SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Keep to the answer. The answer is that you do not know whether you got them or not, assuming that you did get them.
DÖNITZ: I did not get them at all. I had nothing to do with shipyards and consequently I do not know how those responsible for the work in the shipyards received their additional workers. I just do not know.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But you held a position of some responsibility; if you get 12,000 people from concentration camps into the shipbuilding industry, they would have to work alongside people who weren’t in concentration camps, would they not?
DÖNITZ: Certainly, yes.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Are you telling this Tribunal that when you ask for and you may have got 12,000 people out of concentration camps, who work alongside people not in concentration camps, that the conditions inside the concentration camps remain a secret to the other people and to all the rulers of Germany?
DÖNITZ: First of all, I do not know whether they came. Secondly, if they did come, I can very well imagine that they had orders not to talk; and thirdly, I do not even know what camps they came from and whether they were not people who had already been put into other camps on account of the work they accomplished. At any rate, I did not worry about the execution or methods, et cetera, because it was none of my business; I acted on behalf of the competent non-naval departments which required workmen in order to carry out repairs more quickly, so that something could be done about repairs for the merchant navy. That was my duty, considering the arrangements which I had to make for the re-transport of these refugees. I would do exactly the same thing again today. That is the position.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well now, just look a little down the document to the fourth paragraph, after it says, “Translator’s note.” If you will look at the English, the paragraph beginning: “Since elsewhere...” Have you found that? This is as you have told us, after you express your worry about the sabotage in the Danish and Norwegian shipyards. I just want you to look at your proposal to deal with saboteurs.
“Since elsewhere measures for exacting atonement taken against whole working parties among whom sabotage occurred have proved successful and, for example, the shipyard sabotage in France was completely suppressed, possibly similar measures for the Scandinavian countries will come under consideration.”
That is what you were suggesting, Defendant, a collective penalty against the whole working party where any sabotage occurred; isn’t that so?
DÖNITZ: Yes. May I give an explanation in that connection?