THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko?
GENERAL RUDENKO: No questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Have the British or American prosecutors any questions?
[_There was no response._] Does any member of the defendants’ counsel
wish now to cross-examine?
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. President, in order to avoid the witness having to
make the long trip from Holland a second time, I should like to
cross-examine him today, although my client is absent.
Witness, when Seyss-Inquart took over the government in Holland under
the decree of 18 May 1940, was the Queen or were members of the Dutch
Government still on Dutch territory?
VORRINK: No, they were no longer on Dutch territory.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did the government of Seyss-Inquart, the Reich
Commissioner, leave in office the functionaries of the former
government?
VORRINK: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know that of the nine General Secretaries
appointed by the former Royal Government and still in office only one
was dismissed?
VORRINK: Well, it is possible.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you further know that of the 11 Commissioners of the
Provinces only four were dismissed from the government for political
reasons?
VORRINK: I do not know the exact number but that is possible.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know how many mayors were appointed by the Royal
Government and in particular is it correct that there were more than
one-half still in office in 1944?
VORRINK: Yes, I believe so.
DR. STEINBAUER: You have not answered fully the question which was asked
you by the prosecutor. He asked you how many political parties there
were in parliament at the time of the invasion. Which were those
parties?
VORRINK: The Catholic Party, two Protestant Christian parties, two
liberal parties, the Social Democratic Party, the Communist Party, and
some minor parties.
DR. STEINBAUER: I shall now talk about two subjects mentioned by
you—schools and churches. Is it correct that the Dutch school system,
throughout the Seyss-Inquart regime, was under the direction of a
Dutchman, Van Hann?
VORRINK: It was under a Dutchman during the whole time, but we do not
consider him as a Dutchman. He is today in prison because he betrayed
his country.
DR. STEINBAUER: But he was not a German?
VORRINK: He was a Dutch traitor.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it correct that Seyss-Inquart showed great interest
in the Dutch school system?
VORRINK: I cannot remember that.
DR. STEINBAUER: For instance, Seyss-Inquart added an eighth class to the
elementary school?
VORRINK: That is not correct.
DR. STEINBAUER: And that in this way adolescents did not have to enter
the labor services until later?
VORRINK: Correct.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did he show an interest in a long standing wish of the
Dutch concerning the spelling of the Dutch language and did he not
appoint a special committee to investigate the matter?
VORRINK: In this connection he did take some interest in a thing about
which he knew nothing; he got his information from the wrong people.
DR. STEINBAUER: But he did make an effort.
VORRINK: Yes, but in the wrong direction.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it correct that he endeavored to increase the number
of teachers?
VORRINK: No, certainly not.
DR. STEINBAUER: That, in particular, he employed junior teachers and
reduced expenses thereby?
VORRINK: He did that because he wanted to influence the Dutch youth.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know, for instance, that as a result of protests,
Seyss-Inquart rescinded measures that had been taken against the School
of Commerce in Rotterdam?
VORRINK: Will you repeat the question? I did not understand it.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know that Seyss-Inquart, as a result of protests,
took steps to see that the School of Commerce in Rotterdam was not
interfered with?
VORRINK: I do not know.
DR. STEINBAUER: As far as the churches are concerned, apart from
deportation, as you say for political reasons, were the Catholics and
Protestants ever prevented from practicing their religion?
VORRINK: The Germans interfered very much with the right to worship.
They put spies in the churches to listen to the sermons with the idea of
possibly denouncing the pastors.
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes, but that has happened in other countries too.
Please, tell me, could the priest or the parson still continue to preach
according to his conscience?
VORRINK: No, certainly not according to his conscience.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know that during the whole of the occupation the
prayer for the Queen was allowed in churches of all denominations?
VORRINK: It was certainly not allowed. Several ministers were arrested
for that very reason.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know that Seyss-Inquart prevented 27 convents
from being confiscated for German refugees? Is it correct?
VORRINK: I know nothing about it.
DR. STEINBAUER: But perhaps you may know that he prevented the
destruction of the synagogues in Rotterdam and in The Hague. The police
wanted to destroy them, and he prevented them from doing it. Do you know
anything about that?
VORRINK: I do not know whether he wanted to prevent it; but in any case,
the synagogues were destroyed; and those who destroyed them went
unpunished and later took part in the worst persecution of the Jews.
DR. STEINBAUER: Witness, do you know that out of the Catholic and
Protestant Dutch clergymen deported to Germany, Seyss-Inquart succeeded
in getting two-thirds sent back to their country?
VORRINK: I do not know.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know that he prevented the departure of valuable
cultural treasures, especially libraries, which were already prepared
for transportation from Holland to the Reich?
VORRINK: I do not know whether he used his personal influence in that
respect; I only know that enormous quantities of our art treasures and
books were taken away by the Germans, and in any case he was then
powerless to prevent it.
DR. STEINBAUER: You said also that the radio was prohibited because it
stimulated the organization of resistance. As a leader, would you have
allowed a radio speaking against you?
VORRINK: I would by all means allow the radio. I am of the opinion that
there can be no human dignity if people are not allowed to form their
opinions by hearing reasons for and against.
DR. STEINBAUER: Was Mussert given the task of forming a government, or
was that not done because Seyss-Inquart objected?
VORRINK: I really do not know what happened behind the scenes, but
perhaps you may be right that Seyss-Inquart was no friend of Mussert.
While in prison I was taken out of my cell one night and asked to write
an article on the National Socialist movement in Holland, and I was
requested to give my own personal opinion about Mussert. When I
answered, ‘Why should I do this? You know what I think of Mussert and of
all the Nazis,’ they said: ‘You cannot make it bad enough.’ I took this
to be one of the many machinations of the Nazi cliques which fought
against each other.
DR. STEINBAUER: I thank you. I have no further questions.
HERR BABEL: Witness, you spoke of Dutch youngsters who had entered the
SS. Could you tell me approximately what the total number was?
VORRINK: I would say a few thousand.
HERR BABEL: In your opinion how many of those entered the ranks
voluntarily and how many were forced?
VORRINK: I cannot give you an exact figure; but I am of the opinion that
if minors entered such organizations without the consent of their
parents, they did not do it voluntarily. They could not judge the
consequences of their actions.
HERR BABEL: I did not ask that question. I asked you how many, in your
opinion, joined the SS voluntarily and how many were forced. Will you
answer this question and no other?
VORRINK: I have already said that I cannot give you the exact number.
HERR BABEL: Well, an approximate figure.
VORRINK: I should say several hundred were forced.
HERR BABEL: Good, and you gave the total number as several thousand.
VORRINK: They were youngsters who for some reason or another left their
homes, and they were taken by the Green Police or the Security Police
and pressed into the SS. I myself have come across quite a few cases of
this in Dutch concentration camps. As an old leader in the Youth
Movement I was able to speak to these youngsters and got them to tell me
about their life.
HERR BABEL: You say “pressed”? What do you mean by “pressed”?
VORRINK: That means that they were threatened with imprisonment if they
were not willing to join the SS.
HERR BABEL: You heard that yourself?
VORRINK: Yes.
HERR BABEL: You further said that thousands of workmen left their
organizations. I think you said tens of thousands. Did they do so
voluntarily, or what was the reason for this?
VORRINK: The reasons were that the workmen refused to be in a nazified
trade union and to submit to the Leadership Principle. They wanted to be
in their old trade unions where they could have a say in the running of
their organizations.
HERR BABEL: The resignations, therefore, were voluntary?
VORRINK: Yes.
HERR BABEL: In regard to the Jewish question you said that at first
nothing happened to the Jews, but that nevertheless there was a wave of
suicides. Why? What was the reason for those suicides when it had been
said, “nothing will happen to you.”
VORRINK: These Jews were the most sensible ones. We in Holland did not
live on an island, and we knew all that had happened between 1933 and
1940 in Germany. We knew that in Germany the Jews had been persecuted to
death, and I personally still have in my possession quite a few sworn
statements of German Jews who had emigrated, who kept us hourly informed
of how they had been tortured and martyred by the SS during the period
before the war. That of course was known to the Dutch Jews, and in my
opinion in that respect they were more sensible since they knew they
would suffer the same fate.
HERR BABEL: You put it in such a way as to make it sound as if there
were a large number of suicides. Was that so, or were there a few
individual cases?
VORRINK: This happened to about 30 or 50 people, but in Holland; where
we value life very highly, that is quite a large number.
HERR BABEL: Now, you used the word “Nazi illiterate.” Quite apart from,
I would say, your not very friendly attitude towards us Germans, have
you any justification for saying this? Have you met a single German who
was illiterate?
VORRINK: I am rather surprised at this question. By an “illiterate Nazi”
I meant a man who talks about things about which he has no knowledge,
and the people who judged an author’s work were people who had been set
to read through the book to find out whether a Jew appeared in it and
was presented as a good and humane character. According to the Nazi
concepts, such a book could not be published. I would add that I have
used the word “Nazi illiterate” from the days when there were found in
the German cities, in the country of Goethe and Schiller, great piles of
burned books, books that we had read and admired in Holland.
HERR BABEL: I understand you to mean that you can bring no positive
facts which might justify this derogatory word “Nazi illiterate.”
Thank you.
DR. OTTO PANNENBECKER (Counsel for Defendant Frick): I have just one
question, Witness. You just said that young people who did not enter the
SS were threatened with prison. Do I understand you to say that they
would be given prison sentences for an offense committed previously or
that they would be imprisoned only because they did not enter the SS?
VORRINK: They would be given a prison sentence, of course, because they
had been threatened. Whether they would have put them in prison, I do
not know, but it was a threat. It was one of the usual methods of the
Nazis to say “We want you to do this or that, and if you do not we will
put you in prison.” There were so many instances of this sort that one
could have no illusions about it.
DR. PANNENBECKER: But it is correct in this case that these were
youngsters who had run away from home because of differences with their
parents?
VORRINK: Those are cases which I know of personally.
DR. PANNENBECKER: I thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Does any other Defense Counsel wish to ask any questions?
[_There was no response._] M. Faure, do you wish to ask any questions?