4 Jan. 46

DR. KAUFFMANN: Did Kaltenbrunner ever indicate to you that he had agreed with Himmler that everything concerning concentration camps and the entire executive power was to be taken away from him and that only the SD, as an intelligence service, was to be entrusted to him and that he wanted to expand this intelligence service in order to supply the criticism that was otherwise lacking?

SCHELLENBERG: I never heard of any such agreement, and what I found out later to be the facts is to the contrary.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Now, since you have given a negative answer, I must ask you the following question, in order to make this one point clear: Which facts do you mean?

SCHELLENBERG: I mean, for instance, the fact that after the Reichsführer SS very reluctantly agreed, through my persuasion, not to evacuate the concentration camps, Kaltenbrunner — by getting into direct contact with Hitler — circumvented this order of Himmler's and broke his word in respect to international promises.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Were there any international decisions in respect to this — decisions which referred to existing laws or decisions which referred to international agreements?

SCHELLENBERG: I would like to explain that, if through the intermediary of internationally known persons, the then Reichsführer SS promised the official Allied authorities not to evacuate the concentration camps, owing to the general distress, this promise was binding according to human rights.

DR. KAUFFMANN: What do you mean by evacuate?

SCHELLENBERG: Arbitrarily to evacuate the camps before the approaching enemy troops and to scatter them to other parts of Germany still unoccupied by the enemy troops.

DR. KAUFFMANN: What was your opinion?

SCHELLENBERG: That no further evacuation should take place, because human rights simply did not allow it.

DR. KAUFFMANN: That the camps should therefore be surrendered to the approaching enemy?

SCHELLENBERG: Yes.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Did you know that your activity, too, could bring suffering to many people, to people who were per se innocent?

SCHELLENBERG: I did not understand the question. Will you please repeat it?

DR. KAUFFMANN: Did you ever think that your activity, too, and the activity of your fellow-workers was a cause for the great suffering of many people — let us say Jews — even though these people were innocent?