A. Yes, the Ministry did so.
Q. In what cases? That was after 1 September 1939.
A. In any case, it did happen before September 1939. I regret, Your Honor, that I cannot give exhaustive information about this because those are events and trials which were outside of my official duty, but I can say with certainty and under the oath under which I am now that because of abuse in concentration camps measures were taken with the utmost energy.
Q. Did a person who had been handed over to the police or who was sent to a concentration camp, including Poles and other foreigners, have any recourse to the law as administered in the Reich, for his protection?
A. Well, if these people were in the hands of the police, we could not extend that protection to them. As long as those people were in a concentration camp, and to the extent that we had any jurisdiction over concentration camps—to that extent we always intervened, if somehow or other we could find out that there had been some abuse; but later on, from 1939 on, these matters came under the special SS jurisdiction, and we were no longer in a position to interfere[466].
Q. After that these people had no recourse to the law as administered in the Reich?
A. We could not give them any legal recourse; we of the Ministry of Justice could not extend legal protection to them.
Q. Did they have any legal protection?
A. Well, I would like to say there was a jurisdiction over the inmates of the concentration camp and this was in the jurisdiction of the SS courts. That SS jurisdiction in accordance with its duty, could intervene in the same manner as we if anything had happened, that was the legal protection afforded to them.
Q. That was the only legal protection they had?