KALTENBRUNNER: That presentation is definitely misleading. I saw this chart hanging here. All the armaments centers, factories, et cetera, in which internees from concentration camps were used for labor must have been characterized as concentration camps. I cannot explain in any other way the deluge of red dots.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Do you differentiate between the smaller camps and the regular concentration camps, and if so, why?
KALTENBRUNNER: The difference is very obvious for the following reasons: Any worker who worked in armament industries—that is, each internee—worked in the same enterprise, in the same factory, as every other German or foreign worker. The difference was merely that the German worker at the conclusion of his working hours, at the end of the day, returned to his family, whereas the internee of the labor camp had to return to the camp.
DR. KAUFFMANN: You are accused of establishing the Concentration Camp Mauthausen, that you visited this camp repeatedly. The witness Höllriegel, who testified here, said he had seen you in this camp. He also claims to have seen you inspecting the gas chambers while they were in operation. There is an affidavit of Zutter, who has already been mentioned today and who claims to have seen you at the Concentration Camp Mauthausen. From this the Prosecution conclude that you, too, must have known exactly about these conditions which were beneath human dignity. I am asking you now, is this evidence correct or wrong? When did you inspect these camps, and what observations did you make?
KALTENBRUNNER: The testimony is wrong. I did not establish any concentration camps in Austria where I was until 1943. I did not establish a single concentration camp in the Reich from 1943 onwards. Every concentration camp in the Reich as I know today, and as has been proved here with certainty, was established on orders of Himmler to Pohl. This applies also—and I wish to emphasize this—to the Mauthausen Camp. Not only were Austrian authorities excluded from establishing the Mauthausen Camp, but they were unpleasantly surprised because neither was the conception of a concentration camp in that sense known in Austria, nor was there a necessity for establishing concentration camps anywhere in Austria.
DR. KAUFFMANN: And now, in Germany, in the Reich proper?
KALTENBRUNNER: What do you mean by that?
DR. KAUFFMANN: I am asking regarding your knowledge of conditions there.
KALTENBRUNNER: I heard gradually more and more about conditions in concentration camps. It is apparent that I must have heard of these things already by way of the entire Reich intelligence service and its news channels for home politics.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Did you not, as testified by Höllriegel, see the gas chambers in operation?