3. Ill-treatment of internees arising out of sheer fun, or for sadistic motives.
I should like to make the following detailed comments on those three categories:
About No. 1. In the remand prisons and penal establishments under the Ministry of Justice, there was no need to introduce corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure. The experience of the administration of justice has taught that a well trained, reliable, and conscientious personnel of wardens is in a position to set up and to maintain model order under a strict discipline, even without corporal punishment. The more training and discipline the prison guards have, the less need exists to introduce corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure.
But if, contrary to this view, one is to suppose that there might be a need to introduce corporal punishment in concentration camps, it appears indispensable that this disciplinary measure and the manner of its application should be determined, uniformly and unambiguously, for the whole territory of the Reich. It has happened recently that camp orders of individual concentration camps concerning this matter and the use of weapons, contained unusually severe instructions which were brought to the knowledge of the internees as a stern warning, while the warden personnel was administratively informed that these regulations which dated mostly from 1933 were no longer applicable. Such a situation is equally dangerous for the warden personnel and for the internees. It would therefore appear, after the question of imposing protective custody was generally settled by the competent minister, that in the interests of all concerned, one should urgently and clearly define responsibility and legal aspect, furthermore that the same responsible authority would have to settle, by means of camp regulations generally applicable, the question of corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure, which is still unclarified, as well as the question of the use of arms by the warden personnel.
About No. 2. I cannot concur with the opinions expressed in the enclosed letter. The present penal law, which I have to enforce, renders liable to particularly severe penalties those officials guilty of inflicting ill-treatment in the performance of their duties, especially when such ill-treatment is used to extort admissions or statements. That these legal provisions also reflect the will of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor is shown by the fact that, during the suppression of the Roehm revolt, the Fuehrer ordered the shooting of three members of the SS who had ill-treated prisoners in Stettin. That being the legal situation, it is out of order to grant silently one part of the police forces permission to extort statements by means of ill-treating prisoners. Such a measure would destroy the respect for the existing laws and would thereby lead necessarily to the confusion and demoralization of the officials concerned.
Furthermore, such statements extorted by force are practically without value if they are supposed to serve as evidence in trials for high treason. The courts which have jurisdiction in cases of high treason consider to an ever increasing degree statements of the defendants made before the police as worthless and without any evidenciary value for court decisions. This was the result of their getting convinced in the course of numerous proceedings that confessions and statements made before the police were extorted by ill-treatment.
Moreover, I cannot follow the statements contained in the attached report in as much as the beating of Communists held in custody is regarded as an indispensable police measure for a more effective suppression of Communist activities. These explanations of the Gestapo office show precisely that the methods used up to now have not been successful in combatting the illegal Communist machine or to hinder its development.
Experience shows that such police measures may perhaps partially be successful but that they never can attain a total suppression and destruction of an illegal revolutionary organization which alone is of importance in the long run. Behind such revolutionary organizations there are professional revolutionaries of great experience and frequently exceptional intelligence. These succeed very soon by means of cleverly camouflaging all more important functionaries in excluding for all practical purposes the possibility of betrayal as a result of mistreatment.
About No. 3. The experience of the first revolutionary years has shown that the persons who are charged to administer the beatings generally lose pretty soon the feeling for the purpose and meaning of their actions and permit themselves to be governed by personal feelings of revenge or by sadistic tendencies. As an example, members of the guard detail of the former concentration camp at Bredow near Stettin completely stripped a prostitute who had an argument with one of them and beat her with whips and cowhides in such a fashion that 2 months later the woman still showed two open and infected wounds on the right side of her buttocks, one 17.7 by 21.5 centimeters and the other 12.5 by 16.5 centimeters, as well as a similar wound on the left side of the buttocks 7.5 by 17 centimeters. In the concentration camp at Kemna near Wuppertal, prisoners were locked up in a narrow clothing locker and were then tortured by blowing in cigarette smoke, upsetting the locker, etc. In some cases the prisoners were given salt herring to eat, so as to produce an especially strong and torturing thirst. In the Hohenstein concentration camp in Saxony, prisoners had to stand under a dripping apparatus especially constructed for this purpose until the drops of water which fell down in even intervals caused seriously infected wounds in their scalps. In a concentration camp in Hamburg four prisoners were lashed for days—once without interruption for 3 days and nights, once 5 days and nights—to a grating in the form of a cross, being fed so meagerly with dried bread that they almost died of hunger.
These few examples show such a degree of cruelty which is an insult to every German sensibility, that it is impossible to consider any extenuating circumstances.