dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
M. DUBOST: Although we are not in possession of any document signed by them in respect to the western countries, the uniformity of the acts we have described to you and the fact that they were analogous and even identical, in spite of the diversity of places, enables us to assert that all these orders were dictated by a single will; and among the accused, Bormann and Kaltenbrunner were the direct instruments of that single will. Everything I described to you here concerned the procedure prior to judgment. We know with what ferocity this procedure was applied. We know that this ferocity was intentional. It was known to the populations of the invaded countries, and its purpose was to create an atmosphere of real terror around the Gestapo and all the German police services. After the examination came the judicial proceedings. These proceedings were, as we see them, only a parody of justice. The prosecution was based on a legal concept which we dismiss as being absolutely inhuman. That part will be dealt with by my colleague, M. Edgar Faure, in the second part of the statement on the German atrocities in the western countries: crimes against the spirit. It is sufficient for us to know that the German courts which dealt with crimes committed by the citizens of the occupied western countries, which did not accept defeat, never applied but one penalty, the death penalty, and that in execution of an inhuman order by one of these men, Keitel; an order which appears in Document Number L-90, already submitted to you by my United States colleagues, under Document Number USA-503. It is the penultimate in your large document book, Line 5: "If these offenses are punished with imprisonment or even with hard labor for life, it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Effective and lasting intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures which leave the relatives and the population in the dark about the fate of the culprit. Deportation to Germany serves this purpose. Is it necessary to make any comment?
M. DUBOST: Can we be surprised at this war leader giving orders to justice? What we heard about him yesterday makes us doubt that he is merely a military leader. We have quoted you his own words, "Effective and lasting intimidation can only be achieved by capital punishment." Are such orders, given to courts of justice, compatible with military honor? "If in effect"Keitel goes on to say in this Document--"the courts are unable to pronounce the death penalty, then the man must be deported." I think you will share my opinion that, when such orders are given to courts, one can no longer speak of justice. In execution of this order, those of our compatriots who were not condemned to death and immediately executed were deported to Germany. We now come to the third part of my statement: the question of deportation. It remains for me to explain to you in what circumstances the deportations were carried out. If prior to that the Tribunal could suspend the sitting for a few minutes, I should be very grateful.
THE PRESIDENT: How long would you like us to suspend, M. Dubost?
M. DUBOST: Perhaps ten minutes, Your Honor. [A recess was taken.]
DR. OTTO NELTE (Counsel for the Defendant Keitel): The French Prosecutor just now read from Document L-90, the so-called " Nacht und Nebel " decree. He referred to this decree and cited the words: "Effective and lasting intimidation can only be achieved by capital punishment, or by measures which leave the relatives and the population in the dark about the fate of the culprit." The French Prosecutor mentioned that these were the very words of Keitel. In connection with a previous case the President and the Tribunal have pointed out that it is not permissible to quote only a part of a document when by so doing a wrong impression might be created. The French Prosecutor will agree with me when I say that Decree L- 90 makes it quite clear that these are not the words of the Chief of the OKW, but of Hitler. In this short extract it says: "It is the carefully considered will of the Fuehrer that, when attacks are made in occupied countries against the Reich or against the occupying power, the culprits must be dealt with by other measures than those decreed heretofore. The Fuehrer is of the opinion that if these offenses are punished with imprisonment, or even with hard labor for life, this will be looked upon as a sign of weakness. Effective and lasting intimidation can only be achieved by capital punishment, et cetera." The decree then goes on to say: "The enclosed directives on how to deal with the offences comply with the Fuehrer's point of view. They have been examined and approved by him." I take the liberty to point out this fact, because it was just this decree, which is known as the notorious " Nacht und Nebel " decree, which in its formulation and execution was opposed by Keitel. That is why I am protesting.
M. DUBOST: I owe you an explanation. I did not read the decree in full because the Tribunal knows it. In accordance with the customary procedure of this Tribunal, it has been read. It is not necessary to read it again. Moreover, I knew that the accused Keitel had signed it, but that Hitler had conceived it. Therefore, I made allusion to the military honor of this general, who was not afraid to become the lackey of Hitler.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal understood from your mentioning of the fact that the document had already been submitted to the Tribunal and does not think that there was anything misleading in what you did.
M. DUBOST: If the Tribunal accepts this, we shall proceed to the hearing of a witness, a Frenchman. [The witness, Lampe, took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: This is your witness, is it not? Is this the witness you wish to call?
M. DUBOST: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: [To the witness] Will you stand up. What is your name?
M. MAURICE LAMPE (Witness): Lampe, Maurice.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: Do you swear to speak without hate or fear, to say the truth, all the truth, only the truth? [The witness repeated the oath in French.]
THE PRESIDENT: Raise the right hand and say, I swear.
LAMPE: I swear.
THE PRESIDENT: Spell your name.
LAMPE: L-A-M-P-E.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
M. DUBOST: You were born in Roubaix on the 23rd of August 1900. Were you deported by the Germans?
LAMPE: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.
LAMPE: Thank you, Mr. President.
M. DUBOST: You, were interned in Mauthausen?
LAMPE: That is correct.
M. DUBOST: Will you testify as to what you know concerning this internment camp?
LAMPE: Willingly.
M. DUBOST: Say what you know.
LAMPE: I was arrested on 8 November 1941. After two years and a half of internment in France, I was deported on 22 March 1944 to Mauthausen in Austria. The journey lasted three days and three nights under particularly vile conditions-104 deportees in a cattle truck without air. I do not believe that it is necessary to give all the details of this journey, but one can well imagine the state in which we arrived at Mauthausen on the morning of the 25th of March 1944, in weather 12 degrees below zero. I mention, however, that from the French border we traveled in the trucks, naked. When we arrived at Mauthausen, the SS officer who received this convoy of about 1,200 Frenchmen informed us in the following words, which I shall quote from memory almost word for word: "Germany needs your arms. You are, therefore, going to work; but I want to tell you that you will never see your families again. When one enters this camp, one leaves it by the chimney of the crematorium." I remained about three weeks in quarantine in an isolated block, and I was then detailed to work with a squad in a stone quarry. The quarry at Mauthausen was in a hollow about 800 metres from the camp proper. There were 186 steps down to it. It was particularly painful torture, because the steps were so rough-hewn that to climb them even without a load was extremely tiring. One day, 15 April 1944, 1 was detailed to a team of 12 men-all of them French-under the orders of a German "Kapo," a common criminal, and of an SS man. We started work at seven o'clock in the morning. By eight o'clock, one hour later, two of my comrades had already been murdered. They were an elderly man, M. Gregoire from Lyons, and a quite young man, Lefevre from Tours. They were murdered because they had not understood the order, given in German, detailing them for a task. We were very frequently beaten because of our inability to understand the German language.
LAMPE: On the evening of that first day, 15 April 1944, we were told to carry the two corpses to the top, and the one that I, with three of my comrades, carried was that of old Gregoire, a very heavy man; we had to go up 186 steps with a corpse and we all received blows before we reached the top. Life in Mauthausen-and I shall declare before this Tribunal only what I myself saw and experienced-was a long cycle of torture and of suffering. However, I would like to recall a few scenes which were particularly horrible and have remained more firmly fixed in my memory. During September, I think it was on the 6th of September 1944, there came to Mauthausen a small convoy of 47 British, American, and Dutch officers. They were airmen who had come down by parachute. They had been arrested after having tried to make their way back to their own lines. Because of this they were condemned to death by a German tribunal. They had been in prison about a year and a half and were brought to Mauthausen for execution. On their arrival they were transferred to the bunker, the camp prison. They were made to undress and had only their pants and a shirt. They were barefooted. The following morning they were at the roll call at seven o'clock. The work gangs went to their tasks. The 47 officers were assembled. in front of the office and were told by the commanding officer of the camp that they were all under sentence of death. I must mention that one of the American officers asked the commander that he should be allowed to meet his death as a soldier. In reply, he was bashed with a whip. The 47 were led barefoot to the quarry. For all the prisoners at Mauthausen the murder of these men has remained in their minds like a scene from Dante's Inferno. This is how it was done: At the bottom of the steps they loaded stone on the backs of these poor men and they had to carry them to the top. The first journey was made with stones weighing 25 to 30 kilos and was accompanied by blows. Then they were made to run down.
LAMPE: For the second journey the stones were still heavier; and whenever the poor wretches sank under their burden, they were kicked and hit with a bludgeon, even stones were hurled at them. This went on for several days. In the evening when I returned from the gang with which I was then working, the road which led to the camp was a bath of blood. I almost stepped on the lower jaw of a man. Twenty-one bodies were strewn along the road. Twenty- one had died on the first day. The twenty-six others died the following morning. I have tried to make my account of this horrible episode as short as possible. We were not able, at least when we were in camp, to find out the names of these officers; but I think that by now their names must have been established. In September 1944 Himmler visited us. Nothing was changed in the camp routine. The work gangs went to their tasks as usual, and I had-we had-the unhappy opportunity of seeing Himmler close. If I mention Himmler's visit to the camp-after all it was not a great event-it is because that day they presented to Himmler the execution of fifty Soviet officers. I must tell you that I was then working in a Messerschmidt gang, and that day I was on night shift. The block where I was billeted was just opposite the crematorium; and in the execution room, we saw-I saw-these Soviet officers lined up in rows of five in front of my block. They were called one by one. The way to the execution room was relatively short. It was reached by a stairway. The execution room was under the crematorium. The execution, which Himmler himself witnessed-at least the beginning of it, because it lasted throughout the afternoon-was another particularly horrible spectacle. I repeat, the Soviet Army officers were called one by one, and there was a sort of human chain between the group which was awaiting its turn and that which was in the stairway listening to the shots which killed their predecessors. They were all killed by a shot in the neck.
M. DUBOST: You witnessed this personally?
LAMPE: I repeat that on that afternoon I was in Block 11, which was situated opposite the crematorium; and although we did not see the execution itself, we heard every shot; and we saw the condemned men who were waiting on the stairway opposite us embrace each other before they parted.
M. DUBOST: Who were these men who were condemned?
LAMPE: The majority of them were Soviet officers, political commissars, or members of the Bolshevik Party. They came from Oflags.
M. DUBOST: I beg your pardon, but were there officers among them?
LAMPE: Yes.
M. DUBOST: Did you know where they came from?
LAMPE: It was very difficult to know from what camp they came because, as a general rule, they were isolated when they arrived in camp. They were taken either direct to the prison or else to Block 20, which was an annex of the prison, about which I shall have occasion...
M. DUBOST: How did you know they were officers?
LAMPE: Because we were able to communicate with them.
M. DUBOST: Did all of them come from prisoner-of-war camps?
LAMPE: Probably.
M. DUBOST: You did not really know?
LAMPE: No, we did not know. We were chiefly interested in finding out of what nationality they were and did not ask other details.
M. DUBOST: Do you know where the British, American, and Dutch officers came from, about whom you have just spoken and who were executed on the steps leading to the quarry?
LAMPE: I believe they came from the Netherlands, especially the Air Force officers. They had probably bailed out after having been shot down and had hidden themselves while trying to go back to their lines.
M. DUBOST: Did the Mauthausen prisoners know that prisoners of war, officers or noncommissioned officers, were executed?
LAMPE: That was a frequent occurrence.
M. DUBOST: A frequent occurrence?
LAMPE: Yes, very frequent.
M. DUBOST: Do you know about any mass executions of the men kept at Mauthausen?
LAMPE: I know of many instances.
M. DUBOST: Could you cite a few?
LAMPE: Besides those I have already described, I feel I ought to mention what happened to part of a convoy coming from Sachsenhausen which was executed by a special method. This was on 17 February 1945. When the Allied armies were advancing, various camps were moved back toward Austria. Of a convoy of 2,500 internees which had left Sachsenhausen, only about 1,700 were left when they arrived at Mauthausen on the morning of the 17th of February. 800 had died or had been killed in the course of the journey. The Mauthausen Camp was at that time, if I may use this expression, completely choked. So when the 1,700 survivors of this convoy arrived, Kommandant Dachmeier had selected 400 from among them. He encouraged the sick, the old, and the weak prisoners to come forward with the idea that they might be taken to the infirmary. These 400 men, who had either come forward of their own free will or had been arbitrarily selected, were stripped entirely naked and left for 18 hours in weather 18 degrees below zero, between the laundry building and the wall of the camp. The congestion ...
M. DUBOST: You saw that yourself?
LAMPE: I saw it personally.
M. DUBOST: You are citing this as an actual witness, seen with your own eyes?
LAMPE: Exactly.
M. DUBOST: In what part of the camp were you at that time?
LAMPE: This scene lasted, as I said, 18 hours; and when we went in or came out of the camp we saw these unfortunate men.
M. DUBOST: Very well. Will you please continue? You have spoken of the visit of Himmler and of the execution of Soviet officers and commissars. Did you frequently see German personalities in the camp?
LAMPE: Yes, but I cannot give you the names.
M. DUBOST: You did not know them?
LAMPE: One could hardly mistake Himmler.
M. DUBOST: But you did know they were eminent personalities?
LAMPE: We did indeed. First of all, these personages were always surrounded by a complete staff, who went through the prison itself and particularly adjoining blocks. If you will allow me, I would like to go on with my description of the murder of these 400 people from Sachsenhausen. I said that after selecting the sick, the feeble I and the older prisoners, Dachmeier, the camp commander, gave orders that these men should be stripped entirely naked in weather 18 degrees below zero. Several of them rapidly got congestion of the lungs, but that did not seem fast enough for the SS. Three times during the night these men were sent down to the shower-baths; three times they were drenched for half an hour in freezing water and then made to come up without being dried. In the morning when the gangs went to work the corpses were strewn over the ground. I must add that the last of them were finished off with blows from an axe. I now give the most positive testimony of an occurrence which can easily be verified. Among those 400 men was a captain in the French cavalry, Captain Dedionne, who today is a major in the Ministry of War. This captain was among the 400. He owes his life to the fact that he hid among the corpses and thus escaped the blows of the axe. When the corpses were taken to the crematorium he managed to get away across the camp, but not without having received a blow on the shoulder which has left a mark for life. He was caught again by the SS. What saved him was probably the fact that the SS considered it very funny that a live man should emerge from a heap of corpses. We took care of him, we helped him, and we brought him back to France.
M. DUBOST: Do you know why this execution was carried out?
LAMPE: Because there were too many people in the camp; because the prisoners coming from all the camps that were falling back could not be drafted into working gangs at a quick enough pace. The blocks were overcrowded. That is the only explanation that was given.
M. DUBOST: Do you know who gave the order to exterminate the British, American, and Dutch officers whom you saw put to death in the quarry?
LAMPE: I believe I said these officers had* been condemned to death by German tribunals.
M. DUBOST: Yes.
LAMPE: Probably a few of them had been condemned many months before and they were taken to Mauthausen for the sentence to be carried out. It is probable that the order came from Berlin.
M. DUBOST: Did you know under what conditions the "Revier" (infirmary) was built?
LAMPE: Here I have to state that the infirmary was built before my arrival at the camp.
M. DUBOST: So you are giving us indirect testimony?
LAMPE: Yes, indirect testimony. But I heard it from all the internees, also the SS themselves. The Revier was built by the first Soviet prisoners who arrived in Mauthausen. Four thousand Soviet soldiers died; they were murdered, massacred, during the construction of the 8 blocks of the Revier. These massacres made such a deep impression that the Revier was always referred to as the "Russen Lager" (Russian Camp). The SS themselves called the infirmary the Russian camp.
M. DUBOST: How many Frenchmen were you at Mauthausen?
LAMPE: There were in Mauthausen and its dependencies about 10,000 Frenchmen.
M. DUBOST: How many of you came back?
LAMPE: Three thousand of us came back.
M. DUBOST: There were some Spaniards with you also?
LAMPE: Eight thousand Spaniards arrived in Mauthausen in 1941, towards the end of the year. When we left, at the end of April 1945, there were still about 1,600. All the rest had been exterminated.
M. DUBOST: Where did these Spaniards come from?
LAMPE: These Spaniards came mostly from labor companies which had been formed in 1939 and 1940 in France, or else they had been delivered by the Vichy Government to the Germans direct.
M. DUBOST: Is this all you have to tell us?
LAMPE: With the permission of the Tribunal, I, would like to cite another example of atrocity which remains clearly in my memory. This took place also during September 1944. 1 am sorry I cannot remember the exact date, but I do know it was a Saturday, because on Saturday at Mauthausen all the outside detachments had to answer evening roll call inside the camp. That took place only on Saturday nights and on Sunday mornings. That evening the roll call took longer than usual. Someone was missing. After a long wait and searches carried out in the various blocks, they found a Russian, a Soviet prisoner, who perhaps had fallen asleep and had forgotten to answer roll call. What the reason was we never knew, but at any rate he was not present at roll call. Immediately the dogs and the SS went up to the poor wretch, and before the whole camp-I was in the front row, not because I wanted to be but because we were arranged like that-we witnessed the fury of the dogs let loose upon this unfortunate Russian. He was torn to pieces in the presence of the whole camp. I must add that this man, in spite of his sufferings, faced his death in a particularly noble manner.
M. DUBOST: What were the living conditions of the prisoners like? Were they all treated the same or were they treated differently according to their origin and nationality or, perhaps according to their ethnic type, their particular race, shall we say?
LAMPE: As a general rule the camp regime was the same for all nationalities, with the exception of the quarantine blocks and the annexes of the prison. The kind of work we did, the particular units to which we were attached, sometimes allowed us to get a little more than usual; for instance, those who worked in the, kitchens and those who worked in the stores certainly did get a little more.
M. DUBOST: Were, for instance, Jews permitted to work in the kitchens or the store rooms?
LAMPE: At Mauthausen the Jews had the hardest tasks of all. I must point out that, until December 1943, the Jews did not live more than three months at Mauthausen. There were very few of them at the end.
M. DUBOST: What happened in that camp after the murder of Heydrich?
LAMPE: In that connection there was a particularly dramatic episode. At Mauthausen there were 3,000 Czechs, 600 of whom were intellectuals. After the murder of Heydrich, the Czech colony in the camp was exterminated with the exception of 300 out of the 3,000 and six intellectuals out of the 600 that were in the camp.
M. DUBOST: Did anyone speak to you of scientific experiments?
LAMPE: They were commonplace at Mauthausen, as they were in other camps. But we had evidence which I think has been found: the two skulls which were used as paper weights by the chief SS medical officer. These were the skulls of two young Dutch Jews who had been selected from a convoy of 800 because they had fine teeth. To make this selection the SS doctor had led these two young Dutch Jews to believe that they would not suffer the fate of their comrades of the convoy. He had said to them "Jews do not live here. I need two strong, healthy, young men for surgical experiments. You have your choice; either you offer yourselves for these experiments, or else you will suffer the fate of the others." These two Jews were taken down to the Revier; one of them had his kidney removed, the other his stomach. Then they had benzine injected into the heart and were decapitated. As I said, these two skulls, with the fine sets of teeth, were on the desk of the chief SS doctor on the day of liberation.
M. DUBOST: At the time of Himmler's visi t- I would like to come back to that question-are you certain that you recognized Himmler and saw him presiding over the executions?
LAMPE: Yes.
M. DUBOST: Do you think that all members of the German Government were unaware of what was taking place in Mauthausen? The visits you received, were they visits by the SS simply, or were they visits of other personalities?