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.
But as in more recent times, the religious conceptions and obligations generally faded out, gradually the attitude toward the body which the deceased had left behind on earth changed into that of the corpse. It was regarded as a thing, which, according to natural law, was subject to rapid decomposition and which , until it had turned to dust was to be regarded as a thing. The respect and the honors shown to the dead body were intended only for the person of the deceased, who no longer lived and no longer existed. The strict religious and legal duties toward the body of the deceased were replaced by a general feeling of reverence. Reverence demanded that the deceased should be buried respectably. Reverence did, however, not prevent the body of the deceased from being destroyed by fire by turning it over to the crematorium and did not prevent it from being cut up by the knife of the anatomist. Of the old conceptions about the sanctity of the body, we the present generation, have solely retained the notion of desecration of dead bodies. This conception still seems to us impressive; yet it is void and vain and without significance because the religious and legal obligations toward the body no longer exist at present.
The judicial question which in our case is under discussion is this: Does there at present exist a crime of desecration of bodies or what other punishable act can otherwise be committed against the human corpse?
The deceased who has breathed his last, no longer has any rights, for the legal capacity of a man ends with his death. As already mentioned, the love of surviving relatives lasting beyond death and the respectful memory of his friends are attached to the mortal remains of a deceased person. He who violates the duties of reverence is exposed to reproof and contempt. However, for all reverence to be shown to the human body as a one time human being, it can no longer have any legal rights, the violation of which would be a crime in the judicial sense.
On the other hand, the human corpse is not a thing, just as little as a man in his lifetime has been a thing.
This leads to the following reflections, which I quote literally from a Swiss paper on "The Treatment of the Dead Human Body in Civil and Criminal Law." Author Carl Erwin Cramer from Zurich, published in Zurich in 1885.
"Due to the so entirely isolated position held by the dead human body , pursuant to its nature as an erstwhile human being and as a non-entity among the things of the free and unfree material world, it lacks the main characteristics which the still living legal person had (Such as life, freedom, honor, health, etc.), as well as those which follow, or could follow from the qualities of a thing, being considered somebody's property of changing hands, of being an asset."
Therefore, a violation of these qualities by illegal acts directed against the dead human body is impossible; thus attacks directed against the human corpse can never involve a violation of these legal rights; consequently no criminal acts applying to the violation of these legal rights, for instance, life , honor, freedom, property, can be committed against the human dead body.
In agreement with its nature the dead human body has only one destiny: To find its due final rest. Religion and customs of men gave it for the time prior to, and after its internment a sanctified position, rejecting everything profane. That the dead human body should be treated in conformity with this sanctified position is the will of its mourners as well as of the whole society and in nearly all countries, also that of the State. There is no other will or no other interest of society with regard to the human corpse. Acts offending the position of honor created for it by religion and custom are qualified as offenses against religion. Its object is the religious peace of the religious communities; in most modern times legislative acts it has been granted the status of a legal possession, i.e., it has been placed under the protection of criminal law.
To continue my contention -- within these wider limits of a violation of the peace of religious communities every act directed against the position of honor of the dead human body is especially qualified as a violation of the final peace of the dead this being the special objective of every offense against the dead human body. No other crime against the dead human body is possible, as every punishable activity directed against it can only affect this one and no other legal property, either directly or indirectly.
My ideas are confirmed by the legal history of the human corpses: Roman law, as well as general law, was only aware of a delictum sui generis, which could be committed against the earthly shell of man.
According to Cramer, this delictum sui generis of the Roman law was identical with the sepulcri violatio which was punished most severely. In general law the continuation of the validity of this crime was disputed: Some said that the sepulcri violatio was antiquated as general law, because of the complete change which had come about in common law and customs and that they were replaced by the ordinary rules about theft and damage to property. Other scientists said that the crime of the Roman sepulcri violatio was adopted in Germany unchanged in the idea behind it as well as in its facts. The Reich Penal Code which has been valid in Germany from 1871 up to the present time has adopted the idea that any actions against a dead body deprive it of the place of honor allotted to it by religion and custom and are therefore to be listed among religious offenses. The Reich Penal Code in the 11th paragraph, Article 166, deals with blasphemy and slandering of religious societies; Article 167 deals with disturbances caused to the religious services of those religious communities which are acknowledged by the States; Article 168 deals with the sepulCri violatio as follows.
I quote:
"Any unauthorized person who removes a corpse from the custody of an authorized person and any unauthorized person who destroys a grave or damages it, or he who defiles a grave, will be punished with imprisonment up to two years; loss of civil rights may also be decreed."
These regulations are supplemented in article 367, subparagraph 1 of the Reich Penal Code as follows:
"Whoever buries or removes a body without notifying the authorities or whoever removes parts of a corpse from the custody of the persons authorized thereto without being authorized to do so himself, will be fined up to 150 RM or taken into custody."
The Reich Penal Code, therefore, on principle, punishes only (1) the removal of a corpse, i.e., the theft of a dead body,(2) the violation of graves. After the dead body has been buried, that is, the body is interred, then the deceased has been put to everlasting rest by the religious ceremonies of his religious community, such as consecration, etc. Violation of the peace of the grave sanctioned by the blessing of the Church is a religious offense according to Article 168 of the Reich Penal Code. The dead body which is not consecrated in such a way is by no means protected against desecration or damage. Only the removal of the dead body from the custody of the persons thereto authorized is a punishable offense and to be punished for trespassing is he who, without knowledge of the authorities buries or removes a corpse, or, without proper authority removes part of a body from the custody of persons authorized to hold it. According to German law there can, therefore, be no question either of bodily damage to or actual theft of, or damage to or defiling of a dead body. The reason seems clear: The body from which life has departed is, according to our idea , no longer a personality or a human being, but it is also not a thing; it is the pathetic remains of a human being, doomed to de composition, the mortal and completely dead shell in which law has no further interest than that of preventing its being illegally removed by a third party or its being dismembered by an unauthorized person.
As far as the legislator is concerned the question of handling a corpse is a religious one. It is in order to safeguard the interests of religious authorities recognized and not those of the corpse, that violation of the peace of the grave is made a punishable offense, just as insult to a relgious community or disturbing of religious services is threatened with punishment in the articles of the Reich Penal Code which immediately precede it.
The legislator goes by no means so far as to adjust his own view to that of the authorized religious communities. For instance, although all the Christian churches still maintain that cremation of a dead body is unacceptable and sinful as it is contradictory to all Christian doctrines, the state legislators have decided to act according to more enlightened standards and to allow cremation of the dead; this would, undoubtedly, not have happened had the State itself not considered the dead human body a thing doomed to destruction and to be destroyed at the earli est possible moment.
What a change in the public attitude from ancient times, when desecration of the dead was a matter for capital punishment!
It is clear that the modern legislator considers the handling of a dead body to be a matter of private concern, i.e., the concern of the relatives of the deceased or of any persons authorized to keep the dead body in their custody. -- article 368 of the Reich Penal Code. -- Those persons will naturally have to comply with police regulations which have been issued in the interest of public order and hygiene in connection with the internment of the dead body. Otherwise, there is no objection to their doing whatever they please with the body; for instance, having it embalmed or cremated. They can sell the corpse or have it dismembered or exhibit it; they may treat the corpse shamefully or reverently, and so forth.
Binding - Handbook, Special Section, Volume I, Artide 45 - has sternly criticized this attitude of the law and points out that it does not even forbid anthropophy to the authorized, let alone trading in corpses.
Returning to our own case: Concerning the removal of gold teeth from the mouths of deceased persons, we can first state that: Removal of gold teeth and fillings is not punishable if done by persons authorized to keep the corpses in custody, -- Articles 168 and 367, subparagraph 1, Reich Penal Code. Entitled to keep corpses in custody are all those persons who do not take them over illegally, such as near relatives, hospital administrations, and the police.
In cases in which the state is responsible for the care of a person during his or her lifetime, this responsibility is extended also towards the dead body - the keeping of it and the arrangements for the burial. The state is responsible for the dead body of the soldier as well as for the corpse of the patient who has died in a public hospital and also for the corpse of the deceased prisoner (Professor von Blume "Questions of Posthumous Law" - in the Archive for Civilian Practice, 112, Vol. 1914, page 421). If the state is in such a way concerned with a dead body it has the duty to pay the burial charges but it has, naturally, also to be ceded all the rights over it which, under normal circumstances, would be reserved for the near relations. It cannot only decide upon the manner in which it is buried, but can also turn the body over to the anatomical institute which, in turn, can then also do as it pleases with it. As the state is in such a case the "person authorized to take custody of the body" - it can, undoubtedly, do with the corpse of the deceased prisoner what, otherwise, the family could have done with it: remove all the gold out of its mouth.
I shall skip the next page and continue on page 48.
The following objections will be raised: Despite everything I have said, the removal of dental gold in the case of the prisoners who died in the concentration camp will, on the basis of the sense of justice of all civilized people, be considered as robbery or violation of the dead and it will be claimed that such action completed the picture of the criminal system of the concentration camps and the absolute abolishment of all human rights.
In summary I would like to say this, against that: Whether someone dies as a king, or as a beggar, or as a concentration camp inmate, with his last breath his legal position and all his rights are extinguished. The corpse has no more rights of any sort but no one has any rights to the corpse either. The body, so to speak, from a legal point of view, floats between heaven and earth. There remains only a custody over the corpse and a right of custody over it. The person with the right of custody can, as observed, dispose of the corpse - even in a selfish manner; for example, the person with the right of custody may sell the corpse to an anatomical laboratory, or also to an embalmer, who may further use tho skull not only for scientific purposes but also as an article of decoration.
Previously, no one thought of seeing a crime against humanity in such a procedure. And who thinks of plundering or of any other crime if the corpse of a person who has been executed is not delivered to his survivors but is burned and the ashes are scattered to the four winds? Justice has already been sufficiently vindicated by the execution on the basis of the death sentence. The legality of this process lies in the fact that the state has the right of custody over the corpse of every prisoner and that as a result of this the state may dispose of the corpse as it wishes. As long as there is no internationally recognized, and internationally valid code for the handling of corpses of prisoners, even the removal of the dental gold from the mouth of a dead prisoner - even if it was a concentration camp prisoner - then it may not be punished as a crime either according to international law or according to national penal law.
May it please the tribunal, all of my arguments about the question as to whether the removal of the dental gold in the case of the victims of the mass murders in Auschwitz, Lublin, etc. The Prosecution has not been able to incriminate the defendant Pook of participation, or even of knowledge of, this action - with a single clear and distinct word. Not a single document, not a single witness's testimony has been suitable to arouse such a suspicion against the defendant Dr. Pook. On his part, the defendant has denied such a knowledge with complete credibility; he has said that the reports concerning dental gold which had been removed which went through his hands were always so few in number that a question of mass annihiliation never occurred to him; he has stated that the Reinhardt Action took place at a time when he was at the front with a division as directing dentist, and that it was already essentially completed when he entered the service in Amt D III in September 1943, and that the removal of dental gold in the case of the murdered prisoners was certainly kept no less a secret than the mass murder itself.
I believe that it could not seriously be maintained that the trouble was taken with reference to this dental gold to make detailed and superfluous reports to Amt XIV according to formula through channels, thus through the directing dentist Dr. Pook. It has now been proven by testimony of witnesses that the dental gold was always directly delivered by the administration of the camp to Welmer - deputized by the WVHA - and from thelatter to the Reichsbank. (See the affidavit of the former Administrative Director of Auschwitz, Burger, in my Document Book I, page 24.) Also by this it has been clearly proven that Pook never saw, or even heard, anything at all of this gold. I can, therefore, disregard legal arguments with reference to this dental gold.
4. Concerning the dental treatment of the prisoners in the Concentration Camps.
Against still another suspicion the defendant Dr. Pook must be defended - namely, the suspicion that he violated his obligations as supervisory dentist of the camp dentists in that he consented to, or even commanded, a negligent or inhumane or cruel treatment of the prisoners in the sphere of dentistry.
There would have been concrete grounds for such a suspicion of the assumption had been justified that Pook was an unscrupulous or a less capable dentist, or that he was deeply involved in the criminal SS ideology - such as believing that the prisoners were inferior people and, therefore, as patients they were to be treated accordingly. However, in this respect there are concrete grounds only in the opposite sense.
Besides his official service in Amt XIV, Dr. Pook built up and directed the large local dental station at Berlin. Besides his official service in Amt D III, he directed the large dental office at Oranienburg. In addition to this, he still carried on his own large private practice. From this, one can really not infer the suspicion that he was an incapable, or a bad dentist.
There was never an ideology for SS dentists. In particular, Dr. Pook would never have subscribed to such an ideology - as we have learned of him from personal witnesses. But there was never such an ideology in the dental central office for the Waffen-SS, in Amt XIV, Dental Service. From that office was never issued a special provision about the dental treatment of the prisoners. Not one single directive along this line came from that office. The office of a directing dentist in Amt D III was especially created to establish a supervisory, intermediary office for concentration camp dentists, The camp dentists had to report in detail every month about the personnel of the camp dental station, and about its work. Permission had to be granted for false teeth for the prisoners, not to injure the prisoners, but because such an affair would bring about great expenditure of material and thus incur expenses. This principle of prior permission for false teeth, naturally, also applied to the civilian sector of Germany when a sick insurance was supposed to pay the expenses for false teeth for the insured. It is amazing that Dr. Pook, during his activity, never refused such a request. Therefore, he could only have been reprimanded by his superiors for his all toogenerous attitude toward the dental patients. Requests for supply of material and drugs for the dental care of prisoners also went via Dr. Pook. Whoever in Germany hashad any wishes with regard to the care of his teeth during the years 1943 to 1945 knows how happy one could be if the dentist still had the material and drugs necessary for the best treatment of his patient. Then, again, it is amazing to hear that, up to the end of the war, more material and drugs were available to supply SS dentists, including those practicing in the concentration camp prisoner dental stations than in the so-called civilian sector. What is the crime for which Dr. Pook could be punished?
The witness Dr. Blachke has testified in his affidavit, Document Book I, page 1, that all SS dental stations and, therefore, also those in the prison camps, had the same equipment and were supplied with the same material; that the prison dental station Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, which he himself saw, had everything which is necessary to carry out a normal dental practice, and that, naturally, those dental stations established during the last period of the war often did have to operate according to orders.