“4) Investigation of the results obtained by utilizing the labor
of all foreign male and female workers. Special regulations will
be issued with regard to these.
“5) Investigation of the correct feeding, housing, and treatment
of all foreign workers and prisoners of war engaged in work.”
In his program for the allocation of labor, presented—as I have already
pointed out—for Hitler’s birthday in 1942, the Defendant Sauckel
wrote—this part of the program was not read into the record by the
United States Prosecution; it is on Page 105 of the document book:
“IV. The Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor will,
therefore, with a very small personal staff of his own choice,
make exclusive use of existing institutions set up by the Party,
State, and industry, and the goodwill and co-operation of all
will assure the quickest success of his measures.
“V. The Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor has, therefore,
with consent of the Führer and in agreement with the Reich
Marshal of Greater Germany and the Chief of the Party
Chancellery, appointed all the Gauleiter of Greater Germany as
his commissioners in the Gaue of the National Socialist Labor
Party (NSDAP).
“VI. The commissioners for allocation of labor will use the
competent offices of the Party in their Gaue. The chiefs of the
highest competent State and economic offices in their Gaue will
advise and instruct the Gauleiter in all-important questions
relative to labor allocation.
“Especially important for that purpose are the following: The
President of the State Labor Office, the Trustee for Labor, the
State Peasant Leader, the Gau Economic Adviser, the Gau Trustee
of the German Labor Front, the Gau Women’s Leader, the District
Hitler Youth Leader, the highest representative of the Interior
and General Administration, especially if the Office for
Agriculture falls within his jurisdiction.
“VII. The most elevated and most essential task of the Gauleiter
of the NSDAP in their capacity of commissioners in their Gaue is
to secure the maximum agreement between all offices dealing with
questions of manpower in their Gau.”
In this document Sauckel addressed himself to the Gauleiter asking them
repeatedly to give him all possible assistance in every respect. I would
like to draw Your Honors’ attention to only one of Sauckel’s assertions
in this document. He mentions the decision of Hitler to send to the
Reich “in order to help the German peasant women, four or five hundred
thousand selected, healthy, and strong girls from the eastern
territories,” thus to relieve German women and girls of labor duty.
Apparently in order to explain the advantage of this measure, Sauckel
wrote, “Please trust me as an old and fanatical National Socialist
Gauleiter when I say that in the end the decision could not be
different.”
The importance of the part played by the fascist Party in the
organization of compulsory slave labor and how far this Party went into
the matter, is shown by the following document which I am submitting to
the Tribunal as evidence, Exhibit Number USSR-383 (Document Number
USSR-383). This document is a letter of the Defendant Sauckel, dated 8
September 1942, and is entitled, “Special Action of the Plenipotentiary
for Allocation of Labor for the Purpose of Procuring Female Workers from
the East for the Benefit of Town and Country Households with Many
Children.”
In the course of my presentation I shall have the opportunity to refer
once more to this document. In the meantime I wish to draw your
attention to the passage which has direct bearing on the role of the
fascist Party in this measure. On Page 3 of the Russian text of the
document, which I hereby submit, there is a section entitled,
“Viewpoints for Selecting Households.”
THE PRESIDENT: Does it matter whether these women were brought into a
house where they ought not to have been brought and whether a particular
German housewife was entitled to a woman worker or not? The whole point,
it would seem, is whether they were deported—and forcibly deported.
GEN. ZORYA: Mr. President, I just had it in view to abridge this passage
which you mentioned. But now I am talking about something else. I would
like to show the part which the fascist Party played in organizing slave
labor inside Germany and in particular in the distribution of those
Soviet women who were transported for this purpose to Germany. Here are
two short documents which I consider necessary to submit to the
Tribunal. As for the rest, which concerns the regime which has already
been described sufficiently by the United States and British
Prosecutions, I do not intend to dwell upon it and contemplated cutting
down this part to the minimum.
I wish to dwell on this part of the document which says that
applications for obtaining an eastern woman worker for household duties,
are to be examined by the Labor Department which would decide whether
there is a real need for the worker and are then to be forwarded for
final approval to the corresponding leader of NSDAP. Should the district
leader object to granting a woman worker to the household, the Labor
Department declines to send an eastern woman worker to the applicant and
accordingly declines the permission for the employment of such. The
refusal need not be motivated, and the decision is final.
You may find this on Page 129 of the document book. It is followed by
the application form. You will find this in the appendix to Exhibit
Number USSR-383 (Document Number USSR-383). This application form
contains a brief questionnaire about the family which would like to
employ a domestic worker in the household. This application form also
contains the reply form of the corresponding fascist Party organization
whether it recommends or not the use of an eastern slave in this
household.
I request the Tribunal to pay attention to the appendix to Exhibit
Number USSR-383. This appendix is entitled, “Memo for Housewives
Regarding Employment of Eastern Woman Workers in Urban and Rural
Households.” This memo has already been mentioned by Mr. Dodd. I will
not dwell upon it in detail, but will only draw the attention of the
Tribunal to the subtitle which is on Page 133.
I beg Your Honors to pay attention to the subtitle of this slave owner’s
memo.
The statement between brackets announces that this memo is published by
the Plenipotentiary for the Allocation of Labor in agreement with the
chief of the Party Chancellery and other corresponding authorities. It
is difficult to state it more precisely. Millions of foreign slaves were
languishing in Germany. A German could become a slave-owner with the
sanction and under the supervision of the fascist Party. Apparently this
also constituted one of the elements of the New Order in Europe.
I deem it indispensable to refer also to the order of the Defendant
Göring, dated 27 March 1942. I do not submit this document, as it is
already at the disposal of the Tribunal, having been presented by the
United States Prosecution:
“The Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor, in order to carry
out his tasks, herewith receives the power which the Führer has
given me to issue directives to the superior Reich authorities
and to their subordinate offices, to Party authorities and to
Party organizations and attached units.”
This order of the Defendant Göring does not only determine the special
part of the fascist Party in the execution of the compulsory labor
system, but also emphasizes the extraordinary powers of Defendant
Sauckel in this field.
The documents to which I have been referring thus far give grounds for
the Soviet Prosecution to assert that within the general framework of
the fascist State the fascist Party was the center of all measures for
the organization of compulsory slave labor.
I would like now to turn to the part taken by the German High Command in
the organization of compulsory labor and deportation into slavery of
Soviet people. With this object in view, I submit to the Tribunal as
Exhibit Number USSR-367 (Document Number USSR-367), an OKH document
regarding—I am using the words of the document itself—the “Enlistment
of Russian Manpower for the Reich.” I beg the Tribunal to refer to Page
138 of the document book in which this document is to be found.
First of all, let us look at the source from which this document
emanates. In the upper left-hand corner of the first page you will find,
“High Command of the Army, General Staff of the Army, Quartermaster
General, Office of Military Administration, (EC) Number II
3210/42—secret.” In the upper right-hand corner: “Headquarters, High
Command of the Army, 10 May 1942,” and again the stamp “secret.” After
the title it states:
“Subject: OKH, Gen Qu/Ec/II, Number 2877/42, secret, 25 April
1942; OKH, Gen Qu/Section Mil. Adm. Number 3158/1942, secret, 6
May 1942.”
Therefore, the document which I intend to quote here originates from the
OKH and is based on orders previously issued by the OKH. At the end of
the document there is a list of addresses to which it was distributed. I
will not quote this list in full, but it leaves no doubt as to who were
the executors of the orders contained in the above document. These
executors were the military authorities.
Let us now turn to the contents of the submitted document. First of all,
what induced the OKH when it issued this letter? The reply to this
question is contained in the first paragraph of our document, which I
shall now read into the record. I abridge the quotation:
“The Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor appointed by the
Führer, Gauleiter Sauckel . . . in consideration of the
increased armament requirements of the Reich and in order to
secure the manpower requirements of the German war and armament
economy, has ordered that the enlisting and transferring into
the Reich of Russian manpower be speeded up and considerably
increased.
“For the execution of this recruiting action . . . influence of
the military and local administrative authorities (field
Kommandantura, local Kommandantura, I A—organization of the
Economic Staff East, district administrations, town mayors, _et
cetera_) . . . is necessary. This is a task of decisive
importance for the outcome of the war. The labor situation of
the Reich makes it necessary that the ordered measures are
carried out on a priority basis and in a large scale manner.
This must be the chief task of all organizations.”
The next two paragraphs of the quoted document, part of which is
entitled, “Priority of Manpower Needs in the Armed Forces and Economy in
the East,” contain the following statement—I quote Page 139 of your
document book which runs:
“The immediate manpower needs of the Army must be satisfied in
the highest priority inasmuch as the need is actually
inescapable . . . and unalterable. The scale of the needs of the
Army is to be determined by the armies, the commanders of the
front areas, and the Wehrmacht commanders. However, in
consideration of the urgent labor needs of the Reich . . . the
severest standard is to be applied, and especially the scale of
the troops’ own manpower needs is to be most carefully
examined.”
THE PRESIDENT: Isn’t it sufficient to say that this document provides
for the speeding up of the mobilization of manpower and slave labor for
the purposes of the necessities of the Reich? Does it do anything more
than that?
GEN. ZORYA: Yes, you are quite right, Mr. President. It would be enough
if we add that this document contains the demand not only to accelerate
the mobilization of manpower but also the demand for immediate
participation by the military authorities who had to arrange a suitable
machinery in the form of suitable officers.