The order was addressed to agencies on lower levels of the Economy and Administration Main Office and to individuals outside such afencies, i.e., the plant manager.
With respect to the contents -- this directive constitutes a mixtum compositum militare et civile - insofar as this directive as actual order from the chief of the Economy and Administration Main Office could be addressed only to the Office Group D and the camp commandants -- whereas it could be considered only a direction from the business manager of the DWB, being by commercial law the only person entitled to act as representative, to employees of economic enterprises connected with the holding company through interlocking of capital and organization agreements.
The motive which prompted Pohl -- elimination of the dualism in the management of the employees - was justified. It would have been consistent with this same objection to transfer all SS-plants to the concentration camp administration, thus creating a setup similar to the one in operation for installations with their own plants under the administration of the Ministry of Justice.
However, Pohl shrank from drawing this final consequence for fear of what might follow afterwards. Therefore, what was done was only a half measure and, for this reason, entirely inadequate. He transferred the management of the plant to persons completely lacking the economic mind necessary for a plant manager and ignorant of the art of handling and employing workers.
Acting in the double capacity outlined above, Pohl transferred the economic responsibility for the part of the personnel consisting of prisoners from the economic sphere to exclusive police agency - namely, the commandants - on whom, in addition, he conferred the economically completely impossible title of plant managers. He did not transfer it to the plant manager whom he reduced to assistants of the commandants. But, at the sane tine, he imposed upon then, and not upon the business managers of the individual companies or the so-called office chiefs (Amtschefs) a co-responsibility for failures with respect to output and profits.
The consequence of this was that not only the accommodation, the feeding, the clothing, etc. of the prisoners were concerns of the camp commandant, but also the allocation of prison labor to the works whenever it was not a question of purely professional directions. From an economic view point, and from the point of view of the SS as well as the business managers, the so-called office chiefs (Amtschefs) were no more allowed to handle these questions without interfering with the sphere of competency of another agency which, from that time on, could claim that this group of questions was exclusively within their range of rights and duties.
The unhappy consequences of this absurd order from a man having no knowledge whatsoever of economic matters - in particular, of the management of a business enterprise - soon became manifest to an appalling extent.
Now economic considerations, but points of view of the police were decisive for all measures taken by the camp commandants. The tyranny of violence now started, exercised by the spirits of the camp headquarters which Pohl - as in the words of the poet - had raised but now could no more control. That is the tragedy of Pohl's life, arising from his primitive military mind.
A subordination of the labor camps to the management of the plant managers would have made a proper labor allocation possible, thus being a preparatory step towards application of the procedure customary in the administration of justice of letting the prisoners serve their sentence term under gradually loss hard conditions, also to the concentration camp prisoners.
From this dualism which Pohl tried but was unable to eliminate, arose the fight over the problem "man" Carried on through five years, by Mummenthey in a way involving much personal sacrifice and which he finally concluded, recapitulating the words of Montgomery:
Nobody except he who personally knows the tragedy of these years can measure what enormous quantities of energy and working power were wasted by Mummenthey on the realization of his ideas.
The shifting of the responsibility for the allocation of prisoners from the sphere of the enterprises to the sphere of the concentration camps, however, forces upon us unconditionally a conclusion of basic importance for the problem concerning the responsibility of Mummenthey.
The Document R-129, introduced by the Prosecution, is not a document which supports the case of the Prosecution with respect to the DEST and Mummenthey. On the contrary, it constitutes evidence in their defense to such strong degree that the Prosecution could never have produced one more favorable for Mummenthey. In the face of the clear wording of this document the business management of the economic enterprises of the SS can, ex nunc, no more be charged with a responsibility for the allocation of prison labor nor for the way it was practiced, nor for abuses and atrocities found to have taken place in connection therewith. Mummenthey has fought against this order with superior authorities. His failure is due to the repudiation of all his ideas. It is not Mummenthey, but the camp commandants who, since 1 May 1942, are solely responsible for all this.
The examination of the question whether the utilization of the work of prisoners by the DEST constitutes "slave labor" leads to a critical valuation of this concept as such.
In Section I, subparagraph 1 of the international convention on slavery, signed in Geneva 25 September 1926, slavery is defined as the status or the position of a person on whom the powers incident to ownership, or some of them, are exercised. In Section II slave trade is described as being any act of acquisition or cession of a person with the intention of placing him in the state of enslavement.
This definition implies that forced labor, or the amount or the nature of the remuneration as such, in international opinion are not decisive for the concept of enslavement but, rather, the violation of the dignity of a human being implied when men are being made equal to dead things. Thus the nature of the basic agreement is decisive, by virtue of which the duty to work is enforced either plainly or through purchase or cession of a human being.
In the case of the DEST the persons employed were not forced laborers or displaced persons, as in the case of Action Sauckel, or similar enterprises - but persons imprisoned by the Administration of Justice or the police, and assigned to work for the DEST by the official executive authority representing the state, namely, the camp headquarters.
The obligation to work imposed upon the prisoners was recognized by the present Tribunal in the Milch verdict to be an expedient measure in the interest of the prisoners against which no objection for inhumanity could be raised. Such obligation is a normal measure in nearly all civilized states throughout the world and, therefore, cannot constitute a violation of the general dignity of human beings. The obligation to work imposed upon a prison can, therefore, never be termed an enslavement, and the work as such never "slave labor."
In the course of the trial "forced labor without pay" or "granting of food and accommodation only" as remuneration for the work, were mentioned as essential criteria of slave labor.
It cannot be denied that forced labor or obligation to work result in conditions similar to a state of enslavement, and that in this connection also the question of the remuneration can be of a certain importance. These two characteristics, however, are not a criterion of enslavement according to the Geneva Convention.
This reference already shows how dangerous it is to generalize concepts which have been established for certain cases. From the sphere of internationally established formulations referring to a certain set of facts, such concept easily sinks into the sphere of slogans being applied to completely different sets of facts by means of the virtually anathematized legal analogy.
Therefore the only question which still needs an answer is whether the nature of the remuneration could give the prison labor an accessory character of being slave labor in the sense of the Geneva Convention.
Concerning this question the following principal views are to be expounded in the first place:
(a) The protective custody procedure in pursuance of regulation existing at that time was not a procedure before an ordinary court, that is true, but still it was a legally established police procedure. The prisoner was imprisoned by the German Reich, administration of justice. The correctness of this assertion is proved, that is, also through the extension of the law on accident care for prisoners, from 1900, to apply also to prisoners in concentration camps, whereas, previously it had applied only to Justice and Police prisoners, and similarly through other regulations according to which concentration camp police prisoners had a status more or less equal to that of justice prisoners, that is, through the. regulations providing that prisoners and concentration camp inmates be fed by the Reich food Ministry.
(b) The German Reich, police administration, acting through the camp headquarters, allocated prisoners to work for the DEST, but in return the DEST had the obligation towards the German Reich within their plants to assign the prisoners as imprisoned by the German Reich to such work as was within the scope of tasks imposed upon the DEST. These facts were the basis of the legal relationship can only be judged as a parallel to that which arises when an official of a certain agency is assigned to another agency for temporary duty, that is, a transfer from the District Court, Nurnberg in Bavaria, to the District Court Torgau in Prussia. No legal relationship under civil law would arise between the District Court Torgau and the official from the District Court Nurnberg, and this was no more the case through the assignment of the prisoner of the DEST. Exactly as the District Court Nurnberg had to provide the salary for the official detached for duty with the District Court Torgau, the German Reich also had to assume the responsibility for the remuneration of the prisoner.
Whether the justice or the police prisoner received a remunerative for the work which he had to carry out in pursuance of the camp regulations was a matter exactly as immaterial to the DEST as the payment of the salary to the official from the District Court Nurnberg would be to the District Court Torgau; this was a concern of the German Reich exclusively, represented by the administration of justice in the case of judicial prisoners and represented by the police administration in the case of police prisoners?
(c) The Reich represented by the police administration was on the other hand entitled to demand of the enterprise a compensation for the expenses arising to it from food, clothing, wages, etc., during worktime, just as the Bavarian administration of justice in the case of the above mentioned official was entitled to demand a refundment of the salary for the discharge of the official from the Prussian Administration of Justice. This claim to indemnification was asserted by the Reich in our case in the form of a compensation for prisoners work, which the DEST had to pay to the Reich treasury represented by the Kommanduer just as other enterprises to which judicial prisoners had been assigned had to pay such a compensation to the authority executing the punishment.
(d) The question as to the amount in which the Reich actually demanded such an indemnification from the DEST did likewise not touch the DEST in itself. The Reich could demand the compensation in any amount and could under certain circumstances renounce it.
Pohl in his position as representative of the Reich actually fixed the payment for prisoners and since the amount of the payments in this new field of prisoners allocation had not been established from the beginning, it developed in three stages:
(a) Originally the DEST paid the Reich prisoners a compensation amounting to 30 pfennigs a person per day.
(b) Later the DEST in addition to the amount of 30 pfennigs paid an mount in cash to the prisoner directly which was calculated in percentage for the prisoner involved on the basis of a wage list in agreement with the wages of a civilian worker. This cash amount was consciously not designated as wages, or payment but as a premium, that is, as a reward for work done, or service rendered.
(c) Since in the course of time the Kommandantur raised objections to the payment in cash, the cash amounts of all prisoners were later transferred to the treasury of the camp administration in a collective transfer based on a collective list. The treasury credited the individual amounts to the prisoners accounts. The prisoners could freely dispose over these amounts by buying merchandise, by transferring them to their dependents, or by accumulating these amounts up to the time of their release.
(d) In 1942 this system was replaced by the premium system designed by office D-II. The premium system of office D-II provided for the acquisition of premium bills by the DEST, and the possibility of exchanging them in the concentration camp for goods. Whether and in how far the Reich still owes amounts to the prisoners in case of the Reich or has not exchanged them, is a question which need not be discussed in this connection.
The payment made by the DEST to the Reich for the services rendered by the prisoners thus did not represent wages which the DEST had to pay, or did pay to the prisoner indirectly or directly for his work. The reason why the amount of the payment to begin with was low, and at the end of the war still was below the amount which the Reich had to pay for the maintenance of the prisoners, including the compensation due to them for their work, partly, is that the Reich did acknowledge its obligation to give the DEST a subvention.
(a) The DEST was a public - a SS - enterprise. As such it had to accomplish a series of tasks which in themselves would have been a public task, thus a task of the Reich. This included the production of building material for the building programs, thus a mixed task, a task in the interest of private economy and of the public, insofar as large public buildings were involved, the establishment of most up-to-date works for the production of building materials, thus a task of industrial development, the training of future workers, retraining of persons of other trades, training of unskilled workers into skilled workers, thus a task of industrial labor, finally a task of training sustained by the execution of the arrest, that is, the training, or education of criminal, anti-social elements to be skilled workers for avoiding relapses, etc.
The DEST was not in a position to finance these tasks with its own funds. It, therefore, needed the assistance of the Reich by keeping the production costs low by way of subventions.
The evidence has proved that Mummenthey continually intervened in favor of an increase of payment to be made to the Reich. This fact is striking in itself, because it is in contradiction to the business motives which partly determined Mummenthey in his management of the DEST. It can, however, easily be explained by Mummenthey's commercial efforts to prevent sham profits by keeping the production costs low, and to avoid the reproach of gaining such profits by cheap labor. Out of social reflections Mummenthey, on the other hand, wished to induce the Reich to make greater payments, for the prisoners by keeping the compensation on a higher level.
Bickel as commercial leader of the prisoners at Neuengamme testified that his works in 1944 let the prisoners have roughly one-third of the prisoners compensations paid to the Reich in the form of premiums.
The situation was not much different in the other works. These contributions were occasioned by Mummenthey's constant urging the managers of the works to let the prisoners have as many privileges as possible. In this connection it must be established that these additional services were voluntary.
In concluding I wish to state the following with regard to the chapter of slave labor.
(a) To those who are acquainted with the German Administration of Criminal Justice, it is an established fact that the administration of justice until World War I was only determined by the purpose of punishment if it employed prisoners in enterprises owned by the prison. After World War I, the administration of justice without giving up the primary of the purpose of punishment, proceeded to supply outside enterprises with prisoners. In the middle of the twenties the Thuringian administration of justice prompted by the idea of replacing the purpose of punishment by the purpose of improvement of character, created its own limited partnership for its penitentiaries in a place in Thuringia, where the first consideration was no longer the work carried out as a penalty, but an individual industrial employment for the purpose of improvement of character far away from the penitentiary. This was to enable the prisoners to return into civilian life.
(b) The DEST, the DAW, and also the Deutsche Versuchsaustalt fur Ernaehrung, the German Food Research Institution, which for this reason had been granted privileges by the administration of justice in the field of taxes, were so to speak, an attempt to develop this type of industry, which combined the performance of industrial tasks with the idea of training the prisoners to lead a regular civilian life. Therewith their attempts ran along lines which for a considerable time had attracted the attention of the public in an increasing measure.
They aimed at freeing prisoners from their unprofitable seclusion behind bars by giving them productive work to do, and at their incorporation into the general working process the difficulties of which at present appear more than ever in connection with the reconstruction of Europe.
I shall interrupt my final plea here and I shall make certain oral statements with regard to the question of the way the work was carried out by the prisoners and that they had carried out, their work assignments not in violation of humanity by the DEST, and this, therefore, this can not be charged against Mummenthey. The deliberation on this question is contained in this final plea on pages 47 to 54. I believe I can say that I have presented this even with this evidence in an objective manner in my final plea. For this reason, I think that it is important that these deliberations should be judged by this Tribunal accordingly, because they will show as clear as crystal in my final plea. In order to advise the Tribunal I have referred to particular plans and the record pages of the Tribunal, and also to the exhibits of the defendant Mummenthey; it is a reiteration also as to what extent Mummenthey's measures went which he had taken in order to eliminate certain conditions, and in order to better conditions of the inmates. That is, in particular to increase their ability to work, to improve the food, the billeting, the clothing conditions and to obtain tobacco rations, to take care of the question of working hours, and of sending back to the barracks those inmates who were not fit to work but were sick inmates. I have pointed out in particular that the DEST had in no way carried out any punishment of the inmates and now I would like to pass on to page 55 of my written plea.
The question of the treatment of prisoners at the plants of the DEST is closely connected with this. The Prosecution attempted to make the DEST responsible for ill treatment or killings of inmates, which are supposed to have occurred on the plant grounds.
Several Prosecution witnesses, for example, Engler, Kruse and others, spoke of ill treatment and killings. None of these witnesses, however, could relate even a single case of a member of the plant participating in such ecesses.
The witness Bickel testified that members of the plant did not take part in the beating of prisoners. His following remark shows from which side the prisoners had to suffer especially, and what difficulties stood in the way of correcting such conditions: "It is easier to contradict an emperor than a prisoner in charge of the entire column, especially if he comes from the lowest brackets of humanity."
Mummenthey admitted that through conversations with technical managers he knew of individual excesses on the part of the camp guards. Therefore, his order to the technical managers to interfere with any excess regardless of its nature and to report to him in case their intervention failed to be successful. It is known that in such cases Mummenthey contacted the camp commander personally or reported the case to Pohl who caused the situation to be corrected.
Mummenthey was not satisfied with such interventions but made sure from time to time, especially during conferences with the technical managers, that such incidents were not repeated.
Mummenthey also intervened at once against less important misconditions at the plants. It would have been incompatible with Mummenthey's nature, as it is revealed by his statements and the descriptions by witnesses during this trial, not to have intervened with all means at his disposal against ill treatment, or, even worse, killings.
Therefore, his claim that he knew nothing about the incidents at the Mauthausen quarry (NO-3104, Exhibit 621) can be accepted as being true. This description, by the way, contradicts sharply the testimony given by the witness Otto Wever, Document Book No. XVII.
Among the prisoners who died, there were certainly some who worked at the plants. However, by the witness Bickel the cause of death was not the way work was performed at the plants of the DEST. The responsibility lay with conditions in the concentration camps and especially with the arbitrary acts of the Kapos, that is of the prisoner-foremen and the block leaders of the camp personnel. This is the only explanation for some witnesses's claims of "inhuman working conditions". The DEST had no part in this at all.
The actual attitude of the DEST and its members in the question of the treatment of prisoners is revealed beyond doubt by all affidavits and by the testimonies.
At the plants the prisoners were, as a matter of principle, treated like the civilian workers, The technical managers and former prisoners confirm this. The former prisoner Skladal Exhibit 11, even mentioned an incident where through his direct intervention Mummenthey save him from a beating by the camp commander.
Many cases of prisoners being assigned to responsible positions prove the DEST's efforts to employ prisoners according to their former civilian work or other personal abilities. At the witness stand Mummenthey cited several examples of prisoners who worked at the plants of the DEST as construction or business chiefs, as chief of a construction office or chief of bookkeeping, etc., although the employment of prisoners in such positions was forbidden.
Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz were employed at the office in contradiction to an order by Himmler according to which Jews could not be employed at offices. In this case, too, the DEST took no notice of an order which had to be considered as discrimination against certain people.
Summing up it can be considered as having been proved, as far as working conditions at the plants of the DEST are concerned, that the prisoners were not subjected to inhuman or extremely hard conditions on the part of the plants.
Whatever the plants could do for the prisoners in this direction, had to remain imperfect. They could procure additional food and clothing, could establish shops where gloves and shoes were produced and repaired. However, they could not cure the basic ill which pervaded the entire system. What happened to the prisoners after they had left the plants at the end of the workday, what kind of food they received, how they were treated, all this remained concealed from outsiders. The circle of these outsiders who despite geographical proximity could not gain insight into conditions at the camp, was very wide. It included the technical managers and Mummenthey.
From Mummenthey's untiring efforts to improve the living conditions of the prisoners, the Prosecution deducted that Mummenthey must have had detailed knowledge of the conditions in the concentration camps. Difficile est satiram non scribere. Had Mummenthey not tried to improve the living conditions, the Prosecution would be sure to have that fact interpreted as a failure to act, and thus as a violation of the laws of humanity. But since this charge can be established no longer after the examination of evidence, Mummenthey's knowledge of conditions in the concentration camps must strengthen the base of the indictment. The "juste Milieu" of the indictment had to misinterprete the sovereignty of Mummenthey's human feelings and had to substitute another inhuman weakness.
In reality Mummenthey knew nothing about it.
It has been established beyond doubt that Mummenthey cared much about the lot of the prisoners working at the plant than he was allowed to do on the basis of his competency. Wherever possible he tried to gain insight into the conditions under which the prisoners lived and worked. Often the camp commanders, who watched jealously over their competency, reproached him on account of this attitude which they considered as "interference". What he heard was the result of the reports of his business comanagers and technical managers.
The most important points on the agenda of the conferences of the technical managers were always the questions of feeding and clothing of the prisoners and other measures in their favor. Here Mummenthey did not limit himself at all to suggestions which he submitted himself or which he received from his collaborators. On the contrary, he cared about the actual carrying out of the measures that had been discussed, and pressed for their execution. This fact was confirmed by the witnesses, Schwarz, Bickel, and especially the works managers and former prisoners in their numerous affidavits.
To a foreigner who does not know anything about conditions in war time Germany, the amount of relief measures taken by the DEST, that is to say those taken by Mummenthey and the local work managers, may seen poor and negligible. But if one considers the fast that nearly all necessary conveniences, including food and tobacco, were strictly rationed, one can realize how much work and effort was necessary to effect all these improvements in nutrition, clothing, housing, etc., which Mummenthey, in connection with his co-directors and plant managers actually attained. What these measures taken by him were is described in detail in the various affidavits by former prisoners.
To these war-time difficulties will have to be added the equally great resistance which the Camp Commandant's Office frequently put up against the honest efforts made by Mummenthey and the plant managers to better the prisoners' conditions. It was, as Bickel confirms, a continual struggle between the DEST and its works on the one hand and the Camp Commandant's Office on the other hand. Mummenthey himself declared on the witness stand that for years he worked full strength and actually to the point of exhaustion without being able to get at the root of all the evil.
Mummenthey has the right to apply to himself Bismarck's word: "In serviendo consumor. Many of the plant managers did not fare any better. They all agree upon it that Mummenthey always sustained them unconditionally in their local battles against the Camp Commander's Offices?
These conditions must be taken into account if Mummenthey's activities and actual successes to be considered and correctly judged.
According to Witness Schwarz the DEST successfully intervened in the cases of 30 to 40 prisoners who were reloaded. After their release most of these former prisoners were re-employed as civil employees or laborers by the DEST. In a great many more cases Mummenthey's efforts were thwarted by the resistance of RSHA and other authorities. If the DEST had been an "all-round prisoners' outfit" as one would gather from Document NO-1276/428 XVI, which Mummenthey has signed along with others such efforts made by Mummenthey in order to have prisoners released would have been senseless. It was important for the DEST to train a body of efficient specialists so as to be able to use them as free labor. This effort was based on the knowledge, that the work of prisoners, that is to say forced labor always is qualitatively as well as quantatively inferior to free labor.
The statements of Bickel, Schwarz and Mummenthey agree on the fact that the amount of work done by prisoners was generally inferior to that of civilian workers of comparative ability and the DEST took this into account.
The witnesses Schwarz, Bickel and Mummenthey have made detailed statements on the witness stand about the question of professional training of the prisoners in the works of the DEST, as well as other measures, such as the elimination of long and unnecessary roll calls, the support of requests for leave, improvements on working conditions, etc.
Quite a number of affidavits are also concerned with this question.
If one considers Mummenthey's efforts and the measures taken by him, one cannot avoid wondering why a man, whose official activities kept him already more than busy, took an interest in matters which were outside his formal responsibilities and even more beyond his power-sphere. The reasons are the following:
As the plant manager, especially state in their affidavits, Mummenthey took his duties very seriously and he always looked after everything most conscientiously.
Mummenthey gave the following answer to the Prosecutor's question whether the unsatisfactory state of nutrition of the prisoners induced him to start taking relief measures.
"During the war every plant made provisions for additional food for its employees."
And in answer to the further question whether he would have been willing to risk being indicted and convicted although he did not consider the food to be insufficient, Mummenthey said:
"In this respect I share the fate of many German plants and their responsible men, as during the war, they made the same efforts as I did for their civilian employees and also took the same risk."
This proves that Mummenthey did not consider the prisoners as slave laborers but as employees. Anyway -- what slave-owner would be prepared to run such a risk for his slaves?
Bickel stated that Mummenthey was thoroughly friendly inclined towards the prisoners. He has proved this in connection with the report about the plants management conference in Neuengamme. He and two other prisoners overheard the whole of the conference with Mummenthey in the Chair. At this occasion Mummenthey's attitude and speeches proved clearly that he was anxious to get as many privileges as possible for the prisoners. According to Bickel's statement this attitude towards the prisoners was not dictated by business interests only, but was based upon Mummenthey's character.
That Mummenthey took his fight for the prisoners' welfare seriously is proved by the fact emphasized by Bickel that those measures which Mummenthey personally suggested, or those approved by him were also carried into effect.
A number of former prisoners have made voluntary statements to the same effect already at the beginning of the trial.
The Prosecution witness Engler in his affidavit acknowledges the fact that he probably owes his life to Mummenthey, as Mummenthey did not pass on the accusations which had been made against him to the camp commander as would have been Mummenthey's duty to do. The former prisoner Schroth too states that Mummenthey had saved his life. The witness Bickel acknowledges the fact that Mummenthey took great trouble to get him his release and that in this way his life was saved.
May I also refer to the affidavit of Seiler-Vierling, Exhibit No. 66?
It would lead too far to mention all the cases in which Mummenthey proved again and again that purely humane reasons enduced him to stand up for the prisoners.
These facts lead us up to the human qualities of the man Mummenthey which have not been considered in the indictment.
As the evidence proved, Mummenthey came into contact with social problems already in his earliest childhood. Ever since that time an ever increasing social conscience proved of domineering influence on his character. Even in the certificates which he received at the time of his legal training this particularity of his was especially mentioned (Exhibit 10).
Joining the DEST put his social ideals to the test and it remained to be seen whether they would hold bood in practical life. What he found was an economic outfit which employed unfree labor. From a moral point of view this seemed to him justifiable only if some higher aim was to be reached. This aim, for him, was that of changing men who through their leanings towards criminality had put themselves for the time being outside human society, back into useful members of human society by way of a training useful to the interests of the community.
His work with the DEST did not allow him at first to occupy himself with the prisoner problem. During the hearing of the evidence the name Schondorff was mentioned several times. Schondorff differed to a great extent from Mummenthey where his attitude towards social questions and especially questions concerning prisoners was concerned. As already mentioned, allocation of labor was his responsibility. If, in spite of this, Mummenthey helped the prisoners as much as possible, his attitude was motivated by his deep human sympathy for those human beings who had become unfree and his wish to help in leading them back into the human community.
Mummenthey was full of social ideas and ideals, the greater part of which was doomed to be made impossible by wartime conditions and the system under which concentration camps were managed. Neither could his training program be carried out to its full extent. In it the prisoners were supposed to be given the opportunity to learn a trade which could keep them after their release and which would help them to become useful members of the human society. It could have meant, as stone mason Kaiser states in his affidavit, a "great social achievement." Such thoughts cannot live in a human brain which thinks at the same time of ways how to exploit human beings or to exterminate them by making them work too hard; it would not even allow such things to happen.
Mummenthey understood clearly that the dualism camp-commandants office and plant management was at the root of all evil. The commandants office claimed for itself the right to rule supreme over the camp inmates. To bridge the fatal cleft Mummenthey wrote Document NO-1031/ 437, XVI, in which, besides recommending the taking-over of the Roehmhild basalt quarries, he suggested putting the labor camp under the command of the plant manager.
All these efforts show that here was a man who swam against the stream and who did not succumb to the epidemic of "thoughtlessness" and"giving way to dark instincts."
It is, therefore, not accidental that in nearly all affidavits the characteristics of Mummenthey's personality are fully recognized as being a social attitude, humane thoughts and actions, helpfulness and altruism. This quality of Mummenthey was particularly emphasized by witness Schwarz. The witness Bickel, whose "strong will to objectivity" could not keep him from making his attitude quite clear, set Mummenthey aside from the other SS officers. For Bickel Mummenthey is the "white raven" whose attitude towards the prisoners was unique, who did no evil deeds and who had never "beaten up" anybody neither directly nor indirectly, by giving orders to that effect.