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NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume V · Page 1057

the community-owned brickworks were released from this seizure, but leased to the administration of the General Trustee to ensure an experienced management and a quick development. Out of these originally seized brickworks, four were returned to their owners, who had meanwhile been recognized as racial Germans. Finally, some brickworks were handed over to the Reich Works Hermann Goering after negotiations, as these brick works are in close operation — and economical connection with the mines secured by the Hermann Goering Works. Four works were given to German repatriates, who could prove to have owned and run brickworks before their resettlement."

Because Bobermin spent most of his time during the war out of Berlin, it may not be assumed that in some way he was disassociated from the WVHA. Many documents were introduced in evidence to demonstrate the close tie-up between him and Pohl. On 28 June 1941, Pohl appointed him as business manager of Ostdeutsche Baustoffwerke G.m.b.H. On 2 September 1941, Pohl appointed Bobermin as his deputy to inspect the former Russian territories for plants producing building material and for places in which new factories might be built. On 15 August 1941, Bobermin, quite proud of his work in reactivating the factory at Krubin, invited Pohl to attend the opening ceremonies which Bobermin described as a "celebration."

Most of the confiscated factories were taken from Jews who either had to flee Poland or were taken into custody and sent to concentration camps or extermination centers. Bobermin denied all knowledge of this wholesale persecution. His witness, Winkler, who was chief of the Main Trustee Department East, stated that he did not know until late 1944 that many of the Jews whose property he was administering had been killed by the SS and other German forces in the East. Even if we accept this statement at its face value, the fact remains that he did learn of the criminality of this entire confiscation program, and yet remained in the office engaged in the very criminal venture. Could Bobermin have known less?

The massacre of the Jews in Poland was certainly not a secret. The International Military Tribunal found that, "the murder and ill-treatment of civilian populations reached its height in the treatment of the citizens of the Soviet Union and Poland", and that one-third of the population of Poland was killed off in the course of the occupation. How much Bobermin knew of these killings is not evident, although it clashes with human observation that he could have lived in Posen [Poznan] in the very heart of the territory where these excesses occurred, without having some awareness of what was taking place. Bobermin explains

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