DR. SAUTER: That is a Gau, a district on the Polish border. That is an area in the east of Germany,—W-a-r-t-h-e-g-a-u—in the west of Poland, near Silesia.
Please, Witness, will you continue briefly:
VON SCHIRACH: The executions, the shootings on Russian territory, mentioned in the documents submitted in the course of the cross-examination in the Kaltenbrunner case, were not known to me at that time. But at a later date—it was before 1944—I heard about shootings in the ghettos of the Russian area and connected this with developments on the front, since I thought of possible armed uprisings in the ghettos. I knew nothing of the organized annihilation which has been described to us in the Trial.
DR. SAUTER: Then, if I have heard you correctly, you were informed about these events for the first time in 1944 by your friend, Dr. Colin Ross, who knew it from reports in the foreign papers?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: Do you still remember the month?
VON SCHIRACH: That I cannot say.
DR. SAUTER: In any case it would be in 1944?
VON SCHIRACH: That again I cannot say. But I believe I have to explain something more about it. I asked myself what can one do to prevent it? And I still ask myself, day after day, what did I do to prevent it? I can only answer practically nothing, since from 1943 on I was politically dead. Beyond what I had attempted in 1943 on the Berghof, I could do nothing at all.
DR. SAUTER: Nothing?