DR. SEIDL: Witness, the Government General was divided into five districts at the head of each of which there was a governor; is that correct?
VON BURGSDORFF: Yes.
DR. SEIDL: From 1 December 1943 until the occupation of your district by Soviet troops you were governor of the district Kraków?
VON BURGSDORFF: Yes. To use the correct official term, I was...
GENERAL R. A. RUDENKO (Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Mr. President, the defense counsel has put the question of the “occupation” of this region by Soviet troops. I energetically protest against such terminology and consider it a hostile move.
DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, I have just been told that perhaps a mistake in the translation has crept in. All I intended to say was that, in the course of the year 1944, the area of which this witness was governor was occupied by the Soviet troops in the course of military action. I do not know what the Soviet prosecutor is protesting against; it is at any rate far from my intention to make any hostile statement here.
THE PRESIDENT: I think the point was, it was not an occupation; it was a liberation by the Russian Army.
DR. SEIDL: Of course; I did not want to say any more than that the German troops were driven out of this area by the Soviet troops.
Witness, will you please continue with your answer?
VON BURGSDORFF: I was entrusted with exercising the duties of a governor—that is the correct official expression. Until a few months ago I was still an officer of the Wehrmacht, and during my entire activity in Kraków I remained an officer of the Wehrmacht.