“The administration of penal law for persons of alien race must be transferred from the hands of the administrators of justice into the hands of the police.”
That is the part that connects the police with it, and I will not quote from the document otherwise.
Now I next come to the subject where the Gestapo and the SD executed or confined persons in concentration camps for crimes allegedly committed by their relatives; and in that connection I offer Document L-37 in the first volume, Exhibit Number USA-506.
That is a letter dated the 19th of July 1944—I call Your Honor’s attention to the fact that it is dated in 1944—sent by the commander of the Sipo and SD for the district of Radom to the foreign service office in Tomaszow.
Parenthetically, that big Haftbuch that we introduced in evidence has a number of cases in connection with the district of Radom, and Your Honors will remember that it is a list of the people in the district of Tomaszow.
The subject of this letter is “Collective Responsibility of Members of Families of Assassins and Saboteurs.” I will read after the word “precedents”:
“The Higher SS and Police Leader East has issued on 28 June 1944 the following order:
“The security situation in the Government General has in the last 9 months grown worse to such an extent that from now on the most radical means and the harshest measures must be applied to the alien assassins and saboteurs. The Reichsführer SS, in agreement with the Governor General, has ordered that in all cases where assassinations of Germans, or such attempts, have occurred or where saboteurs have destroyed vital installations, not only the culprits be shot but that also all of the kinsmen are to be executed and their female relatives who are above 16 years old are to be put into concentration camps. It is strictly presupposed, of course, that if the culprit or culprits are not apprehended, their names and addresses be correctly ascertained. Male members of kin include, for example: the father, sons (insofar as they are above 16 years of age), brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins, and uncles of the culprit. The same ruling applies to the women. The aim of this procedure is to secure joint responsibility of all men and women of the kin of the culprit. It furthermore hits most severely the family circle of the political criminal. For example, this practice has already shown, at the end of 1939, the best results in the new Eastern territories, especially in the Warta district. Experience shows that as soon as this new method for combatting assassins and saboteurs becomes known to these foreign people—this may be achieved by oral propaganda—the female members of a kin to which members of the resistance movement or bands belong will exert a curbing influence.”
Now the SD and Gestapo also conducted third-degree interrogations of prisoners of war; and I refer to Document 1531-PS, Exhibit Number USA-248. This document contains an order of 12 June 1942, signed by Müller, which authorized the use of third-degree methods in interrogations where preliminary investigation indicated that the prisoners could give information on important facts such as subversive activities but not to extort confessions of prisoners’ own crimes.