SAUCKEL: With regard to the employment of workers from the East I was told that Russia had not joined the Geneva Convention, and so Germany for her part was not bound by it. And I was further told that in the Baltic countries and in other regions, Soviet Russia had also claimed workers or people, and that in addition about 3 million Chinese were working in Soviet Russia.
DR. SERVATIUS: And what about Poland?
SAUCKEL: As regards Poland I had been told, just as in the case of other countries, that it was a case of total capitulation, and that on the grounds of this capitulation Germany was justified in introducing German regulations.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did you consider the employment of foreign labor justifiable from the general point of view?
SAUCKEL: On account of the necessities which I have mentioned, I considered the employment of foreign workers justifiable according to the principles which I enforced and advocated and to which I also adhered in my field of work. I was, after all, a German and I could feel only as a German.
DR. SERVATIUS: Herr Sauckel, you must formulate your sentences differently, the interpreters cannot translate them. You must not insert one sentence into another.
So you considered it justifiable, in view of the principles you wished to apply and, which as you said, you enforced in your field of work?
SAUCKEL: Yes.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did you also think of the hardships imposed on the workers and their families through this employment?
SAUCKEL: I knew from my own life even if one goes to foreign countries voluntarily, a separation is very sad and heartbreaking and it is very hard for members of a family to be separated from each other. But I also thought of the German families, of the German soldiers, and of the hundreds of thousands of German workers who also had to go away from home.