One of the Defense Counsel, a highly respected member of the local bar apparently would seen, unwittingly, to have given an explanation. From the constant association with the case, he found himself arguing in his summation speech: "What did Schubert actually do which was criminal?" And then he outlined Schubert's actions:
"Schubert first goes to the gypsy quarter of Simferopol and sees them being loaded aboard and shipped off.
Then he drives to the place of execution, sees the rerouting of traffic, the roads blocked off, persons being unloaded, valuables handed over, and the shooting.
Finally he drives back once more along the way to the gypsy quarter and there again sees them being loaded aboard and carried off, and then returns to his office.
That is what he did."
SS-Obersturmfuehrer Schubert oversees an execution of human beings who happen to be Gypsies, there is no assertion anywhere that these Gypsies were guilty of anything but being Gypsies. He sees that the roads are blocked off, that the victims are loaded on trucks and taken to the scene of execution, that that their valuables are taken from them and then he watches the shooting. This is what Schubert did, and the question is asked: What is wrong about that?
There is no indication of any realization here that Schubert was taking an active part in mass murder. Counsel even goes further and says that when Schubert reported to Ohlendorf on what had happened, he stated that he saw "nothing unusual".
The reference to Counsel, when it occurs, is not intended as any criticism of professional conduct. It is the function of a lawyer to represent to the best of his ability his client's cause and it must now be apparent what difficulties confronted the attorneys in this case. None theless, with industry and skill, with patience and perseverance they made their presentations so that the Tribunal was not denied any fact or argument which could be submitted in behalf of the accused. Regardless of the results of the Judgment it cannot be said that the accused did not have the utmost and fullest defense.
Many of the affidavits introduced in behalf of defendants spoke of religion. One related how Seibert often accompanied his mother to church. While he was in the Crimea, did he recall these visits to the house of God with his mother, and if he did, could he reconcile his activities there with the teachings of religion and of his mother?
This is a court of law, and the presence or absence of religion on the part of any defendant is not an issue in this trial. The fact, however, that Seibert advanced his early Christian training as an item of defense is indication that he at least recognizes there is a dissimilarity between what he learned and what he later did. This affidavit is additionally interesting because it impliedly repudiates the condemnations of religion by men like Goebbels, Rosenberg, Himmler, and above all, Hitler himself, who designated the church as the only remaining unconquered ideological opponent of National Socialism, continually insulting it in speeches and pronunciamentos.
Bormann said:
"National Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable .....If therefore in the future, our youths knows nothing more of this Christianity whose doctrines are far below ours, Christianity will disappear by itself.
....
All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with the aid of the NSDAP must be eliminated.
More and more the people must be' separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors."
With this anti-religious attitude dominating National Socialism, it is interesting to note that at least ten of the defendants, according to their own statements, formally left the church of their childhood.
And here one must tell of the Christmas of Simferopol in the year of 1941. In the early part of December the commander of the 11th Army, which was located in that area, notified the chief of Einsatzkommando 11b that the Army expected them to kill some several thousand Jews and Gypsies before Christmas.
This savage proposal, coming on the eve of one of the holiest days of the year, did not consternate the kommando leader, as one might expect, On the mystic chords of memory no echo sounded of the Christmas carols he had heard in childhood, nor did he recall the message of Peace on Earth and Good will Toward Men. The only impediment this kommando leader saw in the execution of the order was that he lacked enough men and equipment for so accelerated an assignment, but he would do his best. He called on the Army Quartermaster and obtained sufficient personnel, trucks, guns and ammunition to do the bloody deed, and it was done.
The Jews and Gypsies -- men, women and children -- were in their graves by Christmas.
On Christmas Day the executioners were depressed, the Tribunal was told, not because of the slaughter, but because they now feared for their own lives. Death, which had been so commonplace a day or two before, presently revealed itself as vivid and frightening: It might overtake the executioners themselves. Life became sweet and precious. The kommando leader testified that the danger existed they might fall into the hands of the Russians.
But at last they overcame their apprehensions and they found themselves in the mood to celebrate their own Christmas party. Their chief, Otto Ohlendorf, made a speech on that occasion. The defendant Braun was questioned on this speech:
"Q. And did he talk on religious matters?
A. I cannot give any details of the words anymore.
I don't know whether he mentioned Christ, but I know Herr Ohlendorf's attitude on all this.
Q. What was his attitude as he delivered it in his speech?
What did he say that was of religious significance?
A. I really cannot give any details any more.
Q. Did anybody offer any prayers on Christmas Day of 1941?
A. Your Honor, I do not know......
Q. Were any prayers offered for the thousands of Jews that you had killed.
....?
A. Your Honor, I don't know whether anyone prayed for those thousands of Jews."
Did this Christmas massacre serve the best interests of Germany and her people? Did it harmonize with the theory of moral revulsion to the Fuehrer-Order, as proclaimed by the defendants?
How far did the defendants get away from religion? It is to be repeated here that it is entirely irrelevant to the issue before the Tribunal as to whether the defendants are religious or not. They can be atheists of the first degree and yet be as innocent as the driven snow of any crime. Religion is mentioned because several of the defendants introduced the subject and their references to religion are pertinent in the evaluation of the credibility of certain testimony.
Ernst Biberstein, the defendant who was a minister of the Gospel, left the church in 1938. At that time he repudiated organized religion and claims to have founded a religion of his own. This religion, he stated, was based on the love of his fellow-men. Despite his definite abandonment of the church, he states he was regarded as a clergyman by his fellow-officers and emphasized this point as a reason why he could not have committed the murders with which he is charged. He did admit to attending various executions, since according to his testimony, he still worshipped at the invisible altar of his own religion, he was asked whether he attempted to offer comfort and solace to those who were about to die. His answer was that since the Bolshevist ideology advocated the movement of atheism, "one should not throw pearls before swine". Then came the following;
"Q. Did you think that because they were Bol shevists and had been fighting Germany that they did not have souls?
A.No.
Q.You did believe they had souls then, didn't you?
A.Of course.
QBut because they were of the attitude which you have expressed, you did not think it was worthwhile to try to save these souls?
A. I had to assume that those were atheists.
There are people who do not believe in God, who have turned away from God, and if I tell such a man a word of God, I run the danger that the person will become ironic.
Q. Well, suppose he did become ironic that could not be any worse than the fact that he was going to be killed rather soon.
Suppose he did become ironic, how did that harm anyone?
A. These things are too sacred to me that I would risk them in such situations."
He was further asked:
"Do you think that you demonstrated that 'Love of fellow-men' by letting these people go to their deaths without a word of comfort along religious lines, considering that you were a Pastor?
Did you demonstrate there a 'Love of fellow-men?
'." And his answer was:
"I didn't sin against the Commandments of Love."
Did Biberstein tell the truth when he said that the core of his religion was "Love of his fellow-men" and then ordered the shooting of innocent people whom he regarded as swine? Was he trustworthy when he declared that he never heard of the Fuehrer-Order until he arrived in Nuremberg? Was he credible when he announced that during all the time he was in Russia he never learned that Jews were shot because they were Jews?
Religion, which through the ages, has strenghtened the weak, aided the poor and comforted the lonely and oppressed, is man's own determination, but that a minister of the Gospel, via the road of Nazism, participated in mass executions is an observation that cannot go unnoticed, When the Swatiska replaced the cross and Mein Kampf dislodged the Bible, it was inevitable that the German people were headed for disaster.
When the Fuehrerprinzip took the place of the Golden Rule, Truth was crushed and the Lie ruled with an absolutism no monarch has ever known. Under the despotic regime of the Lie, prejudice supplanted justice, arrogance cancelled understanding, hatred superseded benevolence -and the columns of the Einsatzgruppen marched. And in one of the front ranks strode the ex-minister Ernst Biberstein.
THE FUEHERPRINZIP In every Nuremberg trial, an invisible figure appears in the defendants' dock.
At each session in this Palace of Justice, he has entered the door and quietly moved to his place among the other defendants. For over two years he has been making his entrances and exists. He never takes the witness stand, he never speaks, but he dominates every piece of evidence, his shadow falls over every document.
Some of the accused are ready to charge this sinister shadow with responsibility or their every reverse and misfortune. But were he to cast off the cloak of invisibility and appear as he was, the amimadversions of the other occupants of the defendants' box might not be so audible, because he knows them well, He was no sudden interloper in Germany's destiny. He did not appear in a flash and order his present companions into action. Had it happened that way, the story of physical and moral duress they recounted from the witness stand would not be so incongruous. But, of their own free will, they threw in their lot with that of the specter's, and in their own respective functions enthusiastically carried out the shadow's orders, who was then not a shadow but a fire-breathing reality.
In explanation of their willingness to follow him in those days, they explain they had no reason to doubt him. He had been so successful. But the very successes they cheered most were usually this man's greatest crimes. Each defendant has claimed that the propaganda of the day assured them that Germany was always fighting a defensive war, but these men were not outsiders, nor were they children. They were part of the government, they belonged to the regime. It is incredible that they should believe that Germany was being attacked by Denmark, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Belgium and even little Luxembourg. Indubitably they revelled in these successes. One of Defense Counsel declared that the defendants could well believe of Hitler that "here was a man whom no power could resist".
And indeed never did a man wield so much power and never was a living man so ignominiously and stupidly obeyed by other men. Never did living beings, made in the image of man, so pusillanimously grovel at the feet of clay. But it is not true that no one could resist him. There were people who could resist him, or at least refused to be a party to his monstrous criminality. Some voluntarily left Germany rather than acknowledge him as their spiritual leader. Others opposed him and ended up in concentration camps. It is a mistake to say or assume that all the German people approved of Nazism and the crimes it fostered and committed. Had that been true, there would have been no need of Stormtroopers in the early days of the Party, and there would have been no need for concentration camps or the Gestapo, both of which institutions were inaugurated as soon as the Nazis gained control of the German state.
But against those who looked with alarm and foreboding on the violences of Nazism, there were those who could not resist the glory, pomp and circumstance of war, nor the greed of unbridled domination. They accepted Hitler with fervor and passion because they believed Hitler could lead them to a gratification of their bloated vanity and lust for power, position and luxurious living.
Nor have all forsaken their "successful" leader. Several of the defendants in this case have expressed their countinuing belief in the Fuehrer. One could not bring himself to blame Hitler for any of the illegal deaths under discussion. Another regarded him as a great leader, if not a great statesman. Still another, when asked if he would have been satisfied if Hitler had succeeded in his aims, replied with a categorical affirmative. The defendant Klingelhoefer stated that he would have been happy if Hitler had won the war, even at the expense of Germany in ruins, with two million Germans killed and the entirety of Europe devastated. One other defendant told of his adoration for Hitler which apparently had not changed since 1945. The expression of such adoration offers convincing testimony on the mental attitude of the defendant at the time he received and executed the Fuehrer-Order.
That Hitler was a man of extraordinary capacities can not be doubted, but his capabilities for harm would have been nil had he not had willing, enthusiastic collaborators like the defendants who accepted his mad out-pourings and hysterical maledictions against defenseless minorities, as if his pronouncements were the apostrophies of a semi-divinity.
These defendants were among those who made it possible for a megalomaniac to achieve his ambition of putting the world beneath his heel or to bring it crashing in ruins about his head. Some of these defendants, in following Hitler, may have believed that, in executing his will, they were serving their country. Their sense of justice staggering from the intoxication of command, their normal reactions drugged by the opiate of their blind fealty, their human impulses twisted by the passion of their ambitions, they made themselves believe that they were advancing the cause of Germany, But Germany would have fared better without such patriotism, When Samuel Johnson uttered his cynical line that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, he could well have had in mind a Hitlerian patriotism.
Hitler struck the match, but the fire would have died a quick death had it not been for his fellow arsonists, big and little, who continued to supply the fuel until they, themselves, were scorched by the flame they had been so enthusiastically tending. If history has taught anything it has demonstrated with devastating finality that most of the evils of the world have been due to craven subservience by sub-chiefs upon a man who through boundless ambition unrestrained by conscience has formulated plans which, proposed by anyone else, would be rejected as mad.
Dictatorship in government can only lead to disaster because whatever benefits derive from centralized control are lost in the infinite damage which inevitably follows lack of responsibility. That unlimited authority and power are poisons which destroy judgment and reason is a demonstrable fact as conclusively established as any chemical formula tried and tested in a laboratory.
The genius of true democratic government is that no one person is allowed to take the nation with its millions of people into the valley of decisive action without the advice, counsel and approval of those who are to be subjected to the hazards, hardships and potentially fatal consequences of that decision.
The defendants must have found themselves repeatedly at the cross-roads where and when there was still the opportunity to turn in the direction of the ideals which they had once known, but the wilful determination to follow the trail of blood prints of their voluntarily accepted leader could only take them to the goal they had never intended. It is possible that currently the defendants realize the mistake which h they made. Though most of them have sought to rationalize their deeds, though they attempted to explain that every executioner's rifle was aimed at a national peril, it is possible they now grasp the disservice they have done not only to humanity but to their own fatherland. It may even be that through this trial with its sobering revelations they will have demonstrated what are the inevitable consequences of any plan which stems from hatred and intolerance; and her they may have proved what has never been disproved: There is only one Fuehrer, and that is Truth.
Alfred Rosenberg, the acknowledged master philosopher of Naziam wrote on "The Myth of Blood":
"A new faith is arising today: They myth of the blood, the faith, to defend with the blood the divine essence of man.
The faith, embodied in clearest knowledge that the Nordic blood represents that mysterium which has re placed and ever come the old sacraments."
What does this mean? No one has yet deciphered its cadenced incoherence, but as Rosenberg himself claimed in it conclusive proof of the master race, others were willing to assume in this torturing abstruseness the authority of a revealed writing.
Beneath the meaningless phrases Trent the subtle theme of a race of men so different from, and superior to, other men that it required an occult language, whose alphabet was understood only by the elect, to carry the wisdom of this ineffable superiority. From it could be proved everything and nothing. From it the Nazi hierarchists drew their meretricious inspiration which led to their licentious and profligate deeds.
There have been Alfred Rosenbergs in other eras as well, and they also have confirmed the rulers of nations, states and tribes in their superiority over other nations, states and tribes, but the results have invariably been the same. The theme of might against right has, through the centuries, led to consequences which were catastrophic to the assumed stronger. Through the pauseless sweep of the centuries, despots and tyrants have ever and again appealed to the weakness of their followers, the weakness of supposed strength, and have utilized their primitive vanity and arrogance of the little man in the accomplishment of their monumental horrors. Over and over, this monotonous and savage drama has appeared on the stage of history, but never was it played with such totality, fury and brutality as it was with the Nazia in the title role.
That so much man-made misery should have happened in the twentieth century, which could well have been the fruition of all the aspirations and hopes of the centuries which went before, makes the spectacle almost unsupportable in its unutterable tragedy and sadness. Amid the wreckage on the six continents, amid the shattered hearts of the world, amid the sufferings of those who have borne the cross of disillusionment and despair, mankind pleads for an understanding which will prevent anything like this happening again. That understanding goes back to the words spoken 1900 years ago, words which had they been honored in the observance rather than in the breach would have made the events narrated in this trial impossible -"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to then."
PRESIDENT:The Tribunal will be in recess until tomorrow morning at 9:30 o'clock.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 9 April 1948, at 0930 hours.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the Matter of the United States of America, against Otto Ohlendorf, et al, defendants, sitting at Nuernberg, Germany, on 9 April, 1948, 0930-1630, Justice Musmanno, presiding.
THE MARSHAL:The Honorables, the Judges of Military Tribunal II.
Military Tribunal is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
THEPRESIDENT (reading):
INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENTS In the judgments on the individual defendants now to follow, no attempt will be made to cite from all the testimony and documents introduced on both sides.
Such a treatment would give to the overall Judgment a length out of all proportion to the nature of a final adjudication. Nor is it necessary. Although the Indictment has charged the several defendants with multiplicitous murders, the verdict of Guilty, where arrived at, does not need to be predicated on the total number contended for by the Prosecution.
It is also to be noted that while emphasis throughout the trial has been on the subject of murder, the defendants are charged also in / Counts I and II with Crimes against Humanity and violations of Laws or Customs of War which include but are not limited to atrocities, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations. Thus, if and where a conclusion of guilt is reached, such conclusion is not based alone on the charge of murder but on all committed acts coming within the purview of Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes. In each adjudication, without its being stated, the verdict is based upon the entire record.
DEFENDANT OTTO OHLENDORF The evidence in this case could reveal not one but two Otto Ohlendorfs.
There is the Ohlendorf represented as the student, lecturer, administrator, sociologist, scientific analyst, and humanitarian.
This Ohlendorf was born on a farm, studied law and political science at the universities of Leipzig and Goettingen, practiced as a barrister at the courts of Alfeld-Leine and Hildesheim, became deputy section chief in the Institute for World Economics in Kiel, then section chief at the Institute for Applied Economic Science in Berlin, and in 1936 became Economic Consultant in the SD. On behalf of this Ohlendorf, defense counsel has submitted several hundred pages of affidavits which speak of Ohlendorf's efforts to make the SD purely a fact-gathering organization, of his opposition to totalitarian and dictatorial tendencies in the cultural life of Germany, of his defense of the middle classes, and of his many clashes with Himmler, the SS Chief, and Mueller, the Chief of the Gestapo. One of these affidavits declares:
"Ohlendorf did not see superior and in ferior races in various peoples.
... He considered race only as a symbolic notion.
The individual nations to him were not superior or inferior, but different.
The domination of one people with its prin ciples of life over the other he consider ed, therefore, wrong and directed against the laws of life.
For him, the goal to be desired was a system among peoples by which every nation could develop according to its own nature, potentialities and abilities.
Folk, in his view, also was not dependent on a state organization."
On the other hand, we have the description of an SS General Ohlendorf who led Einsatzgruppe D into the Crimea on a race-extermination expedition. That Otto Ohlendorf is described by that same Ohlendorf. If the humanitarian and the Einsatz leader are merged into one person it could be assumed that we are here dealing with a character such as that described by Robert Louis Stevenson in his "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". As interesting as it would be to dwell on this possible dual nature, the Tribunal can only make its adjudication on the Ohlendorf who, by his own word, headed an organization which, according to its own reports, killed 90,000 people.
The Tribunal finds as a fact from the reports, records, documents and testimony in this case that Einsatzgruppe D did kill 90,000 persons in violation of the laws and customs of war, of general international law, and of Control Council Law No. 10.
Whatever offenses Ohlendorf may have to answer for, he will never need to plead guilty to evasiveness on the witness stand, which indeed cannot be said of all the defendants. With a forthrightness which one could well wish were in another file of activity, Otto Ohlendorf related how he received the Fuehrer Order and how he executed it. He never denied the facts of the killings and only seeks exculpation on the basis of the legal argument that he was acting under Superior Orders. Further, that, as he saw the situation, Germany was compelled to attack Russia as a defensive measure and that the security of the Army, to which his group was attached, called for the operations which he unhesitatingly admits. All these defenses have been treated in the General Opinion and need not be repeated here.
In addition to Ohlendorf's direct testimony in this present trial, he voluntarily appeared as a witness in the International Military Tribunal trial and there described under oath the entire einsatz program of extermination. With but a minor exception he confirmed in this trial the testimony presented before the IMT. Thus, that testimony, by reference, is incorporated into the record of the instant trial and forms further evidence in support of the findings reached in this Judgment. Even outside the Courtroom Ohlendorf admitted untrammeledly the activities of the Einsatzgruppe under his charge. In at least four affidavits he related how his command functioned. He told of the area covered by his Einsatzgruppe, the division of his group into smaller units, the manner and methods of execution, the collection of the valuables of the victims, and the writing and submitting of reports to Berlin.
The record of Otto Ohlendorf, the Chief of Department III of the RSHA and the Chief of the Einsatzgruppe D, is complete.
The record and analysis of the Otto Ohlendorf who was born in the country and showed great promise in the field of learning, purposeful living and sociological advancement, will need to be made elsewhere. Unfortunately it cannot form part of this Judgment which can only dispose of the charges of criminality presented in the Indictment. Those charges against Otto Ohlendorf have been proved before this Tribunal beyond a reasonable doubt. The Tribunal accordingly finds Otto Ohlendorf guilty under Counts I and II of the Indictment.
It has been argued by Dr. Aschenauer that Ohlendorf was not a member of a criminal organization as determined by the International Military Tribunal decision and Control Council Law No. 10. In support of this argument it is asserted that Ohlendorf was ordered to Russia as an employee of the Reich Group Commerce. It is impossible that Ohlendorf, as the leader of Einsatzgruppe D, should have been functioning as a member of the Reich Group Commerce. He headed Office III of RSHA before he went to Russia, and he headed it when he returned.
The Tribunal finds that the defendant was a member of the criminal organizations SS and SD under the conditions defined by the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal and is, therefore, guilty under Count III of the Indictment.
JUDGESPEIGHT (reading):
HEINZ JOST SS-Brigadier General and Major General of Police Heinz Jost specialized in law and economics when he studied at the universities of Giessen and Munich.
He later worked in the District Court at Darmstadt. He joined the Nazi Party in February 1928 and subsequently became a member of the SA, the SS, and SD. He served as an SS officer in the Polish campaign. He headed Einsatzgruppe A in the Russian campaign. His attorney devoted many pages in his final plea to arguments on self defense, necessity and national emergency, confirming and emphasizing what was said at great length by Dr. Aschenauer on these subjects.
In the latter part of the plea, Defense Counsel insisted that his client in no way participated in the execution of the Fuehrer Order. If, as a matter of fact, the defendant committed or approved of no act which could be interpreted either as a War Crime or Crime against Humanity, the argument of self defense and necessity is entirely superfluous.
The record clearly demonstrates, however, that as Chief of Einsatzgruppe A the defendant was aware of the criminal purpose to which that organization was put, and, as its commander, cannot escape responsibility for its acts. Jost outlined his activities outside of Germany in the following language:
"During my activity as Chief of the Einsatz gruppe A, I was also Commander-in-Chief of the Security Police and SD in Eastland (BdS Ostland).Headquarters for the Einsatzgruppe A was located in Krasnogwardeisk, whilst headquarters for the Commander-in-Chief for the Security Police and SD Eastland was located in Riga.
On the whole, the duties of a Commander-in-Chief of the Security Police and SD were the same as those of a Chief of an Einsatzgruppe, and the duties of a Commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) the same as those of a Chief of a Sonderkommando or Einsatz kommando, respectively."
During the time the territory under his jurisdiction was subject to Army control, Jost as Chief of Einsatzgruppe A cooperated with the Army command. When the territory came under civilian administration, he, as Commander-in-Chief of Security Police and SD received his orders from the Higher SS and Police Leader or SS and Police Leader. Under this double designation he was responsible for all operations conducted in his territory.
Report No. 195, dated April 24, 1942, reporting on activities within the area under the command of Einsatzgruppe A, states:
"Within the period of the report a total of 1,272 persons were executed, 983 of them Jews, who had infectious diseases or were so old and infirm that they could not be any more used for work, 71 Gypsies, 204 Communists and 14 more Jews who had been guilty of different offenses and crimes."
The Prosecution charges the defendant with responsibility for these murders. The item itself does not carry the exact date of its happening, but the latest date revealed in the entire document is March 26. Thus the execution of the 1,272 persons mentioned the rein could not have occurred on a date subsequent to March 26. The defendant testified that he was in Smolensk when, on March 24 or 25, he received his orders to take over the command of Einsatzgruppe A and that he did not arrive in Riga, headquarters of the Einsatzgruppe, until March 28 and 29.
The record shows that Einsatzgruppe A had accomplished some hundred thousand murders prior to March 29 and, as late as March 26, as indicated by the report above-mentioned, was still killing Jews, It would be extraordinary that it should suddenly cease this slaughter for no given reason and with the Fuehrer Order still in effect, three days before Jost arrived.
The Prosecution argues that it would not take an officer of Jost's rank (Major General of Police) four days to travel the 100 miles between Smolensk and Riga. But whether Jost arrived the day before or the day after is not controlling in the matter of responsibility for the program involved. The Fuehrer Order was in effect prior to Jost's arrival at Riga and he did not revoke it when he took over the Einsatzgruppe. The defendant does state that when in May 1942 he received an order from Heydrich to surrender Jews under 16 and over 32 for liquidation he placed the order in his safe and declined to transmit it.
Report No. 193, dated April 17, 1942, reports an execution in Kauen, as of April 7, 1942, of 22 persons "among them 14 Jews who had spread communist propaganda". The defendant was asked on the witness stand:
"Do you regard it proper, militarily proper, to shoot fourteen people, or only one person for that matter, because he spreads Communist propaganda?"
and he replied:
"According to my orders these measures had to be carried out.
In that far it was correct and justified."
Defense Counsel in arguing this phase of the case said that the victims had indulged in Communist propaganda "up to the last moment". But there is nothing in International Law which justifies or legalizes the sentence of death for political opinion or propaganda.
At the trial the defendant testified that he did not remember any reports about "mass executions" during his time. If there had been no such executions during his incumbency it is reasonable to suppose that Jost would have emphatically so declared. It cannot be assumed that so grave and solemn an event as a mass execution could fall into the realm of the forgettable. Thus the only possible conclusion is that here the defendant was equivocating.
On June 15, 1942, at a time when Jost was admittedly in charge of the area, one of his subordinates, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Truebe, wrote to the RSHA, requesting shipment of a gas van and gas hoses for three gas vans on hand. Jost denied any knowledge of this letter but admitted that the subordinate in question had the authority to order equipment. It is not reasonable to suppose that the ordering of such extraordinary equipment would not come to the attention of the leader of the organization and the fact that the ordered gas van was to go to White Ruthenia (where he was also in command) does not absolve the defendant from responsibility.
The defendant, as all other defendants in this case, is not charged alone with the crime of murder. The Indictment lists various offenses, including enslavement, imprisonment, and other inhumane acts against civilian populations. Thus the defendant cannot escape responsibility for a consenting part at least in the slave labor program instituted by Sauckel in his territory. Report No. 193, dated April 17, 1942, carried this item: