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well qualified, on account of the position he held, to make such a
statement) said to me, when he was told that I had undertaken to defend Dr.
Wurster, "Sir, you are defending a good cause," he put into words what
everybody was thinking.
Can it be that all these Americans, Frenchmen,
and Germans, who were in immediate contact with him, are all wrong, and that
only the prosecution, which does not know him personally at all, is right? Can
it be that all these people, some of whom knew him during the most trying days
in which a man is put to the test, were deceived by him, and that only the
prosecution, which knows nothing about him at all, is endowed with the acumen
required to see him as he really is? One is reminded of the sentence attributed
to Abraham Lincoln, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all
of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of
the time." In reality, nobody has been deceived with regard to Dr. Wurster,
with the sole exception of the prosecution, which succeeded in deceiving
itself.
It is therefore no coincidence that I, who sacrificed my
position and my fortune in the cause of fighting against national socialism and
for peace and liberty, and who spent 14 years in exile, should undertake the
defense of this man. I could undertake it safely in accordance with the wishes
of those who were opponents of nazism. I felt an inward urge to undertake it
when I had become convinced, in the course of long interviews with Dr. Wurster,
that he was innocent.
When I ran into one of my friends (a fellow
lawyer whom I had met in exile) outside this courthouse the other day, carrying
under my arm a few document books, he raised his voice in surprise and said:
"What, you - defending war criminals?" to which I confidently replied: "No, I
am defending Dr. Wurster."
Thus I shall sincerely seek the truth in the
course of my presentation of the evidence and, finding it, shall follow it
whatever the cost, knowing that it is the truth which makes men free. I am
confident, Your Honors, that truth will make my client free and that justice
will unlock the doors of his cell and will restore him to life and to work, to
all these countless thousands of people who are waiting for him; to that
large community of working men who wish to build with
him a better world. |
| |
| W. Opening Statement for Defendant Duerrfeld
* |
| |
| DR. SEIDL (counsel for defendant Duerrfeld) : Mr. President, my
opening statement for the defendant Duerrfeld will take a |
__________
* Tr. pp. 4910-4926, 19
December 1947. The final statement of the defendant Duerrfeld to the Tribunal
appears in section XII 12, vol. VIII, this series.
351 |
. 
