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Volume V · Page 1054
| white a crow. It is not an unusual phenomenon
in life to find an isolated good deed emerging from an evil man. Because of
convenience, caprice, or even a sudden ephemeral gleam of benevolence forcing
its way through a calloused heart, even a murderer can help a child to safety.
A grim humor can cause a slayer to save his intended victim. But whatever the
cause which motivated Mummenthey's benevolence to Bickel, the kind deed is not
enough to obliterateate his indifference to the wholesale suffering of which he
could not but be aware, and to alleviate which, in spite of his protestations,
he did little or nothing. Mummenthey is not an aggressively vicious man. He is too lacking in imagination to conjure up the planning of murder and equivalent enormities. His criminality lies in culpable indifference to humanity, the sacredness of which demands respect in all parts of the world. Mummenthey attempted to evade responsibility by first stating that there were no atrocities and no inhuman treatment of concentration camp inmates; secondly, that if they did occur, they were caused by concentration camp guards over whom he had no control, and further that the treatment of inmates was subject to the supervision of the Messerschmitt and Junkers firms and other employers of inmates. But on cross-examination he admitted that he personally dealt with labor allocation. In fact his monthly report on W I for May, 1942 referred to the shortage of 1,500 inmates in the Gusen quarry, but declared that "this calamity" would be overcome when a new shipment of inmates arrived from Auschwitz the following month. Mummenthey has argued that DEST had nothing to do with food, clothing and billeting for the workers, and that it was impossible for him to know whether or not the inmates ate well since only the midday meal was consumed in the plants. Still he has testified that he was certain the inmates were sufficiently nourished because his plant managers so informed him. He even stated that through the ruse of misleading statements he was able to supplement the fare of the workers with extra rations. This, in spite of his assertion that so far as he was concerned the workers were well fed. Mummenthey's defense is almost naive. He stated that he did not know whether the inmates received any monetary compensation for their work. He went so far as to say that he tried to find out but never got a "satisfactory" answer. With the right spirit he could have found the answer in every document that he examined, and in the face of every concentration camp prisoner. Mummenthey's assumed or criminal naivete went to the extreme of asserting that inmates were covered by accident insurance. |
