English Translation

The defendant knew that he was obliged to work as an emergency servant, he also knew that the Volks- deutsche Mittelstelle had to perform state tasks and that it was already equivalent to an authority because otherwise his emergency service obligation for the Volksdeutsche Mittelstellen could not have been carried out. It was also clear to him in his position as administrative leader that he had to administer funds. The field court has these conditions for the intent of the accused i.S. the provisions on official crimes and offences and the principles of the highest judicial case-law developed for this purpose were considered sufficient, but at the same time considered that the defendant knew for another reason that he was in a position of service which made him a duty of special helpers. The defendant had been hired as an i-man for a li-office, which the fitter in the war transferred to the Reich the equally beautiful as well as reputable surrender of the resettlement of Volksdeutscher. The defendant, as manager of a resettlement camp, faced the people's Germans who were housed there as a representative of the fatherlandc, in whose protection these hermits, leaving their possessions and estates behind and subject to a great deal of disenchantment and hardship, went to whom they had longed for generations. The accused was reasonable enough to realize clearly that the people's German settlers saw in him a German official and that they and their families therefore had to form their first impressions of the German Third Reich and its officials precisely according to the picture that they received from him, There can be no doubt that the accused was in a position of service for this reason alone, which made a special conduct his duty. The Féldgericht considered the meaning of this circumstance to be so comprehensive that, by way of § 2 of the RStGB, it would have regarded the defendant as an official of § 33l ff even if, for legal reasons, he had not been regarded as an civil servant of § 359 of the German Civil Code. However, such an analogy was not necessary because the regulations on official offences and official crimes had to be applied directly." II. From a similar point of view, a newer decision of the Reichsgericht (Rechtsgerichtl.Rspr. 1941 Nr. 944), which comes to the following conclusion: The leader appointed by the NsDAP of a resettlement camp for people Germans, who carries out indiscriminate operations with a camp inmate, must be punished in the appropriate application of § 174 No. 2 StGB. - 22 -