. NMT04-T0634
Volume IV · Page 634
| with Lorenz as its chief. The defendant
Brueckner was the head of Amt VI of VoMi. He frequently acted as a liaison
officer between VoMi and other offices and was connected with numerous
resettlement and deportation actions. VoMi was responsible for the registration of ethnic Germans, their evacuation from their homes, their transportation to VoMi camps, their care in the camps, and their indoctrination with Nazi ideology. Frequently resettlers were kept in these camps for months and even years awaiting the promised resettlement. In the middle of 1944, there were still one million ethnic Germans and Poles in the VoMi camps. In addition, it participated in the expulsion of citizens of Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, and France in Alsace-Lorraine. Its activities also included plunder of property, conscription of enemy nationals into the German Armed Forces, compulsory Germanization of foreign nationals, slave labor, and the kidnapping of alien children. The Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) was one of the oldest Main Offices of the Supreme Command of the SS. Before the war, the main function of RuSHA was the translation into practice of the racial theories of the SS. It concerned itself with checking the proof of Aryan descent of candidates for admission into the SS. An SS Officer was required to provide a family tree going back to 1750 to prove his "Nordic" or at least "Aryan" descent. RuSHA also processed marriage applications of SS men, as they were not allowed to marry until the bride-to-be was approved. Such approval was based upon "racial purity" and physical compatibility between the two partners likely to result in a fertile marriage. All this was part of Himmler's desire to make the SS a "racial elite". RuSHA's concern with and experience in racial matters made it the logical agency to take over the racial problems inherent in Himmler's program of genocide and Germanism. It was apparent that someone had to screen the millions of people about to be uprooted from their homes and tossed about the map of Europe. The activities of RuSHA in connection with the selection and welfare of SS men and their dependents became of secondary importance to this new task. The Race Office of RuSHA under Professor Bruno Kurt Schultz and his deputy Walther Dongus, both of whom we shall hear of frequently during the course of this trial, was particularly important. Guenther Pancke, now about to be tried in Denmark, was Chief of RuSHA in 1939 and 1940. The defendant Hofmann was Chief from July 1940 to 1 April 1943 when he was succeeded by the defendant Hildebrandt. Hofmann and Hildebrandt also served as Higher SS and Police Leaders at various times. The defendant |
