All these facts show that despite the anti-Jewish propaganda carried on by the Government, actual hostility against the Jewish population did not exist among the people themselves. Thus it is as good as proved that neither Streicher’s publications in Der Stürmer nor his speeches incited the German people in the sense maintained by the Prosecution. Therefore the general attitude of the German nation provides no proof of incitement to hatred of the Jews having been successfully carried out by the Defendant Streicher and leading to criminal results. The Prosecution, however, has further supported its accusation by the specific assertion that only a nation educated to absolute hatred of Jews by men like the defendant could approve of such measures as the mass extermination of Jews. Thereby the charge is made against the whole of the German people that they knew about the extermination of the Jews and approved of it; the severity and consequences of such a charge on the whole future of the German nation is impossible to estimate.
But did the German nation really approve of these measures? A fact can only be approved of if it is known. Therefore should this assertion of the Prosecution be considered as proved, then logically it must also be considered as proved that the German nation actually had knowledge of these occurrences. However, evidence in this respect has shown that Reichsführer SS Himmler, who was entrusted by Hitler with the mass assassinations, and his close collaborators shrouded all these events in a veil of deepest secrecy. By threatening with the most severe punishments any violations of the rule of absolute silence which was imposed, they managed to lower before the events in the East and in the extermination camps an iron curtain which hermetically sealed off those facts from the public.
Hitler and Himmler prevented even the corps of the highest leaders of the Party and State from gaining any insight and information. Hitler did not hesitate to give false information to even his closest collaborators, like Reich Minister Dr. Lammers, who was heard here as a witness, and to make him believe that the removal of the European Jews to the East meant their settlement in the Eastern Territories but by no means their extermination. However much the statements of the defendants may diverge on many points, in this connection they all agree so completely with one another and with the statements of other witnesses that the veracity of their testimonies simply cannot be questioned. If it was not possible for even the Defendant Frank in his capacity as Governor General of Poland to get through to Auschwitz, because without Hitler’s special consent even he was denied entrance, then this fact speaks for itself.
If even the leading personalities of the Third Reich, with the exception of a very small circle, were not informed and if even they had at best very vague information, then how could the general public have known about it? Under these circumstances the possibilities for finding out what was going on in the camps were extremely slight.
For the majority of the people, foreign news did not exist as a source of information. Listening to foreign radio stations was punishable with the heaviest penalties and therefore did not take place. And if it did, the news broadcast by foreign radio stations concerning events in the East, although, or rather because, it corresponded to facts, was so crass, so horrible beyond any human understanding, that it was bound to appear to any normal individual, as in fact it did, as intentional propaganda. Germany could only gain factual knowledge of the extermination measures against the Jews from people who either were working in the camps themselves or came in contact with the camps or their inmates or from former concentration camp inmates.
There is no need to explain that members of the camp personnel who were concerned with these happenings kept silent, not only because they were under stringent orders to do so, but also in their own interest. Furthermore, it is known that Himmler had threatened the death penalty for information from the camps and for spreading news about the camps and that not only the actual culprit but also his relatives were threatened with this punishment. Finally, it is known that the extermination camps themselves were so hermetically sealed off from any contact with the world that nothing concerning the events which took place in them could penetrate to the public.
The prisoners in the camps who came into contact with fellow-workers in their work kept silent because they had to. People who came to the camps were also under the threat of this punishment insofar as they could obtain any insight into things at all, which was all but impossible in the extermination camps. From these sources, therefore, no knowledge could come for the German people.
But the order for absolute silence was compulsory to a still greater measure for every concentration camp inmate who had been released. Hardly anybody ever came back to life from the actual murder camps; but if, once in a while, a man or woman was released, in addition to the other threatened punishments the threat of being sent back to the camp hung over them if they violated the order for silence. And this renewed detention would have meant gruesome death.
It was therefore nearly impossible to learn from released concentration camp prisoners positive facts concerning the occurrences in the camps. If this was the case with regard to normal concentration camps in Germany, it applied in a still greater measure to the extermination camps. Every lawyer who, as I did, defended people before detention in a concentration camp and who was visited by them again after their release, will be able to confirm that it was not possible, even in such a position of trust and under the protection of professional legal secrecy, to get former concentration camp inmates to talk.
If men such as Severing, who testified here—a Social Democrat of long standing, who was highly trusted by his party comrades and who was, because of this, in touch with many former concentration camp inmates—came to know of the real facts connected with the extermination of the Jews only very late and even then to a very restricted extent, then such considerations must apply even more to any normal German.