VON STEENGRACHT: No.
COL. AMEN: You did not know either about what was happening to priests or the nuns or to other inmates of concentrations camps? Correct?
VON STEENGRACHT: I have just said that I have intervened in hundreds of cases, in which I was approached by the Nuncio even when it concerned Jews, for whom the Nuncio was not authorized to act, and in cases in which the Nuncio was acting on behalf of Polish clergymen, also a sphere for which he was not authorized. In spite of the fact that I had strictest orders not to receive such cases, I did receive the cases; and, in spite of the “Nacht und Nebel” decree, I always gave information when I could get any information. Details other than those which I received officially I did not have.
COL. AMEN: And who gave you the instructions not to do anything about these complaints?
VON STEENGRACHT: These orders came directly from Hitler and came to me through Ribbentrop.
COL. AMEN: How do you know?
VON STEENGRACHT: I have already said yesterday that the two notes which before my time were passed by State Secretary Von Weizsäcker to Hitler through Ribbentrop were rejected with the remarks that they were blunt lies and, apart from that, this was not within the jurisdiction of the Nuncio; these notes were to be returned and in the future such documents were not to be accepted. Furthermore, there were to be no discussions and that applied, not only to the Nuncio, it applied to all unauthorized actions particularly when foreign diplomats intervened in matters in which they had no jurisdiction.
COL. AMEN: But do you want the Tribunal to understand that you went ahead and tried to do something about these complaints, whereas Ribbentrop did nothing; is that correct?
VON STEENGRACHT: I tried to settle within my own sphere of jurisdiction all cases which, according to instructions, I was not permitted to accept at all. But if a case here and there was of primary importance, or where the lives of several people could have been saved, I always applied to Ribbentrop. In most of these cases Ribbentrop took the matter before Hitler, after we had invented a new competence, so that he could not raise the objection that the Nuncio had no jurisdiction. Upon this, Hitler either absolutely rejected them or at least said that the police would have to investigate the case first. This presented the grotesque picture that in a humanitarian matter or an affair which under all circumstances had to be handled as foreign politics, the Foreign Minister no longer made the decision, but the Criminal Inspector Meier or Schulze who only needed to state “Undesirable in the interests of state security.”
COL. AMEN: Did Ribbentrop obey the instructions which you say were received from the Führer not to do anything about these complaints or did he not? “Yes” or “no”?