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Transcription: [00:07:49]
[00:07:49]
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
--but you were evacuated to Oberammergau.
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Yes.
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
In that area. You stayed there for how long?
[00:07:57]
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Oberammergau, out there not more than four or five, six weeks or so, before I gladly took that job going back. [[laughter]]
[00:08:08]
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Mmm-hmm. Why were you glad to take the job going back?
[00:08:12]
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Instead of hanging around doing nothing. Somehow, [[laughter]] I didn't like that.
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Mmm-hmm. That's what you did basically after you got to Oberammergau, just hang around.
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Yes, that's right.
[00:08:24]
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Mmm-hmm. So you weren't connected to von Braun and Dornberger, the group that gave up on May the 2nd. They were farther away.
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
No. Again, this is a question you can ask Tessmann too. Tessmann was at the same place as von Braun, when the Americans came in, and uh
[00:08:46]
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Tessmann was uh sent out to conceal files in the Harz Mountains.
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Yeah, but that was even before the surrender.
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
That was before the surrender.
[00:09:03]
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Tessmann and Hutzel, because of course, Hutzel
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Yeah you're right
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Hutzel, Hutzel wrote his book about, I've read Hutzel's book about that.
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
[00:09:12]
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
But the thing that mystifies me about your story is, um you, at least von Braun and some of the others had wanted to save the central files of Peenemunde.
[00:09:30]
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Yeah, that is so.
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
You know, because these are the ones that were buried by Hutzel and Tessmann.
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Hutzel and Tessman, Yeah
[00:09:35]
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Uh, why were you, why was Riedel and so forth, why was he out to make sure that the files had been destroyed, at Lehesten?
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
Uh you know, each, each group had its own files,
[00:09:49]
{SPEAKER name="Karl Heimburg"}
and only the central filing system was to be protected, as I understood it, and separate filing systems should be destroyed. This is how I see it.
{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
Why was that the case? I mean, I'm not quite sure what it would gain you, one way or the other, from doing it that way.