Do you know anything about that?
A. When I was abroad - which happened three times - never did I purchase goods in any amount. I was not in a position to do so because I did not have the foreign currency. I remember one occasion - I don't know whether it was in The Hague or somewhere - from the PX there, which was kept in The Hague for female assistant workers, underwear was sold. But I had no personal advantages from that. I personally bought abroad only such items which I could carry in my briefcase. I had no requirements of chat description.
MR. ROBBINS: May it please the Court, I should like to reserve Exhibit No. 554 for a later offer of Morgen's affidavit, NO-1907.
THE PRESIDENT: Is Morgen alive or dead?
MR. ROBBINS: He is alive, Your Honor. He is a witness, I think, today with the Dachau trial.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, it is true, isn't it, that the income from the deceased inmates in the concentration camps - that is, the inmates from it - the income from the Jewish and Polish inmates was turned over to Amtsgruppe A?
A. No.
Q. Where did it go?
A. Mr. Prosecutor, what income are you talking about?
Q. I am talking about the personal property, the valuables, cash, which belonged to the inmates, and which were taken from them either when they entered the concentration camp or when they died.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you see that isn't income, Mr. Robbins; that is why the witness was confused.
MR. ROBBINS: You are quite right.
A. The property of the inmates in concentration camps was, as far as I know, made part of the camp treasury -- the camp or inmates treasury was under the commandant; it had nothing to do with me.
Q. Well, your office audited these funds, didn't it?
A. No, not at any time.
Q. Well, do you have Document Book 5 in front of you?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you turn to page 168 in the German document book, NO-858PS, Exhibit 153, an page 161 of the English book? This is an order by Frank concerning the property of deceased prisoners and it StateS that in the case of Polish and Jewish prisoners this property is not to go to their relatives. Dated 7 January 1943. Do you have it?
A. Yes, I do.
Q Did you ever see this document in the course of you business?
A That is possible, but I cannot recall it.
Q The first paragraph tells us cash shall he deposited to the Account H-10 with the administrative offices of the concentration camps and shall be transferred at the end of each quarterly period, that is on January 10, April 10, July 10, and October 10, to Group D, Oraniensburg to Account No. 426. This account was audited by you.
A No, I do not know that account. Here we are concerned with property left behind. That sort of property of inmates had to be handed over to the heirs, according to the law and, if there were no heirs, it fell to the Reich, but that fact had nothing to do with my office. I had no connection with this inmate money at all. If the income reached the Reich at all, it was made part of the Reich income as such, but, speaking quite generally, I could not see that this was money which had been left behind by dead persons. No supervision over inmate property left behind was within my office. The other point you raised before -- that concerned the property of inmates after their arrival, which was taken away from them then. I had nothing to do with that. I had no connection whatever with the property of inmates. I was only concerned with Reich income.
Q So it is your position, is it, that this money which was entered in Account H-10 and finally reached Account NO-426, Amtsgruppe D, was never in any way checked by your office? You knew nothing about this account?
A I do not know the account nor do I know the name of the Account by heart. I did not audit the bills, so, therefore, if this was a Reich account or an account of the Office Group of the Office Treasury, I am unable to tell you, but as far as this property left behind by inmates is concerned, I had nothing to do with it, only if and when it reached the Reich Treasury.
Q Then did you have anything to do with it if and when it reached the Reich Treasury? I didn't ask you about the administration of the funds which denied.
I am just asking you about the auditing at any time.
AAll of the income of the Reich which was put down in books had to be audited by me, just as any other expenses were.
Q All right. I would like to ask you about another order by Frank, which is in Document Book XVIII. It is Exhibit 472. It's on page 108 of the German, page 85 of the English. This is Frank's order of the 26th of September, 1942, which deals with the distribution and the handling of cash and foreign exchange taken from the Jews in the Fast. There were six copies of the order made and the fourth copy is the one which appears in the document book. Your office received a copy of this order, did it not, Witness?
A Of the 26th of September, 1942?
Q Yes, Document NO 724.
A Yes, quite. That document was addressed to the leader of the garrison of Lublin. I did not have any knowledge of the order at the time.
Q When did you receive knowledge of it? A copy was sent to you, wasn't it -- sent to your office?
A When was it supposed to have reached my office? That does not become clear from this document.
Q I am asking you -- it is in September, 10942. A copy of this was sent to your office, wasn't not?
A No.
Q When did you first receive knowledge of the document?
A I saw this document here for the first time.
Q You mean that this document, NO-724, you didn't see before you came to the court here?
A No, I cannot recall it.
Q This document deals with the handling of the foreign exchange and the cash money of the German Reich Bank. It is the very same sort of of money that you dealt with a few months later in Lublin.
It is coming from the same place. You mean to say that you never saw a copy of this document.
A No, that document was not known to me, nor did I have the cash money of Lublin to administer. All I had to do was to have part of the fund which hadn't been handled yet which I found there, but I had nothing to do with the administration. I merely found that the money was still there. Any further handling was entirely up to the garrison administration of Lublin.
Q Will you turn a few pages to Document NO-061, which is the document you say in your affidavit that you had seen? Do you have that?
A Yes.
Q I ask you, Witness, to turn to the third page of the original there which deals with the valuables, paragraph 5.
A Yes.
Q Did you see while you were in Lublin any of the items which were referred to here, such as wrist watches, gold broaches, and so forth?
A I said before that when I was in Lublin I did not see such items with the exception of one load of jewelry. This document was not submitted to me. I deny that.
Q You don't know whether or not this list of valuables and jewels is the same list that you saw in the trunk in Lublin?
A Mr. Prosecutor, when I was in Lublin I did not see -
Q You can answer the question yes or no. Do you know whether this is the same item -
A It's not the same list.
Q You told us yesterday that your check in Lublin --- your inspection --- was not confined to the auditing of money, isn't that correct? You told us that you inspected machines and tools in the tool shop.
A Only that they existed on the basis of the bills which I saw.
Q Is this the first time you ever checked machines and tools?
A If any checking was done in the treasure and it became clear in doing so that valuable objects had been acquired, it was the duty of the auditor concerned to convince himself whether or not machines were actually there.
Q Now you told us yesterday that after you returned from Lublin you came to the conclusion that the property that you had seen in Lublin had come from Jews who had met a violent death, who had been killed. I ask you what caused you to come to this conclusion?
A I did not say that I knew they had come from Jews who had been killed. I was not in a position to assume that and that is what I said.
Q Witness, I am going to take just about two minutes to read to you your testimony yesterday. This is a question that Judge Musmanno put to you: "What conclusion did you come to at home when you were separated from this place here as to where this property originated?
Answer: 'Well, at the time I felt that those were things which probably were in connection with the action in Warsaw or with the destruction of the Ghettos.
Question: 'Did you know that Jews had been killed?
Answer: 'That was in the papers. Whatever was published in the papers was known to me.'"
A Yes, but whether these items which I saw came from that action I did not know, of course. I said that only because from the account I had seen in the papers it was possible that it was connected with the Warsaw action.
Q You were pretty sure that when you got back home and thought about it, as you say in your affidavit and this is a part of the affidavit which you didn't repudiate, that these things had come from dead Jews, weren't you?
A That is not quite true in this form. I stated expressly that I did not know that these came from killed Jews.
That there might have been items among them which came from Jews who had died is quite possible, but no one explained it to me. Nobody told me this money comes from Jews whom we have killed. First I found the money and I had to think about where it came from. I was told thereupon that in the internment camps Jews had arrived and things had been taken away from them there and I had to assume that that was correct. Any extermination action on the part of Globecnik was entirely unknown to me.
Q You don't deny today that you knew from the newspaper that Jews had been killed in the Warsaw Action? You knew that?
A Yes, I knew that.
Q And you knew that the valuables that you had seen and the money that you had audited came from a Warsaw Action. That is what you said yesterday,I am not asking you if the same items came from a particular deceased person?
A I had to assume it perhaps, but any certainty I did not have.
Q Then after that time you received an order by Pohl, which is contained in Document Book 18, dated the 9th of December, 1943 -- it is Exhibit 481. It is the last document is Book XVIII. NO-725. This order by Pohl was addressed to you?
A Yes, indeed.
Court No, II, Case No. 4.
Q You don't deny that you received this, do you?
A No, I don't deny that.
Q In the last paragraph it says, "Upon completion of the resettlement operation, the vouchers will have to be presented for auditing to the WVHA, Provision A IV." Still subsequent to that time, you wrote a letter that is in Document Book XIX. This is on the 15th of March 1944, several months after your return. It is Exhibit 496, on Page 110 of the German.
A Yes.
Q In this letter you make reference to A II/3, Reinhardt, and you say: "It is again requested to report here whether there occured in the offices of the respective administrative districts any receipts or expenditures for the evacuation of Jews and whether and where a settlement of these accounts was accomplished."
Now, witness, when after your return from Lublin you continued to receive correspondence about Action Reinhardt and you continued to take a part in this proceeding and to lend your support to it and your assistance to it, didn't you realize that you were making yourself an essential part of the murder of these millions of people? I ask you, is this the way you express your opposition to anti-Semitism? Is this the way you show your adherence to the principles of the Church that you told us about this morning?
A Mr. Prosecutor, this letter of 9 December 1943 is the consequence of a conference with the auditing court. It concerns pure auditing matters of the administration.
Q You didn't do anything at all but sit at your desk and make figures? But an accountant, a bookkeeper, can commit murder as well as a General in the SS.
THE PRESIDENT: It's hardly a question, Mr. Robbins. I think you are arguing to a witness instead of to the Court.
Q I ask you, Witness, what did you think this reference to Action Reinhardt in your letter referred to; what you think Reinhardt Court No. II, Case No. 4.consisted of at that time.
A Reinhardt--that at that time was well-known, that Action Reinhardt; but what Action Reinhardt was not known to me.
Q You said you asked Globecnik about it when you were in Lublin. Did you ask anybody else about it? About that time thousands of Jews had been killed. Didn't anybody tell you in more detail what it was about?
A No.
Q Tell us what you told the Ministerialrat Knebel, who was a representative of the auditing court. What did you tell him about all of this procedure? You mentioned that yesterday.
A I told Knebel that when I audited the treasury and the deposits I found money in foreign bank notes which had been made part of the income without previous permission; and I expressed my misgivings about the fact that this was not in accordance with treasury regulations and that also the transfer of confiscated items had not been done in accordance with orderly treasury regulations.
Q Witness, at this time you had already returned from Lublin and you had given this some thought and you had at least thought of the possibility that these valuables came from people who had been killed. Didn't you ever tell Frank or Knebel about this? Didn't you have any misgivings about these facts, as well as the fact that some technical treasury regulation hadn't been complied with?
AAll I had to do by order was to audit these things. When I returned home the only task I had was to see to it that all money had been made part of the books and would be booked properly in the accounts so that they would not reach somewhere where they shouldn't be. That was my task; and that I discussed with the officials of the treasury court. From that decree followed once more my question, which was not carried out, whether actually with these single individual SS and Police Leaders such items would not also have turned up. That was my task.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q So some technical defect in the law was cured; but didn't you ever tell Frank that you thought that these goods might have been coming from people who had been killed?
A No, I had no cause to do so. I did not know it.
EXAMINATION BY THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE PHILLIPS):
Q When did Frank send you to Lublin to make this investigation?
A That was the middle of June 1943.
Q When you got over there to Lublin, I believe you testified that this man Wippern was with you when you were making this check and this examination.
A Yes, quite.
Q How long was Wippern with you during this investigation?
A The whole examination lasted perhaps an hour until all the money had been counted.
Q Did Wippern tell you that he had made a report to the Reichsfuehrer SS giving him in detail the property that had been taken from the Jews up to February 3rd, 1943?
A No, that was not discussed at all, your Honor. I simply ordered that the cash--I made a note of the money on hand and handed over the actual auditing to my auditing official.
Q How much cash did you find there?
A I can no longer remember the figure; but as far as foreign currency is concerned, I estimate here without any definite knowledge whether it was a million or five hundred thousand, I do not know anymore.
Q Didn't you find 53,000,000 and some odd marks there?
A No. 53,000,000 marks--that had already been handed over, your Honor. 53,000,000 marks had been handed over already before 3 February 1943. I looked into the cash there in July 1943.
Q Wasn't it already there and you went down to check it? Wasn't that what you were there for, to check what he had on hand, the Court No. II, Case No. 4.cash on hand, 53,000,000 marks?
A No, your Honor.
Q Well, his report shows that he had it on hand, doesn't he?
A These 53,000,000 were no longer in Lublin.
Q How about banknotes?
A The foreign currency was not left there either. That was new foreign currency which had meanwhile been delivered.
Q How many banknotes did you find there, approximately?
A Well, that is extremely difficult to say. It was a large parcel about this size, and most of it was Roumanian lei, but from all over the world also.
Q Did you find some American currency?
A Yes. Yes, also dollars, certainly.
Q Didn't your find some British pounds?
A Yes, certainly.
Q Didn't you find a large amount of French money?
A French money, yes; but I am unable to say very much about the details. Money was there from all over the world.
Q Didn't you even find some Cuban money there?
A I don't know anymore.
Q I'll ask you if you didn't find money from practically every known nation of the earth?
A From all over the world, your Honor, all countries.
Q I'll ask you further if you didn't find at the time you made this check as many as several thousand different kinds of items of personal property.
A No, the examination showed only the money. Other items were not present there. They were not in the treasury because the treas ury was in the official building of the garrison administration.
Q Didn't this man Wippern tell you then that this was stolen property?
A Wippern told me, "These are confiscated goods from confis Court No. II, Case No. 4.cations carried out by Police Leader Globocnik."
Q Didn't you then make up your mind that this was ill-gotten property and that after you had made your check you were so shocked until you almost ran away from there?
A Your Honor, for me as an official-
Q Just answer my question, please, and then you can make any explanation you desire.
A That is true, yes; but that it was stolen property was not known to me. I had to assume that it was confiscated goods which had been taken away from the new arrivals. To me as an official it was a confiscation which had already been carried out.
Q When you went over to that camp you saw practically all Jews there, didn't you?
A Well, I assumed that they were all Jews. I don't know who was locked up.
Q I'm talking about the ones that you saw.
A I only looked into the workshops where I saw people.
Q What about the ones that you saw in the workshops then?
A I assumed that they were all Jews, yes; but I'm not sure.
Q You knew they were foreign Jews didn't you?
A There were also German Jews there.
A The majority of them were foreign Jews?
A Yes, quite.
A You thought this property was taken away from them?
A Yes.
A That shocked you so until you hurriedly left there to get back?
A What shocked me, your Honor, was that so many people were interned there. That I saw for the first time.
Q The taking of the property didn't shock you?
A That was before when I counted the money, I saw that. Now I'm speaking only about the camps.
Q You asked this man Wippern what Action Reinhardt meant, didn't you, or what the letter "R" meant?
A The letter "R" stood for an account; and he didn't explain to me what it was about. He only said it was a cover-name for a secret matter.
Q Just answer my question. We can go along faster. I asked you, did you ask Wippern what the letter "R" meant? Did you ask him that or not?
A Yes.
Q All right, now, what did he say?
A "It is a cover-name for a secret matter."
Q That put you on guard right then that there was something wrong with it, didn't it?
A Yes, because why a cover-name.
A Yes, and why didn't you go back then and report it to Pohl, your superior of the main Office, and tell him that Frank had sent you over there on something you thought was crocked, and tell him that you wanted to know what it was? Why didn't you tell him that?
A My report to Pohl consisted of four or five points. I do not re member the details of the report, whether a statement on my part was made in that report.
I am no longer sure about that. I did not have an oral conversation with Pohl about this. I was not called to see Pohl.
Q Why didn't you report to Pohl that your immediate superior Frank had sent over to Lublin on a mission that you considered illegal and that is was covered up by a fictitious name Action R.? Why didn't you ask him about it?
A I reported that as far as the Department was concerned there was confiscated goods and books kept about it, under the name Account R.
Q That's all you did about it?
A Yes.
Q The reason you didn't do more about it was because you knew'all about it, didn't you?
A I knew nothing about that, Your Honor.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q Just one last question on this matter, Witness. You say in your affidavit that you saw this report NO-061, which shows that 100,000,000 Reich Marks had been confiscated. You say, " I first saw this document at the start of the auditing, and it states the value of 100,000,000 Reich Marks. I know that these goods were taken away from Jews." In addition to the other statements that you repudiated, when you were asked by judge Musmanno, did you wish to repudiate this today?
A That document 061 was not in my hands when I did my auditing. When I did my auditing I probably had a similar list in my hands of those funds which on the day of the auditing were actually there. It had the same form as NO-161.
Q And it had the same total, didn't it?
A No, not the same total. I cannot recall the total. 100,000,000 marks cannot have been there as according to Document 063. I believe the total funds amounted only to 85,000,000 marks through the period between April 1942 until December 1943.
Q Witness, you couldn't have been that mistaken. Why did you sign an affidavit in which you said that you knew that 100,000,000 Reich Marks were taken away from the Jews and that you had seen this document? You couldn't have been that mistaken.
A Mr. Prosecutor, 100,000,000 were not there as the total. Enclosure 2 of Document NO-063 shows that a total of 85,041,000 marks were there.
Q I'm not talking about 063; I'm talking about 061.
A 061 is about something which had already been delivered.
Q I'm not asking if you saw this money, I'm asking you if you didn't see the report about the 100,000,000 Reich Marks as you say you did in your affidavit.
A No, I did not see the report.
Q I have only one other question to you, Witness, and that is with regard to your conferences with other members of the Amtsgruppen. How often did you confer with Frank?
A When I was in Berlin the conferences with Frank took place only when I had to report to him about something connected with the auditing court. Regular conferences did not take place. When I was outside Berlin after June 1943 I had no conferences at all with him.
Q How often did you confer with Fanslau?
A Fanslau as Office Group Chief from the middle of 1941, after which date Knebel, I saw him and talked to him four or five times about personnel questions in all matters connected with my office or perhaps even an auditing affair.
Q Was that before he became chief or after?
AAfterwards.
Q How often did you confer with him before he became Chief of A?
A I had no conferences with Fanslau because I had no points of contact with him.
Q Did you ever have a conference with Melmer?
A Melmer, no.
Q Did you ever speak to him?
A No.
Q Did you know him, when you saw him?
A Yes.
Q But you never spoke to him?
A I talked to him privately when I ran into him, of course. He lived next door to me.
Q Did you ever had a business conference with him about anything to do with the WVHA? You never talked about the WVHA at all?
A No.
Q Did you ever have a conference with anyone in Amtsgruppe B?
A D?
Q B.
A Yes, I talked to Office Group Chief Loerner.
Q About what did you talk to him?
A That concerned the auditing in Paris on the basis of which the head of the agency there was arrested.
Q Is that the only conference you ever had with Georg, Loerner?
A Yes. I had no other point of contact with him.
Q Only one conference as long as you were in the WVHA with Georg Loerner?
A Yes.
Q Did you confer with anyone else in B?
A These conferences were not of an official character. All I can remember is a conference with Britzen when he was still there. That concerned only a similar matter connected with, I believe, the auditing or something.
Q. Did you ever confer with anyone in C?
A. NO.
Q. You never had a single conference with anyone in Amtsgruppe C?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever have a conference with anyone in Amtsgruppe D?
A. In Office Group D I had one conference with Gruppenfuehrer Gluecks. This was about a letter from the SS Court in Weimar in the Koch affair; and it concerned the embezzling of money from PX cash boxes. As I had nothing to do with these matters, on the occasion of a trip to Berlin I handed the letter to Gruppenfuehrer Gluecks in Oranienburg.
Q. This was a matter that was being investigated by Morgan, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. Why didn't you tell me that a while ago when I asked you if you know anything about the black market activities and the PX Morgen's investigation?
A. I did not deal with that matter myself, Mr. Prosecutor. As I was not competent, I handed it over to somebody else. I did not work on it.
Q. Didn't you have any other conferences with anyone in Amtsgruppe D?
A. No.
Q. You had only one conference, and that was with Gluecks, in the entire time you were there?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you ever confer with anyone in amtsgruppe W?
A. No.
MR. ROBBINS: I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Any further questions from defense counsel? After recess.
THE MARSHALL: The Tribunal is in recess for 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q. Witness, in the course of the cross examination by the Prosecution your political activity was discussed before you joined the SS and it was also mentioned then that you were active in the SA reserve. Can you tell us how you became a member of the SA reserve?
A. It was not a membership in the SA reserve. It wasn't as if I had been a member in the SA itself. In this state of affairs all those were used who were not members of the SA proper, or the SS, or of the party and it was the aim of the SA-reserve to organize the Expert Departmental chiefs as well as the Deputy Chief, the officials into contingents when any activities took place, We did not even have a uniform. It was a co-operative organization of the officials of the Party. It was first -
Q. If I understand you Correctly, witness, you went to the SA reserve without ever having applied to become a member?
A. Only through these cor-operative connections did we become members of the SA reserve.
Q. You spoke of co-operative membership, I understand that to mean that a co-operative membership in any institution can only take place when you have been admitted before to another organization; is that the case?
A. Yes, I was member of the German Civil Service as an official and as such I was a member of the Specialist Department. I should like to call that more of a union -- trade union.
Q. What year was that?
A. That was after the Hitler's seizure of power. I was used two or three times in blocking-off roads. Then I became ill and went to a hospital. I had never had any more service in the SA reserve because of illness. I was unable to do so.
Q. Did you ever call yourself a member of the SA?
A. No, I never called myself that. There was a difference between the SA and the SA-Reserve.
The SA performed military service; the SA Reserve blocked roads.
Q. In the cross examination mention was made of a political organization which called itself "Bavaria und Reich." Were you a member of that organization?
A. Yes.
Q. What year?
A. That was after the revolution. I think it must have been 1921. I believe it was 1921. It must have been at that time. I do not know exactly when we had to join. It was dissolved after a few years and unions were formed. One was called the Homeguard which was also a union of the Schutz und Trutzbund. The Union Bavaria und Reich was an active organization with monarchist tendencies. There were other unions, too. There was also the Voelkische' block, the national union which was formed under Oberregierumgsrat Puttman. There was a local group of the party which was formed by Gregor Stresser. There were so many parties one didn't know one's way around.
Q. And of what party were you a member?
A. I was a member of the Bund Bavaria and Reich only. We inspired the organization of the NSDAP, which was the Nationalist Program but that wasn't a political activity in that sense of the word. It was rather a measure against Communism, if I may say so.
Q. My question was, did this Union Bavaria and Reich have any political program?
A. No, it was a military organization. It was rather like the Homeguard. It was guarding one's own property and the property of the population.
Q. Does that statement apply or is it not correct if I say that this organization Bavaria and Reich had no program which could be compared with the later National Socialist Party program?
A. No, sir, not at all. It was of a Monarchist nature.
Q. Did I understand you correctly in the cross examination when you said that the Union Bavaria and Reich had been the predecessor of the National Socialist Party?
A. No; I would like to say this; it existed before Puttmann started the local Group and at that time it still existed with about ten men, next to the local group.
Q. During cross examination the question was asked whether you were a member of the General SS and on direct examination by me you answered "no" to the question. Do you want to change your answer?
A. No, it's correct. I never applied to become a member in the General SS. I have never had a membership card. For myself, I only was to become a member of the Special Task Group.
Q. Is it possible that at some time or other in writing your life history you said that you were a member of the General SS?
A. No, I did not say that. I did not call myself and did not consider myself a member.
Q. Furthermore, mention was made of whether it is correct that in February 1945 you were dismissed from the services of the SS. Is it correct that even before the capitulation you were dismissed from the service?
A. Yes. The dismissal in February was brought to the attention of the retirement authorities. I was removed from the pay roll. I was a state official and I had to be pensioned. I was pensioned and the retirement proceedings came before the actual pensioning.
Q. Who started the proceedings?
A. As far as I know -
Q. I would like to ask you make a pause before you answer so that the interpreter can follow.
A. I think by the Personnel Main Office because only that office could initiate the retirement of officers with my grade.
Q. And with regard to the beginning of your membership in the Waffen SS, what date was it when you joined the Waffen SS?
A. I took over a position provided by the budget on 1 April 1938.