That night, October –, the condemned men heard
heavy trucks backing into the prison yard less than a hundred
feet away the gallows equipment had arrived. Göring heard
former Reich manpower commissioner Fritz Sauckel screaming
loudly, but there was nothing he could do to help. First Lieu-
tenant John W. West searched his cell, ransacked his belongings,
and removed and shook all the bedding while Göring talked
volubly and “seemed very happy,” as West later testified. He
found nothing. Late on the fourteenth, as the hammering from
the gymnasium filled the cellblock two hundred feet away, the
chaplain came into the cell. Göring asked Gerecke if he knew the
execution hour. Gerecke said he did not, and to Göring’s dis-
tress also refused him Holy Communion. “I refused him the
Lord’s Supper,” the pastor testified a few days later, “because he
denied the divinity of Christ who instituted this sacrament....
He became more discouraged because I insisted he couldn’t meet
Edda, his daughter, in heaven if he refused the Lord’s way of
salvation.”
Thus the different men faced up to the last day in different
ways. An enterprising American officer at Nuremberg issued a
philatelic “first day cover” to mark the coming executions. An-
drus ordered tanks and anti-aircraft units to guard the prison
The German physician at
Nuremberg prison, Dr. Ludwig
Pflücker (seated), shook hands
with the Reichsmarschall as
they parted for the last time.
“Because, the last time, it was
difficult for a doctor not to shake
hands... .”