DÖNITZ: Yes. The German people knew that concentration camps existed; but they did not know anything about the conditions and methods therein.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It must have been rather a surprise for you when the Defendant Von Ribbentrop said he only heard of two: Oranienburg and Dachau? It was rather a surprise to you, was it?
DÖNITZ: No, it was not at all surprising, because I myself only knew of Dachau and Oranienburg.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But you say here you knew there were concentration camps. Where did you think you were going to get your labor from? What camps?
DÖNITZ: From these camps.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Did you think that all your labor was going to be German or that it was going to be partly foreign labor?
DÖNITZ: I did not think about that at all. I should like to explain now how these demands came to be made.
At the end of the war I was given the task of organizing large-scale transports in the Baltic Sea. Gradually the necessity arose to move the hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken refugees out of the coastal areas of East and West Prussia where they were exposed to starvation, epidemics, and bombardment and to bring them to Germany. For this reason I made enquiries about merchant shipping, which was not actually under my jurisdiction; and in so doing I learned that out of eight ships ordered in Denmark, seven had been destroyed by saboteurs in the final stage of construction. I called a meeting of all the departments connected with those ships and asked them, “How can I help you so that we get shipping space and have damaged ships repaired more quickly?” I received suggestions from various quarters outside the Navy, including a suggestion that repair work, et cetera, might be speeded up by employing prisoners from the concentration camps. By way of justification, it was pointed out, in view of the excellent food conditions, such employment would be very popular. Since I knew nothing about the methods and conditions in the concentration camps, I included these proposals in my collection as a matter of course, especially as there was no question of making conditions worse for them, since they would be given better food when working. And I know that if I had done the opposite I could have been accused here of refusing these people an opportunity of having better food. I had not the slightest reason to do this, as I knew nothing about any concentration camp methods at the time.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I am sure we are grateful for your explanation. But I just want you to tell me, after you had proposed that you should get 12,000 people from concentration camps, did you get them?
DÖNITZ: I do not know. I did not do anything more about that. After the meeting I had a memorandum prepared and submitted to the Führer...