. NMT03-T0842
Volume III · Page 842
| Secret State Police with protective custody
or concentration camps. The meaning of this step” — so writes this
Reich trustee — “is that in the case of Poles the strictest measures
are to be taken at once in order to create a deterrent effect. For this reason
we made it a point in my office to transfer the cases involving breach of work
contract by Polish civilian workers to the Gestapo (Secret State Police) for
further action. Only in those cases where the Polish workers involved were
already under arrest on charges of vagrancy, vagabonding, etc., and
investigated, have I in those cases known to me, preferred charges for breach
of work contract, so that all the punishable offenses of the Pole could be
adjudicated in one court trial.” In one individual case, concerning a member of Protectorate, the Reich Labor Trustee for the economic districts of Westphalia and Lower-Rhine refrained from demanding legal action stating, as a reason, that "all foreigners including the Czechs" were exempt from criminal action where this question is concerned. Contrary to the opinion of the above-named authority, the Reich Trustee for Public Service, who had been informed of the attitude fundamentally taken by the Reich Labor Trustee for the economic districts of Westphalia and Lower-Rhine, has strictly upheld the charges he had preferred against members of the Protectorate who had broken their contracts. In the case in question, the demand for punitive action was based upon the recommendation of the Reich Minister for Transportation to the Reich Trustee for Public Service, dated 24 June 1940 and 13 August 1940 respectively — 51.533 Pldaa. According to a statement by the Reich Trustee of Public Service, entered into the criminal record files, the Reich Minister of Labor stated at that time in reply to the report of the Reich Trustee for Public Service referring to a regulation dated 17 July 1940 — III b 15062/40, that he had no objections, if he — the Reich Trustee — should prefer charges in accordance with the wishes of the Reich Minister of Transportation. On the other hand the competent office of the Reich Protector thinks it more advisable, not to punish workers from the Protectorate employed within the Reich proper for breach of work contract or to punish them only very mildly as otherwise great difficulties would be encountered in the further recruitment of Czech workers from the Protectorate for jobs in the Reich proper. At any rate, I have dealt with the criminal procedure against workers from the Protectorate for breach of work contract in a special report to the Protectorate also taking up the question concerning the competence of the German courts in the Protectorate for passing sentence in case of breach of contract, committed in the Reich proper. |
