Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-091-03
Last-Modified: 1999/06/12

Q.  That is wrong? You were the man of whose deeds and
successes Heydrich boasted to Goering and the Reich
Ministers. Is that correct?

A.  This I do not know. I was active in emigration. What
advantages Heydrich derived from that, about this I have no
information. He was a very high...a superior of mine. I
cannot judge about that.
Q.  When did Heydrich hand over to you the direction of the
Central Office for Jewish Emigration for the entire Reich?

A.  This he never handed over to me, because I was never
Director of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration for the
entire Reich. May I point to the documents which name the
executive director of this Central Reich Office. That was my
immediate superior, Gruppenfuehrer and Lieutenant General
Mueller and the director of the Central Office for Jewish
Emigration was, in fact, Heydrich himself.

Q.  And the person who was, practically speaking, in charge
of the direction that was you, and you ran things in Berlin,
Prague and Vienna, as is evident from all the documents and
testimony by witnesses?

A.  I was entrusted with the practical running of the
offices, and from the moment that I was assigned to Berlin
and received the Special Department (Sonderreferat), until
the permanent distribution of business went into effect, I
also had to run the Central Office in Berlin. However, there
is a difference whether one was called the director of such
an office, or whether one had several superiors above
oneself, because the person entrusted with the execution of
business can and may do only that which he is ordered to do.
He does not have the right of independent decision. And that
is the cardinal difference.

Q.  I assure you that I shall not forget this difference and
shall question you about being a recipient of orders, or one
giving them. Therefore, there is no need for you to mention
this together with each reply of yours.

When you took over the direction of affairs of the
Emigration Office, did Heydrich inform you of his policy
toward the Jews?

A.  When I took over this office in late autumn - according
to the document it must have been around December, 1939 - at
that time Hitler issued a decree by which Himmler was
appointed Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German
Folkdom.

Presiding Judge: You must answer the questions that are put
to you. Did Heydrich inform you of his Jewish policy? That
was the question.

Accused:    He did not inform me of the Jewish policy, but
this became automatically clear through the new orders
issued in connection with the new decree by the Reich
Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom.

Attorney General: When did you become head of the Jewish
Department of the Gestapo?

Accused:    May I ask, Mr. Attorney General, whether you are
asking - precisely speaking - about IVD4?

Q.  No, IVB4.

A.  IVB4 must have been at the time of the first and second
plan for the distribution of business, that means - if my
memory serves me rightly - in the period from about March
1940 until, I think, the second plan for the distribution of
business came out in the autumn of 1941; in this period
then, actually more toward March 1940 than around the
publication of the second plan for the distribution of
business.

Q.  And when you assumed this responsibility, then at the
latest, you were informed of Heydrich's Jewish policy, as he
had made it known at that meeting on 21 September. That you
cannot deny.

A.  No, I must reply to this that I was not at all brought
into contact with this policy at the time of the Polish
campaign and shortly thereafter, but that I was very
definitely present at the next consultation which took place
in January 1940, and at which Heydrich informed me of his
orders, or rather the orders which Himmler had published in
his decree.

Q.  In January 1940, then, you knew that the policy of
Heydrich was the one which had been proclaimed at the
meeting of 21 September?

A.  No, in January I knew, when I had to deal with
evacuation, that certain defined portions of the population
had to be transferred to the Generalgouvernement.

Q.  And his basic Jewish policy, as expressed in document
T/165, Heydrich kept secret from his expert in Jewish
affairs? Is that what you are trying to tell us?

Presiding Judge: T/164, isn't it?

Attorney General: T/164 as well.

Accused:    I do not know, at this moment, which document
this "T" number, as just quoted refers to. Should this be
the consultation which the Honourable Attorney General has
just mentioned, then may I say in this connection, that
Heydrich, in fact, had no reason to tell me anything nor
conceal anything, because at that time I was not yet in
Berlin at all. I was stationed in Prague and in Vienna and
was not at all occupied  with this.

Presiding Judge: You are familiar with this document -
T/164, aren't you?

Accused:    When it was shown to me now, Your Honour, it has
promptly come back to my memory, as I have, in fact, also
repeatedly dealt with it.

Presiding Judge: All right.

Attorney General: Well then, after you had come to Berlin,
as you state, in December 1939, did Heydrich conceal his
policy from you even then?

Accused:    I have already said that a totally new policy
was initiated at that time when I was in Berlin. That in
fact, was the reason why I was ordered to come to Berlin.

Q.  The Special Operations Units which were assigned tasks
in Poland, in fact carried out these tasks, and you knew
that.

A.  I had nothing to do with either the Operations Units or
the Operations Commandos in Poland. I did not carry out
these things because I was not charged or ordered to do so.
But I had to prepare the transport plans ordered under the
new instructions of the Reich Commissioner for the
Strengthening of German Folkdom. I had to do this in Berlin,
in agreement with the Reich Transport Ministry. That was my
assignment. The policy at that time was very different from
that at the beginning of the War, but this I did not
discover at that time either, but only later.

Q.  I would just like to have one thing clear. You say that
the list of participants included in this official document
of the German Reich is forged.

A.  I did not say that it was forged. This document about
the meeting in September 1939?

Q.  Yes. It says here that you took part, and you say that
you did not take part.

A.  To this extent that is correct. But this document also
bears neither seal nor signature.

Q.  All right, all right. We shall see about how many
documents of the German Reich you will have to say that they
are forgeries.

In what capacity did you deal with the Nisko project?

A.  I had at that time...through the Polish campaign...it
was taken...I was encouraged by Jewish functionaries in
Poland to carve out a territory for purposes of settlement.

Presiding Judge: No, no. The question was different. You
were working in a state where there was a division of
authority.  Under what authority, then, were you operating?
That is how I understood the question.

Accused:    From the Commander of the Security Police and
the Security Service in Bohemia and Moravia at that time,
Dr. Stahlecker, there - he had presented this Nisko project
in Berlin and surely received permission, and thereupon
ensued the journey to what was then the Generalgouvernement
- to the Nisko region.

Attorney General: Is that the same Stahlecker who later
became one of the chief murderers of Jews, as Commander of
Operations Unit A?

Accused:    Yes, this is that same Stahlecker. I no longer
had any business with him. I neither saw him nor spoke to
him.

Q.  It was he, then, who thought up this idea of Jewish
settlement in Nisko?

A.  No, that is not right. He did not think it up, and
neither did I. Rather, it was thought up by Jewish
functionaries. But I presented the idea to Stahlecker, and
Stahlecker then presented it in Berlin. That is the correct
sequence.

Q.  Who, for instance, were these Jewish functionaries?

A.  These were Dr. Loewenherz, and Edelstein in Prague. I
think these were...perhaps it was also Rabbi Dr.
Murmelstein. At any rate it was a group of Jewish
functionaries, and there were great hopes at that time, and
I myself was enthusiastic about this idea, and therefore I
seized this matter and took it up with enthusiasm, in the
same was as the idea of emigration.

Q.  Can you point to any document which proves that the
Jewish functionaries asked you to send Jews, naked and
penniless to Nisko, as you did? A single document?

A.  The Jews were not sent to Nisko naked. Rather, there was
an artisans' advance commando which was to have created the
prior conditions there; to prepare the ground for the rest
of the Jews to follow, who could live there among
themselves, and not under the conditions of stress to which
they were subject in their previous localities. That was
also the basic idea of the Jewish functionaries, to which I
subscribed enthusiastically.

Q.  And for this purpose you selected an area which even
Polish farmers were unable to cultivate? Is that correct?
And you said about this area that it was forbidden to drink
water there, because it was poisoned?

A.  That no Polish farmer could cultivate this area, I do
not know. I do remember that Nisko and its environs are not
the worst. Secondly, about the poisoned water, I have to say
that at that time of the War certain waters were not
poisoned - that I did not say at all - but that drinking it
might cause typhoid fever, and we ourselves had such an
order, and, therefore I was duty bound to pass on these
orders, which we ourselves received, to others. I did not
issue these orders that the water was contaminated by
typhoid fever or may have been suspected of typhoid.

Q.  Did you receive permission for this plan from your
superiors?

A.  Yes. Stahlecker received permission, and I had to carry
it out.

Q.  I am asking you whether you received permission for this
plan, and not whether Stahlecker received it.

A.  Yes, Sir. Stahlecker was, in fact, my immediate
superior. If he had not received permission for the plan, he
would not have taken me along to the Generalgouvernement.

Q.  When you carried out the deportations to Nisko, were you
already stationed in Berlin?

A.  No, I was not yet stationed in Berlin. This must have
been in the transitional period when I came there from
Vienna to Prague. I think that is even evident from the
Loewenherz File notations.

Q.  And in order to get the Jews to settle in Nisko, they
had to be escorted by many SS troops, is that not so?

A.  There were not many SS troops there, because, first of
all, I had no personnel and there were few people on hand,
and only when Frank became Governor General and forbade the
whole thing, only then was barbed wire put up around the
whole area and it was placed under the jurisdiction of
another office, the entire Nisko project was taken out of my
hands. Which circles were interested in that, I cannot
venture to say even today.

Q.  You poor man! Everything you do turns sour on you.

Judge Halevi:  I do not understand how Stahlecker came to be
your superior. How and why Stahlecker actually was your
superior?

Accused:    Stahlecker was at first Inspector of the
Security Police and Security Service in Vienna. In that
capacity he was charged by the Reich Commissioner for the
Reunification of Austria and Germany, Buerkel, with the
direction of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in
Vienna, and I received from Stahlecker, who was at the same
time also Chief of the Head Office Vienna of the Security
Service, the order to carry out these tasks at the Central
Office. He had been my immediate superior already in Vienna.
Later, when the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was
created, Stahlecker became the Commander of the Security
Police and the Security Service, and was transferred to
Prague. When I was also ordered to go to Prague, after a
while, when the Protectorate was already in existence, then
Stahlecker was once again my superior, because in the
meantime a decree by the Reich Protector for Bohemia and
Moravia was issued under which Stahlecker was commissioned
as Director of a Central Office for Jewish Emigration in
Prague, and he entrusted me with the setting up of this
office. In this way I became...

Stahlecker ....in Vienna as well as in Prague he became my
immediate superior.

Judge Halevi:  And who was Stahlecker's superior?

Accused:    In Austria it was first the Higher SS and Police
Chief, and secondly the Chief of the Security Police and
Security Service in Berlin. In the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia the superior official was the Minister of State
or the State Secretary for the Security System, Frank, for
the territorial domain and beyond that for matters of
importance to the Reich, the Chief of the Security Police
and Security Service Heydrich, as his immediate superior,
and paralllel with that, in both cases, the political
authority too, first the Reich Commissioner the
Reunification of Austria and Germany and also the Reich
Protector. These were the superiors of the Inspector or
Commander of the Security Police and Security Service.

Attorney General: The main measures for deportation to Nisko
were taken when you were already stationed in Berlin. Is
that correct?

Accused:    This I do not know. This I can no longer answer
exactly today. I must rely, mainly, on what I have read in
Dr. Loewenherz' File notations.

Q.  And what emerged from these file notations?

A.  That I could not find precisely myself. The file
notations actually show that the transports had already been
carried out, and that now matters revolved around support
for these transports with monies, etc. This is what I
inferred from that. It does, however, state in one file
notation, which just occurs to me, that a transport train
was then being made ready, and there is talk of ten
physicians per train. I do not know, however, at this point,
where that train left from, and which one, what number it
might have been. Neither do I know whether the meeting with
Dr. Loewenherz, to which I have just referred, took place in
Berlin or Vienna.

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