. NMT05-T0072
Volume V · Page 72
| VIII. FINAL STATEMENTS OF
THE DEFENDANTS |
| DEFENDANT ULRICH GREIFELT: May it please the
Tribunal: After 60 days of proceedings before this Court, the prosecution, in its final plea, basically speaking, just repeated its assertions with which it had opened this trial, and has not considered any of the material we have submitted to the Tribunal in our case in chief. The closing briefs of the prosecution do not up to now exist in the German texts. However, to the extent that I could see from the English copy, hypothetical charges are also made here, hypothetical charges to which I can no longer explain my position. I really endeavored, to the best of my ability and to the utmost possibility, to clarify and give the true connections of the whole matter. I did not base my case on merely negative denials. I stated, in a positive manner, how matters were, why matters were that way, and explained the over-all connection of the measures which my agency had taken. In the final pleas of my defense counsel, the individual arguments of prosecution have been refuted one by one. There are only three things I would like to say. 1. I am assisted by my good faith. In the same way as I followed the appeal of my Fatherland in 1914 and enrolled in the ranks of the soldiers, in the same way as I endeavored to serve the new German Republic in 1919, in the very same manner I followed Hitler's appeal when, in 1933, he promised to help the German people. No man can thrive without his Fatherland. That is what the German poet Theodor Storm said when he had to leave his Fatherland on account of personal persecution. In October 1939 I assumed my functions in the firm conviction that the Reich Government had established a law which could stand firm in every international investigation. 2. I am also assisted by my conviction that I always wanted the best. The task given to me was the care for German human beings who were channeled to my agency from other parties and on the selection of whom I had no influence. I devoted myself to this task with all my forces. I felt myself to be a servant of these people who were uprooted from their previous homes. I devoted myself to the foundation of a new life for them, to the consolidation of their existence, and thereby of their Germanism, That was my task. At no time did I even have a spark of an idea |
Tr. pp. 5254-5277, 19 February 1948.
