THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
[A recess was taken.]
DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, I have stated yesterday that the document books for Frank have already been translated. However, it appears—I have just found this out—that the document books are not yet bound because the office authorized to do that has not yet received permission from another competent office. Perhaps the Tribunal could order the binding of the document books, or else the whole translation is useless.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. DODD: I did not know there was any delay, but I will see to it right away that they get it as far as we are able to do it.
ROSENBERG: May I say something about this document? This memorandum, as I stated in the beginning, is based on the supposition of a possible ministerial decree. It obviously uses phrases which Bormann had used in his letter, but my letter which I sent to the Führer cannot possibly contain these phrases. It may have contained appeasing statements to the effect that I did nothing in the Occupied Eastern Territories for which I was reproached; that is to say, that I did nothing for the German population but that I established large health departments, school departments, education departments, et cetera; and that now I was absolutely compelled to simplify these administrative departments. But that Bormann made these statements, that he used these phrases! It is regrettable that he expressed himself in this way; and during the last few years we were compelled to observe an unnecessarily large number of similar instances.
I may add briefly that he himself stated that the Minister apparently intervened to clarify these things there, but I want to indicate one decisive point, and that is that the opinions advanced by Bormann were also familiar to Koch’s circle. During these tragic years my entire efforts were directed against Koch’s personal circle, especially in the training of administrative leaders; and that can be seen from Paragraph 3, where it says, “Moreover, at least 80 percent of the district commissioners are opposed to the views described.”
MR. DODD: I think we all know what is in it. If you have any explanation, I think you ought to make it.
ROSENBERG: Yes. On Page 4, it says the great majority of the administrative leadership corps set their hopes in the Minister—that is, myself—and I endeavored and tried to fulfill these hopes of the administrative leadership corps, which I attempted to educate by means of my decrees because these thousands of people could not know the vast Eastern territories, these thousands who, even in the fight against Bolshevism, sometimes had no very clear conception of the state of things in the East; and I must emphasize the fact that the author here says that the decree issued by the Minister on 17 March 1942 re-emphasizes his former decrees in a more rigorous form. The decree of 13 May 1942 attacks the view that the Ukrainians were not a race at all and attacks the false conception of superiority. Thus, these are two decrees which I have not received and which are here; and furthermore, Mr. Prosecutor, I say that he points out quite correctly that of course the Minister—that is, myself—knows very well that such a continent has to be treated differently than in accordance with these suggestions which we have heard. As a consequence of these proceedings, however, I have positively established that after that correspondence between Koch and Bormann I introduced the orderly set-up of a school administration in the Ukraine by issuing a detailed decree. Secondly, I requested the extension of the...
MR. DODD: I am not interested in that. Just a minute.