FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: How was the boat sunk?
HEISIG: By depth charges. Two Canadian frigates sighted the U-boat and destroyed it through depth charges.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Your testimony today differs in an essential point from the statement you made on the 27th of November. How did you come to make this statement of the 27th of November?
HEISIG: I made the statement in defense of my comrades who were put before a military court in Hamburg and sentenced to death for the murder of shipwrecked sailors.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Your statement begins by saying that you had received reports that German sailors were being accused of murder and that you therefore considered it your duty to depose the following affidavit.
What reports had you received, and when?
HEISIG: At the beginning of the Hamburg proceedings against Kapitänleutnant Eck and his officers I was a prisoner of war in Great Britain; there I heard on the radio and read in newspapers that these officers were to be tried. Since I knew one of the accused officers, Leutnant August Hoffmann, very well and had spoken with him on this subject on two or three occasions, I considered it to be my duty to come to his assistance and to his defense.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Were you not told in your interrogation on the 27th of November that the death sentence against Eck and Hoffmann had already been confirmed?
HEISIG: That—I don’t remember whether it was on the 27th of November, I only remember that I was told here that the death sentence had been carried out. I no longer remember the date, as I was interrogated several times.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Since you have knowledge of the circumstances, do you maintain that the speech of Grossadmiral Dönitz mentioned in any way that fire should be opened on shipwrecked sailors?