Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Appeal/Appeal-Session-03-03 Last-Modified: 1999/06/15 Justice Silberg: Did Mildner state this to the Nuremberg Tribunal? Attorney General: At Pohl's trial. He states the same in the first document, on page 3, in the second paragraph from the top. The same appears in his affidavit of 22 June 1945. These were documents submitted by the Defence, if it please Your Honours, in defence of the Accused. Justice Silberg: The Accused does not deny this? Attorney General: He most certainly does deny it. Justice Silberg: In respect to the formal position. Attorney General: He denies utterly and completely that he was the representative of the Head of the RSHA. If matters came up in the Department, they were the province of IVB4. And what did he have to do with extermination camps? He says: "I was someone who arranged transport timetables, like a booking clerk at a railway station who provides information about when the next train is leaving. "I drew up the transport timetables, the times, when a train is going to arrive, when a train leaves, where it is going. But I had no such powers." Justice Silberg: You are going by the words. Attorney General: Not just the words. The person in charge of the negotiations with the camps, the negotiations with foreign representations. He says, "I was not in any position to come into contact with them." Look at all of the descriptions he gave, all the plans and sketches, about the organization structure, the chain of command, and he claims to be off in a corner. And he describes the extermination machinery very well, and on the sidelines there stands little Eichmann, secluded and timid. This is what Mildner says about him... President: Mildner, you say, was the Commander in Vienna? Attorney General: Yes. President: The whole time? Attorney General: I do not believe so. Justice Sussman He was at Auschwitz too. Attorney General: Yes, and he was in Denmark as well. Justice Agranat: Was the designation IVB4 the final designation? Attorney General: Yes. It varied. At the beginning it was IVD4, then IIB4, and then IVB4. Incidentally, in order to accept this description, Counsel for the Defence based himself - and for that purpose requested a decision by the Court - based himself on Section 15 of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law. President: What was the purpose of this being submitted by Counsel for the Defence? Attorney General: Perhaps this question should be asked of Counsel for the Defence. President: The reason why I am asking is because I am not yet totally acquainted with all this material. Attorney General: At the beginning there is something which hints at other matters in respect of status, but there are general statements in Mildner's affidavit which are just as damning for the Accused as a hundred witnesses. I very much wanted to submit this material, but I believe that it would not have been admitted if I had submitted it. President: What I wanted to ask was this: You have shown passages which help you, but perhaps there are also passages which help Counsel for the Defence too. Justice Silberg: (To the Attorney General) Perhaps you could read out the last paragraph. Attorney General: Which affidavit are you referring to, Your Honour? There are two affidavits. Justice Silberg: The first one. It says there: "Die Stellen, die die Befehle hinsichtlich der Judenfrage in der SIPO erteilen, waren nur durch Gespraeche mit Gruppenfuehrer Mueller and anderen Kameraden der SIPO bekannt" (The authorities which gave the orders to the SIPO on the Jewish Question were known only through conversations with Gruppenfuehrer Mueller and the other members of the SIPO). Attorney General: Perhaps. I believe that it is not up to me to indulge in suppositions when Counsel for the Defence is sitting here. I believe that he wished to submit this document in order to prove that Eichmann did not give the overall order for extermination. Here he is pushing at an open door: I have never made that argument. He did not have the power to do that. And here in the last paragraph it says that "Himmler issued the orders to deport the Jews from the Reich and from the territories conquered by the army to the labour camps and the concentration camps, and the orders carried his signature." I was not denying that in the least. Another document submitted by Counsel for the Defence is N/5. Justice Agranat: Let me clarify something, Mr. Hausner: Could you not submit that, since corroboration was necessary? Attorney General: It was obvious to me that the Court would ask, "Where is Mildner?," and would wish to cross_examine him. And I do not know where he is and I cannot make him available for cross-examination. Thus it was obvious to me that my application for the submission of the document was doomed to fail, and I refrained from submitting it. But this is a Bureau 06 document, it was presented to Counsel for the Defence by us, and he saw fit to submit it. My learned colleague has drawn my attention to the fact that when Counsel for the Defence submitted the document (Session 87, Vol. IV, p. 1553), he based himself on the passage which says that the concentration camps were under the control of the Economic-Administrative Head Office in Oranienburg, near Berlin. The Chief of the Office was SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl. He was directly subordinate to the Reichsfuehrer-SS. President: Is that also the Court's finding? Attorney General: Yes. And I never denied this. And if we are already talking about this aspect, may I point out that in the Economic-Administrative Head Office trial, Pohl and his colleagues were acquitted on charges of murder. The Court will find this in the fifth volume of the Green Series. Justice Silberg: Although the camps came under their control? Attorney General: Although they were in control, because the orders for the extermination of the inmates did not come from them. They were sentenced to death and hanged on charges other than the murder of the inmates. Justice Silberg: Namely? Attorney General: Crimes against humanity, detention of the inmates, and so on. I turn now to N/5, which contains a passage from the testimony of Karl Hoffmann. Justice Sussman Who is Dr. Mildner? Is that the examiner? Whose examiner? Attorney General: This is one of the witnesses whom they brought to Nuremberg. N/5 is a passage from Hoffmann's testimony to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Hoffmann was a Referent, a Head of Department in the Gestapo, and he made the following comments: "At that time responsibility for dealing with Jewish affairs was in the hands of Eichmann, who never served in the State Police, but was from the SD. He and his unit lived in a separate building, and he had no contact with the other Referenten. In particular he did not get other Referenten to countersign documents (Mitzeichnung), for example when he ordered the expulsion of Jews. When we complained about this, he replied that he was carrying out special duties, that the instructions concerning them were received from the highest authorities, and consequently an additional signature by other Departments was no longer necessary, because there was no need for them to express their opinion in this matter." And further down it says: "Eichmann had special plenipotentiaries (Sonderbeauftragte) in the conquered territories with the various Police Commanders." In reply to a further question, Hoffmann replied that he knew of the operations of Eichmann's representatives in the conquered territories from the Police Commanders' monthly reports which he received from time to time. President: Whose monthly reports? Attorney General: Reports of the Police Commanders in the field, which he would receive as the Department Head in the police. He complained that, instead of receiving the information from the Head Office, from his friend the Referent Eichmann, he had to make do with reports he received from abroad, from the police representatives abroad. Justice Silberg: He writes: "die monatlichen Berichte der Befehlshaber" (the monthly reports of the Commanders). Attorney General: Yes, of the BdS. In the Defence testimony, material is cited that comes from the Dutch attorney van Taalingen-Dols, who in 1943 handled the case of Professor Meyers, and intervened with the Gestapo in order to prevent him from being sent to the East, i.e. to his death. I am referring to exhibit N/105(a). What follows appears in her diary, on page 214. President: Is that a book? Attorney General: N/105 is a book. N/105(a) are passages which the Defence submitted together with a translation into German. The book is in Dutch. Justice Sussman We do not have this document, Mr. Attorney General. Do you have a copy? Attorney General: The Defence gave me a single copy. I will be happy to lend it to the Court after I have used it. Actually, I do not need it now, so I shall be happy to hand it over to the Court. If you would turn to page 214 in the diary to which I have referred, dated 22 July 1943, in van Tallingen-Dols' diary: "A discussion in the Head Office for Reich Security in Berlin at 10 a.m. about Professor Meyers: Eichmann, who is the representative of Reichsfuehrer Himmler, the supreme chief in the complex of Jewish affairs throughout Europe - "der hoechste Chef im Komplex der juedischen Angelegenheiten in ganz Europa" - is in Czechoslovakia. His deputy, Guenther, knows about the matter and is, according to him, competent to take binding decisions. Those present at the talks were Guenther, his secretary Dr. Hoffmann, and myself." On page 218 reference is made to the congratulations expressed to Mrs. van Tallingen-Dols for having obtained a decision allowing her to come to the Kurfuerstendamm, to the "Holy of Holies," as she calls it, and to talk with the deputy of the supreme chief of all Jewish affairs. President: Is this referred to in the Judgment? Attorney General: Yes, Your Honour. Another piece of Defence evidence consists of passages from the testimony and the affidavit of SS Judge Morgen: Exhibits N/94-96. Morgen refers to the extermination operations, which he investigated in the camps as part of his duties. And this is what he says about Eichmann, in N/95, on page 3: "Von diesem Kommando getrennt war die Organisation Eichmanns, deren Aufgabe lediglich dahin bestand, die europaeischen Juden in die KZ, bzw. Vernichtungslager, zu schaffen" (Distinct from this commando was Eichmann's organization, whose task was solely to transfer the Jews of Europe to concentration camps or extermination camps.) In N/96 Morgen adds that he was informed that Eichmann was running the Final Solution operation in the Head Office for Reich Security (at the bottom of page 3). He is one of those against whom he issued an arrest warrant, as he did also against Hoess, following the atrocities he uncovered. But in his testimony Morgen said that following Kaltenbrunner's intervention, these proceedings were rapidly stopped, because he was told that Eichmann was involved in a special secret mission. It should be noted that Eichmann is referred to here before Hoess. In the same exhibit, on page 4, Morgen testifies about the system which Eichmann operated, using tactics of deceit, fraud and camouflage, for the extermination operation. This concludes the Defence documents. President: But in our session on Friday, I believe, Dr. Servatius referred to another document by Morgen which seems to indicate that he carried out an investigation and did not find anything. Attorney General: He carried out an investigation at the Head Office for Reich Security, looking for an order, which he did not find. President: What was it he did not find? Attorney General: He did not find an order for the extermination of the Jews. That concludes the Defence documents. And what do the Defence witnesses say? The testimony of Six, the Head of Department VII in the Head Office for Reich Security, was read out in Session 107 of the District Court's proceedings. I shall read a few passages from it. On page 1836 (Vol. V), this testimony says: "The Eichmann Section occupied a special position. More people were employed in this Section than in the other Sections." Then: "Had I wished to obtain an exemption or something similar for a Jew, I would not have gone to Eichmann, as he was an exponent for the other side." And then: "I am not familiar with Eichmann's various powers. However, there is no doubt that he had wider powers than other Section Heads. This was the general view in the Head Office for Reich Security. The general impression was that Eichmann was not only under Mueller's orders, but that he was somewhat on the same level as Mueller. Mueller was known as one of the worst instigators, and I would say that the two were very well matched. Under a different superior than Mueller, Eichmann's powers would probably not have been as extensive as they actually were. It was known that Eichmann had access to Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner, although I cannot now give any actual facts to attest to that. I also saw Eichmann in Heydrich's antechamber - as far as I remember, definitely once or twice." And on the same page he says: "In my view that was another reason why Eichmann's superior considered Eichmann to be particularly suited for his job, as he was a National Socialist of long standing. I believe that Heydrich in particular attached value to the Eichmann Section being in the hands of a National Socialist of long standing. In my opinion, Mueller and Eichmann teamed up fairly well." And then: "Eichmann believed absolutely in National Socialism. Essentially, the world was fulfilled for him by means of the Nazi outlook on life." Justice Agranat: This is also cited in the Judgment.
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