THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Nelte, you said 744?
DR. NELTE: 744-PS.
THE PRESIDENT: I haven’t got any note that he referred to that document. I don’t know whether he—did you refer to 744-PS this morning, General Alexandrov?
GEN. ALEXANDROV: I referred this morning to the document in question. It was a directive of the Defendant Keitel, dated 8 July 1943, referring to the employment of prisoners of war in the mining industry.
DR. NELTE: Then the Russian Prosecution presented me with the original, that is the photostatic copy of a letter dated 8 July 1943, signed by Keitel. I now have two German versions before me. Not only do they differ greatly as far as the contents are concerned, but also the translation contains something additional which is not in the original, namely that to the heading of the letter, “Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht,” is added “Army General Staff.”
I do not want to delay you by reading the other incorrect translations, but I must assume that you have before you the texts in the foreign languages, which, as I see from the translation back into German, are incorrect. As this document, the original, is the evidence and is not being objected to, I should like to ask you to order that the translations in the foreign languages, which you have before you, be checked in order to find out to what extent they differ from the original document.
THE PRESIDENT: Had the document been put in evidence before? Had it been offered in evidence? Was it an exhibit?
GEN. ALEXANDROV: 744-PS.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that does not mean that it has been put in evidence. That only means that it is identified in that way. Had it been offered in evidence before?
GEN. ALEXANDROV: I do not know the U.S.A. number of this document, but according to the data at my disposal I am able to state that it was submitted in evidence to the Tribunal. In the German copy, presented in the German language, it is written that the German translation was made on 26 November 1945 by Second Lieutenant of the U. S. Infantry, Fred Niebergall. As Dr. Nelte has discovered certain inaccuracies in the translation, I consider that the Translation Division should be asked to check these divergencies.