DR. SERVATIUS: I will put the question again.
In this document mention is made of return transports from Germany to the East, and two transports are denounced on account of the abominable conditions which are described. I quote from the document:
“Very depressing effects on the morale of the skilled workers and the population are caused above all by people returning from Germany in a condition unfit for work, or who were already unfit before they came to Germany. Several times already transports of skilled workers on their way to Germany have passed returning transports of such unfit persons, and they have stood on the tracks alongside each other for some time. On account of the insufficient care given these returning transports (sick, injured, or weak people, mostly 50 or 60 to a car, often many days without sufficient care and food, usually escorted by only 3 or 4 men), and through the frequently very unfavorable—even if exaggerated—statements of these repatriates about their treatment in Germany and en route, added to what the people could see with their own eyes, a psychosis of fear developed among the skilled workers and others being transported to Germany. Several transport leaders, especially those of the 62d and the 63d Transports, reported details in this connection. In one case the leader of the transport of skilled workers observed with his own eyes how a person who had died of hunger was unloaded on the side track from a returning transport. (1st Lt. Hofmann of the 63d Transport, Darniza Station.) On another occasion it was reported that en route three dead...”
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think you need read all of this to the defendant. He probably knows it and he can give his answer upon it.
DR. SERVATIUS: You see that reference is being made to a report; will you please comment on it?
SAUCKEL: Concerning this report, may I say the following: These terrible conditions had to be investigated at once by the local authorities concerned. A report on the result of the investigation did not reach me. This report here was also not made to me. I may point out that the transportation to Germany of sick people unfit for work was strictly prohibited by me, because that would have been a crime and an impossibility from the economic point of view. I could not possibly say who sent these trains back. It was also not established what kind of transports they really were. The report describes conditions which already existed before I came into office. I, personally—and I should like to emphasize this particularly—issued a decree according to which sick people or pregnant women—I personally issued orders that, if a return transport of sick people were necessary, the German Red Cross were to furnish personnel to accompany these people all the way back to their native place. These orders can be found among the codes. Such terrible cases of negligence and crime are, therefore, in contradiction to the clear regulations issued by the German labor authorities.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did you not equip Bad Frankenthal for sick people who could not return?
SAUCKEL: In my own Gau it was not Bad Frankenthal but Bad Frankenhausen, Kyffhäuser, which I made available for sick Soviet workers. In addition, I had a large school set aside in Edendorf near Weimar with 100 beds for typhus patients and Russian prisoners of war. So, on my own initiative, I myself did everything possible to help in dealing with cases of sickness and similar matters. It was also prohibited to return people while they were in a sick condition.
THE PRESIDENT: We had better adjourn now.