DR. SERVATIUS: Now, I submit Document Number EC-68. It contains directives issued by the Regional Food Office of Baden regarding the treatment of Poles in Germany. This is Exhibit Number USA-205, to be found in the American Document Book “Slave Labor,” the fourth document. I shall now read the beginning of this document, which you have already seen. It says there:
“The offices of the Reich Food Administration—(Regional Food Office) of Baden—have received with great satisfaction the result of the negotiations with the Higher SS and Police Leader in Stuttgart on 14 February 1941. Appropriate memoranda have already been sent to the district food offices. Below I promulgate the individual regulations as they were laid down during the conference and are now to be supplied accordingly:
“1. In principle farm workers of Polish nationality no longer have the right to complain; consequently, no complaints may be accepted by any official agency.
“2. Farm workers of Polish nationality may no longer leave the localities in which they are employed.”
Now, I shall omit some points and just confine myself to the essential parts. I turn to Point 5:
“5. Visits to theaters, cinemas, or other cultural entertainments are strictly prohibited for farm workers of Polish nationality.”
Other regulations follow, prohibiting use of the railroad, and under Number 12 there is a vital provision:
“12. Every employer of Polish farm workers has the right to administer chastisement...”
Please comment on this document and tell us to what extent you approve of it.
SAUCKEL: First of all, I should like to point out that this document is dated 6 March 1941—that is, more than a year before I assumed office. Such an absurd and impossible decree never came to my attention during my term of office. But since I am now being confronted with the document and am learning about it, I should like to refer to my own decrees, which I issued entirely independently of what had gone before and which automatically revoked such decrees. In order to prevent these absurd decrees of some agency in the Reich from being effective, I had my decrees collected and published in a handbook in which it says—because of the time factor and out of respect for the Tribunal, I cannot ask the Tribunal to look at all of them; but they are in direct contradiction to such views. I would like to ask that I be permitted to quote just one sentence from the manifesto already referred to, which is directed against such nonsense and against the misuse of manpower. I refer particularly to my directives for fair treatment. The sentence reads as follows: