“All these people must be fed, lodged, and treated in such a way that they may be exploited to the maximum with a minimum of expense.”
I ask the Tribunal to remember this formula—the aim to exploit the foreign labor to the maximum at a minimum of expense. It is the same concept which I find in a letter of Sauckel of 14 March 1943 addressed to all Gauleiter. It is Document 633-PS, which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-90:
“Subject: Treatment and care of foreign labor.
“Not only our honor and prestige and, still more than that, our National Socialist ideology which is opposed to the methods of plutocrats and Bolshevists, but also cool common sense in the first place demand proper treatment of foreign labor, including even Soviet-Russians. Slaves who are underfed, diseased, resentful, despairing, and filled with hate, will never yield that maximum of output which they might achieve under normal conditions.”
I skip now to the next to the last paragraph:
“But since we will need foreign labor for many years and the possibility of replacing them is very limited I cannot exploit them on a short-term policy nor can I allow wasting of their working capacity.”
The criminal concept revealed by these documents is particularly manifest in the establishment of the food sanctions which were inflicted on the deported workers. I refer to Document D-182, which I have just submitted as Exhibit Number RF-88, and I remind the Tribunal that it provides the possibility of inflicting on recalcitrant workers the penalty of a partial suppression of food rations. Moreover, the foreign workers, who were all the more exposed to diseases and epidemics since they were poorly lodged and fed, did not enjoy proper medical care.
I submit in evidence a report made on 15 June 1944 by Dr. Février, head of the health service of the French Delegation with the German Labor Front. It is Document F-536. I submit it as Exhibit Number RF-91, and I quote from the last paragraph at Page 15 of the French original, Page 13 of the German translation:
“At Auschwitz, in a very fine camp of 2,000 workers, we find tubercular people who were recognized as such by the local German doctor of the Arbeitsamt going about freely; but this doctor neglects to repatriate them out of hostile indifference. I am now taking steps to obtain their repatriation.