The Nuremberg Interviews (71 page)

I remarked that Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, told me he “personally despised” the extermination program which he executed by gassing and then cremating 2.5 million Jewish men, women, and children. Hoess told me he could not allow human feeling to enter into the matter, because he had been convinced by Himmler of the necessity of exterminating the Jews, and moreover had been given an order by a superior, which made his actions quite in order. I asked Pohl if he felt that was more or less his own position. He replied, “No. That is one of the reasons why I did not participate in the Jewish pogroms of November 1938. I was not convinced that it was necessary. I felt that there were quite different and legal ways to solve the Jewish question.

“I know many Jewish mixed marriages. Many of these people were friends of mine. My wife, prior to our marriage, worked for the famous Berlin banking house Jacob Goldschmidt, a Jewish firm. Some of my present wife’s best friends were Jewish. That is proof enough of how I feel. In fact, my wife’s best friend is either half or fully Jewish. I believe she is now living in England.”

I interjected that it seemed of minor importance that some of his best friends were Jews, since I had heard that from many Nazis in Germany, who nevertheless lent their support to the economic and finally the physical destruction of Jews. Pohl seemed unimpressed. “If I were really an anti-Semite, I would have hated Jews — but I never hated them. All I did was follow orders. My conscience is clear. I never ordered the death of a Jew or personally killed one. I have explained how the extermination program was not part of my command, but skipped me.”

What about this half or fully Jewish friend of his wife’s who now lives in England? “I never met her. She left for England shortly after Hitler’s
rise to power. It was before I met my wife. My wife had another girlfriend whose father was Jewish, and as far as I know, she was still in Hamburg in 1944.” Had Pohl personally saved this girl from extermination? “Excuse me, it was not her father who was Jewish, but her grandfather. Yes, I stood up for her. I saw that nothing would happen to her.”

Therefore, if a girl had a Jewish grandfather, she was likely to be executed, was that correct? “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say execution — that would depend on other factors. Such people with Jewish blood were persecuted, lost their apartments, couldn’t work in civil service positions, and were labeled as Jews.” Were such persons required to wear the yellow patch of the Star of David over their hearts? “All Jews had to do that for identification purposes after a certain year.”

Would he tell me more about his wife’s girlfriend with the Jewish grandfather? “Her parents were supposed to be evacuated to a concentration camp, where I presume they would have been exterminated. They were very decent people and I took care of the matter and I arranged for them to remain in Hamburg. I arranged false papers for them. Now, does that look as if I were an anti-Semite? Why, on another occasion, I wrote to Himmler to obtain permission for a mixed person to marry a German girl.” He seemed to drop this subject abruptly. Had he succeeded in getting Himmler’s assent for this “mixed” man to marry the Aryan girl? “No. I tried for almost a year, but didn’t succeed. I was told that I should wait until after the war. I can bring witnesses to prove it, and I didn’t even know the man personally, yet I did it. Doesn’t that prove that my personal beliefs never agreed with the official or party ideas?”

Earlier in the interview, Pohl had alluded to his “legal and different” solution to the racial question. What would this have been? Pohl smiled and said, “Simple. So simple it hardly needs explaining. I would have left all the Jews in Germany, but put them on an alien status, under alien law, and naturally closed them out of jobs like doctor or lawyer. But why execute them? In that way, strong Jewish influence would have been cast aside and there would be no need for atrocities. Whenever we had discussions in our own circle, I would mention my solution, whereupon Himmler would say to me, ‘Pohl, you are too soft.’ Therefore, I did my best to keep out of the whole final solution of the Jewish problem.”

Until what date had he held office? “Until the end — until the capitulation.” Then what did he mean by saying he did his best to keep out of
the final solution of the Jewish problem? Was he not in it up to his neck? “I could have participated in the thing actively if I so desired. I could have taken Gluecks’s job, for example. When I sent Gluecks to Himmler in 1942, because he asked me for a man who would carry through the final solution of the Jewish question, I demanded of Himmler that I not have to do it. I agreed to send him one of my subordinates, who was Gluecks. I stipulated that I should have to do only with the administration of the concentration camps themselves, and the internee labor, and nothing to do with the extermination program.”

I observed that perhaps he did not take Gluecks’s place because he had a higher position than Gluecks, who was one of his subordinates. Pohl hesitated, but was not stymied. “By taking Gluecks’s place, I mean I could have asked Himmler to let me take care of the extermination program myself. Then Gluecks would have been spared. But I personally sent Gluecks to Himmler for this purpose, and he did the job, and I did the same as I always did.”

I asked Pohl if he considered himself in any way responsible or guilty, as an accomplice or a direct participant, in the murder of the 5 million Jews in the concentration camps, and the countless other thousands of internees who perished through disease, neglect, starvation, beatings, hangings, and shootings. By this time, Pohl looked anxious and no longer the composed practical businessman talking about stocks and bonds. That he could still not visualize his own importance in the criminal world of the Nazis was clear, but he was beginning to get an inkling at least of one individual’s view of his activities. He replied, “In no way am I responsible or guilty for the murder of the 5 million Jews or the deaths of others in the concentration camps.
⁹
About the murder of the 5 million Jews, I had nothing whatever to do with it. The fact that I was in charge of all the concentration camps in Germany from 1942 until the end is beside the point. I have explained and explained again that I sent Gluecks, one of my subordinates, to take charge of this program, and that I stayed out of it. Now, as far as the others who died in concentration camps or who were punished because of bad behavior or who might have been executed because of the hostage system — the reprisal system — that too is not my responsibility, but was ordered by the local party district administrator, or police functionary, or Himmler and the Gestapo, and it was a bad policy. I was just an administrator.

“Now, I am beginning to think that the whole thing was done by
Himmler and the Gestapo. I admit that I occupied an extremely important job in the SS, but I was just one of thirteen main office chiefs, and besides me there were men like Daluege, Kaltenbrunner, who was Heydrich’s successor, and Hans Juettner, who had the leadership main office and were in charge of the guards in the concentration camps. Those guards, for example, were under my command, but Juettner had the power to replace them. Then there was Gottlob Berger, who was in charge of recruiting for the SS. His office was even bigger than mine. And then there was the personnel chief, Maximilian von Herff.” I said that I would not quibble and that if he were not number two or three man under Himmler, the least he could be would be number thirteen, since there were only thirteen main office chiefs. However, my question, I said, was whether he felt responsible in some way for the murder of the 5 million Jews, and the other atrocities that had taken place over so many years in the concentration camps of which he was in charge. “I can only be responsible for my orders. I cannot be responsible for all the acts of Himmler.”

I asked him whether he knew of the murder of Jews. He replied, “Much later, probably in 1942, and it began before that.” I asked him what was the earliest time he might have learned of it. “About that time or a few months earlier. I had nothing to do with it. Before that time, I had nothing to do with it.” I said that from 1942 to 1945, a period of at least three years, he had been in charge of concentration camps in which mass exterminations of millions of men, women, and children had taken place — and he did not have time enough to think about it during those three or more years? “Well, it was war — I could not have carried on as an administrative officer if I had let myself be swayed emotionally by my feelings.”

Did he think that a responsible, normal person such as the average American, Frenchman, or Russian, or German for that matter perhaps, would have carried out his business? He replied, with typical evasiveness, “Those are questions which are very hard to answer. What is decent is a very hard thing to put your finger on. I often asked myself. After all — the extermination program was no secret of Himmler’s. Funk and Schwerin von Krosigk knew of it. Why didn’t they try to stop it?” I replied that they had little actual connection with Pohl himself, but that nevertheless Funk was on trial for his life. “Yes, those men like Funk were the government — they were people who could have prevented it. I
always asked a man who was close to Himmler why those close to Himmler didn’t prevent it. But, do you think that things would have taken a different course if I would have resigned? The main job was the administration of the armed SS.” I added that it seemed to be also the direction of the concentration camps. He replied, “No, that was under Gluecks. Although he was my subordinate and had to report to me like all subordinates do, I specialized in labor in concentration camps.” I said that I thought he had told me that after 1942, the concentration camps came under his jurisdiction. “Yes, but Gluecks did it. He was my subordinate and he did the inspection of the camps.” I rejoined that this was the very point — that Gluecks was his inferior in the office and that everything Gluecks did, he had to report to Pohl. “In certain things he was my subordinate, but Himmler and Gluecks had private conversations.” I said that that did not impress me very much because every large organization had conferences between the chief and some subordinate. “I could not talk things over with Gluecks — therefore, I only talked questions of policy with Himmler. I mean policies of labor.”

I asked him whether the labor situation in the concentration camps was strictly honorable. “It was important for the conduct of the war. It was important and not a bloody affair to make sure that the internees of the concentration camps were not split up but used systematically in armament industries.”

I asked him whether these workers were not more or less slaves. Pohl’s face appeared as blank as usual and he said indifferently, “No.” I said it was my understanding from my conversations with other prisoners here, as well as from evidence produced in court by the tribunal, that if the internees did not work hard enough, they were starved, beaten, or exterminated. Pohl said with no assurance in his voice, “Well, in general, as far as I know — and mind you, I don’t know everything because the individual concentration camp commandants were responsible for conditions within their own camps, and in the case of factories where concentration camp labor was supplied, the plant owner or manager was responsible — but as far as I know, these workers had the same working conditions as every German, including premiums.”
¹⁰

What were these premiums? “Every worker in Germany received coupons that were premiums to reward him for hard or extraordinary labor. These coupons were good for cigarettes, bread, butter, tea, et cetera. The concentration camp internees received these premiums just
like other German workers. That was something I am responsible for. I instituted it over the protest of many who did not agree with this system.”

Tell me more about the ideal working conditions of the concentration camp labor, since I found it to be interesting and at great variance with anything else I had ever heard about it. Pohl said, “Of course, I must repeat that there were cases where the responsibility for the handling of these people was in the hands of the factories themselves. These plants or factories themselves were responsible for handling these people. It worked out that there were plants that did not abide by the rules I laid down. But all of the thirty or more plants which I had directly under me abided by my rules.”

I said I had visited a camp near Landsberg a few days after the end of the war last year in which were housed some four hundred Russian workers. The place had been evacuated immediately upon liberation, but it was miserable beyond description. Workers slept on long wooden shelves without bedding, and the lice and fleas were so apparent that one could not enter the dugout itself because of the danger of contracting typhus. I had spoken to several of the former inmates of that camp, and they told me that it had existed for years, that its death rate was tremendous, that the food rations were below starvation level, and that each night after the workers returned from the factory, they would be locked up in dugouts until the next morning, when those who remained alive had to report for a roll call before being sent to work. One of the rules in that camp was that internees had to remove those who had died during the night and bring them to roll call in the morning, after which the bodies were disposed of. I asked him whether he had anything to do with these labor camps, of which there were several in the vicinity of Landsberg. Pohl seemed not in the least upset by my description and said, “Yes, you see what I mean, what a hard job I had and how disagreeable it was. I had nothing to do with those camps around Landsberg, but such places existed. In most instances when I came across such a camp in my travels, I tried to correct things. But in many instances I had no jurisdiction because it was the responsibility of the factory or plant itself, and in the second place, I was just one man and what could I do?”

I said that it seemed to me that he was becoming very technical in his answers and that when he was confronted with facts, he merely dodged them by presenting an illusory picture of the delightful and ideal conditions
of concentration camp workers. Pohl looked at the floor and said, “I am not trying to be technical about this. I know conditions were not ideal. It was war and one can’t be too softhearted in such a time. Whatever I tried to do to help conditions, even when I presented it as something which was economically sound, rather than for human reasons, Himmler would say that I was too soft. But I think you should know that there were several groups, for example, the armament factories, which were under Speer.