HC Deb 15 March 1949 vol 462 cc2072-82

Resolved: That a sum, not exceeding £3,100,000, he granted to His Majesty, to defray the expense of non-effective services, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1950.

flagrant cases of breach of international law should be punished in accordance with the principles of juristic procedure.

Therefore, I have never joined with those who criticised the fact of war trials and I am glad to think that in the criticisms which I am about to make in regard to a particular war trial, although they are criticisms which are, I feel bound to say, criticisms of a more general application than to that trial alone, there is nothing so serious that I have to advance as the admissions the other day, in the case of an American Forces war trial, that force had been used to interrogate prisoners now under sentence of death; that there was a disgraceful mock trial in which a crucifix and two candles were employed to terrify persons interrogated; and that those methods were actually thought proper to be employed by a civilised Power. There is nothing of that kind in what I have to say tonight.

What I have to say concerns the story of a young doctor. He was a Roumanian, classified by the Nazi authorities as of German origin, and he thereafter gravitated, or was conscripted into, the S.S. He was tried for maltreatment of Allied nationals in a concentration camp. He was tried at the same time on a charge of selecting persons to be sent to another camp for extermination. He was found guilty, certainly on the latter charge, and on 17th September last he was hanged.

The case first came to my notice when I was in Amsterdam last summer at an international Church Congress, when I was approached by the representatives of, I think, the German Lutheran organisation. The young doctor was then still alive.

I am bound to say quite frankly to the House that I was not impressed with the type of representation which was then made to me. The young man had apparently not given sworn testimony on his own behalf and had not, in my view at any rate, an adequate explanation—although he had some explanation—of not having done so. I did, however, write in the first place to the Foreign Office for the purpose of ascertaining the truth about some of the complaints made on his behalf by those who had approached me. One of the grounds which I then considered substantial was the allegation that upon the capital offence he had been convicted on the evidence of one witness alone, and that witness a witness whose credibility was in doubt.

I very much regret to say that I received the following answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, which I believe—and the hon. Gentleman opposite will correct me if I am wrong—was based on material supplied by his Department. He said: The suggestion that the evidence of Orendi's active participation in the crimes of which he was accused was limited to that given by a Belgian witness is similarly incorrect. There were other witnesses.

I take that assurance as meaning that when this person was convicted on a capital charge, the complaint, which had been made that there was only one witness in the case, was not true, and that upon that capital charge there were other witnesses. I now assert that that information given me by the Foreign Office was untrue and that, so far as the charge for which he was condemned to death was concerned, there was only one witness—the Belgium witness. It is unfortunate that these circumstances led me to take less active steps that otherwise I would have taken, with the result that I was not able to raise the matter again until after the sentence had been carried out. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to confirm that the Foreign Office gave me that information and that it was definitely false, as I assert.

I now come to the more substantial questions of criticism. As the result of repeated requests from Germany, I took the trouble to inspect, through the courtesy of the Under-Secretary, the file of documents concerned with the case. I assert that it was in a state which no file of documents in a case of a capital charge should be in. The documents were practically illegible and almost indecipherable. If one is going to try people on a capital charge, one ought to see that they are tried in circumstances of decency in which papers are kept properly to allow the reviewing authorities to arrive at a proper conclusion. That was not the case. Worse still, there was no transcript of the summing-up but a note of what the learned Judge Advocate-General had intended to say—without any record of what he actually did say. I assert that the summing-up was defective to such a degree that the Court of Criminal Appeal would not have allowed a conviction based upon it to stand. I assert that if one is going to try a man for his life, it is one's duty to provide a proper transcript of what was said in the summing-up.

I come to the actual method of trial. In my opinion, it was grossly unfortunate that, combined with the capital charge, there was one of a much less serious nature, the maltreatment of female prisoners in a way which was no doubt unfortunate but had nothing to do with the capital charge, and which obviously embarrassed the defence, which had to devote itself to answering totally irrelevant and obviously prejudicial attacks.

The next point is most unfortunate. The summing-up was defective in that, the accused having been charged with having selected prisoners for extermination, the summing-up appears not to have directed the court's attention to the need for proving that extermination had actually taken place. Upon my reading of the evidence, there was not a jot or tittle of evidence that extermination actually had taken place. In other words—you have hanged a man for the equivalent of murder and have not proved that anyone is dead. That is the next charge I make.

The next point I desire to make is that the evidence of one witness, which was warmly disputed by the defence, was that two doctors, one of whom was subordinate, had gone into the camp and actually picked out prisoners from a particular parade. There was evidence that the younger man, rightly or wrongly because there was no evidence that it was true, believed that some of those picked out—namely, those insane—were to be exterminated. It was vital if the court was to be properly directed on this occasion that it should have brought to its knowledge that the function was of selecting prisoners to be exterminated and not a more administrative or administerial function of picking out people on other people's orders and putting them on a particular convoy; knowing what the destination of that convoy was.

I am not saying which of these two things the accused person did. I know this: that if the summing-up note of the Judge-Advocate was correct, the vital matter of that distinction was never put before the court, nor was there ever put before the court a proper criterion of the tests to be applied to one witness's questions. I can tell from a study of the papers that the evidence was not very convincing, as I read it. I can find no trace in the summing-up of any of the criteria to be applied.

I do not wish to deprive the hon. Gentleman of his rightful reply, but it is most unfortunate, in my opinion, that these trials have been carried out by the War Office, for they have not an adequate sense of justice. If anyone else is to be tried on a capital charge in this way, it is most important that they should be given at least as good a trial as an Englishman would expect to receive under the same circumstances. This is rough and ready, nasty and cheap justice, and is not a good advertisement for this country. Let us show the world the best we can do in this way; that is the way we can enforce international law in the future. I do not think, on reflection, that this is a page in our judicial annals that any British lawyer can look upon with satisfaction. Although I cannot assert, and do not assert, that an innocent man was hanged, I do assert that a man was hanged who, had he been an Englishman tried in this country, would certainly not have been hanged.

12.1 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Michael Stewart)

The hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) began with certain general views on war crimes, and I understood him to say that he did not attack the conception of the trial of war criminals in general, but he did say, towards the end, that he considered it most unfortunate that these trials have been carried out by the War Office which has a defective sense of justice. I do not want to make too much of this as a debating point, but it has been known from the very outset that that was the way they would be conducted. It was made clear by the Royal Warrant and regulations thereunder in June, 1945, that, in general, the procedure would resemble a field general court-martial. Since the hon. Gentleman' was at some pains to suggest that this man has been treated to some inferior brand of justice that would not be meted out to a British subject, I repudiate it. It is a procedure which is in general similar to a field general court-martial, such as a British subject in certain circumstances would be subject to, and it has been known to everyone since 1945 that that would be the procedure.

Mr. Hogg

Does the Under-Secretary say that a British subject would be tried for his life without there being a full transcript of the judge's summing-up? If so, it is a most serious admission.

Mr. Stewart

In similar circumstances, yes. If it should ever happen that a large number of British subjects engaged in torturing and murdering women and sending them to gas chambers, it might well be that the outraged conscience of mankind would say that a speedy form of justice should be executed.

Mr. Hogg

I must have an answer from the hon. Gentleman. Has it ever been the case that a British subject has been condemned to death in recent years without a transcript of the summing-up?

Mr. Stewart

Not to my knowledge, but the whole point is that the circumstances are not the same. There has been no case in which British subjects have committed such offences and the hon. Gentleman does no service to British subjects by his comparison. We have been charged with administering cheap justice. In my experience, in the history of mankind more mischief has been done by expensive justice than by cheap justice. If the hon. Gentleman attacks this case, he is attacking the general procedure under which war crime trials were to be conducted, as made known and generally accepted nearly four years ago. Unless he can make out his case, that this particular trial of the young doctor has been improperly conducted, then his reflections break down.

I shall deal point by point with the particular case of this young doctor. It was suggested that he was a Roumanian who, in one way or another, had been drawn into the Nazi net. It is important to notice that he himself at one stage of the proceedings declined to make a statement on the ground that he still considered himself bound by his oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. On another occasion, when defending one of his inhuman acts, he used the phrase, "It is for the sake of the Reich." Let us not suggest, as was implied by the hon. Member, that this young man had not given his allegiance to that regime with all his heart and soul. Now as to the particular points alleged against our conduct of this case. In the first place, the hon. Member complains of the state in which he found the papers. It is true that anyone wishing to go over this case, as I have done, and as others have done before me, will have to devote great care and attention to it. They will have to read the longhand report of the proceedings in the case, and the longhand notes of the Judge-Advocate's summing-up. It is difficult, but, as I know from my own experience, it is not impossible, for anyone prepared to give the time and patience, to find out clearly what were the issues before the court. The hon. Gentleman suggested that because he found the task difficult the reviewing authority must have scamped its work. That is an unworthy and unjustifiable suggestion. His suggestion that the papers are illegible is without foundation. It is true that they require care and patience.

Mr. Hogg

All I said was that it was a disgraceful state for the papers in a capital charge to be in, and I repeat it.

Mr. Stewart

The hon. Member is now toning down his statement a little. His first statement was that they were illegible. To use a phrase he often used—that is untrue. They are legible; I read them, and a shocking story or cruelty and perversity it is. We have, as is the natural and normal procedure in field general courts-martial, which are the models for trials of this kind, the notes made by the Judge-Advocate for his summing-up, and in those notes are laid down all the essential issues that were before the court. Let us take what the hon. Member refers to as the capital charge. There is one point on which I trust he was not misleading the House, that is, that both the offences of which this man was convicted were capital charges. Under the Royal Warrant, any war crime carries a penalty of death.

Mr. Hogg

Surely the hon. Member is not suggesting that to inspect a woman naked, smoking a cigarette, is something for which you are going to hang a man?

Mr. Stewart

There is a great deal more than that on the first charge, as I shall show. On the particular capital charge on which he laid such emphasis, and which he represented to the House as the only capital charge, which it is not—

Mr. Hogg

Will the hon. Gentleman deny that in the long interview he had with me he agreed that it was the only capital charge on which the penalty would have been inflicted?

Mr. Stewart

Certainly. What I did say was that I doubted whether the capital sentence would have been inflicted on the first charge. The second charge was certainly the more serious, but there was a great deal in the first. This man was concerned in selecting victims for extermination. He was convicted on the evidence of the woman Govers. The hon. Member made great play with the phrase "other witnesses." I think what was behind that phrase was this. Without the evidence of this woman, the doctor could not have been convicted on the charge of selection for the gas chamber, but the incident she described is also referred to in part by certain other witnesses. Their evidence without hers would get us nowhere, though with hers they have some substance. This explains, though it does not justify, the use of the phrase "other witnesses," but despite that, the fact remains that the court knew perfectly well at the time that, without the evidence of Madame Govers, no conviction could be made on this charge.

What was the evidence? She stated that she was present at a parade in December, 1944, in Ravensbrück concentration camp at which the doctor prepared the list of persons to be sent on the extermination convoy, that he expressed opinions as to what types of persons were to be on the list and what were not, and stated with regard to certain conscientious objectors that they were not to be included in the convoy as they were not mad, therefore there was no need to exterminate them. The clear implication of that was that those who were regarded by the internal medical service of this concentration camp as mad were to be exterminated. It was clear that the defence accepted that implication, because they endeavoured to shake this woman on the question whether the doctor used the word "extermination." They were unable to shake her at any point of her evidence. The court, which saw and heard this woman and other witnesses, found her credible. It is not easy for us who have not seen and heard to decide, as the hon. Member has quite capriciously and whimsically decided, that she is not a credible witness. If the hon. Member admits she was a credible witness, his whole criticism—

Mr. Hogg

I said that the court was never properly directed as to her credibility.

Mr. Stewart

The Judge-Advocate, in summing up, drew the court's attention to the fact that there was only one witness and they must weigh in this matter not only the number of witnesses but their credibility. Attention was drawn to the vital importance of this woman's evidence. Nothing was advanced at that time against her personal character to suggest that she was not a credible witness. The examination of other witnesses appeared to contradict her, but they said no more than that they did not see or were not present at the episode she described. It was a very large camp and it might well be that they could say in good faith, to the best of their knowledge and belief, that such and such did not happen, but that cannot be taken as conclusive proof that this woman's evidence was not credible. She said she was there and saw what happened and that the doctor used the word "exterminate," which clearly shows that he knew the frightful destination to which these people were being sent.

There is the question as to whether the doctor was acting under orders to such an extent as to relieve him of guilt. It is impossible to take that view, if only by reason of the fact that this man was a qualified doctor, having a degree conferred on him by the University of Berlin. It is impossible for someone in that position, a doctor in medical charge of a block of this camp, to plead, like somebody in the position of an orderly or office boy, that he was carrying out orders. He was in too responsible a position to plead that. He was in a position to express an opinion as to what sort of persons ought or ought not to be on the list. The hon. Member seems to deny that, but the evidence of Madame Govers is perfectly clear on that point. He said about one particular group of prisoners that they were not mad.

Mr. Hogg

The hon. Gentleman could not have read this illegible document as well as it would seem. If he had, he would have seen that the evidence was, rightly or wrongly, that the doctor said that was going to happen to them—not that he selected them for that purpose.

Mr. Stewart

If he was not selecting them for that purpose, what is the meaning of certain phrases in the woman's evidence? What is the point of his remark that, because some of them were not mad, they were not to be exterminated? Since the hon. Member has used the phrase "capital charge" so much, let me say just a word about the other charge on which the doctor was convicted. That was the charge of ill-treatment, which was testified to by several witnesses. First, it took the form of criminal neglect of persons for whom he was medically responsible, so that by reason of that neglect they were acutely in need.

Then there was the carrying out of an operation in a way which, if he were not a qualified doctor, could only be described as incompetence, but which, in view of his qualifications, we are obliged to describe by a harsher term. Part of his duty was to decide which women were fit for work. In performing that duty, he condemned to do work women who were quite plainly medically unfit, and on whom this was clearly a death sentence. He did it using these words, "It is for the Reich; sick or well you have to work." On another occasion he said: "You are all going to die anyhow.' Even if the hon. Member had succeeded in overturning the evidence on the other charge, that would be sufficient reason for regarding these as war crimes which are regarded as a capital charge.

I am bound to deplore what the hon. Member has done this evening. Because he found certain papers difficult to read, and because of a capricious determination to disbelieve a witness who was found credible by the court, he has, for these completely unjustifiable reasons, seen fit to make a totally unwarranted attack on the conduct of war crime trials and on the sense of justice with which judgment has been administered. I trust the House will believe me when I say that I take no pleasure in the fact that my duty connects me with these judgments of death; but if ever there was a case in which justice has been, not vindictive, but vindicative, vindicating the outraged conscience of humanity, it was this case in which justice has been done to a torturer and murderer.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

What happened to the conscientious objectors who appear to have been the only sane people?

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Eighteen Minutes past Twelve o'Clock.