dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SCHAEFER: As I already said, in the case of the Gestapo it was established that the cases of maltreatment with which we had been charged had actually occurred in the Gestapo in Berlin, and in the Seger case it was proved beyond doubt that Seger had made statements contrary to the truth.
HERR BOEHM: Is it true that further tortures did take place, of which, as Fritzsche says, he learned from individuals in the Gestapo or the Press Office of the Reichsfuehrer SS?
SCHAEFER: I myself was firmly opposed to maltreatment and torture, and my guards knew my attitude well, moreover the inmates of the camp also knew it.
HERR BOEHM: Is it true, as Fritzsche says, that the 30th of June 1934 constituted a purge inasmuch as Gauleiter and SA Fuehrer who had misused their power were removed?
SCHAEFER: In connection with the concentration camps I cannot share this opinion.
HERR BOEHM: The former Reichstag Member for the SPD, Seger, of Dessau, wrote a book on Oranienburg.  Do you know it?
SCHAEFER: Yes. Seger himself sent me this book.
HERR BOEHM: Do you know that Seger submitted this book to the Ministry of Justice for the investigation of the complaints which he made?
SCHAEFER: I know that too.
HERR BOEHM: And what did the Ministry of Justice do?
SCHAEFER: The prosecutor competent for the locality of Seger's former residence questioned me in great detail. A thorough investigation was carried out, with the result that, as far as I can recall, the Supreme Court in Leipzig stopped the proceedings.
HERR BOEHM: Do you know that Seger accused you of murder?
SCHAEFER: Yes, I know that.
HERR BOEHM: Was this matter cleared up beyond doubt?
SCHAEFER: Seger accused me of being responsible for the shooting and killing of two internees. This case was cleared up beyond all doubt, so satisfactorily indeed that when this book on my instructions was read to the internees in the camp, one of the persons who, as Seger alleged, had been shot, suddenly stood up and reported that he was alive and well, while the other one was already with his family, having been released; a clear refutation, therefore, by the two men themselves who were said to have been shot.
HERR BOEHM: The statement of fact as given by Seger must therefore plainly be called a lie?
SCHAEFER: Quite.
HERR BOEHM: Is it correct, as you say in your book, that the prisoners could even make use of their right of secret ballot, on the basis of the Weimar Constitution?
I SCHAEFER: That is also true. The prisoners took part in the plebiscite on the continued participation of Germany in the League ,of Nations, and it was conducted under the legal rules as laid down in the Weimar Constitution.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. B6hm, I have already pointed out to you that we think you might get on to something a little more important. We are still dealing with 1933 or the beginning of 1934, in the Camp Oranienburg.
HERR BOEHM: Mr. President, the SA is charged only with the Camp Oranienburg, and actually the SA guarded Oranienburg only from March 1933 to March 1934. It is therefore not possible to talk ,of any other period.
THE PRESIDENT: That we understand, that this witness tells us that the camp was administered in a perfectly satisfactory and proper manner, and we don't desire details of every day during 1933 and 1934.
HERR BOEHM: Since I expect the book of Seger to be submitted in cross-examination, perhaps the Tribunal will be interested to hear that its title was ...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. B6hm, if it is submitted in cross-examination, the witness will then be able to answer questions which are put upon the book. It isn't necessary for you to anticipate possible cross-examination.
HERR BOEHM: Very well, Mr. President. May I continue? Is Seger's assertion true that Gauleiter Laeber of Dessau, furious on account of Seger's escape, came up to you in Oranienburg and slapped you?
SCHAEFER: No, that is not true. I never saw Gauleiter Laeber, and never made his acquaintance. Laeber was never in Oranienburg, I never met him on any other occasion, and there was therefore never any altercation between us.
HERR BOEHM: You said that the false reports on Oranienburg which were spread abroad were intended to poison relations between the nations. Can you support this view with facts? .
SCHAEFER: Yes. Whenever articles appeared abroad on Oranienburg, for instance, I received an enormous number of threatening and offensive letters, which unfortunately showed that the completely false reports which appeared on Oranienburg had the result that perfect strangers, whom I did not know, and who did not know me, now felt obliged, not only with regard to me, but also with regard to the SA men under my command, and unfortunately also the whole German nation ...
THE PRESIDENT: What you are speaking of now-when did these articles appear, and when did you receive threatening letters?
SCHAEFER: In 1933 and 1934.
THE PRESIDENT: Those appeared then, and you received those letters then?
SCHAEFER: Yes.
HERR BOEHM: Under whose orders were the guards at the Concentration Camp Oranienburg?
SCHAEFER: They were under my orders as their SA Fuehrer.
HERR BOEHM: And to whom was Oranienburg itself subordinate?
SCHAEFER: As I have already said, it was under the Regierungspräsident and the superior office of the Regierungspräsident, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. The SA was called upon for service within the SA auxiliary police to a very small extent. Channels went from the State, in this case the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, to the SA Gruppe, from the SA Gruppe to the SA Brigade and Standarte. My superior SA Fuehrer was at the same time an auxiliary police official, and through these channels the orders from above reached me. I was subject to a double command: For discipline, I was under the SA, and for State measures, I was directly subordinate to the State.
HERR BOEHM: You told the Commission that you received the order for the establishment of this camp from the competent SA Standarte.
SCHAEFER: Yes.
HERR BOEHM: How is that possible?
SCHAEFER: That is in accordance with the channels I have just described: the State, SA Gruppe, Standartenfuehrer, as the man responsible for the use of the auxiliary police, and so, through him, by the State, I received the order to establish the camp.
BEER BOEHM: What persons were brought to the Oranienburg Camp?
SCHAEFER: Mainly, of course, active opponents were sent to the Oranienburg Camp. Then there were elements of the Movement and the SA, who owing to undisciplined conduct had incurred confinement. For this purpose there was a special camp section in Oranienburg. At the same time however informers who had acted for their own personal advantage in denouncing political opponents to further their own interests and against their better knowledge were also imprisoned there. And then -there was a small group of people who, although sympathizing with the NSDAP, might have caused difficulties with foreign powers by their foreign nationality. Among those was the leader of the Russian National Socialists in Berlin, who had to be detained in Oranienburg because he was causing political mischief. He was a man obsessed with fantastic ideas who had in this way to be withdrawn from circulation, though for a comparatively short time, as a matter of fact.
HERR BOEHM: Is it right to say that the groups you have just mentioned could be expected to cause an uprising of some sort against the existing government?
SCHAEFER: Yes, that could be expected from the groups of active political opponents, and it was proved by the weapons which were found in a well-preserved condition.
THE PRESIDENT: We had this already today, about the confiscation of weapons.
HERR BOEHM: No, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: I have written it down myself. I heard it.
HERR BOEHM: I certainly do not want to have it repeated, Mr. President. It is plain that excesses happen in times of revolution. Did excesses also take place on the part of members of the SA and the NSDAP?
SCHAEFER: That cannot and shall not be denied.
HERR BOEHM: How do you explain such excesses?
SCHAEFER: There was, in the first place, a group of political hot-heads who in such a time of revolution went far beyond the goal set for them; but, as I have already clearly said, there were also obscure elements which, uncontrolled, because they came from the outside, had gained admittance into the SA and the Party. For these elements, of course, the seizure of power was the best opportunity to commit punishable acts, but may I emphasize that we on our part did everything possible to take really strict steps whenever such excesses were reported to us. The Party had formed its own police corps for this purpose, which was known to take action without consideration for persons or position.
HERR BOEHM: What was the basis for arrests and confinement in concentration camps?
SCHAEFER: An order for protective custody had in all cases to be issued first.
HERR BOEHM: Who issued this order?
SCHAEFER: The political police or the Kreis police authority issued these orders.
HERR BOEHM: To what work were the people in the concentration camps assigned?
SCHAEFER: They were used for work in the interest of the concentration camp itself, in the administration, and also for land cultivation work.
HERR BOEHM: Did you, as the commandant, receive complaints -from prisoners about improper treatment?
SCHAEFER: I do not recall that I personally ever received any complaints.
HERR BOEHM: But when it became known that improper conditions actually existed, did you do anything about them?
SCHAEFER: Through constant contact with the internees-I was -in the camp very frequently and for long periods-I occasionally learned of improper conditions. I can give the assurance here that I did everything possible to remove such conditions as soon as I had learned of them.
HERR BOEHM: Did any executions take place during the time in which this camp was guarded by the SA?
SCHAEFER: No.
HERR BOEHM: Were there any instruments for the torture or the extermination of human beings in this camp, while you were commandant?
SCHAEFER: No.
HERR BOEHM: Who was in charge of guarding the camp after you?
SCHAEFER: The SA continued to guard it for some time, about two months, and then the SS took over.
HERR BOEHM: And what can you, as the first commandant of the camp, say about that change-over?
SCHAEFER: The camp was not taken over because of any inadequacies or improper conditions, but because after the 30th of June it became the task of the SS to direct these concentration camps. The Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler took over the concentration camps and administered them with his men. The SA therefore had nothing at all to do with the concentration camps after 1934.
HERR BOEHM: Now I want to ask you, did you have occasion to punish the camp -guards for any excesses which they might have committed?
SCHAEFER: Of course, excesses were punished. If they appeared to be of a serious nature, I was under the obligation to report them to the superior authority-in this particular case, the State. I had to make such reports about two Sturmbannfuehrer and one Sturmfuehrer who were assigned to me. These three men were immediately removed from their positions and were put on trial.
HERR BOEHM: Did you yourself inflict punishments, and if so, what punishments?
THE PRESIDENT: Wasn't this gone into before the Commission?
HERR BOEHM: In part, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: You are dealing with the case of three officers at the moment. Either it was gone into before the Commission or it was not.
HERR BOEHM: It was mentioned before the Commission, Mr. President. But I now wanted to add the question whether SA men, not only these three officers, but SA men, were punished and dismissed.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you can pass on from the three officers.
HERR BOEHM: It is true that in addition to these officers of whom you spoke before the Commission, SA men were also dismissed in this connection?
SCHAEFER: Yes.
HERR BOEHM: Is it true that because of your satisfactory direction of the Camp Oranienburg you became head of the Penal Execution Administration in the Ministry of Justice?
SCHAEFER: In 1934 1 was taken over by the Prussian Ministry of Justice. I was not appointed Chief of the Reich Penal Execution Administration, but I became commander of, the Ems installations, the biggest organization within that administration. Then in the course of the year I became director of a penitentiary, and thereafter I remained in the Penal Execution Administration.
HERR BOEHM: In this connection it maybe necessary to clarify what you understand by "SA auxiliary police."
SCHAEFER: The SA auxiliary police was, as the name says, an auxiliary organ of the Police. In order that the revolution might be carried through without bloodshed according to orders, it was, of course, necessary that there should be close supervision. Since the police forces available were not adequate, the State made use of a comparatively small number of SA men who had a particularly good police record and whose lives had been without reproach. Old and experienced police officials initiated them into their duties, and then together with the police they carried out their services within the limits of general police duties. But this was only a temporary measure.
HERR BOEHM: What did you, as commandant of Camp Oranienburg, consider to be your task?
SCHAEFER: It was my task primarily to direct the camp in a clear and correct way. In addition I had to supervise the measures which were taken against the internees.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom): My Lord, I interfere with the greatest possible reluctance with Dr. BOEHM's examination, but I cannot think that he has appreciated the instruction which Your Lordship has repeated to Defense Counsel on several occasions during the last week. My Lord, this witness gave evidence before the Commission, which I have in front of me. This morning Dr. BOEHM is going into these matters in far greater detail than they were gone into before the Commission. As I understood the order of the Tribunal, it was that counsel should not repeat what was gone into before the Commission, but should select the important points and deal with them and give Your Lordship and the Tribunal an opportunity for judging the witness and seeing his merits and capabilities. My Lord, I do ask, very respectfully, that some limit should be put on this very extended examination in controversion of the Tribunal's ruling.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, Dr. Bhm, unless you observe the orders of the Tribunal in this matter the Tribunal will have to stop the examination of this witness. You must consider that. The Tribunal will now adjourn, in the hope that after the adjournment you will observe the orders. Otherwise, as I say, we will stop the examination of this witness. [A recess was taken.]
HERR BOEHM: Mr. President, I intend to observe the order of the High Tribunal that witnesses are to be heard upon topics which were not discussed before the Commission. But the questionnaire submitted to the witness had to be extended somewhat to include the Seger case, details of which we heard only quite recently, and to include questions on the affidavit of the witness Diels, on which this witness had to give views. At the time when this witness was heard before the Commission, both the questionnaire and the affidavit deposed by Diels were still unknown.
THE PRESIDENT: There was no objection about his being examined about the affidavit. That was not dealt with in the Commission before. We do not want you to go over all the details which were gone over before the Commission.
HERR BOEHM: I have only about ten more questions to put to the witness, Mr. President. I shall ask the witness to be as brief as possible. When you were commandant of Oranienburg, was there any supervision on the part of the State?
SCHAEFER: Yes. The camp of Oranienburg was supervised by the Regierungspräsident at Potsdam, by the Police President, Count Helldorf, and by high officials of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior.
HERR BOEHM: Did the Kreis police authority have any right of supervision?
SCHAEFER: Yes, the Landrat of the Kreis Barnim.
HERR BOEHM: Did all these authorities actually carry out controls and checks?
SCHAEFER: Frequent checks, and very thorough ones, did take place.
HERR BOEHM: Did foreigners and other prominent personalities have an opportunity of visiting the camp at Oranienburg and of talking with the inmates?
SCHAEFER: Visits of that kind were made at Oranienburg on a very large scale. Those participating were the Foreign Press, the German Press, and private citizens from abroad who were politically interested. They had an opportunity of talking with the prisoners quite freely inside the camp and at their places of work.
HERR BOEHM: Is it correct that on the occasion of one of these visits you were told: "Now you are going to show us only what we are permitted to see and all the rest will remain concealed from us"?
SCHAEFER: That is correct. That was put to me and I thereupon saw to it that these visitors to the camp should be able to go wherever they pleased. There was nothing to hide, nothing to be concealed in Oranienburg. The visitors themselves had an opportunity of forming their own judgment.
HERR BOEHM: Please tell us, briefly, about the food of the internees in this camp.
SCHAEFER: The food for the inmates was good. Proof of that was the fact that the inmates always increased in weight. Apart from that, everything necessary and required was done. to allow the inmates to live under humanly dignified conditions. They even had their own canteen where their daily needs could be met.
HERR BOEHM: Now, just a few questions about the penal camp s in Emsland. Why were these camps established?
SCHAEFER: In 1933 the penal institutions of Germany were overcrowded, the prime reason being the country's great social distress at that time. It was the special wish of Minister President Goering at that time that prisoners should take part in the large cultivation, projects in the Ems district. The SS was charged with setting up a number of large camps so that prisoners could be collected there for their cultivation work. However, the generous Christmas amnesty of the Minister President made this task problematical, so an offer of filling these camps with criminal prisoners was accepted and carried into effect by the then Prussian Minister of Justice, Kerrl.
HERR BOEHM: Did the-Supreme SA command have jurisdiction over the camps in the Emsland?
SCHAEFER: No, they were State camps, subordinate only to the Reich Ministry of Justice.
HERR BOEHM: You already mentioned that these camps were filled with criminals who were put to work there?
SCHAEFER: Yes.
HERR BOEHM: Now I should like to put a final question to you.  How many SA men were used in the concentration camp Oranienburg as guards and as employees of the German Police?
SCHAEFER: When the camp was first erected, approximately 30 to 40; at the time when it had most inmates, approximately 90.
HERR BOEHM: Can you tell me who, from the beginning, furnished the guards at Dachau?
SCHAEFER: As far as I know, Dachau was an SS camp entirely.  The SA was never active in Dachau.
HERR BOEHM: Mr. President, for the present I have no more questions to put to this witness.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: Witness, you probably know it already, but if you do not, you may take it from me that in the last eight months this Tribunal has heard a great deal of evidence about concentration camps. Do you deny, now, that even in 1933 concentration camps were regarded throughout Germany with terror?
SCHAEFER: I did not quite understand the question.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: I will state it again. Do you deny that. even in 1933 concentration camps were regarded by people throughout Germany with terro r?
SCHAEFER: Anyone who is arrested always naturally connects a personal horror with his arrest, for the loss of freedom alone compels. him to have a feeling of that sort. But there was no reason, at that time, to be horrified by the thought of such internment.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: You have spoken, this morning, about the Reichstag deputy, Herr Gerhard Seger. He wrote a book on the Oranienburg Concentration Camp. I am not going to talk on that book, but do you remember that the title of it was A Nation Terrorized? Do you remember that title?
SCHAEFER: No.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: Do you consider that that was a reasonable title to give a book on Oranienburg?
SCHAEFER: No.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: Would it have been a reasonable title to give about the. concentration camps at Wuppertal or Hohenstein?
SCHAEFER: I cannot make any statements in that respect. I never knew Wuppertal and as far as Hohenstein is concerned, I only know that the severest measures were taken there when abuses were discovered. Later I learned that the leading men of the Concentration Camp Hohenstein received very long terms of penal servitude and imprisonment.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: You know, too, that those severe penalties were reduced in the most serious cases to about half the sentence? Don't you know that?
SCHAEFER: No. That is unknown to me.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: You know that the number of people. who were sentenced in Hohenstein was 25 and that the official report about it said that they were not all those who took part in the excesses, but only the most prominent ones? Did you know that?
SCHAEFER: I do not know the particulars. I know only that at that time very severe and strict measures were taken.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: And did you know at that time about the atrocities which were going on in Wuppertal and in Hohenstein? You knew about it at that time, did you not?
SCHAEFER: No.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: You knew that those camps, or at any rate you know now that those camps were run by the SA? Is that right?
SCHAEFER: No. I did not know that either.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: You did not know they were run by the SA?
SCHAEFER: No. I did not know that.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: Witness, I want you to look at a document-which is Number 787-PS, My Lord, in Book 16a, at Page 16. That is a letter written by Dr. Görtner, the Reich Minister of Justice, to Hitler, and he describes at the beginning of the letter the maltreatment of prisoners in Hohenstein, including torture by a Orip apparatus. If you look toward the end of the letter-I should think it is about 10 lines from the end-you will see he is talking about the principal SA offender, one Vogel, and he says: "By his actions he supported the convicted SA leaders and men in their deeds." That shows that Hohenstein atrocities were done by SA men, does it not?
SCHAEFER: I am afraid that in one brief minute I cannot read through a document five pages long. I should like to say only that I learned afterward that severe measures were taken against the SA leaders and against the SA men who had perpetrated crimes in Hohenstein. I should also like to point out that it was the Minister of Justice Dr. Görtner, himself, who took me over into his Penal Execution Administration as an SA leader known to him personally. That shows that he did not generalize the matters which in this letter he is reporting to the Fuehrer as an isolated case. These are isolated cases, and the criminals concerned in them received their due punishment.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: Witness, if you say you do not know what went on in Hohenstein and Wuppertal at that time, let me ask you this: You knew Görtner fairly well. Did you not?
SCHAEFER: Yes.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: You knew Kerrl fairly well, did you not?
SCHAEFER: Yes.