. NMT03-T0552
Volume III · Page 552
| Dr. SCHILF: Mr. Klemm, therefore let us go
concretely to the contents of these two letters. How did it happen that these
two letters as such were written? I believe it will be necessary to bore the
Tribunal with that still because your name is under this letter.
PRESIDING JUDGE BRAND: Counsel, you are not boring the Tribunal, nor is the witness. But we have the substance before us at this moment of these letters and you need not ask the witness what the substance of those letters were. We are here to try the case fairly and we don't want counsel to worry about boring us, but we do want counsel to worry about undue explanations and too long explanations. Ask your next question. DR. SCHILF: Please state the practical cause how these letters happened to be written. Due to the decision of the court, you do not have to discuss the contents any more. DEFENDANT KLEMM: The method for writing such letters had already been established long before I entered the Ministry of Justice. If cases accumulated in one district, the president of the district court of appeals who was concerned received a letter so that in future cases a general just sentencing, as it happened in the entire Reich, would take place. PRESIDING JUDGE BRAND: Why did you write this particular letter? Just ask him why he wrote the particular letter shown in Exhibit 178. DEFENDANT KLEMM: These cases had been collected in the Referat — in the Department — and then they were reported to the minister and the minister determined whether such a guidance letter was supposed to be written. In these two cases of Stuttgart and Hamburg, Franke and Vollmer, the department chief, reported to the minister about the jurisdiction exercised by these district courts of appeal and suggested to compile the most extreme cases and to call them to the attention of the presidents of the district courts of appeal. The minister approved of this suggestion and in addition to that determined that I had to sign these letters. That in these letters, the first person singular "I" was always used, is the accepted official style. To that extent I may refer to Exhibits 48, 94, 95, 96, and 99 in which simply Referenten and associates also write in the first person singular, although the letter bears the letterhead of the Reich Minister of Justice, and they sign it personally. DR. SCHILF: Mr. Klemm, in regard to the two guidance letters to Hamburg and Stuttgart, were the judges who pronounced these sentences and who had aroused the disfavor of Thierack |
