“I have the honor of giving you below some additional information gathered on this subject.
“The German engineer Meyer and the French subject Bentz stopped on 1 December 1941 at the Hotel Splendid in Nice, coming from Marseilles.”
Now, I go on to the third paragraph before the end:
“I permit myself to draw your attention particularly to the fact that in Paris they enrolled French workers for Germany.”
Here I end the quotation.
These documents attest to the activity which the clandestine recruiting offices developed. But I am not satisfied merely to point out their existence; I wish to show that these offices operated under the initiative of official administrations and of the German office for labor.
The proof is furnished by a statement which the Defendant Sauckel made on 1 March 1944, during the 54th conference of the Central Office for the Four Year Plan. The stenographic report of these conferences has been found. It forms Document R-124, to which my American colleagues have already referred. I submit it again to the Tribunal under Exhibit Number RF-30 and I shall read from an extract of the minutes of the session of 1 March 1944. This is in Exhibit Number RF-30, in the French text, Page 2, second paragraph; in the German text, Pages 1770 and 1771. I quote the page numbers which are at the bottom and on the right of the German original. I read the declaration made by the Defendant Sauckel:
“The most abominable point against which I have to fight is the claim that there is no organization in these districts properly to recruit Frenchmen, Belgians, and Italians and to dispatch them to work. So I have even proceeded to employ and train a whole staff of French and Italian agents of both sexes who for good pay, just as was done in olden times for ‘shanghaiing,’ go hunting for men and dupe them, using liquor as well as persuasion. . .”
The propaganda of the official services and that of the clandestine recruiting offices proved to be inefficacious. The National Socialist authorities then had to resort to methods of economic pressure. They tried to give to the workers who were to go to Germany the hope of material advantages. I cite in respect to this an ordinance of the Military Commander in Belgium and the North of France, which I submit to the Tribunal. It is an ordinance of 20 July 1942 which appeared in the Verordnungsblatt of Belgium. It exempts from tax Belgian workers who work in German factories. I submit it to the Tribunal under Document Number RF-31.