and everything that occurred in connection with this court.
A. Here I must give you an introduction. Pursuant to an order which General Field Marshal List gave one lay before the German troops entered Greece, the law to be applied was the German penal code, the orders which the various commanders issued - those were the two categories of regulations to be applied. The German courts had jurisdiction over offenses against these orders.
Q. You are speaking too fast. The interpreter cannot keep up with you. Will you please repeat what you just said?
A. According to the same order, I believe of 5 April 1941, the law to be applied in German summary courts martial for Greek cases was the Reich penal code and the orders issued by the commanders in the occupied territory. On the basis of these orders the German courts were competent--
Q. I'm sorry, but you are still too fast. Please make a pause between sentences. It has to be translated from German into English, witness. Please speak slowly.
A. Shall I repeat the answer?
Q. Yes, please.
A. One day before the German troops entered Grece an order was issued by General Field Marshal List, according to which the penal law to be applied was, first, the Reich Penal Code, and secondly what I forgot before, regulations in effect apart from this law, the Reich regulations, I mean, which were valid throughout Germany, and the orders which were issued by the commanders in the occupied territory. Pursuant to this law, the German courts martial in Greece were competent to judge offenses against these laws by the Greeks. There were cases--
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess until 1:30 this afternoon.
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 21 August 1947) JOHANES SONTIS - resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION - continued
THE MARSHAL : Persons in the Courtroom will be seated.
The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed.
MR. RAPP: If your Honors please, I shall continue with the examination of the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
BY MR. RAPP:
Q. Before the lunch recess,witness, we were talking about the regulations which were published by Field Marshal List at that time, in connection with the law to be applied. Could you tell us that again in one sentence quite briefly, to summarize, so that we may make better progress from now on.
A. You mean to say I should repeat the contents of this regulation?
Q. Quite briefly, for our own information, so that we will have cleared this subject.
A. As regards the substantive law, according to regulations, it was the Reich Penal Code, the Reich regulations which were also valid alongside the Reich Penal Code, and the orders of the Commanders in the occupied Greek territory. Competent for violations against these penal regulations for issuing sentences regarding these violations , were the German summary courts martial , Feldgerichte, in the Greek occupied territory. This regulation of the commander of the 12th Army was often violated. Shootings, even mass shootings, without a legal trial and sentence became the rule in the course of time. That on the one hand. On the other hand, I experienced many cases where intentionally the rules of international law, as well as the regulations of German military law, were not applied rightly. I might even say they were applied wrongly or against international law.
I cannot mention all the cases here. All of them would take up a lot of time. I can only mention here a few examples, the most outstanding examples which I could observe and follow from my position as defense counsel at those summary courts martial.
Q. Witness, how many cases, in order to clarify this right from the start, did you as attorney defend or were you in connection with?
A. My activity as defense counsel, in summary courts martial, as I said before, started at the end of June 1941. The second summary court of the Commander for South Greece, -or rather , the Military Commander for Greece --as far as I can remember exactly, was in operation until August, 1944. That is, from June 1941 until August 1944, including those cases which I had to conduct before a third court, for minor cases, that is the summary court of the Field Command post of Athens. I defended about 300 cases.
Q. Thank you, witness. Please continue now.
A. I must first of all relate the most striking example which I know from my post as defense counsel before the first summary court martial of the Air Gau Southeast. I only want to mention one thing. It was, as far as I remember, at the end of April when a few Greek officers were arrested while trying to escape to Egypt. The case did not come before the summary court martial. For instance, a few officers --4,5 or 6, I don't remember exactly, I can only recall three names -were shot without trial. It must have been at the end of May or the beginning of June 1942. These defendants here, if I am not mistaken, had nothing to do with these murders; for these murders only General Andre is responsible. That example is the first case that greatly impressed me.
Q. Witness, you are talking here about murders and you are talking about the fact that these people were not brought before a court martial, that they were, so to speak, shot illegally. Why does this case re present something extraordinary -- I don't understand the emphasis you are placing on it.
Can you explain that?
A. I should ask you to hear my view on this in connection with a case I shall mention later on.
Q. As you please.
A. The most striking examples of violation of law -- I repeat, of International law as well of domestic German law --- I experienced as defense counsel before the second summary court martial . I now begin to mention individual cases. The first case is the case of Boros. At the beginning of September 1942 on the Island of Boros the secret field police arrested nine respectable Greeks because they were suspected of making propaganda for England among the population of this inland. Communistic activities were not at issue in this case. Even the G.F.P. (Secret Field Police) who appeared before the Summary Court Martial as prosecution witnesses , later, admitted that those arrested were Greek of nationalist views.
14-1-A-GW-21 Aug 47-Biolsi (Jacobson) Among those arrested were a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacist, a retired officer, and three civil servants.
Those arrested were taken to the office of the G.F.P. in Pireus. There they were subjected to examination of a severe nature. We know exactly what severe examination meant at that time. For the benefit of those who did not experience these conditions in my country, and there may be many in this courtroom, I want to mention the following: One of the foremost Germanists, Professor Hans Fehr, in 1923 published a book entitled "Das Recht im Bilde". This book refers to the methods of examination employed in the middle ages. What we see of these methods in the various pictures in this book was recalled to life in the middle of the 20th century by the G.F.P. in Greece as well as, of course, by the SS. I shall mention only two examples: Tying of the hands behind the back, hanging up with a weight attached to the feet, hanging by the feet for a certain period of time, and other things of a like nature. As regards those arrested on the island of Boros a severe examination took place in the office of the G.F.P. in Pireus-such an examination that one of those arrested, the chief tax official of the island of Boros, later became insane. I personally at that time intervened with the President of the Summary Court Martial of the Military Commander for Greece, who was at that time Oberkriegsgerichtsrat Kirchberger Dr. Kriegsrichter, and asked him to bring about the transfer of this insane person to a clinic and, in fact, he fulfilled my request. The preliminary investigation by the G.F.P. in Pireus took up to the middle of October or maybe a few days later in October 1942, and then the files with the concluding report of the G.F.P. were sent to the summary court-martial,as usual, the military judge dealt with this case, and after issuing the penal regulation the matter came into court on the 30th of November 1942.
President of this court on that day was Kriegsgerichtsrat der Luffwaffe, Dr. Rattke, and the prosecutor was Kriegsgerichtsrat der Luftwaffe, Dr. Hennich--quite a nice lawyer, I must admit that -- from Leipzig, and not a severe judge as regards the Greeks. When the session started the president stated that the trial would take place in camera, since this was a serious case of espionage. After the court was cleared the examination of the prosecution witnesses began. As prosecution witnesses the G.F.P. officials appeared-two of themwho had conducted the preliminary investigation in pireus. I can only recall the name of one of them. His name was Steierhof. The defense consisted of three Greek lawyers, among then myself. The defense knew from the start that the defendants had been subjected to a severe preliminary investigation. For that reason I put to the first witness the question whether that really had been the case. The president admitted this question , and then the witness gave the following answer: "There is an order according to which in such cases we have to subject those arrested to a severe examination. In this case I only slapped the idea of defendant number one, a doctor of Boros". For one moment my equanimity left me and I asked the witness what his profession was in civil life. He answered: "I am a Municipal judge." My excitement increased. "Witness", I said, "you are an educated man, then. How did you dare to slap the face of an equally cultured man and a doctor who studied at the university?"
Then he cried out, "I received such a remark, and I went for it." The court was equally excited and asked me to be quiet. After the examination of this witness the second witness testified. The G.F.P. official Steierhof. This time my colleague questioned, the other Greek lawyer. He asked him: "Have you done the same, witness?" The witness answered: "No, I personally did not do any such thing. I left this to my other colleagues." And then his colleague replied in a very excited frame of wind, turning to the Court: "Your Honors, this is a now method. You may call it the "Steierhof Method"." Now excitement and now calls for order. The proceedings began at eight o'clock in the morning and lasted until seven in the evening. At seven O'clock the Court retired for consultation and after two hours it delivered its verdict. The contents of this verdict was that the evidence offered did not suffice in order to arrive at a sentence of the defendants. For that reason the defendants must be acquitted and further legal proceedings must be quashed. However, the defendants are not to be acquitted because the G.F.P. of Piräus appeared-I don't know his name-and he turned to us, to the three defense counsel, and said this: "Gentlemen, you have offended my men, you will have to pay for that. You will soon hear from me. Please give me your address now." We know what that meant. We went at once to the Archbishop and asked him to intervene in our behalf to the superior authorities. He went at once to the plenipotentiary at that time, von altenburg, accompanied by the military attache von Klemm of the German Delegation in Athens; and by this intervention saved us from falling into the hands of the G.F.P. That, as I said, was on the 30th of November 1942.
Those acquitted, after the proceedings had been quashed, were not released from custody, as I have already said. They remained in custody for the whole month of December, and in the beginning of January 1943 I decided to turn directly for help to the general. To visit General Speidel was impossible for a lawyer, and for that reason I approached the officer of I-C. The notorious Captain Stoeckle was the only one I could approach in order to make a petition. My request was to release my clients since the court-martial in the field of the general had quashed the proceedings, as the same court-martial did not find sufficient reasons, and as in the last resort, the people concerned were certainly not people who had violated any penal provisions. For the first time I entered this famous Department I-C, and then I understood what this department represented. On the table of Captain Dr. Stoeckle there were heaps of documents, files, copies of the files of the documents submitted to the court-martial; and on every file a red strip had been affixed. Naturally, I could not understand what this red strip meant. I learned this later on. Captain Stoeckle received me politely. He asked for the purpose of my visit and I told him the reason. Suddenly he got up in excitement and told me verbally the following: "Doctor, the court-martial in the field can say what it wants to say. I here possess in these documents proof according to which I can have the defendants shot at once. In any case I will think the matter over." It was about ten o'clock. And it is important that I mention this time that is, the morning of the 4th of January 1943. Dr. Stoeckle promised me that he would think the matter over.
He certainly thought it over well. Three days later, on the 7th of January three of those who had been acquitted by the ****** German field court-martial-- he sent three of those before the firing squad. At six o'clock on the morning of the 7th of January 1943 they were shot, that is the first case.
Now I am coming to my second case. In the middle of September 1942, by a band of about ten Greek hooligans who represented themselves to be friendly towards Germany-the building of the so-called ESPO, situated near the Romonia Square, the largest place in Athens,-was blown up. A few days later, 14 or 16 people- I don't remember exactly- Greeks of national views, were arrested under suspicion of being implicated in this blowing up. The investigation took the course of the G.F.P. For about a month and a half or two months, at the end of October or the beginning of November, I had worked on this case and later the files with the concluding report were sent to the court-martial by the G.F.P. The Judge Advocate dealing with this case ordered that the case was to be quashed without any trial-that is, the case did not come into court. In this case, too, those arrested were not released from custody since the G.F.P. had ordered protective custody for them. It was on the 7th of January 1943, on the same day which I mentioned in the previous case, at nine o'clock in the morning, when I went into my office, I found a gathering of the relatives of those defendants, mostly women, almost exclusively women of some of those arrested, and they were crying and sobbing, and they told me that this morning the guard of the prison had refused to take the parcels with foodstuffs. We knew, of course, what this meant in such cases. It meant that those in prison were no longer alive.
At once I went to the palace of the Archbishop. I always did that in such cases, and asked the Archbishop to take some steps. The Archbishop telephoned the guard; he told him who he was, that, as a religious leader of those arrested he was interested in them, and he asked this guard or sergeant to tell him where these Greeks had been taken to. The sergeant answered, "I don't know; at any rate, they took them away early this morning, at five o'clock."
At the same time we had approached the then director of the Radio Corporation. At that time we had telephoned General Speidel's office, who knew the director of the Radio Corporation very well. In fact, he harried away somewhere, I don't know where he went, and between ten and eleven o' clock he went into the office of the brother of one of the Greeks where, in the meantime, all the relatives had gathered. He took me aside and he told me that, in fact, all seven together who were taken away from the prison, had been shot this morning at six o' clock; that is to say, Greeks were shot who had not been sentenced to death by a German court-martial, and in whose case the German courtmartial had ordered a Quashing of the proceedings.
We sent the relatives home. We did not want to tell them at once that their people were no longer alive. I must also mention here, what I should have done before, that I talked to the director of Radio Corporation a couple of days before the shooting and I had asked him to intervene either with General Speidel or with Captain Stoeckle. I also asked for the Hungarian delegate, at that time Develich, who had social relations with General Speidel and Captain Stoeckle, to do the same thing Their efforts were unsuccessful.
Even the director of the Radio Corporation repeated to me the talk he had with Captain Stoeckle concerning this case. I recall this quite clearly because I made notes every evening and at present I can make them available.
Stoeckle on this occasion told the director, "The Greeks must leave us in peace, otherwise I will have recourse even to the upper classes of society the next time." That is the second case.
These two cases I have particularly mentioned, and almost in every detail, because I considered them severe violations, not only of international law, not only of German inner military law, but of international ethics, and this because people were shot who had been acquitted by the German court martial.
I believe this case is even more serious than the mere shooting of hostages.
Q. Witness, if we have understood you correctly, the shooting took place in the first days of January 1943, is that correct?
A. Yes, indeed, on the 2nd of January.
Q. Witness, was there SS and SD in Greece at that time?
A. There was no SS in Greece at that time.
Q. How do you know that, witness?
A. Well, there is a way of telling. We know exactly that the SS in Greece started its activities in the beginning of October 1943.
Q. Witness, can you give us other examples falling in this period, and which you have taken part in yourselves?
A. After the arrival of the SS? It was only before the arrival of the SS.
Q. Well then give us those first.
A. A second category of severe violations of international law, and I might even say of international ethics, I experienced as defense counsel before court martial as the Commander Southern Greece the following cases:
Many officers, after the occupation of Greece, Greek officers of the army, of the navy and of the air force, tried to escape to Egypt in order there to unite with the forces still active of the Greek Army and the Greek fleet. Many were arrested while trying to escape in this manner. I have conducted the defense in many such cases before the court martial. General Speidel well remembers those cases.
First of all, that was on the 25th of January 1943. I defended three officers before the court martial, two of the navy and one of the air force. Later I defended a Greek colonel; still later I defended a first lieutenant; and in the spring of 1944, if I remember correctly, I defended two naval officers. In all of these cases the defendants were sentenced to death.
I wouldn't object to the fact that they were sentenced to death if there had been a special directive of the German commander, but that was not the case. They were sentenced to death on the strength of Article 91 B of the Reich Penal Code, "Giving aid and comfort to the enemy".
We know well - that is, the lawyers know well - that giving aid and comfort to the enemy is a crime, or a kind of a crime, which belongs. to the category of treason. The provisions regarding treason and high treason rest on a firm principle, on the principle of loyalty toward one's own country. How could they ask the opponents, or enemy in this case, to be loyal to Germany? That is to be loyal to the enemy. That is against any view. Nobody can deny that.
Secondly, the defendants in these cases were obliged and bound by their military rank or military oath to join forces with those formations still fighting. To the utmost they could have in this case been con sidered as prisoners of war.
No, the court martial did not want to hear anything about it. It did sentence, all without exception, to death. General Speidel, of course, could not confirm these sentences in all cases; he did not confirm these cases, but now we are coming to the violation of international law. He did not look upon them as prisoners of war but he simply changed the death sentence to a term of penal servitude.
All of these officers were treated as common prisoners, and taken to Germany. Here they were not kept in a prisoner of war camp but were imprisoned in the ordinary prisons as ordinary convicts.
And that, I repeat, was a violation of international law, and of international ethics, but also a violation of inner German law. As a witness I have not the text before me of Article 91-B, but I know that the crime of aid and comfort to the enemy in a foreign country - according to the German law - can only be committed by a German. Only within Germany also a foreigner can commit this crime. This shows that also the German law has been applied wrongly in these cases.
Q. These things which you have related to us here, witness, in connection with your request - did you mention all of these reasons in order to achieve a mitigation of sentence?
A. I quoted all of these reasons and I knew of such attitude. We had the right, according to the provisions of military penal law -we had the right after the verdict was announced to make known our views to the Supreme Judicial Officer and to ask him not to confirm the sentence, but to mitigate it or to issue a pardon.
All of these reasons we listed, and I will make them available to the Tribunal if it should prove necessary.
Q. Now, witness, to leave this period
A. I have to mention something else.
Q. Yes, please do.
A. I am now coming to the category of the cases of sabotage. It is known to all German lawyers, and to all who understand something of German law, that according to German military law the crime of sabotage
Q. Witness, tell us the facts and what you did. We do not want to have any lectures from you at this time. Please tell us the facts, and after you have told us the facts, please tell us what you did.
A. The violation of a legal provision is not a legal question.
DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, I want to point out the same thing and join in what the prosecutor has just said. The witness should testify to facts and not make speeches.
THE PRESIDENT: May I suggest to the witness that it is the desire of the Tribunal that you state facts. Perhaps under certain circumstances it may he necessary for you to give some explanations, but, generally, restrict your comments to what you may know and what you may have seen, rather than commenting upon them in detail.
THE WITNESS: I certainly will.
A. I now come to the third category of the violation of penal law, those cases belong where a summary court martial sentences people to death for sabotage without considering weather in the case under discussion there was an intention of endangering the war potential of the German army or not. In my practice before the court martial, I experienced between 25 and 30 death sentences of this type. That is all that I have to mention.
Q. Witness, when you talk of cases of sabotage here, please give us a typical example of a so-called case of sabotage, which, for instance, took place before your court, where you appeared as defense counsel, without giving any further explanations.
A. Very well.
DR. LATERNSER: I object. The question cannot be material. I do not know of a single count of the indictment saying that in cases of sabotage a wrong verdict was given.
MR. RAPP: Your Honor, We submit that it may be of some importance to have two witness testify as to the type of offense that was handled by these courts and the ultimate results and/or disposition of those who stood either as defendants or were found not guilty before such tribunals. I believe that this has some bearing on our case.
PRESIDENT WENNERSTRUM: The witness nay testify, restricting his comments solely upon the facts that he knows, and as to his observations that he personally made.
MR. RAPP: Very well, your Honor.
A. Example of sabotage cases: Cutting of telephone wires, in order to interrupt the telephone communications of the German authorities.
That is a typical case of sabotage which we had in Athens, and the defendants were sentenced to death in complete conformity with the the law. Also blowing up of motor cars. I also had such cases. Motor cars of the German Wehrmacht. They were legally sentenced to death. Setting fire to a camp. A typical case of sabotage, which I also had the defendant was legally sentenced to death. But a kid goes into a German camp, steals two liters of gasoline and is sentenced to death for that reason. This was illegal, because it was never his intention to impair the war potential of the German Army.
Q. Very well, Witness, will you continue, from this period of time and relate further facts of your experiences from that time on, during the period of the occupation?
A In spite of the violations which I have mentioned, until September, 1943, I could not assert that we found ourselves in a state of complete lawlessness. In the last analysis, there were cases which came into court, which came into the German court, and in some of these cases the people were shot on the basis of a legal verdict. This state, however, ceased completely after the arrival of the SS in Greece. I cannot speak for the whole of Greece. I am only talking of Athens. The SS, as I have already mentioned, arrived in Athens about the end or beginning of October, 1943. The Greeks, were now hardly over prosecuted by the GFP. The GFP dealt mainly with the minor cases, and the SS took over the major part of the prosecutions, through the notorious SD, Security Service, that is.
Of course the Summary Court Martial of the Military Commander for Greece did not stop functioning all of a sudden. Some serious cases came before this court martial, but in the course of true this also ceased. I might say that about February or March, 1944, the Summary Court Martial of the Military Commander for Greece had became a shop without customers. It only dealt with minor offenses. The ........... was only carried out by the SS.
The SS, of course, had no court martial, Their tortures, were, of course, a daily occurrence, and the people were not shot on the basis of a legal verdict; they were not ever shot singly, but on masse. 40, 100, 25, 30, etc., There were so many cases that I cannot remember them. Of course I was not an actual eye-witness of these events, but I was an eye witness of a part, that is to say, the following case.
On the 1st of May, 1944, I heard from the Arch bishop's office, -- (I must make here, an explanation). I get the assignments of the arrested Greeks from a department of the office of the Arch bishop of Athens. That is, the relatives went to the Arch bishop's office and the Arch bishop's office gave me the assignment to defend these people, and for that reason I had a connection with the Arch bishop's office). I learned from the Arch bishop's office that a policeman had brought clothes and suits of about 200 shot Greeks to the headquarters of the 21st Police District of Athens.
I went to this office in the Arch bishop's Palace. He sent a motor car, and about 11 o'clock in the morning all of these things were brought to the ground floor of the Arch bishop's Palace. In the meantime the population got to know that on this morning a mass execution had taken place of people who had been brought from the concentration camp at Heidari (?). The relatives, of course at once hurried to the Arch bishop's Palace, as often happened in these cases, and they gathered there.
The picture was awful. All of these people pushed their way into the ground floor. I cannot describe the crying of the women as they went in and when they started looking for the clothing of their loved ones. They searched the pockets in order to find some kind of identification, or a letter. The pockets were completely empty.
Suddenly, I saw an old women from the suburb of Pentelli (?). She had noticed the jacket of her oldest son, and she took it, and she pressed it against her breast, and began to cry.
After a few seconds she turned around, and this time she found the clothes of her second son. She fainted. That is the only picture of the terror of the SS of which I was an eye witness. This state continued until the end of August or beginning of September 1944 -- Athens had became a hell - until the liberation. That is to say, until the 12th of October 1944. That is all I have to report regarding facts.
Q. Witness, in order to return quite briefly to the court trials in which you took part, I'd like to ask you how long, on the average, did these trials last - that is, individually.
A. Mr. Prosecutor, I cannot give you an exact answer. There were cases of trials lasting one, two, or three hours, or even a whole day, when there were more defendants than one. There were cases where the trial took only a quarter of an hour, but that doesn't mean a thing. This was a case of a spy who had been caught in flagranti at the broadcasting station with a radiogonometer. It was quite clear, and he was convicted immediately. It was quite legal. In any case, whether law was spoken in a proper manner always depended on the judge. In the beginning and, to be just, especially in the case of the court martial of the Military Commander for South Greece, in the beginning there were good court martial judges who came to Athens. There were judges who were professional judges.
Q. Witness, I did not ask you regarding these things. My question was precisely what was the average duration of the three hundred cases in which you took part as a defense counsel.
A. I am telling you, Mr. Prosecutor, there were cases which took one, two, or three hours. I want to tell you that exactly. Later some proceedings - and that was illegal - had become "blitz" trials, but I can't say that this was true in all the cases.
Q. All right. Now, the next question: In the cases in which a death sentence was announced, what was the average duration between the announcement of the verdict and the execution of the verdict?
A. Sometimes two weeks, sometimes a whole month, sometimes more than a month, sometimes only three days.