Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-051-03
Last-Modified: 1999/06/02

Q. Do you know anything special regarding the transport in
which Gisi Fleischmann travelled, some special instruction
which was given in respect to Gisi Fleischmann?

A. My "Aryanizer" wanted to know whether I was still alive,
or whether I had escaped.  Some days after this he came to
Sered; he came to the office and asked whether he could
speak to the Jew, Adolo Rosenberg.  There was a Jew there,
one of the clerks, named Weiss.  He extracted a card from
the card index and said to him: "No, he left already, with
the transport of 17 October."  To this he responded: "Thank
you very much, Heil Hitler!" and left the place.  This Weiss
told me, on the same day or the next day, that my
"Aryanizer" had been there, and that I should take care that
no one should see me.  Weiss mentioned to me that he had not
only said that I had left, but that there was a notation
there "R.U."

Q. What did this "R.U." stand for?

A. I asked Mr. Weiss the same question, and he replied
"Rueckkehr unerwuenscht" (his return is undesirable).

Q. Do you know whether there was a similar notation attached
to the file of Gisi Fleischmann?

A. There was a similar notation attached to two persons,
apart from me - to Gisi Fleischmann and to one other Jew
from Bratislava.

Q. I understand that Gisi Fleischmann left on the same
transport as your parents.  Did you get to know,
subsequently, what happened when the train reached
Auschwitz?

A. After the War, two women from that transport of 17
October returned to my town.  I asked them about my parents,
whether they had seen them.  One of them told me that my
father, of blessed memory, was very glad that I was not
there, for when the train arrived, they opened the carriages
and called out three names, that of Gisi Fleischmann, mine,
and one other.  My father said: "Thank God he is not here."
They told me that they took Gisi Fleischmann and the other
Jew away while the rest were still in the carriages.

Q. Please tell us one more thing - incidentally, did they
tell you afterwards what happened to Gisi Fleischmann, after
they removed her separately?

A. No.

Q. What kind of treatment did Brunner mete out in cases of
attempts to escape from the camp?

A. In cases of attempted escape, if someone ran away by
night, orders were given to kill him the following evening
by shooting.  Anyone who tried to escape had to traverse the
same route, and in the same manner, as that in which he had
attempted to escape, and he was killed on the very spot
where he was caught.

Q. Did you also see gypsies in the camp?

A. Yes.  Once - it was in the winter - they brought 20-25
gypsies to the camp.  I saw them at the entrance to the
camp; after that they took them to wash themselves.  In
front of the entrance to the wash-house, they told them to
get undressed.  It was snowing, it was winter, approximately
December or January.  They were standing there outside,
naked, and after they came back from the wash-house, the
camp barber was ordered to provide each one with a different
kind of haircut, in order to ridicule them.

Q. What was the fate of these gypsies?

A. On the first transport that left after this, they, too,
went off to the east, together with the Jews.

Q. Was this also on Brunner's orders?

A. Yes, yes.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, have you any questions to
the witness?

Dr. Servatius:  I have no questions.

Presiding Judge: Thank you, Mr. Rosenberg, you have
concluded your testimony.

State Attorney Bach:  With this I have completed the chapter
of Slovakia.  My colleague, Mr. Bar-Or, still wishes to
submit to the Court three documents, as supplements.

Presiding Judge: Is this also about Slovakia?

State Attorney Bach:  They refer to previous chapters.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  With the Court's permission, I have,
first of all, to supplement document T/864, which is the
record of the interrogation of Rahm of 25 March 1947.  At
the time, the Court requested me to secure additional copies
of the translation into German.  Your Honour will recall
that the record was drawn up in the Czech language.  We
submitted it in the original, together with a Hebrew
translation.  I have here a certified copy of the original,
translated into German, together with three additional
copies of the official translation into German.

Presiding Judge: Has Dr. Servatius received a copy of this?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Dr. Servatius already had a copy at
the time.

Dr. Servatius:  I presume that it is in the office upstairs.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  And now, with your permission, Your
Honours, I return to Prosecution document No. 351, which is
an affidavit of Advocate Asher Rafael Moissis, by means of
which I sought to submit the diary of the late Advocate
Yomtov Yekuel, which is attached to the affidavit.

Presiding Judge: What exhibit number was it given here?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  It has not yet been submitted, since
Defence Counsel did not have a German translation.  I
requested the Court to use its powers under Section 15, and
so far there has been no decision, since I was obliged to
furnish Defence Counsel with the translation. Yesterday I
delivered to Defence Counsel a literal translation of those
extracts from the diary on which I want to rely.  I hope
that he has meanwhile received it.  On the basis of my
arguments which are recorded in the record of proceedings, I
ask for a decision to admit the diary attached to the
affidavit of Advocate Moissis.  Your Honours will surely
remember that the original of that diary was written in the
Greek language, and we are now about to submit its Hebrew
translation.  I have brought with me today the Greek
original as well, authenticated by Moissis.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, have you now received a
translation of it?

Dr. Servatius:  I presume so.  I have before me now the
German text.

Presiding Judge: Do you have any comments to make?

Dr. Servatius:  I cannot examine it hurriedly.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  With your permission, I should like
to point out: I can see the document on the table of Defence
Counsel.  I think that he is mistaken.  We are talking of
document No. 351, and I see there a number consisting of
four digits.  That is not it.  I dictated this translation
to Dr. Servatius' secretary yesterday.  He has surely
received it from her.

Dr. Servatius:  Yes.  The mistake arises from the fact that
I have another document in front of me.  I have no objection
to the submission of this document.

Presiding Judge:

Decision No. 53

It is decided to admit in evidence the diary of Advocate
Yekuel, together with the affidavit of Advocate Moissis.  I
have marked it T/1134.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Thank you, Your Honour.

I shall permit myself to draw the Court's attention to a
number of extracts from the diary - not too many.  I shall
refer to the Hebrew translation and will quote the number
appearing at the head of each page.

On page 2, in the first excerpt, there is a reference to the
poor physical condition of the Jews after the Germans had
entered - this has already been mentioned by a witness on
this aspect.  Thereafter, the author of the diary describes
the growth of the special project for feeding the children,
which grew to two thousand children who received free meals
daily.

On page 3, paragraph 2, the reference is to the first year,
from April 1941 to July 1942, which passed without any anti-
Jewish laws.  The writer states that the German attitude was
without a plan and without an objective throughout the first
fifteen months.

On page 5, in the last passage from chapter 3, it describes
the publication of the first set of regulations of the
Military Government for Salonika-Aegeis, in July 1942.

On page 6 we find the events of that morning, in the early
hours of that Sabbath day, concerning which the Court has
heard evidence from another witness.  In passage 3 the Court
will find proof of how it happened, and pictures which have
come into our possession of the events in the square that
morning.  From this it is clear that, already at that time,
care was taken that the events should be photographed and
publicized.

I pass now to page 21 of the printed copy - passage 5.  Here
it refers to the delegation which was in Athens, and to the
fact that, at the same time, a high officer of the Gestapo
arrived in Salonika; he merely wanted information, mainly
precise news about the life of the community, about its
members and its institutions, and he flew back to Berlin
immediately.  Now it is of course clear to us that the
person concerned was Guenther, the permanent deputy of the
Accused.

I now go on to page 23 of the printed text.  Here, for the
first time in this diary, there appear the SS officers,
Wisliceny and Brunner.  Brunner is identified here as the
same Brunner who afterwards became known as the liquidator
of the Jewish Question in Vienna.  They remain there and
charged the community council with carrying out their
instructions, after making it known that it was not the
military government, but they, the appropriate department of
the SS, who would be responsible for operations in
connection with the Jews.  The second sentence on page 24
says this explicitly: "The implementation has been entrusted
to the department of the SS."

Further details will be found by the Court in passage number
4 on page 34.  Here we are also given figures of the Jews of
Salonika.  It speaks of 50,000 persons, of the conduct of
Brunner when he appeared before the leaders of the community
in the offices of the community council, in order to give
his instructions, of the feverish pace at which the
community council was charged to carry out these
instructions, and so forth.

I pass to page 28.  Here there is an interesting passage
dealing with the successful efforts made in order to arouse
the sympathy of the Christian public in that part of Greece
for the aid of their Jewish neighbours.  A most poignant
story in this context will be found by the Court at the foot
of page 29 and the top of page 30, that is to say, until the
end of the first passage.  It there mentions a Christian
woman who saw, for the first time, a Jewess wearing the
Jewish Star of David in the street.  She wanted to approach
her and console her.  And then she suddenly noticed the
writer's maid who did not seem to be Jewish, laughing.  She
was laughing from pleasure; the Christian woman thought she
was joking.  She turned to her and said: "Why are you
laughing, my daughter?  You should be participating in their
sorrow - they are also human beings as we are.  You know,
perhaps it might be our turn tomorrow."

On page 32, in passage 5, there is reference to the
introduction of regulations concerning the registration of
Jewish property, and to the feeling of relief that this step
gave to many Jews, as they believed that the SS sought
taxes, not human beings.  The illusion is revealed as such
afterwards, in passage 4 on page 33 of the diary.  And on
page 34 the diary breaks off in the middle of the word
"Jews" in the Greek language.  From the affidavit we know
that, after his flight to Athens (the diary was actually
written in Athens), the author was arrested, exiled to
Auschwitz, and there he met his death.

Presiding Judge: He was arrested in Athens, not Salonika?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  He escaped to Athens.  When the
Germans entered Athens, after the revolution in Italy, he
was arrested and sent to Auschwitz.  The Court will find the
details in the affidavit of Moissis.

@2With your permission I would crave your indulgence for one
more document which appertains to the chapter of the Jews of
Germany.  This document was in our possession, but we have
only now received verification of this document.  I refer to
Prosecution document No. 186.  This is part, actually the
last part, of the diary of a German poet named Jochen
Klepper.  Jochen Klepper was married to a Jewish widow, and,
while being married to her, took into his house the Jewish
daughter of his Jewish wife.  In November 1942 preparations
were made for more vigorous and extensive action against the
Jews of Germany, as the Court has meanwhile heard.  Jochen
Klepper was concerned about the fate of his Jewish wife and
daughter.  He applied to the Swedish authorities and secured
entry visas into Sweden.  And now he needed exit permits.
He had many acquaintances amongst the German officer corps.
He turned to his friend, the Minister of the Interior,
Frick.  He describes his meeting with Frick.  Frick says:

     "I cannot help you.  I can only advise you to go
     immediately, for we are on the eve of even more drastic
     measures.  There is one thing I can do.  I can see to
     it that, through the intervention of one of the
     department chiefs of the Ministry of the Interior, you
     will be granted an interview with Eichmann."

He relates that, due to the kind help of the Minister of the
Interior, he was, in fact, received in interview by the
Accused, and that the Accused wanted to go into the matter
and promised to do so.  He said to him: "I cannot promise
you, but I hope that it will work."  The next day he was
called again.  We do not know exactly what happened during
that conversation.  The diary concludes with the following
words: "I was in the offices of the Security Police -
tonight we shall be going, together, to our death."  That is
the end of the diary.  The difficulty was that, while this
part of the diary was known and published in Germany, in
various forms, in the past, it was not so easy to obtain
authentication of the author's handwriting.  We have now
obtained this authentication with the help of the German
authorities.

I request the Court to allow me, by virtue of its powers
under Section 15, to submit document No. 186.

Presiding Judge: Who authenticated the handwriting now?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  The authentication comes from the
Magistrate's Court in Berlin, dated 4.5.61.  This must be
read in conjunction with the letter of the publisher to the
State Attorney in Frankfurt, in which the publisher confirms
that he did, in fact, receive this handwritten document,
which has been verified here, from the sister of Jochen
Klepper.  A photostatic copy of that letter to the State
Attorney is also in our possession.

Judge Halevi:  Where did Klepper leave his diary?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Evidently with his acquaintances,
and it was handed over for publication by his acquaintances,
naturally after the War.  It seems to me that under Section
15 the Court can be satisfied in this way, if it so desires,
that we do, in fact, have before us the diary of Jochen
Klepper.

Presiding Judge: Was the diary published in book form?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  As far as I know it was published
twice.  That portion on which I rely, namely the last part
of the diary, was published in a book entitled Du Hast Mich
Heimgesucht Bei Nacht (I Had a Visitation from You by
Night), which appeared in Munich in 1960.  The diary of
Jochen Klepper, as a whole, appeared through another
publisher, "Die Deutsche Verlagsanstalt" in Stuttgart,
already before that.

Presiding Judge: You say that you are applying to submit the
copy of the publisher's letter which confirms that he
received the manuscript from the sister of this poet?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  That is correct - from Miss
Hildegard Klepper of Berlin.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, do you have any comments?

Dr. Servatius:  I have no objection.

Presiding Judge: Is the poet himself no longer alive?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  He committed suicide, together with
his wife and daughter, on 10 December 1942.

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor