[A recess was taken.]
DR. SAUTER: Witness, before the intermission we last spoke of your activity concerning the decrees for the exclusion of Jews from economic life and you told us about the minutes of the session with Göring on 12 November 1938. That is Document Number 1816-PS.
You have already mentioned that the minutes of that conference were poorly edited and are full of omissions, but we can see from these minutes that you openly and definitely exerted a restraining influence and that you tried to save one thing or another for the Jews. I see, for instance, from the minutes that during the conference you repeatedly maintained that the Jewish stores should be reopened again speedily. Is that correct?
FUNK: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: You also pleaded, according to the minutes, that the Jews should be able to keep their shares and interests. That is shown in a question which you put. Is that correct?
FUNK: I have already said that I had thought, up to the time of that conference, that the Jews could keep their securities; and in the course of the conference I said that it was quite new to me that the Jews should also surrender the securities they possessed. Ultimately they got 3 percent government bonds in settlement, but they had to hand over all their shares and other interests.
I was also against a ruling of that kind because the Government would then take over a huge number of securities and the conversion of such securities was of course difficult.
DR. SAUTER: From the minutes it also appears that Heydrich was in favor of placing the Jews in ghettos, and you recall that the Prosecution has already mentioned that here.
What was your attitude, Dr. Funk, to Heydrich’s proposal at that time?
FUNK: I was against ghettos for the simple reason that I considered a ghetto a terrible thing. I did not know any ghettos, but I said that 3 million Jews can surely live among 70 million Germans without ghettos. Of course, I said that the Jews would have to move together more closely, and one would have to assist the other, for it was clear to me, and I also said so during the conference, that the individual Jew could not exist under the conditions which were now being created for him.