Q I know what you said yesterday about your own assignment, but I am asking you if you carried on the auditing at any time of the accounts of concentration camps while you were in office V-II?
A I cannot say exactly, but there is a possibility that when somebody was sick or on leave I had to deputize for him.
Q Well, you remember doing that, don't you? It is not only a possibility?
A Yes, it is a possibility.
Q It is more than a possibility, isn't it? You remember it; it is certainty?
A No.
Q Well, who regularly handled the accounts in office V-II of the concentration camps?
A That was Hauptsturmfuehrer Heiter.
Q And he was under Moeckel? Moeckel?
A Moeckel.
Q Yes?
A. Moeckel.
Q Then when the Verwaltungsamt was dissolved and the Main Office Budget and Construction came into being, what connection did you have with this Main Office?
A With this Hauptamt Main Office I had no connections. They were at the same place, but any official channels there were none, because I was Department Chief of the Administration Office of the Waffen--SS.
Q Are you telling me that from August, '39, until February, '42, when the WVHA was brought into being that you had no contacts with wither the WVHA as opposed to the WVHA or the Main Office Budget and Construction? You had no contact with those main Offices?
A Neither with WVHA had I anything to do; that was administrative nor with the Office Budget and Construction which was after all a matter of the Budget Office. I was in the Administration Office of the Waffen-SS in the auditing department.
Q That was subordinate to one of these two Main Offices, was it not?
A The Administration Office of the Waffen-SS was under the Fuehrungshauptamt Main Operational Office.
Q And did Pohl have any connection with that?
A No.
Q Well, what position were you holding in December, 1941?
A In December, 1941, I was still in the audit department as the chief of the department.
Q And was that subordinate to the defendant Frank? Is that the Administration Office that Frank was in charge of?
A Yes.
Q And you were subordinate to Frank from August, '39, until the organization of the WVHA.
A From October, 1939, until the WVHA was erected.
Q Now wasn't there a time during this period which you worked for Kaindl in the Inspectorate of the concentration camps? Don't you recall your assistance to Kaindl?
A No, I cannot remember having been an assistant of Kaindl.
Q You don't remember having a desk in his headquarters?
A Now when should there have been?
Q Between the period of 1939 when the Verwaltungsamt was dissolved and prior to 1942 when the WVHA was erected.
A No, I had no desk in Kaindl's office. I was in the Administration Office of the Waffen-SS in Berlin.
Q Did you have any contacts with Kaindl at all?
A I had no office relation with Kaindl of any kind. I know him from Munich. It may have been that he talked to me on occasions or asked me questions, but I don't remember having any contacts with Kaindl, at least not any office contacts.
Q Did you have any official or business discussions with Kaindl at all?
A No.
Q And then in January, 1942, you came to the WVHA when it was organized?
A Yes.
Q I would like to deal for a moment with your functions as Chief of A-IV. It is true, is it not, that an auditing or accounting office of an administrative office such as the WVHA serves two purposes. One is the administrative control which you have described in detail, that is, to prepare a report for a higher accounting agency; and the second purpose of such an office is to give the administrative offices themselves an insight into the financial and economic organization and status of the respective offices. Is that the ordinary function of an auditing or accounting office?
A Mr. Prosecutor, in long sentences we spoke yesterday about the tasks of the auditing office. The auditing office, in fact, during all the time it existed as Office A-IV, dealt mainly with auditing and examining of the treasury court. The liaison office with other offices, that was not even necessary. What would they want of us?
Q I understand what the main purpose was, but you submitted as one of your exhibits an extract from a textbook by an expert who says that a second function of an accounting or auditing office is to give the administrative office as a whole -- to give the chief of the administrative office an insight into the finances of the office. That was one of the functions of your office, wasn't it?
A Mr. Prosecutor, you must remember about our regulations as existed in peacetime. At that time it was, just as you told us, but in wartime, in 1942, it was not so at all, and I did not regard the task as such. I couldn't do so. I couldn't have dealt with it as there was not a staff for this.
Q. Do you mean to say that neither you nor any of your subordinates were ever asked to report to anyone in the WVHA about the financial status of an office or a unit or an agency of the Waffen-SS?
A. I don't know, of course, whether one of my subordinates gave such information at one time or another. Mr. Prosecutor, you must imagine that the keeping files involved -- files and books which were submitted only afterwards to the auditing office --. If really one of these offices needed information, it is possible that the office asked for it. That is part of the general routine.
Q. You know it is not only possibly, you know that was a part of the regular routine of your office, wasn't it, to supply other offices with a financial report, or various agencies of the Waffen-SS? That was not an irregular happening?
A. No, that was not my task.
Q. Did you ever report on the balance of accounts of an agency of the Waffen-SS to anyone other than to the auditing court?
A. No.
Q. So all of the reports that you ever made as Chief of Office A-IV were made to the accounting court, is that what I understood you to say?
A. Mr. Prosecutor, mainly I had to write my own reports to the treasuries which were examined and audited. The auditing court received no information and no reports from me, but in person discussions the whole field and the whole activity of auditing was dealt with, and on that occasion, on these occasions, the notes made by the auditors were made known.
Q. And they were made known to other offices in the WVHA weren't they?
A. No.
Q. They were not made known to anyone in the WVHA?
A. If it was in no direct connection with a particular office then of course not.
Q. Well, did anyone in the WVHA ever receive any of the reports that you made to the auditing court?
A. I supplied no information, I gave no reports to the auditing court, on the whole. I would like to draw your attention to it, Mr. Prosecutor, that in the WVHA the auditing court had an office.
Q. I am just trying to find out this. Did your office in any way serve this second function which your expert says is a formal function of an accounting office,namely to give the administrative office itself some understanding about the financial status of its agencies? Did you have any conversations with anyone in the WVHA about the financial status of any agency under the Waffen-SS?
A. No.
Q. Now, when the auditing court waived a preliminary audit or an agency, as you say they sometimes did, and the sole audit of that agency was carried out by the auditing courts wasn't it your function to advise with the agency in the preparation for the audit by the auditing court?
A. As department chief of course it was my duty to make the auditors acquainted with the field.
Q. Let me ask you this, in 1942, as an example, tell us when the books for the Waffen-SS were ordinarily - for the agencies of the WaffenSS were ordinarily closed? Was this quarterly, semi-annually, or annually?
A. At that time in three months.
Q. Four times a year. Then these agencies prepared balance sheets and statements of income and expenses?
A. Mr.Prosecutor, this kind of auditing does not edit any balance sheets. Her it is just a matter of submission of the auditing books, bills, income, and bills of expenses. A balance sheet or a summarizing in any way does not exist there.
Q. All right, a balance sheet did not exist. You had a statement of income and expenses, didn't you?
A. Yes.
Q. You had the vouchers, the bills which supposedly were actually paid?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, were there any other books in the auditing procedure given yourself or your subordinates when you carried out a spot check?
A. I have already said the cash books and the bills only.
Q. When these audits were made, what was the usual procedure, did you go to the agency, or did the agency send its books to you?
A. These books were not submitted to me generally speaking, only if the auditing there were mistakes which were discovered. The auditor had to come to me and speak to me, and the proofs and bills were used for this. Generally I did not deal with the auditing myself.
Q. When you say an auditor came to you and spoke to you, you mean one of your subordinates in Office A-IV?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you ever make checks yourself on any of these agencies in person?
A. I did not understand , sir.
Q. Did you ever audit any of the books of the Waffen-SS in person when you -
A. Yes, that happened when I went -- came to a place where there was a treasury.
Q. Well, you referred us yesterday to a regulation of the Reich Code which is from the Reich Treasury Regulations, Boft Exhibit No. 4, Article 89. Do you remember that there it says the auditor is not permitted to delegate the examination of the balance in hand to one of the officials appointed for his assistance. So when it came to the auditing of treasuries and the auditing of cash accounts, you had to do that personally, didn't you?
A. I should ask you if you could give me the figures again? Is it the Reich Treasury Regulation?
Q. This is Exhibit No. 4, Document 4, do you have that?
A. Yes.
Q. Article 89, Sub paragraph 2.
A. Mr. Prosecutor, here this is an occasion of a special work task.
It means auditing of the cash on hand. I carried out these measures in the Action Lublin, auditing of the cash on hand. That means the counting of the moneys on hand to be dealt with by the auditor himself. That means only the auditing of the cash account, whether it is there, and he has to count the money himself.
Q. Well, this does not deal with special or extraordinary audits. On the contrary, this is contained in Part II of the law which deals with ordinary audits, and Part III, which deals with extraordinary audits follows this article which I read. This was the ordinary procedure, wasn't it?
A. Extraordinary audits of treasuries by audits out of the ordinary we mean those audits which happen suddenly without previous notice. There are the general audits which are those which are carried out by the local authorities monthly after announcement to that effect, and then there are the extraordinary audits which happen suddenly in the agencies without previous announcement, which is called Kassenauf-sicht.
Q. This article teals with the regular period. The law says, "Ordinary audits"which require the chief auditor to audit the cash amounts personally, and you told us yesterday that the reason you had to count the cash in Lublin was because of this provision of the law. Now, apparently this provision applies not only to extraordinary audits or surprise audits such as in lublin, but also, according to the working of the law, to ordinary, regular audits, isn't that true?
A. Every audit has to be dealt with according to these points.
MR. ROBBINS: Would this be a convenient time to recess?
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1:45.
(A recess was taken until 1345 hours.)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1400 hours, 17 June 1947.)
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is again in session.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, with regard to your curriculum vitae there is one question that may not be exactly clear. You don't claim, do you, that you were drafted into the SS?
A. No.
Q. You weren't forced to join?
A. No.
Q. Now, I ask you, witness, if you recall having visited the concentration camp Dachau?
A. I was not in Dachau concentration camp.
Q. You never visited Dachau?
A. I have never visited the concentration camp, only the camp where the troops were garrisoned, the units called "Deutschland".
Q. But you were never on the inside of the camp?
A. No.
Q. Were you ever on the inside of any concentration camp in Germany?
A. No.
Q. You at no time ever visited a concentration camp?
A. No.
Q. Although you had the job of auditing the accounts of the camp and you were charged with the responsibility of personally handling the cash accounts, you at no time ever went yourself personally to a concentration camp, is that right?
A. Mr. Prosecutor, I believe there is one point here which is not quite clear. I did not have to audit the cash because when the WVHA was established that task was transferred to the agencies on the medium level. They had to audit the cash in the camps; first the head of the administration had to audit the monthly cash balances. Special audits had to be done by the chief of Office Group D. I had nothing to do any longer with auditing of cash.
When the local bills were audited in a camp, that was not auditing the cash. The paragraph today about the cashin-hand concerned only the cash involved in a special auditing action. That had nothing to do with the auditing of the actual cash.
As far as I know, no local auditing of cash was carried out, but if actually one auditing had taken place, this would have been done by my auditors, or later on in the garrison administration which were outside the concentration camp administrations.
Q. Well, you told us yesterday that you had the job of spot-checking the accounts of the concentration camps, and just before noon you told us that this article which I was reading to you from the Reich Budget Code applied to all checking.
How is it that it didn't fall to you to check the cash of these accounts? Just tell us who it was who did do that.
A. The cash was audited by the head of the administration of the concentration camp.
Q. And you audited the books of the administration. You told us that yesterday.
A. I audited the books of the garrison treasury.
Q. And you told us yesterday - if necessary, I will read it to you from the transcript - that you audited the accounts of the administration of the camp.
A. I audited only the accounting of the treasury. I had nothing to do with the administration because the administration consisted of three or four departments: the treasury department, the food department, the billeting department, and the clothing department.
It was my duty only in the treasury department to audit the bills and vouchers - not to audit the actual cash itself.
Q. Well, I am not going to argue with you about what you said yesterday. The record will speak for itself on that. Now let me ask you if you were ever given the job of checking on the black market in the concentration camps in connection with the PX for the inmates.
A. No.
Q. Were you ever given the job of checking on the black market which the camp commandants were operating, with selling items which were manufactured in the concentration camps?
A. No, that was not my task.
Q. You know who Conrad Morgen was, witness? Do you know that he was given the job of investigating corruption in the concentration camps?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know of a charge that he made against you that you were acting as Pohl's tool to cover up the black market activities in the concentration camps? Did you hear about that charge?
A. I know that document. Morgen's affidavit is a libelous statement. Never, at any time, did I have the task of checking on the PX cash boxes or the cash of the black market, or anything else outside the Reich treasury. That was up to the officials there. That was a task of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, but not of the auditing office or the preliminary auditing office. We did not have the authority even to audit their books. These were private funds of the troops.
Q. Witness, I don't think you have seen the affidavit of Morgen that I hold in my hand. But first let me ask you if you didn't hear of the charge by Morgen at the time during the war that you were acting as Pohl's agent to cover up black market activities. You didn't hear of that during the war?
A. No.
Q. I would like to read you just a sentence from Morgen's affidavit, which is Document NO-1907, and see if you can give us any details as to this. He says that "Vogt was the top chief of the Investigation Department of the WVHA and had charge of the examination of concentration camps. He worked with Pohl together under cover. I should also like to add that Vogt availed himself of his official position to obtain all possible personal advantages for himself. As an example, in the occupied territories he purchased huge quantities of goods, and then profited in illicit trade."
Do you know anything about that?
A. When I was abroad - which happened three times - never did I purchase goods in any amount. I was not in a position to do so because I did not have the foreign currency. I remember one occasion - I don't know whether it was in The Hague or somewhere - from the PX there, which was kept in The Hague for female assistant workers, underwear was sold. But I had no personal advantages from that. I personally bought abroad only such items which I could carry in my briefcase. I had no requirements of chat description.
MR. ROBBINS: May it please the Court, I should like to reserve Exhibit No. 554 for a later offer of Morgen's affidavit, NO-1907.
THE PRESIDENT: Is Morgen alive or dead?
MR. ROBBINS: He is alive, Your Honor. He is a witness, I think, today with the Dachau trial.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, it is true, isn't it, that the income from the deceased inmates in the concentration camps - that is, the inmates from it - the income from the Jewish and Polish inmates was turned over to Amtsgruppe A?
A. No.
Q. Where did it go?
A. Mr. Prosecutor, what income are you talking about?
Q. I am talking about the personal property, the valuables, cash, which belonged to the inmates, and which were taken from them either when they entered the concentration camp or when they died.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you see that isn't income, Mr. Robbins; that is why the witness was confused.
MR. ROBBINS: You are quite right.
A. The property of the inmates in concentration camps was, as far as I know, made part of the camp treasury -- the camp or inmates treasury was under the commandant; it had nothing to do with me.
Q. Well, your office audited these funds, didn't it?
A. No, not at any time.
Q. Well, do you have Document Book 5 in front of you?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you turn to page 168 in the German document book, NO-858PS, Exhibit 153, an page 161 of the English book? This is an order by Frank concerning the property of deceased prisoners and it StateS that in the case of Polish and Jewish prisoners this property is not to go to their relatives. Dated 7 January 1943. Do you have it?
A. Yes, I do.
Q Did you ever see this document in the course of you business?
A That is possible, but I cannot recall it.
Q The first paragraph tells us cash shall he deposited to the Account H-10 with the administrative offices of the concentration camps and shall be transferred at the end of each quarterly period, that is on January 10, April 10, July 10, and October 10, to Group D, Oraniensburg to Account No. 426. This account was audited by you.
A No, I do not know that account. Here we are concerned with property left behind. That sort of property of inmates had to be handed over to the heirs, according to the law and, if there were no heirs, it fell to the Reich, but that fact had nothing to do with my office. I had no connection with this inmate money at all. If the income reached the Reich at all, it was made part of the Reich income as such, but, speaking quite generally, I could not see that this was money which had been left behind by dead persons. No supervision over inmate property left behind was within my office. The other point you raised before -- that concerned the property of inmates after their arrival, which was taken away from them then. I had nothing to do with that. I had no connection whatever with the property of inmates. I was only concerned with Reich income.
Q So it is your position, is it, that this money which was entered in Account H-10 and finally reached Account NO-426, Amtsgruppe D, was never in any way checked by your office? You knew nothing about this account?
A I do not know the account nor do I know the name of the Account by heart. I did not audit the bills, so, therefore, if this was a Reich account or an account of the Office Group of the Office Treasury, I am unable to tell you, but as far as this property left behind by inmates is concerned, I had nothing to do with it, only if and when it reached the Reich Treasury.
Q Then did you have anything to do with it if and when it reached the Reich Treasury? I didn't ask you about the administration of the funds which denied.
I am just asking you about the auditing at any time.
AAll of the income of the Reich which was put down in books had to be audited by me, just as any other expenses were.
Q All right. I would like to ask you about another order by Frank, which is in Document Book XVIII. It is Exhibit 472. It's on page 108 of the German, page 85 of the English. This is Frank's order of the 26th of September, 1942, which deals with the distribution and the handling of cash and foreign exchange taken from the Jews in the Fast. There were six copies of the order made and the fourth copy is the one which appears in the document book. Your office received a copy of this order, did it not, Witness?
A Of the 26th of September, 1942?
Q Yes, Document NO 724.
A Yes, quite. That document was addressed to the leader of the garrison of Lublin. I did not have any knowledge of the order at the time.
Q When did you receive knowledge of it? A copy was sent to you, wasn't it -- sent to your office?
A When was it supposed to have reached my office? That does not become clear from this document.
Q I am asking you -- it is in September, 10942. A copy of this was sent to your office, wasn't not?
A No.
Q When did you first receive knowledge of the document?
A I saw this document here for the first time.
Q You mean that this document, NO-724, you didn't see before you came to the court here?
A No, I cannot recall it.
Q This document deals with the handling of the foreign exchange and the cash money of the German Reich Bank. It is the very same sort of of money that you dealt with a few months later in Lublin.
It is coming from the same place. You mean to say that you never saw a copy of this document.
A No, that document was not known to me, nor did I have the cash money of Lublin to administer. All I had to do was to have part of the fund which hadn't been handled yet which I found there, but I had nothing to do with the administration. I merely found that the money was still there. Any further handling was entirely up to the garrison administration of Lublin.
Q Will you turn a few pages to Document NO-061, which is the document you say in your affidavit that you had seen? Do you have that?
A Yes.
Q I ask you, Witness, to turn to the third page of the original there which deals with the valuables, paragraph 5.
A Yes.
Q Did you see while you were in Lublin any of the items which were referred to here, such as wrist watches, gold broaches, and so forth?
A I said before that when I was in Lublin I did not see such items with the exception of one load of jewelry. This document was not submitted to me. I deny that.
Q You don't know whether or not this list of valuables and jewels is the same list that you saw in the trunk in Lublin?
A Mr. Prosecutor, when I was in Lublin I did not see -
Q You can answer the question yes or no. Do you know whether this is the same item -
A It's not the same list.
Q You told us yesterday that your check in Lublin --- your inspection --- was not confined to the auditing of money, isn't that correct? You told us that you inspected machines and tools in the tool shop.
A Only that they existed on the basis of the bills which I saw.
Q Is this the first time you ever checked machines and tools?
A If any checking was done in the treasure and it became clear in doing so that valuable objects had been acquired, it was the duty of the auditor concerned to convince himself whether or not machines were actually there.
Q Now you told us yesterday that after you returned from Lublin you came to the conclusion that the property that you had seen in Lublin had come from Jews who had met a violent death, who had been killed. I ask you what caused you to come to this conclusion?
A I did not say that I knew they had come from Jews who had been killed. I was not in a position to assume that and that is what I said.
Q Witness, I am going to take just about two minutes to read to you your testimony yesterday. This is a question that Judge Musmanno put to you: "What conclusion did you come to at home when you were separated from this place here as to where this property originated?
Answer: 'Well, at the time I felt that those were things which probably were in connection with the action in Warsaw or with the destruction of the Ghettos.
Question: 'Did you know that Jews had been killed?
Answer: 'That was in the papers. Whatever was published in the papers was known to me.'"
A Yes, but whether these items which I saw came from that action I did not know, of course. I said that only because from the account I had seen in the papers it was possible that it was connected with the Warsaw action.
Q You were pretty sure that when you got back home and thought about it, as you say in your affidavit and this is a part of the affidavit which you didn't repudiate, that these things had come from dead Jews, weren't you?
A That is not quite true in this form. I stated expressly that I did not know that these came from killed Jews.
That there might have been items among them which came from Jews who had died is quite possible, but no one explained it to me. Nobody told me this money comes from Jews whom we have killed. First I found the money and I had to think about where it came from. I was told thereupon that in the internment camps Jews had arrived and things had been taken away from them there and I had to assume that that was correct. Any extermination action on the part of Globecnik was entirely unknown to me.
Q You don't deny today that you knew from the newspaper that Jews had been killed in the Warsaw Action? You knew that?
A Yes, I knew that.
Q And you knew that the valuables that you had seen and the money that you had audited came from a Warsaw Action. That is what you said yesterday,I am not asking you if the same items came from a particular deceased person?
A I had to assume it perhaps, but any certainty I did not have.
Q Then after that time you received an order by Pohl, which is contained in Document Book 18, dated the 9th of December, 1943 -- it is Exhibit 481. It is the last document is Book XVIII. NO-725. This order by Pohl was addressed to you?
A Yes, indeed.
Court No, II, Case No. 4.
Q You don't deny that you received this, do you?
A No, I don't deny that.
Q In the last paragraph it says, "Upon completion of the resettlement operation, the vouchers will have to be presented for auditing to the WVHA, Provision A IV." Still subsequent to that time, you wrote a letter that is in Document Book XIX. This is on the 15th of March 1944, several months after your return. It is Exhibit 496, on Page 110 of the German.
A Yes.
Q In this letter you make reference to A II/3, Reinhardt, and you say: "It is again requested to report here whether there occured in the offices of the respective administrative districts any receipts or expenditures for the evacuation of Jews and whether and where a settlement of these accounts was accomplished."
Now, witness, when after your return from Lublin you continued to receive correspondence about Action Reinhardt and you continued to take a part in this proceeding and to lend your support to it and your assistance to it, didn't you realize that you were making yourself an essential part of the murder of these millions of people? I ask you, is this the way you express your opposition to anti-Semitism? Is this the way you show your adherence to the principles of the Church that you told us about this morning?
A Mr. Prosecutor, this letter of 9 December 1943 is the consequence of a conference with the auditing court. It concerns pure auditing matters of the administration.
Q You didn't do anything at all but sit at your desk and make figures? But an accountant, a bookkeeper, can commit murder as well as a General in the SS.
THE PRESIDENT: It's hardly a question, Mr. Robbins. I think you are arguing to a witness instead of to the Court.
Q I ask you, Witness, what did you think this reference to Action Reinhardt in your letter referred to; what you think Reinhardt Court No. II, Case No. 4.consisted of at that time.
A Reinhardt--that at that time was well-known, that Action Reinhardt; but what Action Reinhardt was not known to me.
Q You said you asked Globecnik about it when you were in Lublin. Did you ask anybody else about it? About that time thousands of Jews had been killed. Didn't anybody tell you in more detail what it was about?
A No.
Q Tell us what you told the Ministerialrat Knebel, who was a representative of the auditing court. What did you tell him about all of this procedure? You mentioned that yesterday.
A I told Knebel that when I audited the treasury and the deposits I found money in foreign bank notes which had been made part of the income without previous permission; and I expressed my misgivings about the fact that this was not in accordance with treasury regulations and that also the transfer of confiscated items had not been done in accordance with orderly treasury regulations.
Q Witness, at this time you had already returned from Lublin and you had given this some thought and you had at least thought of the possibility that these valuables came from people who had been killed. Didn't you ever tell Frank or Knebel about this? Didn't you have any misgivings about these facts, as well as the fact that some technical treasury regulation hadn't been complied with?
AAll I had to do by order was to audit these things. When I returned home the only task I had was to see to it that all money had been made part of the books and would be booked properly in the accounts so that they would not reach somewhere where they shouldn't be. That was my task; and that I discussed with the officials of the treasury court. From that decree followed once more my question, which was not carried out, whether actually with these single individual SS and Police Leaders such items would not also have turned up. That was my task.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q So some technical defect in the law was cured; but didn't you ever tell Frank that you thought that these goods might have been coming from people who had been killed?
A No, I had no cause to do so. I did not know it.
EXAMINATION BY THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE PHILLIPS):
Q When did Frank send you to Lublin to make this investigation?
A That was the middle of June 1943.
Q When you got over there to Lublin, I believe you testified that this man Wippern was with you when you were making this check and this examination.
A Yes, quite.
Q How long was Wippern with you during this investigation?
A The whole examination lasted perhaps an hour until all the money had been counted.
Q Did Wippern tell you that he had made a report to the Reichsfuehrer SS giving him in detail the property that had been taken from the Jews up to February 3rd, 1943?
A No, that was not discussed at all, your Honor. I simply ordered that the cash--I made a note of the money on hand and handed over the actual auditing to my auditing official.
Q How much cash did you find there?
A I can no longer remember the figure; but as far as foreign currency is concerned, I estimate here without any definite knowledge whether it was a million or five hundred thousand, I do not know anymore.
Q Didn't you find 53,000,000 and some odd marks there?
A No. 53,000,000 marks--that had already been handed over, your Honor. 53,000,000 marks had been handed over already before 3 February 1943. I looked into the cash there in July 1943.
Q Wasn't it already there and you went down to check it? Wasn't that what you were there for, to check what he had on hand, the Court No. II, Case No. 4.cash on hand, 53,000,000 marks?