Yes?
SPEER: First I should like to say, as you have so often mentioned my nonresponsibility, that if in general these conditions had been true, on the basis of my statement yesterday I should consider myself responsible. I refuse to evade responsibility. But the conditions were not what they are said to have been here. There are only individual cases which are quoted.
As for this document I should only like to say from what I have seen of it that this seems to concern a concentration camp, one of the small concentration camps near the factories. The factories could not inspect these camps. That is why the sentence is quite true where it says that no factory representative ever saw the camp. The fact that there were SS guards also shows that it was a concentration camp.
If the question which you asked me before, as to whether the labor camps were guarded—those for foreign workers—if that refers to this document, then your conclusion was wrong. For as far as I know, the other labor camps were not guarded by SS or by any other organizations.
My position is such that I feel it is my duty to protect the heads of plants from any injustice which might be done them. The head of a plant could not bother about the conditions in such a camp. I cannot say whether conditions were as described in this camp. We have seen so much material on conditions in concentration camps during the Trial.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now I will ask to have you shown Exhibit Number D-382—I should say Document D-382—which would be United States Exhibit 897. Now that is the statement of several persons as to one of those steel boxes which stood in the foreign workers’ camp in the grounds of Number 4 Armor Shop, and of those in the Russian camp. I do not know that it is necessary to read the complete descriptions.
Is that merely an individual instance, or what is your view of that circumstance?
SPEER: What is pictured here is quite a normal locker as was used in every factory. These photographs have absolutely no value as evidence.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Very well. I will ask to have you shown Exhibit D-230. Together with D-230 is an interoffice record of the steel switches, and the steel switches which have been found in the camp will be shown to you. Eighty were distributed, according to the reports.
SPEER: Shall I comment on this?