Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-014 Last-Modified: 1999/05/27 The Nisko Chapter 72. The first transports dealt with by the Accused were connected with the Nisko Plan, which he himself devised as far back as September 1939, together with Stahlecker, and he supervised its implementation in person. Nisko is situated on the San river in the Radom district of what was the area of the Generalgouvernement, not far from the border. The idea of the Accused, according to his Statement, was to set up a kind of Jewish state in the Radom district, after the evacuation of the Poles from that area. But from the very beginning his intention was not a permanent settlement, but a temporary concentration of the Jews, prior to their deportation to another place. This is what he notes in exhibit T/43, p. 4: "I said: Give me a sufficient subsistence area; then it will be possible to set up an autonomous Jewish pre- state (Judenvorstaat) from which gradual emigration could be carried out." and in T/37, p. 124: "We said to ourselves...this can be a solution for some time, at least for some time, so that meanwhile there will be no fire under our fingernails." It is, therefore, likely that this concentration of Jews near the demarcation line was planned as the first step towards their expulsion across the lines, in accordance with the Fuehrer's order, announced by Heydrich on 21 September 1939, as mentioned above. Heydrich supported this plan, and in October 1939 the Accused began to carry it out. The first transport of 1,000 men was sent from Moravska Ostrava to Nisko, as a sort of pioneer corps intended to prepare the place for those who would follow them. The witnesses Max Burger (Session 19, Vol. I, p. 299) and Dr. Hugo Kratky (Session 20, Vol. I, p. 309) were with this transport, and from their description it transpires clearly that the talk about a grandiose plan is far removed from the grim reality - the Accused acted with complete disregard for the health and life of the deportees. They relate that people were brought to a hill open to the four winds, where they were addressed as follows by an officer of the SS: "Some seven to eight kilometres from here, across the San, the Fuehrer has promised the Jews a new homeland. There are no dwellings and no houses; if you carry out the construction you will have a roof over your heads. There is no water, the wells all around carry disease; cholera, dysentery and typhoid are rampant. If you start digging and find water, then you will have water." From the testimonies of Burger and Dr. Kratky, there is much reason to believe that the speaker was the Accused himself. In any case, even if the speaker was someone else, this was the spirit that reigned there. About a quarter of the number of those transported were expelled on the following morning towards the East, on foot, with the warning that anyone returning would be shot. Dr. Kratky was one of those. We heard from him about the misery which he and his friends suffered, as they walked a distance of 120-150 kilometres through the forests, until they reached Lublin, and thence still further towards the East. Of the fate which befell those who remained in the camp, we heard from Mr. Burger (Session 19, Vol. I, p. 300). After the camp was set up, additional transports of Jews arrived from Moravska Ostrava and from Vienna. Some of them were not even permitted to enter the camp, but were driven on immediately, without the luggage they had brought with them. A transport of one thousand extremely old Jews arrived. The cold was unusual that winter and touched 40 degrees below zero. In the spring of 1940, the whole plan was liquidated, because of the objections of Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland (Generalgouvernement area), who did not want additional Jews in his territory. The survivors from amongst the deportees were returned to where they had come from. Of the one thousand people who started off with Burger and Dr. Kratky from Moravska Ostrava, three hundred returned there. The others were expelled or escaped across the border, into Russian territory, and most of them were caught there by the Germans after the German-Russian war broke out. The Accused ordered that those who returned to Vienna from Nisko should be registered in the police records as "returning from vocational training" (Umschichtung) (T/801). The responsibility for the entire operation, including all the human suffering which went with it, falls directly upon the Accused.
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