The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-20/tgmwc-20-191.06
Last-Modified: 1999/11/06


                                                              [Page 129]

                   DR. ERNST HIRT-Resumed
                      CROSS-EXAMINATION

BY LT-COL. GRIFFITH-JONES:

Q. Witness, I want to ask you one or two questions on general matters.
Am I right in saying that in towns and villages in many parts of the
country there were glass cases exhibiting Der Stuermer?

A. In many places there were so-called Der Stuermer cases; that is
right.

Q. Were they set up by the Party?

A. I know nothing whatever about that.

Q. You cannot tell me, can you, whether those Der Stuermer cases were
set up on the instructions of either the Kreis- or Ortsgruppenleiter?

A. At times, I personally had the impression. that the local SA was
responsible for setting up Der Stuermer cases.

Q. There were also, were there not, both in towns-particularly holiday
resorts-and all over the countryside, notices saying that Jews were
undesirable? "Juden unerwuenscht"?

A. I have seen such notices in various parts of Germany.

Q. Do you know whether they were set up on the instructions and by the
authority of the local political leader?

A. I do not know.

LT.-COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well.

My Lord, I have one new document which was put to this witness before a
commission. Perhaps I might draw the Tribunal's attention to it now and
to the relevant parts. It is Document D-901 A, which will become Exhibit
GB 546.

Your Lordship will see that that is a circular issued in the Gau Cologne-
Aachen on 31st January, 1941, and it contains instructions to all Kreis
--  and Ortsgruppen Organizationsleiter regarding the installing and
keeping -- of card indexes of households.

Under Paragraph 1, "The sense and purpose of card indexing households,"
it is stated that the purpose is a basis for statistical inquiries and,
combined with the entries on the back of the card index of households,
for the political judgment of the members of a household.

Then a few lines farther on, the information contained on them must
enable the Ortsgruppenleiter to give at any moment a judgment of the
household member concerned which is sufficient in all respects.

Then, my Lord, under Paragraph 5, "The Blockleiter must be in possession
of lists which contain the same printed text as the household card
index, and which ate to be provided with the necessary entries by the
Blockleiter: family status, Party membership, membership of an
organization, affiliated body, etc."

On the next page, the second paragraph in No. 10 sets out the
information which is to be obtained. Half-way down that paragraph it
says: "It is thus to be recorded since when the Voelkischer Beobachter
was subscribed to, whether the family already possessed a swastika flag
before the 1935 flag law, and what wireless apparatus is available in
the household. It is easy to obtain this data from a conversation by
Blockleiter with the German concerned."

The next paragraph deals with the political judgment of the inhabitants.
I quote the last three lines: "The political judgment of every German is
to be carried out by the Ortsgruppen Organizationsleiter in co-operation
with the competent Block- and Zellenleiter, as well as in agreement with
the Ortsgruppenleiter."

Then in the last paragraph, No. 14 on the next page, it describes how
this information can be obtained. "It is prohibited on principle to give
Germans and Party members lists or index cards to fill in themselves.
Owing to their frequent visits to the individual households, the
Blockleiter have sufficient opportunity to obtain the required data for
the index by means of conversations with the Germans. The Blockleiter
must make sure of the accuracy of the data supplied

                                                              [Page 130]

to him by looking through membership papers and such-like. The
Blockleiter is responsible for the accuracy of the data supplied to the
Ortsgruppen Organizationsleiter.

Your Honour, I have no further documents and no questions.

My Lord, General Raginsky has three documents which he desires to put
in.

GENERAL RAGINSKY: Mr. President, with your permission I would like to
submit three documents which characterize the role of Kreisleiter and
Blockleiter in the participation of such crimes as the Germanization of
occupied territories and their populations.

The first document I am submitting is Exhibit USSR 143. This document
was discovered in the archives of the Kreisfuehrer of the town of Pettau
in Yugoslavia in May, 1945. I would ask the Tribunal to pay attention to
the fact that the document begins with the following phrase: "It is
indispensable immediately to inform all the Blockfuehrer, down to the
last one, of the contents of this document." Point No. 1 of this
document states as follows:

The document is signed by a Kreisleiter.

     "In the course of my tours of inspection I ascertained through the
     various local groups that there are still some Slovenian
     inscriptions on the houses. I request the Blockfuehrer once more to
     see to it immediately that all these Slovenian inscriptions,
     billboards, posters, etc., be removed. I, therefore, charge the
     local Gruppenfuehrer to see to it, that through personal
     conversation with the responsible priests, the Slovenian
     inscriptions are also removed immediately, without exception, from
     all church images (ikons), chapels, and churches."

Point 3 of this document is as follows:

     "The local Gruppenfuehrer will, as before, be personally
     responsible to me to see that every office-holder down to the last
     blockfuehrer learns to speak and to write German."

The next document which I am presenting as exhibit USSR 449 is an
excerpt from the speech of Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick,
dated 16th December, 1941, in connection with the appointment of
Gauleiter Dr. Friedrich Rainer. This document was seized in the archives
of the Kreisleiter in Maribor by the Yugoslavian Army in May, 1945. In
the speech is said:

     "Dear Party Comrade Rainer:
     
     The Fuehrer has appointed you to be a Gauleiter...."

I do not wish to read the whole excerpt.

THE PRESIDENT: General Raginsky, have you got the original of this
document?

GENERAL RAGINSKY: I beg your pardon, Mr. President; I did not get your
remark.

THE PRESIDENT: It is all right. We have the original of the document
now. Now can you explain to us what the document is; I mean, how it is
certified, how it is proved?

GENERALRAGINSKY: This document has been authenticated by the Yugoslav
Government Commission for the Investigation of Crimes committed by the
German Occupants in Yugoslavia. The original of this document is to be
found in the archives of this commission. The copy which I am submitting
to this Tribunal has been authenticated by the president of the
Government Commission, Dr. Nedelkowitch.

     "Dear Party Comrade Rainer:
     
     Your duty, Party Comrade Rainer, consists in seeing that this
     entire district is again made totally German. . . . The German
     language must be given more and more priority in the life of the
     community. It is the only authorized language and the only one
     which may be used officially. Pupils in the schools must
     immediately be taught in German. Instruction must be given as soon
     as possible exclusively in German. . . .
     
                                                              [Page 131]
     
     As to the rest of the population, they must be taught the German
     language at an increased tempo.
     
     Only then, when not only the external picture, signs on
     institutions, the ruling language and inscriptions are in the
     German language, only then, when the whole of the young people will
     be speaking German, and when the German language takes the place of
     the Slovene language in daily life-only then will we be able to
     speak of the Germanization of the Upper Krain."

Finally, the last document, which I am submitting as Exhibit USSR 191.
This document is an excerpt from the minutes of a staff conference of
the Gauleiter of Lower Styria. The original of this document was seized
by units of the Yugoslav Army in the archives of the Gauleiter of the
town of Maribor in May, 1945.

On the first page of this excerpt, Mr. President, we can see that on
12th November, 1941, the Gauleiter held a conference with the Security
Department. Members of the SS were present at this conference, and "SS
Standartenfuehrer Lurcker informed the Gauleiter that approximately
2,000 persons had been removed to Serbia and 400 persons had been put
into concentration camps, and, as a retaliatory measure for incidents
which had recently taken place about thirty persons had been shot."

In the last paragraph on this page, an excerpt from the minutes of the
conferenceof 5th January, 1942, it also states "On 27th December, 1941,
as reprisal for an attack, forty persons were shot," and further, in the
report of a speech by Dr. Carstanjen, Deputy Gauleiter of Styria, it
states: "The removal to the frontiers of the old Reich is *practically
completed. Only about 10,000 persons are still to be resettled."

I do not wish to quote the following pages, which contain excerpts of a
similar kind.

                    RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION
               of the witness Dr. Ernst Hirt.
BY DR. SERVATIUS:

Q. Witness, you were not able to comment on the documents. I shall ask
you a few brief questions about them. The first letter submitted was
Document D-goi. It was a circular letter issued by the Gau
Cologne-Aachen dated January, 1941. It mentions a card index of
households. Do you know whether such card indexes of households were
kept in your district similar to those mentioned here?

A. I know only of card indexes for inhabitants on which all inhabitants
were listed according to their name, family status, birth, profession,
and membership in the Party or its branches. No other essential
questions were put on these cards and neither were they answered.

Q. Can this order here be considered an organizational exaggeration?

A. Up to now, I have really had no knowledge of this order. Had it been
universal for all local districts in Germany, it would have had to be
promulgated and carried out by us, too. As such a far-reaching order was
issued in the Gau of Cologne-Aachen, it was certainly only the local
Gauleiter and the executive officer of the Gau who was responsible for
that, and it was certainly an exaggerated interpretation of the
situation on their part.

Q. The next letter was a letter from the Styrian Heimatbund of Pettau,
dated 30th April, 1942. It was addressed to all local district leaders
and came from the district leader. It concerns the removal of Yugoslav
signs. Did you ever obtain any information at all about such matters
abroad?

A. No, they were completely unknown to me.

Q Did you know that up to 1918 Pettau was an old German city, and that
it only became part of Yugoslavia after 1918?

A. I did not quite understand the name of the city.

                                                              [Page 132]

Q. Pettau. Then you cannot give an answer?

A. No.

Q. Then there has been submitted a speech by Dr. Frick to
Reichsstatthalter Rainer. It refers to conditions in the new border Gau.
Were you informed about these conditions which existed in the border
Gau?

A. No, I had no knowledge of them.

Q. The last document contained notes on staff conferences of Gauleiter
Ueberreither, which also refer to the border Gau and the adjoining
Yugoslavia. Can you not testify about these things either?

A. Nothing whatsoever.

DR. SERVATIUS: I have no more questions to put to this witness.

BY THE PRESIDENT:

0. Did you have anything to do with the deportation of foreign labour?

A. No.

0. Who did?

A. I do not know.

Q. Did you not know anybody who was employing slave labour?

A. I did not understand the question.

Q. There was a great amount of foreign labour used in Germany, was there
not?

A. There were many foreign workers in Germany who were employed in
factories.

Q. And also in private houses?

A. I know that foreign women were also employed in private homes as
maids.

Q. What I asked you was, did you have anything to do with the placing of
that foreign labour either in factories, or in offices, or in workshops,
or in private homes?

A. I had nothing to do with it in any respect.

Q. Do you know what officials did have to do with the placing of such
labour? A. I do not know that. I was certainly never interested in it.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness can retire.


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