GEN. RUDENKO: I have a few more questions to ask. You state that you never heard a thing about the cruelties perpetrated in the concentration camps?
VON RIBBENTROP: Yes, that is correct.
GEN. RUDENKO: During the war you, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, studied the foreign press and the foreign newspapers. Did you know what the foreign press was saying?
VON RIBBENTROP: No, that is true only up to a certain point. I had so much to read and so much work to do every day that, on principle, I received only the foreign political news selected for me from the foreign press. Thus, during the whole of the war I never had any news from abroad about the concentration camps, until one day your armies, that is, the Soviet Russian armies, captured the camp at Maidanek in Poland.
On that occasion news came from our embassies and I asked for press news, et cetera, to be submitted to me. How I took these news releases to the Führer and what resulted from that has already been discussed here. Before that I knew nothing about any atrocities or any measures taken in the concentration camps.
GEN. RUDENKO: Did you know about the notes of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, Molotov, concerning the atrocities committed by the German fascists in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the deportation into slavery of the people of the Soviet, the pillaging?
VON RIBBENTROP: I think that note reached me somehow through diplomatic channels. I am not quite sure how; it may have come through news agencies. However, I do remember that at the time—I believe there were even several notes—at any rate I remember one of these notes which I submitted to the Führer. But since the beginning of the Russo-German war we could not carry out any action in these territories, and we had no influence there. Therefore, I am not informed about details.
GEN. RUDENKO: I was primarily interested in one fundamental fact, namely, that you were aware of the notes from the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. Tell me, please, do you know that millions of citizens were driven into slavery to Germany?
VON RIBBENTROP: No, I do not know that.
GEN. RUDENKO: You do not know! And that those citizens were used as slaves in Germany—you were not aware of that?