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Volume III · Page 1063
| RACIAL PERSECUTION |
| The record contains innumerable acts of
persecution of individual Poles and Jews, but to consider these cases as
isolated and unrelated instances of perversion of justice would be to overlook
the very essence of the offense charged in the indictment. The defendants are
not now charged with conspiracy as a separate and substantive offense, but it
is alleged that they participated in carrying out a governmental plan and
program for the persecution and extermination of Jews and Poles, a plan which
transcended territorial boundaries as well as the bounds of human decency. Some
of the defendants took part in the enactment of laws and decrees the purpose of
which was the extermination of Poles and Jews in Germany and throughout Europe.
Others, in executive positions, actively participated in the enforcement of
those laws and in atrocities, illegal even under German law, in furtherance of
the declared national purpose. Others, as judges, distorted and then applied
the laws and decrees against Poles and Jews as such in disregard of every
principle of judicial behavior. The overt acts of the several defendants must
be seen and understood as deliberate contributions toward the effectuation of
the policy of the Party and State. The discriminatory laws themselves formed
the subject matter of war crimes and crimes against humanity with which the
defendants are charged. The material facts which must be proved in any case are
(1) the fact of the great pattern or plan of racial persecution and
extermination; and (2) specific conduct of the individual defendant in
furtherance of the plan. This is but an application of general concepts of
criminal law. The person who persuades another to commit murder, the person who
furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of its commission, and the person
who pulls the trigger are all principals or accessories to the crime.
We turn to the national pattern or plan for racial extermination. Fundamentally, the program was one for the actual extermination of Jews and Poles, either by means of killing or by confinement in concentration camps, which merely made death slower and more painful. But lesser forms of racial persecution were universally practiced by governmental authority and constituted an integral part in the general policy of the Reich. We have already noted the decree by which Jews were excluded from the legal profession. Intermarriage between Jews and persons of German blood was prohibited. Sexual intercourse between Jews and German nationals was punished with extreme severity by the courts. By other decrees Jews were almost completely expelled from public service, from educational institutions, and from many business enterprises. Upon the death of a Jew his property was |
