. NMT04-T0695
Volume IV · Page 695
"The fact that a state commits crimes does not cause all its measures and laws to become invalid or void. The authoritative actions of a state are subordinated to the rules of the administrative law. Administrative actions can simply mean legality and validity and are also otherwise independent of faults in their construction, and are only disputable in cases of doubt, but are not void." |
| I refer to Jellinek, Administrative Law. |
"The practice relative to constitutional law of Germany and foreign countries assumes, therefore, that in general the laws issued and the actions undertaken by the authorities in Germany from 1933 to 1945 are legally valid and binding." |
| The evidence submitted by the prosecution
shows that the defendant Greifelt signed decrees and directives, dictated
records, gave orders, and wrote letters, that is, in his capacity as chief of a
part of an administrative authority of the Reich, the Staff Main Office of the
Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germanism. Any kind of a direct
personal interference in alien life, liberty, or property has not been proved.
Whatever he did, he did in his capacity of an official. He did not do it for
himself but for the state which he served. His personal integrity is without
blemish. His personality and his human qualifications in this connection will
be discussed during his interrogation. The evidence submitted by the prosecution did not prove that the defendant Greifelt himself, or for selfish motives, hurt a human being's life or health. It has not been proved that he personally was present when such things happened. According to the statement of the witness von dem Bach-Zelewski (German Tr. p. 412), the witness was present together with the defendant Greifelt at the time when an evacuation action on a small scale took place in Saybusch. At that time a small number of Polish farmers were evacuated in Saybusch. This event took place in public; the local officials had carried it out. The persons in question had received their signed and sealed orders to leave their houses, in the form of orders by the state. It will be proved that Greifelt was not the drillmaster of this action. In order to be successful, the prosecution must prove that the defendant Greifelt used the apparatus of the state in order to commit crimes. As personal enrichment can be excluded, these crimes could be committed only in Greifelt's capacity as a representative of a state which, by misusing its rights of sovereignty, committed crimes. There arises at once the difficulty that a strict distinction has to be drawn between the line of activity of the state and its representative, and the behavior of the single individual. The single |
