Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-090-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/11

Session No. 90
26 Tammuz 5721 (10 July 1961)

Presiding Judge: I declare the ninetieth Session of the
trial open.

Dr. Servatius, you have submitted a request to examine Mr.
Zvi Tohar and Mr. Jack Shimoni. Has the Attorney General
received a copy?

Attorney General: Yes.

Presiding Judge: Would you like to explain this application?

Dr. Servatius:  I do not have it at hand at the moment, as I
did not assume that it would be read out today. I could do
so tomorrow morning.

Presiding Judge: All right. Therefore, we shall discuss this
application tomorrow morning, at the beginning of the
session.

We are now going to resume the cross-examination of the
Accused. I draw your attention to the fact that you are
continuing to testify under oath.

Accused:    Yes, I am aware of this.

Presiding Judge: I would also like to tell you that during
the translation you may sit down, to rest, without having to
receive special permission each time. And if you feel tired,
you may ask me for permission to give your entire testimony
while seated, if need be.

Accused:    Thank you.

Attorney General: Accused, when you joined the Nazi Party,
were you familiar with its slogans, such as "Awake, Germany,
Judea Perish!" and "When Jewish blood spurts from the
knife..." etc.?

Accused:    In Austria, where I made my first contacts with
the Party, these songs were not...in any event, I did not
hear these songs in the mountain valley areas. And I have
already said that I did not join the Party because it may
have had the programme of combatting the Jews as its aim.
Rather, the thought that motivated me was that this Party
had inscribed on its banner the fight against Versailles.
That alone was decisive for me.

Q.  But you will agree with me that at least from 1937 on,
the only front on which you were active was the front of the
fight against the Jews, and not against Versailles.

A.  That is correct; when I joined the Security Service Head
Office, and then, actually, there was the fight against
Jewry. But efforts were being made to find a solution, in
different ways. I have already stated which direction I
took.

Q.  Do you know that your Fuehrer had declared, quite a long
time before the War, that if a war broke out....the
loser...whoever won the war, Jewry would be annihilated.

A.  Yes, I am familiar with this statement. It is part of a
speech in the Reichstag. But the expression "annihilated"
was not seriously meant at that time. Rather, it was
believed that this was more or less a political matter. In
any event, at that time I did not think for a second that
this referred to physical annihilation, and many others
thought the same way.

Q.  You told a story here to the effect that your hostility
towards Jewry began after the late Dr. Weizmann had declared
war against Germany. When did he make this declaration?

A.  That is correct. From that moment on I, too, recognized
Jewry as, shall we say, a potential opponent which could
become dangerous to my fatherland. This declaration was made
public a few days after the outbreak of war, in 1939. And
that is, if I may say so, an understandable reaction on the
part of any person who loves his fatherland.

Presiding Judge: It is not necessary to add an explanation
to every answer. If an answer does require an explanation,
you may add an explanation. However, the answer to the
question "When was that?" must be brief. The explanation and
everything else, were unnecessary.

Attorney General: How do you know that such a statement has
ever been made? Who told you about it?

Accused:    It was circulated in the Service at that time,
and if I am not mistaken, it was also published. This I am
not sure about, however. In any event, in the ranks of the
Service it was made public.

Q.  And from then on you regarded the Jews as an enemy who
had to be liquidated, like any other enemy?

A.  The word "liquidate" is not the right one here. An enemy
you do not always liquidate, an enemy you fight.

Q.  I would like to draw your attention to what you have
written with your own hand, in what we refer to as File 17,
on page 734 - I will hand it to you, if you wish - that is
on pages 734-735. The motto is: "The enemies are to be
annihilated" (vernichtet).

A.  Yes. I was writing here under the impression of the
saying: "Woe to the vanquished," as I have indicated here.
The motto on both sides was: "The enemy shall be
annihilated."

Q.  And Jewry all over the world - through its leader Chaim
Weizmann - had evidently declared war on the German Reich.
Therefore, the motto is: "The Jews shall be annihilated."
Isn't that right?

A.  But not the physical annihilation which Hitler later
ordered.

Q.  Ah, not the physical!

Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, could you provide us with a
list of the documents to which you plan to refer? This will
make matters easier for us, for the interpreters, etc.

Attorney General: Certainly, but I cannot promise that I
shall always follow the numerical order precisely, because
matters develop according to the requirements of the
examination.

Presiding Judge: You will do it as far as possible.

Attorney General: I shall do that.

Do you know of any annihilation that is not physical?

Accused:    Oh, yes. Our struggle, for instance, against
France, against England, etc. This is a process of putting
the enemy out of action for the duration of the War, and
once the War is over, any feeling of enmity is once more put
aside.

Q.  This is what you call annihilation (Vernichtung).

A.  This was called annihilation during the War. One
annihilated England as well, one annihilated any enemy
within reach. This expression "annihilation" referred to the
disarming of the enemy at the time of the War, but not the
extermination or physical liquidation.

Q.  You agree, don't you that you considered the Jew an
opponent, simply an opponent, a long time before the War?

A.  I did not consider him an opponent, if for no other
reason then that through personal relations and contacts I
felt differently. But I realized through the influence of
the surrounding society, of course, that a mutual solution
must be sought.

Q.  Let us leave the solution aside for the moment; we shall
come back to it. What I am referring to now is your attitude
towards the Jews. When Wisliceny recommended you on 17
September 1937 as an expert on the organizational
arrangements and ideology of the opponent Jewry (that is in
exhibit T/55) - was that correct or not?

A.  From the point of view of information, that was correct.

Q.  And the war which Chaim Weizmann declared on Germany,
was it, as you have stated here, also part of the war which
was forced on Germany?

A.  This declaration of war against Germany, decided on by
Chaim Weizmann, is in my eyes part of a chain of mutual
misconceptions. To be more explicit - I think both sides are
to blame here.

Q.  You have not answered my question. You have spoken here
of the war that had been forced on Germany and of the fact
that Chaim Weizmann, as it were, had declared war on
Germany.

My question is this: Was the war which Weizmann had declared
part of that war which had been forced on Germany?

A.  Globally seen, yes.

Q.  And if I tell you that this is a lie and an invention;
that Weizmann never made any such declaration of war, and
you have never heard such a declaration, and you have never
in your war used this declaration as an argument - what is,
then, your reaction?

A.  In that case I can only state again that we had heard
it, as it was officially dealt with. I personally actually
had files about it.

Q.  Can you point to any document among the documents
concerning the annihilation and the discussions about
annihilation, in which you people referred to the so-called
declaration of war by Chaim Weizmann?

A.  I must admit, as a matter of fact, that during the War I
no longer heard anything about it.

Presiding Judge: Quiet! If this goes on, I shall have the
court-room cleared. I am sorry, but I cannot allow this.

Attorney General: Among other things for which Wisliceny
recommended you was your being a convinced National
Socialist. I assume that his opinion was correct.

Accused:    Yes.

Q.  And you mean to tell me, us, that your superiors were
afraid to let you - a convinced National Socialist - study
Hebrew with a rabbi? With a rabbi?

A.  I am sorry, I did not understand this.

Q.  ...that your superiors were afraid that in the course of
your Hebrew studies you would come into contact with a
rabbi?

A.   I do not know exactly which motives my superiors acted
on, of course. All I know - and at present I know it only
from the files, because I myself had forgotten it - that I
had applied twice to receive Hebrew lessons from a rabbi.

Q.  Perhaps they were of the opinion that the business which
you had to perform, you could discharge without knowledge of
the Hebrew language?

A.  I do not think so, because at that time I was active
mainly in religious-scientific matters and intelligence -
all pertaining to Zionist organizations.

Q.  You have told us of your programme to "put soil under
the feet" of the Jewish people. I assume that this was not
your personal invention. Could you tell us who were the
righteous men who conceived this programme: Heydrich,
Himmler, Streicher, Rosenberg - which one of them?

A.  As far as I know, at that time, when I tried to sell
this idea within the Service, no one else expressed it.

Q.  Only you?

A.  At that time, in any event, I did not hear it from
anyone else and I also know that this idea was, at that
time, ridiculed and scoffed at by some. My impetus came from
Adolf Boehm's book, and there I recognized the root of all
evil in the homelessness of this people, and I made no bones
about it, within my official sphere of service.

Q.  And a clear expression of the need to give this people a
homeland, you gave, for instance, in the report about your
journey to Palestine in 1939, correct?

A.  This is not my report. I have said so myself, and it was
confirmed recently in testimony by the person who had then
been the superior in command of both myself and the author.

Q.  That is not correct, but let me refer only to what you
have stated. You have said, in your interrogation, that this
report had been corrected by you in your handwriting. This
appears on page 341 and 342 of your Statement, where you
said that the report had been shown to you before being
passed on. Is that correct?

A.  I corrected it, but only the spelling, as one can easily
find out.

Q.  Your journey was designed among other things, to
establish contact with Hajj Amin al-Husseini, isn't that
coorect?

A.  The purpose was, first, to get to know the land and its
people, and secondly, to establish contact with all kinds of
persons.

Q.  I am talking about Hajj Amin al-Husseini.

A.  If this were possible, yes, that too, of course.

Q.  One of the objects of your journey was to establish
contact with Hajj Amin al-Husseini, is that correct? "Yes"
or "no"?

A.  Yes, that too.

Q.  Do you admit to your responsibility for this report?

A.  No, this responsibility I do not admit, as it was my
chief who composed this report, and not I.

Q.  During the police interrogation, at least, you had the
courage to state that you admit this responsibility. Now you
are going back on this again.

Presiding Judge: Let us take a look and find out precisely
what was said there. This is page 342, isn't it? I see, Mr.
Attorney General, that you have the German text.

Attorney General: Right, page 346: "Certainly. I can say
nothing else today. I must assume responsibility. I have no
other choice." This is what you said on page 346 of your
police interrogation. Do you want to retract this now?

Accused:    May I read the preceding sentence?

Q.  Please do so. It begins in the middle of the page.

A.  Certainly.

Q.  Can you see it?

A.  The point at issue in the interrogation was this: the
interrogator could not believe that the author had a lower
official rank than mine. At that time I was
Hauptscharfuehrer and my Chief was Oberscharfuehrer, which
is one rank lower. In order to counter this doubt and to
weaken it, I assumed joint responsibility, inasmuch as I
had, after all, made the spelling corrections. I had nothing
to do with the substantive aspect, as was confirmed for me a
few days ago by my chief, our chief at that time, Dr. Six,
in his testimony. That is all I can say about this. And I
did not, in fact compose it, this report.

Q.  Professor Six did not say anything of the sort. He
merely based himself on the initials H.G. which appear on
the document, on top. He was not speaking from memory, or
from his own knowledge. And I say to you that you composed
this report. You appear in it first, and Hagen only after
you.

Presiding Judge: What is the number of this report?

Attorney General: T/124, is that correct or not?

Accused:    No, that is not correct. I must protest against
this, because this is a false interpretation of the truth.

Q.  In the police interrogation, several passages from this
report were read to you. Thus, for instance, on pages 346-
397, entire passages of the report were read to you, and you
replied: "Yes, that was my opinion, that was precisely the
position of the Reich Economics Ministry." Well, is that
correct or not?

A.  I have no doubt that many passages in this report
reflect my opinion to a large extent. However, the dictation-
sign alone shows that I cannot have been the author of this
report. The dictation-sign, as is well known, all over the
world, shows the name of the person dictating a document.
And this person was not I.

Q.  Is there in this report one single sentence, one single
paragraph, which indicates a positive attitude towards the
Zionist constructive enterprise?

A.  I do not remember the article any more, word for word.
All I know is that there were differences about matters of
substance between the conception of my Department Chief at
that time, Hagen, and myself. That they existed, is quite
evident from the documents, since my attitude towards the
Zionists is, after all, documented here.

Q.  But for some reason you forgot to say this in the police
interrogation.

A.  During the police interrogation I forgot quite a lot,
confused quite a lot, and even testified to many things to
my detriment which had, in reality, never occurred. Thus, I
shouldered the responsibility for the arrest of Canon
Grueber, who has testified here, although, as a matter of
fact I did not arrest him, as I discovered here to my
surprise, from his own mouth.

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