SCHMIDT: I cannot say anything about that, since all these questions refer to the private household of Herr Von Ribbentrop and I had nothing to do with that. My connections with him were purely official and limited at that to routine matters and the important political interpretation affairs in the Foreign Office. I only heard about the other matters, and naturally not in such a way that I could make any authentic statements about them.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, I will ask you only one question. After the Schloss had become the property, or at any rate had come to the use of the Foreign Minister, did not Herr Von Remitz spend several years in a concentration camp, where he ultimately died? You knew that, did you not?
SCHMIDT: I knew it as a rumor; I was told that it had happened in that way.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: And did he not hear of other stories stronger than these, that came out of concentration camps?
SCHMIDT: I do not believe that any authentic reports were made there regarding conditions because naturally, particularly in front of the Foreign Office, it was treated as taboo by these people who were responsible for concentration camps, since we were in any case regarded as not quite reliable and as not belonging to them. Such matters were of course diligently covered up and concealed from us. Therefore, any concrete details never became known to us at all.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But you knew, did you not, even in the Foreign Office, that there were a large number of concentration camps in which a vast number of people were shut up?
SCHMIDT: We knew that, but our source of information was mostly the foreign press, which we read, of course; and the foreign radio reports which appeared on our table, translated, every morning.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: So that if you knew it from the foreign press and the foreign radio, whoever else in that dock did not know about concentration camps, the Defendant Ribbentrop, as foreign Minister, did know. Is that not right?
SCHMIDT: I would like to put it this way: Of course, he had access to that foreign news material. Just how he evaluated it, whether he considered it true or completely false, or exaggerated, naturally I cannot say. Of course he also received the reports as such, but as reports from abroad and, during the war, as reports from hostile countries.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Doctor, I will not pursue that further at the moment. I want you just to tell me this: You have given us your account of the interview between Hitler and the Defendant Ribbentrop and Horthy when the question of the Jews was discussed, on the 17th of April 1943. I just wanted on record that your account is based on the fact that you actually made the minutes; the minutes are signed by you.