. NMT04-T0569
Volume IV · Page 569
| [re...] lated how he shot 30 Jews because
they had left the ghetto without permission. He did this, he said, under orders
from the chief of the Einsatzgruppe, Nebe, who ordered him "to establish an
example". At the trial he gave a different explanation of this episode which,
however, establishes even a clearer case of guilt. He said that three women had
contacted some partisans and, returning to the town, had talked to the thirty
Jews in their homes. This, according to the defendant, made them guilty of
partisan action and he had them shot. He, of course, also shot the three women.
He did, however, accord them a special consideration. He had them blindfolded
for the execution and then ordered that they be given a separate grave.
Klingelhoefer has stated that his function in the Einsatzgruppe operation was only that of interpreter. Even if this were true it would not exonerate him from guilt because in locating, evaluating and turning over lists of Communist party functionaries to the executive department of his organization he was aware that the people listed would be executed when found. In this function, therefore, he served as an accessory to the crime. |
"Q. I asked you, Witness, didn't you know that when you were giving him these lists of Communist party functionaries that he was going to exterminate all those he could? You either knew it or you didn't know it. |
| But the evidence is clear that Klingelhoefer was no mere interpreter in the grim business of the Einsatzgruppe. He was an active leader and commander. He knew what the Einsatz units were doing to the Jews. |
"Q. You told us you knew that if he stayed in the ghetto he was killed. Now, if he left the ghetto, was he then set free? |
| In his own affidavit the defendant stated: |
"While I was assigned by Nebe to the leadership of the Vorkommando Moscow, Nebe ordered me to go from Smolensk to Tatarsk and Mstislavl to get furs for the German troops and to liquidate part of the Jews there. The Jews had already been arrested by order of Hauptsturmfuehrer Egon Noack. The executions proper were carried out by Noack under my supervision." |
| Although the defendant stated several times during his interrogation on the witness stand that he was morally opposed |
