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Volume IV · Page 1099
| the Racial Office and in the Racial Office
the employee Harders worked primarily on that matter. Just how they did their
work individually was not told to me by Harders nor did the chief of the Racial
Office tell me anything about it. With regard to paragraph 12 of the
indictment, abortions on Eastern workers, I only learned from the documents
submitted here that Conti had instigated the entire matter. On 4 March 1943,
Conti issued an order to that effect, and Conti was the highest health official
of the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Furthermore I have discovered here from
the documents that only in July the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of
Germanism-and this time by way of the Reich Security Main Office-issued
corresponding instructions. At the time I could only gain knowledge of these
instructions when these instructions were also distributed to the Race and
Settlement Main Office. However, this only applies to very few instances. It
does not apply to decrees and documents which have been presented here by the
prosecution such as Document NO-3089, Exhibit 468, Document NO-3557, Exhibit
473, Document NO-1384, Exhibit 472, and Document NO-3520, Exhibit 470.
Q. Did the way the leadership of the Security Police deal with these questions not surprise you? A. No. On the contrary, already the first decree of Himmler as the Reich Commissioner, on 17 October 1939 stated quite clearly that the Reich Security Main Office was competent for all policies toward aliens and in these questions it would bear the responsibility, and was competent as far as the work was concerned. In all cases of paragraphs 12-14 of the indictment, however, quite clearly alien nationals are involved, that is to say, questions are concerned which arose from the labor allocations of foreign nationals; that is why the responsible leadership and administration of all these questions were carried out in the Reich Security Main Office, and that is why we were not surprised about it. Q. Did you have any misgivings about the inclusion of the examiners at the time? A. Naturally, the inclusion of the examiners had been ordered by the Reich Leader who was the highest authority. Of course we ourselves also had discussions about the inclusion of the examiners; however, according to the situation prevailing we considered this procedure as being correct and as being relatively reasonable. After all, there were a large number of acceptable reasons for that. I would even say, political ones. Q. You just spoke about political reasons. What political reasons were decisive for that? |
