MR. DODD: That is really—it is interesting to hear all about it, but I have another purpose in mind. From whence did you obtain gold after you took over? Where did you get any new gold reserves from?
FUNK: Only by changing foreign currency into gold, and then, after I took over the post, we got in addition the gold reserve of the Czech National Bank. But we mainly increased our reserve through the Belgian gold.
MR. DODD: All right. Now, of course, gold became very important to you as a matter of payment in foreign exchange. You had to pay off in gold along in 1942 and 1943, did you not? Is that so?
FUNK: It was very difficult to pay in gold.
MR. DODD: I know it was.
FUNK: Because the countries with which we still had business relations introduced gold embargoes. Sweden refused to accept gold at all. Only in Switzerland could we still do business through changing gold into foreign currency.
MR. DODD: I think you have established that you had to use gold as foreign exchange in 1942 and 1943 and that is all I wanted to know. When did you start to do business with the SS, Mr. Funk?
FUNK: Business with the SS? I have never done that.
MR. DODD: Yes, sir, business with the SS. Are you sure about that? I want you to take this very seriously. It is about the end of your examination, and it is very important to you. I ask you again, when did you start to do business with the SS?
FUNK: I never started business with the SS. I can only repeat what I said in the preliminary interrogation. Puhl one day informed me that a deposit had been received from the SS. First I assumed that it was a regular deposit, that is, a deposit which remained locked and which was of no further concern to us, but then Puhl told me later that these deposits of the SS should be used by the Reichsbank. I assumed they consisted of gold coins and foreign currency, but principally gold coins, which every German citizen had had to turn in as it was, and which were taken from inmates of concentration camps and turned over to the Reichsbank. Valuables which had been taken from the inmates of concentration camps did not go to the Reichsbank but, as we have several times heard here, to the Reich Minister of Finance, that is...