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The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem

The Nazi programmes and the methods used to put them into
effect varied according to circumstances, and various phases
of planning and execution may be distinguished. It was so on
the political front: after the German armies had
successfully reoccupied the Rhineland they began to look in
the direction of Austria; when they had taken that, they
demanded the Sudetenland; when this was conceded, they went
on to conquer the whole of Czechoslovakia and invaded Memel.
From then onwards, their preparations for war matured
rapidly.

Whether there existed a political-military master plan for
the subjugation of peoples and nations or whether this
developed as a result of political victories, when the world
remained inactive in the face of brazen Nazi aggression
accompanied by declarations of peace, and Europe's statesmen
submitted to threats and fulminations - in any case, Nazi
self-confidence and political blackmail grew stronger and
more blatant and the final result was World War II.

So it was with the Jews. Whether the physical extermination
was planned and prepared from the start and action waited
only for the appropriate time, or whether it came as a
graduate development that reached its climax when pretence
was no longer needed, and it had become possible, casting
off all restraint, to put into operation the plan for total
destruction - it is still possible to distinguish various
phases in the treatment of the problem.

At the beginning, when the Nazis were still sensitive to the
reaction of world opinion, the solution took the form of
forced emigration. Though the methods were drastic and
brutal, Nazi arrogance had not yet reached the point of
deciding on extermination. But when they found that it could
be done, that for all practical purposes the world was
silent, that circumstances were propitious - they went over
to total extermination.

In between, there was a transition phase, in which the Nazis
toyed with the idea of a so-called territorial solution for
the Jewish problem.

The Accused took an active part in both the planning and the
execution of all three of these programmes. He was the
responsible head of the executive arm of all these deadly
projects. Though his master, Hitler, did not succeed in
realising a single one of his promises and ultimate aims,
Eichmann carried out whatever he took upon himself to do.
But before I speak of his part in the execution, let us
dwell first on the plans themselves.

At first the Nazis were satisfied with the mass emigration
of Jews seeking refuge from misfortunes that had suddenly
befallen them: the humiliating Nuremberg laws which
dislodged them from their positions, economic boycott,
arrest and imprisonment in concentration camps. Nazi greed
for gain which was the only brake on their hatred of the
Jews, did not allow them to renounce this source of income:
every emigrant was ordered to pay emigration taxes to the
extent of 25 per cent of his property, and to exchange the
balance for "frozen marks," whose actual worth rapidly fell
to an infinitesimal fraction of their nominal value. This
period extended until the annexation of Austria to the Reich
on 12 March 1938. Four days later, the Accused had already
put in an appearance in Vienna and begun to organize the
anti-Jewish programme on the new basis of which I have
already spoken. A central authority was set up for the
emigration of the Jews, which in actual fact was engaged in
their expulsion and the partial confiscation of their
property.

At the end of October 1938, the German Government decided to
expel all Jewish residents who had formerly been Polish
citizens. The Poles had cancelled their passports, but the
Nazis decided to take advantage of their position to get rid
of them. They were arrested at the order of Reinhard
Heydrich, then head of the Security Police and the SD, whose
name will recur in this trial. Thus the first mass Jewish
expulsion took place. The Jews were permitted to take only
what they could carry, and were ordered to leave the rest of
their property behind. Crowded into freight cars, they were
transported to a point near the border, commanded to
descend, and then chased through the fields in the direction
of the Polish border. Men and women stumbled and fell, but
were forced by kicks to rise and run on. Some lay dead where
they had fallen.

The Polish border guard, unprepared for this sudden
invasion, were helpless. The human flood broke through: the
first expulsion had been a success.

Among those unfortunates was a Jewish cobbler, Mendel
Grynszpan. He too was expelled, in a state of utter
destitution with his wife and children. In bitter despair
the family wrote a postcard from Poland to their son,
Herschel, who was then in Paris. This young lad of seventeen
decided that he would not keep silent in the face of
injustice. Though the entire world seemed indifferent to
these crimes in broad daylight, he, Herschel Grynszpan would
not be still; he would at least try to avenge the injustice
to his parents and family. On the morning of November 7, he
bought a pistol, and that very day showed up at the German
embassy in Paris. He had determined to kill the ambassador,
but he was sent to the Counsellor of the Legation, Ernst vom
Rath, who asked him what he wanted. The young man's revolver
barked twice, and vom Rath fell, severely wounded. To the
Paris police, Herschel Grynszpan declared:

     "I resolved to kill a member of the German embassy as a
     sign of protest. I had to avenge the Jews, to draw the
     attention of the world to what is happening in
     Germany."

Grynszpan did not know then that his sacrifice would be in
vain. Not even the despairing act of this young Jew could
shock the world. He himself was imprisoned in Paris, and
after the invasion fell into German hands. He was sent to
Berlin for special investigation by the Accused. He was
investigated. No further traces of him have been found.

Vom Rath died of his wounds after two days. Immediately
Heydrich issued emergency instructions to all units of the
Gestapo to the effect that, following the attack on vom
Rath, "anti-Jewish demonstrations may be expected." He
therefore ordered the police to cooperate in the
organization of the demonstrations, to guide them, and to
permit the destruction  of Jewish property and the burning
of synagogues - so long as it was possible to ensure that
the flames would not spread to other neighbourhoods. All the
property of the Jewish communities was to be confiscated.

Thus Nazi Germany revived in Europe the burning of the
synagogues which, until then had been known only in the
darkest days of the Middle Ages.

That night of terror, between November 9 and 10, came to be
known as the Kristallnacht. The Nazi hooligans broke into
Jewish homes, pillaged, destroyed and plundered. Thousands
were imprisoned in concentration camps, in order to "protect
them from the wrath of the people." This was the first time
Nazis arrested Jews in large numbers at one time and put
them in concentration camps. One hundred and one synagogues
were burned and seventy-six destroyed; seven thousand and
five hundred places of business were plundered. These
figures are taken from an official report submitted by
Heydrich to Goering at a meeting of Ministers devoted to
Jewish affairs two days later, the minutes of which will be
submitted to the Court. The damage to shop windows alone
came to six million marks, and what most bothered the
participants in the meeting was the problem of the
compensation for damages that the insurance companies would
normally have to pay the Jews. It was thereupon decided
quite simply that these companies would make their payments
to the German Treasury, and the Jews would be obligated to
repair the damage at their own expense. Goering complained
that a great deal of property had been destroyed; and when
Heydrich also reported the deaths of thirty-five Jews,
Goering said:"It would have been better if you had killed
two hundred and not destroyed so much property."

There was a further exchange of opinion about the compelling
of Jews to wear a distinctive badge. Towards the end of the
meeting, Goering said:

     "I shall find an appropriate formula to obligate the
     Jews as a whole to pay a fine of a billion marks for
     their base criminal acts, etc., etc. That will hit them
     where it hurts. The swine won't carry out another
     murder so quickly. And in general, I repeat: I wouldn't
     like to be a Jew in Germany."

The fine was imposed and brutal legislation went into effect
to deprive the Jews of all sources of livelihood.

Eichmann was in Vienna on the Kristallnacht, and we shall
yet have the opportunity of tracing his actions there at
that time.

I have referred to this ministerial meeting at such length
because it marks a turning-point and a phase of preparation
for further developments. This had been a second test action
of the Nazis against the Jews. If this could be done to them
without shocking the world, it would be possible to proceed
further towards "the final solution."

At the same conference Heydrich reported on the activities
of the Accused in Vienna, and spoke with pride of the fact
that thanks to the activities of the Vienna bureau for
emigration, some fifty thousand Jews had already left
Austria. It was decided to set up a central authority for
Jewish emigration from the entire German Reich. In January
1939, Goering instructed Heydrich to carry out the plan and
to use all possible means to speed up emigration. This
emigration by expulsion programme was thenceforth carried
out in all parts of Germany, and, beginning in July 1939,
also in that part of Czechoslovakia that had meanwhile
fallen into the hands of the Germans and was known as the
"Protectorate."

In this order, Goering appointed Heydrich, Chief of the
Security Service and Security Police, as head of the central
office for emigration, with the economist Wohlthat as his
administrative associate. Thus he ensured that, while
Heydrich would work towards getting the Jews out of Germany,
Wohlthat who had formerly been Schacht's assistant, would be
concerned with plundering their property.

In this way, Goering overcame those doubts to which he had
given open expression at the ministerial conference, when he
brought up fiscal and economic reasons against the policy of
forced emigration. The way had now been found to carry out
this aim without damaging Germany's economy, which it was
Goering's function to steer towards a war effort.

Trading at the expense of Jewish freedom was thenceforth the
official policy of the Reich. Ribbentrop gave notice, in a
Foreign Ministry circular dated 25 January 1939, that the
ultimate goal of Germany's policy was the emigration of all
the Jews, and that the problem would not be solved until the
last of them had left her soil. Funk, the Minister of
Economics, was able to report that, out of the seven billion
marks which were estimated as the value of German-Jewish
property, two billion had already been transferred to the
State, and there were grounds for the hope that Germany
would get the balance in the near future.

These two aims - the physical liquidation of the Jews by
expulsion or killing, and the pillage of their property -
were thereafter fixed pillars in German policy. First
expulsion and robbery, then murder and robbery - these were
to remain closely associated, accompanying one another
through all the phases of the Holocaust, soon becoming so
indistinguishable that one is at a loss to say which was the
more important, which was being put into the service of the
other. Henceforth, they are both part of "the final
solution": to kill and to take posSession were the two
fundamental principles of the evil German plan. At all
stages of the Holocaust, in official reports filled with
shocking details of cruel killings by strangulation,
burning, hanging and unimaginable tortures, there will
always be found a twin section telling of the plunder of
Jewish property.

The pressure on Jews to emigrate was not discontinued after
the outbreak of war; the line changed, as has been said,
only when new decisions were reached relating to the
physical fate of the Jews.
Atfirst it was not clear what was to be done to the Jews. It
was decided that they were to be got rid of, but not
completely; to be expelled, but a certain number had best be
left to serve as a sort of hostage so that the threat of
their destruction might bring pressure on the world's rulers
to submit to the German will. Hitler gave expression to this
idea in one of his conversations with Rauschning, President
of the Danzig Senate, and on 30 January 1939, he delivered
his famous speech in the Reichstag predicting that if the
Jews controlling international world capital would again
bring the nations to a world war, the result would not be
the spread of Bolshevism and the subsequent victory of
Judaism, but rather the annihilation of European Jewry.

Again Hitler had fused the Jews with his two mortal enemies:
the capitalistic West and the communistic East. In both,
according to him, the Jews ruled by means of an unholy
alliance: the capitalist circles desired the victory of the
Communists, in order to use them as a means by which the
Jews could rise to power. The foolish absurdity of this
contention is so glaring that there is no sense in even
analysing it. What is important from our point of view is
the fact that the destruction of the Jews was serving Hitler
as one of his bargaining and blackmail points in his
relations with the outside world: "Give in to my demands or
- woe to your Jews."

All the prophesies of that evil man proved baseless. The
Reich that was to have lasted a thousand years, collapsed
like a house of cards. The "New Order" that was to have
served as the basis for human civilization has become a
historical byword for atrocity. The Aryan Master Race was
thoroughly defeated by the "degenerate plutocrats" and the
"inferior" Slavs. Not only was Germany driven out of the
Ukrainian wheat granaries she had invaded, which the Fuehrer
had promised her as an eternal heritage, but she herself is
now divided, and Bismarck's work of unification has been set
at naught.

Only one single promise, the most dreadful of Germany's
terrible deeds which has brought upon her eternal disgrace,
was kept by Adolf Hitler. And for the execution of that
promise to destroy European Jewry he used another Adolf -
Adolf Eichmann, who is on trial before you today.

From the beginnings of the Nazi regime, Jewish affairs were
dealt with by the Gestapo and the SS. In June 1940, Heydrich
notified Ribbentrop that because of the great increase in
the Jewish population then under the control of the Reich,
emigration could no longer be considered a feasible solution
of the Jewish problem. He, therefore, suggested that a
territorial solution be sought to settle the Jewish question
once and for all, and he wanted to consult him on the
matter.

Within the framework of programmes for the expulsion, there
also emerged two abortive projects of a territorial nature.
One was to deport all the Jews to Madagascar. In fact, this
was an old scheme, which had already been put forth in the
anti-Semitic literature of the twenties; the Polish
government had toyed with it in the '30s, and the Nazis had
begun to discuss it officially even before the outbreak of
the War. Goering and Rosenberg made speeches on the proposal
in the Reichstag, and the idea was the subject of diplomatic
activity and pseudo-scientific researches. In July 1940, the
German Foreign Ministry prepared a memorandum according to
which defeated France would have to relinquish Madagascar
within the framework of the future peace treaty. A German
military base would be erected on the island and the Jews
would be settled there under a German mandatory regime, "as
a hostage for the future good behaviour of their kinsmen in
the United States."

The Accused too had a hand in all this. One of the staff of
his section, his close assistant, Dannecker, to whose name
we shall recur as one of Eichmann's loyal partners in the
extermination of the Jews, wrote a detailed memorandum for
his Foreign Ministry on the Madagascar Plan. Its advantage,
he wrote, was that it would isolate the Jews on an island;
its execution should be made possible by the confiscation of
Jewish property; and its executors should be the Gestapo.
The goal should be to send one million Jews each year.

There is no need to add that this plan was abortive. To this
day, experts differ as to whether the Nazis ever gave it
serious thought or whether it only served them as one of
their many means of camouflaging a different project which
had already begun to take shape. In any case, practically
nothing was done to realize it.

On the other hand, an attempt was made at a territorial
concentration of Jews within another context, by collecting
them into the Lublin zone, between the San and Vistula
rivers. This was called the "Nisko plan," after the name of
the village at the centre of that small region to which
Eichmann drove Jews from Vienna, Moravia and Bohemia in the
winter of 1939. You will hear evidence of the thefts of the
property of the deportees, how they were left destitute in
the zone, the brutal treatment to which they were subjected
and the expulsion of a number of them eastward beyond the
Soviet borders with the threat that any attempting to get
back would be killed.

Eichmann personally dealt with the Nisko expulsions, even
spending a number of days in the Nisko area. The project was
finally abandoned because of the opposition of the governor
of Poland, Hans Frank, who persuaded Goering that the
project was upsetting the German war effort. The Nisko
refugees later met their deaths in the Belzec extermination
camp.

The attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and
America's entry into the War on the side of the Allies some
months later, in December of the same year - these were the
turning-points in the development of the plans for
extermination. True, the idea had already been explicitly
mentioned. We shall present to the Court the minutes of a
meeting called by Heydrich on 21 September 1939, in which
Eichmann took part alongside other high SS officers, in
which ways of dealing with Jews in the area of conquered
Poland were summarized. That very day, Heydrich issued
instructions to all the Einsatzgruppen that went along with
the Army and constituted units for special security
missions. Their function was designated by Heydrich. After a
warning that all his instructions were "top secret,"
Heydrich went on to distinguish between the long-range
solution of the Jewish Question - meaning by this, without
any doubt, their actual extermination - and immediate steps
to be taken against them: the Jews were to be expelled from
the countryside and concentrated in the cities near railway
junction points; and Councils of Elders were to be set up
who would be made responsible for marshalling the Jews. As a
pretext for these measures, Heydrich suggested it should be
claimed that the Jews had taken part in irregular activities
and in robberies. The severest punishment was to be
inflicted for violation of the order to move into the
concentration centres.

According to the minutes of that meeting, Heydrich issued
instructions that every judgment against violators in the
zone of conquest that was not a death sentence should be
reported to him personally. Orders were given to seize
Jewish enterprises, to forbid Jews to change their places of
residence, and to impose a curfew.

Heydrich demanded regular reports on the operations carried
out according to his instructions, concluding with these
words:

     "Towards the achievement of the goals indicated, I
     order the immediate mobilizing of all the forces of the
     Security Police and Security Services. The chiefs of
     the Einsatzgruppen active in the same neighbourhood
     will keep in close touch with one another, so that all
     the possible areas will be completely and immediately
     covered by the network."

We shall see later when we deal with the tragedy of European
Jewry, how the conquerors interpreted these instructions -
the brutality, murder and pillage that came in their wake.

But it was only as the invasion of the Soviet Union drew
near that the Germans went over to "the final solution" in
the new sense, that is, utter physical extermination. On 31
July 1941, Goering instructed Heydrich as follows:

     "In order to complete the mission imposed on you in the
     order of 24 January 1939, to solve the problem of the
     Jews by means of emigration or evacuation in the most
     suitable way in the circumstances leading to a possible
     solution, I am herewith instructing you to make all the
     necessary organizational, practical and material
     preparations for a comprehensive solution of the Jewish
     question within the German area of influence in Europe.
     
     "Insofar as the other central authorities are
     concerned, they are to cooperate.
     
     "I hereby instruct you further to submit to me soon a
     general plan (Gesamtentwurf) with respect to
     organizational, practical and material means necessary
     for the execution of the desired final solution
     (Endloesung) of the Jewish question."

Thus the official signal was given. Heydrich was appointed
to plan the extermination, and he on his part appointed for
the planning and execution a cruel and fanatical man,
implacable in his enmity, this evil Eichmann.

As a preparation for the final solution, fresh occupation
units had already begun mass murders of Jews in zones from
which the Red Army had retreated in the summer and autumn of
1941. We shall go into these actions in a later section.
Partial and mass expulsions towards the East had already
been carried out earlier from within Germany proper, but at
that time the work of general "planning" was being done in
Berlin. In August 1941, Eichmann wrote to his Foreign
Ministry that it would be advisable to prevent further
emigration "in the light of preparations for the final
solution of the problem of European Jewry. These
preparations of his were completed before November of that
year, since already then he wrote in the same connection
about "the imminent final solution." That summer we shall
find Eichmann in Auschwitz arranging with Rudolf Hoess the
various technical details, and choosing the spot for the
erection of the extermination apparatus. In the autumn of
that year, Eichmann flew to Kiev to report to Himmler.
Himmler seems to have received a suitably satisfactory
report, since on 27 October 1941, he issued a decree
forbidding any emigration of Jews from the areas of German
rule. Two days earlier, on 25 October 1941, Wetzel, an
official of the Ministry for the Occupied Territories, wrote
that an agreement had been reached with Eichmann to use gas
chambers for the solution of the Jewish problem.

Thus we see: the plan had been formulated, the means had
been determined. Instead of the Jews emigrating, they would
be murdered.

From then onwards, it was the job of the head of the Jewish
Section of the Gestapo to direct in a suitable fashion  the
planning of other offices of the Reich according to the
detailed master-plan that had already been sketched in
September 1939. On 15 September 1941, the Accused sent along
for Heydrich's signature instructions, applying to Germany
and the occupied zones, requiring the introduction of "the
Jewish badge," which had been imposed some time before in
the eastern occupation zones. Every Jew would have to wear
on the left side of his breast a special, easily
recognizable sign. The Jewish authorities themselves would
have to supply the badge of shame. A ban was imposed on Jews
leaving their places of residence and using transportation,
with some clearly specified exceptions.

But there were also problems. Rosenberg, Minister for the
Occupied Territories, issued a series of directives for the
occupation authorities in the areas under his jurisdiction,
which included the Baltic countries, East Poland, and parts
of the Soviet Union. These instructions were called "Die
Braune Mappe" (The Brown Folder), and included the chapter
relating to the Jews containing severe repressive provisions
- but not extermination. "The problem of the Jews," Die
Braune Mappe said, "will find a solution in the whole of
Europe at the end of the War." When a draft of "The Brown
Folder" came to Heyrdich's attention, he reacted with a
highly significant letter dated 10 January 1942. He did not
agree with Rosenberg's proposals. He insisted that the
special instructions, already issued - which included
complete extermination, as we know - be taken into account.

     "In view of the fundamental lines of policy for dealing
     with the Jewish Question as formulated by the Reich
     Central Security Office (in charge: SS Sturmbannfuerer
     Eichmann) I must ask you to reprint your instructions."

In the same month, Heydrich sent on to Rosenberg the
revisions suggested by Eichmann. Because of the importance
of this document, I shall quote from it at length.

     "All measures in connection with the Jewish question in
     the occupied territories in the East are to be
     considered from the point of view that the Jewish
     question must be generally solved for the whole of
     Europe. Hence, such measures in the occupied
     territories in the East as contribute to the final
     solution of the Jewish question and thereby the
     liquidation of Jewry must in no way be hindered. In the
     occupied territories in the East in particular, efforts
     are to be made to bring about a most immediate solution
     of the Jewish question...any measures of the local
     population against the Jews are therefore not to be
     hindered...So long as measures that will contribute to
     the liquidation of Jewry have not yet been taken, the
     local Jews are to be strictly separated from the rest
     of the population. ..Free movement is to be immediately
     stopped for all Jews. A transfer to ghettoes is to be
     carried out...The watching of the boundaries between
     the ghetto and the outside world is the affair of the
     Police...The measures that contribute to the
     liquidation of Jewry are to be carried out without any
     consideration for economic needs...All Jewish property
     is to be registered. Transfers of property by Jews are
     to be prevented..."

But the matters were not arranged by a mere exchange of
letters. Frank, the Governor General of Occupied Poland,
tried to deal with Jewish affairs in his own way, and to
take the matter out of the Gestapo's hands. In other areas,
too, difficulties arose. Eichmann therefore proposed that a
meeting be called of the senior officials who might be
considered suitable to carry out the plan of slaughter, and
Heydrich agreed. It was Eichmann who made all the
preparations for this conference, from the preparation of
all the factual material to the drafting of the invitations;
and those invited were asked to take time off from other
duties, "in view of the exceptional importance of the
problems, and of the need to arrive at a unified point of
view."

The conference took place on 20 January 1942, in the suburb
of Wannsee, near Berlin. The participants were the leading
personalities with the rank of Director General of the
Ministries for the Occupied Territories in the East, the
Interior, Law, Foreign Affairs, Economics, Race and
Settlement; representatives of the Party, the RSHA and the
Reichskanzlei, and, of course, Eichmann. Heydrich delivered
the central speech, according to the data supplied by the
Accused. He recalled Goering's order and recalled at the
outset, in order to prevent any doubts, that it was his
Ministry that was centrally responsible for the execution of
the "final solution" everywhere, without any geographical
limitations. He mentioned the "practical experiments" that
had been carried out in the East, the lessons from which
were of the utmost importance for the final solution. After
having briefly outlined the steps taken thus far "in the
battle against this enemy" for the purpose of forcing the
Jews out of the areas in which the German people lived and
which constituted its Lebensraum, he stated that a halt had
been called to this emigration at the order of Himmler, and
that now would begin, according to the Fuehrer's orders, the
evacuation of the Jews to the East with the goal of arriving
at the "final solution."

We shall prove to the Court that, in the Nazi system of
camouflage, the phrase "Endloesung" ("final solution") in
this context and henceforth had the sole meaning of the
actual killing of the Jews. This was also the meaning of
these other terms: "Ausscheidung" ("liquidation"),
"Gesamtloesung" ("total solution"), and many others.

Heydrich listed the countries to be considered for the
"final solution," including besides all the countries under
Nazi occupation, Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland,
Spain, Turkey, and the entire area of the Soviet Union, and
arrived at a total of eleven million Jews to be included in
the "final solution." In his list, Estonia already appears
as "Judenrein"(clear of Jews).

22And this is how the problem would be solved:

     "Under suitable management, the Jews will be brought,
     in the course of the final solution, in a convenient
     way to labour units in the East. Jews capable of
     working will be transported in long labour columns, men
     and women separate, to build roads in that region; as a
     result of which, no doubt, a large part of them will
     fall out through natural losses. Those who will
     ultimately remain, who will surely be those who will
     have great power of resistance, must be given special
     handling (Sonderbehandlung), because they will
     constitute a nucleus for the building of a new Jewry
     (as history has proved).
     
     For the practical execution of the final solution
     Europe will be combed from West to East. In the
     occupied territories and the countries within our
     sphere of influence in Europe, the officer designated
     by the Security Police will operate in coordination
     with the appropriate representative of the Foreign
     Ministry."

We shall prove that this designee of the RSHA was Adolf
Eichmann, and we shall also prove that the meaning of
"special handling" was - murder.

There was discussion, further, of what to do with children
of mixed marriages. As I have already indicated, this
problem troubled the executors of the extermination. The
principle was established that children of mixed marriages
of the first degree - namely, in which one of the parents
was Jewish - would be classified as full Jews, excluding men
who had married German women and had children, or those with
respect to whom there were exceptional circumstances and for
whom the higher institutions of the Party or the State had
specially interceded; but such circumstances were to be
examined with great care.

The exceptional cases were to be permitted to stay in
Germany on condition that they gave their consent to their
own sterilization.

Instructions were also given with respect to children of
mixed marriages of the second degree, the mixed couples
themselves and various categories of borderline cases.

The Economic Ministry asked that, for the time being, Jews
working in the vital industries should not be evacuated, and
Heydrich agreed. Buehler, representative of the Polish
Generalgouvernement gave notice that there the final
solution had already "begun," asked that the problem be
solved with all possible dispatch, and declared that the
majority of the Jews in his region - about two and a half
million - were not capable of work at all. He agreed that
the implementation of the final solution be put into the
hands of the Gestapo, and promised full support by the
authorities of the Generalgouvernement. He asked only for
the work to begin as rapidly as possible.

Later, opinions were exchanged on the various means
connected with the possibilities of a solution," and the
representative of the government of the eastern areas, like
the Polish Generalgouvernement representative, asked that
the preparations already made in his areas be completed, but
without stirring up panic among the population.

This was afterwards given the seal of legal authority.
Thierack, the German Minister of Justice, stated that in
order to free the body of the German people of certain
elements including the Jews, he was therewith transferring
the punitive authority over them to the Reichsfehrer SS,
Himmler, and he added:

     "I am proceeding on the assumption that the judicial
     processes can contribute but little to the
     extermination of these elements of foreign origin. It
     is true that severe verdicts are now being rendered
     against these people, but this is not enough to bring
     about the aforementioned result. There is also no sense
     in keeping them in prison or internment centers...on
     the other hand, the delivery of these people to the
     police, which will be unfettered by the criminal
     statutes, will get much better results."

This was the final victory of anarchy over justice. Here
National Socialism arrived at the ultimate stage of
degeneration; in order to destroy the Jews it openly
surrendered the very existence of the law, an act of which
there is no precedent in juridical annals.

Even earlier, on 2 January 1942, Himmler had transferred the
authority to pass the death sentence and to give
instructions for "special handling" (Sonderbehandlung) to
the head of Section 4 of the SS Ministry or to his
representative. We shall see that Eichmann was the man who
actually used this authority in Himmler's name. Detailed
directives were given relating to the executions and the
submission of reports on them in concentration camps and
other places.

I have already said that as early as 1941, Heydrich had
appointed Eichmann to plan and carry out the extermination
programme. A renewed endorsement of this choice is found in
a letter by Heydrich dated 26 January  1942, prepared by the
Accused's Section, in which notice was given of the Wannsee
Conference which "to the general satisfaction revealed a
complete unity of opinion concerning the practical steps to
be followed for the purpose of implementing the final
solution." The Foreign Ministry was asked to appoint its
representative to a meeting called for 6 March 1942, by
Heydrich's appointee for this purpose, Obersturmbannfuehrer
Eichmann. The Foreign Ministry sent Rademacher as its
representative.

The programme thus went into its practical phase. At this
stage Eichmann is already the only one in charge. We shall
see him now more frequently than heretofore, together with
his band of confederates, combing Europe from the Pyrenees
to the Urals in order to assemble the Jews together and
dispatch them to death. With the help of his deputies in all
the countries of Europe, he held the Jewish people in his
grip like an octopus strangling its pray. Henceforth,
Eichmann is not only active as one of the directors of a
department in the RSHA, he is the personal representative of
Heydrich, regarded by the Reich authorities as the commissar
for the solution of the Jewish problem. The Court should
note the unusual form taken by this appointment. Goering,
the second man in the Reich, acting in this matter no doubt
with the authority and in the name of Hitler, goes over the
head of the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, directly to Heydrich,
and makes him responsible for the solution of the Jewish
problem. Heydrich in turn goes over the head of the chief of
Bureau 4, Mueller, and appoints Eichmann directly as his
representative. This appointment granted Eichmann
immeasurable power, supported by the order of the Fuehrer
himself.

There is evidence that Eichmann had in his posSession a
written document containing Hitler's order for the
extermination of the Jews. This order is not in our
possession. But it is beyond any doubt that the unusual
character of his appointment raised Adolf Eichmann to a
unique position invested with tremendous authority, enabling
him to contact heads of governments and ministers, to issue
orders and instructions in all matters relating to the
destruction of the Jewish people.

We shall see him issuing detailed directives for the
implementation of the deportations to Auschwitz. We shall
trace the activities of his men concerned with the supply of
gas for killing Jews; we shall find him negotiating with the
representatives of the puppet governments in order to
persuade, to stimulate, to spur and to work. Everywhere, he
was the official authority for murder and plunder and all
reports had to be sent to him. We shall look for his name in
vain among the speechmakers at the central conference,
possibly because his superiors, Himmler and Heydrich who had
chosen him with care and deliberation to do the work of
butchery, did not want to have him speak in the company of
the professors and university graduates who took part in
those consultations. It may be that he himself took no great
interest in talk, having devoted himself with unlimited
fanaticism and zeal to action. Towards that goal, he would
not hesitate to come into conflict with, and sometimes even
to mislead, men in positions higher than his own in the Nazi
hierarchy, but this did not bother him at all, since he was
sheltered in the shadow of the omnipotent Himmler. He
treated with open contempt the ministers and envoys of
occupied states. By means of persuasion, threats or
compulsion, he got from them what he wanted: the enactment
of laws depriving the Jews of human and civil rights;
rounding up of Jews and their concentration in ghettoes;
their deportation to the extermination centers. Everywhere
he adapted himself to the needs and circumstances of the
moment, but his persistent and cruel pressure was
successful.

Everything relating to the extermination and the
preparations for it was his concern. We shall see him
visiting and inspecting the Warsaw and Lodz Ghettos. We
shall follow him as he travels in the autumn of 1941 to
Globocnik, chief of the SS and the Police of the Lublin
region, in order to transmit to him personally the secret
command for the physical extermination of the Jews. Then he
was also in Treblinka and in Chelmno, where gases were used
for the extermination. He witnessed in Chelmno the parade of
the naked Jews who had been stripped of their clothing and
were waiting their turn for death by asphyxiation with gas.
He looked on as gold teeth were extracted from the mouths of
his dead victims. He inspected the system of extermination
by means of cars expelling gas from their exhausts, in that
early phase of the mass killings. He was sent to examine the
extermination activities by shooting, used by the
Einsatzgruppen. He saw the murderers in Minsk shooting their
victims in the back so that they fell into ready graves. He
saw these groups murdering women and children. He saw those
units operating against the Jews in the vicinity of Lvov,
where the blood spurted from the grave "as from a spring,"
to use his words.

But direct murder by shooting did not satisfy him. "Our men
will become sadists," he said. In another place he put it
that the method was not "elegant" enough for the purpose. He
had to seek a new method. This was found in the gas chambers
and furnaces of the extermination centers - which he visited
on a number of occasions, to examine the apparatus, to
organize the transportation procedures, and to give
instructions. There he also saw how corpses were burned in
the open field.

Now that these instruments of extermination, it seems, were
functioning to his satisfaction, he concerned himself with
supplying them with sacrificial victims.

His Section from time to time issued detailed directives
relating to the death transports. The instructions applied
to all the Jews except for those exempted by his Section
IVB4. There were special instructions relating to Jewish
property. The deportees were forbidden to take with them
anything of value.

We shall submit to the Court proofs of the requirement to
send reports about expulsions to Eichmann's Section. This
requirement of reports about the implementation of the
extermination programme was imposed on the Commander of
Auschwitz among others. Thus Eichmann knew at any time who
had been sent to Auschwitz, who were the candidates for
execution, and who already had been killed. Eichmann's
Section would even issue detailed instructions as to when
certain people were to be sent to the death chambers. Truly
one can say of him in the language of the Scriptures: "Where
the slain are, there is he."{Job 39:30}

We shall prove that Eichmann and his Section became the
central authority for all the Reich Ministries in regard to
Jewish affairs. All apply to him and his fiat is decisive.
The Foreign Ministry asks Eichmann to keep alive thirty
thousand Jews with foreign citizenship, so that they may be
exchanged with Germans living in their countries. When it
seems to him that Rumania is permitting the exit of Jews
with means, he warns the Foreign Ministry that very soon
none but impoverished Jews will remain in that country,
adding:

     "In order to implement the final solution of the Jewish
     Question without any impediments and according to plan,
     I herewith request that this development be restrained
     by suitable means, and likewise that I be kept notified
     of the state of affairs."

The intention is clear. There is a danger that in Rumania
murder will be done without plunder - and of course "the
final solution" was not planned that way. When even the
Slovakian government, which ruled by grace of the Nazis,
expressed shock at the rumours of what happened to the Jews
of that country, who had been deported nominally to work in
the East, and asked permission for one of its
representatives to visit the labour camps - Eichmann turned
down the request and suggested to the Foreign Ministry that
it explain to the Slovakian government that all was well
with the deportees. And proofs were given in the form of
postcards received from them, and articles on the subject
published in the press, which Wisliceny, the Advisor for
Jewish Affairs in Bratislava, would be glad to supply. But
the German Ambassador in Bratislava received another request
for permission to visit the camps, and Tuka, head of the
Slovakian government, intervened. The Foreign Ministry again
approached Eichmann with a request to permit the visit, but
Eichmann refused. His refusal is understandable: the Jews
they wanted to visit were no longer alive.

Eichmann took special pains to frustrate emigration to
Palestine. He had obligations on this subject, he argued, to
the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, whom he had
met and with whom he had established contact. The impression
these two men made on each other was so strong that el
Husseini asked Himmler to provide him, after the War, when
he would enter Jerusalem at the head of the Axis troops,
with a special advisor from Eichmann's Department to help
him to solve the Jewish question in the same way as it had
been done in the Axis countries. Eichmann offered the job to
his assistant Wisliceny.

A proposal for the emigration of five thousand Jewish
children from Hungary is transmitted by the Foreign Ministry
to be handled by Eichmann. He receives a report on the
sailing of a shipload of emigrants from Spain to Palestine.
An application from the Spanish government with reference to
property confiscated in Salonika from Jewish citizens in
Spain reaches his desk. The German Foreign Ministry
apologizes to him for daring to give instructions concerning
Jews to the Vichy administration in France after the German
invasion - and explains that it did so only because of the
urgency of the matter and Eichmann's absence from Berlin at
that time.

The government of Argentina enquired about one of its
citizens, Gerson Wollner, who lived in Lvov, and the German
Foreign Ministry asked Himmler himself to take into account
their special relations with Argentina and not send the man
to a concentration camp. The cynical answer of the Accused
was that the Jew in question had died of a weak heart,
despite the excellent treatment he had received for his
ailment.

In 1942, Eichmann decided to treat the Hungarian Jews
residing in the Reich in the same way as German Jews. The
Foreign Ministry, which was then at the height of a
political controversy with satellite Hungary, did not agree,
but Eichmann did as he wanted.

We shall see him spurring on his officials and assistants to
finish the job quickly. He was impatient with any delay.
Once, when a deportation train from France did not leave, he
declared that such things were not permitted to happen under
his command, and that if hindrances of this kind were to
recur he would have to consider whether or not to dispense
with France as a country to be cleared of Jews. His
subordinate, Roethke, was of course appalled by this threat
lest, God forbid, he might be blamed for the survival of
French Jewry; and he apologized and promised that
thenceforth all would go well. When Knochen, an official of
the Security Police had trouble with the Army when trying to
introduce the Jewish badge into Belgium, he asked Eichmann
to use his influence with General Reeder, chief of the
military administration in occupied Belgium, to agree to its
introduction.

When he learned from a secret source that the Jew Golub, in
the Drancy camp in France was about to be granted a
Latin_American citizenship that would enable him to emigrate
- Eichmann cabled Gestapo headquarters in Paris ordering
them to dispatch Golub quickly to Auschwitz.

When the German Foreign Ministry interceded with him to save
individual Jews, in whom for one reason or another the
occupation authorities were interested, such as Roger Masse,
a senior French officer, who was captured and imprisoned as
a Jew; or the Greek citizen Jeanne Cuenca, or many others -
the answer was always that for reasons of principle the
request should not be granted.

At times, another reason is given by the Accused and his
section for turning down requests of the Foreign Ministry.
The Jewesses, Vialica and Belsica, though Swiss citizens,
cannot be permitted to leave the Generalgouvernement because
they know about the methods used for implementing the
deportations. A representative of the Hungarian press agency
in Warsaw, the Jew Rousseau Silly, cannot return to Hungary,
because he has seen many things in Warsaw that he would no
doubt report in a manner inconvenient for Germany. He should
therefore be sent to a concentration camp.

The Commander of the Army of Occupation in France was asked
to permit the entry of German Jews to join their relatives
in occupied France. He asked for instructions, and Eichmann
replied that Jews must not be permitted to evade the
deportations to the East; therefore the request should be
refused.

Benzler, the German delegate to the Serbian puppet
government asked for directives concerning the treatment of
the Serbian Jews. It was dangerous to keep them in camps
because of the threat of partisan attacks; while there was
shortage of trains for sending them East, to Poland or
Russia. In the margin of the letter you will find a
memorandum by Rademacher, director of the appropriate
section of the Foreign Ministry, containing these
words:"Eichmann schlaegt erschiessen vor" - (Eichmann
suggests shooting.) And when Rademacher wanted to confirm
this instruction, and asked Eichmann again on the telephone,
the Accused answered:"Shoot," and cut the conservation
short. Thus, with one word, he sentenced to death some ten
thousand Jews.

This was the man and this was his power.

On one occasion, the Foreign Ministry was not satisfied with
the negative reply of Eichmann's deputy Guenther, and
applied to him personally in the case of Andreas Michaelis,
who was married to a Swiss citizen. The Foreign Ministry
stated that, for urgent political reasons, the request to
save this Jew should be granted, in view of the importance
attached in his district to the woman's father because of
his favourable attitude to Germany. Eichmann's personal
answer was:

     "After re-examining the matter, I regretfully find
     that, because of considerations of principle, I am
     unable to permit the stateless Jew Michaelis to leave
     for Switzerland."

We shall present to the Court many such examples. We shall
prove that he dealt with both the community and the
individual, with every concentration of Jews and every
individual Jew with whom he came to be concerned - and
always with one goal: death.

When the Germans sought a man to serve as French Commissar
for Jewish Affairs in Laval's government, Eichmann was asked
about the candidacy of Du Paty de Clam. Eichmann's office
answered that the man seemed to him most suitable for the
job, since his father was the French officer who had once
arrested Dreyfus.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry sought to save thirty Norwegian
Jews born in Sweden, by granting them Swedish citizenship.
"They too are human, those unfortunates," the representative
of the Swedish Embassy in Oslo explained to the Gestapo.
Eichmann's answer was:

     "These efforts should be frustrated, and I intend to
     intern those Jews as soon as possible and without
     taking into consideration the framework of general
     Jewish activities."

When he learned that a Swiss priest had published a book
containing accounts of the fate of Jews in the French
deportation camps, he issued instructions that priests
should henceforth be kept away from them.

We shall show in this trial how much attention and care
Eichmann devoted to closing every breach through which it
might have been possible for any single Jew to slip through
the net. Typical was his handling of an urgent application
of the Foreign Ministry on 26 May 1943, with reference to
Mario Sasson of Zagreb, married to a Christian German woman
with three brothers serving in the German Army on the
eastern front, who had been sent to Auschwitz. In view of
the desperate situation of the woman, Eichmann was asked to
transfer Sasson to Germany and enable him to be reunited
with his family. Eichmann delayed his answer a long while,
until his office was in a position to reply that Sasson was
no longer alive.

When his envoy in France, Dannecker encountered difficulties
in getting trains for a transport to Auschwitz, a personal
application to Eichmann was enough to get the matter
arranged.

In 1944, what was being done to the Jews in the area of
German rule was already known in Europe. A number of Jews
imprisoned in the Westerbork camp in Holland, intended for
transport to Auschwitz, had received through the efforts of
relatives and friends in Switzerland, passports of Honduras,
Peru, San Salvador and other countries which gave them the
right to leave Europe. On the order of the Accused, these
passports were held up, but the question remained, how to
explain to the Swiss authorities the fact that registered
letters sent from that country had not reached their
destinations. The Swiss Post even demanded compensation. The
Accused issued an order: The German Post will notify the
Swiss Post that the letters were lost because of "enemy
action." The letters should not be returned, and no
compensation should be paid for their loss.

At times, we shall see the Accused and his Section even
stepping out of the framework of strict camouflage and
speaking frankly about the extermination, at least to the
extent of internal exchanges within government circles. To
the Assistant Director General of the Foreign Ministry
Luther, who had drawn his attention to complaints received
about steps taken against Jews, Eichmann's office replied:
"Where wood is being chopped, splinters fall. The enemy will
always try to exaggerate the measures used against him, in
order to awaken pity, and with the hope that they will be
discontinued. Ever since we have begun to intensify our
measures against the Jewish enemy, he has been trying, by
means of anonymous letters to practically all institutions
of the Reich, to escape the fate he deserves."

It is hardly necessary to mention that this "Jewish enemy"
was a defenceless civil population, including infants,
children, women and old men.

We shall see how Eichmann contended with German diplomats
themselves, and with various authorities in the occupied
zones, who did not cooperate or do everything he wanted. We
shall see his anger at Italian officials, who on many
occasions frustrated his plans; his wrath at the fact that
Denmark, through a noble and dangerous operation, had
smuggled her Jews to Sweden; his struggles with all the
governments of the occupied countries to make them cooperate
in his work. When the Pope himself interceded for the Jews
of Rome, who were arrested "practically underneath the
Vatican windows" (in the words of the German Foreign
Ministry), and Eichmann was asked to leave them in Italian
labour camps instead of deporting them, the request was
turned down - the Jews were sent to Auschwitz.

But no part of all this bloody work is so shocking and
terrible as that of the million Jewish children whose blood
was spilt like water throughout Europe. How they were
separated by force from their mothers who tried to hide
them, murdered and thrown out of trucks in the camps, torn
to pieces before their mothers' eyes, their little heads
smashed on the ground - these are the most terrible passages
of the tale of slaughter. You will hear evidence of actions
which the mind of man does not want to believe.

You will hear about little ones thrown out of windows of
hospitals when they failed to respond to orders that they
report for parade.

We shall present to you the instructions issued by Eichmann
and his office about the transport of children. One of these
said that the children were to be divided among the
transports intended for Auschwitz. Children of fourteen were
considered "independent" for purposes of transport to the
extermination camps.

Nor can we say who suffered the more terrible fate: those
who died or those who concealed themselves in every
conceivable hiding place and crevice, who lived in perpetual
terror of expulsion, who survived by grace of Christian
neighbours who agreed to hide them. Children would come home
from the schools and centres organized by the community to
find their parents' home was empty, for they had been sent
by some "Aktion" or "operation" to their deaths; and that
the apartment had in the meantime been occupied by others.

You will hear evidence of tender infants pressed by their
mothers to their bodies in the gas chambers so that they
were not immediately poisoned, until the executioners came
and threw them alive into the furnaces or the ready graves.

Those unhappy children who lived for years in fear of the
beating of a rifle butt on their door; who had been sent by
their parents to the woods in an attempt to save them, who
had been taught to choke their tears and sighs because a
weeping child would be shot on the spot; who had been
ordered to deny their origins and pretend to be Christian;
who saw their fathers being lashed with whips before their
eyes; in front of whom "discussions" would be carried on by
the German executioners as to who should be killed first -
the father or the son; who went to the open graves with
"Hear, O Israel" on their lips - these children and youths,
who despite all the desperate measures and concealments
would finally fall into the hands of their hunters, they are
the very soul and innermost core of the indictment. Those
Anne Franks and Justine Draengers and a million others,
those unplumbed treasures of radiant youth and hope for life
and achievement - they were the future of the Jewish people.
He that destroyed them was seeking to destroy the Jewish
people.

We shall present the pictures of some of those children,
swollen with hunger, frightened and crushed, with eyes
frozen with terror. We shall show you the photographs of
their starved bodies thrown into manure wagons; of the
helpless little ones on the threshold of the extermination
chambers. Perhaps we shall succeed in painting a pale and
inadequate picture of the calamity, wide as the ocean, that
overtook the House of Israel.

It is no wonder that the German Foreign Ministry passed on
for Eichmann's information the warning, broadcast by London
Radio that those responsible for the murders in Auschwitz
would be brought to judgement. Even on the verge of the
German collapse in April, 1945, in that atmosphere of the
twilight of the gods, when the Allies from the East, West
and South were closing in - Eichmann still told the German
Red Cross man that he could not agree to the more
humanitarian methods of dealing with Jews then being
considered by Himmler.

Is it any wonder, then, that one of those days he said to a
close assistant that he would be ready to commit suicide,
and that he would gladly leap into his grave, after he had
succeeded in exterminating five million Jews? In this too,
he maybe followed in the footsteps of his master, Hitler,
who also said that he would die happy with the knowledge of
Germany's great achievements and her contribution to
history.

Many millions of non-Jews also perished in the Great War. We
shall not attempt to decide here, at this trial, which of
the acts of hostility were "permissible" and which were
"forbidden" by the rules of war laid down by international
law. But we shall say, with all the emphasis in our command,
that the extermination of the Jewish people was not
connected with any military action. It cannot be compared
with the bombing of cities, submarine warfare or the like.
These were acts of war, and whether they were legitimate or
not - a question which we shall not attempt to decide here -
they were carried out in connection with, and in the process
of waging war. The extermination of the Jews had no
connection with the war effort of Germany and her allies.
The extermination was carried out at the time of the War,
when the battle smoke to some extent covered and concealed
the atrocities; but it was not done in pursuit of war, nor
was it impelled by war needs.

This was a separate and special action in itself, which
could be implemented more easily - more conveniently, with
less intervention from internal or external elements -
during the War since it was then possible to camouflage what
was done behind the cover of war effort.

And indeed, even in the Nazi documents dealing with the
extermination of the Jews and explaining the decision to
take this action, we shall nowhere find it stated that the
thing was being done in order to advance military
operations. Quite the contrary: if there was some Nazi
leader or their henchmen who wanted to postpone "the final
solution" for a while, they did so on the ground of the need
to exploit Jewish labour power in wartime. We shall present
proofs of this contention, and at this stage I shall mention
one piece of evidence: when the German Army invaded the
Soviet Union, instructions were given for the immediate
destruction of the Jews by the Special Operational Groups.
We shall see later, in the sequel, how these orders were
carried out. In Report No. 81 of the Einsatzgruppen dated 12
September 1941, we read the following:

     "One should note, as an exceptional phenomenon, the
     discovery of Jewish kolkhozes (collective farms).
     Between Krivoi Rog and Dnepropetrovsk there are Jewish
     kolkhozes in which not only the directors but also all
     the labour power, is Jewish. These are, as far as we
     can see, not very intelligent Jews, who have therefore
     been transferred by the political leadership to farm
     labour. Einsatzkommando 6 has decided, in this case,
     not to shoot these Jews, in order to enable them to
     continue working; and they contented themselves with
     liquidating the Jewish management and replacing it with
     Ukrainian ones."

We see that for the sake of the war effort the Special
Operational Groups departed from their orders and left the
Jews alive.

But this is not all. Means of transport were of decisive
importance to the German war effort, and especially when the
fronts expanded in the East, South and West. When the Army
needed every locomotive and railway car and there was a
severe shortage of transport, trains were still found for
shipments to the extermination centres. And while the front
was crying out for manpower, the units needed for the work
of annihilation were found.

The extermination programme was to have been kept secret for
a variety of reasons. First in order to delude the victims
themselves and make them believe that they were merely
brought to labour camps. We shall see later how many
"ingenious devices" the Nazis used to camouflage the gas
vans as dwelling-places, to erect a sham railway station in
Treblinka so that it would seem merely a transit point. And
even at the gates of Auschwitz they inscribed Arbeit macht
frei - that is, "Labour liberates." To facilitate the
camouflage, the prisoners in the camps were ordered to write
postcards to their relatives, saying that they were well;
and the postcards would arrive after their writers had long
been consumed by the flames. But the device, of course,
served the purpose of momentarily allaying apprehensions,
fostering illusions and dampening the will to rebel, since
it seemed to indicate that the deportees were still alive
and that the horrible stories about extermination were
perhaps not true.

Secondly, the camouflage was needed to hide what was
happening from the eyes of the world. That was why the
Fuehrer commanded that everything related to these
activities be kept a strict secret, that no one should know
more than what he had to know to do his job, and that the
necessary instructions should be transmitted only very close
to the actual implementation. The German military command
ordered that the expression "transportation to forced
labour" should be used instead of "transfer to the East" or
"deportation." In the Gestapo itself, an atmosphere of
secrecy and camouflage prevailed.

But the secret, of course, could not be kept inviolate very
long, especially after the circle of the conspirators, the
planners, executors and others concerned, widened, as the
circles of extermination spread ever wider. Not only did the
thousands in the Einsatzgruppen know about it, but also the
letter-carriers who had to return mail stamped "Address
Unknown," the clerks in the registration offices who had to
cross the deportees' names off their books, and the
thousands of soldiers on leave from all the fronts - so that
finally, one way or another, the knowledge reached many
millions of the German people. From Eichmann himself we
shall hear that at first there were instructions to use
camouflage (Tarnung), and that the fact of extermination was
kept a strict State secret. "I know only," he says, "that
towards the end, during 1943, 1944, 1945, to use a somewhat
exaggerated expression, the sparrows were already chirping
this from the rooftops."

In a long speech of encouragement and praise delivered by
Himmler to SS officers in Poznan on 4 October 1943, while
expressing approval and commendation for the courage,
strength of character and other precious attributes of his
men, he said:

     "Here I shall speak...with complete frankness about an
     especially difficult chapter. Among ourselves let us
     for once be quite frank, but in public we shall never
     speak of it...I mean the evacuation of the Jews the
     extermination of the Jewish people...Most of you will
     know what it means to have a hundred corpses lying
     together, five hundred corpses lying together or a
     thousand corpses lying together. To live through all
     this and at the same time...remain decent, that made us
     hard. That is a noteworthy page in our history, which
     has never been written, and which will never be
     written."

It was in such episodes as these that a German leader saw
the greatness of his people; yet it was something to be kept
hidden and secret. Since then the matter has been revealed.
What those villains then regarded with pride is now their
badge of eternal shame; and what they did in concealment, in
the hope that the greatest murder in history would remain
strictly secret - all this will be told here openly, will be
revealed and branded in the light of day.

And now let us trace the bloody work of Adolf Eichmann in
the various countries through which the Nazi rule passed
like a rod of wrath.

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