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Volume VI · Page 435
| solution which I would never have
dreamed possible. And then when even after this Munich Agreement, the English
Prime Minister Chamberlain spoke with Hitler and they both signed the same
document that at no time would there be war between Germany and England, then
once in a while I even reproached myself with having underestimated Adolf
Hitler. At the time I experienced that even among the Jews the situation was
not judged as pessimistically as was justified at a later date. I was very good
friends with two Jewish owners of a certain firm, Bergmann, in Berlin. For many
years they had represented our firm in dealings and business with Soviet
Russia. The two brothers Bergmann very often discussed with me the question of
whether they should remain in Germany or emigrate, and again and again all of
us came to the conclusion that probably they could stay and that things would
calm down. Also in the Ruhr area I employed, as my representative, a Jewish
Bergassessor, and until 1937 he continued his activity in the Ruhr area and
sold our machinery. Very often I even had the impression that if not in all
pits, but in some of the pits they liked him especially well . Q. What was his name? A. His name was Bergassessor Golzen. Then, when in November 1938, the Jewish pogroms started and the synagogues were burned, then even the Bergmanns decided to emigrate, and I helped them to liquidate their affairs in Germany at greater speed and to leave the country. When the German troops marched into the rest of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, I considered that a great injustice. These occurrences strengthened me in my decision not to join the NSDAP. Of course I want to stress that at that period, at the beginning of 1939, I did not have the insight into the general circumstances and the general conditions which had led to the occupation of Czechoslovakia — not the insight I have today — but in spite of that I considered it an injustice |
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| . Q. I may only request you, Mr.
Weiss, to ask how your attitude developed when the war started against the
Soviet Union and then against the United States of America? A. Well, you see, when in 1939 the war broke out, of course I had no conception of the real situation, of who was right and who was wrong. It was a matter of course for me that during the war one has to do his duty, and that it is the duty of every citizen to back up his government, and that all questions of inner politics have to be given second priority during the war. Therefore, in this war, too, I did my duty on the spot where I |
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