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[politi…] cal ideologies appeared to the defendants in
comparison with the ideals of a model concern along Krupp lines. Together with
my colleagues I will prove that the foreign workers employed by Krupp were,
within the sphere of existing possibilities, treated in such away, with regard
to freedom, accommodation, nutrition, pay, working hours, and health, that in
these proceedings also, the Tribunal will arrive at the same conclusion as was
reached in the Flick case, namely, that “the evidence offered in support
of these charges was * * * far outweighed by the substantial and impressive
evidence submitted by the defendants to the contrary” * and that "isolated
instances of ill treatment or neglect shown by the evidence were not the result
of a policy of the plant’s managements, but were in direct opposition to
it."
In consideration of all these individual matters which I will
present to the Tribunal by means of documents, witnesses, and pictures, one
thing, Your Honors, will play an important part: The circumstance that the
great mass of foreign workers employed by Krupp were assigned to the plant by
the State without the plant having requested these workers, at a time when the
war had already become total. At that time, want and privation of all kinds
were prominent in the entire German population, the male part of which had
suffered tremendous losses on the battlefields of the East. From the middle of
the year 1942 onward, the whole of Germany, but especially the Ruhr area with
its linked- up cities, was suffering from the effects of heavy enemy air
attacks. I cannot convey to the Tribunal the gruesome experience, but I can
prove the fact that Essen was a battlefield. The war in the air raged there for
years on end and made ruins of the city of Essen, its industry, its cast iron
production, and its people.
It will be easy then for the Tribunal to
conclude what demands may, under these circumstances, be made in good faith on
the welfare duty of the defendants.
In connection with all this,
concerning questions of the internal organization of the firm of Krupp, there
will be little mention, except for a few remarks, of my client Max Ihn.
However, on having produced the evidence, I shall go into the details of his
person. As personnel manager of the firm of Krupp, he lived and worked just as
numerous other personnel managers of other firms do. None of them is in the
dock; most of them pursue today peacefully their old professions in their
former positions or occupy, with the approval of the military governments of
their zones, public offices in the German states. Max Ihn, in his entire
personality, is just as little a criminal as his colleagues |
__________
* United States vs.
Friedrich Flick, et al., Case 5. judgment, vol. VI.
191 |
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