. NMT06-T0788
Volume VI · Page 788
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camp would probably have marched them away on foot. Q. Have you ever heard anything about the "death marches" which on occasions were arranged by the concentration camps? A. Yes, I have heard about that through newspapers. Q. Is it not quite probable that such a death march would have taken place at Groeditz if in this case the trucks had not been supplied by the firm? A. Yes. That might have been possible. Q. When you reported about the rumor of the shooting of prisoners to Weiser, he told you that it was a military matter with which he had nothing at all to do? A. Yes. That is correct. Q. Do you think at that moment Weiser lied and he had actually given the order to have these prisoners shot? A. That I cannot believe. It was the only answer which I received from Weiser after these happenings and he said "We have nothing to do with it — it is merely a military matter." Those were the last words which I ever heard from Weiser. I did not have the impression myself that he had given the order personally or would have been in a position to give this order, although somebody must have been responsible for it and it could not have been the lieutenant because he was no longer there. Q. Rumors, you say, had it that the lieutenant had shirked the issue? A. Those were not rumors. Second Lieutenant Koerrmann, 3 weeks before the end of the war, fell ill and was taken to the hospital Lauchhammer in a hospital car, and there he died. The population assumed somebody of the plant must have given the order. Q. In the meantime have you heard that in many concentration camps ill inmates were also shot by order of Himmler? A. No. That is not known to me. Q. Did you not read that in the papers? A. No. Q. But you do know that the GPU, the Russian police, tried to investigate this matter and find out about these shootings? A. Yes. Q. You also know that in the course of these investigations Kochkemper was arrested? A. Yes. Q. As a result of these investigations, was he ever free again? A. Yes. He was set free again and he was then employed by the Russians in Thuringia. |
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