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Volume IV · Page 534
| The defendant again admitted that his
sub-Kommando leader participated but argued responsibility for only a fraction
of the mentioned figure. He placed this "fraction" at 300 to 350 persons. In
further attempted exculpation from responsibility for the numerous killings
which admittedly occurred in the territory under his jurisdiction, Sandberger
announced in court a system of investigation, appeal, review, and re-review
which involved eleven different people, one of whom was himself. The real
difficulty about Sandberger's explanation is that it lacks not only support,
documentary or otherwise, but it lacks credibility in itself. Sandberger's
story would argue that these involved and elaborate pains were taken under the
Nazi aegis to protect the lives of the very people, the supreme order under
which they were operating had doomed to summary extermination.
Sandberger leaves no doubt about the fact of his responsibility for at least 350 deaths in this instance — |
"Q. The sum total of Communists seized runs to about 14,500; do you see that? |
| On 10 September 1941, Sandberger promulgated a general order for the internment of Jews which resulted in the internment of 450 Jews in a concentration camp at Pskov. He states he did this to protect the Jews, hoping that during the internment the Fuehrer Order might be revoked or its rigorous provisions modified. The Jews were later executed. Sandberger claims that the execution took place without his knowledge and during his absence, but his own testimony convicts him. |
"Q. You collected these men in the camps? |
