M. DEBENEST: You told the Tribunal yesterday of the dismissal of the magistrates of the court of Leeuwarden. Would you tell us again the exact causes of this dismissal?
SEYSS-INQUART: They were not the magistrates but the administrators of the court. This court of Leeuwarden had said in a public judgment that those Dutch citizens who were condemned by Dutch courts and sent to a Dutch prison would be transferred to German concentration camps, maltreated, and executed. As a result, the court no longer felt in a position to sentence a Dutch citizen.
This statement of the court was wrong in my opinion. In my opinion Dutch citizens have not been sent from Netherlands prisons to German concentration camps to be executed there.
In the meantime I cleared up the situation at the suggestion of the Amsterdam judges, and through the Secretary General for Justice I had the court in Leeuwarden requested to continue passing sentence. The court in Leeuwarden did not do so. Thereupon, I dismissed this court.
M. DEBENEST: Well, I have here the document “Verdict of the Court of Appeal of Leeuwarden” and there is no question of Dutch prisoners being sent to concentration camps or being tortured or otherwise put to death. All that is mentioned is that the magistrates of that court do not wish that the detainees be sent to concentration camps after they have served their sentence.
I shall hand you the original of this document so that you can check it. The document has already been submitted under Number RF-931.
SEYSS-INQUART: I did not receive a German translation or the original German.
M. DEBENEST: Then I shall read you the translation of the judgment; you may check it:
“Considering that the court wishes to take into account the fact that for some time past various terms of imprisonment have been imposed by the Dutch judges upon the people contrary to the intentions of the legislation, and the penalties of the judges have been executed in a manner which aggravates those penalties to such an extent that it is impossible for the judge to foresee or even to suppose the penalty to be inflicted....”
THE PRESIDENT: Why not summarize the document to the witness, do it in that way? You can give the effect of the judgment.