GÖRING: Then he must say from whom he received this order.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I see. Well, he says that he issued this order, and you know as well as I do that prisoners of war is a thing that you have got to be careful about, because you have got a protecting power that investigates any complaint; and you never denounced the Convention and you had the protecting power in these matters all through the war, had you not? That is right, isn’t it?
GÖRING: That is correct, but I take the liberty to ask who gave him this order, whether he received this order from me.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, he would not get it direct from you. I do not think you had ever met him, had you? He would get it from Lieutenant General Grosch, wouldn’t he?
GÖRING: Then Grosch should say whether he received such an order from me. I never gave such an order.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I see. So you say that you had never heard—this was 3½ years after the beginning of the war—and you had never heard that any escaped prisoners of war were to be handed over to the police. Is that what you ask the Tribunal to believe?
GÖRING: To the extent that escaped prisoners of war committed any offenses or crimes, they were of course turned over to the police, I believe. But I wish to testify before the Court that I never gave any order that they should be handed over to the police or sent to concentration camps merely because they had attempted to break out or escape, nor did I ever know that such measures were taken.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: This is my last question: I want to make it quite clear, Witness, that I am referring to those who had escaped, who had got away from the confines of the camp and were recaptured by the police. Didn’t you know that they were handed over to the police?
GÖRING: No. Only if they had committed crimes while fleeing, such as murder and so on. Such things occurred.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 21 March 1946 at 1000 hours.]