SEYSS-INQUART: About the many Austrians who died in concentration camps? I really learned about that in this courtroom, but about the numerous Austrians who were in concentration camps, perhaps in the course of 1943-44. In 1938-39 I knew that some political opponents were in concentration camps, but they were gradually being released again, or at least some of them.
MR. DODD: Didn’t you know that they were being killed in Buchenwald as early as 1939? Didn’t you know some of the people, and know about their deaths? Now think a minute before you answer this. Didn’t you know about the death in Buchenwald of people who had been your political opponents?
SEYSS-INQUART: I do not remember, Mr. Prosecutor.
MR. DODD: You never heard a word about it?
SEYSS-INQUART: I do not mean to say that at all. If you give me a name, then I shall tell you at once what the situation is.
MR. DODD: I know if I tell you the name you will tell me you heard it, I suppose. However, I am asking you first if you didn’t in fact know that some of them were dying in these camps. That is all I want to know. It was pretty common knowledge in Austria, was it not?
SEYSS-INQUART: I shall most certainly admit that it is possible that I was told that one or another died in the camp even as early as 1938 or 1939.
MR. DODD: Well, you still continued to go on with the Nazis, although at least you knew that vast numbers of your fellow countrymen were being thrown into concentration camps. Didn’t that make any difference to you? Whatever you thought before the Anschluss, you certainly knew what they were doing after it.
SEYSS-INQUART: That I knew that large numbers were dying is out of the question. That there were a few, one or another, who died would not have affected me particularly because, between 1934 and 1938, at least as many National Socialists had died in the concentration camps of Dr. Dollfuss and the Fatherland Front, that is to say, of the Austrian State.
MR. DODD: Well now, wouldn’t you agree with me that conditions were very bad in Austria after the Nazis took over and they went from bad to worse and you knew it and everybody else in Austria knew it? Or do you want to take the position that they improved? I would just like to know what your opinion is.