THE PRESIDENT: Does counsel for the U.S.S.R. desire to cross-examine?
GEN. RUDENKO: I have no question, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Has the United States?
[_No response._]
Then does any member of the defendants’ counsel wish to ask the witness
any questions?
DR. MERKEL: Witness, at your first interrogations which as a rule took
place about ten days after arrest, were you interrogated by German or by
Norwegian Gestapo men?
CAPPELEN: It was made by two Norwegians who belonged to, as I learned
afterward, the so-called State Police. That was not the police in
Norway. They were working together with the Gestapo; in fact, it was the
same. But it was by them I was interrogated after the 10 days. But they,
as I heard afterwards, usually did it in that way, because it was easy
to do it in Norwegian; and some of the Germans could not speak
Norwegian. Most of them could not. I think it was, therefore, that they
took the Norwegian; and you can call them Gestapo, practically. They let
them handle the persons first.
DR. MERKEL: Then at the Victoria Terrace, which name I believe you used
to designate the Gestapo headquarters in Oslo, were there Norwegian or
German officials present during your interrogation?
CAPPELEN: I dare say there may have been one Norwegian as a sort of
interpreter; but as I spoke the German language, I cannot, with 100
percent surety, say if there were one or two Norwegian policemen there.
It is difficult. But as Victoria Terrace was the headquarters of the
Gestapo, naturally they had some Norwegian Nazis to help them there. But
most of them were German.
DR. MERKEL: Were the persons who interrogated you in uniform or in
civilian clothes?
CAPPELEN: During my interrogation I have sometimes seen them in uniform,
too. But when they tortured me they were mostly in civilian clothes. So
far as I remember, there was only one person in uniform during one of
the torture interrogations.
DR. MERKEL: You stated that you were then treated by a physician. Did
this physician come of his own free will or was he asked to come?
CAPPELEN: The first time I asked for a doctor, but then I did not get
any. But at the time when I came back to consciousness, when I was
supposed perhaps to be dead, the guard possibly had been looking at me
because he was then running away; and afterwards they came with a
doctor.
DR. MERKEL: Did you know that in the German concentration camps there
was an absolute prohibition against talking about the conditions in the
camp—among the prisoners as well as to outsiders, of course—and that
any violation of the order not to talk was subject to most severe
penalties?
CAPPELEN: Well, in the camps it was like this: It was naturally more or
less understood that it was more or less forbidden to talk about the
tortures we had gone through; but naturally in the camps, the Nacht und
Nebel Camps where I was, the situation was so bad that even torture
sometimes seemed to be better than dying slowly away like that, so
almost the only thing we spoke about was: “When shall the war end; how
to help our comrades; and are we to get some food tonight or not?”
DR. MERKEL: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Does any other defendant’s counsel wish to ask any
questions? Mr. Dubost, have you anything you wish to ask?