Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Appeal/Appeal-Session-04-01 Last-Modified: 1999/06/15 Session No. 4 21 Adar Bet 5722 (27 March 1962) President: Mr. Hausner, yesterday I skimmed the Hebrew record. There are a few imprecisions there. I should like to clarify things. There is a reference to identifying Novak from a photograph. This was done by Dr. Brody and not by Freudiger? Attorney General: This was done twice. This was done once by Brody and once by the Accused himself. President: Not by Freudiger? Because in the record it would appear to indicate that this was done by Freudiger. Attorney General: It was Brody who identified the picture, as did Hansi Brand. With the Court's permission, had we known about Eichmann only what I said yesterday, that would have been sufficient. But we know more about him. Although he tried very hard to burn documents, to cover his tracks, hundreds of documents survived, all of them soaked in Jewish blood, from each of which there arises the cry of destruction of the Jewish People. But there are witnesses who have survived and who have testified here. We shall now, in a limited way and in the form of headings only, follow the bloodsoaked trail of his actions in one country, France. As usual, the Accused is trying to hide behind formal arguments to the effect that he was following orders and acting on the initiative of others. Perhaps Abetz, Hitler's Ambassador in Paris, as Counsel for the Defence claims, was eager to be the first to claim the title to fame of ridding France of Jews. Naturally Knochen, the BdS in Paris, was also most active in the area. But the District Court held, in Paragraph 100 of the Judgment, that in practice Eichmann and the people of his Section, Dannecker, Roethke and Brunner dealt with Jewish affairs. It is true that formally speaking, the latter were under the command of Knochen of the Security Police, but in practice they worked in accordance with Eichmann's directives, obeyed his practical instructions. And he himself says as much in T/37, pages 412-413. Less asks him: "All right, but those people, such as Dannecker, Wisliceny, Brunner, Guenther, they belonged to your Group, to Section IVB4?" And here the discussion, the argument and the standard evasions start again. And finally Eichmann says on page 413: "Jawohl." President: It seems to me that in T/37 there is a general explanation by the Accused - if I am not mistaken, on page 151, and also on page 412, there is a general explanation by the Accused, to the effect that they were local representatives and advisers, that they were IVB4 personnel and received instructions. He does not say in this way that they received orders from him. Attorney General: That is exactly the point. I just read page 412 out to the Court. President: That is correct. Attorney General: Yesterday I read out to Your Honours what the Accused said to Sassen, to the effect that he had no powers of command, but only the power to issue instructions. He draws a distinction between the power to command and the power to issue instructions in respect of those people as well. But I would like to show how this power to issue instructions worked in practice, because this is important not just in general terms but also in terms of how it was implemented. At this appeal stage, I cannot take the Court back to all the countries in which the extermination took place. I have therefore chosen a single country, France. In T/404, Dannecker's memorandum of 10 March 1942, Dannecker announces that he had taken part in a meeting of the Jewish Specialist Officers, a meeting held on 4 March 1942 in Berlin. In Paragraph 2, it says that Eichmann laid down the following (hat Folgendes festgestellt ), and there follow the directives and instructions concerning the deportation of French Jews. Justice Silberg: Is CdS Heydrich? Attorney General: Yes, Chef der Sicherheitspolizei (Head of the Security Police). From T/407, a telegram from Eichmann to Paris, to Knochen, we learn that two days later, i.e. on 6 March, a further joint meeting was held between Dannecker and Eichmann, and that Eichmann issued further directives for the deportation of Jews from France, laid down the composition of the transport, the possessions that the deportees would be allowed to take with them, the composition of the escort, the destination, Auschwitz, and the duty to report the departure of the transport, and for the report to be sent to these places, to him, to his Section, to the Concentration Camp Administration in Oranienburg, and to the Auschwitz Camp. In other documents, and I shall here submit T/460 as an example, a telegram from Eichmann's Section to Knochen, he issues an instruction to transport the Jews with Greek nationality from France without any delay, and releases them from the duty of informing Auschwitz, and he writes: "Das Kl Auschwitz wurde von hier verstaendigt," i.e. I will make sure that Auschwitz is informed of the transport. On 11 June 1942, the Jewish advisers from Paris and Brussels met at Eichmann's office, as we learn from Dannecker's memorandum, T/419. In this memorandum Dannecker reports to Knochen on the discussions concerning the continuing deportations of French Jews, on including non-able-bodied people in those transports. On page 2 it says that Eichmann had instructed (hat angeordnet ) the advisers to report again to him in Berlin on 2 August 1942 for a summin-up talk. Justice Agranat: Who were these advisers of his? Justice Silberg: What was the relationship of the BdS to the advisers on the one hand, and to the Senior Commander of the SS on the other hand? Attorney General: The Senior Commander of the SS is something completely different. Justice Silberg: But was there one in all the occupied territories? Attorney General: No. Justice Silberg: Was not Winkelmann one of these? Attorney General: He was in the East. There were territories where Himmler had direct, personal represenatives, such as in Poland, for example, and apart from that there were RSHA represenatives, who were the BdS. Justice Silberg: And there were advisers with the Legations in certain places? Attorney General: There were advisers with the Legations in places which were not at that time occupied countries. Places where there was a German Embassy were not in occupied countries, such as Bratislava or Belgrade. Justice Silberg: Or Romania. Attorney General: Yes, Bucharest, there were Jewish advisers there. He would direct such activities. Justice Silberg: Who is that? Attorney General: He would direct, he would lay down guidelines. If you take an example from the regular army, if there is a battalion at the front, it would have, for example, a quartermaster. This quartermaster is under the orders of the battalion commander, but he receives his professional directives from the Quartermaster General at the General Staff - that is obvious - although the Quartermaster General cannot issue instructions to the quartermaster who is on the spot. Such instructions have to go through certain command levels, but it is obvious that the person at the General Staff who is co-ordinating matter of supplies is also co-ordinating the supplies for that particular battalion. So if we take this as an analogy, this is roughly how the relationships were between Eichmann and the various Jewish Specialist Officers in the occupied areas. Justice Silberg: In those places where there were advisers, such as in Hungary, Romania and other countries which were under Nazi influence and were not actually occupied territories, did the BdS receive instructions directly from the Accused or did they receive instructions through the advisers? Attorney General: This went in two directions, Your Honour. Eichmann would ensure that Knochen would receive instructions from Heydrich or Kaltenbrunner when necessary, and there was a direct channel of command. On the other hand, Eichmann would give directives to his man, such as Dannecker or Brunner or Roethke in Paris, and that man would pass on his Section's wishes to Knochen. We can see this very clearly from the way Eichmann himself describes the position of Richter in Bucharest. Justice Agranat: If you have already raised this subject, Mr. Attorney General, I have a question concerning documents T/98 or T/99 in conjunction with the distribution of powers; there is a reference there to the powers of the Senior Commander of the SD, and it says that those who deal with special assignments do not have to act through him. The question I want to ask is this: does this refer to an assignment such as Eichmann's, is that a special assignment? Or does it mean someone else who has been given a special assignment? Attorney General: I shall check on this in a moment. T/99, this is the distribution of powers of the Head Office for Reich Security. Justice Agranat: T/98 speaks of the powers of the senior officers. Attorney General: I shall come back to this later in my argument, with the Court's permission. On 28 August 1942 a further meeting of the advisers took place. President: Before you said that he insisted that the representatives report to him again in June. Attorney General: We know nothing about June, but we do know about 28 August. This time we also know that Richter was summoned from Romania, as we see from Eichmann's announcement, T/1028, from his telegram of 23 August 1942; and Wisliceny from Slovakia, as can be seen from telegram number T/1102. President: Also from the Appellant? Attorney General: No, from the German Foreign Ministry, instructing Hauptsturmfuehrer Wisliceny to report for consultations at the Head Office for Reich Security on 22 August, for discussions between the various Judensachbearbeiter, the officials-in-charge of Jewish affairs. What happened at that meeting? We know this from the report submitted by the man in charge of France, T/451: "Eichmann announced during the meeting that the deportation of stateless Jews had to be completed by the end of 1942. He promised to supply an increased number of trains in October. Among other things, he noted that it was still impossible to confiscate the property of Jews with foreign nationality, and announced that the matter was being discussed at the Foreign Ministry and various Legations. President: Apart from Richter and Wisliceny, who else was there, is that known? Attorney General: We know that the people from France were certainly there, because they report on it. Roethke was there, he is referred to in the document, and the author of the report - Ahnert. Justice Silberg: Was Dannecker no longer in France by then? Attorney General: Dannecker was not the only one, there was no shortage of these fiends. Justice Silberg: The Court finds that after Dannecker, there were Roethke and Brunner. Was Dannecker in Bulgaria at that time? Attorney General: In August 1942; I have the Bulgarian material here, it is perfectly possible that at that time he was in Bulgaria. Justice Silberg: Who sent out these invitations, T/1028? Attorney General: The Appellant addresses the Foreign Ministry as follows: "Send Richter, I need him for consultations." We do not know who got the Foreign Ministry to invite Wisliceny, we assume that he did, just as he invited Richter, we know that he gave instructions as to when to report, other documents indicate the close link between the branch office in France and the central office in Berlin. Thus in T/411, which is Knochen's letter to the Accused's Section, Knochen bases himself on a telephone conversation between Dannecker and Novak, announces that the German Army is not prepared to provide escorts for the deportations, and Knochen asks for influence to be brought to bear on the Fuehrer's Headquarters, in order for the Army General Staff to be instructed to provide such escorts. Knochen requests prompt attention to this matter, and announces that he will not be responsible for any loss of prestige caused by delays in the departure of the train scheduled to leave on 28 March 1942. In fact, after this Knochen asked for Eichmann to intervene in order to tackle the difficulties from the German Army over deporting the Jews, and to do this at the same time in Belgium, France and Holland, and Knochen asked for Eichmann's Section to take the necessary steps for the Army to receive the appropriate orders to assist with the operation (T/511). Justice Silberg: It would be interesting to know what the Appellant says about these documents. Attorney General: He does not deny them. Justice Silberg: These documents are extremely interesting, because they were written during the period between Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner, this was after Heydrich's death and before Kaltenbrunner was appointed. Who of the top echelons gave the order? Attorney General: It was not after Heydrich's death. It was on 20 March 1942, Heydrich was still alive. Justice Silberg: I am referring to the meeting in Paris, this was after Heydrich's death. The way he explains it, this was someone else's initiative. Attorney General: There is no difference at all between the Heydrich-Kaltenbrunner period and the interregnum. During the interregnum, Mueller ran the RSHA in practice, and there was no tangible difference in terms of operations affecting the Jews. T/418, which is Dannecker's letter to the Accused's Section, once again shows the constant, ongoing letter and telephone link between the central office in Berlin and its branch office. There is an interesting comment in Roethke's memorandum of 15 July 1942. This is T/436. This is referred to in the Judgment. Roethke worked at the Police Headquarters in Paris and he noted that Eichmann telephoned him on 14 July 1942 at 7 p.m. and asked why the train which was supposed to leave the next day, 15 July, had been cancelled. Roethke writes that he replied to Eichmann that he was allowed to arrest only stateless Jews, and he had managed to round up only 150 such Jews. Because of the shortness of time avaiilable to him, he was unable to carry out the operation. Roethke added that Eichmann had informed him that this was a question of prestige, that there had been many talks in the Transport Ministry before it had been possible to obtain the train, that nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and that it was really embarrassing. He did not wish to inform Mueller at this stage of how things were, because that would simply mean putting himself to shame, and he would have to consider whether it would not be best for him to drop France as a country of deportations. Roethke added in his memorandum that he asked Eichmann not to do something so dreadful, that it was not his Section's fault that the train had been cancelled. There were no more than 150 stateless Jews in Bordeaux, and he promised that other trains would leave as planned. On 1 July 1942 Eichmann visited Paris. There was an in-depth conversation with Dannecker about the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in France, in order to be able to complete the deportations without carrying out a round-up. T/429 is a cover note from Dannecker to Knochen, accompanied by the minutes of the talk between himself and Eichmann, T/428. In his note to Knochen, Dannecker writes that he is sending the report on the talk concerning the arrangements for the major transport of the Jews from France. In the document itself, T/428, which is the minutes of the talk signed by the two men, by Eichmann and Dannecker, there is a reference on page 2 to the fact that a clear and binding agreement was reached by them on the deportation arrangements and destinations from then on. It was laid down, finally, that the current rate of three transports a week, each with a thousand Jews, had to be stepped up as soon as possible, in order to finally rid France of its Jews in the near future.
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.