. NMT05-T1250
Volume V · Page 1250
| Dr. Gawlick says in his further brief: |
"Seizure of alien property by the occupying power is admissible according to the Hague Convention whenever such steps are requisite for the maintenance of public order and security in the occupied territories." |
| But the record does not show that "such steps
were requisite for the maintenance of public order and security in the occupied
territory." Dr. Gawlick says further: |
"The attempt to differentiate between the proprietors was not made by Dr. Bobermin but by the Main Trustee Office East which, being an entirely independent Reich office, had no connection whatever with the WVHA and the office W II. "Dr. Bobermin can, therefore, not be made responsible for the fact that in connection with the seizure, differential treatment was meted out to the Poles and Jews on the one hand, and ethnic Germans on the other. Legal responsibility in this respect rests with the German Reich, in particular with the Main Trustee Office East." |
| The time has passed when the executant of an
obviously illegal, unconscionable and inhuman program can take refuge behind
the assertion that it was not he who issued the order. Any one ordered to
perform a patently illegal and inhuman act is charged by law to protest the
order to the extent of his ability, short of endangering his own security. If
he fails to do so he will be required to answer for the execution of the
illegal act. Whether it be an order calling for the killing of innocent people
or the taking of property from innocent proprietors, the rule is the same. By
the promulgation and enforcement of this rule, some dignity is being restored
to the human race. Hans Bobermin has been convicted for his part in the crime of camp Golleschau. Dr. Gawlick argues that Bobermin had no authority over Golleschau and that only the camp commander had anything to do with the inmates employed there. Bobermin was the administrator of the plants in which these inmates worked and he obtained, in an official sense, the benefits of their work. He knew the workers were concentration camp inmates and he had to know that this was slave labor. It is argued in Bobermin's behalf that in any event his criminality cannot be so great when, out of from 300 to 400 plants, concentration camp inmates were employed in only one of them. The crimes of the Nazi regime were committed on so vast a scale that it comes easy to plead forgiveness for a man who illegally exploited only several hundred people instead of several hundred thousand. |
