From Cracow to Buchenwald

Abstract

In March 1942, Morgen reached a crisis. Invited to lead a new court in Lemberg (Lvov), he writes to the personnel department of the SS Judiciary Head Office in Munich asking to be spared the assignment. He asks instead to be transferred out of the General Gouvernement, preferably to Norway or the Balkans.¹ In support of this request, he recites the record of his accomplishments in the region: the number of the indictments he has filed, the number of defendants he has tried, and the travels he logged in the Sauberzweig case, which he calls a Korruptionsherd—a “focus of corruption,” on the analogy of a Krankheitsherd, a focus of disease. In closing, he offers a further argument:

The corruption in the General Gouvernement is so great, and the number of capital crimes and noxious offenses so high, that I am utterly convinced that any judge would in time become jaded and therefore run the risk of injury to his natural sense of justice. So you will understand, Obersturmbannführer, if I have the urgent wish to go back now to live once again in a different, healthier atmosphere than that of the General Gouvernement.