Summation of Otto Küster in the Appellate Court
Otto Küster’s summation differs considerably from those of the previous speakers: His remarks have to do with the philosophy of law. In a thought experiment, he first tests the hypothesis that I.G. Farben could not have acted otherwise with regard to the employment and treatment of prisoners in Monowitz, had not mistreated Norbert Wollheim personally, and besides had had no knowledge of the goings-on in the camp, in short: “It therefore had not made […] an intentional contribution to the principal offense.”[1] Proceeding on this basis, Küster used the decision of the lower court to prove that the accused participated directly in injurious action, “for under civil law, the actions of its [the firm’s] people are imputed to it.”[2]
Reasoning along moral and ethical lines, Küster drew this conclusion: “If a constitutional representative of the accused had known what was happening at Auschwitz, then the accused would have had no choice but to shut down the construction site thenceforth […].”[3] As the employees of I.G. Farben could not have remained unaware, Küster argued, of what the conditions in Auschwitz were like, it would have been the firm’s duty “to improve […] the fate of the prisoners.”[4]
With regard to Norbert Wollheim’s suit, Küster further explained that it was the “original and cardinal damage of fear”[5] that formed the core of Wollheim’s complaint
Addressing I.G. Farben i.L., Küster then engaged in formulating the failures to improve the prisoners’ fate of which I.G. Farben was guilty
Küster’s line of argument culminated in the rebuttal of the objection raised by I.G. Farben’s lawyers, who claimed that Wollheim himself had weathered the imprisonment without any impairment of his health and thus could not aver a duty to compensate for damages: “[T]his legal relationship is determined by considerably more circumstances than the mere issue of whether the plaintiff was dealt blows and received physical injuries. I[t] is determined by the hell of Auschwitz as such, from whose background the chimneys cannot be removed by magic. It is determined by the unmistakable duty to act humanely, which is incurred by the one who toils along in this hell without being one of the damned, belonging instead on the other side.”[8]
Instead of directing further reproaches at I.G. Farben, Küster expressed near the end of his summation his disappointment that I.G. Farben had betrayed the values for which it rightly had been esteemed for decades: “For it is true, the old IG was ‘our’ IG, it was adorned with the dual glory of science and social accomplishment. […P]eople assuredly blundered into things without much malice on their own part, without more malice than is inherent in human hearts on average and by nature—but this sense of one’s own inoffensiveness alters in no way the fact that the most atrocious injustice was committed in the name of Germany, and in the case of this defendant alters in no way the fact that an I.G. Farben plant bore the name of the place that—unless history as we know it reaches an end—will be known for centuries to come as the site of hell on earth. The defendant has not been able to pluck up the courage to bear the consequences of that, the consequences by which injustice is atoned among human beings.”[9]
(SP; transl. KL)