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Volume V · Page 87
| may well be that my opinions were not always
correct; it may be that I did not always see properly the realities of life,
considering the one-sidedness of my professional activity; but one thing I do
know today is that I am free of guilt; that I am free of guilt of having
committed a crime or having assisted in the commission of any crime. My fate, your Honors, and therewith the fate of my wife and my children, are in your hands. I have within me the inner peace of the philosopher, and I rely upon your justice. DEFENDANT GUENTHER TESCH : Your Honors, what had to be said with respect to the assertions of the prosecution has already been stated before. I regret very much that our work of explaining the entire situation in many respects did not fall on fertile ground. I have been able to find out that even translation mistakes which we have corrected are still now taken over by the prosecution; names have been struck out, etc. The activity of Lebensborn, however one may understand it, consisted of care for other people. Mistakes may have occurred, errors which one may only be able to judge today in retrospect. The basic motives, however, the basic motive for helping and assisting other people was predominant in every case. I personally at no time had any other motive, nor did I at any other time follow any other intentions. DEFENDANT INGE VIERMETZ: Your Honors, I am not in agreement with the final plea of my defense counsel. I did not help women and children in order to be praised for it. I helped them because I wanted to help them, and because I had to help them. I never expected any thanks for that; but that I would be placed before a court because of my helping activities — that is something I never comprehended and I still cannot understand it — at the end of this trial. In the future it will never be comprehensible to me because I cannot believe that my work was ever a crime. |
