“With regard to the destruction of asocial life, Dr. Goebbels is of the opinion that the following should be exterminated: All Jews and Gypsies, Poles having to serve 3-4 years of penal servitude, and Czechs and Germans sentenced to death, to penal servitude for life, or to security custody (Sicherungsverwahrung). The idea of exterminating them by work is the best. . . .”
We stress this last phrase which shows, even in the heart of the German Government itself, the will to “exterminate by work.”
The last document that we shall submit with regard to the concentration camps is Document F-662, which becomes Exhibit Number RF-390, Pages 77 and 78, second document book. This document is the testimony of M. Poutiers, living in Paris, Place de Breteuil, who points out that the internees in the detachments of Mauthausen-Ebens worked under the direct control of civilians, the SS dealing only with the guarding of the prisoners. This witness, who was in numerous work units, states that all were ordered and controlled by civilians and only supervised by the SS and that the inhabitants of the country, as the internees went to and from their work and while at work, could therefore observe their misery; which confirms the testimony which has already been given before the Tribunal during these last few days.
We shall summarize the increasing advance of the German criminal policy in the West: At the beginning of the occupation, violation of Article 50 of the Hague Convention; execution of hostages, but creation of a pseudo “law of hostages” to legalize these executions in the eyes of the occupied countries.
In the years that follow, contempt for the rights of the human individual increases, until it becomes complete in the last months of the occupation. By that time arbitrary imprisonment, parodies of trials, or executions without trial have become daily practice.
The sentences, the Tribunal will remember, were not put into effect in cases of acquittal or pardon; people acquitted by German tribunals, who should have been set at liberty, were deported and died in concentration camps.
At the same time there developed and grew in strength the organization of Frenchmen who remained on the soil of France and refused to let their country die. At this stage German terrorism was intensified against them ever increasingly. What follows is the description of the terrorist repression carried out by the Germans against the patriots of the west of Europe, against what was called the “Resistance,” without giving this word any other meaning than its generic sense.
From the time Germany understood that her policy of collaboration was doomed to defeat, that her policy of hostages only exasperated the fury of the people whom she was trying to subdue; instead of modifying her policy with regard to the citizens of the occupied countries, she reinforced the terror which already reigned there and tried to justify it by saying it was an anti-Communist campaign.
The Tribunal will recall Keitel’s order and will understand what was thought of this pretext. All the French, all the citizens of Europe without distinction, without any distinction of party, profession, religion, or race, were involved in the resistance against Germany and their heroes were mingled in the graves and in the collective charnel houses into which the Germans threw them after their extermination.
But this confusion was voluntary; it was calculated; it justified to a certain degree the arbitrary measures of repression of which we already had evidence in Document F-278, which we submit under Number RF-391. It is dated 12 January 1943, and is signed “Von Falkenhausen.”