Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-076-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/08

Session No. 76
7 Tammuz 5721 (21 June 1961)

Presiding Judge: I declare the seventy-sixth Session of the
trial open.

The Accused will continue his testimony.  I remind you that
you are still under oath.  You may be seated, and Dr.
Servatius will continue his questions.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge,
yesterday's Session dealt with document No. 36 - T/99 -
which concerns the work plan of the Head Office for Reich
Security, about which I still have some questions to put to
the Accused as witness.

Presiding Judge: Please proceed.

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, page 8 lists Department II,
organization and legal matters, under Oberregierungsrat
(Senior Government Councillor) Dr. Bilfinger.  Did you work
together with this Department?

Accused:  Yes.  This Group IIA, that is to say the Group of
Department II of the Head Office for Reich Security, dealt
with all legal matters.  And Sturmbannfuehrer Suhr, who is
mentioned in IIA3 - he came to my Section, where he retained
far-reaching independence, and always had the possibility to
obtain his orders and guidelines by discussion with the then
chief of Department IV.  And Sturmbannfuehrer Regierungsrat
Neifeind, mentioned in Section IIA2 on page 8 - he remained
in Group IIA and, as affirmed repeatedly in the documents,
appeared at ministerial conferences and discussions as
representative of the Head Office for Reich Security,
together with other representatives of the Head Office for
Reich Security.

Dr. Servatius:  The Accused has mentioned an eleventh
ordinance to the Reichsfuehrergesetz (the Fuehrer-of-the-
Reich Law), which dealt with the subject of citizenship.  I
shall come back to this ordinance, which played an important
role.

Presiding Judge: This was submitted to us by Mr. Bar-Or,
isn't that so?

Dr. Servatius:   Yes.

Witness, on page 10, there is mention of a Group IID for
technical affairs, under Sturmbannfuehrer Rauff.  Did that
group concern itself with Jewish affairs?

Accused:  My Section did not have to deal with this group,
but I have seen here a whole set of documents, which were
shown to me, in which this technical group, under
Obersturmbannfuehrer Rauff, played a great role, namely with
respect to the construction of gas vehicles, including their
maintenance. I am of the opinion and convinced that it must
have been this group that was somehow connected with the
Wetzel gas affair.

Dr. Servatius:  Then, on page 12, there is mention of Group
IIIA, relating to the question of the structure of the
judicial order in the Reich.

What did this division have to do with Jewish affairs?

Accused:  Group IIIA was an important group in the Head
Office for Reich Security; it was subordinate to the office
carrying the address "Dolendorf," and - insofar as this
group was concerned - it had a decisive influence with
respect to legal matters, which here means also
constitutional and administrative matters, including
responsibility for all matters of law in those subjects for
which IIA2 - which as we have just seen was Bilfinger's
Department, IIA2 Staedtchen of which Neifeind was the
official in charge - was not responsible.  Thus, for
example, Group IIIA was responsible for the abrogation of
German citizenship, and for similar legal questions of
principle.  It was here that the responsibility lay, and we
also see from the documents that this group influenced the
matter with Daehns, while I may say, as a matter of
principle, that Department IV, as a pure Secret State Police
Office, did not have the task of adjudication, for which the
competence rested with other authorities, both in the Head
Office for Reich Security, as well as in other central
authorities.

Dr. Servatius:  On the same page 12, at the bottom, mention
is made of Group IIB, Nationality, under SS Sturmbannfuehrer
Dr. Ehlich, and on the following page, 13, of the Sections
IIIB3, National Health, and IIIB4, Immigration and
Resettlement.

Were these offices active in Jewish affairs?

Accused:  These sections were very substantially active,
not only with regard to questions of Jewish affairs, but
also generally in matters concerning the evacuation from the
new German eastern provinces in 1939.  Section IIIB3, Race
and National Health was mainly concerned with matters
referring to persons of mixed parentage, mixed marriages,
the matter of definition, and here the Section and, one may
say, the group, were jointly responsible for the definition
of, for example, "who is considered to be of mixed parentage
of the first degree?," "who of the second degree?" and,
perhaps even more importantly, "what is to be done about
it?"  These findings, which I have described earlier, were
subsequently the basis for the State Police work of
Department IV.  Of course, this Department, and each Group,
did not arrive at these findings alone.  In each case, in
inter-ministerial discussions, it represented the position
of the Head Office for Reich Security, that is to say that
of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, or of the
Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of German Police, while others
represented, in the same context, the Minister of the
Interior, the Minister of Economics, and so on.

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, under IIB4...

Presiding Judge: Have you finished your answer to the
previous question?

Accused:  With regard to this Department, yes.

Dr. Servatius:  He will probably also refer to the same
matter, on which I am about to question him now.

Witness, you have already mentioned the Section "Immigration
and Resettlement."  Now we have here, in the last column,
"Participation IIID and IV, Regierungsrat Dr. Mueller."

What was the connection with your Section, and on what was
it based?

Accused:  On that I may first observe that, I have not yet
referred to Section IIIB4.  So far, I have exclusively
referred only to Section IIB3, "Race and National Health."
I now turn to Section IIIB4, "Immigration and Resettlement."
This Section came into being when the Reichsfuehrer-SS and
Chief of the German Police was appointed by decree as Reich
Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom.  Now,
in this matter, there subsequently arose untoward situations
as a result of the fact that, when the first orders were
issued, the local authorities - that is the Gauleiters,
Reich Governors, Senior SS and Police Leaders, Inspectors of
the Security Police, the SD and all other state authorities
- believed that they had to push through, on their own,
these orders from Hitler to the degree of 0.0 (zero point
nothing).  This resulted in centralization and in the
setting up, locally, of the so-called Central Offices for
Relocation, which were under the leadership of the
appropriate Senior SS and Police Leaders, and by whose
orders these matters were taken care of by the Inspector of
the Security Police and the SD.  These Central Offices for
Relocation were under the authority of Group IIIB, and here,
specifically, Section IIIB4 dealt with resettlement, as is,
in fact, indicated by its name.  This matter is described
more clearly, more explicitly and clearly, by the testimony
of witness Krumey who, indeed, directed such a Central
Office for Relocation in Litzmannstadt (Lodz).  The
testimony is before us, and where the factual part of the
subject is concerned, I beg to refer to it later.

Now to the question of the nature of the connection between
Department IV and this Section, what was the nature of the
participation, I have to say the following: First of all,
the document describing the official competence of the
Higher SS Police Leaders has already been discussed here.
Taking this as a starting point, and having seen that all
matters falling within the authority of a Higher SS and
Police Leader were ordered by him as the permanent
representative of the Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of German
Police, and when one considers, on the other hand, that in
the year 1939 the various Landraete (district commissioners)
were concerned with the evacuation of the Poles and Jews
from the new German Occupied Eastern Territories; and, on
the other hand, when one has seen that the preparation of
train schedules was the task of the authorities on the spot,
and that here, too, since the establishment of the Central
Offices for Relocation, the purely technical handling of the
transports had become centralized through the appointment,
or setting up, of a special Section in Department IV of the
Head Office for Reich Security under my leadership, then the
participation, that is to say, these Central Offices for
Relocation, had to take care of the regulation locally,
through their close connection with those who carried out
the detailed work - the district commissioners' offices, the
local police authorities, the gendarmerie stations, etc. -
on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by constant contact
with my special Section, which, after all, had to provide
them with the train schedules, and they had to provide some
orderly procedure, for one thing in the spirit of the orders
issued, and for another a procedure which, it cannot be
denied, also all at once benefited in some manner, if one
may use this term, also those who were to be resettled.

Presiding Judge: I should like to tell the Accused that
style is a personal matter, but if we are to understand him
- and I am also speaking on behalf of my fellow Judges - he
must use shorter sentences, otherwise, to our regret, we
shall not be able to understand the matter.  It is clear to
us that, in German, the predicate comes at the end of the
sentence, but it takes too long to reach the predicate.

Dr. Servatius:  I must instruct the Accused in this matter.
I have, indeed, already earlier apprised him of this, but it
seems to have escaped him in the flow of words.

On page 18 - no, it is not on page 18, it is on page 17 -
there is -  we have already spoken of Department IV in
general - the Group IVB of the old order - matters of the
Protectorate and the Generalgouvernement.

Were these offices, which dealt with Czechs and Poles, also
concerned with or connected with Jews?

Accused:  Since these two sections were responsible on a
regional basis, they had to be involved in matters
concerning Czech or Polish Jews.

Dr. Servatius:  On page 21, there appears Department VII
"Research and Evaluation of Ideologies," under Dr. Six.

Did you co-operate with this office?  How was this
collaboration carried out?

Accused:  Department VII was in charge of scientific
research of the enemy.  It was divided into several
sections.  Group VIIB, specifically Section VIIB1, dealt
with Freemasonry and Judaism.  Whenever there was a need to
obtain an expert opinion - be it on the nature of the
Sephardim, the Ashkenazim, or similar problems - then the
opinion of Department VII was decisive when the Head of
Office gave its instructions on the recommendation of
Department VII.

Dr. Servatius:  Is it, then, to be understood that the
statements which you find in the documents on the situation
of the Jews in Armenia and Persia - that these were not the
results of your own research, but that they were findings
which you obtained?

Accused:  Yes.   All that looks like scientific work, so to
speak, cannot have come from Department IV or Section IVB4.
To complete the answer to this question, I should like to
say that, to be more precise, it could also happen that, for
example, instead of submitting a scientific opinion,
Department VII sent in the Encyclopedia Judaica, indicating
page so-and-so, and then left Department IV to decide how
much to use of this.

Dr. Servatius:  One concluding question with regard to page
23, where it says: "Subordinate to the Chief of the Security
Police and the SD are" - and now there follows a list of
offices.  How did this affect your office, if you wish to
make a statement on this?

Accused:  Of all these departments and sections, actually
only one was effectual, namely the judicial powers of the SS
and Police under Sturmbannfuehrer Regierungsrat Dr. Haensch.
This is because this SS and police jurisdiction, which was
in a certain sense in-house, was, if one may express it for
once vulgarly, always a pain in the neck.  And here one had
to take special care, particularly with regard to observing
the rules for classified material, which were all secret
Reich matters, etc.

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, you must make your statements
brief.  It is more useful if you speak briefly, so that it
may be translated correctly, instead of resorting to long
sentences.  That makes the work of the interpreters more
difficult, and also the understanding.

Accused:  Very well.

Dr. Servatius:  I now come to exhibit T/104, document No.
51, which is another plan of the office work distribution,
of 1 October 1943.  On page 2, there appears, for the first
time, the Attache Group.  Page 2 says on that: Immediately
subordinate to the Chief of the Security Police is - on top
- the Second Attache Group under SS Sturmbannfuehrer Dr.
Ploetz.

On page 5, one finds Department IV again, and I would like
to call attention to the fact that, there, Huppenkothen is
the deputy who is being called as a witness, and apparently
remembers less now than previously.  I point out further
that there is, at the bottom, a secret file registration of
Department IV which exists side by side with the
registration at the various sections.  This might be of some
importance for the examination of the documents.

On page 7, there appears IVB4 and affairs of Jews, of
evacuation, and now the Department is enlarged by the
inclusion of the sequestration of property of enemies of the
nation and state, and of the denial of German Reich
citizenship.

Witness, would you care to make a statement as to how this
enlargement of the Department came about, and what this
signified?

Accused:  This was, no doubt, a result of the initiative of
Department I, I believe of the Ministry of the Interior
under Hering and Globke, regarding the endeavours to deny
German citizenship and sequestration of property of Jews, as
proved unequivocally by a document which is before us.

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, you already said that Regierungsrat
Suhr later came to your Department.  Did he bring with him
these two new matters of administration, the sequestration
of property and the denial [of citizenship]?

Accused:  The two subjects of denial of citizenship and
sequestration of property had already been dealt with for
some time by Department II, but on a case-by-case basis.
Suhr dealt, at the time, not with these matters, but with
jurisdictional and similar matters, but was assigned to my
Department under the new plan for the distribution of
official business, or perhaps a little earlier, and, in any
case, after the eleventh ordinance, as a jurist charged with
dealing with these two matters independently.

Dr. Servatius:  I may perhaps briefly point out that, on
page 7 the position of Chief of Group IVB, is unoccupied.
Witness, why was this position not filled, why didn't you
get it?

Accused:  I was originally, after I was transferred against
my will to the Head Office for Reich Security in 1939...

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, if you would please formulate your
statements more briefly, would you please say only that you
were passed over, or however it happened, without referring
to the entire history.

Accused:  For one thing, my willingness to take decisions
and my activity at that time, was certainly not as it is
presented today.

Dr. Servatius:  Thank you.  The impression was then created
that the Accused had a special service position of his own,
separate from the large service station in the Prinz
Albrechtstrasse.

Witness, could you provide from the office work plan, an
indication where these offices were, and whether many of the
offices existed, in addition to the central office?

Accused:  Yes, Sir.  On pages 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, in the
last column, under telephone number, it says "central
internal post."  The initial letters - M - Meinekestrasse, K
- Kurfuerstendamm, there one can see where these different
offices - Lu, probably Lutherstrasse - were located, and one
sees that he did not have any special position there.  This
thereby clarifies this issue.

I now come to exhibit T/98, document No. 554.  This is an
instruction for the Higher SS and Police Leaders, of 8
December 1939.  Under numbers 4-6, the status of these
Police Leaders is laid down.  It says here in 4: " In his
field of competence, he represents the Reichsfuehrer for all
tasks."

In No. 5, it says: "He leads in the implementation of the
tasks."  And in No. 6: "He assumes command in all joint
operations."

Witness, could you, in view of this order, take measures in
Hungary against the instructions of the Higher SS and Police
Leader and of the Senior Commander of the Security Police?

Accused:  No.

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