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Volume V · Page 969
| [concentra…] tion camp was
preceded by a sort of "cabinet trial" by the Gestapo and that this complied
with German Law. To put it bluntly, the Tribunal does not believe a word of it.
Commitments to concentration camps did not depend upon individual conduct but
were the carrying out of a broad categorical Nazi political policy, frankly
announced by Himmler. We can hardly be expected to believe that the thousands
of Eastern women in Ravensbrueck and the boys and girls who were liberated from
the concentration camps by the Allied Armies were accorded even a "cabinet
trial." When whole villages were deported en masse, it is ridiculous to believe
that each of the inhabitants was accused of some infraction of German Law,
given a hearing of even the "cabinet" variety, and then solemnly found guilty
and committed. Could any rational person believe that this or any comparable
procedure accompanied the annihilation of the ghetto at Warsaw? Far from making any attempt at formal accusation and determination of guilt, a conscious effort was made to evade embarrassing steps which slowed up the program of extermination. On 13 October 1942, Thierack, Reich Minister of Justice, wrote to Martin Bormann, stating (NO-558, Pros. Ex. 335): |
"* * * I intend to turn over criminal proceedings against Poles, Russians, Jews and gypsies to the Reichsfuehrer SS. In so doing I base myself on the principle that the administration of justice can only make a small contribution to the extermination of members of these peoples. The Justice Administration undoubtedly pronounces very severe sentences on such persons, but that is not enough to constitute any material contribution towards the realization of the above-mentioned aim. * * * I am * * * of the opinion that considerably better results can be accomplished by surrendering such persons to the police, who can then take the necessary measures unhampered by any legal criminal evidence. * * * The police may prosecute Jews and gypsies irrespective of these conditions." |
| This specious and shallow excuse has been offered seriously in justification of a nation-wide policy of deportation and slavery. We have witnessed a strange anomaly in this case. Defendants and their witnesses have bowed their heads in profound shame at the evidence of mass murder and wholesale extermination, but as to the cruel enslavement of whole races, they evidence little or no feeling of guilt or culpability whatsoever. They spoke freely and made voluminous records of "prisoner labor" and "inmate labor." They made elaborate industrial plans and wrote without shame, "We have been promised 8,000 Jewish laborers for this enterprise." They planned and started pretentious monuments |
