SEYSS-INQUART: Bringing anybody into and keeping him in a concentration camp was exclusively a matter for the Police. I do not recall a single instance in which I requested the Police to put any Dutchman into a German concentration camp. It may have happened that I ordered the German Police to take Dutchmen to Hertogenbosch or Amersfoort. Especially at the time when the Netherlands courts were very lenient with black-market operators and slaughterers who supplied the black market, I did demand their internment in a concentration camp for 2 or 3 months.
However, if you have specific cases in mind, please mention them and you may be assured that I will tell you everything exactly as I remember it.
M. DEBENEST: No, your answer is sufficient.
Did you participate in the seizure of hostages and in their execution?
SEYSS-INQUART: I stated yesterday that I recall only one actual hostage case, which took place in 1942, and I told you what I had to do with it. The so-called shooting of hostages, beginning with July 1944, was not actually shooting of hostages, but rather executions carried out by the Police on the basis of a Führer decree.
I myself never ordered a single shooting. But I would like to repeat: If, for instance, I called the attention of the Police to the fact that in any certain locality of the Netherlands an illegal resistance movement was causing much trouble, and gave the Police instructions to investigate the case, it was perfectly obvious to me that the leaders of the resistance movement could be arrested by the Police who, on the basis of the Führer decree, would shoot them.
But I must repeat: I had to meet my responsibility, even in the face of a difficult situation whereby those who were guilty—that is, legally guilty and not morally, because morally I probably would have acted the same way as they did—those who were guilty were not put before a court.
M. DEBENEST: As far as the facts which you mentioned yesterday are concerned, this deals with hostages who were shot following an attempt upon the railroad at Rotterdam?
SEYSS-INQUART: Yes.
M. DEBENEST: Who selected those hostages?