Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-077-03
Last-Modified: 1999/06/08

Dr. Servatius:  The next exhibit is T/676, document No. 728.
This is the record of a consultation on 15 January 1941,
concerning the regulation of conditions of nationality in
the Greater German Reich.  This is a fundamental discussion
which took place in the Reich Ministry of the Interior
Department I.  The list of those present is on page 9,
before the draft of the regulation.  There are four
representatives of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and
two representatives of the Head Office for Reich Security,
the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Justice, Ministry of
Finance, all authoritative bodies are represented.  Page 2
clearly shows the purpose of this discussion, namely
deprivation of nationality, with the resultant consequences;
at the end of this page, it says: "The Reich Ministry of the
Interior therefore suggests, retracting the earlier draft,
to deprive all Jews holding German nationality, inside the
country as well as abroad, of German nationality, and to
make them stateless."

The result is summed up in a draft of a regulation about the
assets of Jews abroad who are losing their German
nationality.  Paragraph 2 of the draft, at the top of the
last page, states that the assets go to the head of the
Ministry of Finance; at the end, it says that these
regulations are to be implemented by the Reich Ministry of
the Interior with the Reich Ministry of Finance.

Witness, you yourself were not present at the meeting, but
two others were: Dr. Rajakowitsch, a lawyer from IVD4, that
is to say, someone who belonged to your Section, and
Government Councillor Neifeind, who apparently belonged to
Department II.  Would you explain what these two gentlemen
did there and what they reported to you?

Accused:    I would first like to clarify the position of
the two participants.  Dr. Rajakowitsch was a reservist
conscripted for the duration of the War, of the Waffen-SS,
who was assigned to Section IVD4.   Government Counsellor
Neifeind was also a lawyer and belonged to Department II, as
is shown by the office work plan.  Ministerial Director
Hering or Dr. Globke - I no longer know today which one had
invited the Department Chief - that is Mueller - to this
consultation.  Department Chief IV arranged who was to be
assigned to this meeting.  Since it was a purely juridical
problem, the order was given to assign Dr. Rajakowitsch.  I
would like to correct myself.  To be quite exact, I should
say, reservist of the Waffen-SS, hence he may have been
conscripted by the appropriate military registration office,
but, on the basis of an exemption, or what the possibilities
of the personnel department were, I do not know, he was
placed at the disposal of the Head Office for Reich
Security.

Dr. Servatius:  That is Dr. Rajakowitsch?

Accused:    Dr. Rajakowitsch, yes.

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, how did these decisions that were
made affect your activity.  It must, after all, have had an
influence on your further activity?

Accused:    This draft, which was submitted by Department I
of the Ministry of the Interior, as far as I know, was the
basis for the subsequent Regulation 11 under the Reich
Citizenship Law.  It was, moreover, virtually the basis,
virtually the legal basis which made possible the future
deportations of Jews from inside the territory of the Reich,
that is to say, Jews with German nationality.  I cannot,
today, say if it then made possible other measures of a
dictatorial nature, but anyway, this legal basis made it
very convenient for the leading authorities to give their
instructions for deportations as being based on principle.
Moreover, it raised and solved the question of regulating
the assets, with both matters later becoming a model for a
similar regulation, for example, in France - I cannot, at
the moment, remember other countries.  In France, I know
exactly how the local German authorities or heads of
legations brought their influence to bear on the French
Government, or possibly the Higher SS and Police Leader, to
deprive their Jews of citizenship according to this model,
precisely because it was easier to carry out the
deportations on this legal basis.

Dr. Servatius:  I would still like to refer to page 7 on the
subject of assets.  It says: "There the Minister of Finance
speaks, suggesting not to decree the requisitioning of
Jewish assets, because that would entail too much work, but,
instead, to consider forfeiture whenever a person loses his
nationality." The result can be seen in the regulation, in
the actual draft here of the regulation.  For this, one
should really examine paragraph 1 of the draft, from which
the following results: As a Jew, one loses one's nationality
if one resides abroad or has transferred one's residence
there.  Later on, this comes to mean that one has also
transferred it there when one is removed across the frontier
by force.  And this results in the legalistic trick, as I
would call it, from paragraph 2, where it says: "The assets
of Jews who have lost their nationality on the basis of
paragraph such and such are forfeited to the Reich on the
strength of this regulation, insofar as they have not
already been forfeited."  That is also what happened to the
French: As soon as they had been transported across the
border, a similar state of affairs came about.

Next, exhibit T/719, document No. 739.  The results of these
proceedings are three communications relating to
restrictions in the disposal of Jewish assets.  The first
communication is a circular by Heydrich dated 27 November
1941.  The second one is the covering letter by Mueller,
signed on 3 December 1941.   The third is an addition to
Heydrich's circular.  These communications are directed
against possible illicit trafficking in assets by Jews.

Witness, the file numbers of these communications are IVB4a.
To what extent were you concerned with this communication,
with these proceedings?

Accused:    That follows from the fact that this is a
consequence of Regulation 11.  It was not I who ordered it,
but those who issued the legal regulations.  It also had to
be enforced.  In this connection, I would still like to say
that neither Dr. Rajakowitsch nor Government Counsellor
Neifeind ordered it, but it had been contrived in Department
I of the Ministry of the Interior.  And once these
administrative sections were given the order from the Head
Office for Reich Security to go on from here, they could no
longer raise fundamental reservations, they were not
entitled to do so, these were purely juridical matters.

Dr. Servatius:  I now come to T/729, document No. 1265.

Judge Raveh:   Have you got the letter of 27 November 1941?

Dr. Servatius:  I have it in front of me.

Judge Raveh:   Can the Accused perhaps remember who drafted
this letter?

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, you heard the question.  Will you
please answer it?

Accused:    No, Your Honour, I can no longer remember that
today.  But this much I can say with certainty, that,
without any doubt, it was the lawyers from the Head Office
for Reich Security en bloc, and at least the two lawyers who
had taken part in the discussion that laid the foundations,
of course by referring back to their respective superiors.

Dr. Servatius:  Exhibit T/729, which I already mentioned,
contains guidelines for the treatment of assets of Jews who
are being deported to the Generalgouvernement.  The file
number is IVB4a and is signed by Government Counsellor SS
Sturmfuehrer Suhr from the Accused's Section.  I direct the
attention of the Court to page 2; on the lower half of the
page it says: "Since, in this connection, the
Generalgouvernement is to be considered a foreign country,
the assets of Jews are forfeited immediately upon crossing
the border into the Generalgouvernement on the basis of
paragraph 3 of Regulation 11 to the Reich Civil Law of
25.11.1941."

Witness, can you provide an explanation for the formulation
of these guidelines which differs from what you said about
the other documents?

Accused:    Yes.  Apart from the fact of its being a
consequence of Regulation 11, I actually see from the letter-
head on the first page that these guidelines were issued in
the year 1942.  The fact that Government Counsellor Suhr,
who, according to the office work plan, served in Department
II of the Head Office for Reich Security, and of whom it has
already been said that he came to Section IVB4 - that is to
say, my Section - with two subjects, deprivation of
nationality and requisitioning of assets, which proves that
my Section was here also affected by Regulation 11, even
though the fact that the jurist Suhr acted wholly
independently as a Government Counsellor, and that I
personally could neither give him orders nor practical
instructions.  Those he received from Department Chief IV
Mueller.  He had, after all, been an independent expert in
Department II.

In conclusion, and in order to give further weight to my
present testimony, I would like to refer to the very last
paragraph of the document, on page 6, wherein it says:
"Enquiries concerning matters of property law should be
addressed to the undersigned, mentioned in the file number
at the top of these directives.  In case he is not
available, they are to be addressed to Regierungsassessor
Hunsche, Section IVB4, telephone so and so."  Signed: per
pro Suhr, SS Sturmbannfuehrer, Government Counsellor.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, if you do not mind, we will
take a break now.

[Recess]

Presiding Judge: Please continue, Dr. Servatius.

Dr. Servatius:  Exhibit T/723, document No. 738.  This is a
circular letter from the Reich Association of Jews in
Germany, Berlin, dated 3 December 1941.  It is addressed to
the Jewish Religious Associations.  Its main subject is
Special Account W, into which donations are paid by the Jews
who are about to be evacuated.  The Reich Association says,
by way of introduction, that this communication follows the
directive of "our Supervisory Authority."  Who is this
Supervisory Authority?

Accused:    The Supervisory Authority is the Chief of the
Security Police and the Security Service.  In practice, in
the course of things, there are then the Bureaus of the
Chiefs of the Security Police and the Security Service,
according to their competence, including also my Section.

Dr. Servatius:  Please state your opinion as to how this
directive came into being and what was the meaning of the
donation.

Accused:    Today, I can no longer say with absolute
certainty who coined the word "Sonderkonto W" (Special
Account W).  However, since it was in the interest of both
parties, it is just as conceivable, even likely, that either
the jurists of the Head Office for Reich Security dealt with
this question or, on the other hand, the Director of the
Reich Association, Dr. Eppstein, himself, and, last but not
least, also the Chief of the Security Police himself, namely
Heydrich, and that for the following reason: According to
Regulation 11, the assets were forfeited to the Reich
Treasury.  However, in the Reich there were the Reich
Association and the numerous Jewish organizations
subordinate to it, which obviously also needed a budget in
order to pay their staff, welfare services, etc.   A
struggle was bound to break out automatically between the
Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service and
the Reich Treasury about the need to release funds for the
Jewish organizations for paying the...

Presiding Judge: What is that noise there?  What is that
noise there outside?  Silence there, please.

Accused:    From there, it was only a short step for the
legal sector to discover that a donation on the part of the
Reich Treasury was unassailable.  On page 2, under No. 5 of
this document, it says that these sums of money are to be
paid into an account at one of the banks of the district
offices or Religious Associations of the Reich Association
and that, further on, applications are then to be made for
their release, after due prior notice to the Supervisory
Authority.  In conclusion, it should be said on this subject
that this way, between the local district offices of the
Reich Association and the Religious Associations to their
supervisory offices, which were locally the Gestapo and the
State Police District Offices, was shorter and less
complicated than via the Senior Finance Authority.

Dr. Servatius:  The following three exhibits belong
together, as it were; they are: T/193, document No. 908;
T/195, document No. 509; T/194, document No. 508.  They deal
with the treatment of assets belonging to Jewish foreigners,
foreign Jews in Germany, and German Jews abroad.  The
question is who is to receive the forfeited assets when, for
example, a Reich German Jew has his assets sequestered in
Romania and vice versa.  When a Romanian Jew in Germany has
his assets sequestered, the German Government gets them.
The solution is a territorial set-off: the country in which
the Jew in question is located receives the assets.

The first communication, dated 23 July, invites the
following to a consultation: the representative for the Four-
Year-Plan, Reich Minister of the Interior, Reich Minister of
Trade and Commerce, Reich Minister of Finance, Reich
Minister of Justice, Party Chancellery, and Head Office for
Reich Security - SS Sturmbannfuehrer Eichmann and the Reich
Forestry Commissioner.

Witness, were you or someone from your Section present at
this consultation?  And what can you state about these
events?

Accused:    I received no instructions to take part in this
discussion; moreover, I think that no one from the Head
Office for Reich Security participated in the consultation,
as can be seen from the distribution list: While document
No. 908 names the Head Office for Reich Security, the
results of the consultation follow in document No. 508, of
31 July 1942, referring to all the participants, while here
the only office to be left out is the Head Office for Reich
Security, from which I conclude today that no one at all
from the Head Office for Reich Security took part in this
consultation.

Dr. Servatius:  The next exhibit is T/780, document No.
1060.  This is a communication from Section IVB4 to the
Foreign Ministry, which deals with an individual case of
forfeiture of assets, namely those of a Jewish businessman
by the name of Frank.  It concerns the representative of a
large, well-known firm working abroad as an agent, and it is
now being clarified whether the assets have been forfeited.
How did this individual action come about which originated
in your Section?

Accused:    This action could not have originated in my
Section, since no one there would have had an idea of these
matters, rather it is the result of an item of information,
the like of which arrived in their hundreds, both from the
local Party offices and, in cases of economic matters, also
from the district economic advisers, and this information
had to be followed up.  If the local State Police and
regional headquarters were unable to complete these
investigations, they were passed on to the Head Office for
Reich Security.  This is also a result of Regulation 11
concerning the Law of Reich Citizenship.  The information
had come in and needed to be dealt with according to orders.

Judge Raveh:   Dr. Servatius, may I come back to exhibit
T/194, document No. 508?  If you so wish, would you ask the
Accused about his position regarding the last paragraph on
page 2, where it says: "The Foreign Ministry therefore
views, in agreement with the Head Office for Reich Security,
etc."

Dr. Servatius:  Witness, take the document, on page 2, last
paragraph, where it says: "The Foreign Ministry therefore
views, in agreement with the Head Office for Reich
Security..."

Accused:    Yes.

Dr. Servatius:  Just a moment, I would like to add to this,
so as to have it understood more clearly.  It goes on to
say, "difficulties arise," and, at the end, it says: "To
establish on the basis of the territorial principle and
requests its consent."  Was your Section asked for its
consent?

Judge Raveh:   I am not sure that Dr. Servatius is not
mistaken, because we heard before that the letter was sent
to various offices, apart from the Head Office for Reich
Security.  Therefore, I think, Dr. Servatius, that you err
that here the agreement of the Reich Office for State
Security was not requested.

Dr. Servatius:  Yes, yes.  I mixed it up with the first
communication; only the invitation mentioned the office, it
is not mentioned in the last communication.

Accused:    Precisely the last sentence shows that this
communication was preceded by a discussion with the
competent experts of the Head Office for Reich Security.
The matter of territorial principle was a purely legal
problem, and today I no longer know it in detail.  But this
much I do know, that this matter had to be handled at the
responsibility of the jurists of Department II, as well as
by jurists of Department III, admittedly with the
participation of jurists from Department IV, that is from my
Section.  That this conclusion of mine is correct is clear,
without doubt, from a study of the organizational plan, and
the fact that, on examining these files, I established that
certainly no one from my Section participated in this
discussion shows to me that the Foreign Ministry most
probably got together directly with Departments II and III,
and possibly also with the jurist from IVB4, except for this
consultation.

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