It may be useful to read a few excerpts of it, “By order of the Chief of the General Staff of the Military Command, of 6 February 1943, concerning the compulsory labor service . . . in the combat zone”—and then it goes on to deal with persons who don’t present themselves being considered saboteurs.
Well, I thought you were saying that the Chief of the General Staff of the Military Command was Keitel. He was the Chief of the OKW. Are you still saying that he was the Chief of the Military Command?
GEN. ZORYA: I quote only that which is in the document: “In accordance with the regulations of the Chief of the General Staff of the Military Command.” That is in the document, and I do not wish to add anything.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think it is worth taking any more time over it.
GEN. ZORYA: I will now go back to that document which was submitted to the Tribunal by the United States Prosecution and which was entitled, “Memo for the Treatment of Foreign Civilian Laborers in the Reich.” I will not quote this document in detail; I would like to stress only that it established a special regime for Eastern Workers. They lived in camps surrounded by guards and under supervision of a camp commander. The latter forbade a normal life for workers from the East. They were thus forbidden to visit churches or public places and they were obliged to wear special insignia—a rectangle with pale blue edges, and in the middle the word “Ost” in white letters on the dark blue background.
In the memorandum to housewives regarding the employment of women from the East in town and rural households it was stated that—Page 131 of the document book:
“Every foreigner judges the standard of our entire people by the personal and political conduct of the individual. The foreign workers must see in the housewife and the members of her family worthy representatives of the German people.”
“If, in exceptional cases, German and eastern female domestic workers are employed in the same household, the German domestic workers must be given mainly tasks of serving the family and must also be given the supervision of the Eastern woman worker. The German living in the household must always have precedence.”
General conditions of work did not apply to the women workers from the East. Their labor was regulated only by the discretion of their masters. This was expressed in Paragraph 4 of the same memorandum. I quote: