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the defendant’s SS affiliation his membership number is given as
200,180, that being the number originally assigned to him on his first Riding
Unit membership card, issued at Mannheim early in 1934.
The defendant
further stated on the witness stand that when, in the middle of the year 1939,
he decided to marry, he made application for permission so to do through the
Berlin office of the SS, rather than that at Mannheim, for two reasons, first,
because he was then residing in Berlin and, secondly, because he believed that
the granting of such permission would be delayed if he went through Mannheim.
His counsel points out that this conclusion was justified, as is shown by the
fact that it required approximately 6 months for him to obtain clearance
through Berlin, even though he resided there and personally made application
through that office.
By way of explaining how he came to give the
SD-Main Office as his organization unit, Honorary Collaborator of SD-Main
Office as his SS activity, and Colonel Six as his superior, on his R and S
questionnaire and in his formal application for permission to marry, the
defendant has said that these constituted the SS offices, agencies, and persons
with which he came in contact through his NW 7 activities at Berlin, and that
he made use of this data in the hope that it would expedite approval of his
marriage application. In any event, the defendant asserts that this memoranda
is not inconsistent with his Riding Unit membership; nor does it support an
inference that he was a member of the SD, since it has been made to appear that
a Riding Unit could well have been accredited to and an honorary assistant of
an SD-Main Office. This was corroborated by the testimony of the witness
Ohlendorf, Chief of the SD, who, though he was convicted by it, was
complimented by Tribunal H for his truthfulness on the witness stand.
In dealing with the SD, the IMT included “all local
representatives and agents, honorary or otherwise, whether they were
technically members of the SS or not,” and concluded that said
organization was criminal. In this case, however, von der Heyde is charged,
specifically, with membership in the SS, not the SD, and the burden is on the
prosecution to establish that fact. There was no showing that membership in the
SS was a necessary prerequisite to membership in the SD. The judgment of the
IMT indicates otherwise and treats these groups as separate, though related,
organizations.
Taking into account that the only definitely established
affiliation of the defendant was with the nonculpable Riding Unit of the SS and
that the evidence tending to show that he subsequently became a member of the
General SS arises wholly out of the innocuous incidents connected with his
efforts to obtain a marriage license, we must conclude that the guilt of the
defendant von der Heyde under count four has not been satisfactorily
established. |
1203 |
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