. NMT05-T1009
Volume V · Page 1009
| [requisi…] tioned but not
delivered does not keep men from freezing. Loerner's office was not charged
with labor allocation; but that did not prevent his going to Dachau in April
1941 to address a conference of labor allocation officers. In August 1944,
Loerner was advised by Burger that with an immediate prospective camp
population of over a million, he did not have sufficient clothing to supply
their needs, in spite of having seized large amounts of civilian clothing in
Hungary and Poland. Loerner was more than a mere purchasing agent or
requisition cleric. He was a top-level administrative officer in charge of
clothing supply, with all that that term implies. Pohl in an affidavit filed in
the case (NO-2616, Pros. Ex. 523) states: "It was the responsibility of
Loerner to assure the provision of clothing to the concentration camp inmates."
Fanslau corroborates this statement in his affidavit (NO-1909, Pros. Ex. 6): "Georg Loerner was in the last resort responsible for the procurement of clothing for the prisoners." Loerner's defense is the typical one: "That was the duty of somebody else." He testified that all he could do was to receive the requisitions for clothing from Amtsgruppe D and process them by sending them to the SS clothing factories at Dachau. But the obligation of his responsible office did not end there. The industries in which he was so active as incorporator, director, and supervisor and to which he gave so much time and effort were the principal users of inmate labor. Both as an employer and as a supply officer it was his duty to see to it that the inmates were supplied with adequate clothing. It is not sufficient for him to say, "Well, I've ordered clothing. That's all I'm supposed to do." The lives of thousands of men depended on his doing more than that. |
| ACTION REINHARDT |
| The evidence concerning Loerner's connection with Action Reinhardt is not sufficient to convict him on this specification. There is some proof from which it may be reasonably inferred that he had knowledge of property being confiscated from Jews, but there is nothing which shows with the requisite degree of certainty that he knew that such property had been taken from Jews who had been killed in concentration camps or in pursuance of the extermination policy. Pohl stated in an affidavit that Loerner had prepared for his signature a "report on the realization of textile salvage from the Jewish resettlement" (NO-1257, Pros. Ex. 479). An order from Pohl (NO-725, Pros. Ex. 481), which was distributed to Amtsgruppe B among a number of others, refers to "Administration of Jewish Property" and has a file note reading, |
