GÖRING: No, neither about the amount nor about the cigarette factory, nor anything else.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Let me refresh your recollection about that. Did you not tell them and did you not tell Colonel Amen in interrogations that this money was given to you by this cigarette factory and that their back taxes were canceled?
GÖRING: No, I even denied that their back taxes were ever canceled. I remember now that the question was put to me in a different connection. A sum of money was set aside for the so-called Adolf Hitler Fund, and this amount the Führer put at my disposal for general cultural tasks.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: By the cigarette factory?
GÖRING: Not by the cigarette factory; a number of business men subscribed to the Adolf Hitler Fund, and Mr. Reemtsma gave me this sum from the fund in the course of the years, after agreement with the Führer. A part of it was allotted to the State theaters, another part for building up art collections, and other cultural expenditure.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, you were interrogated on the 22d day of December 1945 by the External Assets Branch of the United States Investigation of Cartels and External Assets, were you not?
GÖRING: May I first say explicitly that I had been asked whether I would be ready to make any statements about it, and was told that these statements would in no way be connected with this Trial. Therefore the presence of my defense counsel would not be necessary. This was expressly told me, and was repeated to me by the prison authorities, and before the interrogation it was again confirmed to me that these statements should in no way be brought in in connection with this Trial. However, that is all the same to me. You may produce them as far as I am concerned. But because of the method employed, I desire to have this made known here.
DR. STAHMER: I protest against the use of the statements for the reason that has just been given by the witness. I myself sometime ago—I think it was around Christmas—was asked by, I believe, members of the United States Treasury whether they could interrogate the Defendant Göring on questions of property, adding expressly that I did not have to be present at the interrogation because this had nothing to do with the Trial, and would not be used for it.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I am not able either to affirm or deny, and therefore I will not pursue this subject further at this time. I do not believe that any stipulation was made that these facts should not be gone into. I was not informed of it, and if there has been, of course, it would be absurd.
[Turning to the witness.] Now, you were asked about receiving some art objects from Monte Cassino.