“In this connection President Gerteis spoke of the treatment of the Poles in the Reich. This treatment, said to be worse than that of any other foreign workers, had led to the result that practically no Poles would volunteer any more for work in Germany.
“There were 21 points on which the Polish workers in the Reich were more badly treated than any other foreign workers. The Governor General requested President Gerteis to acquaint him with these 21 points which he would certainly attempt to have abolished.”
I now ask the Tribunal to turn to Page 100 of the document book. It concerns a conference on 6 June 1944 regarding a large-scale action against the partisans in the Bilgoraje Forest. I quote Page 101, Page 4 of the diary:
“The Governor General wants to be quite sure that protection is given to the harmless population, which is itself suffering under the partisan terror.”
Page 102 deals with the views of the Governor General on concentration camps. It is an entry dated 6 June 1944. I quote the last paragraph:
“The Governor General declared that he would never sign such a decree, since it meant sending the person concerned to a concentration camp. He stated that he had always protested with the utmost vigor against the system of concentration camps, for it was the greatest offense against the sense of justice. He had thought there would be no concentration camps for such matters, but they had apparently been silently put into operation. It could only be handled in such a manner that the persons condemned would be pardoned to jail or prison for a certain number of years. He pointed out that prison sentences, for instance, were imposed and examined by state institutions. He therefore requested that State Secretary Dr. Bühler should be informed that he, the Governor General, would not sign such decrees. He did not wish concentration camps to be officially sanctioned. He went on to say that there was no pardon which would commute a sentence into commitment to a concentration camp. The courts-martial are state legal organs of a special character and consist of police units; actually they should normally be staffed by members of the Wehrmacht.”
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Seidl, can you explain the translation of the words at the bottom of Page 102 which are in English, “It only could be handled in such a manner that the persons would be pardoned to jail or prison for a certain number of years.” Can you explain that from the point of view of meaning?
DR. SEIDL: The meaning of the words becomes clear from the statement made by President Wille in the previous paragraph where, among others, you will find the following statement. It is the tenth line from the top.
“The Reprieve Commission had asked the representative of the Chief of the Security Police, who was present at the session, in what form this pardon was to be effected. As far as he knew, remittance of a sentence had been allowed in one case only. In all other cases it was customary to couple Security Police measures with the remittance of a sentence. It was feared that otherwise these people might disappear.”
Now the Governor General was of the opinion that, for example, to transmute a death sentence to a term in prison or penitentiary was possible but that he would have to refuse direct commutation of a death penalty into a suspended prison penalty if the Police in that event were to impose security measures.