THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Was the reason for that, that those clerks would not have had knowledge of what was going on in the Gestapo?
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I do not think either that they had sufficient knowledge, in general, to be held or that they had sufficient power to do anything about it if they did.
Now, this question of dealing with minor people—and it is one of the questions that the Court inevitably gets into, if it undertakes to draw these lines itself rather than letting them be drawn administratively by what we choose to prosecute—is illustrated by just this sort of thing.
One of the difficulties with the Court is that it tries to be logical, and ought to be logical perhaps. I have always thought that was the great merit of the jury system, that juries do not have to be, and in prosecuting we do not have to be. It may look illogical to exempt small people in one organization and not in another, but there were differences in them.
For example—I think it is in evidence; if not, it will be—it was pointed out at one meeting by the Defendant Göring that chauffeurs to certain officers had profited to the extent of half a million Reichsmark from Jewish property that they had gotten their hands on. Now, I suppose ordinarily you would say that a chauffeur for an official was not a man who had much discretion and not a man who was expected to know much about what his employer was doing, but you have a great deal of difference in their relations to these men.
So far as I am concerned, I want to make perfectly clear—and I think it will be assumed—the United States is not interested in coming over here 3,500 miles to prosecute clerks and stenographers and janitors. That is not the class of crime, even if they did have some knowledge, that we are after, because that is not the class of offender that affects the peace of the world. I think there is little reason to fear that that sort of person—unless there is some reason to feel that some guilty connection exists beyond merely performing routine tasks—will be prosecuted in as big a problem as we have on hand here.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): But in spite of that, you would include them in the SS, let us say?
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I would not exclude them.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): I take it that would include them.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: If they were members, they would be included; if they were merely employees, that is something different; but if they took the oath and became a part of the SS organization, I think they stand in a different relation to the employed clerks of a government agency.