That was the reason why it was possible to classify it at a low degree, the risks had been lower.
Q Did you state that Mummenthey sometimes had conferences with inmates, and tried to assist them?
A Yes, when Mummenthey visited the plants he often talked with men here and there about whether there was anything he could do for them. When, for instance, he heard that they were short of clothing, he told the works managers to try to get some; the same thing applied to foods. He attempted frequently to get additional food, such as bread, potatoes, and flour, and even milk for the inmates who were doing the heavy work.
Q. Whatever the conditions were in the DEST industries we can conclude that Mummenthey was well informed about them, wasn't he, witness, because he made these inspection trips, and even talked to the inmates and he had a very sociological attitude towards it, is that true?
A Yes, of course, he himself informed himself about these, and tried to do what he could.
Q Now, witness, getting back to the employment of Jews, and your knowledge about such matters.
A Yes.
Q Do you want the Tribunal to believe that you knew nothing about the systematic program of Jewish persecution in Germany during the war?
A It was entirely unknown to me. All I know was that in the scheduled diamond cutting works there were Jews to be employed at first, but that they were not employed in the final event, otherwise, I know nothing about the employment of Jews by the different plants up till this time -
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. McHaney, ask him the question again. Mr. McHaney you let him get away from you with the answer.
BY MR. MC HANEY:
Q Witness, I say, did you know anything about the systematic program of Jewish persecution in Germany during the war?
A No, that was entirely unknown to me.
A. No, that was entirely unknown to me.
Q. Now, on this Herzogenbush diamond cutting operation they had some Jews cutting diamonds in the concentration camp of Herzogenbusch in Holland, didn't they, witness?
A. No, that wasn't done there. As I said before it was to be started. Germans who had suffered injuries in the War had to learn how to cut diamonds in order to learn the profession of diamond cutting but this never came about. They were never trained nor did they work as no raw material was available.
Q. Now, witness, we have a document in the record, NO-1278, Prosecution Exhibit 440, Book 16, page 60, which tells us that this diamond cutting plant in Herzogenbusch concentration camp was established in December 1942. In July 1943 Mummenthey and W-I were ordered to take it over, which they did.
A. No diamond cutting work was established. All that happened was that machines which were available to the camp administration of Herzogenbusch were to be put up to do work later on. But, when the invasion started the machines were taken from the camp to Bergen, and I was at the time by orders of Mummenthey, together with Sommer, ordered to go to inspect the work shops where the machines might be put up. As we had no concrete for the bases of these machines these thirty-eight cutting machines were not put up in the end. These cutting machines which wee in Herzogenbusch at the time were not the property of DEST.
Q. You have seen from this document, I imagine, and you very well know that the reason that operation in Herzogenbusch was stopped was because those Jews were deported on order of Himmler of 1944, you know that.
A. All I can tell you is the machines were taken from Herzogenbusch to Bergen and no work was done -- never -- because if you don't have raw material you can't do work.
Q. And they took the machines from Herzogenbusch to BergenBelsen because the Jews had been transported from Herzogenbusch and you were ordered to set up the machines in Bergen and get 60 Jews to run the machines and you couldn't do it, could you?
A. We didn't do any work, nor did we take the machines to Bergen. The camp took them with it to Bergen when it was evacuated.
Q. I suppose you can tell us what you thought the reason was for stopping the diamond cutting operation in Herzogenbusch? They had Jewish diamond cutters cutting the diamonds in Herzogenbusch. Why did they quit and transfer to Bergen unless those Jews were transported and killed?
A. We didn't quit. We didn't even start it.
Q. Your testimony is that they never cut any diamonds in Gerzogenbusch?
A. Yes. Neither in Herzogenbusch nor later in. Bergen-Belsen did we cut one diamond.
Q. I suppose you know nothing about the fact that 1000 Dutch Jews were sent to your quarry in Mauthausen and killed there through work. You know nothing about that?
A. No, know nothing about that.
Q. No further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Any further examination by defense counsel?
DR. FROESCHMANN FOR MUMMENTHEY:
Q. Witness, it becomes clear to me from the cross examination that I must ask you a few more questions. I shall start with the last question. It was alleged by the Prosecution and you were asked whether you knew that in Mathausen Dutch Jews were killed.
A. No, I did not know that.
Q. Just a moment, please. Did I understand you correctly that you told us this morning and this afternoon in the works of DEST nobody was being killed or worked to death because the DEST was interested only in people who were capable to work.
A. Yes, that is what I wanted to say.
Q. I asked you yesterday whether in Mathausen, apart from quarries of the DEST, there were other quarries. Is it correct that you said Yes to that yesterday?
A. In Flossenbuerg there was another quarry which did not belong to DEST. I did not say anything about Mauthausen. It is not known to me whether in the camp at Mauthausen there were such quarries.
Q. I don't mean whether there was one in the camp itself but whether in Mauthausen another quarry was in existence which did not belong to DEST.
A. Yes, two of a Vienna firm.
Q. Therefore, even if the statement is correct that has been put to you that Jews were killed in quarries in Mauthausen that does not mean necessarily that they were killed in quarries belonging to DEST.
A. I know nothing about that and I can say with certainty that nobody was killed deliberately in plants and works of DEST.
Q. It was my impression that the last but one question of the Prosecution you did not quite understand. The Prosecution asked you whether you knew anything of a systematic policy of exterminating of Jews in Germany during the last years of the War?
A. I never heard anything about that at all. It was for the first time when I was a prisoner in Dachau that I heard anything about the fact that in Auschwitz there was an extermination camp.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Mr. McHaney said "Did the witness know of the program of systematic persecution of the Jews" which is much broader than extermination and even of that the witness said he knew nothing about it. Your question does not correctly reflect the scheme of the question by the Prosecuting Attorney.
DR. FROESCHMANN: If your Honor pleases, my impression was that the Prosecution wanted to ask this quite generally whether he knew anything of this broad policy of extermination.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: You changed the wording. I put it down here in my notes - program of systematic persecution.
DR. FROESCHMANN: I may have been wrong and the question becomes superfulous now.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, on cross examination you frequently pointed out that the defendant Mummenthey investigated all complaints and made it possible, among other things, for a camp commandant to be dismissed in Flossenbuerg. That is correct, witness?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. The Prosecution did then put the question to you whether this would not show that Mummenthey was a highly influential man. My question to you is, was Mummenthey's work, which led for instance to the dismissal of the camp commandant of Flossenbuerg to be explained on his strong influence with Pohl or by the fact that he always insisted with Pohl that conditions should be improved and Pohl seemed inclined to comply with these suggestions?
A. Yes, this was an isolated instance. The case of Kunzler was so appalling that employees in the plant could no longer stand it and for that reason that made certain detailed information accessible to Mummenthey and on the basis of that Mummenthey succeeded in getting Pohl to have Kunnzler removed.
Q. Witness, it seems to me that you made one mistake concerning the question put to you by the Prosecution. Prosecution asked you whether the inmates working in DEST enterprises had been insured. And you answered in the negative. I should like to ask you, first, do you know all about the German legislature concerning accident insurance?
A. No, I don't, all I know is---
Q. Do you know that according to German Insurance laws concerning accidents it is always the plant which is insured which means that all persons who are working in that enterprise and the members of this enterprise are automatically insured, do you know that?
A. Yes, I know in a civilian enterprise it is the duty that every worker there must be insured. In the case of DEST it is different as civilian employees and inmates worked together at the same time.
Q. Now do you know whether inmates were excepted from the insurance?
A. I am unable to tell you that.
Q. That is what I wanted to know -- if you had sufficient legal knowledge to answer the question by the Prosecution just with No.
A. No, of course, I don't have sufficient knowledge.
Q. Therefore, you have to change your testimony to the effect that, in your opinion, the insurance was not extended to the inmates. But you must admit you do not have sufficient legal knowledge in order to judge any question.
A. Yes, that is quite true.
Q. Witness, on cross examination you also spoke about armaments. With what firms did DEST have any joint work in armaments?
A. With Messerschmitt in their enterprise in St. Georgen and Flossenbuerg.
Q. Do you know anything about the arrangements made between Messerschmitt and DEST concerning the production of these spare parts.
A. Messerschmitt supplied skilled workers, aircraft builders, engineers, who worked at Messerschmitt's expense. Some of the employees who had formerly worked with DEST were also made part of this operation. Messerschmitt supplied all the raw materials, such as aluminum and other materials needed for the production and in the plant the material was simply processed, put together, and the finished fuselage was sent on so that the engineer could complete it.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Froeschmann will you have considerable more questions?
DR. FROESCHMANN: If your Honor pleases, I think it will take me at least ten minutes.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we will have the recess now.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess for 15 minutes.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, we had just stopped with the relationship between the DEST and the Me. Now, I want to know who had the supervision over the inmates while they were making those armement parts?
A. Of course, the technicians and the engineers were there from Messerschmitt, because we didn't have any knowledge about the construction of airplanes and the development of airplane parts. We did not have the necessary background and only the technicians from the Messerschmitt A.G. were the only ones who could do that.
Q. Do you know anything in particular about the armament works in Mauthausen? What conditions prevailed there?
A. In Mauthausen there was a plant for the firm of Steyr with which we are not concerned at all. The DEST had only to put at the disposal of Steyr the existing halls were chiseling was being done to the Steyr works. That is where the Steyr people were carrying out their work. In this area of DEST there was also a plant for the manufacture of parts, fuselages, and wings. As of autumn 1943 or the spring of 1944 there was also an underground plant for the manufacture of airplane parts in St. Georgen, and small parts also were being manufactured for a Whermacht agency which were screws and so on. Nothing special.
Q. You couldn't tell us anything about the kind of work carried out?
A. No, I couldn't. All I can tell you is that a lot was welded and bolted, and also the various instruments were built in, which instruments were put at our disposal by Messerschmitt.
Q. The prosecution also put before you the death rate in concentration camps. Did the DEST have any knowledge of the death rate in the camps?
A. No, it didn't.
Q. Did monthly reports come to you from the individual plants about the work in those plants?
A. Yes.
Q. And those monthly reports, did they contain the death rate of the inmates who were working in the DEST?
A. No.
Q. One more question in this connection, witness. The prosecution when discussing the clothing of the inmates and the food for the inmates pointed out that the clothing, for instance, consisted of wooden shoes and that they had bad results on the inmates, particularly in the wearing of wooden shoes. Witness, I would like you to tell in a few brief terms the Tribunal if in Germany during the war years it was possible to cover the normal needs of a human being on the free resources of Germany?
A. Personally, I have three children and I was in a large city during the war. I can really tell you it was hardly possible for my wife to get the necessary shoes which we could get according to out ration coupons. Of course, in industrial enterprises where thousands and tens of thousands were used for work, it was the same way, exactly as it was at home in the family.
Q. Now, if the DEST, and by that I mean Mummenthey, tried to get additional clothing and additional food, and if Mummenthey was not in a position to do so, namely, to get that clothing to the inmates in addition to what they had, which would be a prerequisite during peacetime for civilian workers, then the reason for that was the result of his not being able to do so, not his not wanting to do so.
A. I would say it was the result of his not being able to do so. If there was no possibility to get the stuff, then, of course, we could not help. Our efforts were exhausted.
Q. Now, the last question which results from the cross examination today. The prosecution stated at the beginning and discussed the question of chief of office, which question was exhaustively discussed before. I want to ask you one question to clarify that. Was Mummenthey as the senior SS officer in a position to give you orders with reference to the management of your enterprise and by that I mean military, official orders?
A. No, not at all. That is not the way it is to be understood, either. Mummenthey had simply one rank higher than I was. Of course, it was my duty, as it used to be with the Wehrmacht before, to have the person who is lower in rank accept that orders as given by the person who is higher than he is.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Your Honor, I believe I have clarified all the questions in this connection, and I believe I have completed all my questions which resulted from the cross examination.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: Witness, you testified that you, prisoner of war for a period of approximately six months in an American military prison, were required to handle munitions in a munition dump. You don't wish to infer to this Tribunal that you did that during war times, do you?
A. No, it was after the capitulation, Your Honor, from the 20th of July 1945 to the 18th of February 1946, in Roth near Nuernberg. That was an ammunition dump.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: Just straightening up and piling up ammunition in an ammunition dump after the war was over?
A. Yes, indeed.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, I believe that my colleague, Dr. Hoffmann, would like to clarify a mistake which I couldn't clarify because I am not as good as he is in English. Would you mind if Herr Hoffmann would clarify this question instead of me.
DR. HOFFMANN: Your Honor, the question which was put by Mr. MacHaney namely, if the witness didn't know about the constant persecution of the Jews in Germany. Mr. McHaney said "persecution" which is correct. The word used was "Extermination", and I can imagine that the witness did not quite understand what was meant by "persecution". The mistake was done in the German translation, from English into German. Of course, those things were known, and I don't believe that the witness doesn't know.
It would perhaps be appropriate to come back to that question and ask the same question again.
THE PRESIDENT: Judge Musmanno made the distinction and tried to get the witness to answer as to persecution. Let's ask him again.
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Witness, did you know of the program of persecution of the Jews in Germany?
A. Of course, I did. It was one of the points of the program of the NSDAP, not only known to me but also to all the Germans, and to my belief, all the people of the entire civilized world.
Q. But you still say that you didn't know that it involved killing them?
A. No, it was simply an elimination of the Jews from the German economy, the commerce and other influential positions.
Q. Well, did you know that it involved expatriation, that is, moving them out of Germany?
A. Would you mind repeating the question.
Q. Well, did you know that it involved expatriation, that is, moving them out of Germany?
A. Yes, indeed, it was known to me.
Q. Did you see Jews being moved out of Germany yourself?
A. No I didn't.
Q. Did you see their shops being taken over and aryanized?
A. One could see that in Berlin and everywhere in large cities, when after 1939, all business enterprises were taken over which were lead by Jews. They were taken over by other people. That could be seen from the fact that the firm-plate was changed at the house.
Q. Did you see Jews being transported out of Germany in large group?
A. I don't get that. No, I didn't.
Q. Did you know about their synagogues being burned?
A. One could see that in Berlin.
Q. Anyone could see it in Berlin, is that right?
A. Of course.
Q. Did you know about their shops being destroyed, the windows broken and the goods taken out?
A. I used to live in Tempelhof in Berlin, and the day after the famous November 9, 1938, when I went to my office with the street car, I could see that from the moment when I got into the street car until I got to the office. I could see that the windows had been broken.
Q. And everybody else in Berlin that was on the street could see it?
A. Yes, indeed.
THE PRESIDENT: No further questions.
DR. FROESCHMANN (Counsel for defendant Mummenthey): I have no further questions either, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal may remove this witness. Do you have another witness ready, Dr. Froeschmann?
DR. FROESCHMANN: Yes, Your Honor, I do. I would appreciate it if the witness Helmut Bickel would be brought to the witness stand here. He was granted me by the Tribunal as a witness.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal will bring the witness Helmut Bickel to the witness stand.
(Witness excused)
(HELMUT BICKEL, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:)
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Please raise your right hand and repeat after me:
I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.
(Witness repeated the oath.)
JUDGE MUSMANNO: You may be seated.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, would you please state your full name, the place and date of birth, and your present address?
A. My name is Helmut Bickel, born on 20th of April 1906 in Munich. I am living in Hamburg-Bergedorf, Rathenaustrasse.
Q. What is your profession?
JUDGE PHILLIPS: I didn't get his name. What did you say his name was?
WITNESS: Helmut Bickel.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, you were an inmate in various concentration camps for a long time, weren't you? Would you please describe to the Tribunal very briefly what concentration camps you were in, within what periods of time, and what kind of work you did while you were in those camps?
A. Between 1935 and 1945 I was in various concentration camps and institutions. From 1939 to 1940 I was in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, and from 1940 to 1945 I was in the concentration camp Neuengamme, near Hamburg. During the time when I was in the concentration camp as an inmate I worked on all sorts of jobs which inmates had to do.
Between 1939 and 1940, while I was in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, I was working in the large brick factory there. From 1940 to 1945 I was in the concentration camp of Neuengamme, as stated before, and I worked there in the enterprises belonging to the DEST; that is in the Klinker works. These Klinker works were established as a plant in 1940. On the 15th of August 1940 the foundation stone was laid for the Klinker works, and from that date on I was in the construction management as an inmate. The construction itself had been concluded in 1942. Then I worked in the works office as an inmate in the newly established building. From the first day on - from 1940 on - I had to do the work in connection with commerce. All office work, with a very few exceptions, was done and carried out by the inmates.
Q. Did you, on the basis of that activity, see or gain any insight in the business matters that were going on in that factory, and did you also see anything about the general condition of the inmates being employed there?
A. Ever since the beginning I was in a position to see the internal things that led to the establishment of the factory, and I was also in a position to see the internal conditions which resulted after the establishment of the factory. This increased when I was called upon to do more important work of an internal nature. By this I could, for instance, gain an insight into the structure of the DEST, of the SS-WVHA, and I was also in a position to observe the individual personalities as far as they were in connection with the plant at Neuengamme--
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Dr. Froeschmann, will you tell us how he got into a concentration camp?
WITNESS: In 1935 I was arrested due to my activity as the director of a newspaper firm.
I had some difficulties with the Gestapo which particularly charged me with favoring Jews, and the main reason why I was committed to a concentration camp was that I had been the cause that the anti-Semitist Streicher, who was Germany's leading anti-Semitic, received a two-month sentence in jail.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, you were just speaking about the personalities which you met in the course of all those years, and particularly in Neuengamme later on. The Tribunal and myself are, in the first place, interested in the personality of the defendant Mummenthey. I would appreciate it if you would tell us your impressions and experiences, which you gained through your own activity, of the behavior of the defendant Mummenthey with reference to the inmate problem, generally speaking.
A. This chapter concerning Mummenthey's personality has to be explained in detail. I don't know if you are interested in knowing in how far we inmates could recognize the career of this man. The first contact I had with him was when an order came from Berlin which dealt with a quarrel between the commander Glockmann at the time and the commander of the concentration camp of Neuengamme -- who in the meantime has been hanged, whose name was Weiss -which had arisen and was to be settled.
This order came to my knowledge at a time when I didn't know too much about the individual happenings and I was surprised when I first found out about it. I intuitively felt that what we believed about those Masters of the SS was not really true. We were of the opinion that the SS was a very strong power, a power which was closed in itself and well-balanced.
In reality, however, the SS was nothing but a small group of powers and every one of those small powers thought it was the nucleus of the power itself. You could actually say that they were all competing against each other and fighting each other every way they could.
There was a man here who called himself a star - and his name was Himmler.
He had a lot of small stars which had no light themselves and which circled around that main star, Himmler. They were all endeavoring to find their own light and to be bright stars themselves. That, actually, was the secret and the problem in the SS: There was no SS state. It was nothing but a small group of sovereigns which were competing against themselves. And in this competition we inmates were in the middle. It was out of this competition that these mass murders developed.
In order to speak about Mummenthey now let me say that he was also a star, a small star. He was trying to succeed while running along his line within his small power. He was trying to successfully build bricks in order to, at the end of the year, be able to stand before the larger star - which was Pohl - and say:
"High Star - I mean Obergruppenfuehrer - this year I have been able to create so many thousands of millions of bricks. That is my war effort."
All the reports of the individual small stars concentrated in this bright, big star, Pohl, and then Pohl appeared before the sun - the sun being Himmler - and he said to him, "Reichsfuehrer, our success...so many millions of bricks, so many millions of cubic meters of granite."
But one had to keep a few secrets. One had to keep a few secrets because they didn't know up there that on the other side of this balance there were hundreds of thousands of comrades who had died.
Don't forget that these hundreds of thousands of comrades, all those dead people, had been killed by other stars, by other small stars. They had been killed by the concentration camp commanders. It was a parallel line running between one side, the administrations of the concentration camps, and the other side, the factories, the plants.
The concentration camp administration had power over the inmates. They had to deliver the inmates to the plants in the morning and pick them up again in the evening. The commandants did not permit any influencing of the way the lives of the inmates was being led. They were competing, actually, with the works managers, and they jealously watched over their competencies trying to safeguard them.
First, when the plants were established the situation was such: the task was to have those inmates who had been arrested in a real manner do some work. It was a small number relatively speaking. On the other hand, there was a lack of construction material. In order to be able to satisfy the construction programs as set by the mad man in Berlin it was therefore natural that these inmates were used for the manufacture of construction material. Now, at the beginning of all this there was a sound proportion. The number of the inmates could match with the amount necessary for the production of the construction material in small enterprises. However, these gentlemen endeavored to produce more and more. But, and this is the point, due to the bad conditions the number of the inmates which had really been arrested due to reasons which prevailed became smaller and smaller, and therefore you had a vacuum which had to be filled somehow, a vacuum between the figure of the inmates which existed and the number of the inmates necessary in order to increase the output.
The managements of the enterprises, of course, informed the people that the construction projects would necessitate so and so many more workers. Of course they did want to have mechanized enterprises and also partly employ civilians. On the other hand, again, lots of inmates were dying without their being able to do anything against it, so that the vacuum actually became bigger and bigger.
The result was that in the years before the war inmates were no longer arrested on real reasons but were arrested on fake reasons in order to fill that vacuum. The result was actions, so-called actions. A large number of inmates had not been arrested due to crimes, to individual crimes which they had committed - I am now speaking about the time prior to the beginning of the war but rather they had been arrested as a result of those actions. They had been seized, which is the term which was used by the Reich Security Main Office, and speaking from a human point of view they had been rounded up. I can recall one action, for instance, which took place in 1938. It was called the Action of the Anti-Social Elements. All the people who had been branded anti-social by certain circles had been rounded up in Germany and placed in concentration camps as persons who were able to work. And then you had later on actions against heavy criminals, etc., etc. All this had to be done in order to fill the vacuum, which vacuum only resulted from the competition between the individual groups and individuals.
These individuals who were holding the power did not have any influence on each other. The term "SS" distinguished itself by being the contrary of a honogenous entirety. Namely, it was not something that was closely connected. It was only thus that you had the camp commander on one side who had inmates maltreated if not killed - and they were not directly killed, they died as a result of the mistreatment and then, on the other hand, the powerful men of the enterprises had not enough workers. However, the thing resulted also in the interest of the person holding the power beyond the economic sector, namely, to preserve the inmate labor and to be able to use both their life and their power for themselves as laborers. And that is the explanation for the fact that Mummenthey cannot be put among those who are responsible for the murders in the concentration camps. In the first place, it might have been nothing but a business interest. In any case, the interest had to arise from his small circle of power to keep the inmates alive and in a position to do some work so that he at least would be able to receive some bricks, or in other factories he would be able to have some granite.
Q. Now, witness, you had the opportunity to speak to the defendant Mummenthey repeatedly and therefore you must have gained some sort of an insight into his entire ideas. You also spoke about the inmate problem with him, didn't you, personally? Even if you didn't exhaust the subject, maybe you spoke to him once in a while. I think it important to actually find out what impression you gained on the basis of these discussions of Mummenthey and his actions.
A. Mummenthey was absolutely friendly towards the inmates. This friendliness towards the inmates might be based on a business interest, to begin with, but I do remember conversations which Mummenthey condescended to have with me on various things -- after all, he was a higher SS leader and I was nothing but a small little inmate. From these conversations I did gain the impression that this man was a wise crow. And as a white crow can be found among the black ones very seldom, Mummenthey was one of those white crows within the SS, which consisted of black crows mostly.
It is even possible that he had some sociologic interests too some time. In a conversation which he had with me during the works managers' conference which took place in 1942 at Neuengamme, he spoke of food and the allocation of billets, etc. of an inmate as an individual. Whereupon I told him that the most important thing for us in order to carry out a certain amount of work was to give us exactly what the lowest criminal needed, the pickpockets or the burglars, that is, we wanted to know when our captivity would be over, and secondly we wanted to be able to know that we would live. Whereupon there was a helpless gesture which was such that I could understand that he was sorry that he had no influence whatsoever in that field. I made a few more suggestions thereupon concerning some other matter and Mummenthey told me, "Yes, we will take care of that." The explanation was so lax that I thought, well now, you have been told off, and I was really surprised that two weeks later I understood from a letter which had been sent to the works management that Mummenthey had actually followed my suggestion.
The reason was that he was a very exacting man, that he worked quite a lot and did not leave any things undealt with, and that he tried very hard to do things, but apparently he didn't have too much authority in order to be able to do more and induce a fundamental change in Gluecks' group. That group was the one that was actually in charge of our life, namely, Glueck's group, and that was the group of those concentration camp commanders who were in charge of us and who would not listen either to works managers or Amtschefs.
The commander of Neuengamme looked upon the works manager as a subordinate of his who was not worth a thing, and he also regarded the Amtschef, Mummenthey, as an officer and comrade, who was an officer and who wasn't worth too much.
At the same time, in order to illuminate the whole thing for Mummenthey, that even the Main Office Chief was shown Spanish castles by the commanders, which Spanish castles had been built in such a manner that we inmates naturally could only look upon them and be surprised at the boldness with which a small commander was gyping the others by telling them a bunch of lies.
Q. How was it, witness, particularly with Mummenthey, particularly with reference to the relationship between Works Manager Kahn and the commander there? Was the relationship approximately the same there?
A. The relationship there was as bad as it could be. The commander up to 1942 was an indifferent murderer. He didn't care too much. As of 1942 he had become a brutal killer, brutal murderer. The works manager was a diplomat, and he happened to be quite clever and he had a hard time with those commanders. I can tell you with reference to my own experience that I, as the competent inmate from the works management, was hanged up by the commander for a small trouble which I had with him for three hours and a half. He had my hands tied with chains behind my back and he had me hanged up there as if I was just a piece of ham that was being hanged up in order to have it smoke treated.