"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (258 page)

13.
See the situation reports of January 19 and February 19, 1942, by the chief public prosecutor, Königsberg (BA R 22/3375), who states that according to a report by the senior public prosecutor in Zichenau, the introduction of the Polish Penal Code was received with satisfaction, “since the German penal laws cannot sufficiently take into account the idiosyncrasies inherent in a foreign people.” The introduction of the Polish Penal Code would take the “particular Polish character” into consideration. Situation report of March 2, 1942 (BA R 22/3372): “As a weapon … in the fight against the foreign destroyers of German defense in the war,” the Decree on Penal Law for Poles “gives the judiciary … a welcome task that brings them closer to the immediate political purpose.”

14.
See the situation reports of July 10, 1940, and May 31, 1943, by the chief public prosecutor of Posen (BA R 22/3383); situation report of May 4, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Königsberg Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3375); also the situation report of January 8, 1941, by the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3360).

15.
Report of September 28, 1941, by the chief public prosecutor of Danzig (IfZ, FA 85/1, photocopy); report of July 10, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal (Nuremberg doc. NG-432).

16.
See, e.g., the situation report by the chief public prosecutor of Posen of August 14, 1942 (BA R 22/3383), and of the Kattowitz (Katowice) chief public prosecutor of September 3, 1942 (BA R 22/3372).

17.
Thiemann, “Anwendung und Fortbildung” (1941), 2474.

18.
Ibid., 2473; Drendel, “Aus der Praxis der Strafverfolgung im Warthegau” (1941), 2472.

19.
Freisler expressed the instruction orally in his speech “The Penal Code and Alien Peoples in the Reich,” situation report of March 2, 1942, by the chief public prosecutor of Kattowitz (BA R 22/3372).

20.
See the judgments by the Wartheland Municipal Court reported in the
Amtliche Mitteilungen
of the Labor Unit at the office of the Warthegau Reich governor, September 30, 1942 (State Archive Pozna
, quoted in Łuczak,
Dyskryminacja Polaków
[1966], 132 f.).

21.
Of the various special courts, those of Łód
, Kalisch (Kalisz), and Leslau were particularly harsh in their jurisdiction. In this connection see the excerpts from a total of 71 judgments of Wartheland special courts reprinted in
Doc. Occ.
5:351 ff. Of the judgments against a total of 19 persons at the Leslau Special Court, as many as 13 were condemned to death, whereas 3 were condemned to one, 1 to four, and 2 to five years’ detention in prison camp. Regarding the verdicts of the Łód
Special Court against Poles, see, for example, those of October 27, 1942 (4 death sentences for offenses against the war economy), August 18, 1942 (a death sentence for violence against a German), August 24, 1942 (2 death sentences for serious revertible theft), August 25, 1942 (a death sentence for arson), August 27, 1942 (a death sentence for continued offenses against the war economy), and July 22, 1943 (one death sentence each for “posing as an official, receiving stolen goods, fraud and blackmail,” and violence against a German official), from promulgations by the senior public prosecutor of Łód
on the execution on December 3, 1942, of these judgments, undated, presumably August–September 1942, and of October 7, 1943 (Main Commission Warsaw, Plakatsammlung XIV, 111 t/1–3); see also the judgment of April 1943 (the death penalty for a Pole who had stolen four army postal parcels,
Litzmannstädter Zeitung
of April 3, 1943); some 20% of the verdicts of the Łód
Special Court were said to be death sentences (according to Cyga
ski,
Z dziejów okupacji w Łódzi
[1964], 134).

22.
See the preceding note; cf. also the selection of death sentences in Nuremberg doc. NG-2467, compiled from East German newspaper reports, from which it emerges that death sentences were imposed in most cases for relatively minor offenses. See also the notification of February 15, 1943, by the senior public prosecutor of Posen on the execution of death sentences pronounced by the Posen Special Court against two Poles branded as “dangerous habitual criminals” (Main Commission Warsaw, Plakatsammlung XIV, 103 t/7); the judgment of the Posen Special Court of June 1943, condemning a Pole to death for burglary (
Ostdeutscher Beobachter,
June 9, 1943); judgments of the Posen Special Court of April 1942 (
Ostdeutscher Beobachter,
April 11, 1942, reproduced in
Doc. Occ.
5:362); judgments of the Hohensalza Special Court of June 1943 (
Ostdeutscher Beobachter,
June 28, 1943, reproduced in
Doc. Occ.
5:366), condemning three Poles to death for very minor theft of textile fibers, classing them as “parasites upon the
Volk,
” in accordance with sec. 1 of the Decree on Parasites upon the
Volk
of September 5, 1939 (
RGBl.
I 1679). The courts managed to pronounce the death sentence in these cases only by interpreting such thefts as “looting in the liberated zone” under the terms of the Decree on Parasites upon the
Volk
(although looting was classified as an offense against property only in the blackout during or after air-raid attacks). Almost all death sentences pronounced by the special courts were regularly published by the competent senior public prosecutor on red posters at the seat of the special court in question, but only after the executions had taken place.

23.
Broszat,
Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik
(1961), 142 f.

24.
Situation report by the chief public prosecutor of Kattowitz, January 3, 1942 (BA R 22/3372).

25.
Ibid.

26.
Greiser,
Der Tag der Freiheit
(1943), 29.

27.
Letter of September 11, 1942, from the Reich Ministry of Justice to
Reichsmarschall
Göring (Nuremberg doc. NO-241).

28.
The applications, which contained detailed qualifications of the applicant (irreproachability, “steady hand,” “sure hand,” etc.) fill two large files (BA Koblenz).

29.
Cf. the situation report of May 21, 1941, by the president of the Hohensalza Administrative District, Bl. 13, which contains the following passage: “The public execution of the death sentences of the Special Court in Leslau, during which, among others, three Poles were publicly hanged in the marketplace in Kutno, has been received with disapproval by the Poles. Polish circles have stated that the Poles know how to die for their country. The public execution of a Jew in Leslau as a deterrent measure against violations of the War Economy Decree, on the other hand, was welcomed by the Poles” (Posen University library).

30.
Situation report of February 19, 1942, by the chief public prosecutor of Kattowitz (BA R 22/3375).

31.
Secret memorandum dated October 14, 1940, from Public Prosecutor Stephan, Danzig, according to which the
Kreisleiter
of Bromberg in a discussion with Stephan had spoken of a series of “errors of judgment and wrong decisions,” of which he “gave a long list and which provided evidence of conscious favoring of Poles” (ZS, Polen Film, 24, 580). Decisions of the special courts in which Polish accused prisoners were considered to have been treated too leniently and Germans too harshly also provoked the disapproval of the Party; cf. the situation report of September 29, 1941, by the chief public prosecutor of Danzig (BA R 22/3360).

32.
Situation report of January 8, 1941, by the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3360).

33.
Situation report of July 16, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal; report of February 10, 1941, by the presiding judge of the Bromberg District Court to the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3360).

34.
Situation report of February 5, 1941, by the presiding judge of the Posen Court of Appeal (BA R 22/3383).

35.
Thiemann, “Anwendung und Fortbildung,” 2474.

36.
Ibid.

37.
Examples: 3 death sentences against Poles for the murder of a German in the first days of the September incidents (Posen Special Court, June 10, 1941, Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc. I-68); 4 death sentences and 1 stiff penitentiary sentence on account of reprisals against ethnic Germans in early September 1939 (Posen Special Court, June 4, 1940, ibid., doc. I-88); 28 death sentences for the murder of Germans in early September 1939 (Posen Special Court 1, August 25, 30, September 2–4, 1940, ZS); death sentences against 5 Poles for maltreatment of Germans in early September 1939 (Posen Special Court,
Ostdeutscher Beobachter,
December 6, 1941); sentences to fourteen years’ penitentiary for involvement in the murder of ethnic Germans in 1939 (Kalisch Special Court, October 10, 1940,
Litzmannstädter Zeitung,
December 2, 1940, Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc. I-844); promulgation by the senior public prosecutor, Kattowitz, on June 30, 1942, on the execution of a Pole condemned to death by the Kattowitz Special Court, found guilty for “sniping at German soldiers” (Main Commission Warsaw, Plakatsammlung XIII 98 6/2); 16 death sentences by Warthegau Special Courts, submitted to the Reich Ministry of Justice for confirmation on April 30, 1940 (Nuremberg doc. NG-221).