. NMT05-T0275
Volume V · Page 275
| Military Tribunal the
prosecution made an effort to hold the former Governor General Hans Frank
directly responsible for the obliteration of the Warsaw ghetto, although the
correspondence submitted now in this trial indisputably shows that neither the
administration of the Government General nor the Governor General himself had
anything to do with it, but that the obliteration of the Warsaw ghetto was an
action which was carried out exclusively by the Security Police and the SD
under the military direction of the competent local SS and police leaders, and
with which neither the administration of the Government General nor that of the
WVHA had anything to do. The defense will consider it its task to ascertain by questioning the defendant Oswald Pohl himself whether the Reich Leader SS informed him in advance of the existing intentions and plans and whether his position within the organization of the SS would have given him the possibility or power to prevent the obliteration. 10. The defendant Oswald Pohl moreover is accused of being particularly responsible for the execution of the so-called euthanasia program in the concentration camps. This program, which was executed in the concentration camps under designation "14 f 13", was initiated by a decree of Hitler of 1 September 1939. In this decree Reich Leader [Reichsleiter] Bouhler and the later Reich Commissioner for Public Health, Dr. Karl Brandt, were ordered "under their responsibility, to extend the authority of physicians to be appointed individually, in a manner that patients who, to the best of human knowledge, are incurable, can be granted the euthanasia, the prerequisite being a most discerning evaluation of their condition." The evidence in the proceedings before Military Tribunal I has shown that this program was discontinued again in autumn 1941, due to numerous letters of protest, above all from dignitaries of the churches. The rest of evidence submitted by the defense in this trial deals with the period before 3 March 1942, that is, a period in which the concentration camps were not yet included as Amtsgruppe D in the WVHA with a time limit — for the duration of the war — and with a view to the fulfillment of certain tasks in connection with the labor supply and the conduct of the war. It will be the task of the defense to ascertain in detail whether and what the defendant Oswald Pohl learned about the measures connected with this count of the indictment. |
| COUNT FOUR — MEMBERSHIP
IN CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS |
| In this count the defendant Oswald Pohl is accused of membership in the SS, which has been declared a criminal organiza- [...tion] |
887136 — 50 — 19
