. NMT03-T0314
Volume III · Page 314
| to this order the competent
authority will interfere, and report to me, at once. To the Ober- and Regierungspraesidenten Secret State Police Office in Berlin Police President in Berlin State Police Offices |
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| TRANSLATION OF JOEL DOCUMENT 8 JOEL DEFENSE EXHIBIT II¹ |
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| LETTER OF REICH MINISTER OF JUSTICE GUERTNER TO REICH MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR FRICK,² 14 MAY 1935, PROTESTING AGAINST THE "MISTREATMENT OF COMMUNIST PRISONERS BY POLICEMEN" | |
| Copy | |
| 3751 PS of the IMT | |
| The Reich Minister of Justice
Z.F.g 10 — 1717.34 |
|
| Personal | |
| Berlin, 14 May 1935 | |
| To the Reich and Prussian
Minister of the Interior, Berlin |
|
| Subject: Mistreatment of
Communist prisoners by policemen Enclosure: 1 loose sheet |
|
| My Dear Reich Minister!
Enclosed you will find copy of a report of the inspector of the Secret State Police, dated 28 March 1935.³ This report gives me an occasion to state my fundament attitude toward the question of the beating of internees. The numerous instances of ill-treatment which have come to the knowledge of the administration of justice can be divided into three different causes for such ill-treatment of prisoners. 1. Beating as a disciplinary punishment [Hausstrafe] in concentration camps. 2. Ill-treatment, mostly of political internees, in order to make them talk. |
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¹ In the IMT trial, this document was identified as Document 3751-PS and introduced in evidence as Exhibit USA 828.
² Wilhelm Frick was one of the defendants sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal. Concerning Frick's relation to concentration camps, the IMT stated, "From the many complaints that he received, and from the testimony of witnesses, the Tribunal concludes that he know of atrocities committed in these camps." (Trial of the Major War Criminals, op. cit., vol. I, p. 300.)
³ The enclosure was not offered in evidence.
