THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal would like to hear this affidavit of
Krüger read.
DR. BERGOLD: The text is as follows:
“Fräulein Else Krüger, born 9 February 1915, at Hamburg-Altona;
secretary, at present residing at Hamburg (39), Hansenweg 1...
From approximately the end of 1942 was one of several
secretaries of the Defendant Martin Bormann; there were,
roughly, 30 to 40 secretaries. I can no longer give accurate
figures and names. I occupied this position until the end and
after Hitler’s death.
“On 1 May 1945 I saw and talked to Bormann in the bunker of the
Reich Chancellery for the last time; but I was then no longer
working for him, since at that time he was writing his own
orders and wireless messages by hand. All I had to do in those
days in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery was to prepare
myself mentally for my death. The last words he spoke to me,
when he met me accidentally in the bunker, were, ‘Well, then,
farewell. There is not much sense in it now, but I will try to
get through. Very probably I shall not succeed.’ These
approximately, were his last words, I can no longer recollect
them literally.
“Later in the course of the evening when I thought that the
Russians had come very close to the shelter of the Reich
Chancellery I, together with a group of about 20 people, mostly
soldiers, fled from the shelter through subterranean passages,
then through an exit in one of the walls of the Chancellery,
across the Wilhelmsplatz into the entrance of the underground
station Kaiserhof. From there we fled through more subterranean
passages to the Friedrichstrasse, and then through a number of
streets, debris of houses, and so on; I can no longer remember
the exact details on account of the confusion and excitement of
those days. Eventually, in the course of the following morning,
we reached another shelter; I no longer recollect where it was;
it might have been the shelter at Humboldthain.”
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, does not the affidavit deal with the
Defendant Bormann at all?
DR. BERGOLD: Oh yes, I am now coming to that:
“After some time the SS-Gruppenführer Rattenhuber appeared there
quite suddenly. He had been severely wounded in the leg and was
put on a camp bed. Other people asked him where he had come
from; and he said, in my presence, that he, together with
Bormann and others, had fled by car through the
Friedrichstrasse. Presumably everybody was dead; there had been
masses of bodies. I gathered from his statement that he believed
Bormann was dead. This also appeared probable to me because,
according to reports I heard from some soldiers whom I did not
know, all people who had left the shelter after us had been
taken under strong Russian fire and hundreds of dead were said
to have been left behind on the Weidendammer Bridge.”