THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal would like to hear this affidavit of Krüger read.
DR. BERGOLD: The text is as follows:
“Fräulein Else Krüger, born 9 February 1915, at Hamburg-Altona; secretary, at present residing at Hamburg (39), Hansenweg 1... From approximately the end of 1942 was one of several secretaries of the Defendant Martin Bormann; there were, roughly, 30 to 40 secretaries. I can no longer give accurate figures and names. I occupied this position until the end and after Hitler’s death.
“On 1 May 1945 I saw and talked to Bormann in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery for the last time; but I was then no longer working for him, since at that time he was writing his own orders and wireless messages by hand. All I had to do in those days in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery was to prepare myself mentally for my death. The last words he spoke to me, when he met me accidentally in the bunker, were, ‘Well, then, farewell. There is not much sense in it now, but I will try to get through. Very probably I shall not succeed.’ These approximately, were his last words, I can no longer recollect them literally.
“Later in the course of the evening when I thought that the Russians had come very close to the shelter of the Reich Chancellery I, together with a group of about 20 people, mostly soldiers, fled from the shelter through subterranean passages, then through an exit in one of the walls of the Chancellery, across the Wilhelmsplatz into the entrance of the underground station Kaiserhof. From there we fled through more subterranean passages to the Friedrichstrasse, and then through a number of streets, debris of houses, and so on; I can no longer remember the exact details on account of the confusion and excitement of those days. Eventually, in the course of the following morning, we reached another shelter; I no longer recollect where it was; it might have been the shelter at Humboldthain.”
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, does not the affidavit deal with the Defendant Bormann at all?
DR. BERGOLD: Oh yes, I am now coming to that:
“After some time the SS-Gruppenführer Rattenhuber appeared there quite suddenly. He had been severely wounded in the leg and was put on a camp bed. Other people asked him where he had come from; and he said, in my presence, that he, together with Bormann and others, had fled by car through the Friedrichstrasse. Presumably everybody was dead; there had been masses of bodies. I gathered from his statement that he believed Bormann was dead. This also appeared probable to me because, according to reports I heard from some soldiers whom I did not know, all people who had left the shelter after us had been taken under strong Russian fire and hundreds of dead were said to have been left behind on the Weidendammer Bridge.”
I omit one unimportant sentence.
“I remember reading afterwards in a British paper that Hitler’s driver for many years, Kempka, made a statement somewhere that Bormann, with whom apparently he fled, was dead.”