GEN. RUDENKO: In your document, which has been submitted by your defense counsel and which I will therefore not submit to you, Document Rosenberg-19, Riecke wrote, in a letter to all Reichsleiter of the press in November 1942:
“Koch has declared ‘that the Ukraine is for us only an object of exploitation, and that it must pay the expenses of the war, and that in a certain way the population must, as a second-rate people, be utilized for the tasks of the war, even if they have to be caught with a lasso.’ ”
This was the policy of Koch in the Ukraine. This document was submitted by your counsel. I will ask you now: Did you write to Koch on 14 December?
ROSENBERG: May I reply to that? I do not have the verbatim document in front of me. I only know that it was a letter written by Riecke to me with the big complaint which so many others had also had, and that he requested me...
GEN. RUDENKO: Koch?
ROSENBERG: Yes—to complain, and that he used rather drastic language, and that we both strove to reach orderly methods of work here.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal have been all over this matter of Koch as to the Ukraine today, and so it is not helping the Tribunal to go over it again.
GEN. RUDENKO: All right, Mr. President.
[Turning to the defendant.] Yesterday you stated here repeatedly in your explanations as regards the atrocities and extermination of the Soviet population that you were not informed, and that these were police measures. Did I understand you correctly?
ROSENBERG: No, that is not exactly true. I was informed of many combats with partisans and of bands and, as I have stated, of some shootings; and also I was told about the fact that German agricultural leaders, German officials and policemen, and peaceful Soviet farmers were attacked by these partisans and bands and were murdered by thousands.