Glossary

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Summation of Henry Ormond in the Trial Court

Henry Ormond, Norbert Wollheim’s attorney'© Fritz Bauer Institute (collection of Thomas Ormond)
Henry Ormond, Norbert Wollheim’s attorney
© Fritz Bauer Institute (collection of Thomas Ormond)

 a  “The completely clear legal bases of this trial must not be blurred, obscured, or clouded by an interested party […] And finally, it must not be the case that the IG Farben concern tries here to shift to the Federal Republic of Germany, and thus to the general public, the liability for things that the firm itself and no one else is responsible for.”

(Henry Ormond, summation in trial court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. IG Farben), Exhibits, Vol. II, 49 pages, here pp. 1–2. (Transl. KL))
 
 b  “How often these avowals, in light of the preceding descriptions of the prisoner witnesses, sounded like bitter mockery with regard to the suffering of these unfortunates, like biting sarcasm and fiendish cynicism in the face of these events, which are inconceivable to the normal mind. Others of these former leaders of the IG left the impression that despite the intervening years, despite all they doubtless have learned in the interim, they have remained the same Herrenmenschen they were in those days and that they have the same harsh, unpitying and inhumane attitude toward their former enslaved serfs.”
(Henry Ormond, summation in trial court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. IG Farben), Exhibits, Vol. II, 49 pages, here p. 5. (Transl. KL))
 
 c  “These people, who without exception took the greatest pains to make their statements as carefully as possible and to say only what they could answer for, who, although the reverse would have been quite understandable, showed no attitude of hatred, who gratefully emphasized any good and humane treatment of them by a master craftsman [...] they were downright flabbergasted by the testimonies of the Farben witnesses.”
(Henry Ormond, summation in trial court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. IG Farben), Exhibits, Vol. II, 49 pages, here p. 7. (Transl. KL))
 
 d  “[…] surely existed no cause, much less the reason of a so-called supralegal state of emergency, for them to treat the concentration camp prisoners so inhumanely and brutally, and to exacerbate their situation, which in itself was already desperate enough.”
(Henry Ormond, summation in trial court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. IG Farben), Exhibits, Vol. II, 49 pages, here p. 9. (Transl. KL))

Norbert Wollheim’s attorney, Henry Ormond, linked his summation to a newspaper article from the Handelsblatt, which denied any financial responsibility on the part of industry for crimes committed during the Third Reich and referred to the political “solution,” that is, to already concluded “compensation agreements.” Ormond disagreed vehemently  a  with this and emphasized explicitly that Wollheim had filed a civil suit based on German civil law, not, for example, a criminal case based on “the special right of redress”[1]—the point was not Siegerjustiz, victor’s justice, but recovery of damages on the basis of the German Civil Code (BGB).

 

In conclusion, Ormond recapitulated the statements of the witnesses; in this regard, he reproached the defense witnesses with bias and obstinacy.  b  In addition, Ormond contrasted the testimony of the defense witnesses with the efforts made by the plaintiff’s witnesses to be as matter-of-fact as possible in their presentations.  c  Because of his effective contrast, the statements of the witnesses for I.G. Farben about the prisoners’ living conditions seemed implausible and weak in comparison with those of the survivors. Additionally, Ormond explained that I.G. Farben’s claim to have been compelled to use forced laborers had been proved false; moreover, I.G. Farben was directly responsible, he argued, for the circumstances at the construction site.  d 

 

Further, Wollheim’s lawyer contrasted, in detailed fashion, the statements of the plaintiff’s witnesses with those of the witnesses for I.G. Farben and thus rebutted the whitewashed depiction of the working and living conditions in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp offered by I.G. Farben: “Sadly, it is thanks to this worldwide pharmaceutical and chemical giant that under its leadership, death gathered in a rich harvest at the plant and camp and in the Monowitz infirmary.”[2]

 

The second part of his summation is Ormond’s comment on the last written pleading of I.G. Farben in the proceedings on April 11, 1953. Wollheim’s attorney systematically made into mincemeat the pleading’s contradictions and false assertions—for example, that the I.G. Farben employees had known nothing about the conditions in the concentration camp, that I.G. Farben had been coerced into using prisoners, and so forth: “That they [deceased prisoners] nonetheless failed to leave their workplace in I.G. Farben’s Buna-Monowitz forced labor camp must be attributed solely to the accused, and all the attempts of the accused to shift the guilt to others are of no avail here.”[3]

 

The speech ended with a request to the judges for a “just decision in the case.”[4]

(SP; transl. KL)



Sources

Proceedings, 3rd Civil Chamber of the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. I.G. Farben), Vol. III, p. 422.

Henry Ormond, summation in trial court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. I.G. Farben), Exhibits, Vol. II, 49 pp.

 

Literature

Rumpf, Joachim R.: “Der Fall Wollheim gegen die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation.” Unpublished dissertation, Leibniz University, Hanover, 2007.

[1] Henry Ormond, summation in trial court, May 11, 1953. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. I.G. Farben), Exhibits, Vol. II, 49 pp., here p. 2. (Translated by KL)

[2] Ormond, summation in trial court, p. 31.

[3] Ormond, summation in trial court, p. 44.

[4] Ormond, summation in trial court, p. 49.