Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Appeal/Appeal-Session-07-08 Last-Modified: 1999/06/15 II 1. Learned Counsel has asked us to admit further evidence on appeal, and also to admit, as such, notes made by the Appellant while in prison, after his conviction by the District Court, and prior to the hearing of the appeal. By virtue of Section 71 of the Criminal Procedure (Trial Upon Information) Ordinance, this Court may allow further evidence on appeal, but it is an established rule that the Court will not exercise this power save in exceptional cases. So far as we are aware, this Court has not allowed further evidence to be given except on two occasions: in Cr.A. 24/52 (8 Pesakim 123) on the ground that the evidence of a witness as recorded was unclear and ambiguous, and in Cr.A. 49/55 (9 Piske Din 1937) with the consent of the prosecution. Already during the period of the Mandate, the Supreme Court ruled that it would not admit further evidence on appeal except where the evidence tendered was prima facie of such importance that, if it had been before the Court of First Instance, it would have had an influence upon the court in favour of the applicant, and provided he was unable, despite reasonable diligence, to adduce such evidence in the Court of First Instance: Cr.A. 10/42 (11 C.L.R. 149). See also Cr.A. 73/39 (7 C.L.R.21). 2. The evidence now proposed does not comply with the above two requirements. Notes made by the Appellant after the event, that is after the termination of the hearing in the District Court, are of no evidentiary value. We have, therefore, not called upon the Attorney General to reply to Counsel's application for leave to produce these notes. 3. By the evidence of Dr. Serafim, a lecturer at the University of Goettingen in Germany, the Appellant sought to prove that under the Nazi regime in which he served, he could not have been relieved of the duties imposed upon him by his superiors, even had he wished to do so. But in the District Court the Attorney General tendered an affidavit of Serafim in evidence for the purpose of rebutting the contention of Counsel for the Defence, and he offered to bring him to this country to give evidence viva voce. This was opposed by Counsel for the Appellant on the ground that Serafim was only a lecturer in the university, and had not attained the rank of professor. In view of the attitude of the Defence in the Trial Court, we saw no reason to grant the Appellant's application to hear the witness at this stage. 4. The application to hear the witness Dr. Wetzel is related to the findings in paragraph 167 of the Judgment of the District Court. Counsel for the Appellant contends that this witness has only now returned to Germany from long imprisonment abroad, and that he now resides in Hanover; it was therefore impossible for the Defence to call him before the Trial Court. What does Dr. Servatius seek to prove by the evidence of Wetzel? Wetzel was, in 1941, a Specialist Officer in the Reich Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories. A sheaf of documents (Exhibit T/308) was produced to the District Court, including a handwritten memorandum, a typed copy of such memorandum, and drafts of two letters prepared on the same subject. The subject matter of the said document is the introduction of a method of killing by gas through specially constructed death-vans. The names of Wetzel and Eichmann are not mentioned in the memorandum, but from the draft copy and the drafts of the two letters it transpires that a conversation concerning this subject took place between three persons, viz. between Wetzel, a man by the name of Brack, of Hitler's Chancellery, and the Appellant. The documents were shown to the Appellant in the course of his interrogation by the police, and he stated twice - an interval of time having elapsed between one interrogation and the other - that the documents describe the situation "very accurately," and that "there is no doubt that Wetzel came to me on this matter, ... and thereafter I informed Wetzel of the attitude of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD Only thus is this reasonable." These were the words of the Appellant on which the District Court based its conclusion that in 1941 he conveyed the consent of his office to the use of gas vans for the purpose of extermination. In what way can Wetzel's evidence help the Appellant, in view of his statement to the police? Counsel for the Appellant raises two points. He says, first, that the typed copy differs from the memorandum, in that the memorandum (which is not clearly written) mentions a conversation which Wetzel had with Brack or another person (i.e., the Appellant), and not a conversation with Brack and another, third, person, as stated in the typed copy. Counsel further argues that the drafts of the said letters remained drafts, and the letters were not dispatched. But the District Court did not find anything to the contrary. It is irrelevant whether or not the letters were actually dispatched by the Ministry where they were prepared. The essential fact is that the Appellant talked to Wetzel, and in view of the Appellant's admission to the police, coupled with the fact that the method of killing referred to in the said exhibit was actually introduced - the Appellant cannot benefit from any evidence that may now be given by Wetzel to the effect that the letters were not dispatched. Even if they were not dispatched, the conversation referred to in the letters took place, and at that conversation the Appellant made his statement. And even if Wetzel were now to come forward and say in evidence that he did not speak to the Appellant, his evidence would not detract from the Appellant's admission that he had a meeting with Wetzel and spoke to him. We, therefore, have rejected this application as well. 5. The evidence of Shimoni and Tohar, and statements of the Ministry of Justice in respect of the request of the Government of Argentina to investigate the circumstances of the occurrence, on which Counsel sought to base his contention that the Court had no jurisdiction, are irrelevant, in view of the conclusion arrived at by us on the merits of the case. The same applies to the evidence of Dr. Hans Globke, whom Counsel asked the Court to hear as an expert on the Nuremberg Laws enacted by the Reich Government. 6. Finally, Counsel requested the Court to admit as evidence a report by the witness Joel Brand, if such report would be found in another of the Court's files (the Kasztner case), or to call Joel Brand to give further evidence. This application refers to the transaction `Blood for Goods' in Hungary, and was dealt with in paragraphs 116 and 117 of the Judgment. The Appellant contends that he promised Brand - who tried at the time to mediate in a transaction for the saving of Jews from Hungary - that he would immediately, and without any consideration given in return, release 100,000 Jews as soon as Brand obtained the consent in principle of the Jewish representatives in Constantinople to supply trucks to the Reich in exchange for the release of Jews. This contention was rejected by the District Court which held that the Appellant adopted his version of willingness to release Jews, in token of his friendly attitude towards them, only after he had read the book of Joel Brand and taken advantage of an error of Brand in his memoirs. Counsel seeks to have that finding disturbed by the production of further evidence. The line of defence pursued by the Appellant was that he did nothing relating to the persecution of Jews except upon orders of his superiors, and that he personally was not competent to determine their fate. It follows, therefore, that if there existed at any time any willingness to release 100,000 Jews without consideration, contrary to the findings of the District Court, it was the Appellant's superiors who were willing to do so, and not the Appellant. The Appellant acted as he was ordered to act, and we are not here judging his superiors. But the Appellant's version was rejected, also on its merits, in paragraph 116(b) of the Judgment of the District Court, and there again the Court based itself upon the Statement of the Appellant to the police. It should be added that the transaction concerning 100,000 Jews did not directly constitute one of the particulars of the Indictment, and the Court, therefore, pointed out that it had no intention of going into details, but confined itself to a number of observations which were in the nature of obiter dicta. For these reasons, we refused the application by the Defence. It is immaterial to the question with which we are concerned whether or not the `promised' shootings were indeed carried out; neither is it material to establish whether there was a cause-and-effect relationship between the Appellant's recommendation and the killing of those Jews. Important to us is the blatant fact that the Appellant's interest was not restricted to the `transportation of the sentenced' only. (c) March-April, 1943. On 3.3.43 the Appellant writes to the Foreign Ministry to say that: "In accordance with reliable information, which must be kept confidential, Jewish officials are conducting, through their offices in Constantinople, promising negotiations with Turkey as to the issue of Turkish transit visas to a group of one thousand Jewish children, together with one hundred accompanying staff, from Romania, to be transported to Palestine, overland, via Bulgaria and Turkey, in co- operation with the `Waggons Lits Company.' You are requested to thwart this emigration project, if possible" (T/1048). Similarly, Guenther (the Appellant's deputy) appeals on 2.4.43 to the Foreign Ministry and requests `anew' that that office see to it that "no Jewish emigration overseas takes place" (T/950). That appeal came in the wake of a broadcast report to the effect that the British Ambassador in Washington stated to the Jewish Congress that "the negotiations between Bulgaria and Great Britain in the interest of the deportation of 4,000 adult Jews and 4,000 Jewish children have been successfully concluded." The Appellant was overjoyed when he succeeded in stopping the rescue of Jewish children, for that was the most effective blow he could deal to the physical survival of the nation, and against such emigration he fights everywhere (e.g., France, T/439). (d) September-October 1943. The Appellant sees everything, nothing is hidden from him, nor does any error escape his prying eye. He examines and re-examines, scrutinizes and re- scrutinizes, with a pathological and pedantic suspiciousness, all the figures laid before him by the various authorities, and knows - or believes he knows - thoroughly, the most minute detail on the most insignificant internee in any of the camps, as may be seen from the following cases: (aa) On 23.9.43 the Appellant telegraphs to Standartenfuehrer Dr. Knochen in Paris that he has received secret information that in Switzerland attempts are being made to obtain citizenship of a South American country for the Jew Gollub, in order to enable him to go abroad. This Jew is at present in the Drancy camp. He (the Appellant) passes this information on (to Knochen) and requests that the matter be investigated and that the Jew Gollub be arrested immediately and, if possible, to include him in the evacuation transport to the East, to reception camp Auschwitz" (T/496). Noteworthy in this request are: the directions to send the internee to Auschwitz, without waiting for the results of the review, which he himself ostensibly ordered, and the designation `reception camp' here given to the great camp of destruction at Auschwitz. After a lapse of five days, a report is received from Drancy to the effect that "no such person is known in the camp" (see note on T/496). The wickedness was therefore in vain. (bb) A Jewish lawyer by the name of Rosenthal, an old man of over 71, of Romanian nationality, had lived since 1943 in occupied France. The government of Romania, in gratitude to this lawyer for his past good record, made representations to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin not to evacuate Mr. Rosenthal to any of the eastern camps. The Foreign Ministry refers to the competent evacuation Section IVB4 of the RSHA, and one of the Appellant's assistants, Hauptsturmfuehrer Woehrn, informs them by telephone that the Appellant had ordered his Section in Paris not to carry out Mr. Rosenthal's planned deportation until further notice. The Appellant, however, is uneasy lest his order, communicated by telephone, was not properly understood, and lest the Foreign Ministry misconstrue it. He hastens, therefore, four days later, to dispel the bad impression by explaining clearly in a letter the purely temporary tenor of the order. In that letter (T/491 of 11.9.43) he refers to Woehrn's telephone communication, and then proceeds to say: "Even if the Romanian Government grants the Jew Rosenthal a special status by reason of his services for Romania, even then it would be undesirable, from a police security point of view, and because of the steps taken to de-judaize (Entjudung) the European continent, that the Jew Rosenthal continue to live in France... "If, therefore, I gave an order to refrain, for the time being, from the planned deportation of the Jew Rosenthal, in the light of the reasons set out above, this is by no means to be seen as an absolute and definitive decision." Again, the sounding of a warning to the Foreign Ministry, to say: Lest you forget that the supreme object is the de- judaization of the whole of Europe, including those parts of the European continent that have not yet had the benefit of indoctrination by the Nazi doctrine. Certainly there could be no question here of the `transportation of the sentenced.' (cc) The Monagasian episode, in which we find the detecting hand, the prying eye, of the Appellant behind the scenes and over the heads of all other authorities. In mid-September 1943, the Appellant's Section begins `to take an interest' in the Jews living within the Principality of Monaco. The Appellant, who was then in France, telephones to the RSHA in Berlin to report that some 15,000 Jews have escaped from Southern France to the hills of Monaco, and that the government of Monaco agrees in principle to their capture within Monaco territory by the Germans, should that be requested by the Reich Government. On 21.9.43 the RSHA forwards the message of the Appellant to the Foreign Ministry, requesting that they consider the possibility of an appeal to the Monaco Government, with a view to the capture of the above-mentioned Jews. The Appellant's message is referred to in a minute (T/492) by von Thadden, the Specialist on Jewish Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, who adds there, in brackets, as though in passing, the most interesting and instructive observation: "It was impossible to establish in what way Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann managed to come into contact with the Government of Monaco, and whether the consulate took part in this." The Foreign Ministry therefore communicates with the German consulate in Monte Carlo, which reports that, in its view, there can be at most 1,000, not 15,000, Jews in Monaco, most of whom have been residing there for many years. The competent unit of the Security Police in Nice also confirmed that estimate. Therefore - and for other reasons stated by von Thadden - he holds that the appeal to the Government of Monaco must be regarded as premature (T/494). On 30.9.43, a conference is held on this subject between the Appellant and von Thadden. The Appellant says that the figure (1,000) given by the consulate cannot possibly be correct. He had just arrived from a visit to Southern France, and the information he received from the SD Chief of Southern France was that in Monaco there were some ten thousand to fifteen thousand Jews (T/493). In view of the `astounding difference' (verblueffende Differenz) between the figure given by the RSHA and that given by the German consulate in Monte Carlo, the Appellant contemplates (or is requested by von Thadden) sending immediately an express telegram to the competent SD unit, requesting it to review the matter afresh (T/494, T/493). In the end Guenther, the Appellant's deputy, reports on 22.10.43 to the Foreign Ministry: "it has meanwhile been established that there are in the territory of Monaco not - as was formerly believed - fifteen thousand Jews, but only 1,000-1,500 Jews," and he requests the Foreign Ministry to see to it that "the government of Monaco makes these 1,000- 1,500 Jews available and ready for deportation" (T/495). It was thus the estimate of the consulate, not that of the Appellant, which was accepted; yet that loss was `offset' by another `profit': No discrimination is made any longer between refugees from Southern France and permanent residents of Monaco proper. The Appellant's long hand reaches as far as Sweden, and he does not despise even the paltry figure of 64 Jews, for when the Government of Sweden agrees, out of humanitarian sentiments, to grant Swedish nationality to 64 Jews who were citizens of Norway, to save them from Nazi enormities, he (the Appellant) is the only one to foil the plan (T/593, T/605).
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