. NMT05-T0260
Volume V · Page 260
[orig…] inally intended pace. The resettlement of the Jewish enterprises will probably last until June of this year, so that Osti will only be able to start properly by July of this year. Besides the utilization of the movable Jewish property in Warsaw must be started, a matter which I have not been able to attend to so far. I will start to take up this problem next week." |
| The unexpected resistance put up by the Jews
in the Warsaw ghetto, which has already been described, largely frustrated the
plans for an iron industry in Lublin since substantial quantities of machinery
were destroyed. There were some 18 manufacturing establishments controlled by Osti, employing altogether about 52,000 slave laborers. These plants included a glass works, a textile mill, a peat cutting plant, an iron foundry, a brush manufacturing plant, a stone quarry, and finally, a pharmaceutical laboratory. In November 1943, the remaining Jews in the Lublin area were exterminated. This deprived Osti of its principal source of labor and, except for the glassworks which was operated by Polish slave labor, it was liquidated and the assets taken over by the German Equipment Works under the management of Amt W IV of the WVHA. The defendants Pohl, Georg Loerner, Baier, and Volk made an effort in January 1944 to secure the Lodz ghetto with its industrial equipment and 80,000 Jews for Osti, but the Reich Leader held that the ghetto should be left under the jurisdiction of the Gauleiter after the Jews had been reduced to a minimum by action of a "Sonderkommando". This then, was Action Reinhardt — a coldly premeditated program of mass murder and gigantic theft visited upon a people whose only crime was that of failure to be born an Aryan. In scope and brutality the crime is without parallel. |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| CONCLUSION |
| The prosecution has charged in the first three counts of the indictment that all of the defendants are responsible for the crimes alleged therein. This charge is based not only on the theory of conspiracy or participation in a common plan, but also on well-recognized principles of criminal liability. One need not be the trigger man to be guilty of murder. The criteria of criminality are clearly stated in Control Council Law No. 10, Article II, section 2. Any person is deemed to have committed a crime, if he was (a) a principal or (b) was connected with plans or enterprises involving its commission or (c) was a member of any organization or group connected with the commission of any such crime. |
