. NMT03-T0953
Volume III · Page 953
| And, therefore, the fact hurts me all the
more that in its final plea the prosecution designates me as not worthy of
creditibility. I feel obliged toward myself and also toward my children to
protest with all seriousness and with all emphasis against this charge of
having lied. I do not have to fear truth. I hate nothing more than lies. I feel
secure only under the protection of truth, for truth is the sister of justice.
But justice on the part of the prosecution must be claimed by me even if here
we are only experimental objects of international law as it is aspired to, and
of an embryonic international justice. Furthermore, I feel obliged to refer to the following, let the proceedings result as they may. There is the enormous danger that German justice was shown here in a picture which, even referring to the time between 1933 and 1945, is not identical with actual facts. I know justice in all its different phases and organizations, and I know that German administration of justice up to the very end was the best administration of the Reich, and I know above all that the German judges, even in hard times and particularly in these hardest times of all, did their duty for right and justice up to the very end. All that could be desired was that the courage which was shown among the German judiciary at those times would have been shown everywhere. Then the danger could never have arisen that here in this courtroom there might arise the danger of a false picture of the German judge. |
