Q Did you give any orders in that respect which committed such agencies as were competent with feeding their inmates?
A No.
Q Particularly for additional rations did you not in that field issue any special orders?
A No, that never happened, and in accordance with what I said before this was quite impossible automatically.
Q Now, on several occasions it was said here that food rations for inmates were fixed by the Reich Ministry of Food in contact with the WVHA. Who, in your opinion, was the agency in the WVHA, who, concerning food supplies for inmates, would negotiate with the Reich Ministry of Food and make arrangements with it?
A I believe that statements of that sort were made duly through the ignorance of the witnesses concerned. All I can say in that respect is that my office had nothing to do with it. Who negotiated I an quite unable to say unless Burger of D-IV did so, but I an not sure whether this was so or not. I read somewhere food rations were fixed in negotiations between the Reich Ministry of Food and the Reich Ministry of Justice, and all I know is that rations were the same as they were for prisoners in justice prisons.
Q Witness, if B-1 had nothing to do with the supplying of food to concentration camp inmates, then you probably had no right nor authority to supervise concerning collection or preparation of food for concentration camp inmates?
A No. I said before that I did not even have that right or that authority as far as the troops were concerned. Even less did I have it, therefore, as far as concentration camp inmates were concerned, to whom I did not even supply the food.
Q Witness, one final question about this. Your office was dissolved later on in March of 1945, and it was decided that the Office B-1 would be transferred to the Wehrmacht. I should like to know whether at that time when the transfer was ordered concentration camps were mentioned at all.
A No, that was not the case. These tasks of supplying food did nob overlap at all. I seem to remember that in the final negotiations with the OKH a sentence was mentioned that the civilian sector should not be touched at all by these new regulations; and that, of course, included the supplying of concentration camps.
Q Witness, was your Office B-1 responsible for clothing?
A No, no. My office had the subtitle "Food Administration." Therefore, it was quite impossible for us to have anything to do with it. I knew about Office B-II quite generally that it had to take care of clothing. Whether my colleague Lechler manufactured the clothing in his enterprises under B-II or in other economic enterprises would have been entirely irrelevant to me at the time and of a purely academic nature. It hardly interested me at all at the time.
Q Office B-III looked after accommodation, didn't it? Did you know any more about that?
A No, As far as B-III was concerned, I knew even less. From my point of view it is true that as a troop official I assumed that it had to look after the troops only, and it was only here that I saw in detail that it was competent also for the concentration camp factor.
Q When you were in charge of B-I, October 1943, until the end of the war, were you very busy, or did the work become less and less as the war went on? Were you actually so overworked with your own office that you didn't have time to look into the affairs of other offices?
A The latter part of your sentence applies. We were more and more overburdened with work. SS divisions grew and became more and more plentiful; the personnel shortages became more and more acute; we had fewer people to do more work. I mentioned before the frequent air-raids. Even when we had the preliminary alerts, whoever knows these things knows what I mean, this meant that work was interrupted for several hours. Files and typewriters had to be taken downstairs to the cellar and then carried upstairs again. Work stopped and had to be done some other time. The result was, to put it drastically, our nose was never very far away from our desk.
Q Witness, you said that you did not have any normal official connections with concentration camps; that you supplied the concentration camp guards only as part of the other troops without these guards appearing as such, as far as you were concerned. Did your office not at least have a sort of friendly contact with its offices of the WVHA which would have enabled you to form a precise picture about the work done in every single other office of the WVHA?
A No. As far as my own Office Group B was concerned, for instance, my contact was vague. It isn't as though, in view of the incriminating statements, I make frantic efforts to deny any personal or official contacts. Nothing could be further from my mind. But it is surely obvious that between clothing, for instance, and feeding no direct points of contact exist. The only point in common was that our efforts served the troops. I knew of the other offices only so much as one could imagine anyway from their designations. For instance, of the legal office I knew that legal matters would be dealt with there, insurance policies, for instance, law suits, and so forth, but nothing else.
The same will apply vice versa. I did not have any deeper insight into their factual tasks. I knew this or that colleague, of of course, in a personal way; b ut we merely talked to each other as other normal people will - talked about our families or experiences which we had in common at the front, or anything else which might occur to us, because if you ran into one another casually, you did not immediately have to talk about official secrets.
Q You realize, of course, Witness, that this one-sidedness and ignorance concerning parallel fields of tasks in other offices are somewhat difficult to understand. One would assume that in an office a certain amount of friendship and comradely contact would exist which would lead you to discuss even factual matters with one another.
A I do not find that quite so surprising, Doctor, if you bear in mind the position and situation at the time. We did not work peacefully and calmly with ordinary office hours up to 5:00 in the afternoon; and as far as the ignorance concerning parallel fields is concerned, it is also possible to explain that quite simply by the fact that the WVHA, as far as its organization and extension is concerned, carried these things out only in war-time. Only a very few of the officials in the WVHA had a normal peace-time training behind them. The majority consisted of reserve officers who had been called up during the war and who were trained only in their special field of tasks and did not know anything beyond that. If, therefore, there was any contact with other offices with the WVHA, it was an occasional and casual one which should make it all the more understandable that definite official secrets were not communicated at all.
Q Is there not another point which you should explain? Do you know the top secret order number 1?
DR. PRIBILLA: Mr. President, may I add here that this secrecy order Number 1 has been submitted as evidence here, for instance in Document Book Georg Loerner, English and German page 41.
A Yes, of course, I knew that secrecy order. At that time it was fixed on all the walls, doors, and file cabinets of all the offices. You had to read that order whether you wanted to or not wherever you went.
Q Was this a theory or was that order strictly observed among the various offices in the WVHA?
A That order was followed most strictly; and although I personally did not wish to embarrass anybody by nutting superfluous questions to him to tell me about his official secrets, just as little would I allow myself to be questioned. I should even say that my references to that secrecy order would have been quite sufficient to shut up anybody who was becoming too curious. Also, I should emphasize that we, being in uniform and having certain ideas the observation of which was our duty, were even more committed and more isolated than any private person. A particularly striking example of this secrecy might perhaps be that it was only here in the files from the curriculae vitae of my colleagues that I learned that one of us, himself an office chief in 1944, was relieved of his office and put under guard, an event which in our comparatively small circle surely should have caused a stir, even if we did not know each other too well. But that was not the case. I heard that only here.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q That was an office chief of your rank in the WVHA?
A Yes. His office was outside. I believe he will probably mention it himself.
Q Was that co-defendant Klein?
A Yes. Yes.
Q Herr Tschentscher, if you did not discuss these things, was it not the case that regular official conferences in order to coordinate matters were held and that on these occasions you heard about business in other office groups?
A No. Other witnesses have confirmed this. And it should be really quite convincing. When we met or had we met, only one special topic could have been discussed. In some cases it might be fairly interesting and edifying for other colleagues, but we were not able to waste this time. In my own small circle of colleagues, in my own office, I frequently attempted to do this, for instance, when the mail was distributed in the morning, but even there I had this experience: two colleagues sat there and were bored because they had to be away from urgent daily tasks. Within the office group B, I can only recall two or three such conferences where the topic was the reform of Army Administration which was a matter of policy concerning several of us.
As far as other office groups were concerned, no conferences were held because there were no tasks which would have interested all of us.
Q How about joint conferences of people from the concentration camps? I was struck by the fact that the Commandant of the Concentration Camp Buchenwald says in an affidavit which is document NO-2327, Prosecution Exhibit 75, in Document Book 3, Page 109 of the English Text, that in Berlin there had been regular conferences of the Commandants. It mentioned a few names and he includes you. What is the explanation of that?
A I believe that question was dealt with and clarified by other witnesses. Pister must have made a mistake as far as I am Court No. II, Case No. 4.concerned, just as he made a mistake with others.
He probably saw me in the Officer's Mess of the WVHA the evening before. And I do not believe that when we ate in the Officer's Mess, I became so obvious that he should name me in the third place. Anyway, I never took part in the Commandants' Conferences, nor would I have had anything to do with it.
Q On the Organizational Chart, you are listed not only as Chief of Office B-1, but also as Deputy Chief of the Office Group B. In other words, Deputy of Georg Loerner. Is that correct?
A Yes. That is correct.
Q With what was that deputizing concerned? Was it concerned exclusively with Office Group B or any other functions of Loerner? You know that he was also Pohl's Deputy and also had connections with Office Group W?
A I can only confirm what Loerner said himself. Toward the end of 1943, I was appointed to deputize for him quite formally, only however, within Office Group B; but even that position as his deputy, did not result in my being informed about all important matters of the Office Group. The other Office Chiefs would not have stood for any interference in their fields on my part; nor did they report to me about their fields. For instance, when Loerner in the spring of 1944 was away, and I deputized for him for about four weeks; Pohl, as main office chief was present himself. Therefore, quite automatically, more important matters would have been decided on by him. I cannot recall having come across anything particularly important. Should Pohl not have been present at that time, only the next Senior Office Group Chief could have deputized for him, that is Kammler, or Fanslau. Not even Gluecks, for he was not in the building. He was in Oranienburg.
Q At any rate, it was never you. You were only an Office Chief?
A No.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Witness, you knew that some organization of the WVHA concerned itself with Concentration Camps?
A That part of the WVHA was concerned with concentration camps is really saying too much. I knew that concentration camps were under the WVHA in the person of Main Office Chief Pohl. I also knew that the inmates in Concentration Camps were used to do some work. I knew that as such, to use an example, as I knew that the Justice Administration was in charge of prisons, I was just as unable to judge whether persons in Justice Prisons had deserved their faith, as I was unable to do that as far as concentration camp inmates were concerned. Then war broke out. Six concentration camps existed and I was then abroad for a number of years. I did not observe, myself, how the camps extended and grew. I was unable to form a personal impression. When I returned home my interest was claimed by totally different matters. I had to get used to my new field of tasks; although I was not entirely unfamiliar with it, I had to learn new methods. The military situation became more and more complicated. Our activity toward the end of the war was almost an impediment from morning until evening. Therefore, I was quite unable to pay any attention to these things.
Q How far did you know concentration camps? Have you seen any?
A I went to concentration camps in a few cases. In the spring of 1941 my troops and I were in the Dachau Camp, in that part of the Dachau Camp which was the troop training camp. On that occasion, I once took part in an inspection of the actual concentration camp; I should say, I could see whatever they showed us, of course. We saw, as far as I can remember, two barracks for inmates. They were extremely clean and quite worthy of being lived in by human beings. We were also shown the inmate's kitchen, the hospital, the dental station which was very much up-to-date. We were even told that it was better equipped than that which they had for the troops. And I could confirm that from my own observation later on. Then we saw the bakery shop and the carpenter shop. In all those workshops, one often could not have dif Court No. II, Case No. 4.ferentiated between inmates and civilian workers.
Q To interpolate here, Witness, that was in 1941?
A Yes, in 1941.
Q What sort of an inspection was that? Were you and your troops shown around?
A No. A few SS leaders took part in it, five or six perhaps, but I am not able to tell yon now who showed us around and who took part apart from me. It did not last much more than about an hour and a half.
Q And at that time, you were part of a troop unit which was housed and organized in the troop training camp of Dachau?
A Yes.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Did you later on.....
A Yes, in the Buchenwald Camp, towards the end of 1944, I had stored specially valuable food which was done because the front was being taken back and this special food we had to take back from the danger areas. We had nowhere to put it and I had heard that there was an empty hall at Buchenwald, which I used to store this food temporarily. When I passed through those parts on an official trip, I paid a visit - it was already winter time, it must have been about November 1944. I arrived late in the evening and I was walking around only in the neighborhood of the commandant's office. On the following morning I went to that hall, in my official car, and looked at the space for the food there, but I did not see very much of the actual camp. At some distance I saw some inmates march past and I saw some soldiers but anything special I did not notice. Above all, I saw nothing of atrocities or anything like that. Other camps or the interior of protective custody camps I never visited at all. Until the end of the war I did not even know that there was a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. I knew the names of these villages, on frequent occasions I heard that a big clothing warehouse was located there but any other conclusions I was not able to draw from that.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Weren't you supplying guards to these camps?
A Yes, I did mention that. Did you say supplied or provided the guards?
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Well, you sent guards there - you had charge of soldiers of the Waffen-SS who acted as guards in these camps?
A No, I only supplied them with food.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Yes. Well, you know that you were supplying so much food to so many guards at certain places. How could you then fail to know that there was a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen or anywhere else?
A I said before that the 20,000 men whom I supplied with food were distributed all over the Reich Area and certain units of about 200 Court No. II, Case No. 4.or 300 men went to the troop warehouse concerned.
That did not appear on my list particularly as the troop warehouse camps reported to us at the end of the month that, for instance, they would have supplied food for about 40,000 men and the report included the item what troop, for instance, Police Battalion 387, or Guard Unit, whatever designation it had, the strength of it - but one could not see from that what camp they were guarding; the village or location was not indicated; nor could one see anything particular from these reports, what outside camps there were, or what subsidiary camps.
JUDGE THOMS: A recess will be taken.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will be in recess for 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DR. MAYER (for the defendant Kiefer): Your Honor, I would like to make a request at this time. As Attorney Hoffmann has requested the Tribunal to postpone the case of the defendant Scheide for a short period of time, we must count on the fact that the defendant Kiefer will be called as a witness tomorrow. I therefore request that the defendant Kiefer be excused from the session this afternoon so as to enable me to talk to him.
THE PRESIDENT: The request is granted.
DR. MAYER: Thank you very much, Your Honor.
DIRECT EXAMINATION -- Continued DEFENDANT TSCHENTSCHER -- Resumed BY DR. PRIBILLA:Q.- Witness, you are an administrative officer, aren't you?
Who, in your opinion, was responsible when the food and clothing situation in a concentration camp was unsatisfactory?
A.- How the responsibility was divided in the concentration camp system and in particular camps I do not know either. According to the general rules, as I have stated before, that was the task of the concentration camp commandants. In this special case it was the task of the camp commander, and at the lower level it was the task of his administrative officer.
Q.- The bad conditions which prevailed in the concentration camp system about which many witnesses have testified here, in particular the death rate and the death charts --- I now want to ask you if you ever heard anything about these things officially or unofficially. That is to say, in particular about an unusually high death rate as a result of starvation, freezing or exhaustion?
A.- No, I never had the opportunity to hear about these things.
Q.- Would it have been within your field of task to obtain knowledge of these things and to correct bad conditions wherever they prevailed?
A.- No, I could only have had such knowledge if I had had the right to carry out the supervision. However, I did not have that right. I did not even have that right in other respects, as I have already testified.
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q.- Witness, you might easily learn about something without it being involved in your field of task.
A.- Yes, I have already said if I had been in direct contact, officially or unofficially, with concentration camps. However, I met these people so rarely and I had so little contact with them. I have already stated that Burger came to see me three or four times, and I shall in a few minutes refer to this case of Burger in detail. I shall refer to it later.
Q.- Well, you seem to be under the impression that unless you heard about something officially, you didn't know about it. How, I learn about things that have nothing to do with my office every day; nobody tells me about them officially, but still I learn about them. Now, the question is: Didn't you ever hear of the extermination in Auschwitz?
A.- No. Of Auschwitz in particular I heard only after I became a prisoner. I shall refer to that in a few minutes. I heard only once about bad conditions in the Camp Dora, which was a branch camp of Buchenwald. I shall soon describe that in detail.
BY DR. PRIBILLA:
Q.- My question to you, witness, was whether you had knowledge about any specific high death rate as a result of exhaustion, starvation or freezing in the concentration camps. I now ask you to give us your answer once more and not to limit it to if you heard officially about it. I want you to tell us whether you obtained any general knowledge of it.
A.- I have never heard anything about it, and I was unable to obtain such knowledge myself. I could have done it, but I would then have exceeded my authority.
That is to say, I would have had to go to a concentration camp with my car. I would have had to enter it, but I was not allowed to do that. The commander certainly would have made a complaint about me, and I probably would have been punished afterwards. The seclusion of the concentration camps did not attract my particular attention because I too forbade any unauthorized persons to enter my troop economic depots, which actually were harmless enough, because I did not want unauthorized persons going around there and drawing wrong conclusions from the fact that there were large stocks there.
Q Is it correct that a special permission was required whenever you wanted to enter a concentration camp?
A Yes, of course, I also had to have such a permission. I already mentioned before that during the tour at Dachau I had received a special invitation, and when later on I had to go to Dora - I shall speak about it later - I had a special order and the permission of Pohl.
During the war there were so many restricted areas which even high officers in uniform were not allowed to enter. Every sentry could prevent any persons from entering such an area. Even as an officer there were many things we could not do, so that this limitation with regard to the concentration camps did not surprise or astonish me at all.
Q During your activity in the WVHA did you overhear anything from members of the WVHA or did you receive reports from other persons which described to you clearly and in detail just what was going on in the concentration camps, quite generally speaking and regardless of who told you?
A No, that has never happened. I have repeatedly pointed out that we were kept increasingly busy as our tasks increased. Whenever we had some time off so that we really could have a meeting among comrades, then, of course, we talked to each other privately just like other people. In society, in general, it is an unwritten law that you don't always talk about professional matters. In Germany that is called only "to talk shop", just referring to professional matters, and we liked to get away from that, and we would talk about the most unimportant matters. He would talk about the movies, theater, about hunting trips, or whatever was of interest to us.
Q Witness, you yourself have stated that in one certain case you did obtain knowledge about conditions in a certain camp, and that in that case you also play a certain part in it. You have described to us just what your competence was that you had nothing to do with these things. However what was it that brought about this case, and what are the reasons for your discussing it here?
A In that case C only played a part by accident. At the time, as I have already stated, this was a so-called Mittelwork, which was also called Dora. At the time it was a branch camp of Buchenwald. Later on it became an independent camp. I would like to state in advance here that I myself in the pre-trial interrogation have mentioned this matter as proof of the fact that whenever we would find out something about bad conditions, even agencies which were not directly concerned would help, and if possible we would supply the concentration camps from the stocks of our troops. It was not thus that the Prosecution has reproached me with that case on the basis of any other evidence. I have the impression are now being understood to mean, or being interpreted to mean as if this voluntary assistance by sacrificing our stocks was an obligation on our part, that is to say, that we were obliged to take care, of the inmates constantly and permanently. However that is not true. The situation was as follows: At the beginning of October, I was transferred to the WVHA. At the time I considered it appropriate to pay to pay a short visit to the higher offices chiefs to introduce myself and to report to them. After approximately four weeks, it must have been early in November, 1943, I went to see Hammier. He was Chief of Amtsgruppe C for "Charlie". Kammler asked me about my previous assignment, and then he asked whether I know anything about clothing, billeting and feeding. I told him that this was or had been my special field of task as administrative officer. He then asked me whether I could help him out in one particular case. He had to establish a certain plant and difficulties had arisen there with regard to the supplies. He wanted to ask Pohl whether he would agree. Of course, I was prepared to work there. Pohl gave his agreement, and he ordered me to go to this place with Kammler and to see whether everything was going on all right, and to assist wherever it was possible for me to do so.
My participation did not arise from my official competence, but it arose from a personal and accidental conversation which I had with Kammler.
Q Did Kammler not request your assistance because he thought you were competent in this matter?
A No. That was Kammler his impulsive nature. He accidentally realized that he was confronted by an export in that field, and he assigned me to that task. He would have done the same thing with anybody else whom he possibly considered capable.
Q Where was this plant located where you want, and just how was it established?
A On the next morning after a conversation Kammler went to Nordhausen together with me. In that locality near Nordhausen a place by the name of Niedersachswerffen there were caves which already existed in former times. These caves were being extended at that period of time, and armament production works were to be installed there. As the Allied air attacks increased in intensity and frequency. I took it from the conversation that new weapons were to no produced there, and later on I heard that the so-called "V" weapons were being produced. The project was carried out under certain other names, but that probably was for security reasons. The work there at Niedersachswerffen must have begun at the end of August or early in November, 1943.
Q Who showed you the camp and whom did you negotiate with there?
A I was accompanied by Kammler. He showed me around. Two construction places were visited. The first one may have been the plant which was formerly called Laura. This designation has repeatedly appeared in the various trials. The second plant was Dora. First of all we inspected the construction area which was very large. Two big tunnels had been built into the mountain. Each one of them was approximately three kilometers long, and from these main tunnels big shafts went two ways into the mountain forming a criss-cross pattern. One needed one hour to walk through the area.
In these tunnels there were also railway tracks, while in the side shafts smaller tracks had been installed. I have seen in the files now that the prisoners had been driven or pushed around these tracks of fifty kilometers.
It was not so that this was just one stretch which was fifty kilometers long, but if you totaled the main and side line into one line it may have amounted to approximately fifty kilometers.
During this inspection and this negotiation later on the Commander of Buchenwald, Pistor was also present. Then the Commander of Dora, Sturmbannfuehrer Foerschner, was also there. I believe that Barnewald, the administrative officer, came a little later. Then the chief physician of Buchenwald, Dr. Schiedlausky, must also have been there. I cannot remember his presence any more, but Schiedlausky has now stated in an affidavit that he saw me on that occasion.
Later on I attended the conferences, and I heard Kammler had reproached the came administration because of the bad supply system. The camp administration on its part excused itself by saying that its supplies had beed hampered through air attacks, since railroad tracks had been destroyed and since transport had been altered.
Q What bad conditions were you able to observe there in detail?
A First of all I was able to see that the clothing there was insufficient, especially since it had become rather cold at the end of October. Warm woolen clothes for the inmates were lacking in particular.
The billeting of the inmates also was insufficient. Barracks had been established for that purpose in the open. However, they were insufficient Only a small number of inmates could live in these barracks. The remainder of the inmates, approximately fifteen hundred to two thousand of them had temporarily been housed in the shafts, of course, were very large. They were eight to twelve meters high in my estimation. However, the air was very bad in there because no ventilation system had been installed. The inmates there slept in bunks, four on top of each other, and there were not sufficient bed covers. Some blankets were there, but not a sufficient number.
The light system there was extremely bad, and these people in that bad light looted specially gray, dust from the stones severed their faces and they made a very bad impression for a sight.
I also believe that the food in itself also was insufficient. Under normal conditions improbably would have been sufficient. However, it was not sufficient since the inmates had to do a lot of work.
Medical care also was insufficient. As far as I was able to observe at the time, this rather big camp did not have its own physician. The medical personnel there consisted of inmates, and they were only medical assistants. The story went around at the time that the number of people who reported for sick call every morning was rather high. I know that on this day the people on sick call amounted to about forty. Cases of death did not occur at the beginning. However, later on I heard that inmates had died, probably as a result of exhaustion and also as a result of colds.
I must say that I did not need any confirmation because just when I saw the people it was rather unnerving; and one could count on the fact that when an epidemic occurred the inmates did not any longer have any physical resistance and one could predict that a catastrophe might occur in that field. I only had one thought, to help them as quickly and to as large an extent as possible so that these things would not happen.
Kammler himself at the time said that he wanted to have the prisoners work in three shifts. Thus the prisoners were to work for eight hours. Then they were to sleep for eight hours. For an additional eight hours they were to stay in the barracks in the open air. The barracks had already been completed in part. However, the inside facilities had not yet been finished. During the daytime these barracks could be used as a temporary shelter. That is what Kammler told me at the time.
On the following morning we again made a short inspection. On this occasion we saw only the confirmation of what we had seen the day before. There I also saw the barracks which were being built. I saw that the water pipes (plumbing) had been installed and it had almost been completed. Kitchen facilities were being constructed as well as washing and shower facilities. A so-called delousing plant had also been established, and everything could have been sufficient for these three thousand prisoners.