[Page 377]

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]

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]

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 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]

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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