in their labor, which, however, was also said to be exploited in an increasing manner under the pressure of war.
This conflict of inmates and the confusion concerning authority led to secret and open battles between the RSHA and the WVHA, between the camp commandants and the work managers, and this confusion of authority makes it so difficult to undertake today to arrive at a clear definition of the responsibility and guilt particularly since local agencies, such as camp commandants obviously went off on their own in a criminal way.
The Defendant pook had neither a personal nor official interest in the torturing , mistreating , or killing of the inmates. He had no political or police interests. He was not interested in labor allocation, nor was he interested in medical experiments. He was not connected with the RSHA, the camp commandants, nor did he have any contact with the WVHA and his superiors other than he happened to be assigned as the Leading dentist in the WVHA and not a to a division of the Waffen-SS as the dentist in charge. He had as much and as little authority as any other leading dentist in the Waffen-SS or the Wehrmacht. His interest generally did not even tend toward serving the interests of the WVHA or any other person or office in the SS. His interest was solely centered in exercising his dental abilities for the benefit of his patients.
Pook was a soldier and was thus placed within the military chain of commands as a subordinate and a superior. As far as the authority of the soldier is concerned there is no confusion or overlapping of competence, and therefore there is also no doubt as to his responsibility. Also the dental service in the Waffen SS as it is in every other army of the world was clearly defined and organized.
A certain amount of difficulty to analyze the authority and responsibility lies only in the fact that the dentist is subordinate to three different commands: as a soldier to his commanding officer, as a medical officer to his unit medical officer, and as a dentist to his professional superior, that is, to the Chief Dentist as intermediate command and to the Central Dental Office of the Waffen SS as the highest professional agency.
Thus the dentist may receive orders from three sides. The authority of the Defendant Pook, in his capacity as Leading Dentist, actually was only professional, and therefore it ranked only as a supervising intermediate command. He did not have the authority of a chief, nor was he in charge of the office, but he merely was authorized by the central office to act as a supervisor. The main point, however, is the fact that Dr. Pook, as the dentist in charge cannot be held responsible, for orders which, the dentists that were only under his professional supervision had received from other superiors, that is, their medical or military commanders; for these orders lay outside the responsibility of the defendant.
May it please Your Honors, we are not concerned with an artificial jurisprudential construction in order to separate the defendant from his alleged responsibility for the removal of dental gold from dead inmates, but we only have here the question of military channels of command which must be answered clearly and precisely for the reason that a dental officer is being discussed here. There has never been a reason to give a military dental officer more authority or criminal responsibility than his professional tasks and the health of his patients call for. A dentist cannot give orders to a dead man and the dentist had no interest in a corpse professionally or officially. Official interest was only shown by Himmler who organized through his administrative agencies this strange collection of gold. It will be contended, even though it may have been Himmler, who, out of financial greed, caused this collection of gold , that he needed the technical and professional assistance of the dentists . In reply to this one might say this: To what extent were the camp dentists utilized in this operation? This question, however, is without bearing on the criminal guilt of the Chief Dentist Dr. Pook, regardless of what way it is answered.
For whatever the camp dentists possibly contributed to this operation happened outside the authority and responsibility of the Chief Dentist Dr. Pook. His task as professional dental superior was limited to the supervision of the functioning of dental care for the living. If other military authorities utilized the professional abilities of the camp dentists on dead inmates this happened in no way within the authority of the Chief Dentist, Dr. Pook.
Himmler needed the gold in order to take it to the Reichsbank; he gave the order via Gluecks to the camp commandants. These probably ordered the removal of the gold according to their own ideas, in other words, in different ways. It is entirely possible that the Camp Commandants or some among them issued by way of the camp physiciains an official medical order to the camp dentists for their cooperation. Partly the camp commandants formed companies from experienced and trained inmates, thus making the camp dentist quite superfluous. It is a fact that in accordance with an official medical order of Lolling, dated 1942, camp dentists were utilized to supervise the removal of dental gold, Document Abraham NO-2127, page 40 of Doc. Book 21, that is to say in order to prevent embezzlement of the gold thus won, furthermore, in order to accept, to clean to weigh, to pack , and to deliver the gold to the administration of the respective concentration camps. All this however, was not the business of the Defendant Pook, for he was not the head of the camp dental surgeons with regard to medical service, but solely their professional superior. If this matter had been his responsibility, then the order would have been passed on by him, then, he, on his part, would have supervised and controlled this supervising activity of the dental surgeons which, however, was not the case. Pook's task was to supervise professionally the dentists in their activity with regard to the living and nothing else. It would be erroneous aid primitive to hold the leading dental surgeon responsible for everything connected with the teeth of the inmates, the living as well as the dead.
I think such a rule is not to be found in any service regulations of the world on the service of a military dentist.
The action based on the idea that the gold from the mouth of the deceased inmates should not be permitted to become lost, but should be used for the benefit of the Reich was not only carried out with brutal consistency, but also with bureaucratic thoroughness. As already mentioned, the camp dentists were appointed to a supervisory capacity and were again in turn subject to control, having to report the execution to their superior professional office, Office XIV, in the Medical Office of the Waffen-SS. There was no real reason for this report and it was useless because the gold was not delivered to Office XIV , but to the Reichsbank via the administrative offices of the camps and thus Office XIV had no opportunity whatsoever to check it. The Defendant Pook as Directing Dental Surgeon was involved in these senseless bureaucratic formalities, in that the reports of the camp dentists on the dental gold removed, regularly passed his office for transmission to Office XIV. This was, however, not within the scope of the professional control over the dental surgeons, but was a matter of form the sense and purpose of which cannot be discerned at all and which by no means can form the basis for a criminal punishment of the Defendant Pook, for the removal of the dental gold of the deceased would without doubt have been continued even without the reception and forwarding of those pseudo-control reports.
However, not only the removal of the dental gold took place outside of the competency of the Defendant Pook, but also the transfer of the gold obtained to the Reichsbank. The transfer took place through administrative channels, thus via the administrative leader of the camp to Office D-IV.
Office D-III had nothing to do with it, especially not the Defendant Dr. Pook. -- Affidavit Barnewald NO-2149, Document Book III of the Prosecution, page 119, Abraham NO2127, Document Book XXI of the Prosecution, page 40.
May it please the Tribunal, although a responsibility of the Defendant Pook for the removal of the dental gold from the mouth of deceased inmates is to be rejected for these reasons alone, I do not wish to pass over the main legal problem: Whether this action is to be regarded as desecration of corpses or as robbery or as some other punishable act. There I shall stress the fact that the defendant Pook did not participate in the collection of dental gold within the scope of the Reinhardt Action.
May it please the Tribunal, I would like to interrupt my reading here, and I would like to point out here that unfortunately the interpreter does not have a translation. However, there were only ten pages in between which were not translated, but we have the witness testimony.
On the Question of Desecration of Corpses. The conviction that the lifeless shell of a human being, the corpse, must be respected and honored is not an achievement of philosophy and ethics of the modern man. For to the old Egyptians, the dead body was, and continued to be, the deceased person himself whose soul lived on. Therefore, the dead body was embalmed. Also for the old Greeks the dead body was the object of religious duties. The dead had to be buried according to a religious ritual, and it was an inviolable law based on a direct divine command and after every battle the enemies had to give up the dead for burial. Thus, also with the ancient Romans, the corpse had a power rejecting everything profane. Not only was the dead body itself inviolable, it could even make sacred the place where it was buried. Also in the early Christian era the body was regarded as inviolable. Any desecration of the body, be it even through the knife of an anatomist, was liable to the most severe punishments.