Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-21/tgmwc-21-205.05
Last-Modified: 2000/12/04

THE PRESIDENT: That is going into arguments rather than
giving testimony of facts.

A. 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.

Q. Witness, that is one point on which I wanted to question
you.

A. I would not have allowed a report like that to rest. I
would have applied immediately to my superior, the
Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan, and I would have told
him about it.

Q. That is 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 one o'clock if possible.

In your testimony, in May, I believe on 6th May, you
testified that you met SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl once at
lunch at the Reichsbank, in the canteen of the Bank, and the
witness Pohl, in his affidavit, 4045-PS, refers to this
conversation and he 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 5th August, he says:

  "After we, that is, Gruppenfuehrer Pohl and Vice-
  President of the Bank 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 gentlemen of
  my staff 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 Reichsbank.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, we have all heard this evidence
the other day. Can you not put the circumstances of it to
him and ask him whether it is true? I mean, it is not
necessary to read it all?

                                                  [Page 230]

DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I am only reading the two
sentences which apply to the defendant. There are only two
sentences and I am omitting everything else, but naturally I
have to read these two sentences 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 mentioned that a part of
  the valuables which we had inspected had come from
  concentration camps."

That is the end of quotation, and the end of the second
sentence.

BY DR. SAUTER:

Q. 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.

A. 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 with 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 not to be converted by
the Reichsbank, but which were to be converted by the Reich
Finance Ministry, that is gold, jewellery, 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 should have stated in
the presence of twelve other persons, among whom there were
perhaps three or four or five directors of the Reichsbank,
and m 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
exchange, 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.

O. 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 such things as the rims of
glasses, gold teeth, and such-like, in addition to gold
coins and foreign exchange, that such gruesome things had
come to your Reichsbank? When did you learn that for the
first time? Tell me under oath.

A. Here, during this trial.

Q. Yes. Can you swear that with a clear conscience?

A. 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.

THE WITNESS: Of course, what was in the SS deposits, that I
did not know. I never saw that. That other things besides
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.

CROSS-EXAMINATION

BY MR. DODD:

You now tell us that you did know about the gold deposits
and the jewellery coming in from the concentration camps, is
that so?

                                                  [Page 231]

A. I did not know anything about it.

(Q. 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 jewellery and other things were turned over to you
through Himmler?

A. No, I did not know anything about that. I said only that
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 size of these things.

Q. Well, you recall when you testified here before the
Tribunal, on 7th May, that I asked you if you knew anything
about the gold deposits from the concentration camps, and
this testimony is present on Page 9104 of the record. You
said, at that time, that Herr 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 don'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 or three ago. Now, you had some knowledge
certainly that there was something sinister about these
deposits - did you not - when Director Puhl told you it
would be best if you did not 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?

A. This testimony was already corrected by me in so far as
when the first discussion between Himmler and myself took
place, Himmler told me that the SS had confiscated
considerable valuables in the East and that among them there
were assets such as gold, foreign coins, foreign banknotes,
bonds, other foreign exchange.

Whereupon 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 conversation 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.

Q. 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
are 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 concentration camps."
Well, then, you had some knowledge of the source and the
origin of these deposits, had you not? You knew where they
were coming from, and that is all we want to establish here;
you had a pretty good idea, to put it mildly.

A. These items did not necessarily come from the
concentration camps only. But that the inmates of the
concentration camps

Q. Now, just a moment. There is no sense in arguing about it
at all. All I am trying to establish here is the fact that
you told the Tribunal yourself that you assumed it came from
the inmates of the concentration camps. Now, this is your
own testimony of 7th May.

A. Not only the gold, but also the foreign exchange, the
banknotes, 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, that was
clear to me, for these things had to be taken from the
inmates of the concentration 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.

                                                  [Page 232]

Q. Let us see whether you did know or not. You were in the
courtroom when Mr. Elwyn Jones of the British Prosecution
Staff offered Document 4042-PS, which told about the action
"Reinhardt." You heard that document discussed here, did you
not?

A. Yes.

Q. That document is before the Tribunal, and in that one
action - and we do not even know if that is all of it -
Reichsmark to the total value of 100,047,000 were deposited
either in the Reichsbank or in the Ministry of Economics
just from this action alone. Are you telling the Tribunal
that you as a head of the Reichsbank would not know that 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, would you not?

A. Will you please repeat the sum. It does not appear to
have been translated correctly.

Q. We do not need to get it down to the pfennig, it was over
a hundred million Reichsmark.

A. One million?

Q. No, no, a hundred million.

A. A hundred million marks in foreign exchange? That is
quite impossible. It is absurd.

Q. But the document here shows it.

A. Where would these 100,000,000 marks come from? That is
absurd.

Q. I am glad you are enjoying this, but let us get on with a
little more. This document of the SS men further says that
it was a sum of 500,000 American dollars. Would you not have
to know about that money being deposited in your bank or at
your disposal? That is quite a lot of money too, in dollars,
in Germany in 1943, I assume.

A. Certainly, but I do not recall that I was ever informed
of these 500,000 dollars. That is a sum which could have
been discussed with me, I admit, but it was not discussed
with me.

Q. You know, this document goes on, and there is currency
from practically every country in the world in very great
amounts. You know that, do you not? You know this money was
being turned over to your bank by the SS in very large sums
- five hundred thousand 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
1934, and in such an amount that you must have known whence
it came. What do you say about that?

A. That the SS, on the strength of the action mentioned
here, deposited foreign exchange and banknotes and gold
coins and whatever else there might have been in the
Reichsbank, that I knew. The size 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.

Q. Yes, so are we. The astonishing thing is that as the head
of that bank, witness, you do not 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 this by itself is a reason for this Tribunal and
anybody else to believe that you would know about deposits
in these great amounts, particularly in a foreign currency.
And I do not think that you have given any kind of
satisfactory answer yet. Is your answer that you do not
remember, or is your answer that you absolutely did not
know? Or is it both?

A. The amount mentioned first of a hundred million marks,
that I consider absolutely absurd. The second sum of 500,000
dollars, that I consider possible. It is quite within the
realm of possibility that such sums were taken away from
people in these actions - for instance, from people who were
taken into concentration camps, and also in other actions -

                                                  [Page 233]

Q. But - I am not asking you if it is possible they were
taken away, we know they were taken away.

A. I knew they would have to be taken away in the normal
manner, but the amount was not mentioned to me. I did not
know the amount. I did not know about it.

Q. I am not going 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, did you not?

A. I knew nothing about that.

Q. Would you know that the 1,000,000 wagons of textiles that
these SS men said had been shipped or warehoused 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?

A. No, I did not know anything about these things. I
explained this before this Tribunal when I said that these
things went to the Reich Commissioner for the utilization of
old material and were sent directly from the collection
camps to the various factories. Not a single person told me
anything about confiscated textiles from concentration
camps.

Q. Well -

A. May I say one more word in connection with something
which is quite a Reichsbank matter. I myself am confronted
here with, I would almost say, an incomprehensible 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
say as I now remember Herr Wilhelm did once in a
conversation, that it was a serious responsibility for the
officials, a heavy onus - he used some expression like this
- for the officials. How could I who at that time knew
nothing about these matters have inferred from this that it
was a heavy onus.

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