. NMT05-T1055
Volume V · Page 1055
| We can imagine the tragicomic scene of a
Polish Jew, half beaten to death by a concentration camp guard, applying to the
concentration camp administration for workmen's compensation for the injuries
inflicted upon him by the very organization from which he claimed compensation.
Mummenthey even professes an ignorance as to the hours of work required of concentration camp inmates. Aside from the inherent improbability of such a statement the record shows that Mummenthey received a copy of Pohl's order that inmates must work at least 11 hours a day and a half day on Sunday in case of emergency. In his oven letter to Baier on 2 May 1944, he revealed his knowledge of the 11 hour rule and said: "I have directed Blizyn to increase the production of the undertaking by making all efforts, and to be particularly anxious that the best use be made of the Polish prisoners." Mummenthey conceded that he visited the DEST gravel works at Auschwitz in 1940, 1941 and 1943, and at Treblinka in the spring of 1943. Whether he knew of the Jewish extermination program at Auschwitz is not demonstrated by concrete proof, but it is difficult to assume that with his position and opportunity for gaining information he could go to Auschwitz and not learn of what was transpiring in the gas chambers and crematoria. Mummenthey had to know of OSTI and its nefarious program. The final audit of OSTI was prepared by one Fischer who said in his statement of the audit: "I received through SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Mummenthey the order to audit the Ostindustrie." Mummenthey also professed ignorance about the Action Reinhardt. Yet the Allach Ceramic Works under Mummenthey received a loan of over 500,000 marks in May 1943 from the Reinhardt fund through the DWB. Mummenthey could see nothing illegal or improper in the whole concentration camp set-up. He even went so far as to say that at the time he could see nothing illegal of improper in all of Hitler's doings and in all of the Gestapo doings. Mummenthey's assertions that he did not know what was happening in the labor camps and enterprises under his jurisdiction does not exonerate him. It was his duty to know. In his defense Mummenthey takes two entirely contradictory positions. One, that the concentration camp inmates were well fed, clothed, and housed, and decently treated; and the other that he was constantly engaged in conflict with the concentration camp commanders to improve their lot. The absurdity of the contradiction is obvious, but it goes further than is apparent because the camp commanders were themselves plant directors of DEST, and therefore subordinated to WVHA. |
