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Volume VI · Page 806
| COMMISSIONER FRIED:
Dr. Flaechsner, do you have another question? DR. FLAECHSNER: No, thank you. COMMISSIONER FRIED: Mr. Barr, do you have another question? MR. BARR: No, thank you. COMMISSIONER FRIED: The interrogation is interrupted now and tomorrow at 0930 the minutes of the interrogation will be presented to the witness Speer for his signature.¹ |
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| E. Testimony of Defendant Flick | |
| EXTRACTS FROM THE TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT FLICK² |
|
| DIRECT EXAMINATION | |
| * * * * * * * * * * | |
| DR. DIX (counsel for
the defendant Flick) : I now pass to count one of the indictment and will first
deal with the so-called foreign labor. May I ask you, Mr. Flick, did you know
anything about any form of compulsion used in the recruitment of these foreign
civilian workers in their homeland? A. Well, one might say, what does "know" mean? When it started, I assumed that the workers came of their own accord and that they were voluntarily recruited. Formerly, before Sauckel's appointment, it was a fact that the industrial enterprises themselves recruited privately on a large scale and most successfully. I had to believe that because in the press and elsewhere it was made to appear as though it were voluntary and for the time being there was no reason to doubt the correctness of this statement. Moreover, in many cases, Polish and Ukrainian women worked as domestic servants and often told their employers that they had been glad to come to Germany and of their own accord. In any case, I can report that from my own experience. In my house in Toelz a Ukrainian was employed and she told us and assured us again and again that she had come entirely of her own accord to Germany, that she liked it very much in Germany, and that she intended to stay in Germany. I had other farm properties, too. Poles were employed there for the harvest as a matter of course. They always came voluntarily. This was already shown by the fact that the following year the same harvest workers came back whom we had used for seasonal labor on the farm concerned. Even in old Imperial Germany, Polish harvest workers were a regular feature, and in industry at that time the employment of Polish labor played such a large part that in the Ruhr there were |
¹ The next day Speer signed the minutes of the interrogation.
² Further extracts from the testimony of defendant Flick are reproduced earlier in sections IV H, V 6, VI D, and later in section VIII D.
