MARSHAL: Your Honors, Defendants Kaltenbrunner and Streicher will be absent from this morning’s session.
M. DUBOST: Your Honors, yesterday I was reading from an official French document, which appears in your document book under the title “Report of the Ministry for Prisoners of War and Deportees.” It concerned the seizure by the Germans of Jewish children in France, who were taken from private houses or public institutions where they had been placed.
With your permission I will come back to a statement which I had previously made concerning the execution of orders, given by the German General Staff with the approval of the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, to arrest all French generals and, in reprisal, to arrest, as well, all the families of these generals who might be resistants, in other words, who were on the side of our Allies.
In accordance with Article 21 of the Charter the Tribunal will not require facts of public knowledge to be proved. In the enormous amount of facts which we submit to you there are many which are known but are not of public knowledge. There are a few, but nevertheless certain, facts which are both known and are also of public knowledge in all countries. There is the famous case of the deportation of the family of General Giraud, and I shall allow myself to recall to the Tribunal the six principal points concerning this affair. First: We all remember having learned through the Allied radio that Madame Giraud, wife of General Giraud . . .
THE PRESIDENT: What is it that you are going to ask us to take judicial knowledge of with reference to the deportation of General Giraud’s family?
M. DUBOST: I have to ask the Tribunal, Mr. President, to apply, as far as these facts are concerned, Article 21 of the Charter, namely, the provision specifying that the Tribunal will not require facts to be proved which are of public knowledge.
Secondly, I request the Tribunal to hear my statement of these facts which we consider to be of public knowledge for they are known not only in France but in America, since the American Army participated in these events.
THE PRESIDENT: The words of Article 21 are not “of public knowledge” but “of common knowledge.” It is not quite the same thing.
M. DUBOST: Before me now I have the French translation of the Charter. I am interpreting according to the French translation: “The Tribunal will not require that facts of public knowledge (“notoriété publique”) be proved.” We interpret these words thus: it is not necessary to bring documentary or testifying proof of facts universally known.
THE PRESIDENT: You say “facts universally known”; but supposing, for instance, the members of the Tribunal did not know the facts? How could it then be taken that they were of common knowledge? The members of the Tribunal may be ignorant of the facts. At the same time it is difficult for them to take cognizance of the facts if they do not know them.