d. Judicial Murders in Violation of International Law
Victims of the People’s Court, Special Courts, and civil courts martial were judicially murdered by certain of the defendants using a variety of legalistic artifices, all of which had the obvious common denominator of a zealous desire to exterminate even trifling activity not even deemed misdemeanors by the community of civilized nations. One such artifice frequently employed was a subjective, conclusive assumption by the judges and prosecutors of proof of the very issues tried. For example, after the Nazi importation of forced labor from the occupied East had collected large numbers of foreign workers within the Reich at various war jobs against their will, escape efforts by such workers across Reich frontiers to their homeland or elsewhere became frequent. These escapees, when apprehended by border officials, were normally handed over to the People’s Court for trial for preparation of high treason, which bore a mandatory sentence of death. The applicable section of the German criminal code defined high treason in this context “as an attempt to incorporate by violence or by threat of violence the German territory in its entirety or in part into a foreign State or to detach from the Reich territory belonging to the Reich.” The escapees were indicted, inconceivable as it may be, for the violation of this provision.
In grasping for some legal straw upon which to base a conviction on these grounds, the courts created a whole-cloth assumption that such escapees were heading through Switzerland, or wherever they might have been picked up, in an effort to join some military legion hostile to the Reich. The Reich prosecutors were drawn into this scheme. Walter Brem, a former assistant to the chief Reich prosecutor at the People’s Court, described the situation thus (NG-316, Pros. Ex. 79):
“The majority of these cases concerned foreign laborers who wanted to look for a job in Switzerland because of inadequate salaries and insufficient food rations in the Reich. The prosecution, however, claimed that foreign legions were being established in Switzerland and that every foreigner wanting to cross the border illegally did so in order to join up with such legions. I was ordered by the prosecutor of the People’s Court to connect the defendants somehow with the foreign legions. I have never received a positive answer about those alleged organizations, and the whole concept was known to the foreigners only as a rumor. Individual proof of any acts of high treason could not be established; however, the prosecution based its claims on the assumption that such foreign laborers would behave in a hostile manner against Germany once given the opportunity.”
This contention was acceptable to judges of the People’s Court. On 12 August 1942, three Polish defendants, Mazur, Kubisz, and Nowakowski, pursuant to an indictment signed by the defendant Lautz, were sentenced to death by the People’s Court for preparation of high treason and attempting to separate a portion of the Reich by force. They had left their factory in Thuringia and proceeded across the Swiss border, where they were apprehended by Swiss officials and returned to the Reich. As reasons for their escape the defendants cited the hard working conditions to which they had been exposed. Kubisz testified that the meals consisted only of soup. Mazur stated that his work in the quarry was so hard that he feared he would not survive the winter. The defendants stated they had hoped to find better working conditions in Switzerland. They denied having had any knowledge of the existence of a Polish Legion in Switzerland. The prosecution offered no evidence to impeach these statements in any way.
Nevertheless, the People’s Court found that the defendants’ statements were mere excuses, that the existence of a Polish Legion in Switzerland was “generally known,” and that the defendants intended to join this legion. This judicial assumption was buttressed by a physician’s certificate which showed all three defendants to be in excellent health and qualified for active service. Therefore, the court “was convinced” that the defendants had discussed the fate of Poland and her people with their camp mates in the factory barracks and had decided to join the Polish Legion in Switzerland. The court said that it knew of a pact with Russia that the Polish government in exile had formed, and that this fact had been broadcast by the British radio. The court knew, furthermore, that in the past Polish workers had repeatedly fled to Switzerland where they were recruited for the Polish Legion, and I quote a portion of the court’s decision:
“These circumstances force the court to the conclusion that the defendants intended to join the Polish Legion in Switzerland.”
With regard to verbal remarks deemed seditious or deleterious to the “German people’s defensive strength,” People’s Courts sentences were not only outrageously unjustified, but reached the climax of judicial caprice. The Austrian taxicab driver, Rudolf Kozian, pursuant to an indictment signed by Lautz, was sentenced to death on 26 June 1944 for making certain uncomplimentary remarks concerning Hitler and the progress of the war. In the course of conversation while driving a female customer, who later denounced him to the Gestapo, he made remarks typified by the following:
“To us Viennese it’s all the same from whom we receive our bread whether his name is Stalin, Churchill, or Hitler. What matters is that we can live. When I quarrel with someone and see that I can no longer carry on, then I stop and do not continue the fight until everything is destroyed. The Fuehrer in his speech said that he would destroy us all. The Fuehrer has said that this war will be fought until one side will be annihilated. Every child knows that we are that side, unless the Fuehrer will come to his senses before then and offers peace to the enemy.”
The court found the defendant guilty of having attempted to undermine the German morale to such an extent that he was deemed to come within the special Emergency Decree authorizing death for impairing German defensive strength.