no word of them was permitted to reach the country
from which they came, or their relatives; even in cases when they
died awaiting trial the families were not informed, the purpose being
to create anxiety in the minds of the family of the arrested person.
Hitler's purpose in issuing this decree was stated by the Defendant
Keitel in a covering letter, dated 12 December 1941, to be as
follows:
"Efficient and enduring
intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by
measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do
not know the fate of the criminal This aim is achieved when the
criminal is transferred to Germany "
Even persons who were only suspected of opposing say
of the policies of the German occupation authorities were arrested,
and on arrest were interrogated by the Gestapo and the SD in the most
shameful manner. On 12 June 1942 the Chief of the SIPO and SD
published, through Müller, the Gestapo Chief, an order
authorizing the use of "third degree" methods of
interrogation, where preliminary investigation had indicated that the
person could give information on important matters, such as
subversive activities, though net for the purpose of extorting
confessions of the prisoner's own crimes. This order provided:
". . . .Third degree may, under
this supposition, only be employed against Communists, Marxists,
Jehovah's Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance
movements, parachute agents' anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet
Russian loafers or tramps; in all other cases my permission must
first be obtained . . . . Third degree can, according to
circumstances, consist amongst other methods of very simple diet
(bread and water), hard bunk, dark cell, deprivation of sleep,
exhaustive drilling, also in flogging (for more than twenty strokes a
doctor must be consulted) "
The brutal suppression of "all opposition to the
German occupation was not confined to severe measures against
suspected members of resistance movements themselves, but was also
extended to their families. On 19 July 1944 the Commander of the SIPO
and SD in the district of Radom, in Poland, published an order,
transmitted through the Higher SS and Police Leaders, to the effect
that in all cases of assassination or attempted assassination of
Germans. or where saboteurs had destroyed vital installations, not
only the guilty person, but also all his or her male relatives should
be shot, and female relatives over In years of age put into a
concentration camp.
In the summer of 1944 the Einsatz Commando of the SIPO and SD at
Luxembourg caused persons to be confined at Sachsenhausen
concentration camp because they were relatives of deserters, and