dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
HERR PELCKMANN: The camp authorities, under the Commander Diester, aimed at providing the prisoners with an existence worthy of human beings. They had regular mail service. They had a large camp library, even books in foreign languages. They had variety shows, motion pictures, sporting contests and even had a brothel. Nearly all the other concentration camps were similar to Buchenwald. PRESIDENT: What was it they even had? MORGEN: A brothel. HERR PELCKMANN: What crimes did you learn about? MORGEN: As I said before, the investigations were based on a suspicion of corrupt practices. In time however, I was obliged to come to the conclusion that besides those crimes, killings had also occurred. HERR PELCKMANN: How did you reach the suspicion that killings had occurred? MORGEN: I learned that the starting point for the corruption was the assignment of Jews to the camps after the action of 1938. I made it a point to learn all the possible facts about this action, and in doing so I found that the majority of the prisoners who were suspected of knowing something about these cases of corruption, had died. This peculiar frequency of killings was noticeable; it struck me because other prisoners who were not in any key positions remained in Buchenwald for years in the best of health, and were still there, so that it was rather remarkable that it was just certain prisoners who might have been possible witnesses who had died. I thereupon examined the files concerning these deceased prisoners. The files themselves offered no clues to suspect illegal killings. The dates of the deaths were years apart and in each case different causes of death were given. But it struck me that the majority of these deceased, prisoners had been put into the camp 490 7 Aug. 46 hospital or in arrest shortly before their death. This aroused my suspicion for the first time that in these two places murders of prisoners might possibly have occurred.
HERR PELCKMANN: Thereupon I appointed a special official, whose sole task was to investigate the suspicious circumstances, and follow up the rumors which were circulating about the detention quarters, the so-called "Bunker," regarding this killing of prisoners. This very zealous and able detective had to report again and again that he had not found the faintest clue for my suspicions. After two weeks of completely unsuccessful activity, the detective refused further services and asked me ironically whether I myself believed that such rumors of illegal killing of prisoners could be true. Much later, and only by chance did I hit upon the first clue; it struck me that the names of certain prisoners were listed at the same time in the rolls of the camp prison as well as in those of the hospital. In the prison rolls, for example, it said, "Date of release 9 May, 12 o'clock." In the hospital register, "Patient died 9 May, 9:15 a.m." I said to myself, this prisoner cannot be in the camp prison and at the same time a patient in the hospital. False entries must have been made here. I therefore concentrated my efforts on this and I succeeded in getting behind this system, for it was a system, under Commander Koch. The prisoners were taken to a secret place and were killed there, mostly in a cell of the camp prison, and sick reports and death certificates were prepared for the files. They were made out so cleverly that any unprejudiced reader of the documents would get the impression that the prisoner concerned had actually been treated and had died of the seri6us illness which was indicated. HERR PELCKMANN: Then what did you do after learning of these facts? MORGEN: I found out that the medical officer at Buchenwald, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Dr. Hoven, was principally responsible and I had him arrested. I informed my investigating commission in the concentration camps, with which we had to deal, of these cunning forgeries and directed their particular attention to investigating systematically whether in other concentration camps such murders had also taken place.
HERR PELCKMANN: We satisfied ourselves at the time of the investigation-and I am speaking of the second half of 1943-that in the Concentration Camps Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau to the best of our knowledge no such killings occurred. In the other concentration camps, however, such cases were found. The persons believed to be guilty were accused, arrested, and charged. HERR PELCKMANN: Why was this not done earlier? MORGEN: I have already said that these deceptive measures were so cunningly contrived that it was not possible to discover them earlier. Above all there was no possibility of clearing up the 491 7 Aug. 46 matter, and then those things-were always done without witnesses. These cases should at all events have been investigated by the SS courts and they were investigated, for every unnatural death of a prisoner had to be reported by teletype to the central offices. Besides that, the specially sworn-in court officer who was in the camp had to go immediately to the place of the occurrences to question the witnesses; sketches and photographs had to be made of the scene and it was a regulation that an autopsy had to take place in every such case of unnatural death. These reports of unnatural deaths, or of deaths suspected of being unnatural, were sent regularly to the SS and Police court; but as I have already said, these reports were so cunningly contrived and the files were in such good order, that even an expert could not have suspected an illegal killing. Of course, proceedings against members of the concentration camp personnel were frequently instituted, some followed by sentences, even death sentences. But these criminal acts seemed to be within range of the usual army rate of 0.5 percent to 3 percent. If nothing at all had been reported to the SS courts from the concentration camps, or if numerous reports had been made, then it would of course have seemed suspicious. But it was a normal average and nobody could suspect that the concentration camps were a hotbed of such dangerous crimes.
HERR PELCKMANN: It was only through my investigation, which as I said was caused by accident, that we received our first insight into the true state of affairs. HERR PELCKMANN: How did you come onto the track of mass killings? You have just spoken of individual killings. MORGEN: I found traces of mass destructions also by chance. At the end of 1943, 1 discovered two trails at the same time, one leading to Lublin and the other to Auschwitz. HERR PELCKMANN: Please describe the Lublin trail first. MORGEN: One day I received a report from the commander of the Security Police in Lublin. He reported that in a Jewish labor camp in his district a Jewish wedding had taken place. There had been 1,100 invited guests at this wedding HERR PELCKMANN: Go on witness, a little faster. MORGEN: As I said before, 1,100 guests participated in this Jewish wedding. What followed was described as quite extraordinary owing to the gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks. Among these Jews were members of the camp guard, that is to say some SS men, who joined in this revelry. This report only came into my hands in a roundabout way, some months later, due to the fact that the Commander of the Security Police suspected that the circumstances indicated that some criminal acts had occurred. This was my impression as well, and I thought that this 492 7 Aug. 46 report would give me a clue to another big case of criminal corruption. With this in mind, I went to Lublin and called at the Security/ Police there, but all they would tell me was that the events happened at a camp of the Deutsche Ausrustungswerke. But nothing was known there. I was told it might possibly be a rather odd and shrouded (this was the actual term used) camp in the vicinity of Lublin. I found out the camp and the commander, who was Kriminalkommissar Wirth. I asked Wirth whether this report was true or what it meant. To my great astonishment, Wirth admitted it.
HERR PELCKMANN: I asked him why he permitted members of his command to do such things and Wirth then revealed to me that on the Fuehrer's orders he had to carry out the destruction of Jews. HEIRR PELCKMANN: Please go on, Witness, to describe your investigations. MORGEN: I asked Wirth what this had to do with the Jewish wedding. Then, Wirth described the method by which he carried out the extermination of Jews, and he said something like this: "One has to fight the Jews with their own weapons, that is to say "pardon me for using this expression-"one has to cheat them." Wirth staged an enormous deceptive maneuver. He first selected Jews who would, he thought, serve as column leaders, then these Jews brought along other Jews, who worked under them. With that smaller or medium-sized detachment of Jews, he began to build up the extermination camps. He extended this staff of Jews, and with these Jews Wirth himself carried out the extermination of the Jews. Wirth said that he had four extermination camps and that about 5,000 Jews were working at the extermination of Jews and the seizure of Jewish property. In order to win Jews for this business of extermination and plundering of their brethren of race and creed, Wirth gave them every freedom and, so to speak, gave them a financial interest in the spoliation of the dead victims. As a result of this attitude, this sumptuous Jewish wedding had come about. Then I asked Wirth how he killed Jews with these Jewish agents of his. Wirth described the whole procedure that went off like a film every time. The extermination camps were in the east of the Government General, in big forests or uninhabited wastelands. They were built up like a Potemkin village. The people arriving there had the impression of entering a city or a township. The train drove into a dummy railroad station. After the escorts and the train personnel had left the area, the cars were opened and the Jews got out. They were surrounded by these Jewish labor detachments, and Kriminalkommissar Wirth or one of his representatives made a speech.
HERR PELCKMANN: He said, "Jews, you were brought here to be resettled, but 493 7 Aug. 46 before we organize this future Jewish State, you must of course learn how to work. You must learn a new trade. You will be taught that here. Our routine here is, first, every one must take off his clothes so that your clothing can be disinfected, and you can have a bath so that no epidemics will be brought into the camp." After he had found such calming words for his victims, they started on the road to death. Men and women were separated. At the first place, one had to deliver the hat; at the next one, the coat, collar, shirt, down to the shoes and socks. These places were faked cloakrooms, and the person was given a check at each one so that the people believed that they would get their things back. The other Jews had to receive the things and hurry up the new arrivals so that they should not have time to think. The whole thing was like an assembly line. After the last stop they reached a big room, and were told that this was the bath. When the last one was in, the doors were shut and the gas was let into the room. As soon as death had set in, the ventilators were started. When the air could be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special procedure which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel. HERR PELCKMANN: Was Wirth a member of the SS? MORGEN: No, he was a Kriminalkommissar in Stuttgart. HERR PELCKMANN: Did you ask Wirth how he arrived at this devilish system? MORGEN: When Wirth took over the extermination of the Jews, he was already a specialist in mass-destruction of human beings. He had previously carried out the task of getting rid of the incurably insane. By order of the Fuehrer himself, whose order was transmitted through the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, he had, at the beginning of the war, set up a detachment for this purpose, probably composed of a few officials of his, as I believe, the remainder being agents and spies of the Criminal Police.
HERR PELCKMANN: Wirth very vividly described how he went about carrying out this assignment. He received no aid, no instructions, but had to do it all by himself. He was only given an old empty building in Brandenburg. There he made his first experiments. After much consideration and many individual experiments, he evolved his later system, and then this system was used on a large scale to exterminate the insane. A commission of doctors previously investigated the files, and those insane who were listed by the asylums as incurable were put on a separate list. Then the asylum concerned was told one day to send these patients to another institution. From this asylum 494 7 Aug. 46 the patient was transferred again, often more than once. Finally he came to Wirth's institution, where he was killed by gas and cremated. This system, which deceived the asylums and made them unknowing accomplices, enabled him with very few assistants to exterminate large numbers of people, and this system Wirth now employed with a few alterations and improvements for the extermination of Jews. He was also given the assignment by the Fi1hrer's Chancellery to exterminate the Jews. HERR PELCKMANN: The statements which Wirth made to you must have surpassed human imagination. Did you immediately believe Wirth? MORGEN: At first Wirth's description seemed completely fantastic to me, but in Lublin I saw one of his camps. It was a camp which collected the property or part of the property of his victims. From the piles of things-there were an enormous number of watches piled up-I had to realize that something frightful was going on here. I was shown the valuables. I can say that I never saw so much money at one time, especially foreign money-all kinds of coins, from all over the world. In addition, there was a goldsmelting furnace and really prodigious bars of gold. I also saw that the headquarters from which Wirth directed his operations was very small and inconspicuous., He had only three or four people working there for him. I spoke to them too. I saw and watched his couriers arrive.
HERR PELCKMANN: They actually came from Berlin, Tiergartenstrasse, the Fi1hrer's Chancellery, and went back there. I investigated Wirth's mail and I found in it confirmation of all this. Of course, I could not do or see all this on this first visit. I was there frequently. I pursued Wirth up to his death. HERR PELCKMANN: Did Wirth give you names of people who were connected with this operation? MORGEN: Not many names were mentioned, for the simple reason that the number of those who participated could be counted, so to speak, on one's fingers. I remember one name: I think the name was Blankenburg, in Berlin. HERR PELCKMANN: Blankenburg? MORGEN: Blankenburg, of the Fi1hrer's Chancellery. THE PRESIDENT: Well, we had better adjourn now. We have already been 50 minutes. [The Tribunal adjourned until 8 August 1946 at 1000 hours.]
REINECKE: In 1933 there was not yet an SS jurisdiction, that is, no penal jurisdiction. Responsibility for carrying out such criminal proceedings lay with the criminal prosecution authorities of the general justice, and this becomes apparent from this document. It was their task to bring to judgment the guilty men responsible in such cases. HERR PELCKMANN: A report, a document, has been put before you, Document D-924, GB-570, which refers to the horrible shooting of deportees by the escorts. You commented upon that and I noticed that you could not quite finish your statement, because I believe you wanted to add some details reflecting your personal impressions. Would you like to do that now? REINECKE: Yes. I wanted to say that this deals with a convoy of prisoners and the accompanying escorts, and that my own state-ments about the guards referred exclusively to those in the camps, that is to say, those guards who were on duty outside the camps on watchtowers, et cetera, and who had to return to their billets after duty. These men, therefore, had nothing to do with the in-ternal affairs of the camps. Presumably such transports were carried out by members of the commanders' staffs. HERR PELCKMANN: From the document containing the statis-tics regarding the strength of the SS on 30 June 1934-and I regret that the document number is not visible on my copy -- I should like to put to you the figure of 794,000 members of the SS in 1944. Wit-ness Brill yesterday told us higher figures, approximately 900,000 to a million. Since the witness Brill is no longer present, I should like to ask you if you are sufficiently informed as to whether the difference may be attributed to the fact that the figure mentioned by witness Brill also included the dead, those who had been killed, and therefore the figure given by witness Brill was not an incorrect statement on his part. REINECKE: I have the knowledge necessary to answer the ques-tion because, working in the legal department, I constantly had to concern myself with the strength of the SS.
HERR PELCKMANN: A report, a document, has been put before you, Document D-924, GB-570, which refers to the horrible shooting of deportees by the escorts. You commented upon that and I noticed that you could not quite finish your statement, because I believe you wanted to add some details reflecting your personal impressions. Would you like to do that now? REINECKE: Yes. I wanted to say that this deals with a convoy of prisoners and the accompanying escorts, and that my own state-ments about the guards referred exclusively to those in the camps, that is to say, those guards who were on duty outside the camps on watchtowers, et cetera, and who had to return to their billets after duty. These men, therefore, had nothing to do with the in-ternal affairs of the camps. Presumably such transports were carried out by members of the commanders' staffs. HERR PELCKMANN: From the document containing the statis-tics regarding the strength of the SS on 30 June 1934-and I regret that the document number is not visible on my copy -- I should like to put to you the figure of 794,000 members of the SS in 1944. Wit-ness Brill yesterday told us higher figures, approximately 900,000 to a million. Since the witness Brill is no longer present, I should like to ask you if you are sufficiently informed as to whether the difference may be attributed to the fact that the figure mentioned by witness Brill also included the dead, those who had been killed, and therefore the figure given by witness Brill was not an incorrect statement on his part. REINECKE: I have the knowledge necessary to answer the ques-tion because, working in the legal department, I constantly had to concern myself with the strength of the SS. I know that the state-ment by witness Brill corresponds to the facts. It is a fact, as stated by defendant's counsel, that the figure given by witness Brill includes the losses suffered by the Waffen-SS.
REINECKE: Yes. I wanted to say that this deals with a convoy of prisoners and the accompanying escorts, and that my own state-ments about the guards referred exclusively to those in the camps, that is to say, those guards who were on duty outside the camps on watchtowers, et cetera, and who had to return to their billets after duty. These men, therefore, had nothing to do with the in-ternal affairs of the camps. Presumably such transports were carried out by members of the commanders' staffs. HERR PELCKMANN: From the document containing the statis-tics regarding the strength of the SS on 30 June 1934-and I regret that the document number is not visible on my copy -- I should like to put to you the figure of 794,000 members of the SS in 1944. Wit-ness Brill yesterday told us higher figures, approximately 900,000 to a million. Since the witness Brill is no longer present, I should like to ask you if you are sufficiently informed as to whether the difference may be attributed to the fact that the figure mentioned by witness Brill also included the dead, those who had been killed, and therefore the figure given by witness Brill was not an incorrect statement on his part. REINECKE: I have the knowledge necessary to answer the ques-tion because, working in the legal department, I constantly had to concern myself with the strength of the SS. I know that the state-ment by witness Brill corresponds to the facts. It is a fact, as stated by defendant's counsel, that the figure given by witness Brill includes the losses suffered by the Waffen-SS. The figures contained in this document must be increased by the number of killed in the course of the war, both of men and leaders, either low-ranking or senior, of the Waffen-SS, in order to draw conclusions regarding the real strength of the Waffen-SS. BERR PELCKMANN: On Page 28 of the same document you have the numbers in the various offices. The final total is 39,415 members of the SS. -Do you still have the document before you, Witness? REINECKE: No, unfortunately I have not.
HERR PELCKMANN: From the document containing the statis-tics regarding the strength of the SS on 30 June 1934-and I regret that the document number is not visible on my copy -- I should like to put to you the figure of 794,000 members of the SS in 1944. Wit-ness Brill yesterday told us higher figures, approximately 900,000 to a million. Since the witness Brill is no longer present, I should like to ask you if you are sufficiently informed as to whether the difference may be attributed to the fact that the figure mentioned by witness Brill also included the dead, those who had been killed, and therefore the figure given by witness Brill was not an incorrect statement on his part. REINECKE: I have the knowledge necessary to answer the ques-tion because, working in the legal department, I constantly had to concern myself with the strength of the SS. I know that the state-ment by witness Brill corresponds to the facts. It is a fact, as stated by defendant's counsel, that the figure given by witness Brill includes the losses suffered by the Waffen-SS. The figures contained in this document must be increased by the number of killed in the course of the war, both of men and leaders, either low-ranking or senior, of the Waffen-SS, in order to draw conclusions regarding the real strength of the Waffen-SS. BERR PELCKMANN: On Page 28 of the same document you have the numbers in the various offices. The final total is 39,415 members of the SS. -Do you still have the document before you, Witness? REINECKE: No, unfortunately I have not. [The document was handed to the witness.] HERR PELCKMANN: You said that the figure representing the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, which was respon-sible for the administration of the entire concentration camp system, was 24,091 persons. Does this mean persons who were carrying out purely clerical work? Were there in fact 24,000 clerks in that depart-ment? Or what does that figure mean?