Q. I shall come back to the SS later on. Now, Witness, as witnesses have said, you yourself saw to it that persons in concentration camps were freed, or were not committed to the concentration camps. Can one not draw the conclusion from that that you were of the opinion that it was not very good in the concentration camps; that bad things were happening there, because in general one who has committed a criminal offense is not protected from imprisonment?
A. At the beginning I was quite convinced that these concentration camps were just a temporary measure. I knew from the press that they had done the same thing in Italy under the Mussolini regime, and that then, after a few years, these institutions had been dissolved—at least that’s what I heard at the time—and, since many things were being imitated here in Germany which Mussolini’s Italy had done, I saw at that concentration camp nothing but such an imitation. That certain abuses would occur there, I could understand, because, after all, the National Socialist movement itself, in its early beginnings, was a revolutionary group. Even if it weren’t so, at least that’s what people said. I thought that these things were only the childish diseases of the new regime. However, if I ever heard anything, if anything was brought to my own personal attention, then I thought it my human duty to help. That the parents of anybody who is sent to a concentration camp or something are always convinced of his innocence, can be understood and every one of us today knows how unpleasant that is. However, certain other reasons prevailed at the time, when a family wrote: that is probably the case with one of the cases which was submitted here in an affidavit. The main reason was not that the man was a Social Democrat leader. No. He was blamed for other things, and they had to be cleared up. That is why my help took a little bit longer here, and I believe that the man was vindicated. The reproaches which they made to him, and which came from those greatest pests whom we had at the time, the informers, had to be refuted by bringing counter-evidence.
Q. That’s enough, Witness. Now such people were taken out of the camp by you. Then I’m sure that they came to see you and thanked you for it?
A. No. They didn’t do that and I did not pay too much attention to that. I told their parents and their relatives to restrain them from doing that. Maybe they wrote a letter though, sometime, but I did not do it in order to get their thanks and appreciation.
Q. Witness, didn’t you ever speak to anybody who had been released from a concentration camp and who then would have given you more details about the concentration camp?
A. I never spoke with anybody who had been released from a concentration camp—at least, not that I know of. I never spoke with anybody about his experience in a concentration camp. However, during my captivity, I heard through other people that no one else ever heard about such things either, because these people were not only prohibited from speaking, but they were also so scared that they followed that order to the very letter.
Q. Witness, you also visited factories, didn’t you, and you saw eastern male or female workers there, didn’t you?
A. Yes.
Q. What was your opinion about these people. Didn’t they complain to you or anything?