“I have read this statement and I have understood it completely. I have made the statement freely and without compulsion. I swear before God that this is the full truth.”—Signed—“Jürgen Stroop.”
Do you say that that statement of Stroop is true or false?
KALTENBRUNNER: It is untrue and I request that Stroop be brought here.
COL. AMEN: You will find that instead of its bearing out your story it confirms in substantially every detail the story told by Kaleske, who was Stroop’s adjutant at the time. Is that not true, Defendant?
KALTENBRUNNER: It is not true, insofar as witness Stroop is one step closer to my story, for on Page 1 he declares he had received the orders regarding the Warsaw Ghetto from Himmler and this is something which Kaleske has never said anywhere.
COL. AMEN: I will accept that, Defendant.
KALTENBRUNNER: An interrogation of General Stroop will clarify this point completely, also that Hahn had, of course, received orders from the Gestapo in Berlin; whether in this matter, too, I do not know, since as a matter of course the offices of the Security Police had also to be at the disposal of Amt IV, particularly as far as support in legal proceedings was concerned. But what matters here, in an action taking place in the Government General and in Warsaw, is the question of what organizations were involved in this action and all witnesses versed in these matters will have to agree that this was within the jurisdiction of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Government General, not to the Reich Security Main Office. It is completely incorrect that these Security Police forces in Warsaw and officials such as Hahn were not subordinate to the SS and Police Leader.
It can be testified to and ascertained that all Security Police offices, especially where an action of this kind was involved, could have only one leader and that was the local leader. But if, Mr. Prosecutor, you would give me again the opportunity of defining my position to these witnesses’ statements more comprehensively through my defense counsel I could come back to this matter properly.
COL. AMEN: And now, Defendant, I want to refer you to Document 3819-PS, which is already in evidence as GB-306, which are notes of a conference in the Reich Chancellery on 11 July 1944, signed by Lammers and the subject of testimony before this Tribunal the other day. You recall having attended that meeting I presume.
[The document was submitted to the defendant.]