[A recess was taken.]
DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, Your Honors, before I continue the interrogation of the witness Dr. Bühler, I should like to inform you that I forego the interrogation of the witness Helene Kraffczyk; so this witness will be the last one.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
DR. SEIDL: Witness, the Defendant Dr. Frank has been accused by the Prosecution of not having done everything within his power to ensure the feeding of the population of the Government General. What can you say about that?
BÜHLER: The decisive reason, the real cause, why the population in the Government General could not be supplied as efficiently and as satisfactorily as in Germany was the lack of co-operation on the part of the Polish population in the measures taken by the Germans to bring about a just and equal distribution of food quotas. This lack of co-operation was caused by patriotic considerations, the aversion to German domination, and the continuous, effective propaganda from the outside. I do not believe that there was a single country in Europe where so much was pillaged, stolen, and diverted to the black market, where so much was destroyed and so much damage was done in order to sabotage the food program, as in the Government General.
To give one example: All the dairy machinery, which had been provided with great pains, and the chain of dairies, which had been organized with difficulty, were destroyed again and again so that a more or less comprehensive control of milk and fat supplies could not be carried out. I estimate that the fat sold on the free market and the black market in the Government General was several times the quantity of that controlled and distributed officially.
Another decisive reason may be seen in the fact that the Government General had been carved out of a hitherto self-contained governmental and economic structure and that no consideration had been given effecting a proper economic balance.
The large centers of consumption in the Government General, that is to say, the cities such as Warsaw, Kraków, later Lvov, and also the industrial area in the center of Poland, had previously received their supplies to a very large extent directly from the country through the standing market. In these areas of the Government General there was a lack of granaries; a lack of refrigerators; there was no systematic chain of dairies; and storehouses of all kinds were lacking—all necessary for the directing or controlling of a supply economy by the state.
The Government General had to construct all these things step by step, and therefore the supplying of the population was proportionately difficult. It was not intended to supply the population fully right away; the supplies were to be improved gradually. I always saw to it that the directives issued for combating the black market allowed margins for the acquisition of foodstuffs and that the inhabitants of the cities were given the opportunity of contacting the producers. In 1942 the rations were to have been increased; then an order came from the Delegate for the Four Year Plan that rations were not to be increased and that certain quotas of foodstuffs were to be allocated to the Reich. Most of these foodstuffs were not taken out of the area, but were consumed by the Armed Forces on the spot. The Governor General fought continually against the authorities of the Four Year Plan, in order to achieve an increase and an improvement in the food supplies for the Polish population. That struggle was not without success. In many cases it was possible to increase the rations considerably, especially those of the workers in armament industries, and other privileged groups of the working population.
To sum up I should like to say that it was not easy for the population of the Government General to get its daily food requirements. On the other hand there were no famines and no hunger epidemics in the Government General. A Polish and Ukrainian auxiliary committee, which had delegations in all districts of the Government General, saw to the supply of foodstuffs for those parts of the population which were in greatest need. I used my influence to have this committee supplied with the largest possible amount of foodstuffs, so that it should be able to pursue its welfare work successfully, and it is known to me that that committee took special care of the children of large cities.