dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. SAUTER: Dr. Funk, today I must examine you about this affidavit submitted by the Prosecution last week, deposed by the former SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, and dealing With concentration camps. You yourself have been heard on this group of questions on 7 May here in this courtroom. In this examination of 7 May, in response to a question, you stated that at that time you had seen this Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl once, and I quote from the transcript of 7 May, "I saw him once at the bank, when he was having lunch with Mr. Puhl, the vice president of the bank, or some of the other gentlemen of the directorate. I passed through the room and I saw him sitting there. I myself," you said, "never discussed these matters with Herr Pohl (Gruppenfuehrer of the SS). It is completely new to me that these things took place." That is a literal quotation from your testimony of 7 May. Now Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, in his affidavit Number 4045-PS, which was submitted to the Court on 5 May, stated that he had talked to you twice. Do you remember the other conversation you had with him, a conversation which you did not mention at that time? Yes or no?
FUNK: No.
DR. SAUTER: What can you say about this other conversation, regarding the statement of Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl? I mean the conversation in regard to which Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl stated that he had talked with you on Himmler's instructions to the effect that you, as Reich Minister of Economics, would give preferential treatment to the SS when textiles were being allotted, apparently for uniforms? What can you say on this subject?
FUNK: It is my conviction that this conversation did not take place. At any rate, try as I may, I cannot remember such a conversation with Pohl, and many things show that it could not have taken place. First of all, I did not concern myself with such specific things as the allocation of textiles to a branch of the services. Secondly, I always held conversations like that in the presence of my state secretary or in the presence of the competent chief of the department or specialist, particularly if the conversation was with a person whom I did not know. I never concerned myself with the supplying of textiles from concentration camps. These 'things came within the province of the Reichskommissar for the utilization of old materials. That was an office outside the Ministry. This office co-operated of course with the textile department of the Ministry. It is my conviction that it was done in this way: the old material, that is, the old used textiles, from the collecting depots went directly to the factories which processed material of this sort. Therefore, I firmly believe that the officials of the Ministry of Economics knew nothing about the deliveries of this material from concentration camps, because these materials had previously been collected by the economic department of the SS under the leadership of Pohl. Before this Trial I did not even know that the concentration camps were under Pohl's jurisdiction. I had no idea of the connection between the economic department of the SS and the concentration camps. Also the scope of these deliveries of old materials was not so large, in proportion to the entire production, that I would have had to be bothered with them. But let us suppose that Mr. Pohl did visit me. My memory is not quite what it used to be, especially after the many years of illness that I have gone through, so that a visit of that kind, which Pohl stated lasted only a few minutes, might have slipped my memory.
FUNK: If Pohl had ex-pressed to me such a wish on the part of Himmler, then I most certainly would have turned this matter over to my state secretary for him to handle. But Pohl's assertion that he said something to me about dead Jews from whom these deliveries were supposed to have come, these goods turned in by the SS as old material, is monstrous. That was supposed to have been in 1941, perhaps 1942. That Pohl should tell me, whom he was seeing for the first time, a secret which was closely guarded up to the end, is in itself incredible. But he had no reason to mention dead Jews to me when he told me that big deliveries would be arriving from the SS. It .seemed perfectly plausible to me that in the large domain, of the SS, where hundreds of thousands of men were housed in barracks, and were clothed by the State, there must constantly have been much old material such as textiles, blankets, uniforms, underlinen, et cetera ...
THE PRESIDENT: That is going into arguments rather than giving testimony of facts.
FUNK: In any case, I deny most emphatically that Pohl made such a statement to me. I call it a lie, a libel. Up to the day of this Trial no one told me anything, not a soul told me that Jews -were being murdered in concentration camps.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, that is the one point on which I wanted to question you.
FUNK: I would not have allowed a report like that to rest. I -would have applied immediately to my superior, the Delegate for the Four Year Plan, and would have told him about it.
DR. SAUTER: That is the one point, Witness. I believe it has been cleared up sufficiently with your testimony. Now I would like to turn to the second point. And I ask you again to be brief -so that we will be finished by 1 o'clock if possible. Already in your testimony in May, I believe on 6 May, you testified that you met SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl once at lunch at the Reichsbank, in the mess of the bank, and the witness Pohl in his affidavit Number 4045-PS refers to this conversation and says-I will omit everything else-that he spoke with Puhl, your vice president. You know nothing about that and it would only be a waste of time to ask you that. I will read to you what he says about you. In the transcript of 5 August he says: "After we"-that is Gruppenfuehrer Pohl and Vice President Puhl and several others-"had inspected the various valuables in the Reichsbank vaults, we went to a room to have lunch with the Reichsbank President, Funk. It had been arranged to serve lunch after the inspection. In addition to Funk and Puhl,"-that is your vice president-"several other gentle-men of my staff"-the staff of Pohl-"were there. About 10 or 12 people were present. "I sat next to Funk"-please note this particularly, Witness-, "and we discussed, among other things, the valuables which I had seen in his vaults"-he means the vaults of the Reichs-bank.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, we have all heard this evidence the other day. Can't you put the circumstances of it to him and ask him whether it is true? I mean, it is not necessary to read it all-
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I am only reading the two sentences which apply to the defendant. There Eire only two sentences and I am omitting everything else, but naturally I have to read these two, sentenc es to him so that he might know exactly what Pohl said. What I have read up to now is the first sentence, Mr. President. And now, the second sentence follows, which is very brief. It reads as follows: "On this occasion it was clearly stated that a part of the valu-ables which we had inspected had come from concentration camps." That is the end of the quotation, and the end of the second sentence. Witness, you have heard what Pohl, the Gruppenfuehrer, asserts in his affidavit. Is it correct or is it not correct? You can answer the question with "yes" or "no," and if it is "no," then you may give a brief explanation.
FUNK: That he talked with me at this lunch, that I do recall. That he discussed with me the valuables deposited by the SS, that I do not recall. But I know with certainty that he did not talk to, me about these valuables about which I knew nothing, that is, about that part of the things which had been brought in by the SS which were to be converted not by the Reichsbank but by the Reich Finance Ministry, that is, gold, jewelry, and what other things there may have been. I never knew about these things, I never saw these things, and Pohl did not talk to me about these things, because if he had, I would have known about them and would have inquired about them. It is, therefore, quite out of the question that Pohl would have stated in the presence of 12 other persons, among whom there were perhaps three or four or five directors of the Reichsbank, and in the presence of the servants that things like that had come from concentration camps and from Jews who had been murdered. The fact that the SS deposited gold, foreign ex-change, notes, and bonds, and that such things also came from the concentration camps, that I did know, and I discussed these matters with Pohl. That was how this terrible thing started-by Himmler asking me to put vault space at his disposal in the Reichsbank for these confiscated objects, and I asked Himmler myself to be allowed to prepare this for the legal Reichsbank business, but I did not know anything about the other things; I did not know anything about the nature and size of them and nothing at all about their origin.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, I should like to put one final question to you so that everything will be entirely clear. When did you learn, for instance, that rims of glasses, gold teeth, and such like-in addi-tion to gold coins and foreign exchange which had to be given up -that such gruesome things had come to your Reichsbank? When did you learn that for the first time? Tell me under oath.
FUNK: Here, during this Trial.
DR. SAUTER: Yes. Can you swear that with a clear conscience?
FUNK: I can swear to that. Dr. Sauter, I must add...
THE PRESIDENT: He has already given this evidence.
DR. SAUTER: It was just a very brief question.
FUNK: Of course, what was in the SS deposits, that I did not know. I never saw that. That other things, like foreign exchange, gold, and securities, could have been in them, that was clear to me ...
DR. SAUTER: You have already explained that. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I have no further questions.
MR. DODD: You now tell us that you did know about the gold deposits and the jewelry coming in from the concentration camps, is that so?
FUNK: I did not know anything about it.
MR. DODD: You did not know anything about it? I must have misunderstood you. I thought you just told the Tribunal that you did know that this gold and these semi-precious stones and jewel-ries and other things were turned over to you through Himmler?
FUNK: No, I did not know anything about that. I only spoke of what was contained in the deposits made by the SS; that the SS did have such deposits in the Reichsbank I did know, but what was contained in them I did not know, for I never saw them and no one ever told me about the nature and the'origin and the quantity of these things.
MR. DODD: Well, you recall, when you testified here before the Tribunal on 7 May, that I asked you if you knew anything about the gold deposits from the concentration camps, and this testimony is present in the record (Volume VIII, Page 166). You said * at that time that Mr. Puhl told you that the SS had delivered a gold deposit and "he also told me, and he said this somewhat ironically, 'it would be best if we didn't try to ascertain what this deposit is."' This was your own testimony, in this very courtroom, in the same chair that you are sitting in now, before the same Tribunal, just a month or two- ago. Now, you had some knowledge certainly that there was something sinister about these deposits-didn't you?-when Director Puhl told you it would be best if you didn't ascertain or learn too much about the nature of the deposit. What do you say to that this morning? What is the fact of the matter?
FUNK: This testimony was already corrected by me insofar as when the first discussion between Himniler and myself took place, Himmler told me that the SS had confiscated considerable valuables in the East and that among them there were assets of interest to the Reichsbank such as gold, foreign coins, foreign bank notes, bonds, and other foreign exchange. Thereupon I asked him-and I testified to this as well-to appoint someone to discuss this matter with Vice President Puhl. Himmler then sent Pohl to see Puhl, after I had told Puhl about my conver-sation with Himmler. When these things arrived, when the first deposits arrived and were put in the vaults, Puhl said to me: "The SS deliveries are now being deposited," and on that occasion he perhaps made a sarcastic remark, "who knows what is contained in them?" and that is approximately what I have testified to here.
MR. DODD: You also told us, on that same day, and in the next answer to the very next question you made this statement before the Tribunal, "And I personally assumed, since they were always speaking about a gold deposit, that this gold consisted of coins or other foreign currency or possibly small bars of gold or something similar which had been brought in from the inmates of the concen-tration camps." Well then, you had some knowledge of the source and the origin of these deposits, didn't you? You knew where they were coming from, and that is all we want to establish here, and you had a pretty good idea, to put it mildly.
FUNK: That didn't necessarily come from the concentration camps only. But that the inmates of the concentration camps ...
MR. DODD: Now, just a moment. There is no sense in arguing about it at all. All I am trying to clear up here is the fact that you told the Tribunal yourself that you assumed it came from the in-mates of the concentration camps. Now, this is your own testimony of 7 May.
FUNK: Not only the gold, but also the foreign exchange, the bank notes, and everything which would come under the heading of legal transactions of the Reichsbank. That these things could come from the concentration camps as well was quite clear to me, for these things had to be collected from the inmates of the con-centration camps just as from every other person. That was clear to me. It was about the other things that I did not know anything; I did not know about the agreements between the Finance Ministry and the SS.
MR. DODD: Let's see whether you did know or not. You were in the courtroom when Mr. Elwyn Jones of the British Prosecution Staff offered the Document 4024-PS, which told about the action "Reinhard." You heard that document discussed here, didn't you?
FUNK: Yes.
MR.DODD: That document is before the Tribunal, and in that one action-and we don't even know if that is all of it-Reichsmark to the total value of 100,047,000 were deposited either in the Reichs-bank or in the Ministry of Economics just from this action alone. Are you telling the Tribunal that you as head of the Reichsbank would not know that in one year, or at least in one year, 100 million Reichsmark were deposited in your bank, or credits to that amount were placed in the deposit of your bank? You would have to know that, wouldn't you?
FUNK: Will you please repeat the sum. It doesn't appear to have been translated correctly.
MR. DODD: We don't need to get it down to the pfennig, it was over a hundred million Reichsmark.
FUNK: One million?
MR. DODD: No, no, a hundred million.
FUNK: A hundred million marks in foreign exchange? That is- quite impossible. It is absurd.
MR. DODD: But the document here shows it.
FUNK: Where would these 100 million marks come from? That's absurd.
MR. DODD: I am glad you are enjoying this, but let's get on with a little more. This document of the SS men further says that it was a sum of 500,000 American dollars. Wouldn't you have to know about that money being deposited in your bank or at your disposal? That's quite a lot of money too, in dollars, in Germany in 1943, I assume.
FUNK: Certainly, but I do not recall that I was ever informed of these 500,000 dollars. That is a sum which could have been dis-cussed with me, I admit, but it was not discussed with me.
MR. DODD: You know this document goes on, "and there is currency from practically every country in the world in very great amounts." You know that, don't you? You know this money was being turned over to your bank by the SS in very large Sums - 500,000 American dollars, thousands of British pounds, francs, all kinds of money. Now, you certainly had to know that it was coming into your bank in 1943, and in such an amount that you must have known whence it came. What do you say about that?
FUNK: That the SS, on the strength of the action mentioned here, deposited securities, foreign exchange, bank notes, and gold coins, and whatever else there might have been in the Reichsbank, that I knew. The scope of these deliveries was not reported to me. At any rate, I do not remember it and I do not know the total sum. And I am quite surprised that the amount is so high.
MR. DODD: Yes, so are we. The important thing is that as the head of that bank, Mr. Witness, don't you agree that it is impossible that you would not know about these sums of money?. You were something more than an ornament there, surely. And just this is a reason for this Tribunal and anybody else to believe that you would know about deposits in these great amounts, particularly in foreign currency. And I don't think that you have given any kind of satisfactory answer yet. Is your answer that you do not remem-ber or is your answer that you absolutely did not know? Or is it both?
FUNK: The amount mentioned first, of a hundred million marks, that I consider absolutely absurd. The second sum of 500,000 dol-lars, that I consider possible. It is quite within the realm of pos-sibility that such sums were taken away from people in these actions-for instance, from people who were taken into concen-tration camps, and also in other actions ...
MR. DODD: But I'm not asking you if it is possible they were taken away-we know they were taken away.
FUNK: I knew that would have to be collected in the normal way, but the amount was not mentioned to me. I did not know the amount. I did not know about it.
MR. DODD: I am not going to go through these documents, but you have probably read of all the items listed, thousands of alarm clocks, and fountain pens. You knew about them, as a Minister of Economics, didn't you?
FUNK: I knew nothing about that.
AM. DODD: Would you know about the 1,000,000 carloads o textiles that these SS men said had been shipped or warehoused which were composed of the clothing of the dead Jews and other people in concentration camps who had been exterminated? You had to know something about this as Minister of Economics?
FUNK: No, I did not know anything about these things. I ex-plained this before this Court when I said that these things went to the Reichskommissar for the utilization of old material, and they were sent directly from the collection camps to the various factories. Not a single person told me anything about confiscated textiles from concentration camps.
MR. DODD: Well....
FUNK: May I say one more word in connection with something which refers to the Reichsbank matter. I myself am confronted here -with, I would almost say, an incomprehensible matter, a puzzle. The fact that I was not informed of these deliveries of valuables, pearls, and so forth, is probably due to the fact that these things were not deposited for the use of the Reichsbank; the Reichsbank was only a clearing house and for that reason no one told me any of the details. But I, as president, bear the responsibility for everything that happened in the Reichsbank, together with the directors. If, however, officials were suspicious that things were happening which were the result of criminal acts, then it was their duty to tell me quite clearly and frankly and not do as I now remember Herr Wilhelm once did in a conversation when he said that it was a serious responsibility for the officials, a heavy burden-he used some such expression-on the officials. How could I, who at that time knew nothing about these matters, have inferred from this that it was a moral burden.
MR. DODD: I do not know how long you are going on with this, but as far as I am concerned, you've given me all the information I want about the matter. Really, Mr. President, I do not think this is being very helpful to the Tribunal. This last sort of statement is not in response to any questions I put to him. I just want to ask one or two more questions before lunch. Did you ever have any trouble with Oswald Pohl, the Finance Minister, the man Who says that he talked this matter over with you, even to the point of the disgusting fact that the clothing came from dead Jews? Or did you have any trouble with him in your life-any personal difficulty?
FUNK: As far as I remember, I only talked with Pohl once and perhaps he visited me twice.
MR. DODD: The answer is no, is that right?
FUNK: No.
MR.DODD: Now, of course you have seen this affidavit. There he goes into very great detail about when he saw you, where he saw you, who else was present, even the number of people who were at your little lunch in the dining room there. Do you know of any reason why he should fabricate testimony like this against you? Should it help the Tribunal or should it help yourself? Why should he lie about you in this terrible way? Can you give a suggestion, any motive, any cause?
FUNK: In my opinion the motive is purely psychological, because people who are in the terrible situation that Pohl is in, who are indicted for the murder of millions, usually attempt to incriminate others. We know that.
MR. DODD: May I interrupt you ... You mean in the same posi-tion that you find yourself in?
FUNK: No, I do not regard myself as a murderer of millions.
MR. DODD: Well, I don't care to argue about that with you, I merely want to give you an opportunity to state to the Tribunal any reason that you might have-and I think you have. And then only one other thing. I want to ask you this-and there is no doubt in our minds. Although there were millions, there must have been millions, of valuables taken from the people who were killed in the concentration camps and looted through your Economic Ministry, assisted by your Reichsbank-do you want us to understand you knew nothing about that? Can you answer it briefly, yes or no? Am I right in so stating it-you knew nothing about it?
FUNK: I have never asserted that I knew nothing about it. I have always said that I knew that confiscated valuables were depos-ited in the Reichsbank by the SS and that foreign exchange, gold, and other foreign securities and bank notes were converted by the Reichsbank. But that I knew nothing ...
MR. DODD: Wait a minute, please. I don't think you misunder-stood my question. I was asking you about the textiles only at the beginning, and I think that you have told this Tribunal what you did know about the textiles. You did not know about the textile transaction at all, did you?
FUNK: No, I did not know that textiles from the concentration camps were used to this extent...