DR. STEINBAUER: We will speak about their removal later on.
Now I would like to speak about Ommen. There is a long report on that.
SEYSS-INQUART: Ommen was intended as a training camp for those Dutch who voluntarily wanted to be employed in the economy in the Eastern Territories. They were given instruction on the country, the people, and their language. The head of the camp borrowed prisoners from a neighboring Dutch prison for the work. Then I received reports that these prisoners were being mistreated. The judges of Amsterdam turned to me. I gave the Dutch judges of Amsterdam permission to personally inspect the camp and speak to the prisoners. That was done, according to Document F-224(d), on 5 March 1943. Thereupon the Amsterdam judges wrote a long letter to the General Secretary for Justice. They complained about the mistreatment of the prisoners, which they had noted, and about the fact that Dutch prisoners were transferred to prisons in the Reich for labor assignment. The complaints were justified, and I ordered that the prisoners be sent back from the Ommen Camp to the Dutch penal institution, and that Dutch prisoners be returned from German prisons to Dutch prisons. This procedure was correct, and therefore I necessarily took due steps to settle the matter.
DR. STEINBAUER: But now I have to ask you a certain question and confront you with a charge. Document RF-931 shows that you removed judges who made such complaints, namely, in Leeuwarden.
SEYSS-INQUART: In my eyes the procedure of the court of Leeuwarden was incorrect. These judges did not consult me, but publicly asserted in a verdict that the Dutch prisoners were being sent to German concentration camps and shot. According to the facts, which lay before me, that was false. I then informed them of the results obtained by the Amsterdam judges. The Leeuwarden judges refused to pass further judgments. I asked them to continue to officiate, but they refused. I then dismissed them as persons who refused to work. Of course, I could have had them tried by a German court with charges of making atrocity propaganda.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did you receive complaints from the Red Cross about conditions in the camps?
SEYSS-INQUART: In the Netherlands we had the arrangement that a representative of the Dutch Red Cross, Mrs. Van Overeem, could visit all concentration camps and prisons, especially for the purpose of verifying whether the food packages were being delivered. Neither Mrs. Van Overeem nor the heads of the Dutch Red Cross ever directed any complaint to me. I should like to say that this circumstance was especially gratifying for me, because the Dutch complained about everything, and if for a change I received no complaints, then that was a certain relief for me.
I should like to remark that about the beginning of 1944, according to the reports submitted to me, about 12,000 Dutch persons were in concentration camps or prisons. That is the same as if today, in all of Germany, 120,000 Germans were in prisons or camps. That occasioned my setting up legal commissions which had to visit the camps and the prisons in order to make investigations and determine what prisoners could be released or placed on trial. Naturally, in cases where there were orders for arrest from Berlin, I could do nothing.
DR. STEINBAUER: Witness, so you say that you waged a constant struggle with the Police on this question?
SEYSS-INQUART: I would not like to call it a struggle.