THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I said already, there were, no doubt, erroneous statements made in the foreign press and every press. We cannot investigate those sorts of matters.
DR. FRITZ: Then I shall pass on to another question.
[Turning to the defendant.] Did you not, as an experienced journalist in the news service, have the feeling that where there is smoke there is fire? Did you not believe that at least something must be true of the enemy reports about murders and so forth in the areas under German domination?
FRITZSCHE: Precisely because I was a professional newsman I did not have this feeling. Again and again I thought—and I repeatedly reminded the public—of one erroneous bit of reporting of the first World War. I beg the Tribunal to grant me permission to mention it quite briefly because it is also a part of the fundamentals of the propaganda which I carried on.
THE PRESIDENT: No, I have already pointed out that we assume that there are a variety of errors. We do not want to go into detail.
DR. FRITZ: Then I shall turn to another question.
[Turning to the defendant.] But surely you knew that the Jews had been evacuated from the Reich; you must have noticed that they disappeared from the streets?
FRITZSCHE: Yes, I did notice that even though this occurred very gradually. Beyond that I heard Dr. Goebbels say on the occasion of a ministerial conference that as Gauleiter in Berlin he had demanded the evacuation of Jews.
DR. FRITZ: Where were these Jews taken in your opinion and what were you told about these things?
FRITZSCHE: Dr. Goebbels told me that they were taken to reservations in Poland. The suspicion that they were taken to concentration camps, or that they were even being murdered, never arose.