. NMT06-T0381
Volume VI · Page 381
| Commissioner and with the Higher
SS and Police Leader in Holland. I only talked to him once in Holland, to the
best of my knowledge. Concerning conditions in Holland, I am only informed
insofar as the mines in the very extreme southern tip are concerned. Q. You didn't notice that Jews were disappearing from the occupied territories? A. No, I could only have noticed that if I had known the people before, or if I had traveled a lot in the country. I couldn't have seen it. Q. How about in Germany? A. In Germany undoubtedly, during the war, Jews were deported. However, I do not know, I only heard that here, as I have already said, I heard the first hints alter the collapse, that these deportations were directed to extermination camps and were carried out for the purpose of exterminating these people. Up to that time I had never heard anything of that. I have mentioned what I heard about a Jewish state that was supposed be set up in eastern Poland, but I knew nothing of extermination schemes on a large scale. |
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| PRESIDING JUDGE SEARS: You said
something about not knowing anything about any extermination in large numbers.
What do you mean by that? DEFENDANT STEINBRINCK: I was asked about the systematic extermination. That means a system, an idea, to destroy somebody. I said I did not know about such things; I knew that Jews were condemned and died. I knew, nor do I deny it; but I did not know that they were to be exterminated as a race. I thought they were condemned for some definite crime or offense, but not merely on account of the pathological idea, from a sense of mastery, to exterminate another race. I did not know that, and even today I can hardly imagine that. MR. ERVIN: Do you believe that it did not happen, today? A. It is very difficult to obtain a perfectly clear picture what is truth and what is merely claimed; and, if one reads these statements and hears these terrible figures, and if one wants to try to work it out, it is simply unimaginable for normal human being. If you read four million human beings are supposed to be exterminated in Auschwitz in 3 years, well, that is four thousand people a day. How is that possible? Excuse me, please — but it's a question which excites one and troubles one again and again. One doesn't know anymore what to believe. |
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