DR. GAWLIK: Your Honor, I have no further questions. My document book has not been completely translated yet and I wish to reserve the right to submit the document book later on. Two witnesses were approved for me and I shall submit affidavits from them later. For the time being, I have finished my case for Dr. Volk.
THE PRESIDENT: Any re-recross examination?
MR. ROBBINS: None, Your Honor.
DR. HEIM (Attorney for Defendant Hohberg): Your Honor, I only have six questions -
THE PRESIDENT: You have six questions and six minutes.
DR. HEIM: No, Your Honor, I shall only take five minutes to do that.
BY DR. HEIM:
Q. The first three questions deal with Document No-4090. It is Exhibit 614. Witness -
A. I don't have the document. You will have to hand it to me.
Q. Witness, this morning Judge Phillips asked you whether you gave a copy of this document to Dr. Hohberg because Dr. Hohberg was the Chief of Staff W and you answered that question in the affirmative. In this connection, I would like to ask you, did you in general, pass on copies of all letters, even those which were sent out by your office, and you turned these letters over to Dr. Hohberg because, according to your testimony, he was the Chief of Staff W?
A. You must ask me in what year. I had various fields of work. In 1942, on the 24th of January, or the 23d of January, 1942, I was not yet Pohl's secretary. At that time I was still in Staff W with Dr. Hohberg. At that time Dr. Hohberg was my superior as far as the work was concerned and on these occasions I would submit my letters to him. Whether I submitted all letters to him, I don't know.
Q. Thank you, Witness, now I have a second question. Why didn't you state in your letter -- why did you not say Dr. Hohberg, Chief of Staff W, if Dr. Hohberg, according to your testimony was your superior as far as the work was concerned.
A. The letters which I submitted to Chief W, Oberfuehrer Baier, and there are many documents, I only wrote on them, "Oberfurhrer Baier," and since Dr. Hohberg had an academic grade, I put on Dr. Hohberg. Whenever mail was passed on, I did not write Chief of Staff W or Staff W.
DR. HEIM: Thank you. Your Honor, now my questions have come down to five. I only have three more questions now. Your Honors, please permit me to ask three more questions to the veracity of this witness, since my client, Dr. Hohberg has been incriminated by this witness.
Q. (By Dr. Heim) You stated in your direct examination and also in the cross-examination by the prosecution that you had been the business manager of only three companies; (1) The Public Utility Company at Dachau, the House and Real Estate, G.m.b.H., and (3), the Comradeship Settlement. Is that your testimony correct?
THE PRESIDENT: What was the last one, Dr. Heim?
DR. HEIM: Your Honor, I wanted permission to ask three questions.
THE PRESIDENT: No, what was the name of the third company. There was one at Dachau -
DR. HEIM: That was the Comradeship Settlement.
Q. (By Dr. Heim) Witness, I asked you, were you only the business manager in these three companies or did you hold that position in any other company?
A. If you put the question in this way: It is possible that in a single instance I hold that position elsewhere, but I can't recall that at the moment.
Q. Witness, I would like to refresh your memory. Witness, here we have two card index forms. Which is the DWB
DR. GAWLIK: Your Honor, I object to this question. This question is not relevant at all. It has no probative value, because the veracity of the witness cannot be upset here, because we have heard that the witness had so much work to do and that he acted as dummy for so many companies that even if perhaps Pohl in a formal sense had appointed him to some position or other, then this cannot effect the veracity of the witness in any way here.
The whole attack apparently only aims at incriminating the witness, and that certainly is not admissible. That also becomes evident from the way in which these questions are asked, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: What question is immaterial? He hasn't asked any question yet.
DR. GAWLIK: He asked the question whether the witness had only been business manager in the companies which he has mentioned.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but that question has been answered and now he is showing him a document. He hasn't asked him any other question. Go ahead, Dr. Heim.
BY DR. HEIM:
Q. Witness, here we have two card index files which Dr. Hohberg, it is mentioned in Exhibit No. 619, used in the DWB. In this connection I would like to ask you were you the business manager of the Research Institute for the German Publishing System (Forschungsgesellschaft fuer das Deutsche Buchwesen)?
A. I don't know that. In this connection I only want to say that this company never went into operation. However, I shall ask my defense counsel to look at the Trade Register in Berlin.
THE PRESIDENT: You don't know it. That's the answer. Next question.
Q. Witness, were you the business manager of the Lumbeck Company for the German Publishing System (Lumbeck Gesellschaft fuer das Deutsche Buchwesen)?
A. Yes. That is a subsidiary company. It never went into operation either. I don't know that.
Q. Witness, I asked you if you were the business manager.
A. I don't know that.
Q. Thank you, I have no further questions.
BY DR. GAWLIK:
Q. In this connection I have a couple more questions, Your Honor. Please describe to the Tribunal what sort of companies these were.
THE PRESIDENT: The answer that was given was favorable to you and you can't impeach it. He said he didn't know. No damage has been done and you have no need of impeaching the answer.
DR. HEIM: Thank you, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal will remove the witness permanently from the witness stand and the Tribunal will be in recess as usual.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess for fifteen minutes.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DR. FICHT: Dr. Ficht for the Defendant Klein.
May it please the Court, I would like to make a request to excuse the Defendant Klein from attending tomorrow's session so that he can prepare his defense.
THE PRESIDENT: Can you hear me? It is fading out.
DR. FICHT: I request that the Defendant Klein be excused from tomorrow's session so that he can prepare his defense.
THE PRESIDENT: At the request of his counsel, the Defendant Klein will be excused from attending tomorrow's session of court. The trial will proceed without him.
DR. GAWLIK: Dr. Gawlik for the Defendant Bobermin.
May it please the Court, I should like also to have the Defendant Bobermin excused from tomorrow's session in order to prepare his defense.
THE PRESIDENT: The Defendant Bobermin may also be excused for the same reason.
DR. FROESCHMANN: May it please the Court, may I draw your attention to the fact that I have requested a number of witnesses, but I have not yet heard what the Court's decision is. I cannot take any steps until I have heard the Court's decision. This is the Witness Dr. Winkler and a number of other witnesses.
THE PRESIDENT: The Court has already passed upon all applications for witnesses by the defense.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Thank you very much.
THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps you had better inquire at the Defense Information Center, because I have no applications that have not been passed upon. There is a witness on the stand. Whose witness is he?
DR. FROESCHMANN: Dr. Froeschmann for Mummenthey.
May it please the Court, the Marshal, in order not to waste the Court's time, has put the witness on the stand.
I first of all wanted to ash the Court to put the witness on the stand.
THE PRESIDENT: Is he your witness?
DR. FROESCHMANN: Yes, he is.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
DR. FROESCHMANN: May it please the Court, before the witness is sworn in I should like to make a brief statement.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me administer the oath to the witness and then he can sit down.
HIENZ GERHARD FRANZ SCHWARZ, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:
THE PRESIDENT: Raise your right hand. Repeat after me.
I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.
(The witness repeated the oath.)
THE PRESIDENT: Be seated please.
DR. FROESCHMANN: May it please the Tribunal, as counsel for the defendant Mummenthey, it is my task to give to the Court a clear picture of conditions in the enterprises of the DEST, about the way the Defendant Mummenthey managed them, on the limits of his responsibility, the allocation and the treatment of inmates, and Mummenthey's knowledge about these things, his attitude and the measures he took.
Apart from one enterprise, I have been supplied with affidavits by all plants of the work managers concerned, and also of outsiders, particularly by inmates themselves. They will give a comprehensive picture to the Court.
I regret that the two document books, although I have given them to the Translation Department on the 13th of July, have not yet been translated. This will, of course, raise considerable difficul ties for my defense.
I shall therefore be grateful if the Court could kindly support me by telling the Secretary-General that these translations should be speeded up and submitted to the Court. As witnesses I had called Schwarz and Blumberg who were employees of the DEST, as well as Mummenthey himself. I have also applied for Bickel of Hamburg-Neuengamme as a witness, although he has submitted an affidavit, but this does not contain all the knowledge, which this witness has quite generally, on inmates in German concentration camps and economic enterprises.
I am in agreement with the opinion expressed by the Presiding Judge this morning, that it is much more important to examine a wit ness than to hear an affidavit because it gives the Tribunal the possibility to ask for information on questions which are not contained in the affidavit, I should be grateful if I could have the Witness Bickel on the witness stand for direct examination, and I shall therefore forego the affidavit. After the Court has ruled about that, I should like to have Heinz Gerhard Schwarz on the witness stand.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, this is a striking example of why the Translation Division is unable to deliver your material on time. You have an affidavit from this witness, and in addition to that you are going to call him as a witness to the witness stand, is that true?
DR. FROESCHMANN: If Your Honors please, quite some time ago I was furnished with the affidavit by this witness, and only after I had read the affidavit I was in a position to inform myself on other questions on which the defendant will throw a light on condition in the DEST. Had I known that at the time I would, of course, not have had the affidavit translated by the translation department. I am extremely sorry to have given additional work to the Translation Department for once, but I was not in a position to know whether or not I could call the witness to Nurnberg.
Now the witness has turned up on his own initiative and has put himself at my disposal.
THE PRESIDENT: That explanation is quite sufficient, but I want to explain, and I think I sent in a notice to the Defense Information Center a few days ago, that if you propose to call a witness to the witness stand it is entirely unnecessary to also file an affidavit which says the same thing which the witness has said. It means more paper, more work for both counsel and the Tribunal. I understand the special circumstances in this particular case. All right, sir.
DR. FROESCHMANN: May I then start to examine this witness, Heinz Gerhard Franz Schwarz.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. FORESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, what is your first and second name?
A. Heinz Gerhard Franz Schwarz.
Q. Where were you born?
A. 12 March 1909 at Bad Liebenwerda, Saxony.
THE INTERPRETER: I am afraid, sir, there is no volume on the witness's mike. It is just being put right.
Q. (By Dr. Froeschmann) Witness, since when are you in custody?
A. Since 25 May, 1945.
Q. Is there a trial against you anywhere?
A. No.
Q. Have you been furnished with an indictment?
A. No.
Q. Will you please give the Court a brief description of your curriculum vitae?
A. After I left secondary school between 1923 and 1938, I worked with a large firm in Saxony as an industrial merchant.
In 1938 I applied for a position on the basis of a classified advertisement in the newspapers. I found out later that here I was dealing with the WVHA, as it was called later.
THE INTERPRETER: Will you please talk a little more slowly?
A. (Continued) In April 1938 I joined the German Earth & Stone Works, the DEST, as an industrial merchant. My first tasks were of a general commercial nature. Later on I became the manager of the sales department of the granite industry, and in the end, from 1941 on, I was in charge of the commercial department of the granite quarries, in particular the purchase and sale of contingents and transportation. I held that position until the surrender.
Q. Will you please tell the court what positions, important under commercial law, you held in DEST?
A. After 1938 and until 1939 I was in charge of the commercial department. Up to '42 I was prokurist, and from 1942 until the end, I was the third commercial manager.
Q. Who was manager of DEST at the same time with you?
A. Defendant Mumenthey and Schondorf.
Q. Did you manage Salpeter?
A. Of course, he was at that time and until '41 manager and office chief.
Q. When did Salpeter leave his position as manager of DEST, that is to say, to be more precise, when was he given leave to join the Army?
A. In 1941.
Q. What time of the year?
A. I think in the Spring.
Q. I believe you are wrong. I think it was only in the autumn. Is that possible?
A. Yes that is quite possible. I am not absolutely certain of the precise date, whether it was spring or autumn.
Q. Now, I first of all want to talk with you about the period of time when Mumenthey and Salpeter were co-managers. Did you have a chance during that period of time to form an impression of Mumenthey's activities?
A. Yes.
Q. What did Mumenthey do as compared to Salpeter's activities as a manager?
A. Mumenthey in the first period of time was Salpeter's right hand man, as you might call it. He did work for him, by his orders, and after 1941 he became the first manager of DEST.
Q. Who, apart from Mumenthey, was manager after the autumn of 1941?
A. After the autumn of '41?
Q. Yes, after Salpeter left, I mean?
A. At that time a man called Oberbeck, who had been working with Mumenthey, and he looked after the commercial side of the Brick Works.
Q. Was there not somebody else as a manager apart from Mumenthey since 1941?
A. Yes, Schondorf and myself.
Q. What were the tasks and how were they distributed between Mumenthey and your self and Schondorf as regards management?
A. Mumenthey was the firms first manager. He handled financial and economic matters, and he in some cases concluded contracts. Schondorf was a technician and was responsible for the Brick Works. Later on for the procellain factories in Allach and Bohemia. This was his sole responsibility. In that respect, he was not under Mumenthey. If any questions became acute, he was entitled to report to Pohl alone.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: I might have misunderstood the witness, but I understood the witness to say that after the autumn of 1941 when Salpeter went to the Army that Mumenthey became the manager. Well, now, is he describing some other manager subordinate to Mumenthey now or who had powers and duties on level with him?
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Witness, did you understand his Honor's question?
A. No.
Q. The Court has not formed a clear opinion as to whether Mumenthey since the autumn of 1941 was the sole manager or whether at his side and on the same level there were the other two managers whom you mentioned, yourself and Schondorf.
A. After 1941 Mumenthey was first managee, and I and Schondorf were at his side as co-managers.
Q. Please continue.
A. Schondorf was responsible in the technical sense for the Brick Works. Since June 1942 I became competent for the commercial direction of the granit Works. In particular, as I said before, when I described my development, selling, buying, transportation and contingents.
Q. Witness, since you had been with DEST every since 1938 surely you will be in a position to tell the court briefly how Salpeter, as manager, managed the firm at the time. What was his aim as the manager?
A. Under Arenz and Salpeter, DEST -- if I may put it this way -- was a soap bubble. By that I mean a building which was infalted and later on those two saw that. As from 40 and '41, people started to decentralize the plants. I remember that in '39 or '40 in the Main Administration there were about 140 employees, which was unlike the end when there were only 20 or 10 men and 10 women. The plants were given the order to reorganize themselves completely, to become independent. They were allowed to handle independently any matters pertaining to buying and selling. In Berlin, that is to say, the Main Administration of the firm, concerned itself only during the war when difficulties arose, supply questions and so forth.
Q. Witness, do you know that there were between Salpeter and the defendant Mumenthey strong conflicts because of the centralization which you mentioned of the economic power in Berlin?
A. Yes, of course.
Q. Please wait a moment with you answer until I finish my question.
Is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. What were Mumenthey's endeavors in 1940 and 1941 as far as Salpeter was concerned?
A. Mumenthey took the standpoint that it was entirely wrong to have this machine in Berlin and direct plants from there which you couldn't direct from Berlin. He therefore endeavored to have the works independent and give them more power.
Q. Was this to reenforce the business managers who were leading the plants on the spot?
A. Yes, that was the intention.
Q. Were any final orders issued in that respect?
A. Yes, it was carried out even. The plants became independent as from 1941, as I mentioned before, and it was planned even and later on in writing that the various plants should be completely independent with individual directors.
Q. Do you know that Mumenthey's plans went so far to have after the war transformed these plants into independent companies?
A. Yes, that was laid down fully in detail.
Q. Is it therefore correct that the working managers of the individual plants as early as 1941 to 1944 were responsible for the management of the local plants?
A. Yes.
Q Did that apply particularly to the question of labor allocation of inmates?
A. Of course.
Q. It was here for the first time that I used the term "allocation of inmates". Was there between DEST and any third party a legal relationship concerning the allocation of inmates?
A. The plants had decided and told the commandants of the con centration camps how many inmates they wanted.
The various categories, skilled or assistant skilled workers, were put at the disposal of the plants. Thereupon, payment was done also direct by the plants to the commandants, the administration. It was the same with other firms.
Q. Was there between the managements of the plants or DEST and the camps direct legal contact because of the inmates?
A. No.
Q. Were there such relationships between DEST and the Reich?
A. Not really. All that happened was that there were conferences with Office B-II with Standartenfuehrer Mauer. Whenever skilled workers were needed, particularly toward the end of the war, in order to attempt for this or that plant to have the suitable skilled workers.
Q. I feel that we have a gap here in your testimony. Was the local commandant of a concentration camp in a position to put the inmates at the disposal of the plant, just like that? Or was that done on the basis of regulations issued by higher authorities?
A. Yes, there were regulations by the chief of the WVHA that individual firms and the armament industries were to be given inmates for compensation.
Q. You just mentioned the WVHA. Is that statement of yours entirely correct? Did the WVHA have anything to do with the allocation of inmates? Or was it only an agency existing in the WVHA?
A. Yes, it was Office D-2.
Q. Therefore, we can say that allocation of inmates was ordered as a matter of principle by D-2., and, apart from that, of course, by some other authority under which D-2 was?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, let's talk about something else. You told the Court that you were the technical manager of what was known as the Granite Works of the DEST, later on --
A. No, I did not say that. I was not the technical manager. I was the commercial manager.
Q. Quite right, you were the commercial manager.
What type of enterprises were concentrated within the DEST?
A. Granite Works, brick works and, later on, the Porcelain companies, Allach and Bohemia.
Q. And the technical manager of the brick works was Schondorff, you said?
A. Yes.
Q. And you were the commercial manager of the quarries, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. As an expert in the stone processing industry, you are in an excellent position to give the court precise information as to the manner in which the quarries of the DEST were operated.
A. Yes, certainly.
Q. Just a moment, please. Before you do so, I should like to tell you what has become clear from the title so far. Two terms have become important in this trial, and they have been given a rather evil meaning. They are connected with the DEST. One is the term "quarry" and the other is the term of the "clay works." The last term is not very familiar to you, but I should like you to tell the Court briefly how generally the stone processing works used the quarries, what type of work had to be done there, and how, in particular, the DEST handled these things?
A. You have to make a difference between a quarry and a place where the granite is being processed. The quarry, in our case, was only a small part of our work; where as the granite works amounted to the bigger part of our work, about eighty percent. I shall explain briefly, as far as I am able to do that as a merchant, how work is done in a granite plant.
Q. Just a moment, witness, please. You make the modification just now that you were only a commercial expert. I should like to ask you: Did you personally see the quarries and stone processing works of the DEST, and did you gain your experiences on the basis of the enterprises there?
A. Yes.
Q. What works did you inspect?
A. St. Georgen, near Linz; Flossenbuerg, near Weiden; GrossRosen, in Silesia, near Striegau; Rothau, in Alsace.
BY JUDGE PHILLIPS:
Q. Practically all of the granite quarries were located in the vicinity of a concentration, were they not?
A. Yes.
Q. And concentration inmates, particularly, were used in the stone quarries, were they not?
A. Yes.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q. Please describe to the Court what a quarry is like, and in particular what a DEST quarry was like?
A. Twice a day detonations are set off in a quarry. This was usually done at lunchtime and after work, in the evening, by civilian detonating experts who were given the corresponding training in these things. No accidents occurred in our enterprises when such work was done. As soon as the raw material had been released, it was processed by machines and loaded on trucks in order to have it transported by steam engines or Diesel engines to the stone processing workshops. There the stones were once again lifted by derricks from the trucks and deposited on the working site. The processing here was done by hand by means of instruments and tools.
After the work was completed, the material was taken to assembly points, and from there to the railway, to be loaded. I should like to emphasize here that in two of our enterprises there were even at the railway stations highly modern and very expensive derricks which lifted the heavy processed stones on the rail wagons.
Q. Were the enterprises, the quarries of the DEST, supervised by and inspected by experts; and, if so, how did these experts inform themselves of the technical aspects of the work?
What did they say about them?
A. Certainly, our works were made accessible to the private people. I recall here a Herr Reul, an important man in the granite industry in Germany, a man who was important. In my opinion we had no reason to deny private people access to our enterprises because what we produced and the way we worked should have been made accessible to everybody, in my opinion.
Industrialists of the granite branch were always full of praise about the way our plant was run and its modern facilities.
That can be explained also by the fact that a man who operates a small quarry cannot invest so much money and, therefore, has to work in the most primitive fashion. That did not apply to us because much of the material we were producing was needed; expense was of no account, and, therefore, engines and machines were bought which did the most difficult work.
Q. Witness, may I, in this connection, ask you something else? Is it true that in a quarry you go through two stages, as it were; one, the period of time when the quarry is being opened; and the stage which follows then, when it is exploited?
A. Yes, that is quite correct. The first stage is the preliminary stage and the second stage is the work itself.
Q. Is it true that the preliminary stage is, as a matter of course, a more difficult type of work?
A. Yes, it is more difficult because you have to do it by hand. In order to do that you cannot use machines, at least Germany has none.
Q. Did you have the opportunity to inspect quarries of other firms?
A. Certainly. I said so in my curriculum vitae. I worked in an enterprise connected with quaries for 19 years before I joined the WVHA. As a commercial expert I visited these enterprises all the time, but I may say here that these enterprises where I had worked until 1938 were not as up-to-date as the ones of the DEST.
Q. When a number of witnesses were examined here, it was said with an unpleasant implication the plant of Flossenbuerg and Gusen I, Gusen II or Mauthausen, quite generally.
You visited Flossenbuerg and Mauthausen, is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it also correct that in Flossenbuerg --that is, in that small village on the Bavarian frontier -- there were not only quarries belonging to the DEST but also quarries which belonged to other private firms?
A. As far as I know, between Weiden and Floss, about eight to ten small firms were operating quarries.
Q. Now, one question which seems to me to be particularly important. Is it correct that in the Flossenbuerg plant and the concentration camp near it, there were also quarries?
A. Yes, there was a quarry in Flossenbuerg itself which was operated by the camp. As far as I know, the camp processed stones there which were needed for the buildings in the camp.
Q. Are you informed on the point of how it was possible that in a concentration camp a quarry was located? Or let me put it this way.... Did the camp expand gradually because of geological conditions there, with the result that quarries which were so frequent in that part of the world were now part of the camp?
A. No, that was not the case. As far as I know the camp wanted to save money and used the inmates skilled in that work. They left them in the camp and, in order to save money, processed the stones in the camp itself.
Q. I believe you misunderstood me, witness. What I wanted to ask you is this: It seems to me an odd fact that in a camp there should be a quarry. The purpose of a camp was to accommodate human beings.
A. Yes.
Q. And therefore one would not assume that a concentration camp is really the place where you would look for a quarry. Now, my question, therefore, is to ask whether it is correct that the camp of Flossenburg, because it was so large and expanded gradually, included quarries within its boundaries which earlier were not part of the camp.
A. I don't know.
Q. You don't know anything about that?
A. No.
Q. What about Mauthausen? Were there, apart from the DEST quarries, also quarries of other firms?
A. Yes, there was one quarry near the village of Mauthausen which belonged to the city of Vienna.
Q. Can you tell the Court anything about what is known as the Wiener Graben?
A. I myself went to Wiener Graben. It is situated near Mauthausen camp, roughly 600 or 800 meters from the Wiener Graben.
Q. Was that part of the DEST?
A. The Wiener Graben? Yes, it was a DEST enterprise.
Q. Another question, or, let me ask you this first: Is it correct that the plants of the DEST were, on the basis of provisions of law, made part of a certain type of enterprise which were under the Public Accident Insurance?
A. Yes, of course, just as any other firm, we had to belong to a professional organization, particularly to the quarries trade unions and we had to pay contributions just like any other firm. It is remarkable in this connection that we were regarded as a relatively safe enterprise and therefore had to pay less contributions. That was achieved in my opinion because the people of the quarries trade union on the basis of their inspection of our works found out that everything was in perfect condition and that above all accidents became well-nigh impossible.