Hamburg, in the department for crimes against humanity, I deal with cases which under the Hazi regime were committed against German citizens, and I also deal with other cases which have resulted in the political field, that is to say, I deal with measures which must be taken on the basis of the laws issued for the British zone for the elimination of national socialist interference with the administration of justice.
Q Yes. Now, in connection with your present work, you screen cases involving, according to Control Council Law No. 10, cases against humanity occurring in the Hamburg area. Now, in these cases that you are reviewing -
A Yes.
Q In the Hamburg area, do you find instances, actual cases of mistreatment in concentration camps, particularly in Fuhlsbuettel and Neuengamme?
A Yes - well, that is my daily bread.
Q I would like to have you explain just very briefly, Dr. Skok, in a few, a very few instances of the type of maltreatment and torture which are revealed in the records with which you are working at the present time. Please make it brief.
A These contain not only cases that occurred in concentration camps, but also cases which occurred within the area of the city. For example, when people were persecuted for political or racial reasons, excesses on the part of the Gestapo, or the guards at the concentration camps, which consisted in forcing people to make confessions by beating them up. They were fettered and were left standing up for days and nights on end; they were beaten so severely that they either committed suicide or died of the results of such ill-treatment. It was not always possible to clafify such cases; one cannot always find out whether these people committed suicide because they couldn't stand such torture any longer or whether these people died as the as the direct result of such torture.
The leading circles in Hamburg at the time, including the chiefs of the administration of justice, that is to say Dr. Rothenberger, as senator and chief of the administration of justice, - the time to which I am referring goes from 1933, the time of the seizure of power, until the 1st of April 1935, that is the time when the administration of justice was centralized; and subsequently. Dr. Rothenberger in his capacity as chief of the administration of justice within the area of the district court of appeal at Hamburg until he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice as under secretary of state, that must have been approximately at the end of 1942. At the time such cases of ill-treatment and the cases of death of prisoners, none of that was intended to come to the knowledge of the general public. The prosecution which, under the law, had to undertake investigations trying to discover the reasons for cases of death, and the courts were excluded from carrying out their functions and from instituting dissertions. As I know from Dr. Reuter there was an agreement
Q Dr. Skok, I wonder if you will limit your answer to the question as to what type of cases you are dealing with currently. I should like to show you a case which we have identified with the Number NG-2250, which involves a man by the name of Elkan, a Dr. Elkan who was taken into protective custody, and while in protective custody was severely mistreated; and there appears in the document a statement from Dr. Rothenberger and Dr. Drescher to the effect that this individual or the individuals responsible for the mistreatment were not to be prosecuted.
I ask you, Dr. Skok, is the document before you, involving the Elkan case, one such document that came to your attention in your present activity.
THE PRESIDENT: May I ask you is that 2250?
MR. KING: 2250; NG-2250.
THE PRESIDENT: It hasn't been identified.
MR. KING: Not yet.
THE PRESIDENT: We have made a mistake; it is time for our recess. We will recess for fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: We have an announcement to make. Counsel for the prosecution and also for the defense have expressed the view that they will require, as a minimum time, two weeks in which to prepare for final arguments. Final arguments will begin at this place on the 13th day of October. That gives counsel two weeks, and we call to your attention the fact that every hour that you save next week will be added to the two weeks which you have for the preparation of your final arguments. We trust you will be guided accordingly.
We also understand that Dr. Schilf has witnesses here whom he is hoping to call. Now we are starting on rebuttal, and witnesses for the defense must be called; they must be called at once. Assuming that he expects to examine them at all, he may have them here this afternoon. The same applies to the other defendants.
MR. KING: I should like to have marked for identification at this time the document NG-2250, and request that the exhibit number of 598 be reserved for it.
THE PRESIDENT: Let the document be identified as 598 for identification only at this time.
May we register a complaint concerning the noise which is still coming over this transmission system. We certainly are entitled to have better service.
BY MR. KING:
Q. Dr. Skok, I have placed before you the original of the document identified as NG-2250. I asked you, before recess, if this document was one of the cases which has come to your attention in your present job and work in Hamburg.
A. Yes.
Q. Have you had any discussions with any of the principles in the Elkan case in connection with your present official duties?
A. No; but I have to correct myself. The General Public Prose cuter, of course, knows that these files and authenticated copies have been loaned to this prosecution for this case.
Q Yes. Dr. Skok, I would like to go back to approximately 1935, to a case that has come up for discussion in this Tribunal in the past two days, and on one occasion earlier, the Buhk case. A certain Dr. Reuter played a part in this Buhk case.
Let me ask you, first, do you know Dr. Reuter; and second, are you familiar with the Buhk case, from your personal knowledge, dating from the time of the case in 1935?
A Yes, I knew Dr. Reuter, and secondly, I know the Buhk case.
Q Yes. Now you know, do you not, that Dr. Reuter filed the original application for investigation of the Buhk case with Judge Wentzensen?
A Yes.
Q Is Dr. Reuter still living?
A No, Dr. Reuter died on the 10th of October 1946.
Q Tell me, Dr. Skok, did you know Dr. Reuter very well from 1935 or before, and until the time of his death?
A Yes, I knew Dr. Reuter especially from that time, 1935, and I knew him very well.
Q Yes. Now in 1935 -- I withdraw that.
Did you continue to know Dr. Reuter up until the time of his death?
A Yes, from 1935 on, until shortly before his death, I met him frequently.
Q Did he stay at your home in the last days of his life?
A Not during the last days of his life, but in August and October of 1945, twice.
Q And did Dr. Reuter, in 1935, discuss the facts of the Buhk case with you at that time?
A Yes.
Q Dr. Skok, in your conversations with Dr. Reuter did Dr. Reuter ever tell you, as one friend to another, of an agreement of which he had learned existing between certain individuals in the Hamburg Justice Administration whereby the facts of the Buhk case were not to be revealed?
A Yes.
Q Who were the individuals who had concluded the agreement?
A That was the Chief of the Gestapo, Streckenbach, Reichstatthalter Kauffmann, Justice Senator, at that time Dr. Rothenberger, and the General Public Prosecutor, Dr. Drescher.
Q Now, what did Dr. Reuter tell you about the facts of this agreement between these four highest officials in the Hamburg area?
A That agreement concerned illegal handling in the case of deaths which were not cleared up.
Q Would you give me further details, please, if you know them?
A Yes. It was a question of corpses at the concentration camps. Bodies which were to be taken away without making it possible for the relatives to find out about the traces of ill-treatment on these bodies. If, according to the legal provisions, upon application by the prosecution to the court, a corpse had been dissected, it would have been possible to find out whether the death was due to ill-treatment, torture, and so on. However, that was to be avoided. Therefore the agreement was made that these corpses from the concentration camps should be brought to the crematory directly and that the relatives should only get a box with the ashes.
Q Yes. Now, from what Dr. Reuter told you, do you know whether he learned of this agreement from any of the four individuals whom you have mentioned as having concluded the agreement?
A Dr. Reuter told me that that agreement was kept absolutely secret, he had not know about it. However, on the occasion of the Buhk case, which you have mentioned, he obtained knowledge about it.
Q Did he indicate to you the manner in which he had obtained knowledge of this agreement?
A Yes. That file, according to his impression, had been brought to the prosecution, apparently by mistake but really intentionally, by a detective of the police who did not agree with that illegal method of handling these cases.
Dr. Reuter thought that that police detective had informed Judge Wentzensen about the existence of that agreement.
Q Yes. Now, do you know, from your close friendship with Dr. Reuter, whether he ever made a public record of his knowledge of the Buhk case?
A Yes.
Q What was the form of that record?
A It was not exclusively a matter of the Buhk case, but the general and recurring ill-treatment of inmates. In the meantime, it had become a fact that the prosecution did not interfere in such cases at Hamburg. In such cases the persons handling these matters were obliged to favor the offenders, so to speak.
Q Let me interrupt one moment, Dr. Skok. I repeat the original question. Do you know what form this public record, which Dr. Reuter made of the facts in the Buhk and other cases, took? What form was that public record? Was it a letter?
A It was a report signed by four members of the prosecution which went, through the office of the General Public prosecutor, to the Justice Senator Dr. Rothenberger, and which was supposed to be forwarded by him to the Reich Minister of Justice at Berlin.
Q Did you ever see a copy of that letter?
A No.
Q Did you know about it at the time Dr. Reuter was preparing it?
A No.
Q Did he tell you about it after he had prepared it?
A Yes.
Q And you knew that he had prepared the report and sent it on, right?
A Yes, he told me so.
Q Yes.
MR. KING: The prosecution has no further questions at this time.
THE PRESIDENT: You may cross-examine.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY DR. WANDSCHNEIDER:
Q Witness, as a representative of the prosecution you handled the Jansen case from the outset?
A No, I was only sent to the session at the Blitz Court.
Q At that time, or in the meantime, did you obtain information about the entire case, and particularly about the fact as to whether any influence was exerted before the main trial?
A It is not known to me that any influence was exerted on the case before the first session of the trial. I personally did not receive any directives.
Q I see. Did I understand you correctly that you said it was on your initiative that the SA leaders were invited to the session?
A In agreement with the presiding judge.
Q At whose initiative?
A I cannot say that. Both of us were of the opinion that it was absolutely necessary.
Q Why were you of the opinion that it was absolutely necessary to have the SA leaders present during the session?
A I have already said that according to the attitude of the defendants we gathered that immediately after the sentence in the first instance the SA leadership in Hamburg would have to decide, from the point of view of SA discipline and disciplinary proceedings, to what extent they would have to proceed on disciplinary grounds against the defendants.
Q May I now put the question to you whether you are of the opinion that after criminal guilt had been established in the trial, without having the SA leaders present, it was necessary for subsequent disciplinary proceedings to have these SA leaders present in the sessions?
After they have been convicted, the basis is already there for disciplinary proceedings, without the presence of these leaders.
A I have already said that the SA defendants in the main trial behaved in such a manner that it was thought these SA leaders who were competent to institute disciplinary proceedings should be afforded an opportunity to gain an impression themselves in the main trial.
Q Witness, may I point out to you that is not quite an answer to my question. You could not anticipate the way these defendants would act in the trial, and my question aimed at why you intended, beforehand, to invite the SA leaders to attend the session.
A Defense counsel, I think you are mistaken. I said the first of the day the trial had passed. On the second day I was supposed to submit my plea. On the first day the SA defendants had acted in such a manner that the judge and I were of the opinion -
Q I understand you now. Then your decision was not made before the scheduling of the main trial, but during the beginning of the trial.
A Yes.
Q Thank you. Did you exclude the public? That is, did you make the motion to exclude the public?
A I don't remember that, but I do know that the public was partly excluded.
Q May I ask for what reasons the public was excluded?
A For State security reasons.
THE PRESIDENT: Isn't it obvious that the public was excluded for the benefit of the SA and not for their injury? There is no complaint that the SA was being held out by this procedure, is there?
BY DR. WANDSCHNEIDER:
Q. No. Now I come to another question . Were you, yourself, a member of the SA?
A. No, I refused to become a member definitely.
Q. Were you a member of the Party, witness?
A. Yes.
Q. Since when?
A. Since May 1933.
Q. How long were you a Party member?
A. Well, until the surrender, 1945 that is.
Q. In any of the other formations of the Party, you have never been, have you?
A. No, I was not in any formations.
Q. Did you hold any rank, any office in the Party hierarchy?
A. No. I expressly refused to take any office in the Party.
Q. Witness, you have also said that during the trial - or rather after the trial - a good deal of publicity was given to this case in the Hamburg press.
A. Yes.
Q. And that apparently in order to prepare the public for the trial after the appeal.
A. Yes.
Q. In the next higher instance.
A. Yes.
Q. Do you happen to know of cases where after such a great deal of publicity as was doubtlessly applied by the Party in this case, the demand was put to remove the chief of the administration of justice from office which could be the result of a propaganda. of this nature?
A. Yes, of course, in my case it was so.
Q. Is it therefore beyond doubt also for you that the pressure exerted by the Party on the administration of justice in matters of such kind was very strong?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you, beyond the scope of your work with the prosecution, have an opportunity to evaluate the difficulties which a central office as for instance, the administration of justice could have had? Did you have any insight into any major office such as the administration of justice of the Land Hamburg; that is, a ministry?
A. Insight? No. But the general public prosecutor made statements about that to me.
Q. Then in 1935, after a trip that you made, you went to Berchesgaden - no, during the trip?
A. Yes, during the trip.
Q. Did you intend at that time to go to Obergruppenfuehrer Brueckner, one of the adjutants of Adolph Hitler, or did you want to speak to Hitler himself?
A. I had, asked for an interview with Obergruppenfuehrer Brueckner.
Q. Well, any arrangement like that had to be made with the adjutant, but did you intend to speak to Hitler or didn't you?
A. I had not made any demand of that kind.
Q. In other words, eventually there may be the possibility that you wanted to speak to Hitler?
A. It wasn't important for me to speak to Hitler.
Q. Did you at that time expect that Hitler would not tolerate such conditions -- as of course you could not tolerate, and would try to do something about it?
A. That, I believed, on the basis of his decree of June 1934.
Q. I see. You gave a very general construction on the conditions in Hamburg concerning the SA after the change-over of 1933. Was that judgment on your part founded on the experience which you had gained in your work with the prosecution?
A. Yes.
Q. Then, if I understand you correctly, were there quite a number of individual cases, or on the basis of your general opinion, did you have an opportunity to compare conditions with other cities and gaus?
A. No. I saw conditions as they were in Hamburg and that was sufficient.
Q. Then you described how the general prosecutor Drescher stated that he had tried to straighten out the matter Jansen with the SA. Is that true?
A. Yes.
Q. Therefore he pointed out the extraordinary difficulties arising from the fact that the SA leadership, evidently on the basis of the verdict which in their opinion was not justified, was dissatisfied?
A. Yes, it referred to the sentence pronounced.
Q. I see. But wouldn't it have been a logical consequence if these bad general conditions existed in Hamburg that the SA, before the investigating proceedings, could have seen to it that the whole matter could have been straightened out much easier in their sense?
A. I was not in charge of these proceedings.
Q. Therefore you can't say anything about it in detail?
A. On the basis of general conditions, of course, I happened to know what went on.
Q. I see. Your dismissal occurred in 1935 as you have told us. Did Dr. Rothenberger have anything to do with that fact, witness?
A. The question whether he had anything at all to do with it is a little indefinite.
A. I will make it more definite. Do you happen to know anything to the effect that Dr. Rothenberger caused you to be dismissed or contributed to that fact?
Q. I am convinced of that.
Q. You have no definite knowledge about it?
A. I have some knowledge to the effect that he was well informed about it.
Q. On what do you base that conviction and knowledge?
A. On 19 July 1935 the general prosecutor dismissed me from my job with the prosecution. Immediately I went to Vice-President Letz and offered my services to him for the court. I put myself at his disposal to be used in some work with the court. Mr. Letz replied immediately that he had been corresponding with Rothenberger about that case and therefrom he knew about Dr. Rothenberger's point of view to the effect that individuals of that kind were not to be used in connection with the court.
Q. Witness, quite independently of the question as to whether your point of view was correct or not, could one be of the opinion, as chief of an office, that it was not justified to take any such steps without informing the superior about it?
A. The general public prosecutor reproached me for having done that and I rejected that reproach immediately and gave him my reasons.
Q. When were you re-engaged in Hamburg?
A. That cannot mean a reappointment in Hamburg. The ministry, when it received the order of dismissal issued by Dr. Drescher, canceled that orders and as I was later told in Berlin when I submitted my complaint against the dismissal, the ministry on the basis of the report, made by the general public prosecutor about the fact that I had been dismissed, had informed the president of the District Court of Appeals in Hamburg. Dr. Rothenberger -- informed him on its own -- that against the Judge Wentzensen nothing should be done without first inquiring in Berlin.
Q. Therefore the order about the dismissal on the part of the general public prosecutor was not accepted by Berlin, by the Ministry?
A. Yes, that is so.
Q. In July 1935; you mean your dismissal was suggested to the ministry in Berlin without having to go through the chief of the administration of justice?
A. No. Dr. Drescher personally dismissed me.
Q. I see. Witness, my question is: when was the centralization of the administration of justice?
A. On 1 April 1935.
Q. Your dismissal, the order?
A. 15 July 1935.
Q. Therefore the administration of justice of the Land Hamburg under Dr. Rothenberger in April 1935 ceased to exist?
A. Correct.
Q. After that time, did Dr. Rothenberger have anything to do with the administration of penal law in Hamburg, whatever it may have been? Did he have anything to do with it after that time?
A. Certainly.
Q. How?
A. For instance, when it was a question that, let us say a public prosecutor wanted to or was to become a judge.
Q. I don't mean questions of personnel. I mean the handling of questions of proceedings as was done before 1935 by the Chief of the Administration of Justice.
A. The influence of Dr. Rothenberger as President of the District Court of Appeals certainly did not decrease. He was always informed and kept informed about all important political cases.
Q. Witness, are you informed an how many cases Dr. Rothenberger exerted this influence of his?
A. No, I could not know this.
Q. And quite generally speaking, concerning the conditions in Hamburg at that time compared to other cities and gaus, wasn't that known to you?
A. I had possibilities of comparison with conditions in the neighboring city of Altona for a certain period. I worked as an assessor with the district court of Altoona under Prussian regime. The prosecution at Altona at that time belonged to the district of Kiel, and in Altona I saw that the matters of the administration of justice were handled differently, particularly as far as cases such as Buhk, Buhsenschoen, and others were concerned, dealing with the ill-treatment of prisoners --matters which were not prosecuted in Hamburg but in Altona, when I worked there under the Prussian regime, in 1936 and in the beginning of 1937, were prosecuted. That was definitely different in Hamburg because the man in charge of the administration of justice, Dr. Rothenberger, together with the Reichstatthalter, Kaufmann, the Gestapo Chief Streckenbach, and the General Public Prosecutor Drescher, had made a different arrangement.
Q. Do you mean to assert, witness, that course issued by Rothenberger and Kaufmann in Hamburg was more severe from the point of view of radical politics than in any other areas?
A. Yes. That I think I have explained by giving you the example of Altona.
Q. May I put to you in this connection that the first mayor of Hamburg after the war, Petersen, whom you also know, the brother of the former mayor, said about Kaufmann that contrary to all other Reichstattahlters and Gauleiters, he was one of the most moderate National Socialist Gauleiters and that there are other testimonies available which emphasized that fact about the connection between Kaufmann and Dr. Rothenberger.
MR. KING: I object. Just a moment, witness. Obviously this is a leading question and testimony on the part of Dr. Wandschneider. Thirdly I don't think it has the slightest bit of relevance to the direct examination of this witness. I therefore object.
THE PRESIDENT: It isn't either necessary nor proper to compare the testimony of other witnesses with this witness. You may do that in argument. Just examine this witness for his views and his testimony. The objection is therefore sustained.
BY DR. WANDSCHNEIDER:
Q. Witness, then you mentioned the Buhk case and in connection with it you mentioned the then senior public prosecutor Reuter. Reuter told you about that secret agreement having been made between Streckenbach, Kaufmann, Rothenberger, and Drescher. Did that secret agreement concern itself with a certain individual case or a number of individual cases, according to what Reuter told you?
A. No. That was a general arrangement. That was what Reuter explained to me.
Q. The draft or that secret agreement itself, was that made orally or put down in writing?
A. That I don't know.
Q. Do you know that Reuter himself was a member of the SD -- security service - in Hamburg?
A. That question seems to suggest the answer. I am of the opposite opinion. I believe it is quite impossible that Dr. Reuter was a member of the SD. He never told me about that organization and it can never be assumed or recognized.
Q. Do you happen to know that Dr. Reuter at that time had the best connections in the Party Chancellory, to the deputy of the Fuehrer Hess, and on the basis of these good relations he was promoted after he left Hamburg to be Senate President in Cologne after he had been a prosecutor before?
A. You connect two questions here, defense counsel. The first I answer "no" the second, by "yes." It is not correct that Dr. Reuter had the best relations to the Party Chancellory and to Hess.
Q. When did he have good relations to them?
A. His friends employed a statement that he had made about the bad conditions in the administration of justice in Hamburg, as cause to institute an interrogation by a Party court against Dr. Reuter. That was how the relations to the Party and to Hess started.
Q. Witness, is it true that Senior Public Prosecutor Router was a very ambitious man who had strong personal ambitions to become General Public Prosecutor?
A. That is a standard you want me to apply?
Q. I want you to give me an evaluation.
A. I can give you that evaluation. Dr. Reuter was a man who opposed injustice ant who in a leading position himself could have never participated in committing any injustice. He personally was of the opinion that in the course of his career an the administration of justice he had been discriminated against.
Q. Witness, you spoke before of his motives, but you don't answer my direct question. Was he an ambitious man, or wasn't he? One may state and debate the motives.
A. Certainly, to a certain extent, of course he was ambitious.
Q. Witness, please understand my question correctly. Everything depends upon the character of that person because you have no direct knowledge of the happenings themselves.
MR. KING: I think the witness has answered the question to the best of his ability.
DR. WANDSCHNEIDER: Yes. Then I have no further questions in cross examination.
REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. KING:
Q. Dr. Skok, would you recognize the signature of Dr. Reuter if you saw it?
A. Yes.
Q. I have here a letter in which Dr. Reuter's signature appears twice; on page two and on page 54. I submit the document to you and ask you if those signatures are Reuters. The document is to be identified as NG-656.
(Witness is offered the document)
A. Yes. That document bears the signature of Dr. Reuter indeed.
Q. Do you, by your knowledge, happen to recognize that document which is before You?
A. Yes, I know that document.
Q. What document is it, please?
A. It is the application which Dr. Reuter had written in Hamburg at the time. That war in 1945 when he lived with me, and in that document he listed all the cases which he had told me about since 1935.
Q. The prosecution at this time offers, first, the document NG-2240, as Exhibit 598.
THE PRESIDENT: 598 is 2250 according to my notes.
THE WITNESS: That is here. (Offers document to Mr. King)
MR. KING: 2250 is correct, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: You're offering 598?
MR. KING: That is right.
THE PRESIDENT: Received.
MR. KING: We offer the exhibit, or the document NG-566, as Exhibit 599.
THE PRESIDENT: I had it written down 656. Which is correct?
MR. KING: If I said anything different, your Honor, it was inadvertently so. It's NG-656.
THE PRESIDENT: The exhibit is received.
MR. KING: We have no further questions of this witness, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: The witness is excused.
(Witness is excused)
MR. KING: The prosecution calls the witness Timmermann.
HANS JOHANNES DIETRICH TIMMERMANN, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:
JUDGE BLAIR: Hold up your righthand and repeat after me the following oath:
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.)