 |
Q. Did Farben also employ foreign workers?
A. Do you mean
before 1939?
Q. No, after 1939.
A. Of course, certainly, after
1939.
Q. Who housed these foreign workers?
A. Generally the
foreign workers were housed by the firms themselves, the plants.
Q. Did
you at any time hear anything about the working and living conditions of these
foreign workers in the plants.
A. Certainly, when I visited the plants
or when my colleagues came to Frankfurt, this was discussed; therefore, I know
how the housing generally was.
Q. And how was it? A. One can say that
generally the housing of the foreign workers was initially in rented halls or
inns or such places; that later barracks were constructed; and that still
later, the majority of the foreign workers and also a part of the so-called
conscripted German laborers lived in barracks.
Q. I have to come back
once more to what you said previously. You said the plants themselves housed
these workers. Who took care of these foreign workers there?
A. The
Personnel Department did that.
Q. Personnel Department. Who were the
chiefs of these personnel departments? Did you know any of them?
A.
Yes, of course I knew quite a number of them, because previously I had
participated in meetings of the Welfare Commission, the Soko,
[Sozialkommission] and I was the head of the Employers’ Association for
several years, when I had a lot of contact with these gentlemen. One can say
that all of our plants had excellent heads of personnel departments. They were
mostly men of the old school, so to speak, very serious persons.
Q.
Were these people who had devoted long study to social work?
A. Yes,
they were either people who had devoted long years to this work, such as Dr.
Bertrams, Dr. Schneider's right-hand man, or people like Dr. Eccarius, who had
formerly been the mayor of Heidelberg; people who had long administrative work
behind them. Dr. Eccarius was an excellent social worker. Or a man of the type
of Dr. Weiss, in Ludwigshafen, who had specialized in this field because he
knew all pertinent questions and all the laws concerning these questions. And
the officials in Hoechst and Leverkusen were also of the same type — men
of the old school — very excellent people.
Q. Did you ever find
out anything about the attitude of the leading technical men of the plants
toward the housing of foreign workers and soon? |
685 |
. 
