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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts//Sessions/Session-075-02


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-075-02
Last-Modified: 1999/06/08

Presiding Judge: But you did not receive a copy of the
record?

Attorney General: No.

Presiding Judge: That is to say part has already been
published and the second part is still to be published?

Attorney General: The record of proceedings has been
published and we hope that the second part will also be
published.

Judge Raveh:   What is your position on the question of
authentication of this record?

Attorney General: That will be a problem. But the
publication is an official one; a publication of the
Communist Party in Hungary may be regarded as an official
publication. At any rate, let us cross this bridge when we
shall have the documents before us.

Presiding Judge: That is what I would say about this entire
part of your application.

Attorney General: We felt that we had no right to pass in
silence over the express wish of two members of the Court,
Your Honour.

Presiding Judge: You did not understand me. When all this
material, all these newspapers are before you - that will be
the time to deal with it.

Attorney General: I am bound to say what I have to say now,
before I conclude my case. And at the moment I am aware that
Mr. Levai is here.

Presiding Judge: This is the part I am speaking about.

Attorney General: If the evidence of Mr. Levai is heard, the
other part is no longer relevant.

Judge Halevi:  I do not understand: Mr. Levai is prepared to
confirm that the witness Dr. Tibor Ferencz...

Attorney General: ...had in his hands the record of his
conversation with Endre and Baky and read from it years ago
in Budapest. That is to say, there really was such a
document and he also remembers its contents.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I ask you
to reject the application to examine the witness. The Court
has been looking for the best evidence, but instead of the
best evidence which is apparently not forthcoming from the
Hungarian Government, a witness is produced who has written
a book called The Black Days of Hungary or something like
that. If all the authors of publications of this kind were
to be produced as witnesses, one would have to come to the
conclusion that such evidence is not trustworthy. The
witness himself did not hear, he heard what someone else
heard, and this is evidence which must be rejected.

Presiding Judge: I understood that he is able to testify
from his own knowledge to the fact that Eichmann was
mentioned at the trials of Endre and Baky.

Dr. Servatius:  I do not deny this, as I cannot assume that
such proceedings took place without Eichmann's name being
mentioned since, after all, he negotiated with the two
accused at that trial. But the important thing is what was
said there. Winkelmann testified that Endre took the
responsibility upon himself. The Attorney General proposes
better evidence than that by the witness - the publication
in a Hungarian newspaper, in the organ of the Hungarian
Communist Party. But that is not a publication by the Party;
it is an article by a correspondent of this newspaper so
that one cannot rely on what it says, particularly since the
Government has not so far forwarded the documents. I
therefore ask you to reject the application for the
examination of this witness.

Presiding Judge: Is this correct, Mr. Hausner, that the
article in the Hungarian newspaper is a correspondent's
report and not an official publication by the Party?

Attorney General: I have asked to clarify this.

Presiding Judge: Is it here, in the Courtroom?

Attorney General: It is in the building; we can look it up
at once.

Presiding Judge

Decision No. 82

We do not agree to taking the evidence of Dr. Levai at this
stage. We shall not accept the publications in the newspaper
of the Communist Party in Hungary without suitable
authentication. If the Attorney General will still be able
to obtain properly authenticated documents from Hungary, he
may apply to us again on this matter.

Attorney General: With the Court's permission, I turn to
another matter. We have here an expert opinion by Police
Captain Pinhas Dayan, the Court Interpreter and head of the
Bureau 06 team of translators concerning the terminology we
used in the translation of German documents. This will be
helpful to the Court in understanding our terminology in the
Hebrew translations both of T/37, the Statement of the
Accused, and of the other documents, attached to T/37. It is
certainly not binding, but it explains why we used a certain
translation for a certain passage. I ask the Court to accept
Pinhas Dayan's "Expert Opinion" as well as the dictionary,
or, as he calls it, the "Glossary" of Bureau 06.

Presiding Judge: Is the first document called "Expert
Opinion"?

Attorney General: Yes, the first document is an expert
opinion, duly signed in accordance with the Evidence
Ordinance (Amendment) Law.

Presiding Judge: Does this not refer only to T/37?

Attorney General: No, this refers to all the translations
originating with Bureau 06 which we have submitted.

[Dr. Servatius rises.]

The truth is that we did not give a copy of this to Counsel
for the Defence since we did not think that it would help
him much if he knew how we translate into Hebrew: "Referat",
"Dezernat", or "im Auftrag", but if he so wishes we shall of
course let him have this document as well.

Presiding Judge: I understand that this can serve only to
assist us. But of course, if we should find that, to the
best of our understanding, we do not agree with Mr. Dayan -
it does not bind us.

Attorney General: Of course. I only wanted to explain how we
arrived at this terminology, and Captain Dayan explains this
in his Expert Opinion.

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

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I have no
objection to the submission of the Expert Opinion; but as to
the Glossary - to be sure I am not asking for the
proceedings to be adjourned until I shall become proficient
in legal Hebrew, but nevertheless I ask to be given an
opportunity to consult an expert who could examine the
Glossary. At any rate I ask you not to admit it as a
document, except perhaps as an auxiliary instrument.

Presiding Judge

Decision No. 83

It is decided to accept the two documents as auxiliary
instruments only. We shall mark the Expert Opinion as B and
the Glossary as C.

Attorney General: Now, several documents, with the
permission of the Court.

Presiding Judge: What happened? Why?

Attorney General: As regards the Sassen Document, it has
become clear after examination that the decision of the
Court prevents us from submitting most of its substance. In
accordance with the guidance we received we consulted with
the Defence and after some discussion we reached an
agreement on the submission of a number of passages. To my
great regret these passages have shrunk to only five pages
out of 716 pages we had asked to submit.

Presiding Judge: This is apart from File 17 - to ease your
regret a little.

Attorney General: I spoke of 716 pages; together with File
17 that would make 790 pages. My regret is undiminished.
Part of these passages which we submit by mutual agreement,
were placed in a separate file because of the comments of
the Accused, now called File 17, in accordance with the
decision of the Court. Part of them follow from these
passages, because in them there are references to one or two
other passages and we agreed to include these as well. There
is one passage which we agreed to include because of a
remark showing that the Accused paid special attention to
it. That is to say we followed the spirit of the decision
rather that its letter, and we thus arrived at an agreement
about the submission of these passages.

Now I would ask the Court to guide me whether it wishes to
receive these passages as retyped by us or whether it
prefers to receive the original files with those passages
marked. I have both  - as the Court decides.

Presiding Judge: [After consultation]) We wish to receive
the passages you have extracted from the document.

Attorney General: At this stage I shall submit three copies
and after the Session we shall receive one more copy in
German from the simultaneous translator which we shall
submit to the Court to make up the set of four as usual. For
the purpose of checking the translation of the passages
which I shall read each member of the Court has a copy. I
now beg to direct your attention to some of these passages.

Presiding Judge: From these excerpts or from the file?

Attorney General: No, only from these excerpts. The file is
with the Court and we shall refer to it in our final summing-
up. But with the Court's permission, we would like at this
stage to direct special attention to some of these passages.

Presiding Judge: Let us mark this T/1393A.

Attorney General: Just for the Court's information,  T/1393A
does not contain all the passages which were admitted by the
Court's decision because quite a few of them (especially on
tape 19) - about which we happen to have a considerable
number of comments - are of no interest in our opinion, nor
in that of the Defence. There is nothing new in them. They
contain biographical data about an early period in the life
of the Accused in Austria, and we did not think it proper to
burden the Court with an additional load of documents. We
are presenting here what was found to be of interest to
either of the two parties.

Presiding Judge: Does Dr. Servatius confirm that these
passages were taken from the document with the consent of
both parties?

Dr. Servatius:  Yes, this was decided yesterday.

Attorney General: I shall direct the attention of the Court
not according to the sequence you have before you,
Honourable Judges - the logical sequence, so to speak, the
chronological one - but according to a different order,
which I shall explain at once and which is connected with
the various topics discussed. I shall mention the passages
in accordance with "Hagag pages." You will find them marked
with "H" and a number. This is the page number given by
Superintendent Hagag, the consecutive serial number for the
Sassen Document.

     "Question  In various publications it is expressly
     stated that there were two groups within the SS with
     regard to the persecution of the Jews. One group was
     represented by Himmler together with Schellenberg,
     while the others were those who wanted some kind of
     compromise solution. And then there was the other
     group, namely yourself, Mueller and Kaltenbrunner....
     
     "Reply of the Accused:  This is complete nonsense. I
     have to admit that there were two groups within the SS,
     if you like - even three groups, namely: in the
     Security Police there was (here there is a break in the
     original text), Mueller, the Head of the Security
     Police Heydrich and the Reichsfuehrer. The second group
     was actually composed only of Schellenberg. To what
     extent Schellenberg was perhaps also thinking of
     another solution - this was never expressed to me. Nor
     did I ever hear anything like this, or to what extent
     he activated the Jews for his own purposes in the
     intelligence service. He did use them quite a lot in
     the intelligence service and we, on our part, did not
     put obstacles in his way. The third group were those
     nicknamed the 'parlor officers' of the SS who wore
     white gloves so to speak, and who did not want to be
     involved in the matter. Wolff could be regarded as one
     of these and I had a clash with him once. Yes, I
     clashed with him so badly that the matter went all the
     way to the Reichsfuehrer, because I wanted to challenge
     Wolff to a duel, but I was not permitted to do so.
     
     "Question  Why did you want to challenge him to a duel?
     
     "Reply  Because he made a pig of me over the telephone,
     although I was right, because in one particular case I
     acted exactly in accordance with the Reichsfuehrer's
     instructions. But he wanted to give that Jew an
     exceptional status, an exceptional status which could
     not be obtained under any circumstance, because there
     was nothing upon which to base the granting of special
     status in this case. Of course, personally, I should
     gladly have agreed because, with such masses, the
     individual no longer counted, but I was not free to do
     this because of my lawyers, who had to supervise these
     instructions meticulously. And I was not free to do it
     vis-a-vis my Hauptsturmfuehrers, who were abroad and
     who also had to observe these instructions.
     
     "If I had made an exception not covered by the orders
     of the Reichsfuehrer such a decision would have caused
     an avalanche and, as a result, I would have an
     avalanche of troubles around me in no time, aided by
     many German officers which were in any case lying in
     wait to intervene, and aided by the efforts of Jewry
     itself. It would all have turned out into a pigsty and
     no pig could have found its way about any more.  In the
     end the result would even have been deportations of
     Jews who were not  supposed to have been deported under
     the regulations. But once carried out, such
     deportations could have led to foreign policy
     complications, to difficulties for the Reich
     leadership, as actually happened several times. But
     here it would have been on a global scale, the whole
     thing would have blown up and turned into a first-class
     disgrace - not for me but for the central authorities
     of the Reich.

     "This is why I had to take a contrary stand in this
     case; and when he told me that I was an SS-
     Obersturmbannfuehrer but he (Wolff) was an SS-
     Obergruppenfuehrer, I replied: 'Indeed, I know,
     Obergruppenfuehrer, but may I point out that you are
     talking to the Secret State Police, to a Head of
     Section of the Secret Police, to Obersturmbannfuehrer
     Eichmann.'
     
     "Question  About when was this?
     
     "Answer  This must have been about 1943."

The next passage is on page 223. Preceding the passage I
shall read out there is a discussion about whether it was
possible that Krumey and Wisliceny circumvented Eichmann's
instructions and in this connection the trial of Krumey,
which was then, and still is, pending in Frankfurt, is
mentioned. And this is what the Accused said:

     "Answer  If this was as you have just described it and
     if indeed the combination of events was like this -
     then I must say: theoretically, if there was a
     conspiracy between Wisliceny and Krumey at that
     time..."

Presiding Judge: Here it says: Grumey.


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