A. These Polish soldiers—I cannot speak comprehensively because I am not particularly well informed here—but those I saw were young people, and they lived with the farmer’s family.
Q. Witness, you don’t mean to tell this Tribunal seriously that the Polish worker, the former prisoner of war, had the same freedom of movement that the German civilian had?
A. I cannot speak on all fields of life because I do not know. All I do know was that he was under the obligation to remain with his employer, but, as I said before, the German worker had to remain with his employer.
Q. Oh, well, we had that in the United States, for that matter. I still don’t remember your answering my question: What would happen to a Polish worker who chose to walk away from his place of employment?
A. I am unable to answer that. I know of no such cases, nor was I told about one.
Dr. Bergold: May it please the Tribunal, the defendant cannot know, because he was a soldier, what the Polish worker had to do. Like the German worker, the Polish worker would have been punished and brought before a tribunal because he broke his contract, and he would have received a small punishment. Thousands of German workers have been punished for the same reason, and I have defended many a German worker for the same charge. That would have happened—nothing else.
Presiding Judge Toms: Let me ask you, Dr. Bergold. Did you ever defend a Polish worker for walking away from his employment?
Dr. Bergold: Yes, I did.
Presiding Judge Toms: I have no inclination to dispute you.
Dr. Bergold: I defended quite a few foreign workers in wartime, not only Poles, but Frenchmen, Belgians, and Dutchmen.