Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-20/tgmwc-20-197.09
Last-Modified: 2000/11/08

THE PRESIDENT: What do you say to that Dr. Pelckmann? Could
you not put the same questions to this witness, and could he
not incorporate into his affidavit the point you want him
to? He has already had three affidavits.

DR. PELCKMANN: Certainly, your Lordship. I will only state
the following. The prosecution called a witness, Sievers, in
order further to support their position, and I think that if
I want to support the testimony of the witness Reinecke by
calling another witness here, that might be more or less on
the same basis, and by the testimony of a witness, the
matters of the concentration camps, the secret sphere of the
concentration camp organization and the introduction of the
legal system into it might be cleared up more thoroughly for
the Tribunal than by an affidavit.

THE PRESIDENT: Is this witness of yours, is he here?

DR. PELCKMANN: He is in the witness building.

THE PRESIDENT: Were you proposing to call him next?

                                                  [Page 378]

DR. PELCKMANN: I would do it. If the prosecution wish to
call their two; witnesses first, I could wait, your
Lordship.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pelckmann, have you any idea as to how
long you will be with this witness if you do call him?

DR. PELCKMANN: Forty-five minutes to an hour.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, then, if you wish it, and you dispense,
with calling the witness Dr. Hindenberg or whatever is his
name, you may call Dr. Morgen.

DR. PELCKMANN: Thank you, your Lordship. I call the witness
Dr. Morgen.

MR. ELWYN JONES: If your Lordship pleases, the witness is,
of course, in the prison at the moment, and it might
therefore be convenient to call the witness for whom Dr.
Pelckmann has asked for cross-examination, who is available
immediately, and no doubt the Marshal can make the necessary
arrangements for the other one.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sievers, is it not?

MR. ELWYN JONES: No, my Lord, there is a short one first,
the witness Israel Eisenberg, whose affidavit is Document D-
939, Exhibit GB 563.

THE PRESIDENT: Eisberg?

MR. ELWYN JONES: Your Lordship, it is Eisenberg.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Marshal, will you bring in Eisenberg and
send for Morgen.

Will you state your full name, please.

THE WITNESS: Israel Eisenberg.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me?

I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will
speak the pure truth, and will withhold and add nothing.

(The witness repeated the oath.)

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. ELWYN JONES:

Q. Witness - I just want to put the statement to the
witness, my Lord - witness, are you Israel Eisenberg, of 203
Reinsburgstrasse, Stuttgart?

A. Yes.

Q. Will you look at the Affidavit D-939, Exhibit GB 563.
Just look at it. Is that your statement?

A. Yes, I signed it.

Q. And is it true?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Witness, I notice you have a scar on your face. Will you
tell the Tribunal how it was caused?

A. Yes, I can tell the Tribunal. In October, 1942, at the
end of October, 1942, I was shot in Maidanek camp together
with many other Jews. The bullet hit my left cheek and I lay
there from 9.30 p.m. until 4.30 in the morning. When people
were removing the corpses, I was taken away with another man
whose name was Stagel; we were the only survivors.

Q. And how many were killed on that occasion?

A. At 9.30 in the evening, groups composed of about 1,000 or
more people were conducted to a field. I was among them.
Then they fired at us and remained lying in the field until
4.30 in the morning.

Q. Now, just answer this last question, who were the
killers?

A. They were SS men in SS uniforms.

MR. ELWYN JONES: I have no further questions, my Lord.

                                                  [Page 379]

CROSS-EXAMINATION

BY DR. PELCKMANN:

Q. Witness, I know your affidavit. As far as I can see from
it, you were in Lublin, at first in Lublin. Were there SS
men there, too, whom you got to know?

A. Yes, I knew many of them. I was working in the SS staff
offices as an electrician and I came there very frequently
in order to make electrical installations.

Q. In your affidavit you have given some names - Reidel,
Mohrwinkel and Schramm.

A. Yes, I knew them personally.

Q. They were on this staff?

A. Yes, they were on the staff and its office was located at
Warsaw Street, 21.

Q. Do you also know exactly the ranks which you mentioned in
your affidavit as being held by these persons?

A. Yes, I know them.

Q. What, for example, was Riedel?

A. Riedel was an Unterscharfuehrer.

Q. And Mohrwinkel?

A. At first he was a Rottenfuehrer and then, as a result of
this action, he was promoted to Untersturmfuehrer.

Q. You just said that Riedel was an Unterscharfuehrer. In
your affidavit you said he was an Oberscharfuehrer.

A. He had a white braid on his shoulder-straps.

Q. Now, I show you a picture. Please tell me whether that is
Riedel or Mohrwinkel, and what is the rank of this SS man:

A. This man is neither Mohrwinkel nor Riedel.

Q. And what is his rank?

A. It seems to me that he is a Rottenfuehrer because there
is. nothing on his shoulder-straps, and only a badge on his
sleeve.

Q. Thank you. Now, I shall show you another picture. If I
remember the first picture correctly, this would also have
to be a Rottenfuehrer?

A. I cannot tell with certainty, but the other one had on
his shoulder-straps a white stripe all round and here I see
two white stripes.

Q. Thank you, witness.

THE PRESIDENT: Is that all you wanted?

DR. PELCKMANN: I have no more questions, your Lordship.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness can retire.

DR. PELCKMANN: For the information of the Tribunal, I should
like to say that these photographs came from the book, in
Polish, on the Warsaw atrocities, submitted by the
prosecution yesterday, and the photographs do not show men
of the Waffen SS at all, but policemen. The witness did not
notice that.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the witness said he had never seen them
before. The witness said he had never seen the man before.
We do not need to argue about it. Now, who is your next
witness?

DR. PELCKMANN: May I submit these pictures to the Tribunal
or are they known? They are in the Polish book, in Polish,
on pages VIII, - no, IX and XI. It is merely a question of
uniform, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: You can certainly put them in if you think it
worth while; but, now, will you get on with your case. Is
there another witness that you are going to call before Dr.
Morgen?

DR. PELCKMANN: Yes; I believe the witness Sievers was called
by the prosecution, your Lordship.

                                                  [Page 380]

THE PRESIDENT: Well, is he here?

THE MARSHAL: Yes, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, call him, then.

THE MARSHAL: Both witnesses are here now, your Honour, both
Sievers and Morgen.

THE PRESIDENT: We will go on with Sievers now.

MR. ELWYN JONES: Perhaps, my Lord - you did indicate, my
Lord, it might be more convenient for Dr. Pelckmann to
finish with his witness before Dr. Sievers.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well, I do not mind. Call Dr. Morgen
then.

(GEORG KONRAD MORGEN, a witness, took the stand and
testified as follows):

BY THE PRESIDENT:

Q. Will you state your full name, please?

A. Georg Konrad Morgen.

Q. Will you repeat this oath after me:

I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will
speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.

(The witness repeated the oath.)

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. PELCKMANN:

Q. Witness, because of the significance of your testimony, I
will first ask you in detail about yourself. Were you an SS
judge of the Reserve?

A. Yes.

Q. Please speak slowly and wait a little after every
question.

What training did you have?

A. I studied law at the Universities of Frankfurt on the
Main, Rome, Berlin f at the "Academie de Droit
International" at the Hague and the "Institute for World
Economy and Ocean Traffic" in Kiel. I passed the first, the
senior law examination. Before the war I was a judge at the
Landgericht in Stettin.

Q. Were you a specialist in criminology and in criminal law?

A. No, I had specialized in International Law, but later,
during the war, when I had to deal with criminal matters and
penal law, I did special work in that field.

Q. How did you come to the SS?

A. I was drafted compulsorily into the General SS. In 1933,
I belonged to the Reich Board for Youth Training, whose
group of students was taken over as a body. I was drafted at
the beginning of the war into the Waffen SS.

Q. What rank did you have there?

A. In the General SS I was Staffelanwarter and SS
Rottenfuehrer. In the Waffen SS I was latterly
Sturmbannfuehrer of the Reserve.

Q. What example can you give that you did not believe you
were joining conspiracy when you joined the SS. Very
briefly, please.

A. In 1936 I published a book on War Propaganda and the
Prevention of War. This book, at a time when war was
threatening, showed ways and means to prevent war and the
incitement of nation against nation. The book was examined
by the Party and published. Therefore, I could not suppose
that the SS and the policy of, the Reich Government were
directed towards war.

Q. How did you come to the investigations in the
concentration camps?

A. At the order of the Reichsfuehrer SS, because of my
special abilities in criminology, I was detailed by the SS
Judicial Department to the Reich Criminal Police Office in
Berlin, which was equivalent to a transfer. Shortly after I
arrived

                                                  [Page 381]

there, I was given an assignment to investigate a case of
corruption in Weimar. The accused was a member of the
concentration camp of Weimar-Buchenwald. The investigations
soon led to the person of the former commandant, Koch, and
many of his subordinates, and in addition affected a number
of other concentration camps. As those investigations became
mare extensive, I received full authority from the
Reichsfuehrer SS to engage generally in such investigations
in concentration camps.

Q. Why was a special power of attorney from the
Reichsfuehrer necessary?

A. For the guards of the concentration camps, the SS and
Police Courts were competent; that is, in each case the
local Court in whose district the concentration camp was
located. For that reason, because of the limited
jurisdiction of its judge, the Court was not able to act
outside its own district. In these investigations and their
extensive ramifications it was important to be able to work
in various districts. In addition, it was necessary to use
specialists in criminal investigation, in other words, the
criminal police. The criminal police, however, could not
carry on any investigation directly among the troops, and
only by combining juridical and criminal police activities
was it possible to clear this up, and for this purpose I was
given this special power of attorney by the Reichsfuehrer.

Q. Now, how extensive did these investigations become? You
can be brief because the witness Reinecke answered this
point in part.

A. I investigated Weimar-Buchenwald, Lublin, Auschwitz,
Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Herzogenbosch, Cracow, Plaschow,
Warsaw, and the concentration camp at Dachau. And others
were investigated after my time.

Q. How many cases did you investigate? How many sentences
were passed? How many death sentences?

A. I investigated about 800 cases, or rather, about 800
documents, and one document would affect several cases.
About 200 were tried during my activity. Five concentration
camp commandants were arrested by me personally. Two were
shot after being tried.

Q. You caused them to be shot?

A. Yes. Apart from the commandants, there were numerous
other death sentences against Fuehrers and Unterfuehrers.

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