DR. HAENSEL: Did you, during the execution of such measures, of which we have frequently heard, make your own observations or did you remain at home?
SEVERING: I remained at home. I only saw the results of these pogroms afterwards in the shape of destroyed Jewish firms, and in the remains of the synagogues.
DR. HAENSEL: And to which organizations or groups do you attribute these events of November 1938?
SEVERING: My own judgment would not have any decisive value, but I tell you quite frankly, it was the SA or the SS.
DR. HAENSEL: And what makes you think that it was precisely these two groups?
SEVERING: Because the members of these groups, in my home town of Bielefeld, were called the instigators of the synagogue fires.
DR. HAENSEL: By whom?
SEVERING: They were indicated by name by the population in general.
DR. HAENSEL: You knew about the concentration camps. Can you still remember when you heard about them for the first time? It is important at least to determine the year.
SEVERING: No. I cannot tell you that at the present moment. I can only reply to your question by referring to individual dates. The first murder in a concentration camp became known to me when I heard that, in the Papenburg Concentration Camp, the former member of the German Reichstag and Police President of Altona had been shot. That could have been either in 1935 or 1936, I am no longer sure when.