Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-12/tgmwc-12-116.10
Last-Modified: 2000/01/27

Q. It is quite clear that there were plenty of figures for
you, quoted in this "Israelitisches Wochenblatt" over the
period that we are discussing. Plenty of figures, it now
appears, doesn't it?

A. Pardon?

Q. We will go on. Now, I just want to put one or two further
articles of your own to you. You remember what I am
suggesting? That you were inciting the German people to
murder. We know now that at least you had read one article
in the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt" where murder is
mentioned. I just want to see what you go on to publish in
your own paper after that date.

Would you look at Page 47A. This is an article by yourself
on 6 January, 1944. This is after you had been living on
your estate for some time.

  "After the National Socialist uprising in Germany, a
  development began in Europe, too, from which one can
  expect that it will free this continent for all time of
  the Jewish disintegrator and exploiter of nations; and,
  over and above this, that the German example will, after
  a victorious termination of the second World War, bring
  about the destruction of the Jewish world tormentor on
  the other continents as well."

What example was the German nation setting to the other
nations of the world? What example do you mean there?

A. This article collaborates what I have been saying all
along. I spoke of an international solution of the Jewish
question. I was convinced that if Germany had won this war
or had been victorious over Bolshevism, then the world would
have agreed that an understanding should be reached with the
other nations for

                                                  [Page 345]

an international solution of the Jewish question. If I wrote
here about destruction it is not to be understood as
destruction by mass killing; as I have said, that is an
expression, I have to point out that I do not believe that
Erich Kauffmann really wanted to kill the German people by
sterilisation, but he wrote it, and we wrote in the same
manner, echoing the sounds that we heard in the other camp.

Q. You have not yet told us what is this international
solution that you were advocating by talking about
extermination; if it is not murder, what is it? What is the
solution?

A. I have already said that I founded the Anti-Semitic
Union, and through this Anti-Semitic Union we wanted to
create movements among the nations which should, above and
beyond governments, act in such a way that an international
possibility would be created, such as has been presented
today here in this trial - as I conceive it, to form an
international congress which would solve the Jewish question
by the creation of a Jewish State and thereby destroy the
power of the Jews within nations.

A. That is your answer - that you were advocating a Jewish
State? Is that all that this comes to? Is it simply that you
were advocating a Jewish National Home? Is that what you
have been talking about in all these extracts that we have
read? Is that the solution which you are advocating?

A. Well, I do not know what you are driving at with that
question. Of course, that is the solution.

Q. Very well. Let us just go on now. Turn to Page 48A now,
will you? This is 24 January, 1944:-

  "Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal,
  and he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the
  same fate - annihilation, death."

Are you still advocating a National Jewish Home?

A. Yes, that has nothing to do with the big political plan.
If you take every statement by a writer, every statement
from a daily newspaper as an example, and want to prove a
political aim by it, then you miss the point. You have to
distinguish between a newspaper article and a great
political aim.

Q. Very well, let us turn now to the next Page, 2 March,
1944:-

  "Eternal night must come over the born criminal race of
  Jews so that eternal day may bless awakening non-Jewish
  mankind."

Were they going to have eternal night in their national
Jewish State? Is that what you wanted?

A. That is an anti-Semitic play of words. Again it has
nothing to do with the great political aim.

Q. It may be an anti-Semitic play of words, but the only
meaning it can have is murder. Is that not true?

A. No.

Q. Will you turn to the next page, 25 May, 1944, and I
remind you that these are all after you must have read of
the murder in "Israelitisches Wochenblatt." I quote the
second paragraph?

  "How can we overcome this danger and restore humanity to
  health? Just as the individual human being is able to
  defend himself against contagious diseases only if he
  proclaims war against the cause of the disease, the germ,
  so the world can be restored to health only when the most
  terrible germ of all times, the Jew, has been removed. It
  is of no avail to battle against the outward symptoms of
  the world disease without rendering the morbific agents
  innocuous. The disease will break out again sooner or
  later. The cause and the bearer of the disease, the germ,
  will see to that. But if the nations are to be restored
  to health and are to remain healthy in the future, then
  the germ of the Jewish world plague must be destroyed,
  root and branch."

                                                  [Page 346]

Is that what you mean? Are you saying there when you say
"must be destroyed root and branch" - did you mean to say
"ought to be given a Jewish National State?"

A. Yes, it is a long way from such a statement in an article
to the act, or to the will to commit mass murder.

Q. Turn over to 10 August.

  "When it looses the struggle, Judaism will be ruined,
  then the Jew will be extinguished. Then will Judaism be
  annihilated down to the last man."

Are we to read from these words: Provide the Jews with a
Jewish National State?

A. That is a vision of the future. I would like to call it
an expression of a prophetic vision. But it is not
incitement to kill five million Jews. That is an opinion, a
matter of belief, of conviction.

Q. It is the prophetic vision of what you wanted, isn't it -
of what you have been advocating now for the last four years
from the beginning of the war? Isn't that what it is?

A. Sir, I cannot tell you today what I may have been
thinking years ago at a certain moment when writing an
article. But still I admit that when I saw lying before me
on the table confessions from the Jewish front, confessions
saying "the German nation has to be destroyed, bombard the
cities, do not spare women, children, or old men" - if one
has confessions like these in front of one, it is possible
that things will come from one's pen such as I have often
written.

Q. You know, do you not, now, even if you do not believe the
full figures, that millions of Jews have been murdered since
the beginning of the war? Do you know that? You have heard
the evidence, have you not?

A. I believe it -

Q. I only wanted to know whether you had heard that
evidence. You can answer yes or no, and I presume it will be
yes.

A. Well, I have to say evidence for me is only the testament
of the  Fuehrer. There he states that the mass executions
took place upon his orders. That I believe. Now I believe
it.

Q. Do you think that it would have been possible to carry
out the extermination of six million Jews in 1921? Do you
think the German people would have stood for it? Do you
think it would have been possible under any regime in 1921
to have carried out the murder of six million men, women,
and children of the Jewish race?

A. Whether that would have been possible with the knowledge
of the people - no, it would not have been possible. The
Prosecutor himself has said here that since 1937 the Party
had full control over the people. Now even if the people had
known this, according to the opinion of the prosecution,
they could not have done anything against that dictatorship
because of that control. But the people did not know it.
That is my belief, my conviction and my knowledge.

Q. Was it possible to exterminate people in that way only
after some twenty years of incitement and propaganda by you
and other Nazis. Is that what made that possible?

A. I deny that the population was incited. It was
enlightened, and sometimes a harsh word may have been
directed against the other side as an answer. It was
enlightenment - not incitement. And if we want to keep our
place before history I have to state the German people did
not want any killings, whether individually or en masse.

Q. I am not going to let you go into another history about
the German people. I am going to remind you of what you have
said.

A. Adolf Hitler -

Q. I am going to remind you of what you said yesterday. I
read from the

                                                  [Page 347]

transcript: You speak of a Jewish question at the time -
that is 1923 -  "I would like to say that the public
distinguished Jews only by their religion, to speak about a
Jewish problem then would have been nonsense."

Was that because there was no Jewish problem then, and that
the Jewish problem had only been created by you and the Nazi
regime?

A. It was my aim, and I partly reached that goal, to make
the people realise through laws which made sexual
intercourse between different races impossible, that Jewry
does not mean religion but people and race. I helped to
create that basis. But mass killings were not the result of
the enlightenment, or, as the prosecution says, incitement.
Mass killings were the last acts of will of a great man of
history who was probably desperate because he saw that he
would not win.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: I have no further
questions. Perhaps I might be allowed to just sort out the
exhibits and then mention to the Tribunal their numbers. If
the Tribunal would agree, those that I have put in evidence,
which are the other parts of the bundle other than I have
actually quoted from, perhaps I could put them all in as one
number and hand the exhibits in to the clerk, if that would
be the convenient course.

THE PRESIDENT: I think so, yes. If they are in one bundle,
and you are going to give one number to a number of
documents, it had better be in one bundle, had it not?

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, do you want to re-examine?

DR. MARX: I do not consider it necessary.

THE PRESIDENT: Then the defendant can return to the dock.
Dr. Marx, will you continue the defendant's case?

DR. MARX: I call now, with the permission of the Tribunal,
the witness Fritz Herrwerth.

(The witness took the stand.)

THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name?

THE WITNESS: Fritz Herrwerth.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me:

I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will
speak the pure truth, and will withhold and add nothing.

(The witness repeated the oath.)

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY DR. MARX:

Q. Since when do you know the defendant Streicher?

A. Since the Party Rally in 1934.

Q. When did you enter his service and in what capacity?

A. I was employed on 15 October, 1934, in Nurnberg - not in
the personal service of Herr Streicher himself, but in the
municipal motor pool. However, I worked for the then
Gauleiter Streicher.

Q. When did you leave that service?

A. In August, 1943.

Q. For what reason?

A. It was a personal dispute, and mainly due to my fault.

Q. Did you have any other tasks to carry out for Streicher?

A. Yes.

Q. And which?

A. Well, whatever arose. I did agricultural work also at the
end.

Q. Thus you were very often with Streicher?

A. Yes.

                                                  [Page 348]

Q. And therefore you knew about the most important incidents
during that period?

A. Yes. I don't know, however, what you call important
incidents. There were things that I don't know about, that
is, at least I assume that.

Q. I will ask you later in detail.

A. Yes, if you please.

Q. The defendant Streicher is accused of having caused acts
of violence against the Jews and of having participated in
these acts. Do you know of any such case?

A. Not a single one.

Q. Will you please wait until the end of my question, and
then I shall say "end of question." On 9 November, 1938, did
you drive Streicher back to Nurnberg from Munich, and when?
End of question.

A. It was on 9 November, yes. I do not know the time
exactly. At that time Streicher left Munich a bit earlier,
and it may have been about - I do not know for certain - 9
o'clock perhaps.

Q. Did Streicher know already during that ride back that
same night, that something was to be done against the Jewish
population?

A. No, he knew nothing about that.

Q. Then, during the night of 9 November, did you witness a
conversation between Streicher and the S.A. Fuehrer von
Obernitz?

A. Yes.

Q. Where did that conversation take place?

A. In order to answer that question, I have to explain. When
Streicher went to bed in the evening, I was usually with him
or the house superintendent. On that evening Streicher went
to bed earlier than usual. I do not know the reason. And
that concluded my work for the day. I went from Herr
Streicher to the Casino of the Gauleitung. That was in the
cellar of the Gauleitung Building on Schlageter Strasse. I
played cards there. And then the former S.A.
Obergruppenfuehrer von Obernitz came and called me, as was
customary, by the name of Fritz and told me -

Q. Speak more slowly.

A. Well, he addressed me by the name of Fritz -

THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute, Witness, when you see that
light go on, it means that you are going too fast. Will you
try to speak more slowly?

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor