. NMT05-T0998
Volume V · Page 998
| Fanslau's personnel work involved
replacements, recruiting, discharges, promotions, assignments, and transfers.
Within this field he dealt indiscriminately with the Waffen SS personnel and
also with that of the concentration camps. Although he did not have the power
to actually appoint camp commanders, he did make recommendations to Himmler or
to the Main Personnel Office, through Pohl, for their transfer, appointment, or
promotion, and he personally signed orders transferring camp commanders.
(NO-4560, Pros. Ex. 716; NO-4505, Pros. Ex. 720.) Much of the comment in this judgment as to the defendant Frank is equally applicable to the defendant Fanslau. As the officer in charge of personnel, he was as much an integral part of the whole organization and as essential a cog in its operation as any other of Pohl's subordinates. He was in command of one of the essential ingredients of successful functioning. This has no relation to "group condemnation," which has been so loudly decried. Personnel were just as important and essential in the whole nefarious plan as barbed wire, watch dogs, and gas chambers. The successful operation of the concentration camps required the coordination of men and materials, and Fanslau to a substantial degree supplied the men. He was not an obscure menial; he was a person of responsibility and authority in the organization, who was charged with and performed important and essential functions. As chief of Amtsgruppe A after Frank's resignation he occupied a dominant position right near the top of WVHA. His claim that he was unaware of what was going on in the organization and in the concentration camps which it administered is utterly inconsistent with the importance and indispensability of his position. Whether or not he was aware of the cold-blooded program of extermination of useless concentration camp inmates, he must have been aware that millions of human beings had been herded into concentration camps, in violation of all their rights and solely because Germany needed their labor, to work under the most inhumane circumstances. The Tribunal finds without hesitation that Fanslau knew of the slavery in the concentration camps and took an important part in promoting and administering it. This being true, he is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Evidence was introduced that while defendant Fanslau was in command of the supply battalion of the Viking division, which was engaged in the campaign against Russia in the Ukraine, a number of atrocities were perpetrated against the Jews in the vicinity of Tarnopol by the troops under Fanslau's command. The character of this proof has made the Tribunal reluctant to accept it as true beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence as to Fanslau's |
