The Mazal Library

©MAZAL LIBRARY

NMT05-T1185

NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume V · Page 1185

[imprison…] ment for these asocial persons who dared to dissent from the Nazi policy of tyranny and oppression, and who might be considered a source of danger within the Reich, certainly no person could be so naive as to believe that this was the only group confined in concentration camps. This specious brand of exculpation cannot be accepted, nor can it be believed that a man in Fanslau's position to know was unaware that the concentration camps also contained uncounted thousands of men, women, and children from the Eastern territories who had been abducted from their homes by force and herded into concentration camps to be worked to death for the German war machine. Can Fanslau claim with any sincerity that he did not know of Ravensbrueck, where thousands of women and children were confined? Can he with any degree of honesty claim that these women and children constituted asocial elements who were being prepared for their reinstatement into the human society? This Tribunal would be credulous indeed to arrive at such a conclusion.

In stressing his contention that the duties of the several Aemter in WVHA were completely separated and that no connection or common responsibility existed among them, counsel for Fanslau uses an interesting but inapt illustration. He says:

"If one assumes that the entire administrative work carried out by the SS in the Economic Administrative Main Office corresponds to the building of a house, it becomes clear that different worksmen are entrusted with different tasks:

The bricklayer builds the walls, the slater completes the roof, the plumber the sanitary fittings, the electrician the electric installations, the carpenter the windows and doors etc. Thus, if after the conclusion of the building or during the construction a faulty part is detected somewhere in the house, only the person who has built this part of the house can be made responsible for this fault, and not another person who was employed in a heterogeneous job on the same house. Thus, for a fault in the roof the slater, for a fault in the electrical installation the electrician will be responsible. Besides that only the architect supervising the building of the house could be made responsible."

There was nothing wrong with the planning or construction of the house of WVHA. It was skillfully planned and expertly constructed. It was a good house, but it sheltered criminal activities. It is the use to which it was put that was wicked. A noble cathedral may be the rendezvous of thieves and kidnappers and counterfeiters. WVHA was not a group of detached cottages. It was a single edifice but with many connecting rooms, and the corridor; and halls between them were thronged with busy men, all hurry- […ing]

1185