. NMT05-T0261
Volume V · Page 261
| And so in the case of the
general and systematic commission of crimes in concentration camps all of the
defendants are guilty. All of the defendants had substantial connections with
the concentration camps, the very existence and operation of which necessarily
involved murder, atrocities, torture, enslavement, and other inhumane acts.
But, we shall no doubt have to listen to long and tedious lectures by each of
the defendants to the effect that Amtsgruppe A, or B, or C, or W had nothing to
do with the conditions in concentration camps — that such conditions were
the responsibility of Amtsgruppe D, the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps.
And when we come to the two defendants unfortunate enough to have worked in
Amtsgruppe D, that is Sommer and Pook, they will tell us that they did
everything in their power to improve conditions, that it was the dead Gluecks
and Lolling who were responsible.* * * No, the responsibility for the crimes committed in concentration camps can no more be limited to Amtsgruppe D or to dead men than to the sadistic camp guards who found it amusing to subject their helpless victims to degrading tortures. The concentration camps were the very life blood of the whole of the WVHA. The Amtsgruppen were all interrelated in their purposes and activities. Each depended on the other to a greater or lesser degree. The administrators and accountants of Amtsgruppe A cannot escape the charge of murder when they controlled the disposition of valuables of inmates killed by the millions in the camps of Auschwitz, Lublin, and Mauthausen; nor can the supply officers of Amtsgruppe B who ultimately controlled the food, clothing, and billeting for concentration camps and who were the recipients of train loads of clothing of exterminated Jews; nor can the construction engineers of Amtsgruppe C who used inmates to construct crematoriums, gas chambers, and underground factories; nor can the "business men" of Amtsgruppe W who worked inmates to death by the thousands in the granite quarries of Mauthausen and the brick factories in Poland and who used the labor of Jews until the moment they were driven away to gas chambers. |
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| The vastness of the crimes committed and the nature of the organization involved forcefully poses the question: Why was the SS permitted to become a state within a state? It is our deep obligation to the German people and to the peoples of the world not to avoid or to evade that question. For the sake of these nameless millions who perished under the heel of the SS — Germans and non-Germans — let us not speak too softly or too late of the responsibility of every member of the community for its |
