BÜHLER: 1943, yes.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I shall quote three sentences from the typed transcript of the report. Please hand the original to the witness.
I quote three sentences from this document. It is Dr. Frank’s speech:
“I should like to emphasize one thing. We must not be too soft-hearted when we hear that 17,000 have been shot. These persons who have been shot are also victims of the war.... Let us now remember that all of us who are meeting together here figure in Mr. Roosevelt’s list of war criminals. I have the honor of being Number 1. We have thus, so to speak, become accomplices in terms of world history”.
Your name is second on the list of those present at the conference. Do you not consider that Frank must have had sufficient grounds to number you among the most active of his accomplices in crime?
BÜHLER: About such statements of the Governor General I have already said all that is necessary.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Then you ascribe this to the Governor General’s temperament?
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, that is not an answer to the question. The question was, do you consider yourself to be one of those criminals?
BÜHLER: I do not consider myself a criminal.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: If you do not consider yourself a war criminal, will you perhaps recollect who personally—I emphasize the word “personally”—actively participated in one of Frank’s most cruel orders with regard to the Polish population? I am talking about the decree of 2 October 1942. Were you not one of the participants?