Apparently noting that transfers from Reich prisons to concentration camps aroused no immediate public clamor or official opposition, judges saw therein an outlet for increasingly burdensome numbers of criminal cases, particularly political cases, as the defendant Engert has stated (NG-471, Pros. Ex. 276):
“In 1940 or 1941 I wrote to Himmler suggesting that he take me into the Gestapo. My idea was to get in closer touch with the Gestapo in order to get an insight into the activities of the Gestapo, and then to reach a better relationship between the Gestapo and the People’s Court. * * * I also wanted to prevent the possibility of insignificant cases being brought up in the People’s Court, which could be better handed over to the Gestapo for a short term internment in a concentration camp.”
About the time that Engert, then vice president of the People’s Court, made this overture to Himmler, he began to complain officially that it was incompatible with the respect, dignity, and tasks of the People’s Court to try minor political cases. He opined that such cases could be settled more quickly and effectively by transferring the culprit to a concentration camp. Thierack, then president of the People’s Court, in heartily endorsing Engert’s attitude, wrote to the Minister of Justice in 1940 in part as follows:
“However right it is to exterminate harshly and uproot all the seeds of insurrection, as for example we see them in Bohemia and Moravia, it is wrong for every follower, even the smallest, to be given the honor of appearing for trial and being judged for high treason before the People’s Court, or failing that, before an appellate court. In order to deal with these small cases and even with the smallest, the culprits should surely be shown that German sovereignty will not put up with their behavior and will take action accordingly. That can be done in a different way and I think in a more advantageous one, than through the tedious and also very expensive and ponderous channels of court procedure. I have therefore no objection whatsoever, if all the small hangers-on who are somehow connected with the high treason plans which have been woven and abetted and plotted by others are brought to their senses by being transferred to a concentration camp for some time.”
These opinions and desires of Engert and Thierack found eager and sympathetic audience with the Gestapo and SS, resulting in working agreements between these agencies and the Ministry of Justice whereby such illegal transfers could be accomplished outside the law. As the International Military Tribunal in its judgment has found—
“An agreement made with the Ministry of Justice on 18 September 1942 provided that antisocial elements who had finished prison sentences were to be delivered to the SS to be worked to death.”[52]
This agreement, it will be noted, expanded the initial ideas of Engert and Thierack far beyond any more hastening of minor political court cases or exploitation of prison labor. The agreement introduced the ideas of exterminating the so-called “asocials,” i.e., persons who for either racial, political, or personality reasons were deemed unfit to live. Within a month after this agreement had been worked out and put into practice, it was expanded further to include not only those “asocial” elements who had finished their prison sentences, but also all Jews, gypsies, Russians, and Ukrainians who were detained under arrest or imprisonment in any Reich penitentiary or work house, as well as all Poles who were sentenced to more than 3 years.
Now, since the intentional design was to literally work these people to death once they were transferred to concentration camps, this expanded illegal agreement actually rendered any court sentence for any crime tantamount to a death sentence.
In some cases the death awaiting these unfortunates was not long in coming. For example, a situation report in 1942 from the Attorney General of the Court of Appeals in Berlin to the defendant Schlegelberger, while the latter was Acting Minister of Justice, revealed the following episode:
“In this connection I think I ought to point out that only recently perpetrators have been repeatedly handed over to the Gestapo. Also, there was no sufficient cause therefore, to be found in my opinion, in the conduct of the justice authorities. I am referring to criminal procedures against Skibbe and others * * *.”