I now turn to another point of the Indictment, to the question of the concentration camps. The Prosecution has connected the defendant with concentration camps, although not in the Indictment but during the presentation of evidence; and the witness Alois Höllriegel, who was questioned here, was asked in the witness box whether Schirach had ever been inside the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. To this I should like to remark that the Defendant Von Schirach mentioned his visit to Mauthausen at his interrogation by the American Prosecution before the beginning of the Trial; it would, therefore, not have been necessary to have this visit confirmed again by the witness Höllriegel. He visited the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in the year 1942, not in 1944, as the witness Marsalek erroneously stated; the correct year, 1942, has been confirmed by the witness Höllriegel and also by the witnesses Hoepken and Wieshofer, from whom we heard that neither after 1942 nor at any other time did Schirach visit other concentration camps. The visit to Mauthausen in 1942 cannot implicate the defendant Schirach in the sense of his having known, approved, and supported all the conditions and atrocities in concentration camps. In 1942 he saw nothing in Mauthausen which might have indicated such crimes. There were no gas chambers and the like in 1942. At that time mass executions did not take place at Mauthausen. The statements of the Defendant Von Schirach concerning his impression of this camp appear quite plausible, because the testimony of numerous witnesses who have been heard during the course of this Trial has confirmed again and again that on the occasion of such official visits, which had been announced previously, everything was carefully prepared in order to show to the visitors only that which need not fear the light of day. Maltreatment and torture were concealed during such official visits in the same manner as arbitrary executions or cruel experiments. This was the case at Mauthausen in 1942 and certainly also at Dachau in 1935, where Schirach and the other visitors were shown only orderly conditions, which at a superficial glance appeared to be better than in some ordinary prisons.
As a result, Schirach only knew that since 1933 there were several concentration camps in Germany where, as far as he knew, incorrigible habitual criminals and political prisoners were confined. However, even today Schirach is unable to believe that the mere knowledge of the existence of concentration camps is in itself a punishable crime, since he at no time did anything whatsoever to promote concentration camps, never expressed his approval of this institution, never sent anybody to a concentration camp, and would in any case never have been able to make any changes in this institution or to prevent the existence of concentration camps. Schirach’s influence was always too small for that. As Reich Youth Leader, of course, he had nothing to do with concentration camps in the first place, and it was lucky for Schirach that in his entire Vienna Gau district there was not a single concentration camp. His relations with concentration camps were therefore limited to repeated attempts to have people released from them, and it is after all significant that his sole visit to the Concentration Camp Mauthausen resulted in his exerting his influence to obtain the ultimate release of inhabitants of Vienna who were imprisoned there.
May it please the Tribunal, I do not want to go again into many details which have played a larger or smaller part in the presentation of evidence for the case of Schirach. In the interest of saving time I shall not deal more specifically with his alleged connection with Rosenberg or Streicher, nor with his alleged collaboration in the slave labor program, in which connection not even the slightest participation of the Defendant Schirach could be proved, nor with a telephone conversation which has been used by the Prosecution and which allegedly took place between one of the Viennese officials and an SS Standartenführer regarding the compulsory labor of the Jews, about which Von Schirach knew nothing at all.
But I should like to insert a short remark about one subject which arose particularly in connection with the case of Rosenberg, that is, a brief explanation concerning the Hay Action by which thousands of children in the Eastern combat zone were collected and brought partly to Poland and partly to Germany. The apparent aim of this operation, as far as Schirach could see from the documents presented here, was to collect children who were in the zone of operations, that is, immediately behind the front and wandering around without their parents, with a view to giving them professional training and work so that they should be saved from physical and moral neglect.
The Defendant Von Schirach doubts whether this can be looked upon as a crime against humanity, or as a war crime; but one thing is certain, that the Defendant Von Schirach did not know anything of that affair at the time. He was not the competent authority. That entire affair was handled by Army Group Center in collaboration with the Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories, and, of course, it is quite plausible that neither the Eastern Ministry nor the Army Group Center saw fit to approach the Gauleiter of Vienna in order to get his approval of that action, or even to notify him about it.
The only thing which, a considerable time later, came to the attention of the Defendant Von Schirach and may have some bearing on that, the Hay Action, was an incidental report by Reich Youth Leader Axmann that so and so many thousand youths had been brought to the Junkers works at Dessau as apprentices.
The Defendant Von Schirach was anxious to clear up this matter in view of his former office as Reich Youth Leader, and he wishes to make it quite clear that even after leaving that office he would of course never have undertaken anything against the interests of youth.
May I add another remark here concerning the letter which the Defendant Von Schirach sent to Reichsleiter Bormann after the murder of Heydrich, in which he suggested reprisal measures to Bormann in the form of a terror attack upon an English center of culture? That letter was actually sent by the defendant to Bormann. He acknowledges it. I have to point out at the very beginning that fortunately the suggestion remained a suggestion, and it was never carried out. The defendant, however, has told us that at that time he was very upset by the assassination of Heydrich, and it was clear to him that a revolt of the population in Bohemia would necessarily lead to a catastrophe for the German armies in Russia, and in his capacity as Gauleiter of Vienna he had considered it his duty to undertake something to protect the rear of the German army fighting in Russia. And that explains that teletype to Bormann in 1942 (Document 3877) which, as I have already pointed out, fortunately was not acted upon.
May it please the Tribunal, I shall proceed with my statement, the middle of Page 26.
I shall not deal in detail with the Adolf Hitler Schools which were founded by Schirach, nor with the Fifth Column which was somehow, quite wrongly, connected with the Hitler Youth, although nothing definite could be charged to the defendant. I shall not go into either the repeated efforts on behalf of peace undertaken by the Defendant Schirach and his friend Dr. Colin Ross, nor shall I discuss the merits of the defendant with reference to the evacuation of children to the rural areas, which took millions of children from bomb-endangered districts during the war into more quiet zones and thus saved their lives and health.