DR. STEINBAUER: A small town, Putten, was destroyed because of serious acts of sabotage; was this ordered by the Reich Commissioner or someone else?
WIMMER: Since it was a purely military affair, just like the Rotterdam incident, where a plot was directed against the Armed Forces the incident was handled by the Armed Forces. The order was given by the commander of the Armed Forces and if I remember correctly, the Reich Commissioner—in any case, I—only learned about the incident after the execution had taken place.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now I pass over to the next chapter, and that is the combating of so-called enemies of the State.
Yesterday it was mentioned that the property of the Freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses was confiscated. I should like to ask you, so that there may be no mistake, whether it was only the property of the organizations which was claimed, or was it also the property of the individual members? And so, taking the Freemasons as an example, was the property of the individual Freemason claimed as well as the property of the lodges?
WIMMER: In all these cases property that belonged to organizations was demanded, never that belonging to individuals. If there were individual cases where this happened, then these were abuses by individuals, but I cannot recall any such abuses.
DR. STEINBAUER: The Dutch Jews were also counted among the so-called enemies of the State. Who was responsible for handling the Jewish question in the Netherlands—you have really already told me that.
WIMMER: From the very beginning, the Police laid claim to the handling of the Jews, to jurisdiction over the treatment of the Jews, as a matter of fundamental principle.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now, we have an entire list of decrees here which bear the name of Seyss-Inquart and which indicate encroachments on the right of the Jews. Can you remember when the legislation against the Jews was introduced and in what form?
WIMMER: The development was briefly more or less as follows: Seyss-Inquart was opposed to the entire idea of taking up the Jewish question at all in the Netherlands, and in one of the Reich Commissioner’s first conferences it was ordered that this question was not to be dealt with.
After a certain time—it may have been a few months—the Reich Commissioner informed us that he had received an order from Berlin to take up the Jewish problem because Jews had participated in a relatively large number in various movements and actions in the Netherlands which at that time, indeed, could only be characterized essentially as conspiracies.