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XII. FINAL STATEMENTS OF DEFENDANTS
TO THE
TRIBUNAL |
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| A. Introduction |
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| Under Article XI of Ordinance No. 7, “each defendant may make a
statement to the Tribunal” after the closing statements have been
concluded. In the Farben case 14 defendants of the 23 defendants who stood
trial elected to make such personal statements, including the defendants
Schmitz and von Schnitzler who had elected not to testify in their own behalf.
Each of these fourteen statements by the defendants is reproduced below
(subsection B). |
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| B. Final Statements of Defendants* |
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PRESIDING JUDGE SHAKE: In accordance with the order heretofore
entered by the Tribunal, it is now ready to hear the final statements of such
of the defendants as have indicated their desire to address the Court. As the
defendants are called they may leave the dock, come to the podium, and address
the Tribunal. May I remind them that the order contemplates that they shall use
not to exceed 10 minutes and if they can and will keep themselves within that
limitation it will avoid the necessity of calling when the time has expired.
The defendant Krauch may now address the Tribunal. |
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| 1. DEFENDANT KRAUCH |
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DEFENDANT KRAUCH: Mr. President, Your Honors:
When I heard
the final plea of the prosecution yesterday, I often thought of my colleagues
in the United States and in England and tried to imagine what these men would
think, when they heard and read these attacks hurled at us by the prosecution.
For after all, they, too, are scientists and engineers; they had similar
problems. They, like us, were called upon by the state to perform certain
duties. That was true then, before the world war, and that is true now, as we
know from information received from the United States. A citizen cannot evade
the call of the state. He must submit and must obey. The specific duty which I
had to perform involved problems of caring for unemployment and their solution.
This was a task that no conscientious engineer could have refused, especially
nobody who, like myself, had for years observed the terrible effects of this
unemployment and had wondered whether he could not do something, could not make
some contribution towards eliminating this unemployment.
Now we —
and I, too — have been accused by the prosecution of having served a
criminal government. No one mentioned this aspect at |
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* Transcript pages
15600-15638.
1055 |
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