FRITZSCHE: Yes. In April of 1942 I met a former official of the Communist Party, whose name was Reintgen. We had been soldiers together for 6 months; and therefore he reported quite frankly to me, without keeping anything back. He said that he had been ill-treated in 1933, having had lashes on his back, but not afterwards. This information fully coincided with my observations.
DR. FRITZ: Did you yourself visit concentration camps?
FRITZSCHE: No, I have never been inside the compound of a concentration camp. However, during the winter of 1944-45 I was frequently in the administration building near the Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen camp. Apart from that, I spoke to prisoners as often as I was able to do so, if I happened to see them either on the march or at work.
DR. FRITZ: With whom did you speak at Oranienburg?
FRITZSCHE: With a colleague of Obergruppenführer Glücks and twice also with him personally. They told me that the foreign reports regarding cruel treatment were false. They said that the treatment was not only humane but decidedly good, as after all, the prisoners were valuable laborers. I spoke at some length about the working hours, for at that time a rather silly decree had been issued about a general extension of working hours. The attitude taken by Glücks was very reasonable, namely, that longer working hours would not necessarily result in greater output. Therefore the working hours of 8 to 10 hours a day remained as, before. He did not mention anything about extermination through overwork. That is something I heard about for the first time in Court.
DR. FRITZ: And how about your questions which you put to the prisoners direct?
FRITZSCHE: Well, first of all, there was always a guard present, and quite naturally the prisoners were suspicious; but eventually I always received positive replies to positive questions. Briefly, the gist of these replies was always the same, that they had been unjustly arrested. Their food was really better than in prison and I frequently heard this phrase: “Well, anyway we are not soldiers here.” The weapons carried by the guards were only rifles or revolvers; I did not see any truncheons.
DR. FRITZ: Did you not become more and more suspicious about these concentration camps, after listening to foreign radio reports?
FRITZSCHE: Not for a long time, for the reasons which I gave yesterday. Reports from English members of Parliament regarding the Buchenwald case were first mentioned in April 1945. But this case is so very recent that for brevity’s sake I do not need to describe particulars of the incidents that occurred in the Ministry of Propaganda.
DR. FRITZ: How can you explain the fact that crimes and ill-treatment of the worst kind undoubtedly took place in concentration camps?