15.4.46

Q. What position did you hold in the year 1944?

A. In the year 1944 I was the head of Department E-I in the Economic and Administrative Main Office in Berlin. My office was the former Inspectorate of Concentration Camps at Oranienburg.

Q. And what was the subject of that conference which you have just mentioned?

A. It concerned a report from the camp at Mauthausen on the so-called nameless detainees and their engagement in armament industry. Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner was to make a decision in the matter. For that reason I came to him with the report from the commandant at Mauthausen but he did not make a decision, telling me he would do so later.

Q. Regarding the location of Mauthausen, will you please state in addition, in which district Mauthausen is situated? Is that Upper Silesia or is it the Government General?

A. Mauthausen -

Q. Auschwitz, I beg your pardon, I made a mistake. I mean Auschwitz.

A. Auschwitz is situated in the former State of Poland. Later, after 1939, it was incorporated in the province of Upper Silesia.

Q. Is it right for me to assume that administration and feeding of concentration camps was exclusively under the control of the Economic and Administrative Main Office?

A. Yes.

Q. A department which was completely separated from the R.S.H.A.?

A. Quite correct.

Q. And then from 1943 until the end of the war, you were one of the chiefs in the Inspectorate in the Economic and Administrative Main Office?

A. Yes, that is correctly stated.

Q. Do you mean by that, that you are particularly well informed on everything occurring in concentration camps, the treatment inflicted and the methods applied?

A. Yes.

Q. I ask you, therefore, first of all, whether you have any knowledge regarding the treatment of detainees, whether certain methods became known to you according to which detainees were tortured and cruelly treated? Please formulate your statement according to periods, up to 1939 and after 1939.

A. Until the outbreak of war in 1939, the situation in the camps regarding feeding, accommodation, and treatment of detainees, was the same as in any other prison or penitentiary in the Reich. The detainees were treated strictly, yes, but methodical beatings or ill-treatment were out of the question. The Reichsführer gave frequent warnings that every S .S. man who laid violent hands on a detainee would be punished; and quite often S.S. men who did ill-treat detainees were punished.

Feeding and accommodation at that time were in every respect put on the same basis as that of other prisoners under legal administration.

The accommodation in the camps during those years was still normal because the mass influxes at the outbreak of and during the war had as yet not taken place. When the war started and when mass deliveries of political detainees arrived, and, later on, when detainees, who were members of the resistance movements, arrived from the occupied territories, the construction of buildings and the extensions of the camps could no longer keep up with the number of detainees who arrived. During the first years of the war this problem could still be overcome by improvising measures; but, later, due to the exigencies of the war, this was no longer possible since there were practically no building materials any longer at our disposal. And, furthermore, rations for the detainees were again and again severely curtailed by he provincial economic administration offices.

This then led to a situation where detainees in the camps no longer had sufficient powers of resistance against the ensuing plagues and epidemics.

The main reason why detainees towards the end of the war were in such bad