The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Archive/File: imt/nca/supp-b/nca-sb-02-kaltenbrunner.04
Last-Modified: 1997/11/22

         Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Supplement B
           Responsibility for Mobile Gas Chambers

                                                 [Page 1299]
          
Excerpts from Testimony of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, taken at Nurnberg,
Germany, 3 October 1945, 1445-1745, by Lt. Col. Smith W. Brookhart, 
IGD. Also present: Capt. Jesse F. Landrum, Reporter; Mr. Bernard 
Reymon, Interpreter.

Q. When did the use of the mobile gas chamber van first come
to your attention?

A. I can't say when it was but as soon as I read it in the
foreign press I immediately took up the matter with Goebbels
and sent at the same time a photostatic reproduction of the
article to Hitler with a letter in which I expressed the
terrible consequences which such things would have.

Q. Why did you take it up with Goebbels?

A. Because he was responsible for the press and it was he
who allowed the foreign press to enter Germany; and because
he was the man who had dared against Himmler and over
Himmler to talk to Hitler.

Q. Was your objection because the news had gotten out in the
foreign press and that was going to be embarrassing?

A. Certainly not; because I was myself shaken by these
facts.

Q. Why didn't you go to Himmler? You say you knew he was
responsible for these things.

A. Precisely because I held him responsible for it.

Q. Why didn't you take action in your own RSHA? <1> That was
the instrument through which these accusations were being
carried out.

A. This information had not the slightest foundation.

Q. Witness after witness, by testimony and affidavit, has
said the gas chamber killings were done on general or
special orders of Kaltenbrunner.

A. Show me one of those men or any one of those orders. It
is utterly impossible.

Q. The testimony of one of the high officials was that most
orders initiated through Himmler, the killings could not
happen without order of Hitler or without knowledge of
Himmler but practically all of the orders came out through
Kaltenbrunner.

A. Entirely impossible.

1. The RHSA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) or Reich Main
Security Office, headed by Kaltenbrunner, included the SD,
the Gestapo, the Kripo, and other policing agencies. See
document L-219, vol. VII, p. 1053,  charts 16 and 19, vol.
VIII


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