ROSENBERG: I should perhaps add one thing: I visited no real concentration camp, neither Dachau nor any other one. Once—it was in 1938—I questioned Himmler on how things really were in the concentration camps and told him that one heard from the foreign press all sorts of derogatory atrocity reports. Himmler said to me, “Why don’t you come to Dachau and take a look at things for yourself? We have a swimming pool there, we have sanitary installations—irreproachable; no objections can be raised.”
I did not visit this camp because if something actually improper had been going on, then Himmler, upon being questioned about it, would probably not have shown it to me. On the other hand I desisted from going for reasons of good taste; I simply did not want to look at people who had been deprived of their liberty. But I thought that such a talk with Himmler made him aware that such rumors were spreading.
A second time, later on—I cannot say, however, whether it was before or after the outbreak of the war—Himmler himself spoke to me about the matter of the so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses, that is, about a matter which has also been submitted by the Prosecution as a religious persecution. Himmler told me only that it was certainly impossible to put up with conscientious objections, considering the situation the Reich was in, that it would have incalculable consequences; and he went on to say that he had often talked personally to these internees in order to understand them and eventually convince them. That, he said, has been impossible, however, because they replied to all questions with quotations—quotations from the Bible which they had learned by heart, so that nothing was to be done with them. From that statement by Himmler I gathered that since he was telling me such a story he could not possibly want to plan or carry out executions of these Jehovah’s Witnesses.
An American chaplain has very kindly given me in my cell a church paper from Columbus. I gather from that that the United States, too, arrested Jehovah’s Witnesses during the war and that until December 1945, 11,000 of them were still detained in camps. I presume that under such conditions, every state would answer in some way such a refusal of war service; and that was my attitude too. I could not consider Himmler wrong on this point.
DR. THOMA: Could you intervene in the case of Pastor Niemöller?
ROSENBERG: Yes. When the case of Pastor Niemöller was being tried in Germany I sent one of my staff to the trial because I was interested in it both from an official and humane point of view. This official—his name was Dr. Ziegler—made a report to me from which I concluded that this arraignment was based partly on misunderstandings on the part of the authorities, and furthermore that he was not as seriously incriminated as I had assumed. I then submitted that report to the Deputy of the Führer, Rudolf Hess, and I asked him whether he could not give this case consideration also, and after some time, when I was with the Führer once, I brought the conversation around to this subject, and stated that I thought this whole trial and the subsequent handling most unfortunate. The Führer told me:
“I have asked only one binding statement from Niemöller—that he, as a clergyman, will not challenge the State. He has refused to give that and hence I cannot set him free. Apart from that, I ordered that he receive the most decent treatment possible, that he, being a heavy smoker, receive the best cigars, and that he have the means for carrying on all learned studies, if he wants to do this.”
I do not know on what reports the Führer based this statement, but as far as I was concerned it was clear that I was not in a position to intervene any further in this matter.
DR. THOMA: We come now to the last question but one: Is it true that after the seizure of power, you made a certain examination of your attitude towards the Jews, and that the whole treatment of Jews immediately after the seizure of power underwent a certain modification? Further, that originally it had been intended to settle the Jewish question in quite another way?
ROSENBERG: I will not deny that during that time of struggle up to 1933, I too had used strong polemic arguments in my writings, and that many hard words and suggestions appeared in that connection. After seizure of power I thought—and I had good reason to think that the Führer thought so too—that now one could renounce this method, and that a certain parity and a chivalrous treatment of this question should be observed. Under “parity” I understood the following—and I stated it in a public address on 28 July 1933 and also at the Party rally in September 1933 publicly over all the broadcasting systems—that it was not possible, for example, that the communal hospitals in Berlin should have 80 percent Jewish doctors when 30 percent was their ratio. I stated further at the Party rally that we had heard of conditions that the Reich government, in connection with all these parity measures and beyond that, were making exceptions for all those members of the Jewish people who had lost a relative, father or son, during the war; and I used the expression that we would now have to make efforts to solve this problem in a chivalrous way. That it turned out otherwise is a tragic destiny, and I must state that the activities following in connection with the emigration and the support of this emigration in many countries abroad had as a result the aggravation of the situation; then things occurred which were regrettable and I must say robbed me of the inner strength to continue petitioning the Führer for the method I favored. As I said, what was stated here recently in the veiled phraseology of the police and made known here, and what has been testified to here the other day, I considered simply impossible and I would not have believed it even if Heinrich Himmler himself had related it to me. There are things which, even to me, appear beyond the humanly possible, and this is one of them.