“The Delegate for the Four Year Plan, the Plenipotentiary General for
the Allocation of Labor.” Is not that you? You talk of a subordinate.
Are you trying to throw the responsibility on one of your subordinates?
SAUCKEL: No, I do not want to do that. I merely want to say that the
letterhead belongs to some office, but I have never known anything about
the letter. This is the first time in my life that I have seen it, and I
myself did not have it written. I can say that under oath.
M. HERZOG: With this letter is an application form for replacement for
the expelled Jews. Who else but you could have anything to do with this,
you who were the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor?
SAUCKEL: Yes, my department—I told my counsel yesterday that my
department, of course, had to furnish replacements if workers were taken
away from a concern, either by being called up for service or for some
other measure. I did not always know the details.
M. HERZOG: You are not answering my question, the fact that this
letter...
SAUCKEL: Yes, I have answered your question properly.
M. HERZOG: The fact that this letter contains an application relating to
the replacement of workers, is that not proof that it comes from your
department, you being the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of
Labor?
SAUCKEL: Such a request could not come from my department. The
evacuation of Jews was entirely the responsibility of the Reichsführer
SS. I had only troubles because of such measures, as it was very
difficult to replace workers. I had no interest in it.
M. HERZOG: In short, you deny that you ever proposed special working
conditions for Jews?
SAUCKEL: That is just what I am denying. I had nothing to do with it. It
was not my task.
M. HERZOG: Would you please refer once more to Document Number F-810,
which I offered under Exhibit Number RF-1507? We will hand it to you if
you have not got it. Please look at Page 16, under the heading:
“Gauleiter Sauckel.” I quote...
SAUCKEL: I have not the document at hand—oh yes, I think I have it.
M. HERZOG: It was passed to you about 2 minutes ago. If you have not got
it, it will be handed to you again.
SAUCKEL: Will you please give me the number again?
M. HERZOG: Document F-810, but I do not think it is marked on the
photostat you have. Have you that document?
SAUCKEL: Yes.
M. HERZOG: Under the heading “Gauleiter Sauckel,” I read—it is on Page
16 of the document:
“Sauckel objected very emphatically when it was said that the
inmates of concentration camps and the Hungarian Jews
constituted the best manpower on constructional work. This is
not true to fact, because they produce on an average 65 to 70
percent of the work of a normal worker; never 100 percent.
Besides, it is unworthy to put the German worker and the German
moral conception of work in the same category as this pack of
traitors. To an inmate of a concentration camp and to a Jew,
work is not a mark of nobility. Things cannot be permitted to
reach the point where inmates of concentration camps and Jews
become articles in demand. It is absolutely essential that all
concentration camp inmates and Jews working on building sites be
kept apart from the remainder of the workers, including
foreigners.
“Gauleiter Sauckel ended by pointing out that as a matter of
fact he did not object to the employment of Jews and
concentration camp inmates, but only to such exaggerations as
mentioned above.”
I would ask you, Sauckel, you who yesterday described your own life as a
workman, what you meant when you said: “To an inmate of a concentration
camp and to a Jew work is not a mark of nobility.”
SAUCKEL: I want to say most emphatically that this paragraph is a very
condensed and free rendering, and not a shorthand report. I raised an
objection because I assumed that inmates of concentration camps would be
traitors. My only object was that these people should not be taken to
the same places of work as the other workers, the Jews either. But I did
not employ them; that was the business of the Reichsführer SS. I was
speaking at a conference of leaders and in the interests of workers with
a clean record and the other foreign workers. I objected to their being
put to work together.
M. HERZOG: I ask you this question again. What did you mean when you
said: “To an inmate of a concentration camp and to a Jew work is not a
mark of nobility?”
SAUCKEL: By that I meant that the work of men who had been found guilty
of offenses should not be compared with the work of free workers with a
clean record. There is a difference if I employ prisoners in custody or
if I employ free workers, and I wanted to see the two categories
separated.