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Volume V · Page 278
| [indi…] vidual guilt, and remind us that
evil forces and a destiny exist which surpass the power of the individual, and
into which we are all forced. In the opening speech on 8 April 1947, one of the prosecution cried (German Tr. p. 55) "It is literally impossible to comprehend the enormity of the crimes committed in Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek etc." Certainly this is correct, but the prosecutor failed to see that in doing so he had wandered from the prosecution's sphere of arguments to that of the defense. These events can no longer be understood, by any of us. But did the defendants understand them? Did the defendant whom I represent understand them or could he understand them? Could he have been so involved as to be made personally coresponsible? Posterity working on a psychological basis will confirm with great interest that the prosecutor did not add any legal argument to the phrase just quoted by me, for one cannot add to it, but continued, "We will show a film in this respect in support of the Tribunal which shows the warehouses of these death camps filled with clothes, shoes, spectacles, and bales of human hair." The logic is simply disconnected. The ratio, the power of consideration fails, and we can only have recourse to this series of apocalyptical pictures which were burnt into our memory. I shall never forget the shorn human hair mentioned above, and the individual features of the victims, who in the suffering they have overcome, already attain what we imagine to be transcendental sublime greatness, completely raised above this valley of misery. But I was never far distant from the bridge which led from the hell of these events to that, may I say, bourgeois narrow mindedness of my client the defendant, who went to his work in the morning, to lunch at noon, and in the evening to his family, to wife and children; and who was absolutely incapable of having such a vision or the idea of such a vision. I am, however, fortunate to be able to refer not only to the judgments of eminent former courts, but from the reasons for the verdict in the Milch Case (case No. 2) we know the principles upon which the High Tribunal, which will pass judgment in this case, based its decision in the Milch case and will, therefore, presumably do the same in the present case. I take it from this judgment that for us it is a matter of proving that the defendant did not give orders to commit crimes against the laws of war, against humanity, that he did not originate these crimes; that he had no knowledge of such acts, knowledge by which he failed to prevent these acts having the power to do so. This is my aim. If you want to make the acquaintance of the personality of |
