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the first employment of foreign workers or forced workers in Farben
plants? I differentiate expressly between foreign workers, and those foreign
workers who did not come to Germany voluntarily, more generally called,
“forced laborers,” in the terminology of this trial.
A. What
I remember from my observations and from my activity — for if one does not
deal directly with the commitment of workers and with the regulations issued
about this commitment, it is quite clear that the time and the dates become
vague in one's memory, especially if one saw very much of this sort of labor; I
travelled all over the plants of Farben, not only Leuna — I know that the
first foreigners came in 1940, approximately.
I believe that Dr.
Schneider explained that Slovakians already arrived in 1938 or 1939. Dr.
Flaechsner, it is difficult to indicate the exact time when these people came
voluntarily, and when they were no longer voluntary. That is very hard to do.
That was all handled by the labor offices, the labor commitment agencies. Those
people can remember better than I do.
Q. Didn't you employ workers or
didn't you fire any workers?
A. No, that was all arranged in the
division of work so that I didn't have to be concerned with these things in
addition to my technical duties. That was automatically handled by the
personnel department directly subordinate to the leader of the enterprise, and
I have already explained that there was a tremendous amount of regulations
issued about this subject that one had to know, of which one had to be
informed, if one dealt with such matters. |
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Q. Dr. Buetefisch, I will now turn to the Auschwitz problem. First of
all I want to ask you what brought about the construction of the Leuna part of
Auschwitz. You have to deal with this only to the extent that it has not yet
been treated by Dr. Schneider and Dr. Ambros.* You can be very brief.
A. The construction of the Leuna part of Auschwitz originated on the
basis of a quota that we had for Leuna, for the construction of an intermediate
oil plant, a so-called Synol plant. This was technically connected with the
production of Propanol — but these are all technical details
This
plant originally was to be built in Leuna, on the other side of the bank of the
river, because Leuna was too crowded, but one wanted to utilize the proximity
of the coal. When the construction site of Auschwitz had been decided on for
buna, then it was also decided (which I believe was a sound idea, technically
speaking, because they also had to work with coal synthesis) to have this other
production plant constructed in Auschwitz also. |
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* Extracts from the
testimony of the defendants Schneider and Ambros concerning the slave labor
charges are reproduced earlier in this section.
769 |
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