M. DEBENEST: So you consider that the building of the Vught Camp was in the interest of the Dutch?
SEYSS-INQUART: Most certainly it was. The cost of Vught Camp, as far as I was informed, was covered out of this property—I believe 14 million guilders were spent—because this camp was to be a Jewish assembly camp. It was only later that Himmler transformed this into a concentration camp.
M. DEBENEST: That is an opinion, and the Tribunal will decide about it. But regarding the property of the Freemasons, what was done with the sums produced by this liquidation, exactly how were they utilized—for the Reich, or also for the construction of concentration camps in the Netherlands?
SEYSS-INQUART: Neither the one nor the other.
THE PRESIDENT: M. Debenest, he has said already, hasn’t he—I thought he said quite clearly on deposit in some unknown bank, and that there were about 400 million which came from the Jews.
SEYSS-INQUART: Mr. President, I know the bank. The property of the Jews is deposited in the “Vermögens-Verwaltungs und Rentenanstalt.”
M. DEBENEST: Well, I am now going to submit to you a document, which is a letter, Number F-864, which becomes RF-1532. This document states exactly the destination of the property which was thus liquidated. First, you indicate at the beginning of the letter that the total resulting from the liquidation amounted, as you say, to 6,134,662 guilders up to that date, and you indicate that this sum is located in the Reich Foundation (Reichsstiftung) of the Netherlands. This is a German organization, and not a Dutch organization, as far as I understand. You indicate further on how the various sums were to be allocated.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you don’t need trouble about the details of where it is. He says it is there in the bank.
M. DEBENEST: Exactly, Mr. President, I would merely like to read the few lines at the end where he states exactly the purpose of the allocation of the various sums.
“I believe I am complying with your intentions if I assume, with reference to this liquidated Freemasons’ property, that it too, as we discussed with reference to Jewish property, should be used for specific purposes within the Netherlands, according to an agreement to be reached between us.”