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Volume V · Page 1210
| Baier found nothing inhuman at
Dachau, the next logical query should be, what constitutes inhumanity?
Defense counsel says further: |
"But he did not know at that time that arbitrariness and forcible methods were the bases of the commitments to a concentration camp. Like many other Germans, Baier was of the opinion that legal proceedings had to precede any commitment to a concentration camp. It would have been impossible for him to have exact knowledge about that because the WVHA had nothing to do with the commitment of people to a concentration camp and the only agency designated to have such authority was the Reich Security Main Office. There is no further need for dwelling on the fact that severe secrecy regulations, protected by threatened draconic punishment, threw a veil over the methods practiced by the Gestapo. The so-called whispering propaganda on the nature of the commitments to concentration camps was certainly least apt to reach members of the SS because everybody was particularly careful and reserved in expressing such views to the face of SS members." |
| The Tribunal must reject this line of
reasoning completely. To say that of all people, the SS did not know why people
were sent to concentration camps and what happened to them, especially the SS
charged with running the plants using concentration camp inmates, is to argue
what is sheerly unacceptable and contrary to the facts in the case and all
reasonable observation. Defense counsel seeks to absolve his client from guilt by arguing percentages: |
"The evidence has shown that out of about 50 companies of the DWB only a few used inmate workers (record pp. 5015, 5016). The evidence further revealed that in those few W concerns which used inmate labor only a small percentage — namely 5-10 percent — of the concentration camp inmates were used." |
| But the fact remains that concentration camp
inmates were used in W industries and used in an inhuman manner, and that
constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity. Defense counsel says: |
"The fact that the W concerns belonged to the same WVHA as the concentration camp administration does not permit the conclusion that they were internationally connected because until 1942 the concentration camp administrations were not part of the WVHA at all." |
| But the admission that the W concerns belonged to the same WVHA as the concentration camp administration in itself reveals the tie-up between the two, at least after 1942, and the crimes enumerated in the indictment certainly go beyond 1942. |
