The Nuremberg Trials (Vol.5). International Military Tribunal

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СКАЧАТЬ or an SS leader, who have authority to order the death sentence or confiscation of property, and those decisions are not subject to appeal. The general commissar is given the right to reject a decision. Thus, the determination of the SS, of these summary courts, is made subordinate to the authority of a representative of the Rosenberg Ministry.

      At Page 4 of the translation of Document 1056-PS, the position of the Commissioner General is defined. It is stated here that: “The Commissioner General forms the administrative office of intermediate appeal.”

      Three paragraphs down it is stated, and I quote:

      “The SS and Police Leader assigned to the Commissioner General is directly subordinated to him. However, the Chief of Staff has the general right of requiring information from him.”

      The document goes on to describe the function of the various subdivisions of the Ministry, concluding with regional commissioners who preside over the local administrative districts. They, too, have police units assigned to them and directly subordinated to them.

      THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mr. Brudno, surely that could have been stated in a sentence without referring us to all these passages in this document. I mean, Rosenberg was the Minister for the Eastern Territories. He had under him Reich commissioners and SS units, who had the full administration—civil administration—of the Eastern Territories. If you had stated that, surely that would have been sufficient.

      MR. BRUDNO: Very well, Your Honor.

      I will proceed from that point, then, merely to point out that the economic exploitation of the territory was undertaken in the fullest co-operation with the Commissioner of the Four Year Plan, as shown by Paragraph 2 of Page 7 of the translation. It is stated there that the economic inspectorates of the Commissioner of the Four Year Plan will be substantially absorbed in the agencies of the civil administration after the establishment of the civil administration.

      I also wish to call Your Honors’ attention to the first paragraph on Page 6, which reads as follows:

      The various commissioners, it says, “are, aside from the military agencies, the only Reich authorities in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Other Reich authorities may not be established alongside them. They handle all questions of administration of the area which is subordinate to their sovereignty and all affairs which concern the organization and activity of the administration, including those of the police, in the supervision of the autonomous agencies and organizations and of the population.”

      I now turn briefly to the second section of the document which is entitled, “Working Directives for the Civil Administration.” The first two paragraphs on Page 9 have been read into the record as part of Document EC-347, Exhibit Number USA-320. I call particular attention to the statement that the “Hague Rules of Land Warfare, which deal with the administration of a country occupied by a foreign armed power, are not valid.”

      I continue quoting at the last paragraph on Page 9:

      “The handling of cases of sabotage is a concern of the Higher SS and Police Leader, of the SS and Police Leader, or of the Police leaders of the lower echelon. Insofar as collective measures against the population appear appropriate, the decision about them rests with the competent commissar.

      “To inflict penalties in cash or kind, as well as to order the seizure of hostages and the shooting of inhabitants of the territory in which the acts of sabotage have taken place, rests only with the Commissioner General, unless the Reich Commissioner himself intervenes.”

      I conclude with this document by quoting the first sentence at the top of Page 13:

      “The district commissioners are responsible for the supervision of all prisons, unless the Reich commissioners intervene.”

      I will not take the time of the Tribunal, nor burden the Record, with a detailed account of the manner in which Rosenberg’s plenary authority and power were wielded. There is evidence in the Record, and there will be additional evidence presented by the Soviet prosecutor, as to the magnitude of the War Crimes and the Crimes against Humanity perpetrated against the peoples of the occupied East.

      However, merely to illustrate the manner in which Rosenberg participated in the criminal activities conducted within his jurisdiction, I would like to refer briefly to a few examples.

      I call your attention to the document numbered R-135, which was previously introduced as Exhibit Number USA-289. In this document the prison warden of Minsk reports that 516 German and Russian Jews had been killed, and called attention to the fact that valuable gold had been lost due to the failure to knock out the fillings of the victims’ teeth before they were done away with.

      These activities took place in the prison at Minsk, a prison which, Your Honors will recall from Document 1056-PS, was directly under the supervision of the Ministry for the occupied East.

      For my next illustration I wish to offer Document 018-PS. This document has already been introduced as Exhibit Number USA-186. I would like to read to the Tribunal the first paragraph of Document 018-PS, which has not yet been read into the Record. The document reveals that Rosenberg wrote Sauckel on 21 November 1942, in the following terms:

      “I thank you very much for your report on the execution of the great task given to you; and I am glad to hear that in carrying out your mission you have always found the necessary support, even on the part of the civilian authorities in the Occupied Eastern Territories. For myself and the officials under my command, this collaboration was and is self-evident, especially since both you and I have, with regard to the solution of the labor problem in the East, represented the same points of view from the beginning.”

      As late as 11 July 1944 the Rosenberg Ministry was actively concerned with the continuation of the forced labor program, in spite of the retreat from the East.

      THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): After making this generality, Rosenberg goes on to object, at the last here, to the methods used. You haven’t mentioned that.

      MR. BRUDNO: Quite right, Your Honor. Those objections are already in the record, Sir, and I was merely referring to this document to show that Rosenberg favored recruitment from the East, that his civilian administrators co-operated with the recruitment in spite of the methods used, the methods which were known to Rosenberg as he reports in the letter himself.

      DR. ALFRED THOMA (Counsel for Defendant Rosenberg): High Tribunal, in this connection I must protest that the Prosecutor did not finish reading this Paragraph 1 he has just quoted. For then comes the sentence in which he states that an agreement existed between Sauckel and Rosenberg regarding. . .

      THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think you can have heard that the United States Member of the Tribunal has just made this very point, which you are now making to Counsel for the United States, and has pointed out to him that he ought to have read there, or drawn attention at any rate, to the other paragraphs in this document which showed that Rosenberg was objecting to the methods used.

      DR. THOMA: High Tribunal, I would like to point out that the prosecutor quoted just the first two sentences of a specific paragraph. The same paragraph ends, however, where it is stated that “there was an agreement between Sauckel and me according to which workers were to be treated well in Germany, and for this purpose welfare organizations were to be created”. The presentation of the prosecutor creates the impression that the Defendants Sauckel and Rosenberg had agreed only on the use of forced labor without restraint and on the deportation of the workers from the East.

      THE PRESIDENT: As Counsel for the United States pointed out, the other СКАЧАТЬ