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Q. You say you never heard anything about such extermination
measures?
A. No.
Q. Did you not talk to any SS-men who could
have told you something about this?
A. Well, of course, I occasionally
had official contact with SS officers, specifically the three whom I have
mentioned, but outside of that I had nothing to do with them. Our contact was
purely formal and, as Mr. Schneider said here, we were polite but without any
intimate personal connection. The level of the SS officers whom I met there was
not such that one wanted any personal or social contact with them. We had to
meet them occasionally, but on such occasions they never said anything about
such things; and I can understand it today, after having heard of the strict
secrecy as mentioned in Document Hoerlein 92, Hoerlein Exhibit 86, book IV, in
the affidavit of SS Judge Morgen.* At any rate, I never heard anything about it
from these men.
Q. You heard nothing from the SS men, but did you not
hear something from your own associates about extermination measures, or rumors
about them?
A. No, from no one. Therefore, it is impossible for me to
understand how people can assert that the extermination of human beings at
Auschwitz was generally known. I consider it possible that there are a few
people who may have learned from inmates or other well-informed sources some
concrete fact about things in concentration camps and today contend these
things were generally known by the population at the time. I can only imagine
that they act in this way, since the whole world knows about these things now,
because they have a lively imagination, or perhaps because they are afraid to
have known more than other people, to have been in the possession of secrets,
or perhaps they are acting in good faith and cannot distinguish between what
they knew at the time and what they know now.
Q. Dr. Duerrfeld, do you
really believe that none of all the people at the plant knew anything about
these gassings, didn't even hear any rumors about them? I want to put to you
specifically the fact that there were 32,000 people there.
A. No, I no
longer believe that; because, among the many hundreds of letters I received
there were two or three according to which such rumors had been heard from
inmates or workers, although in a very indefinite form. If I may evaluate these
letters according to the system of the Gallup Poll, then I can say with 100
percent certainty that there is no question of general knowledge.
Q.
Several prosecution affiants have contended that a strange odor |
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* Not reproduced
herein.
804 |
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