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Volume V · Page 788
| country in the belief that they
had been members of the elite, the knights of the German people; and who today
in their graves still are the victims of this verdict. DR. SEIDL: I have no further questions. |
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| CROSS-EXAMINATION |
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| MR. R0BBINS: Now, you have told us about the
character of the defendant Pohl. Proof in this case shows that under the WVHA
and under the supervision of the defendant Pohl in the stone quarry people were
worked 11-14 hours a day; people were worked until they were no longer able to
work. They were killed while they were working, and when they were no longer
able to work they were sent out to extermination camps, in the concentration
camps under the defendant Pohl. Thousands and thousands of people — six
hundred thousand, Pohl says — in 1944, those people were enslaved and
imprisoned; their property was taken away from them. People who loved life and
fought for life just as hard as you and I do, General. What about a man like
Pohl? Is this the best that the SS had to offer? Is this the man that you are
proud of? WITNESS KARL WOLFF: I have already repeatedly told the prosecution today and yesterday that in my conviction Pohl did not have anything whatsoever actively to do with these things, and up to now the prosecution has in no way led me to believe that Pohl — who was only responsible for the direction of the allocation of labor, and was only organizationally and schematically brought into connection with these things — that Pohl, is really guilty in the sense. The prerequisite for the fact that I declared myself prepared to appear here as a witness in one of the most important of the SS trials on his behalf, and on behalf of his comrades, was his answer to a question which I asked him on his word of honor; whether he had anything to do with it, and I asked him whether my concept was correct or not, and he confirmed that I was correct, on his word of honor. Since I have, known him for many years only as a very decent human being, and since, as one of the few survivors, I still know exactly the organizational connections; I refuse to the utmost to leave a comrade when I am personally convinced of the fact that he never issued an order for killing, or for an arbitrary commission of inhumane acts. |
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