Hitler offered me a uniform. He said I could have any uniform I desired but I only raised my hands in refusal and did not accept any, not even the uniform of an official, because I did not wish to have a uniform.
DR. DIX: Now, another subject: Did you know anything about the concentration camps?
SCHACHT: Already in the year 1933, when Göring established concentration camps, I heard several times that political opponents and other disliked or inconvenient persons were taken away to a concentration camp. That these people were deprived of their liberty perturbed me very much at the time, of course, and I continuously demanded, as far as I was in a position to do so during conversations, that the arrest and removal to concentration camps should be followed by a clarification before the law with a defense and so on, and suitable legal proceedings. At that early time the Reich Minister of the Interior Frick also protested energetically along the same lines. Subsequently this type of imprisonment, et cetera, became less known in public, and in consequence I assumed that things were slowly abating. Only much later—let us say the second half of 1934 and 1935...
DR. DIX: When you met Gisevius, you mean?
SCHACHT: Yes, when I met Gisevius—I heard on repeated occasions that not only were people still being deprived of their liberty, but that sometimes they were being ill-treated, that beatings, et cetera, took place. I have already said before this Tribunal that as a result, as early as May 1935, I personally took the opportunity of drawing Hitler’s attention to these conditions and that I told him at the time that such a system was causing the whole world to despise us and must cease. I have mentioned that I repeatedly took a stand against all these things publicly, whenever there was a possibility of doing so.
But I never heard anything of the serious ill-treatment and outrages—murder and the like—which started later. Probably because, firstly, these conditions did not begin until after the war, after the outbreak of war, and because already from 1939 onwards I led a very retired life. I heard of these things and of the dreadful form in which they happened only here in prison. However, I did hear, as early as 1938 and after, of the deportation of Jews; but because individual cases were brought to my notice I could only ascertain that there were deportations to Theresienstadt, where allegedly there was an assembly camp for Jews, where Jews were accommodated until a later date when the Jewish problem was to be dealt with again. Any physical ill-treatment, not to speak of killing or the like, never came to my knowledge.
DR. DIX: Did you ever take a look at a concentration camp?
SCHACHT: I had an opportunity of acquainting myself with several concentration camps when, on 23 July 1944, I myself was dragged into a concentration camp. Before that date I did not visit a single concentration camp at any time, but afterwards I got to know not only the ordinary concentration camps but also the extermination camp in Flossenbürg.
DR. DIX: Did you not, while in Flossenbürg, receive a visit from a “comrade-in-ideas”—if I may say so?
SCHACHT: I know of this matter only from a letter which this gentleman sent to you or to this Tribunal, I believe, and in which he describes that visit. I can only, on my own observation...