COL. POKROVSKY: You have just confirmed that you were aware of the fact that en route prisoners of war died by thousands. Now I would like you to look at a document, Document Number 1201-PS, Exhibit Number USSR-292. It consists, Your Honors, of the minutes of the meeting of the war economy administration of the OKW. It has not been submitted to the Tribunal so far. It is dated 1000 hours, 19 February 1942. The minutes were taken of the meeting which took place at the Reich Chamber of Commerce. The report by Ministerial Director Dr. Mansfeld of the office of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor was heard. The three lines which particularly interest me are underlined with red pencil on the copy that is before you right now. Look at it, Witness. It states there:
“The utilization of these Russians is exclusively a question of transportation. It is senseless to transport this manpower in open or unheated closed boxcars and then to unload corpses at the place of destination.”
Have you found this place?
WESTHOFF: Yes.
COL. POKROVSKY: Have you heard anything about transports of this kind, wherein, in place of a train of living persons, corpses were unloaded? Have you heard anything about that before you took charge of your particular job in the OKW? Has anyone reported to you about these things?
WESTHOFF: I have heard nothing about these transports, as that did not come under the jurisdiction of the OKW, but came, as is clear from this document, within the sphere of the operational sectors. The jurisdiction of the OKW comprised mainly the German Reich and the border states, and only here did the OKW have authority over the prisoners of war—not in the operational sector, not in the rear army area. To this extent, it is a matter which did not come to the OKW at all. We received the prisoners of war from the Army, and then we were informed that we would receive so-and-so many prisoners of war, and we took them into our camps. What happened to those people in the operational territory was something we could not control in detail.
Apart from that, this story also goes back to 1942—the time when I was still at the front.
COL. POKROVSKY: Look at the left side of the document at the top. There is a note there that this comes from the War Economy and Armament Office of the OKW does it not? Left, at the top, under the number K 32/510.
WESTHOFF: My office never had anything at all to do with the Armament Office.
COL. POKROVSKY: Very well. Does it not seem to you that this document confirms the fact that the OKW knew about these transports?