VEITH: My knowledge of Action K is due to the fact that I was head of
the Hollerith service in Mauthausen, and consequently received all the
transfer forms from the various camps. And when prisoners were
erroneously transferred to us as ordinary prisoners, we would put it on
the transfer form which we had to send to the central office in Berlin,
or rather, we would not put any number at all, as we were unable to give
one. The “Politische” gave us no indications at all and even destroyed
the list of names if, by chance, it ever reached us.
In conversations with my comrades of the “Politische” I discovered that
this Action K was originally applied to prisoners of war who had been
captured while attempting to escape. Later this action was extended
further still, but always to soldiers and especially to officers who had
succeeded in escaping but who had been recaptured in countries under
German control.
Moreover, any person engaged in activities which might be interpreted as
not corresponding to the wishes of the fascist chiefs could also be
subjected to Action K. These prisoners arrived at Mauthausen and
disappeared, that is, they were taken to the prison where one part would
be executed on the spot and another sent to the annex of the prison,
which by this time had become too small to hold them, to the famous
Block 20 of Mauthausen.