Now I shall read Paragraph 25. "It is forbidden to utilize the manpower of the prisoners of war a) in the zone of hostilities, b) for personal needs of the administrative bodies, and for personal needs of other prisoners of war (as orderlies)."
This, according to my opinion, shows that the Soviet Union permitted PW labor to the full extent, with one single restriction; namely that at the front. In other words, at the front and for personal use of the administration the prisoners could not be used. Apart from that in the Soviet Union in this war, after this regulation, there was no restriction whatso ever to employ the labor of PW's.
I shall read as Milch Exhibit Number 50, excerpts from the exhibit USA 57 which was introduced by the prosecution in IMT, Document Number 1760-PS, which is the affidavit of Mr. George S. Messersmith.
I shall read from Page 1:
"Gerorg S. Messersmith, being first duly sworn, deposes and says:
"Immediately after the access to power of the National Socialist Party in the beginning of 1933, all sorts of steps of an arbitrary character were taken by the new Government and by its various agencies and dependencies which affected the rights of American citizens and property and owing to my official position as Consul General my duty was primarily to protect American Citizens and their property."
The defendant, when he is a witness, will give further details to that effect.
Then I should like to read further, Number 2: "General Milch was not a Nazi before the Party came into power in 1933. He had been head of the Deutsche Luft Hansa, the principal German air-transportation company, which had lines all over Germany and to various parts of Europe and even the Far East. He was an extraordinarily capable man; and Goering brought him in as his principal assistant in the Air Ministry and raised him to the rank of General in order to carry through his determination to build up the German Air Force as rapidly as possible."
Then another page: "I recall specifically that General Milch was one of those who spoke frankly that these outrages in Austria were being directed by the Nazi Party, and expressed his concern with respect thereto and his disagreement with his definite policy of the Party."
Then as the last exhibit, or as the last document, I should like to introduce as affidavit of the witness Richter. May it please your Honors, this man has already been examined here in this Court. However I did not know that he could make this statement; and therefore he was not asked about it. I have here an affidavit. I have learned that there was a similar case in Tribunal Number I where Tribunal Number I had decided that in spite of the examination of the witness an affidavit could still be brought in afterwards. On the assumption that such a ruling of the Tribunal Number I also applies to you, I should like to introduce this affidavit now; and I'll appreciate it if you could permit it.
MR. DENNEY: If your Honors please, so far as the contents of the affidavit are concerned, I have no objection to their being admitted.
However, in spite of the ruling of Tribunal Number I, I do think that this Tribunal and other tribunals should proceed with caution in allowing witnesses who come here to testify after having been cross examined, then to make and submit affidavits because, as your Honors certainly are aware, of a witness can come to the stand, fail to testify on a given subject, and not be cross examined on that subject for any one of a number of reasons and then be allowed to make an affidavit for the counsel who has called him as his witness, it seems to me that we are going a little bit far.
As I say, in this case I have no objection. I'll concede that Milch did this; and I see no reason to introduce the affidavit. I'll be very glad to make a concession on the record that Richter would say, if he were called, that Milch asked Goering not to appoint him, Milch, as Under Secretary of State or as State Secretary in the Air Ministry in 1933; and I also will concede that Richter, if recalled by Dr. Bergold, would testify that Milch sent in a resignation in 1937.
With these concessions, I submit that the affidavit is not necessary and hence inadmissible.
THE PRESIDENT: In view of the concession made on the record by Mr. Denney, the admission of this exhibit seems to be unnecessary. It is not to be considered that the admission, even without objection, of this testimony shall be a precedent for any future offers. In other words, this is not apolicy-making ruling in this Tribunal.
DR. BERGOLD: May it please your Honors, then I am through with the introduction of my exhibits; and Mr. Denney may have my place now.
MR. DENNEY: If it please your Honors, may the Marshal bring in the witness Roland Ferrier.
THE RESIDENT: The Marshal will bring the witness to the Courtroom.
ROLAND FERRIER, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, you swear to speak without hate or fear; to say the truth, all the truth, and only the truth? Raise your hand and say, "I swear it."
THE WITNESS: I swear.
THE PRESIDENT: You may be seated.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. DENNEY:
Q What is your name?
A Roland Ferrier.
Q That is spelled F-e-r-r-i-e-r?
A Yes.
Q When were you born?
A The 5th of July 1922.
Q Where did you go to school?
AAt Montrauban.
Q Spelled M-o-n-t-r-a-u-b-a-n?
A Yes, that is correct.
Q When did you finish your schooling?
A I was not yet twenty years old when I finished school, about nineteen and a couple of months.
Q So it was sometime in 1941?
A Yes, sir.
Q What did you do then?
AAt that time I passed a contest and entered the banks.
Q What bank was that?
A 20 Credit Lyonnais.
Q That's spelled C-r-e-d-i-t L-y-o-n-n-a-i-s?
A Yes, that's correct.
Q. How long did you work there?
A. Six months.
Q. And then what did you do?
A. I was then mobilized to work at the Youths Organization, a short term, which was an organization which was a Youths workshop, which replaced the Army mobilization during the period of German occupation in France.
Q. How long did you remain there?
A. I stayed there from the 1st of July 1942 up to the 1st of March 1943.
Q. And then what did you do?
A. At that time I was released from the Youths Camp, I must add, where we took a few days longer than usual when we were retained, and we never knew why.
Q. What did you do when you left the Youths Camp?
A. At that time I was released, I went home and I started to work again, add then it was about the 8th or 9th of March, I figure it was about the 9th of March, and I received a composition which was brought to my place by the police according to which I had to come somewhere for a visit.
Q. And this work where you were then was done at the bank?
A. Yes, I started to work again at the bank.
Q. What did you do at the bank?
A. I was at that time under-chief---assistant chief of the Control Services of the Bank.
Q. You did not make airplanes in your bank, did you?
A. No, never.
Q. You went to have this visit as a result of this summons which you had received?
A. Yes, I did, because we had no precision whatsoever as to what kind of a visit that was to be.
Q. What happened when you went for this examination?
A. At that time when we came to the barracks, we were when we came to make the visit brought into some barracks, and nobody told us anything about the visit, and we were kept there under the supervision of French police, or else of some corps of French policemen, or militia, but it was not the French militia, not really called as militia, but some police that had been created as part of the Vichy Regime.
Q. Then what happened to you?
A. At that time our parents were informed and they came along to bring us some clothing and food in order to enable us to take a train which was part of the transport to take us to some destination, and we had to leave during the evening.
Q. How long were you on this train?
A. We were then about five and one-half days on this train until we reached our destination. We stopped at Paris for one day in order to change trains, but on this occasion we were always under the control and the constant watch of the SS.
Q. Then did your train go to the east?
A. Yes, we passed then by Landau, Stuttgart, Nurnberg, Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna.
Q. Were you guarded on that train?
A. We were always guarded by -- while we were on the train by what we called Gendarmes, who were the German policemen. They were always armed.
Q. How did you eat on that trip?
A. We received at Landau one-hundred grams of bread, and a piece of wurst, which is a German kind of sausage, and it was at that time I first saw this kind of sausage, and we also received one sandwich for two of us at Nurnberg.
Q. And that is all you received to eat?
A. That is all we received to eat during the trip, but, of course, we had some food which we had brought along to keep us in the first week.
Q. You mean the food your family had given you?
A. Yes, of course.
Q How many people were in this train with you?
AAbout twelve-hundred to twelve-hundred and fifty.
Q And in what kind of car did you ride?
A The old French cars.
Q Were there any sleeping cars?
A No.
Q Any porters?
A No, not during the first transport, anyhow.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: How many cars were in that train, Mr. Denney?
MR. DENNEY: Sir?
JUDGE MUSMANNO: How many cars were in that train?
BY MR. DENNEY:
Q How many cars were in that train?
A I never counted them. I never saw this kind of a thing during the trip.
Q How many people were in the car in which you were?
A I could not say how many persons were actually in the car in which I travelled, but I can say that in our compartment which was a compartment for eight persons normally, we were eleven, and we had to put our suitcases outside in the corridor, and I know that people were standing in these corridors, too.
Q Where did you leave the train?
A This train went as far as Strassow. Excuse me, I'll have to rectify that. We went to Vienna, and there we changed trains, and we then took another train, which was about in the same condition, and which must have probably brought other workers to Vienna, and this other train lead us to Strassow, which was about twenty-five to thirty miles from Vienna.
Q And you got to Strassow on approximately what day?
A It must have been at about the 17th or 18th of March.
Q And how long did you remain in Strassow?
AAbout ten days.
Q Will you tell us and the Tribunal of the conditions that you had which prevailed in Strassow?
A The Strassow camp was a camp for Russian Political Deportees. As soon as we arrived at Strassow they put us into barracks, and we were about two-hundred to two-hundred fifty in the barracks. I must say that everybody tried to get some accommodations as well as he could, but I knew that our barracks was a barracks which was originally meant for forty persons, and we were at least two-hundred in this barracks.
Q. What did you sleep on in the barracks?
A. These barracks had some wooden constructions - military beds, but of course, as we were 200 in a barrack meant for 40 persons, it was altogether impossible to properly use this kind of wooden beds. I personally had taken some tins and some junk and I slept on that kind of thing.
Q. You slept on cans, did you?
A. Yes.
Q. And did they give you anything to clean the barracks with?
A. No, never.
A. How did you clean the barracks?
A. With my feet or otherwise with my hands. Everybody did what he could.
Q. How did you eat in Strassow?
A. I must say that the food was simply disasterous, as soon as I came down there. We had to stand in a queue for sometimes eight hours, not only for food but also for roll calls, and that always was in the open air, and it was very cold down there. We had temperatures down to minus 28 degrees Centigrade.
Q. How many times a day did you eat?
A. It always depended on the number of persons who were in the camp at the moment, but I may say that we had food twice a day, but there were no regular hours for that. Of course, they used the simplest method. We got a piece of bread and a cup of hot water, that is they called coffee.
Q. Do you recall sitting in barracks and looking out the windows?
A. Yes.
A. What did you see?
A. I have to give one more precision with regard to the food because I would like to tell this to the Tribunal.
Q. Go right ahead.
A. When we had a regular number of prisoners in the camp, we had our Harvard beets, together with 50 grams of bread - red beets - but as soon as the number of persons in the camp increased, became too high, then they immediately dropped this and we did not get it.
Q. How many people were in the camp normally?
A. The average was perhaps 3000.
Q. You have mentioned Russians. Were there people of any other nationalities in the camp?
A. Yes, Serbians, Croats, Czechoslovakians, and Poles. I think that was about all. Their number, of course, varied.
Q. Now, to get back to what you could see when you were sitting in the barracks.
A. Yes. The very day after we arrived, at sunrise, we were struck by the fact that we saw many Ukrainians going and coming, as we looked through the windows. These Ukrainians all carried stretchers and on these stretchers there was something. We could not quite see what it was. They came up to the barbed wire, somebody opened it, and they went through, and then they threw the contents of the stretcher into a hole, or whatever it was, and started making a prayer. We were at first very much puzzled as to what this meant. Afterwards we found out that these Ukrainians buried their own dead every day.
Q. Do you recall something that was said to you by one of the guards when you protested about the food there?
A. Yes. I remember that one day when we had been in a queue for four hours - I must say first of all that we had mostly old German policemen to guard us. Sometimes there were some young ones. On that day when we had been in the queue for four hours, I protested violently because we did not get any food and at that time one of these old German policemen came up to me and told me in pretty bad French that he had been a prisoner of war in France during the first World War and that he was going to make us pay for that.
His prediction proved to be quite correct. Somebody paid for it. It was not I, but one of the next days - the next day or the next but one there was a queue again and we were waiting and we did not get any food and the whole queue started to protest. I don't know whether these Germans got frightened or not but, anyhow, they started shooting into the crowd and six or seven - I don't know how many - of my comrades were shot.
I cannot say how many exactly because they never allowed us to find out correctly.
Q. Was this camp guarded at all times?
A. Yes, all the time.
Q. And did the guards carry weapons?
A. Yes, always.
Q. And did you have barbed wire around there?
A. Yes. This barbed wire was even electrified.
Q. Now, up to this point, no one had asked you to sign a contract?
A. No.
Q. Now, you stayed at Strassow about ten days, which would take you to approximately the 27th or 28th of March, 1943?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. And then where did you go?
A. I would like to give one more statement with regard to Strassow. May I?
Q. You certainly may.
A. While we were in Strassow, an epidemic of typhus broke out and we had an enormous number of sick. The dispensary did not accept most of the sick because they really had all the people who were almost dying and would not accept any more people. This dispensary was in pretty bad shape but I must admit that the factories into which we came later had better dispensaries. This particular dispensary at Strassow had only one or two nurses, who were not even sworn nurses. I do not know what they were, probably Czechoslovakian. I supposed that this typhus had been brought in by the Russian political deportees, who had been in this camp for much longer than we had.
Q. Then you left late in March 1943, and you went to another camp?
A. Yes, that is correct. I must add that when we left Strassow we got a stamp on our wrists. From that time onwards we always travelled with this stamp and this stamp meant the initials of the factory in which we were meant to work.
Q. And that stamp, just so the record will be clear, was just a rubber stamp, wasn't it?
A. Yes, it was just a rubber stamp.
Q. You don't have anything on your wrist now?
A. No, that stayed only about a month and a half.
Q. And then, what was the next camp to which you went after Strassow?
A. Fishament.
Q. That is spelled F-I-S-C-H-A-M-E-N-T?
A. F-I-S-H-A-M-E-N-T.
Q. Just like it sounds, no "C". How long did you stay there?
A. Let me see. We stayed there for something like a fortnight, something like two weeks.
Q. And were you guarded in Fishament?
A. Yes, we always had the same kind of guards, the same kind of German police.
Q. Did they carry weapons?
A. Yes, always.
Q. And were you inside barbed wire?
A. Yes, exactly.
Q. And what kind of quarters did you have there?
A. There we were in rooms lined with straw.
Q. Just straw on the floor?
A. Yes, only straw. That was all.
Q. How many people were in the room?
A. That, of course, depended as to whether these persons were good comrades or not, but I can say that in my room we had about twenty to twenty-five persons.
Q. And all you had in the room was straw on the floor?
A. That was all.
Q. How big approximately, would you say that the room was?
A. Approximately it would have been four to five meters long, three meters wide, and about two meters and twenty as height, and it is very simple. We all were very close to each other. As a matter of fact we touched each other.
Q. How were you fed there?
A. The food was a little better down there. Every day at noon we were brought to the factory where we got a dish of stangerit, and one hundred grams of bread, and in the evening we got another stangerit.
Q. And what did they get for breakfast?
A. Coffee, that was all. If we were not too numerous, if there were not too many of us, we got bread. It was always the same story, as soon as we got too many we wouldn't get it. That is, most of the time, the following procedure was adopted, we got our bread, one hundred or sometimes one hundred and fifty grams, in the morning, and then we would eat it whenever we pleased during the day.
THE PRESIDENT: I will have to say that I do not know what stangerit means. Could you initiate me into the mystery of that?
MR. DENNEY: It means sauerkraut, doesn't it?
THE WITNESS: It is not exactly what we would call sauerkraut. It is not exactly the dish I used to eat in Germany when I came there before, but it is mixed with potatoes.
Q. (By Mr. Denney) Was there any meat in it?
A. No. We got meat about once a week, which was either donkey made up as hamburger, or else dried horse flesh made up as hamburger. I remember that because that day we used to get noodles with it.
Q. How many people, from the original 1200 that went with you from Montrauban to Strassow came with you from Strassow to Fishament?
Q. I couldn't say the exact number because we were taken always by parts according to the roll call we had in the camp.
Q. Well, do you have any idea?
A. Well, maybe three hundred, two hundred and fifty to three hundred and upwards.
Q. How many people were in Fishament altogether?
A. That would be also rather difficult to say. Maybe there would be about two thousand, but persons came and left again, and besides that it would be rather difficult to count anyhow.
Q. Did anyone get sick at Fishament because of the food or other causes?
A. Yes, at Fishament there were quite a number of them, but I must add that when we came to Wiener Neustadt latter on. There were much less cases because at that time we still had some food that had been brought from France.
Q. They didn't have any blankets for you in Fishament?
A. Yes, we had one blanket each.
Q. And how about Strassow?
A No, at Strassow, we didn't have any.
Q Just the camp?
A Yes, that was all and what we had on us, what we had brought with us.
Q From Fishament where did you go?
AAt Fishament before we left we had to fill in quite a number of forms, and that is why we had to stay about two weeks, and to queue all the time, and then he had another visit we had to go through, and then we were sent to Wiener Neustadt, and in this particular case I can even give positions as to the figure. There were about ninety of us in the same convoy, in the same transport.
Q At Fishament did you lose weight?
A Yes, I lost twenty-four kilos. That is, I must say it wasn't at Fishament only, from the moment when I left until the first chance I got to weigh myself. That was at Wiener Neustadt, about ten days after we arrived. I had lost twenty-four kilos. That would be about forty days.
Q What had you done with the clothing that you had brought with you by the time you were ready to leave Fishament?
A Well, at that time we didn't have any money any more so we had to start to sell something in order to pay, to buy some food on the black market, to have some marks for that.
Q The Germans had not paid you up until this point, had they?
A No, they had not.
Q But they later began to pay you, didn't they?
A They started to pay us from the moment onward when we were in the apprenticeship, but I have to give a position, it wasn't quite correct that they had not paid us. They had given us two and a half marks at Fishament.
Q So you had two and a half marks to take care of all your needs from the time you left France until sometime in March, until the time that you left Fishament, which is sometime late, or early in May?
A No, we had been permitted to exchange two and a half marks at Landau already.
Q So, the two and a half marks at Landau and the two and a half marks you got at Fishament, five marks, was all you had by the time you got ready to go to Wiener Neustadt?
A Yes, that was all.
Q Were you in debt when you left Fishament?
A Yes, I was in debt. I had thirty marks, I owed thirty marks when I left Fishament, but after ten or twelve days in Wiener Neustadt, because the Germans did not pay us right away there either, it went after ten or twelve days I had already seventy-five to eighty marks which I owed to somebody.
Q When did you get to Wiener Neustadt?
A It was about the middle of April.
Q Will you tell the Tribunal about the conditions there, how long you worked? Tell them about how long you worked.
A Yes, but in that case I have to divide it in several periods, in several periods of time, because there were actually periods of time in which it was better and in which it was worse.
Q First, what did they make at Wiener Neustadt?
A I was in a factory which belonged to Goering and which produced Messershmitt 109 airplanes.
Q Now, tell the Court, just in your own words, about what happened there all the time, what you did, how long you worked, how you ate, what you did to get your food, what you did to get your lodging, and how much the Germans paid you.
A Yes, then I will have to tell about each period of time.
Q All right, sir, tell it any way you want.
A The first period was the period of waiting. This is when we waited before we became apprentices. It lasted for about eight to ten days, and we were lodged in a big barrack for eighty persons, and always two of us together had a sort of a straw mat, but the barrack was subdivided and one end of the barrack served as a canteen at the same time.
Q Did you work during that period?
A No, not during this first week.
Q Were you still guarded by people carrying weapons and inside of barbed wire?
A No, we were not. There was no barbed wire around our barrack. The barrack was outside of the camp. It touched the camp, but during this first week we were forbidden to leave the barrack.
Q Well, then what happened after that?
A If I may call this barrack our first period of time, as far as food is concerned we used to have coffee, and 150 grams of bread, and in the evening either a dish of stangerit or Havard beets, and sometimes we would have soup in the evening. That would have been about once every third evening.
Q And then what happened in the next period?
A Could I give some more positions to that subject?
Q Yes, you may.
A It was that period which was the most weakening for all our comrades. They were all feeling very weak, and we had departures to the dispensary of a rate of about 50%, from 50 to 60%. Then one day we were brought into the workshops where we had to serve our apprenticeship. In these workshops the tools were very complete. Everything was there, and we were standing in ranges of twelve, and there was a wooden arrangement for the whole workshop and we were always twelve in one range. For every range there was a supervisor who was at the same time the man who taught us how to work, but there were constantly police in the factory, and there for the first time we saw also guards who were members of the Hitler Youth.
Q How long did you stay there?
AAbout a month, maybe a month and a half.
Q Then what did you do?
A May I give some more positions?
Q Yes.
A Well, I want to add that it was at that time that we first got our pay from the Germans, and that is after two weeks when we had served our apprenticeship for two weeks, we got the first marks which, if you want to call it that way, was our pay. But I must say that all this pay went away for the food, and I don't want to exaggerate but we had to pay for the tickets which we received for our food and also we had to pay our rent because we had received a better barrack, a higher barrack now which contained sixteen persons, and it would have been a barrack for eight to ten.
Now, the food at that time would have been eighty to a hundred grams of potatoes and an additional fifty grams of bread and perhaps ten grams of noodles or something like that, and once in a while an egg. When we paid all this we wouldn't have anything left of our money.
Q Did they ever send any money to France for you?
A No, I never could send any money to France. On the contrary I needed the money.
Q Didn't the Germans ever deposit money in the Credit Lyonnais at Montrauban for you to your account so that when you got back to France you had some money?
A No, I have never known anything about that. No, I have to add that from whatever we received as a salary, and I mean now, not only when I was an apprentice but also later on when I had become what they used to call a skilled worker, that this salary was only a total salary, but in reality there were tax deductions.
First of all there was the ordinary tax. Then there was what they called the contribution for victory. Altogether there were three taxes, and we always received an account and the account showed that -- well, we would receive about the money we would actually receive wouldn't amount to but half or one-third of what was supposed to be our salary.
Q What was the top salary that you ever got in all the time you worked in Germany?
A One hundred to one hundred twenty marks per month, I think. No, maybe one hundred forty, something like one hundred forty marks. That was the highest salary I received.
Q Are we through with the period now of when you were in your apprenticeship?
A Yes, that is the termination period of my apprenticeship.
Q Then sometime in August, was it, or late in July that you started working in the factory as a laborer?
A No, it was at the beginning of July.
Q Beginning of July. Well, tell the Court now how long you worked and how you ate and what you got paid -- perhaps before we start on this, this would be a convenient time for your Honors to adjourn.
THE PRESIDENT: This would seem to be the most significant part of the testimony and let us take it all together after the recess. Recess until 1:30.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess until 1330 hours.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours.)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 5 March 1947.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal Number II is again in session.
(ROLAND FERRIER - Resumed)
DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued)
MR. DENNEY: May it please your Honors.
BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Monsieur Ferrier, we had just reached the point in your testimony where around the middle of 1943 you had finished your apprenticeship.
A. Yes.
Q. Now, there are one or two points that I should like to bring out about the time when you were still at Fishamend. Did there come a time when you were there when you were presented with a paper which you were asked to sign?
A. Yes, we had to sign several papers; and there was one especially important. We refused to sign all those papers. The fact that we refused to sign this important paper meant that we had to go for a day or a day and a half or even forty-eight hours -- I cannot quite recollect how long it was -- without any food for this period of time.
Q. And the reason that you refused to sign this paper was that you couldn't understand it; it was in German? Is that right?
A. Yes. There was one paper, however, which we signed. Some of our comrades with previous experience had told us that this was an unimportant paper; and it is actually true that it was not followed by any measures; and we never heard anything about it anymore.
Q. But this paper which you signed was also in German?
A. Yes, it was also in German.
Q. They had no one there who translated the paper for you nor anyone who explained to you on behalf of the guards as to what the paper contained?
A. I could not say that they were never translated because quite a number of papers were signed at Fishamend, and there were interpreters;