SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I shall. I am much obliged to Your Lordship. Well, My Lord, it is quite clear that both figures—they are in figures, and they are 18,998, and then there is the check below, and you have to take off 1,200; that leaves 17,800. My Lord, if it were only 1,800, the second figure could not arise.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, somewhere there must be an error. That would have been more for two universities in Czechoslovakia than there were in Berlin at the best of times. There was a maximum of 8,000 to 9,000 in Berlin per year and in the case of a nation of only 7 millions there are supposed to be 18,000 students in two universities. This cannot be right.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, it may be that there are three age groups. Your Lordship sees that it is “according to the data at my disposal, the number of students affected by the closure for 3 years of the Czech universities is 18,000.” It may be that is the intake for 2 years, in addition to present students.
[Turning to the defendant.] Anyhow, this is the figure; and it is this problem which has been dealt with by your Ministry. It may be that it includes certain high schools, but at any rate, these are your Ministry’s documents, and I want to know what happened. This was the minutes, as I understand it, from Dennler, Dr. Dennler, who was the head of Group X of your office, to Burgsdorff, who had a superior position; and, if I may summarize it, this letter of 21 November 1939 suggests that the students should be taken forcibly from Czechoslovakia to the old Reich and put to work in the old Reich; and then, the next—on 25 November, you will notice that in Paragraph 2 it says—the writer, who is Burgsdorff, is saying that he is dealing with X 119/39, which is Dennler’s memorandum; and Burgsdorff says that he does not want them to go into the Reich because at that time there was some unemployment in the Reich, and suggests that they should be dealt with by compulsory labor on the roads and canals in Czechoslovakia. Now, these were the two proposals from your office.
My Lord, the second one is Document 3857-PS, which will be Exhibit GB-524.
[Turning to the defendant.] What happened to the unfortunate students?
VON NEURATH: Nothing at all happened to them.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well now, did either of these proposals of Dr. Dennler for forced labor in the Reich and of Burgsdorff for forced labor in Czechoslovakia, did they come up to you?
VON NEURATH: No, none of them.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Did they come to you for decision? Did they come to you for decision?