I would ask you, Sauckel, you who yesterday described your own life as a workman, what you meant when you said: “To an inmate of a concentration camp and to a Jew work is not a mark of nobility.”
SAUCKEL: I want to say most emphatically that this paragraph is a very condensed and free rendering, and not a shorthand report. I raised an objection because I assumed that inmates of concentration camps would be traitors. My only object was that these people should not be taken to the same places of work as the other workers, the Jews either. But I did not employ them; that was the business of the Reichsführer SS. I was speaking at a conference of leaders and in the interests of workers with a clean record and the other foreign workers. I objected to their being put to work together.
M. HERZOG: I ask you this question again. What did you mean when you said: “To an inmate of a concentration camp and to a Jew work is not a mark of nobility?”
SAUCKEL: By that I meant that the work of men who had been found guilty of offenses should not be compared with the work of free workers with a clean record. There is a difference if I employ prisoners in custody or if I employ free workers, and I wanted to see the two categories separated.
M. HERZOG: So that Jews were prisoners in custody, were they not?
SAUCKEL: In this case the Jews were prisoners of the Reichsführer SS. Actually, I regret the expression.
M. HERZOG: You dispute, therefore, that this phrase is an expression of the hostility which you showed to Jews for instance?
SAUCKEL: At that time I was, of course, against these Jews, but I was not concerned with their employment. I was against these workers, whose employment was the concern of the Reichsführer SS, being put with the other workers.
M. HERZOG: Did you ever conduct any propaganda against the Jews?
SAUCKEL: I conducted propaganda against the Jews with regard to their holding positions in the Reich which I considered should have been occupied by Germans.