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Volume V · Page 979
| their release to be sworn to secrecy as to events which they had observed or experienced, and that the German people generally were kept in complete ignorance of what was going on. All these facts are true. But in the very nature of things, it was impossible to maintain complete secrecy or anything like it. It was impossible to keep hidden from public view the huge transports which carried the slave laborers from the East to the concentration camps. It was impossible to keep secret the public demonstrations against the Jews. Streicher's infamous, "Der Stuermer," had a circulation of 600,000 copies. Himmler spoke openly about "the final solution of the Jewish problem" at Poznan, Krakow [Kharkov], and Metz. When prisoners were liberated from concentration camps, it is impossible to think that they maintained the complete secrecy to which they were bound. Soldiers returning on leave from Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine must have talked to some extent. The pall of smoke from the crematory at Auschwitz could not be kept hidden. In spite of decrees, foreign broadcasts were heard. The systematic murder of millions of human beings, extending over 5 years, could not by reason of its very magnitude be kept secret. It is undoubtedly true that millions of obscure and unimportant German citizens had no way of knowing and did not know of the horrible wrongs which were being perpetrated. But if high-ranking officers of the SS, whose daily tasks for years brought them into immediate contact with the operation of the camps, claim that they had no suspicion of the events occurring within the barbed wire, that defense cannot be believed. Undoubtedly some knew more than others, and some limited few knew nothing. With this conclusion Pohl himself agrees. In his interrogation of 13 June 1946 (NO-4728, Pros. Ex. 693), Pohl was confronted by Kaltenbrunner's testimony before the International Military Tribunal that, "there were only a handful of people in the WVHA who had any control or knew anything about concentration camps," to which Pohl commented: |
"Well, that is complete nonsense. I described to you how these were handled in the WVHA. As for instance, in the case of the use of textiles and turning in of valuables, and also from Gluecks and Loerner right on down to the last little clerk, must have known what went on in the concentration camps, and it is complete nonsense for him to speak of just a handful of men." |
| In Liebehenschel's letter of 25 February 1943, written as chief of Amtsgruppe D [Amt D 1] of the WVHA and addressed to all the concentration camp commanders, he states that the population in the East is beginning to be startled by the frequent casualties in the concentration camps. Apparently, in some areas at least, the secret was beginning to leak out. |
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