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.
That was the normal way in which trouble was being dealt with between the two people who were competent. The inmate was in the middle and, of course, the inmate was the one that was to take the blame. The same as it applied in this small example as I told you now applied to the large examples.
Q. Were you in a position to experience that this struggle between the interest of the concentration camp management and the work management was a constant and exhausting struggle, both for Mummenthey and the work management?
A. It was a constant struggle. It was a latent and also an open struggle. That was the reason why Neuengamme was relatively speaking more advantageous for the inmates, because the works management was represented by a man who was a diplomat and quite clever. I am convinced and I know that struggle also took place in other enterprises and other camps, but only it did not develop as advantageously as it did in our camp, namely, because the work managers there were not so clever. Let me explain the whole thing by an example. From 1941 to 1942 we had an epidemic which resulted in a quarantine. The plant stopped working. After the quarantine was over, the living conditions became so horrible that I cannot possibly describe them here. There was hardly any food, nor was there hardly any clothing. The works manager, when these inmates were brought to work in the morning, saw that they could not possibly do any work. He immediately contacted Berlin, and I'll have to admit here that Mummenthey also quite often in this connection had the interest to support Kahn. The result was that he tried all right to improve conditions, namely, to get some foodstuff, and also, at least, to permit the inmates to wear their own underwear, but by the time such success had been scored, that is, when Berlin had succeeded in getting something through, there was immediately hostility. Let me give you another example. In the month of October 1944 we secured for the inmates from the Klinker Works at the expense of the Klinker Works, with Mummenthey's permission, a truckload of potatoes. These potatoes were to be distributed exclusively to the inmates who were working in the Klinker Works from the concentration camp of Neuengamme. We had them boiled, and we had them distributed as additional food, when boiled. We did that through our inmate organization, knowing that we had to do that as secretly as possible. In spite of that the commander found out about it. I believe it was seven o'clock in the morning, shortly after work had begun, when he saw inmates who were chewing potatoes which they still had left over from the evening before.
That was an awful violation of law on the part of those inmates. The commander beat them with his own hand, and, of course, he found out where the potatoes came from, whereupon Kaliss was very much reproached and the remaining potatoes were confiscated for the "needy" SS, for the SS industry. The camp administration received the remaining potatoes. That is how the cooperation worked between the concentration camp and the factories.
Q. Apart from this one incident, which is rather striking, were the conditions of the inmates improved in any way with the help of Mummenthey?
A. Many things were tried by the works management to improve the conditions of the inmates. As I stated before, it was a business interest behind it. It is a fact that I cannot employ any slave if I starve them to death. I cannot receive any slave from a slave driver for slave work if I was not doing everything to help him, the slave, to do the work. Now whether it was purely business interest or not is not the question. The fact is, such did exist.
Q. Didn't you write out a report on one occasion, witness, concerning various bad conditions in the concentration camp at Neuengamme, and about the treatment and the food for the inmates? Didn't you sent that report to Berlin and, if you did, what was the result of that report?
A. I compiled these reports currently for Kahn, and I worked partly as a typist, and some of them I had to compile myself. I really don't know what report you refer to, defense counsel.
Q. It might have been a report of 1940 or 1941.
A. Reports which went to Berlin had a certain tendency to have this or that changed, and many suggestions were made and some suggestions were accepted at Berlin, so far as they could be accepted. I can recall one report which was written out in 1942, and it had far reaching results. Maybe you mean that one.
Q. It should be right around that time.
A. Around the end of that period of time, which I referred to before, the conditions were so strikingly bad that the work at the plant almost had to be ceased completely. The undescribable report sent to Berlin was probably submitted by Mummenthey to the defendant Pohl. I can recall that Pohl, thereupon, without informing us of his arrival, which he used to do, arrived unexpectedly, and he saw the conditions personally as they prevailed at the time. He drove into the plant yard, the works manager Kahn came running down, and also the commander had been informed in the meantime, whose name was Weiss. Pohl scolded the camp commandant in his own expressive way. I was standing a few meters behind Kahn in order to be able to take notes if it became necessary, and I can recall this whole incident as vividly as I do because it was surprising for me to see how an SS general would scold a concentration camp commander who had the rank of a colonel, and I had only seen this happen before when I was a kid, when I saw a teacher scold a small child in his school. His reproaches were approximately the following: negligence of the inmate working energy, and the statement that such negligence on his part is quite close to sabotage. Pohl left and he was very mad about it and meant to take steps. The commander apologized by saying he was not the man who was competent, but rather the Administration Manager, whose name was Barnewald, was responsible. Anyway, Pohl left, and the following day Barnewald came to see Kahn and he made a horrible scene. He told Kahn that this was a breach of comradeship and this was treason, etc. Kahn tried to evade, and Barnewald said that this bunch of people would have to pay for it anyway. He meant by that the inmates. He said it was silly to cause trouble to one of the comrades in order to help this bunch of people. By that he meant the inmates, of course. Barnewald was immediately afterwards transferred, and Weiss a short time later had to give up his job as commander of the concentration camp. The events that followed show how the SS was not a homogenous entirety at all: The commander Weiss was transferred as punishment to a place higher up, namely, he became the commander of a much larger camp, Dachau, and Barnewald, who was the administrative leader, was also transferred as a punishment and went also to a higher up position.
He received a special position in the administration of the SS Troop Administration, which was located in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, or actually was annexed to this one of Buchenwald. Now, if a homogeneous collaboration would be possible here, these two would not have been able to go higher up, after they had been transferred as punishment by one of the generals. The danger for us inmates was that the other concentration camp commanders and the administration leaders would see this example and realize how unimportant the influence of work management and the office chiefs were. They saw even though a man had made a mistake he was going higher up than he had been before.
THE PRESIDENT: We will continue tomorrow morning at 9:30.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess until 9:30 tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 1 August 1947 at 0930 hours.)
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Oswald Pohl, et al., defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 1 August 1947, 0945-1630, Justice Robert M. Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Take your seats, please.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal No. 2.
Military Tribunal No. 2 is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the court.
DR. GAWLIK (Counsel for the defendant Bobermin):
Your Honor, I would appreciate it if the Tribunal would issue a rule concerning the following case. The Tribunal granted me the witness Dr. Winkler. I intend to examine the witness here. However, I have no opportunity to see Winkler alone because a representative of the Prosecution will always be present when I interrogate him.
Dr. Winkler is here in jail, and I am of the opinion that if the witness is granted me, and the Prosecution does not intend to bring him here as a witness, that then I should have the right to speak to him alone, and prepare the examination.
MR. MC HANEY: If the Tribunal please, I do not know Dr. Winkler offhand. I don't think the Prosecution has any objection to Dr. Gawlik's speaking to him alone. However, I would like to have time to speak to Mr. Robbins at the intermission and see if there are any special circumstances in connection with Dr. Winkler's case which might require that we have a man present. Offhand I don't know of any, and offhand I have no objections. I would like to have the opportunity of consulting with Mr. Robbins.
THE PRESIDENT: Did you understand, Dr. Gawlik?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes, Your Honor. However, I would appreciate it if the decision could possibly be made today because Winkler was granted to me for tomorrow and if I can't speak to him tomorrow then I will probably have to apply for him on Monday, and it will be Wednesday or Thursday--and in the meantime, of course, my case will be on, because I Court No. II, Case No. 4.have to make the application 48 hours in advance in order to speak to him.
THE PRESIDENT: The decision will be made at eleven o'clock-between eleven and eleven-thirty at the recess-time today.
HELMUT BICKEL (Resumed) DIRECT EXAMINATION - Continued BY DR. FROESCHMANN (Counsel for the defendant Mummenthey):
Q Witness, first of all, let me remind you of the fact that you are still under oath. Witness, yesterday you gave us a very interesting picture of the stars of the SS with their smaller and larger stars--and at that moment I thought of one of the great words which one of the great poets wrote, which is:
"If the great persons on earth could only thunder like Jupiter, Then they would try to exceed God's power; Because even the tiniest, insignificant judge would try to outdo God's ways; and there would be nothing but thunder."
Did I understand you correctly, witness, approximately? Is the answer namely that everyone of those stars thought it had a great power in itself and always endeavored to become stronger and stronger and upwards? However, let's come back to reality and turn our faces to the inmates, to those inmates who had been in the concentration camps and who were working in the factories of the DEST.
In the course of this trial it has repeatedly been mentioned that these inmates received so-called "privileges," and even those privileges were taken advantage of by both the concentration camp managers and the works managers.
Are you in a position to tell the Tribunal what the whole idea was of these special privileges to the inmates--and particularly to tell if and in how far the defendant Mummenthey participated in this talk of the extent of privileges, and also of the individual powers which were struggling against each other in this connection?
A The privileges were nothing but a symptom for the relationship Court No. II, Case No. 4.between concentration camp administration and the works management.
From the very first day, when inmates were used for so-called productive work there was always the endeavor in those circles which were gaining their power and wanted to have more privileges and profit out of the inmate labor to first of all keep the inmates willing to work; and, secondly, in a somewhat good position to be able to work, strong enough to work.
On the other hand, in the concentration camps you had the endeavor with the administrations to do something on their own, they considered themselves very efficient if they exterminated the inmates by first torturing them.
It is from those two lines that you had the divergencies. These divergencies at the time of Heydrich who was the greatest murderer in history were on the side of the concentration administration. That was up to 1942. When, in 1942, Heydrich had been killed and Kaltenbrunner took his place, this line became less strong. It was no longer as strong as it was--not because Kaltenbrunner was more humane than Heydrich but rather because he didn't have that Nordic lust to murder that Heydrich did. Then we reached the moment when those circles which were interested in increasing the capacity or the power of the inmates, that they got a sort of boost in their own endeavor to reach more authority and more power. Exactly one day after the elimination of Heydrich a better situation resulted for us inmates.
There were privileges of all kinds. All these privileges had been suggested and initiated by the works management. The DEST Administration for those purposes had several works managers conferences. In 1942, for instance, amongst other conferences there was a conference in Neuengamme of all works management of the DEST. It was for this purpose that I had the big inmate office evacuated and had an office prepared for a conference, and I had a partition made of wood, where two inmates and myself wanted to control the conference. We wanted to see ourselves by this what the gentlemens' attitude and opinions were. Partly by stenographic notes we had gained knowledge of the conversation of the conference, and the result of this particular conference. Some of the works managers were skeptical in reference to the success of the intended privileges which should be granted the inmates. I shall have to stress here that those were simply suggestions or proposals which the works managers were to work out under the leadership of Mummenthey. According to the complicated structure of the SS Administration, it was not possible for them to make the decision themselves. Some of the works managers, for instance, said that with the means at their disposal they could not possibly increase the output on the part of the inmates, and, Mummenthey was intense in being against those ideas as pronounced by some of the works managers. His tendency was absolutely clear, and to get whatever privileges could be obtained for the inmates. I would like to interpolate what I had stressed yesterday, that his point of view was that of a business manager of the entire enterprise, that he did that out of a commercial interest. However, he did have an opportunity to make a few sociological remarks to support the question of privileges which showed that these remarks which he made in connection with commerce were actually the results of his own character. After a while the various privileges came through one after the other by the orders of the Main Office of Chief Pohl.
The concentration camps received those orders rather reluctantly. Sofar as things were concerned which could exclusively be dealt with by the works managements, of course, everything was carried out then. But if something was to be done where the assistance of the concentration camp administration would become necessary, then there were difficulties. Sofar as those privileges were privileges which came, or were to come exclusively from the concentration camp administration, then there was sabotage done. I remember some orders. For instance, towards the end of 1942, there was an order from Pohl that the inmates who were important as employees for the factory, namely, the work of whom was of special interest for the management, or for the plant, like special stokers, or special technicians, or particularly skilled laborers, or handcraft, that these inmates should be taken out of the concentration camp. They were to be taken out of the concentration camp, they were to work outside the camp, they were to be billeted out of the camp in a more human billet. They were to receive SS food, and, what is of interest, they were to receive hygienic care by the SS. By that it was admitted, of course, that the hygiene of the camp was not sufficient, otherwise, this could not be regarded as a special privilege. Apart from that those inmates were to receive something close to a salary up to two marks a day. I believe that only fifty pfennigs out of their two marks were to be deducted for food. Therefore, generally speaking, a special kind of inmates was planned who were to work more or less under normal workking conditions of a normal human being, and it would, of course, offer the opportunity that these inmates would be left alive. It was a so-called "could" order. Gluecks had granted that to Pohl, but it was not a "should" order. Take for example the Neuengamme concentration camp, Though the work management in Nuengamme had very frequently taken the matter up with the commander Pauli of Neuengamme, not one single inmate had received any privileges in this way, not one single inmate.