Concentration camp

“ At the Auschwitz concentration camp, evil found willing servants and innocent victims. For almost 5 years, Auschwitz was a factory for murder where more than a million lives were taken. It is a sobering reminder of the power of evil and the need for people to oppose evil wherever it exists. It is a reminder that when we find anti-Semitism, we must come together to fight it. ”

“ It is common knowledge that the anguish of the concentration camp was spread, not only over the Continent of Europe, but over all the world. Even today all over the world people are still seeking word of their friends and relatives who vanished into the Nazi concentration camps and left no trace behind. ”

“ SCHACHT: Already in the year 1933, when Göring established concentration camps, I heard several times that political opponents and other disliked or inconvenient persons were taken away to a concentration camp. That these people were deprived of their liberty perturbed me very much at the time, of course, and I continuously demanded, as far as I was in a position to do so during conversations, that the arrest and removal to concentration camps should be followed by a clarification before the law with a defense and so on, and suitable legal proceedings. ”

“ For these experiments inmates of the concentration camp at Dachau were selected. These inmates presented a motley group of prisoners of war, dissenters from the philosophy of the National Socialist Party, Jews, both from Germany and the eastern countries, rebellious or indifferent factory workers, displaced civilians from eastern occupied countries, and an undefined group known as “asocial or undesirable persons.” ”

“ The list of concentration camp inmates of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, who were sent to the Bernburg euthanasia station for extermination, contains many names of non-German nationals and non-German Jews. (NO-158, Pros. Ex. 410.) Jews in protective custody, Poles in protective custody, Jews who were habitual criminals, Jews who were “shirkers,” Jews who “defiled the race,” Czech “shirkers,” and Czechs in protective custody were among the inmates selected by the camp physicians for “examination” by the experts. ”

“ The concentration camps were also used to increase the supply of labor. Concentration camp commanders were ordered to work their prisoners to the limits of their physical power. During the latter stages of the war the concentration camps were so productive in certain types of work that the Gestapo was actually instructed to arrest certain classes of laborers so that they could be used in this way. Allied prisoners of war were also regarded as a possible source of labor. ”

“ The latter will arrange for their transfer into a concentration camp.
“3. Persons with a particularly bad political record will not be included in the resettlement action. Their names will also be given by the Higher SS and Police Fuehrer (Inspectors of Security Police and Security Service) to the competent State Police (Superior) Office for transfer into a concentration camp. The wives and children of such persons are to be resettled in old Reich territory and to be included in the Germanization measures. ”

“ SPEER: It is certain that concentration camps had a bad reputation with us, and the transfer to a concentration camp, or threat of such a possibility, was bound to reduce the number of absentees in the factories right from the beginning. But at that meeting, as I already said yesterday, there was nothing further said about it. It was one of the many remarks one can make in wartime when one is upset. ”

“ The treatment in the labor training camps will have to be in accordance with, the severity of the offense. It is suitable, e.g., to make obstinate shirkers work in the stone-quarries of the Mauthausen camp. By a special decree, to the heads of SS-Deathshead Units and concentration camps, I have ordered that the treatment of these persons under protective custody be undertaken in a concentration camp. ”

“ SEYSS-INQUART: Bringing anybody into and keeping him in a concentration camp was exclusively a matter for the Police. I do not recall a single instance in which I requested the Police to put any Dutchman into a German concentration camp. It may have happened that I ordered the German Police to take Dutchmen to Hertogenbosch or Amersfoort. Especially at the time when the Netherlands courts were very lenient with black-market operators and slaughterers who supplied the black market, I did demand their internment in a concentration camp for 2 or 3 months. ”

“ Accordingly, the concentration camps will be classified into the following categories:
“Category I—for all prisoners charged with minor offenses only and definitely qualified for correction; also for special cases and solitary confinement—Camps Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz I. The latter also applies in part to Category II.
“Category Ia—for all old prisoners conditionally qualified for work who could still be used in the medicinal herb gardens—Camp Dachau. ”

“ All prisoners qualified for work, if it is essentially and humanly possible, will be committed at once to the nearest concentration camp, according to the following instructions, for instance also if penal procedures were to be established in the near future. Only such prisoners who in the interest of investigation procedures are to remain absolutely in solitary confinement can be left there.
Every single laborer counts! ”

“ Besides, it is unworthy to put the German worker and the German moral conception of work in the same category as this pack of traitors. To an inmate of a concentration camp and to a Jew, work is not a mark of nobility. Things cannot be permitted to reach the point where inmates of concentration camps and Jews become articles in demand. It is absolutely essential that all concentration camp inmates and Jews working on building sites be kept apart from the remainder of the workers, including foreigners. ”

“ The crowds who had been out to stare at the concentration camp, peopled with dark-faced thousands of men, women, and children, trailed in procession as near as they were allowed to approach the field guns placed on a bare, brown eminence whence their long noses pointed grimly across the river. There were six of these guns the day I saw them, all guns of Captain March's battery ”

“ There were, of course, other grounds for uneasiness in occupied Poland which the Defendant Frank did not mention in his report to Hitler. He does not mention the concentration camps, perhaps because as a representative jurist of National Socialism, the Defendant Frank had himself defended the system in Germany. As Governor General the Defendant Frank, we feel, must be held responsible for all concentration camps within the boundaries of the Government General. These include, among others, the notorious camp at Maidanek and the one at Lublin and at Treblinka outside of Warsaw. ”

“ DR. FLÄCHSNER: Did you know, during your activities, that the workers from concentration camps had advantages if they worked in factories?
SPEER: Yes. My co-workers called my attention to this fact, and I also heard it when I inspected the industries. Of course, a wrong impression should not be created about the number of concentration camp inmates who worked in German industry. In toto, 1 percent of the labor personnel came from concentration camps. ”

“ We feel that no argument, no particular argument, is necessary to support our statement that the Nazi conspirators used these concentration camps and the related instruments of terror in them to commit Crimes against Humanity and to commit War Crimes. ”

“ The German people were well-acquainted with what was happening in concentration camps, and it was well known that the fate of anyone too actively opposed to any part of the Nazi program was liable to be one of great suffering. ”

“ On 14th March 1933 the Defendant Frick announced:
“When the Reichstag meets the 21st of March, the Communists will be prevented by urgent labor elsewhere from participation in the session. In concentration camps they will be re-educated for productive work. We will know how to render harmless permanently, sub-humans who don’t want to be re-educated.” ”

“ Herr Fritzsche, it has been said here in Court that conditions in concentration camps were generally known to the German people. As a journalist, will you give us your opinion and the reasons on which it is based? ”