Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-063-06
Last-Modified: 1999/06/07

Attorney General: With regard to reports on cases of death
in the camps, an instruction was issued by Gluecks, in our
document No. 416.  Gluecks was an SS Brigadefuehrer and a
Major General of the Waffen-SS, and he was the chief
official in charge of supervision of the concentration
camps.  On 21 November 1942, he issued new orders relating
to matters concerning cases of death.  This is a sequel to
the document we have just submitted - as the reference
shows.  Thus, in paragraph 1: "Cases of death of Jews and
Jewesses must be reported in a collective list.  It must
mention the name, place and date of birth, and the
nationality."

Presiding Judge: To be exact: In future, reports must be
submitted about them in a collective list only.

Attorney General: And it says: "In order to simplify the
procedure."

Presiding Judge: In other words - one form.

Attorney General: The court will notice immediately that the
procedure is to make the reporting easier.  But the consent
of the dispatching authority is always required.  With
regard to protective detainees sent by IVC2 or by Department
V, a special report must be submitted.  That is to say, all
these criminals, anti-social elements, homosexuals, etc. -
reporting about them has a special value.  All the other
Jews who were dispatched are to be included in collective
reports on one form.

Presiding Judge: The one form could be for the sake of
secrecy.

Attorney General: Your Honour, we shall see right away -
there are developments concerning these documents.

Presiding Judge: Please continue.

Attorney General: Again it mentions, in the paragraph before
the last, that there is no alteration in the order that a
report is always to be sent to the dispatching authority
about each case of death. And, at the end, it says:

     "Camp commanders are responsible to the Reichsfuehrer-
     SS and to me personally that, despite this easing up in
     the reports, nobody in the camp is to forget that there
     is responsibility even for the life of every criminal."

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1279.

Attorney General: The Court will find the Accused's reaction
to this document on pages 3495-3496 of his statement.

Directions for a meeting at which procedural matters in
concentration camps were dealt with are contained in our
document No. 175.  With regard to cases of death - this
appears on the second page - there are special instructions
for Jews and for Poles, and it says the following: In the
case of Jews, the reporting is to be done only by lists.
The monthly notifications about Jews who died are to be
sent, according to the order of 21 November 1942, either to
the RSHA or the RKPA (Reichs-Kriminalpolizeiamt) (Reich
Criminal Police Office).  The documents must indicate
precisely whether the transport referred to is of transport
Jews (IVB4a) or of Jews who are protective detainees (IVC2).
With regard to the latter, their death must be marked in
red.  This already bears the signature of Rudolf Hoess who
was, at that time, the Chief Officer in charge of
concentration camps.

Presiding Judge: What is D1?

Attorney General: This was in the Economic-Administrative
Head Office.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge.  With
regard to this point on page two, about the transfer of
prisoners, may I be permitted to read one point into the
record: "With regard to applications for the transfer into
other camps, especially to Grade III" - it says here - "to
the Head Office for Reich Security and to the Reich Criminal
Police Office - there is no such thing.  Orders for
transfers will, in principle, be given only from here."
This means that the reference was to "here" - to the
Department D1 of the Economic-Administrative Head Office.
This relates to the transfers that have already been
discussed here, and of which Eichmann has been accused.

Judge Halevi:  Dr. Servatius, perhaps you know the meaning
of "vor allen Dingen - Stufe III"?

Attorney General: I also don't know the meaning of the words
"Especially Grade III" - I would first have to go into this.

Attorney General: Grade III, to our knowledge, were the
worst camps, of the type of Mauthausen and others.  If I
may, I would draw attention to two items.  In the second
paragraph, in the same section which Defence Counsel
mentioned, it says there is no necessity to report about the
transfer of Russians and Jews from camp to camp, and, at any
rate, this does not affect the basic directive that dispatch
to the camps was carried out in accordance with the same
directive which I have already submitted.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1280.

I should like to clarify something once again.  Even at this
advanced stage, a basic matter in the office structure is
not clear to me.  Was the Economic-Administrative Head
Office  part of the Head Office for Reich Security?

Attorney General: No, it was one of the twelve main offices
of the SS.  One of them was the Head Office for Reich
Security, one was the Economic-Administrative Head Office,
and there were others for historical research, and so on.
We have a list of all twelve.

Presiding Judge: Have you submitted it?

Attorney General: I think we have, but I will check that.
There were twelve of these offices.  At any rate, from a
formal point of view, Pohl had the same status as Heydrich
and Kaltenbrunner.  Both of them were subordinates of
Himmler, the head of the SS.

Presiding Judge: This marking is misleading.

Attorney General: Our following document deals with a number
of concentration camps - this is document No. 558.  On 5
April 1944, Pohl reports to the Reichsfuehrer that the total
number of concentration camps had now reached twenty; the
number of labour camps, in the localities listed here,
totalled 165.  And he adds in his own handwriting: "In
Eicke's time, there were only six, now there are 185!"  What
appears here as page two is a shorthand note for the reply
of the Reichsfuehrer.  We have not managed to decipher all
of it, since this is a system of shorthand which is not
familiar to the people we consulted.  But, to the extent
that we have succeed in deciphering it, Himmler expresses
his full satisfaction at the fact that the number of
concentration camps has risen at such a rate under Pohl's
administration.

Judge Halevi:  When was Eicke replaced?

Attorney General: Eicke was the notorious commander of
Dachau who subsequently set up a school there for all the
criminals.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1281.
Pardon me, who has written the answer with an expression of
thanks for this report?

Attorney General: That is Himmler - it says so on top.

Presiding Judge: This is not Himmler's signature.

Attorney General: This is only a shorthand draft.

Presiding Judge: After that, there is another letter - or
perhaps it was included by mistake?

Attorney General: I do not have it - perhaps I may see what
the Court is referring to.  [After examining the document]
There is a reply in the original which I do not have, but I
have the passage in shorthand.  Himmler replies    to Pohl

Presiding Judge: Is that Himmler's signature?

Attorney General: Yes, I believe it is.

Presiding Judge: No.

Attorney General: This is in Himmler's name - apparently
someone replied.  I cannot say for certain; I think that
this is not Himmler's signature, as I have seen it in other
documents.  At any rate, there is, here, an expression of
thanks for the letter of 5 May with the list of
concentration camps "and from this sample, it is possible to
see how our affairs have expanded, and you are not the last
of those to whose credit it will be recorded."  This was not
in my possession; I only had the first two pages, and,
apparently, this page was not photographed in the
laboratories of Bureau 06, so that I was not aware of it.

Presiding Judge: I have separated it and will give it a
separate number.  I am marking it T/1282.

Perhaps you would take it back and make two more copies.
Please also make a copy for Dr. Servatius.

Attorney General: Yes, certainly.  Prosecution document No.
1252 is a document which was submitted at Nuremberg Trial
No. 6, testifying to the instantaneous effectiveness of the
Zyklon gas, which immediately affects the breathing and
which directly causes death.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1283.

Judge Halevi:  But this was after the War?

Attorney General: This was an expert opinion on the
effectiveness of those gases, which was used in the
Nuremberg Trials of war criminals.

Attorney General: The next document is likely to give rise
to some difficulty and, accordingly, I prefer to make my
remarks at once.  It was submitted to the Accused and is
before you as T/37(313).  It is an article published in the
Romanian newspaper Jurnalul de Dimineata, after the
liberation of Romania, when the Romanians published several
documents from the period of Nazi influence over their
country.  These are the minutes of a meeting that took place
in Berlin on 26 and 28 September, 1942, on the subject of
the deportation of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement and
the Jews of Romania.  They deal with the number of Jews, the
number of trains, the destinations of these trains -
Treblinka, Belzec, Lublin, Chelmno and Sobibor - and it is
important for us.  We procured this document, which was
apparently submitted by a claimant for reparations from the
German authorities; it is authenticated by the German
consulate in New York, but this is the only source of
verification that we have.

Presiding Judge: And this paper is not an official
publication?

Attorney General: I cannot say that it is official.

Presiding Judge: This is apparently a Sunday newspaper; I do
not know Romanian, but I gather that from the name.

Attorney General: I think it is a morning paper - if my
guess is correct.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Rosen, perhaps you can help us?

Translator Rosen  It is a morning paper; my colleague in the
French section confirms to me that it is a morning paper.

Attorney General: This is a translation into French.  There
is also a Hebrew translation, if that would facilitate
matters.

Presiding Judge: Were you not able to get in touch with the
editors of this paper?

Attorney General: All I can say to the Court is that, so
far, our attempts have not proved successful.

Presiding Judge: Did you do that?

Attorney General: Yes.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, what do you have to say
about this document?

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I have no
formal objection; the probative value of what it says and
its assessment - that is another matter.

Presiding Judge:

Decision No. 69

We allow the submission of this document, which purports to
be the minutes of a meeting that took place in Berlin on 26
and 28 September, 1942.  Defence Counsel does not object to
its being submitted.

The document will be marked T/1284.

Attorney General: Before I address myself to an analysis of
the document, may I say that the Accused reacted to it on
page 3539 and the following pages, and on page 3548 he was
asked about the person of Klemm, who signs this report or
record of proceedings, and he says that Klemm's name is
known to him - Klemm and the railways counsellor Stange were
the ones who had consulted together over the transport
plans.  Thereafter, he was asked: "Did your man Novak
participate in these meetings?"  And he replied: "Novak,
yes, yes" (on page 3548).

What is this document, which was the record of a meeting
drawn up by the Reich railways department, and in which,
according to the Accused's statement, Novak participated, at
least in meetings of this kind?

Judge Halevi:  I request a Hebrew translation - it is
difficult to read this.

Attorney General: [handing over the document] The meeting
took place on 26 and 28 September, 1942, and refers to the
deportation of 600,000 Jews from the Generalgouvernement,
and 200,000 Jews from Romania into the area of the
Generalgouvernement.  With regard to the deportation of the
Polish Jews it was decided: Two trains would run daily from
the Warsaw district to Treblinka, one train per day from the
district of Radom to Treblinka, one train per day from the
district of Cracow to Belzec, and one train per day from the
district of Lvov to Belzec; these would be carried out in
two hundred freight cars.  After the completion of the
construction of the railway line Lublin-Chelmno, apparently
on 1 November 1942, additional urgent deportations will have
to be carried out, that is to say: one train per day from
the district of Radom to Sobibor, one train per day from the
district of Lublin-North to Belzec, and one train per day
from the district of Lublin-Central to Sobibor, as far as
would be possible, and, to the extent that it would be
possible, to supply the required number of freight cars.
This was as far as the deportations of the 600,000 Jews of
the Generalgouvernement were concerned.

With regard to the deportation of the Jews of Romania, the
Romanian railway administration announced on the day of the
meeting that for budgetary reasons, it was unable to
participate, and it requested the postponement of the
meeting.  The meeting, which took place without
representatives of the Romanian railways, came to the
following conclusions: The station for the departure of the
special trains in Romania would be Adjud on the Ploiesti-
Czernowitz line, the frontier station for the area of the
Generalgouvernement would be Sniatyn, and the terminal
station would be Belzec.  It was intended that, every other
day, a special train would depart, consisting of fifty
freight cars, and one passenger coach for accompanying
personnel, for about two thousand people.  The general
representative of the German Reich railways in Bucharest was
requested to come to an agreement with the Romanian
railways, under which they would supply the freight cars for
carrying out the deportations, and this would apparently be
a little later than had been planned.  The delivery of the
special trains by the C.F.R. (the Romanian railways) would
take place on time on transport days in co-ordination with
the Reich railway office in Cracow, so that they could be
sent from Sniatyn to Lvov at 1.03 hours.  It also states
that, in order that there should not be any movement of
empty cars, use should be made of closed German cars that
will be in Romania or will arrive there.

Document No. 1540 is a notice which von Thadden sent on   2
May 1944, to Eichmann, containing a copy of a notification
which the German Foreign Ministry had received from the
embassy in Istanbul.  In Istanbul, information was spread -
and the embassy writes that in the Palestine Post of 12, 13
and 15 March, and in the Egyptian Gazette of   22 March,
items were published about atrocities in Poland, about
labour camps which were being liquidated, about the fact
that all the Jewish children in Poland had been killed, that
the concentration camp in Auschwitz was a German death
factory - the largest - to which there had been brought
sixty thousand Jews from Greece, fifty thousand Jews from
Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, and sixty thousand from
Germany.  Von Thadden sends this notice to Eichmann for his
information.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1285.

Attorney General: Through the courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
of today - then the Palestine Post  - I am in a position to
submit to the Court two copies of the paper of 13 March
1944, which appears to contain the news item that the German
representatives in Istanbul conveyed to the Accused.  It
says here: "All Polish Jewish children killed."  This is the
item that the Palestine Post published from London, that the
Polish Government-in-exile accused the Germans of the murder
of all the Jewish children in occupied Poland.

Presiding Judge: Have you marked that here?

Attorney General: It has been marked in a frame.

Presiding Judge: This copy will be marked T/1286.

What about the other copy?

Attorney General: There are two copies of the same issue, I
believe.

Presiding Judge: No, one is dated 13th and one 15th March.

Attorney General: In the second copy, there is also the same
item: "Massacres stepped up."  I have also marked this one
with a frame.

Presiding Judge: This copy will be marked T/1287.

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