2 Jan. 46
document book. This letter signed "Kaltenbrunner"
was sent by him under date of 4 December 1944 to regional offices of the
Criminal Police.
The Tribunal will recall that Kaltenbrunner's responsibility covered
the Criminal Police as well as the Gestapo. It provides in part, and I
quote, reading at the beginning of the letter:
"According to the decree of 30 June
1943, crimes committed by Polish and Soviet-Russian civilian laborers
are being prosecuted by the Directorates of the State Police and even
in those cases where for the time being the Criminal Police had,
within the sphere of its competence, carried on the inquiries. For the
purpose of speeding up the process and in order to save manpower, the
decree of 30 June 1943 is altered, and the Directorates of the
Criminal Police are authorized as from now on to prosecute,
themselves, the crimes they are inquiring into, within the sphere of
their competence, insofar as they are cases of minor or medium crimes."
I begin with the second paragraph:
"The following are available to the
Criminal Police as a means of prosecution: "Police imprisonment
... Admission into a concentration camp for preventive custody as
being antisocial or dangerous to the community."
And next to the last paragraph:
"Their stay in the concentration camp
is normally to be for the duration of the war. Besides this, the
Directorates of the Criminal Police are authorized to hand over Polish
and Soviet-Russian civilian laborers in suitable cases and with the
agreement of the competent Directorates of the State Police to the
Gestapo's penal camps for the 'education for labor.' Where the
possibilities of prosecuting an individual case are insufficient
because of the peculiarity of the case, the case is to be handed over
to the competent Directorate of the State Police. Signed: Dr.
Kaltenbrunner."
In addition
to sending foreign workers to Gestapo labor camps, Kaltenbrunner
punished foreign workers by committing them to concentration camps. I
offer Document 2582-PS as exhibit next in order, Exhibit Number USA-523.
This is a series of four teletype orders committing individuals to
concentration camps. I invite the attention of the Tribunal to the
second order dated 18 June 1943 under which the Gestapo at Saarbrücken
was ordered to deliver a Pole to the Concentration Camp Natzweiler as a
skilled workman and to the third teletype dated 12 December 1944 in
which the Gestapo at Darmstadt was ordered