This is part 1 of 2 parts:
EXTRACTS FROM TESTIMONY OF DEFENSE WITNESS HELMUT BICKEL*
DIRECT EXAMINATION
DR. FROESCHMANN (counsel for defendant Mummenthey) : Witness, would you please state your full name, the place and date of birth, and your present address?
WITNESS BICKEL: My name is Helmut Bickel, born on 20 April 1906 in Munich. I am living in Hamburg-Fergedorf, Rathenaustrasse.
Q. What is your profession?
JUDGE PHILLIPS: I didn't get his name. What did you say his name was?
WITNESS BICKEL: Helmut Bickel.
DR. FROESCHMANN : Witness, you were an inmate in various concentration camps for a long time, weren't you? Would you please describe to the Tribunal very briefly what concentration camps you were in, within what periods of time, and what kind of work you did while you were in those camps?
A. Between 1935 and 1945 I was in various concentration camps and institutions. From 1939 to 1940 I was in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, and from 1940 to 1945 I was in the concentration camp Neuengamme, near Hamburg. During the time when I was in the concentration camp as an inmate I worked on all sorts of jobs which inmates had to do.
Between 1939 and 1940, while I was in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, I was working in the large brick factory there. From 1940 to 1945 I was in the concentration camp of Neuengamme, as stated before, and I worked there in the enterprises belonging to the DEST; that is in the Klinker Works. These Clinker Works were established as a plant in 1940. On 15 August 1940 the foundation stone was laid for the Clinker Works, and from that date on I was in the construction management as an inmate. The construction itself had been concluded in 1942. Then I worked in the works office as an inmate in the newly established building. From the first day on — from 1940 on — I had to do the work in connection with commerce. All office work, with very few exceptions, was done and carried out by the inmates.
Q. Did you, on the basis of that activity, see or gain any insight in the business matters that were going on in that factory, and did you also see anything about the general condition of the inmates being employed there?
A. Ever since the beginning I was in a position to see the
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* Complete testimony is recorders in mimeographed transcript, 31 July, 4 August 1947, pp. 5381-5512.
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internal things that led to the establishment of the factor, and I was also in a position to see the internal conditions which resulted after the establishment of the factory. This increased when I was called upon to do more important work of an internal nature. By this I could, for instance, gain an insight into the structure of the DEST, of the SS WVHA, and I was also in a position to observe the individual personalities as far as they were in connection with the plant at Neuengamme —
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Dr. Froeschmann, will you tell us how he got into a concentration camp?
WITNESS BICKEL: In 1935 I was arrested due to my activity as the director of a newspaper firm. I had some difficulties with the Gestapo which particularly charged me with favoring Jews, and the main reason why I was committed to a concentration camp was that I had been the cause that the anti-Semitist Streicher,* who was Germany's leading anti-Semitic, received a 2-month sentence in jail.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Witness, you were just speaking about the personalities which you met in the course of all those years, and particularly in Neuengamme later on. The Tribunal and myself are, in the first place, interested in the personality of the defendant Mummenthey. I would appreciate it if you would tell us your impressions and experiences which you gained through your own activity of the behavior of the defendant Mummenthey with reference to the inmate problem, generally speaking.
WITNESS BICKEL: This chapter concerning Mummenthey's personality has to be explained in detail. I don't know if you are interested in knowing how far we inmates could recognize the career of this man. The first contact I had had with him was when an order came from Berlin which dealt with a quarrel between the commander, Glockmann at the time and the commander of the concentration camp of Neuengamme who in the meantime has been hanged and whose name was Weiss, which had arisen and was to be settled.
This order came to my knowledge at a time when I didn't know too much about the individual happenings and I was surprised when I first found out about it. I intuitively felt that what we believed about those masters of the SS was not really true. We were of the opinion that the SS was a very strong power, a power which was closed in itself and well-balanced.
In reality, however, the SS was nothing but a small group of powers and every one of those small powers thought it was the nucleus of the power itself. You could actually say that they were
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* Defendant before International Military Tribunal. See Trial of the Major War Criminals, vols. I-XLII. Nuremberg, 1947.
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all competing against each other and fighting each other every way they could.
There was a man here who called himself a star — and his name was Himmler. He had a lot of small stars which had no light themselves and which circled around that main star — Himmler. They were all endeavoring to find their own light and to be bright stars themselves. That, actually, was the secret and the problem in the SS: There was no SS state. It was nothing but a small group of sovereigns which were competing against themselves, and in this competition we inmates were in the middle. It was out of this competition that these mass murders developed. In order to speak about Mummenthey, now let me say that he was also a star, a small star. He was trying to succeed while running along his line within his small power. He was trying to successfully build bricks in order to, at the end of the year, be able to stand before the larger star — which was Pohl — and say:
"High Star — I mean Obergruppenfuehrer — this year I have been able to create so many thousands of millions of bricks. That is my war effort."
All the reports of the individual small stars concentrated in this bright, big star — Pohl — and then Pohl appeared before the sun — the sun being Himmler — and he said to him, "Reich Leader, our success * * * so many millions of bricks, so many millions of cubic meters of granite."
But one had to keep a few secrets. One had to keep a few secrets because they didn't know up there that on the other side of this balance there were hundreds of thousands of comrades who had died. Don't forget that these hundreds of thousands of comrades, all those dead people, had been killed by other stars, by other small stars. They had been killed by the concentration camp commanders. It was a parallel line running between one side, the administrations of the concentration camps, and the other side, the factories, the plants.
The concentration camp administration had power over the inmates. They had to deliver the inmates to the plants in the morning and pick them up again in the evening. The commandants did not permit any influencing of the way the lives of the inmates was being led. They were competing, actually, with the works managers, and they jealously watched over their competencies trying to safeguard them.
First, when the plants were established the situation was such: The task was to have those inmates who had been arrested in a real manner do some work. It was a small number relatively speaking. On the other hand, there was a lack of construction material. In order to be able to satisfy the construction pro-
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grams as set by the mad man in Berlin it was therefore natural that these inmates were used for the manufacture of construction material. Now, at the beginning of all this there was a sound proportion. The number of inmates could match with the amount necessary for the production of the construction material in small enterprises. However, these gentlemen endeavored to produce more and more. But, and this is the point, due to the bad conditions the number of the inmates which had really been arrested due to reasons which prevailed became smaller and smaller, and therefore you had a vacuum which had to be filled somehow, a vacuum between the figure of the inmates which existed and the number of the inmates necessary in order to increase the output.
The managements of the enterprises, of course, informed the people that the construction projects would necessitate so and so many more workers. Of course they did want to have mechanized enterprises and also partly employ civilians. On the other hand, again, lots of inmates were dying without their being able to do anything against it, so that the vacuum actually became bigger and bigger. The result was that in the years before the war inmates were no longer arrested on real reasons but were arrested on fake reasons in order to fill that vacuum. The result was actions, so-called actions. A large number of inmates had not been arrested due to crimes, to individual crimes which they had committed — I am now speaking about the time prior to the beginning of the war — but rather they had been arrested as a result of those actions. They had been seized, which is the term which was used by the Reich Security Main Office, and speaking from a human point of view they had been rounded up. I can recall one action, for instance, which took place in 1938. It was called the action of the anti-social elements. All the people who had been branded anti-social by certain circles had been rounded up in Germany and placed in concentration camps as persons who were able to work. And then you had later on actions against heavy criminals, etc., etc. All this had to be done in order to fill the vacuum, which vacuum only resulted from the competition between the individual groups and individuals.
These individuals who were holding the power did not have any influence on each other. The term "SS" distinguished itself by being the contrary of a homogeneous entirety. Namely, it was not something that was closely connected. It was only thus that you had the camp commander on one side who had inmates maltreated if not killed — and they were not directly killed, they died as a result of the mistreatment — and then, on the other hand, the powerful men of the enterprises had not enough workers. However, the thing resulted also in the interest of the person
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holding the power beyond the economic sector, namely, to preserve the inmate labor and to be able to use both their life and their power for themselves as laborers. And that is the explanation for the fact that Mummenthey cannot be put among those who are responsible for the murders in the concentration camps. In the first place, it might have been nothing but a business interest. In any case, the interest had to arise from his small circle of power to keep the inmates alive and in a position to do some work so that he at least would be able to receive some bricks, or in other factories he would be able to have some granite.
Q. Now, Witness, you had the opportunity to speak to the defendant Mummenthey repeatedly and therefore you must have gained some sort of an insight into his entire idea. You also spoke about the inmate problem with him, didn't you, personally? Even if you didn't exhaust the subject, maybe you spoke to him once in a while. I think it important to actually find out what impression you gained on the basis of these discussions of Mummenthey and his actions.
A. Mummenthey was absolutely friendly towards the inmates. This friendliness towards the inmates might be based on a business interest to begin with, but I do remember conversations which Mummenthey condescended to have with me on various things — after all, he was a Higher SS Leader and I was nothing but a small little inmate. From these conversations I did gain the impression that this man was a white crow. And as a white crow can be found among the black ones very seldom, Mummenthey was one of those white crows within the SS, which consisted of black crows mostly.
It is even possible that he had some sociologic interests too sometime. In a conversation which he had with me during the works managers’ conference which took place in 1942 at Neuengamme, he spoke of food and the allocation of billets, etc., of an inmate as an individual. Whereupon I told him that the most important thing for us in order to carry out a certain amount of work was to give us exactly what the lowest criminal needed, the pickpockets or the burglars, that is, we wanted to know when our captivity would be over, and secondly we wanted to be able to know that we would live. Whereupon there was a helpless gesture which was such that I could understand that he was sorry that he had no influence whatsoever in that field. I made a few more suggestions thereupon concerning some other matter and Mummenthey told me, "Yes, we will take care of that." The explanation was so lax that I thought, well now, you have been told off, and I was really surprised that two weeks later I understood from a letter which had been sent to the works management
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that Mummenthey had actually followed my suggestion. The reason was that he was a very exacting man, that he worked quite a lot and did not leave anything undealt with, and that he tried very hard to do things, but apparently he didn't have too much authority in order to be able to do more and induce a fundamental change in Gluecks’ group. That group was the one that was actually in charge of our lives, namely, Gluecks' group, and that was the group of those concentration camp commanders who were in charge of us and who would not listen to a plant manager, not even to an Amtschef.
The commander of Neuengamme looked upon the plant manager as a subordinate of his who was not worth a thing, and he also regarded the Amtschef, Mummenthey, as an officer and comrade, who was an officer and who wasn't worth too much.
At the same time, in order to illuminate the whole thing for Mummenthey, I must say that even the Main Office chief was shown Spanish castles by the commanders, Spanish castles which had been built in such a manner that we inmates naturally could only look upon them and be surprised at the boldness with which a small commander was gypping the others by telling them a bunch of lies.
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DR. FROESCHMANN: * * * Are you in a position to tell the Tribunal what the whole idea was of these special privileges to the inmates, and particularly to tell if and how far the defendant Mummenthey participated in this talk of the extent of privileges, and also of the individual powers which were struggling against each other in this connection?
WITNESS BICKEL: The privileges were nothing but a symptom for the relationship between concentration camp administration and the works management. From the very first day, when inmates were used for so-called productive work there was always the endeavor in those circles which were gaining their power and wanted to have more privileges and profit out of the inmate labor to first of all keep the inmates willing to work; and, secondly, in a somewhat good position to be able to work, strong enough to work.
On the other hand, in the concentration camps you had the endeavor with the administrations to do something useful on their own; they considered themselves very efficient if they exterminated the inmates by first torturing them.
It is from those two lines that you had the divergencies. These divergencies at the time of Heydrich who was the greatest murderer in history were on the side of the concentration administration. That was up to 1942. When, in 1942, Heydrich had been
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killed and Kaltenbrunner* took his place, this line became less strong. It was no longer as strong as it was, not because Kaltenbrunner was more humane than Heydrich, but rather because he didn't have that Nordic lust to murder that Heydrich did. Then we reached the moment, when those circles which were interested in increasing the capacity or the power of the inmates, that they got a sort of boost in their own endeavor to reach more authority and more power. Exactly one day after the elimination of Heydrich a better situation resulted for us inmates.
There were privileges of all kinds. All these privileges had been suggested and initiated by the plant management. The DEST administration for these purposes had had several works managers conferences. In 1942, for instance, among other conferences there was a conference in Neuengamme of all works managers of the DEST. It was for this purpose that I had the big inmate office evacuated and had an office prepared for a conference, and I had a partition made of wood, where two inmates and myself wanted to control the conference. We wanted to see ourselves by this what the gentlemen's attitude and opinions were. Partly by stenographic notes we had gained knowledge of the conversation of the conference, and the result of this particular conference. Some of the works managers were skeptical in reference to the success of the intended privileges which should be granted the inmates. I shall have to stress here that those were simply suggestions or proposals which the works managers were to work out under the leadership of Mummenthey. According to the complicated structure of the SS administration, it was not possible for them to make the decision themselves. Some of the works managers, for instance, said that with the means at their disposal they could not possibly increase the output on the part of the inmates, and Mummenthey was intense in being against those ideas as pronounced by some of the works managers. His tendency was absolutely clear, and to get whatever privileges could be obtained for the inmates. I would like to interpolate what I had stressed yesterday, that his point of view was that of a business manager of the entire enterprise, that he did that out of a commercial interest. However, he did have an opportunity to make a few sociological remarks to support the question of privileges which showed that these remarks which he made in connection with commerce were actually the results of his own character. After a while the various privileges came through one after the other by the orders of the Main Office Chief Pohl.
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* Ernst Kaltenbrunner. head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and chief of the Security Police and Security Service (SD) was a defendant before the International Military Tribunal. See Trial of the Major War Criminals, op. cit. supra. vols. I-XLII.
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The concentration camps received those orders rather reluctantly. So far as things were concerned which could exclusively be dealt with by the plant managements, of course, everything was carried out then. But if something was to be done where the assistance of the concentration camp administration would become necessary, then there were difficulties. So far as those privileges were privileges, which came, or were to come exclusively from the concentration camp administration, then there was sabotage done. I remember some orders. For instance, towards the end of 1942, there was an order from Pohl that the inmates who were important as employees for the factory, namely, the work of whom was of special interest for the management or for the plant, like special stokers, special technicians, particularly skilled laborers, or handcraft, these inmates should be taken out of the concentration camp. They were to be taken out of the concentration camp, they were to work outside the camp, they were to be billeted out of the camp in a more human billet. They were to receive SS food, and, what is of interest, they were to receive hygienic care by the SS. By that it was admitted, of course, that the hygiene of the camp was not sufficient, otherwise, this could not be regarded as a special privilege. Apart from that those inmates were to receive something close to a salary up to two marks a day. I believe that only 50 pfennigs out of their two marks were to be deducted for food. Therefore, generally speaking, a condition for inmates [Haeftlingsart] was planned which was to work more or less under normal working conditions of a normal human being, and it would, of course, offer the opportunity that these inmates would be left alive. It was a so-called "could" order. Gluecks had given this "could" order, but it was not a "must" order. Take for example the Neuengamme concentration camp. Though the plant management in Neuengamme had very frequently taken the matter up with the commander Pauly of Neuengamme, not one single inmate had received any privileges in this way. Why? Because there was a possibility now to sabotage a "could" order. Had it been a "must" order they would have had to do it.
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Now coming back to the privileges, there were all kinds of privileges. For instance, additional bread, the additional heavy workers allowance. The plant managements had been fighting for it for a long time. Finally, in 1942, the inmates received this allowance. There was also the so-called danger allowance. In our plant in Neuengamme, in the brick factory men were working on the ovens. They came constantly in contact with carbon dioxide gas, and their lives were being threatened all the time. In that instance
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there was always a struggle to receive milk for these men. Berlin arranged that these men received a certain amount of milk daily. But they removed the cream off the milk, and then gave them just the skim milk instead of giving them the full content of milk which they needed, after having received and signed for proper milk.
Then, of course, there were other privileges which were being fought for, namely: The elimination of one or two of the roll calls. There were three roll calls, one in the evening, one in the morning, and one at noon; two were to be eliminated. So far, these privileges were supported by normal working conditions, they were carried out by the concentration camp commander. Before the inmates had left for work they had already stood in line for one or two hours for a roll call in the morning. The inmates were not machines. All these hardships which they suffered standing for roll call resulted in less work, and the same applied to the noon roll call. An additional privilege was then the installation of canteens for the inmates. These inmate canteens, of course, did not have any large supply, or important things for sale. It was more of a joke what one could buy there, and a normal thinking human being would not possibly believe if one would tell him, that for instance, for twenty marks we could buy a large amount of red beets and just as much sauerkohl, a few pieces of sand-soap as soap, and as an added "attraction", we would receive a few cigarettes. But they did not have anything themselves which they could offer. Then we had further privileges, which were the following, namely: The working conditions themselves, then in the billeting at the camp, and in certain other things, which are not made so important.
The most important thing is that toward the end of 1942 a bonus system was introduced. Up to that time we could only receive money from home. From that moment on the money was no longer paid out. The inmates were limited to bonuses. That means they received 50 pfennigs up to 4 marks per week in bonuses, this was camp money, depending on how much work they did. The highest amount of four marks was prescribed. You could buy things in the canteen for those bonuses and those bonuses could also serve to order newspapers and to use the camp brothel. Those bonuses were developed quite well by office W I. As I stated before, four marks was the total amount that could be received and the bonuses had to be paid by the works managements. The camp had nothing to do with it. There was a further regulation, I believe, that 10 percent of the amount which the works management or private firms had to pay to the SS treasury, to be transferred for work done by the inmates, at the most
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could be used for bonuses. From Neuengamme with the help of the works management and the inmates we helped boost up those bonuses, with special bonuses, so the inmates were receiving from 1½ marks up to 12 marks. Then they received special bonuses in the shape of goods and individual articles, for instance, clothing, etc., as far as could possibly be provided in the camp secretly, because the resistance of the camp commandant was to be evaded. I can give you the figure from the balance of 1944. In 1944 the Clinker Works in Neuengamme had paid for inmate labor assignment to the Reich a total of approximately 300,000 marks.
It could have been a few thousand marks over that. Then we paid for special bonuses and special achievements, etc. to my comrades and myself 100,000 marks which was roughly 33 percent as compared to the 10 percent which was permitted. Mummenthey, in order to come back to your client, Mr. Defense Counsel, absolutely agreed with that tendency although it was not quite in compliance with the main order that had been made. Mummenthey permitted expenditures, I mention in this connection that all expenditures had to be approved by Berlin.
There were also additional privileges on other fields, I don't think necessary to mention them here. The most important thing in all those privileges was that there was the tendency to improve conditions under which the inmates were working in the Klinker Works. But, the most important thing, as I said before, they couldn't take care of. They could not provide them with sufficient food and sufficient supplies nor could they possibly guarantee their lives because in this field the SS concentration camp administration which was administered by the SS RSHA decided alone. Thus they had to follow the tendency which was coming after Heydrich's death. They had to treat inmates a little bit better and they would have to stop this torture and killing. But the concentration camp administration still wanted to succeed by exterminating the inmates.
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DR. FROESCHMANN: Witness, if I understood your testimony correctly, you wished to say, and in order not to put the answer in your mouth, I am asking you the following: Who was responsible for all those bad regulations under which the inmates had to suffer and which cost the lives of several of them?
WITNESS BICKEL: I can only answer that question of yours with reference to Neuengamme with 100 percent certainty. The answer is: The management and the people responsible in the works are not responsible for any of the deaths.
Q. Witness, do you know whether Mummenthey endeavored to
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help inmates to get out of the concentration camp and by that I mean inmates who were working well, and to put them back on a civilian status? Do you know anything about it?
A. It is actually the case that inmates who were working in individual enterprises of the DEST, upon Mummenthey's suggestion through Pohl and to Gluecks, have been released by the RSHA. The first case which I heard myself was — and according to what I hear now it wasn't the only case — the following: Namely the case of the inmate Ludwig Fischer. He was an architect in my office of the Clinker Works in Neuengamme. In 1941 he was released upon Mummenthey's suggestion and was employed as an architect, as a civilian employee, in Prambachkirchen near Mauthausen. * * *
Mummenthey furthermore got other inmates out of other camps, I myself was the second case. Since 1944, my release, and at the same time my employment as a civilian employee was worked on. It took one year from the moment of the application. The resistance offered by Berlin was rather strong. This shows that the power of the SS WVHA within the framework of the entire SS structure was not very strong. If the power would really have been as strong as they actually thought it was, then all it would have needed would have been a letter; in order to get out an inmate; namely as in my case, for instance, a bookkeeper and the other case, of Fischer who was an architect. They thought they had the power but they didn't have it. Perhaps, it was of importance for Mummenthey to be able to seek power himself and to imagine that he was strong, both for himself and for his subordinates, saying that he actually succeeded in doing something by releasing a few inmates from the concentration camp. For us inmates, there was nothing else, no better aim or better luck than to be released from a concentration camp.
On 5 February 1945 — that is a few days before the liberation by the Allies — my release had been granted me. I had already been dressed in the morning and I had to wait until 6 o'clock in the evening whereupon the commander said "Bickel is not going to be released. I am not going to release him." He was stronger. Although the order had come from Berlin to have me released, although my papers were ready, although I was ready, dressed up and everything — I had received my wedding ring again, had received my clothes again and had signed for them — the commander at 6 o'clock in the evening said, "Go back to the camp. Change into your clothes again. You are an inmate." The commander had found out that Mummenthey had done that and he wanted to prove he was the stronger. He was nothing
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but a beast. That is the reason why I again became an inmate. It was depressing. I got again into my inmate's garb, went back. Kahn called Mummenthey up — the same evening, I believe. As I learned from Kahn, Mummenthey went again to see Pohl.
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DR. FROESCHMANN: Witness, I am now coming to the end of your examination and I must say that you have been very objective in your statements although one could have suspected other feelings to be harbored by you. In the course of the trial two concepts have been of importance and they have repeatedly awakened the interest of the Tribunal. They are surrounded by a certain veil of secrecy. One is the concept of the crematorium and the chamber harboring the corpses in the concentration camp about which the prosecution had alleged that very wide circles, and in part my client Mummenthey, must have known something about them. The other concept is the concept of the punitive company and a number of witnesses have mentioned that from their own point of view. I believe that in the interest of an objective explanation it is necessary for you to describe these two concepts to us in detail, in particular to what extent Mummenthey had knowledge of these things, and to what extent he was able to have knowledge about them, and if he did have knowledge what he did about these things. Please tell us something about it.
WITNESS BICKEL: Whenever a concentration camp was established then the most important institutions were not the kitchen or the hospital or the accommodations for the inmates, but the most important things were: (1) the chamber where the corpses could be stored; (2) the place where the corpses could be cremated; and (3) the punitive detachment.
This is a parallel to what was done in the colonies of Germany before the First World War. When I was a boy I once read the history of the colonization of Cameroun. The German colonial agencies first of all established police stations and prisons, and that is exactly what was done in the concentration camps. The punitive detachments were institutions of the camp. The camp commander used them in order to exercise his punitive authority over the inmates. The camp commander in most cases was a very uneducated and primitive human being. Other people wouldn't have acted like that. He decided about the life and death of thousands of inmates. He had the punitive authority from 1940 or 1939 on. He had the following possibilities: he was able to order the flogging of inmates, a fact which is well known. The inmate would be put on a bench and SS people would flog him with heavy whips. The second possibility of punishment was hanging. I myself got acquainted with this method on several occasions. From
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1940 on, the hands were tied on the back of the inmate with chains and in this way, the inmate being above the ground, was left hanging so that his body would be suspended in the air. Of course the joints would be dislocated in the arms, and the inmate would be incapable of performing any work for quite some time. I want to add here that this method of punishment was abolished at the end of 1942 upon the recommendation of the plant managers and the economic sector.
The next medium of punishment was the punitive company. All violations for which some sort of punishment was imposed on inmates were always of a very slight and minor nature. For example, I was flogged on one occasion with 25 lashes of the whip because somebody found me loitering around when I should have been working. After all, I only had a purely commercial activity. On one occasion I stood at the roll call square and the man in charge of the detachment saw me and he wrote out a report about it. Several days later I had to report to the punitive board, and here I received the punishment for my violation. I was not allowed to make any statement there at all. The report read that I had stood around when I should have been working. I had loitered, and the commander told me in the SS terminology, "Well, you pig, you are too lazy to work, and now we are going to beat you up." He did not consider the fact that I had a very important job and I fulfilled my work efficiently in the plant. I couldn't tell that to the commander and he wasn't interested at all in that. A few days later I was actually flogged, and then the whole case was settled.
PRESIDING JUDGE TOMS: Who administered the flogging?
WITNESS BICKEL: The SS block leaders. They were noncommissioned officers, and each of them was in charge of one block. A block is a barrack where the inmates were accommodated. All the inmates could be assigned to the punitive detachment for very minor violations, for example, because they had smoked when they should have been working, or some other minor violation. However, there were also transfers to the punitive detachments as the result of the inmate records. When, in the year 1940, the concentration camp Neuengamme was established, the commander created a punitive detachment which was divided into three parts. It was called Roller I, Roller II, and Roller III. The name of this punitive detachment originated from its work. The inmates were harnessed before heavy rollers, and then they had to pull these rollers back and forth across a square of the newly established camp, and the new camp road which was being constructed. In this way they were to make the soil more solid on the square and on the road. When they were doing this work,
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SS men of the concentration camp would drive them on to work with whips. The inmates who worked on Roller I were the Jews who were situated within the camp. This particular camp commander was especially hostile toward the Jews, and whenever he had not succeeded in killing the Jews he would put the remainder into that punitive detachment. In Roller II all the inmates were put who had to wear a red point on their uniform because on an earlier occasion they had tried to escape. In Roller III only inmates were located who had been guilty of some small disciplinary violations. When the work of hardening the soil of the road and the square had been completed the commander had to find a new work for the punitive detachment.
He ordered them to dig a very big cellar, and here water constantly accumulated because the Elbe River was situated nearby, and there was a lot of water in the soil. At that time I was also in the punitive company for several days, and I saw that the inmates had to get into the water which went up to their chests, and they had to put the water into buckets and empty the pit. This work was not important at all. There was no use to it. That is how the inmates were kept busy with chicanery, and the purpose of all this was to torture the inmates in the punitive company and to kill them as a result of this torture.
The death rate was correspondingly high. The SS noncommissioned officers, mostly there were two or three of them who were in charge of this punitive detachment and who were exclusively and directly subordinated to the concentration camp commander, were always by selection extremely brutal. Most of them were very young fellows, and since they were unable to prove that they were heroes at the front, they consequently tried to become heroes by torturing the defenseless inmates. They also competed with each other in discovering new methods of torture and killing the inmates in the punitive detachments. Let me give you an example.
When I was in this punitive detachment there was also a Catholic priest there of a high standing. He was only in the concentration camp because he had preached against Hitler from his pulpit. That is why he was sent to the concentration camp, and at the same time he was assigned to the punitive detachment. This inmate was about to die and he was lying in a coma next to our place of work. One of these block leaders had discovered an especially funny method of torture. He would urinate into the mouth of the man who was just about to die and then he would complete his joke by saying, "Well, my priest, now you have received the last salvation." Yes, the SS could be funny on occasions, but only according to their nature.
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This punitive detachment, after the death of Heydrich, was entrusted with work after 1942 which had some sort of sense at least. The commander was afraid that he would be reproached if it was ever noticed that he only used the inmates in the punitive detachment in order to torture them. Of course, now he was looking for the heaviest work for them.
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CROSS-EXAMINATION
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MR. McHANEY: Were there any prisoners of war employed in the Clinker Works at Neuengamme?
WITNESS BICKEL: Prisoners of war arrived in August 1941. They were used for work which had to be carried out in the scope of the Klinker Works. They were used in order to construct a clay pit. However, they were not assigned to the detachment working at the Klinker plant. And here we were only dealing with a project which employed Soviet prisoners of war.
About the labor assignment of the Soviet prisoners of war a decision was to be reached later on. However, a clear decision was not reached because the quarantine period started, and of the 1,200 prisoners of war who had come to the camp, only approximately 200 were left. The remainder again was returned to prisoner of war camps, early in 1942. The prisoners of war were kept separately from us in the camp, and they were subjected to special treatment ordered by the RSHA and the SD. They were treated so brutally that even the inmates — although we did not have very much, and although we could not be too comradely as a result of our bad condition — would share the little food we had with the Russian prisoners of war.
I assume that the Tribunal will doubt the truth of my words. It is incomprehensible that a civilized nation will treat prisoners of war like that, but the food consisted of raw unpeeled potatoes and unpeeled beets. They were boiled together. There would be 95 percent water and five percent beets.
That is what the Russians received for lunch. In the morning each of them received approximately half a cup of coffee and one little piece of bread through which you "could see the light." That was their food.
Their accommodations were actually nil. They were kept in a wooden barracks, and one even refused to give them a little straw or hay which would be given an animal. They had no straw or any wood shavings from which they could fashion a bed * * *. They had nothing whatsoever.
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MR. McHANEY : * * * There were two roll calls a day. How long did the roll calls normally last?
WITNESS BICKEL: The morning roll call was carried out rather quickly, generally. In spite of that it would last between a half hour and three-quarters of an hour. The evening roll call depended on the temperament of the concentration camp guards. There were evening roll calls which, in the best cases, lasted for half an hour. I have seen one evening roll call last for 36 hours — 36 hours, that is one and a half days.
Q. And the inmates had to stand outside in the open during these roll calls, did they not?
A. The inmates would have to stand in the open in the concentration camp at the square where the roll calls were held. At the Clinker Works the roll call would be carried out in a room.
Q. What do you mean that at the Clinker Works the roll call would be carried out in a room? I understood they had a roll call in the morning, before they went to work, and a roll call in the evening when they came back from work. Now you mentioned a third roll call. What was that?
A. Besides these two roll calls in the camp, we also had three roll calls daily within the plant. These three roll calls in the plant were carried out for the purpose of showing the man in charge of the detail from the concentration camp so he could be convinced three times a day that the number of inmates was still present in the camp, and that no inmate had escaped. These roll calls at the plant took place as soon as a detail arrived at the plant in the morning; then at noon, before the noon meal was issued; and then in the evening before the detail returned from the plant to the camp. Altogether, we would have five roll calls a day.
Q. Witness, isn't it true that each work detail had to check back in the camp in the evening with the same number of inmates that composed the detail that went out in the morning?
A. Yes. That is correct.
Q. And isn't it true that if certain of the inmates of a particular detail died or were killed during the course of the day on the job, then the remainder of the detail had to carry their dead inmates in to the roll call place in the camp so that the dead could be counted in too?
A. That is correct. For the guards of the concentration camp there was no difference between live inmates and dead inmates. It made no difference to them as long as the correct figures were
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given; whether these people were dead or alive did not make any difference at all.
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EXTRACT FROM TESTIMONY OF DEFENSE WITNESS HELMUT BICKEL
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CROSS-EXAMINATION
MR. McHANEY: Mr. Bickel, what is your present occupation?
WITNESS BICKEL: I am an independent merchant.
Q. Will you give me the answer again, please?
PRESIDING JUDGE TOMS: Independent merchant.
WITNESS BICKEL: I am an independent merchant.
MR. McHANEY: Now, in discussing the transport of invalids out of Neuengamme you mentioned the initials SAW Sonder-Abteilung-Wehrmacht] and I didn't quite understand what they meant. Will you tell us again, the initials S-A-W ?
WITNESS BICKEL: S-A-W is a special department of the Wehrmacht. Those were the inmates who were taken by the Wehrmacht out of the ranks of the Wehrmacht, and they were sent to the concentration camps. These inmates were incarcerated in the concentration camps by order of the agencies of the Wehrmacht, and the RSHA was only included in that [channel]. However, it was not done on the sole initiative of the RSHA, but the Wehrmacht played an active part in this.
Q. Now, Mr. Bickel, isn't it true in connection with those invalid transports which were sent to the asylum where they were killed, isn't it true that the basis for selecting those inmates was their incapacity for work, the fact that they were sick, exhausted, debilitated.
A. The selection was carried out in this case exclusively by the camp leader Luetgemeyer who was hanged a short time ago in the
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* Complete testimony is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 31 July, 4 August 1947, pp. 5381-5512.
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British Zone. Luetgemeyer was the leader and he carried out the selection according to his temper and sympathy. He was not interested in working conditions. First of all he liquidated the inmates who had come to his attention more frequently, or because they had committed disciplinary violations; and specifically, he dealt with those who had tried to escape on one or two occasions. Even then in particular he selected older Jews, who from his point of view were not considered as being productive for concentration camp life; and as I have already stated before, especially valuable human lives were exterminated here.
Q. Isn't it true, Mr. Bickel, that the camp doctor also participated to some extent in the selection of inmates for these transports ?
A. Yes, in general. However, in this individual case the physician was not there. In general this task was handled exclusively by the camp medical officer. May I describe the attitude of medical officers toward the state of affair? Let me give you an example. The camp physician at Neuengamme, at the end of 1942 I believe, was reproached and he told that at Neuengamme there were too few people capable of working. That was in the middle of 1942 that this statement from Berlin came. The reproach connected with this was left open with regard to any conclusions which might be drawn from it. The commander in the came and the physician now had two possibilities. They could take positive action or negative action. The positive action would have been to improve food, accommodations, and quarters of the inmates there; and the negative action would have been to exterminate the persons, including those who were working. The camp physician approved of the latter method because it was easier. For example, the time arrived when lethal injections were given. The camp medical officer did not give orders to his subordinates, but he hinted to them that they had received a reproach that there were too many inmates incapable of working. These subordinate, SS noncommissioned officers, now on their own initiative, exterminated inmates who were in the dispensary sick and exhausted without regard to the labor conditions. Here we had two SS noncommissioned officers by the names of Bahr and Boening. Both of them have been hanged. First of all, they would personally select the inmates, and then they would inject phenol into the hearts of these inmates. Then when there was a shortage of phenol, they would inject gasoline into the hearts of the inmates. The man Bahr developed a fantastic technique. Whenever he killed the inmates by these injections, he even succeeded in killing inmates just by injecting water into the inmates; and he would inject this water into the back of the neck. Boening worked
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on a different method. He worked from the back, injecting the water into the heart of the inmates. These things were certainly kept secret, and I only heard about there when I was in the hospital, and I had contacts with the inmates who worked in the dispensary. All these things only came to the knowledge of the important SS leaders later on.
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