The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)
Nuremberg, war crimes, crimes against humanity

The Trial of German Major War Criminals

Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany
9th August to 21st August 1946

Two Hundred and Fourth Day: Thursday, 15th August, 1946
(Part 5 of 5)


[Page 206]

DR. BOEHM: Yes, certainly. I have learned now that the affidavit of Dr. Hoegner was introduced because I referred to it yesterday. Now these other affidavits, which contain much evidence for the defence, were placed at my disposal or given to me at the same time, and I would ask the Prosecutor to submit the affidavits which have just been mentioned or to read them into the record now, so that I may have an opportunity, when hearing evidence, to form an opinion, through a witness, on the contents of these affidavits.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, I have no objection, of course, to Dr. Boehm's putting away of the documents. We have given, I think, all, whether we have decided to use them or not. Some are not in the form of a sworn statement, and we were not going to use them. If Dr. Boehm thinks that he can get any help from any document to be had from the prosecution, the prosecution, of course, make no objection to his using it.

DR. BOEHM: Mr. President

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Boehm, you can offer these affidavits or other documents in evidence, if you want to.

DR. BOEHM: Very well. So I am in a position to refer to the affidavits in the course of taking evidence.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. But for the purposes of the record, you must offer them in evidence, and then they will be given, or you will give them, proper exhibit numbers.

DR. BOEHM: Yes, certainly.

DR. SEIDL (counsel for the defendants Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess): Mr. President, yesterday the prosecution submitted a new document, GB 602, a letter from the Commander of the Security Police in the Government General to the defendant Dr. Frank.

THE PRESIDENT: What is the other reference to it? You said GB 602. It must have some other reference.

DR. SEIDL: D-970. It is a letter from the Commander of the Security Police in the Government General to the defendant Dr. Frank, dated 25th September, 1944. It appears from the document itself that it is an annex, and I make the application that I may be permitted to read into the record a short excerpt from the diary of Dr. Frank, which belongs to this document.

THE PRESIDENT: If it refers to this document, yes.

[Page 207]

DR. SEIDL: This is an entry of Tuesday, 26th September, 1944.
"Conference with State Secretary Dr. Buehler ..." and others. At this conference first of all the shooting of the Prior of the Carmelite Monastery at Czerna was discussed. "As the report given by the Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the Government General" - that is the report concerning the indictment - "lacks clearness, according to the opinion of the Governor General, and as the police office at Kattowitz wanted to take upon itself the responsibility that in the future not SA men but police officials would carry out such undertakings, the Governor General told the First Public Prosecutor Rother to carry out a detailed investigation of that case."
The diary does not show what happened to these SA men. Therefore, I have taken an affidavit of the defendant Frank which I ask to be permitted to submit in evidence here. It is very brief. It indicates that the men were tried and received severe punishment.

THE PRESIDENT: Are you offering the affidavit in evidence?

DR. SEIDL: I should like to offer this as Frank Exhibit 25.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you any other documents that you want to offer in evidence, or is this the only one?

DR. SEIDL: This is the only new document that I want to offer in evidence.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well, then. I think we may as well put it in now, and you will put it in as Frank 25. And you did not give us -

DR. SEIDL: Frank No. 25.

THE PRESIDENT: Did you give us the reference to the diary of Frank, the passage that you read?

DR. SEIDL: It is an entry of 26th September, 1944.

THE PRESIDENT: Is that already in evidence? I know some parts of the diary are. But is that in evidence?

DR. SEIDL: It is a part of Document GB 602.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you state that again? What was the number of the document?

DR. SEIDL: GB 602.

THE PRESIDENT: That is not Frank's diary, is it? GB 602?

DR. SEIDL: No; it is the letter written by the Commander of the Security Police and submitted by the prosecution.

THE PRESIDENT: I know that. I was asking the number - if it has got an exhibit number - of the diary of Frank of 26th September, 1944

DR. SEIDL: This has the number 10. The whole diary was submitted in evidence under this number.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

MR. DODD: Mr. President, I do not wish to object to the submission of this affidavit, but I should like to observe that if other affidavits are offered by the defendants it may be necessary for the prosecution to have the right to cross-examine in this case. But it might very well call for cross-examination if they are now going to make an effort to put in further testimony on their own behalf under the disguise of an affidavit.

[Page 208]

DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, my intention was to ask permission to recall the defendant Frank to the witness stand and examine him on this question. If I submit an affidavit, this is done only to save time, and for no other reason. I would have preferred it the other way.

MR. DODD: I am not altogether sure, Mr. President, that this is done in the interests of saving time. I have some feeling it may be done in the interests of prolonging the time.

THE PRESIDENT: We do not need to hear any more, Dr. Seidl. We have admitted the document.

DR. SEIDL: I may assume that this very short affidavit may be read into the record. Exhibit 602 was also read into the record.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you not read it? Read it into the record then, if you say it is short.

DR. SEIDL:

"In the second half of September, 1944, Governor Dr. von Burgsdorff reported to me that the Prior of the Carmelite Monastery, Czerna, had lost his life and that there was a suspicion of punishable action. I immediately ordered that preliminary proceedings be instituted and if need be punishment administered. In the course of these preliminary proceedings the Commander of the Security Police in the Government General made a report on the 25th of September, 1944, which has now been submitted by the prosecution under the number D 970, Exhibit GB 602. This report was also the subject of a discussion which I had with State Secretaries Dr. Bulhler and Koppe and other high ranking officials on the 26th September, 1944, during the course of which I ordered the Public Prosecutor Rother to make a detailed investigation of the case.

Further investigations have shown that the SA men mentioned in the report of the 25th of September, 1944, (GB 602) did not belong to an SA unit of the Government General. Although, as shown in the report of 25th September, 1944, the monastery, Czerna, was situated within the boundaries of the Government General, nevertheless, on the basis of a Fuehrer decree in the summer of 1944 the whole district, as far as customs, police and military administration were concerned, came under the neighbouring province of Upper Silesia, and therefore under the Reich. The order of the Fuehrer had been issued in connection with the fortification work to be carried through in the East at that time. That explains, as is seen from Document GB 602, why the investigation was carried out by the State Police Office of Kattowitz, that is by a State police office situated in the Reich territory.

Ilkenau was not situated in the Government General, but in the Reich (Upper Silesia). For these tasks not only SA men were used but also members of other organizations, for instance Volkssturm men. The investigations proved further that the participating SA men were not being employed by any higher SA office but by the building staff, Kattowitz (Upper Silesia).

On the basis of the investigations of Public Prosecutor Rother penal proceedings were instituted against several SA men in Kattowitz. It was later reported to me that these proceedings resulted in the sentencing of several of the accused to severe penalties. (Signed) Dr. Frank."

THE PRESIDENT: Now, Dr. Boehm, do you want to re-examine?

DR. SEIDL: I do not want to ask any further questions, but I would like to call the attention of the Tribunal to a document, also in the name of the defendant Frank, which was submitted today, GB 615, D-923. The report of the defendant Frank of 6th September, 1933, shows, under No. 3, that the defendant demanded

[Page 209]

with the utmost rigour that penal proceedings be instituted against the accused SA Fuehrer, and he even ordered it.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Seidl, the Tribunal has noticed that document and it does not require to have its attention called to it by counsel for the defendant Frank. The Tribunal will consider the document.

DR. SEIDL: For the defendant Rudolf Hess I should like to make application that the prosecution be requested also to submit the answer of the Fuehrer's deputy to Document PS- 784. This is a letter dated 5th June, 1935, from the Reich Minister of Justice to the Fuehrer's deputy. The document given to me does not show what occurred between this letter and the later decision of Hitler in this case. In particular the attitude which Hess adopted is not shown.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you not got the document you mean? You are referring to 784-PS and you are asking us to take notice of some other document. Have you got the document?

DR. SEIDL: No, I have not got it, but I should like to ask the Court that the prosecution be requested to let me have the answer of the defendant Hess to this document.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will request the prosecution to produce the document if they have got it.

LT.-COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, it will be done. I cannot say at the moment whether the document is in our possession. If it is, it will be done.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Now, Dr. Boehm, do you want to ask any questions? Do you think that you will be able to finish by one o'clock?

DR. BOEHM: That is impossible, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, will you be able to finish shortly afterwards?

DR. BOEHM: No. I believe that this re-examination after this cross-examination may last three hours. A number of new documents have been submitted -

THE PRESIDENT: Very well. We hope they will be relevant.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY DR. BOEHM:

Q. Witness, the first question which the Prosecutor asked yesterday was -

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Boehm, the Tribunal thinks that three hours is not a reasonable time for the re-examination. You will remember that re-examination should not be put in the form of leading questions; that is one rule, and another rule is that it must arise out of the cross-examination and not be for the purpose of introducing fresh evidence which has not been dealt with by cross-examination. You will be kept strictly to these rules.

DR. BOEHM: I believe that the cross-examination by the prosecution dealt with a number of new matters, especially with the matters which were freshly introduced today and yesterday afternoon.

THE PRESIDENT: We do not want any arguments from you, Dr. Boehm. I am telling you what the Tribunal rules. If your questions arise out of the cross-examination they are admissible. If they do not arise out of the cross- examination they are inadmissible. Now will you go on with your re-examination, please?

[Page 210]

BY DR. BOEHM:

Q. Witness, the first question which was asked of you yesterday by the Prosecutor was whether you, and I assume by that was meant you personally as SA Fuehrer, hence the whole SA leadership, whether you had anything to do with the treatment of people outside the borders of the Reich.

[Max Juettner] A. No. The SA leadership was not concerned with the treatment of such people unless they were Germans belonging to the SA and employed outside the Reich borders.

Q. A confidential report of the supreme SA leadership in the form of a third report on the activities of the SA in the war was submitted yesterday. In connection with this report the prosecution asserted that its contents referred to the last weeks before 23rd June, 1941; that is the day when this report was issued. Now I should like to ask you whether it is true that the beginning of this report, under No. 1, on the first page: "The whole work of the SA from the beginning of the war" and on Page 2 the last four lines, I quote: "Decorations -

THE PRESIDENT: Did you give us the reference to this document?

DR. BOEHM: The first document which was submitted yesterday, 4011-PS, on Page 1 the first line and on Page 2 the last four lines. May I continue?

THE PRESIDENT: I only wanted the reference to the document. Go on.

BY DR. BOEHM:

Q. "Decorations given to the SA: 21 Knight's Crosses of the Iron Cross, and 31,125 Iron Crosses, first and second class." Is it true if I say that this shows that the assertion of the prosecution that the report was only a report on the weeks before 23rd June, 1941, is incorrect: Is that true? Is it correct if I conclude from this that the third report on the activity of the SA during the war is a report beginning with the activity of the SA on the 1st September, 1939?

A. These reports were always comprehensive reports. The third report - I believe I signed it myself - sums up the activity of the SA from the beginning of the war until the day of the report.

Q. The prosecution said yesterday that the activity of the SA in the Hinterland was the activity of the SA in occupied territories. Herr Juettner, if you will look at Page 4 of this report where it says that when the disaster of the Elbe floods occurred in the spring of 1941, for example, it was the SA engineer units who were the first to arrive to give assistance, and who, by means of their floating equipment, saved human beings and animals from drowning, can one assume from this statement that what you called "Hinterland" was within the borders of the Reich?

A. By Hinterland was meant the Homeland.

Q. And then please look at Page 5 of the same report.

A. It was submitted yesterday.

Q. Well, then, I will read it to you. On Page 5 of the same report, I quote:

"Many SA Fuehrer and Unterfuehrer were assigned to the DAF (German Labour Front) for duty in the Todt Organization. The SA also carried out numerous tasks for the authorities, for example in the frontier control service."
Does this not show clearly that the SA seceded from the authority of the SA supreme leadership and was assigned to other authorities for certain tasks, like other drafted German citizens?

A. We released the men from the SA for duty in all these services. We did not offer them, we released them. These agencies of the Organization Todt or other authorities selected such men. They wanted to engage them and they enquired of the SA whether they could be dispensed with.

[Page 211]

THE PRESIDENT: That is what he said already, is it not? He said already in cross-examination that these men, in so far as they were employed outside the Reich, were not operating as SA men in SA units.

THE WITNESS: It was also true within the Reich.

DR. BOEHM: What I asked was supposed to lead up to the question which now follows. I should like to ask you, Herr Juettner: Were not the same conditions in existence when you made your report on the 21 groups of SA men who were assigned to guard prisoners?

THE PRESIDENT: That again, Dr. Boehm, he has already said. He said that all activities referred to in this report, in so far as they were by SA men, were not under SA men or SA units.

DR. BOEHM: Very well.

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.

(The Tribunal adjourned until 1000 hours, 16th August, 1946.)


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