. NMT05-T0274
Volume V · Page 274
| otherwise, with the WVHA, and all of whom
received their orders immediately from Reich Leader SS Himmler, all necessary
measures having been taken to guarantee the greatest possible secrecy. In this
connection I refer to the statements of the witnesses Wislizeny, Hoess, and
Morgen before the International Military Tribunal. It may be pointed out also,
even now that the extermination camps Treblinka, Belsec, Majdanek, and others
did not belong into the domain of the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps,
and therefore even after 3 March 1942 were not subordinated to the defendant
Oswald Pohl, not even nominally or administratively. I also should like to add
that the WVHA, as directed by the defendant Pohl, was only an administrative
office which had no executive organs whatsoever, and that an immediate
participation in a number of acts which constitute the object of the
indictment, would appear impossible if it were for that reason only. 8. Extensive evidence was submitted by the prosecution in connection with the Action Reinhardt. Several agencies were in charge of the execution of this action, among them the Higher SS and Police Leader East and the SS and Police Leader Globocnik. The WVHA as such had at first nothing to do with this matter. It was brought into it only when the action was approaching its end, and certain enterprises near Lublin had to be taken over by the WVHA and, beside the audit of the received assets, negotiations with several other Supreme Reich Offices as for instance the Reich Finance Ministry and the Reich Bank, had to be conducted for the purpose of assuming title to these assets. It will be the object of the evidence of the defense to establish in detail the participation of the defendant Oswald Pohl in the wind up of this action and to examine the legal aspects resulting in this connection. 9. The prosecution also submitted extensive evidence in order to prove a participation of the defendant Oswald Pohl in the measures which led to the obliteration of the Warsaw ghetto. The evidence of the prosecution proves that the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto and its transformation into a concentration camp was in the first place the task of the Higher SS and Police Leader East. The documents submitted by the prosecution show, moreover, that the obliteration of the Warsaw ghetto was carried out by the director of the Reich Leader SS Himmler under the military supervision of the Higher SS and Police Leader East by the SS and Police Leader Warsaw, Juergen Stroop, who also submitted an extensive report on it. In this connection it should also be mentioned that in the proceedings before the International |
