Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-094-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/13

Session No. 94
28 Tammuz 5721 (12 July 1961)

Presiding Judge: I declare the ninety-fourth Session of the
trial open. The Accused will continue with his testimony in
cross-examination. I remind the Accused that he is still
testifying under oath.

Accused:    Certainly, I am aware of that.

Attorney General: So to summarize the matter of deportations
to the East - what then was the reason for your instructing
Roethke on one occasion to report to Oranienburg, and on
another occasion not to report?

Accused:    I had to give him the instructions which I
myself had received.

Q.  Yes, but what was the reason?

A.  Today, I can only imagine that in the
Generalgouvernement at the time, responsibility lay with the
Higher SS and Police Leader or his SS and Police Leader,
Globocnik. To what extent Globocnik dealt with Pohl on the
matter, I have no idea - after all, I was also on the
distribution list.

Q.  You are not being asked to say anything you are unable
to say. I would simply like to know from you why on one
occasion you gave Roethke instructions - signed by you - to
report to Oranienburg and Auschwitz on the deportation of
Jews, and on another occasion you instructed him to refrain
from doing so.

A.  Because the distribution list stipulated that transports
which went to what was then called the Generalgouvernement
were not in any way reported, or reported back to
Oranienburg through my office, but only those transports
which went to Auschwitz. I cannot say anything else other
than that I myself received copies of this, since I was on
the distribution list.

Q.  And for his part, Globocnik reported back to you that he
had received the transports?

A.  Section IVB4 knew of every transport - when it arrived
it had to report when reception was confirmed.

Q.  Say "yes" or "no".

A.  Yes.

Q.  And you knew from 1941 onwards that Globocnik was
engaged in murdering these Jews?

A.  I knew that, since I received instructions from Heydrich
to make a visit there...

Q.  In other words, from 1941 onwards?

A.  From the autumn of 1941.

Q.  All right. You have told us a great deal about your
duties really being the drawing up of timetables, but the
fact of the matter is that you never set foot even once in
the Ministry of Railways, that you never took part in the
timetable meetings, and that Novak did all that for you, as
you said on page 3546 of your police interrogation.

A.  That is also true, Novak was the official in charge of
this matter, and he had orders to deal with matters at the
Reich Ministry of Transport. But that did not dispose of the
timetables, timetable matters... Afterwards there were all
sorts...he had to deal with hundreds of bureaucratic
arrangements related to this, as indicated in these
documents.

Q.  Yes, that is quite obvious. I know that the deportation
of Jews was the result of long, drawn-out, protracted work -
you have said so yourself.

In order to do this, first of all it was necessary to mark
the Jews, to locate and concentrate them in one place, and
only then could they be deported.

A.  I have testified on that as well.

Q.  Yes, in tape 77, for example.

Presiding Judge: On which page, please?

Attorney General: Page 24 of tape 77, in the part not
submitted.

[To the Accused] I will, therefore, read out to you what you
said there:

"That's it, people have no idea - that the order was given
to evacuate - the order was given: Get out, into the freight
cars and away! That is obviously the mental picture people
formed in their minds. People have not the faintest idea of
the fact that this was a real Sisyphean task in terms of the
administrative tasks which had to be carried out first."

Is that true? That is correct, is it not? That really was a
vast amount of work.

Accused:    I must admit that that is how things were, as I
was unable to manage matters as I liked.

Presiding Judge: Which page was that, please?

Attorney General: Page 24, tape 77.

[To the Accused] Yes, I will concur with that: it was a vast
amount of work. The property problems also had to be solved.
You told us here about the "territorial principle." There is
just one thing which you forgot to mention - that you were
the one who insisted that the property problems be solved,
and that it was at your initiative that a consultation took
place in the Foreign Ministry on 30 July 1942 which set down
the territorial principle. Here, read it in T/744, document
No. 147.

So you demanded that a solution be found, and the solution
was found together with you.

Presiding Judge: Is this about the treatment of Jews of
foreign nationality?

Attorney General: It is the issue of the territorial
prinicple.

Accused:    The solution was found after Regulation 11 was
issued by the Ministry of the Interior, Department I, and
the order was given that this arrangement should be applied
in the occupied territories as well. This matter was worked
on by one of my officials, of course in accordance with
orders. This had to be done - that was the order from above,
in order to co-ordinate matters with the Regulation 11.

Q.  And when the Foreign Ministry writes in T/194, document
No. 508, on page 2, on the same subject that the territorial
principle has been laid down for these cases in agreement
with the Head Office for Reich Security, that means that
this is in agreement with you?

A.  Yes, but that does not mean that I took the initiative,
and that I ordered that this be done. That I must deny.

Q.  But in any case you are the person who arranged for the
meeting at which the territorial principle was laid down, as
we have seen in this document.

A.  Yes - I myself - it was obviously not I myself, as I had
to notify the Foreign Ministry of this matter in accordance
with instructions subsequent to Regulation 11.

Q.  Does it say Eichmann here?

A.  It says Eichmann, but...

Q.  Or am I mistaken?

A.  No, no, it does say Eichmann, that is quite correct, but
it was not my initiative.

Q.  In T/500, document No. 295, you instructed all the State
Police Regional Headquarters, and also other authorities in
occupied territories, to arrest all Jews holding Argentinian
nationality and to send them to Bergen-Belsen, and you
ordered that they be handed over to Dr. Seidl.  Dr. Seidl
was a member of your Section, was he not?

A.  He was a member of the Section, but at that time he was
not part of it; at that time he had been seconded - any way,
he was not part of IVB4.

Q.  Until when did he belong to your Section?

A.  Today, I do not know that, but it should be possible to
check on that immediately and without delay, from the
personnel files.

Q.  So how do you know that on that date he did not belong
to your Section?

A.  Because at that time Seidl was in charge of part of the
Bergen-Belsen Camp - I think it was called the civilian
internees - and this camp was not under the authority of
IVB4. For that very simple reason, I must conclude that
Seidl did not belong to Section IVB4.

Q.  Why did you have to arrest all Argentinian nationals?

A.  Today, I can only imagine that the order to do so was
issued after Argentina declared war on Germany. I do not
remember the date now, I do not know when that was. But that
is the only thing I can imagine, that there must have been
some causal relationship.

Presiding Judge: The question is why did you deal with that?

Attorney General: So your Section also dealt with Jews when
their arrest was a result of the outbreak of war?

Accused:    Yes, if I was ordered to do so, of course.

Q.  And the dissolution of ghettos, and the decision to
place Jews in concentration camps - these were also part of
the duties of your Section, were they not?

A.  No, that was not part of the duties of my Section, just
as I could not issue the original order to arrest these Jews
with Argentinian nationality. Himmler himself ordered the
liquidation of the ghettos. As far as I know, this
assignment was given to task forces or units stationed in
the Generalgouvernement, and not to Section IVB4.

Q.  Let us see, therefore, what you said in your police
interrogation. I refer you to page 3116. After an exchange
about the case of Litzmannstadt, Captain Less asked you:
     
     "But in other cases, where ghettos were dissolved, and
     there was a decision to transfer the inmates of the
     ghettos to another concentration camp?"
     
     Eichmann: "Ah, that was something dealt with on the
     basis of the deportation order which came from the
     Reichsfuerer-SS, in this respect..."
     
     Less: "So that had to pass through you?"
     
     Eichmann: "Yes, yes - that had to pass through me. That
     had to pass through Section IVB4."

A.  About that I must say - this will be shown by the
reference number - at the time I confused Litzmannstadt with
Warsaw. In other words the documents, Mr. Attorney General,
which you showed me here this morning, where it says
"Kaltenbrunner's deputy." I believe that Captain Less'
reference to Exhibit T/ - I don't remember the number - must
refer to this document.

In this instance I confused Litzmannstadt with Warsaw, and
the series of records shows that Himmler ordered that Warsaw
or Litzmannstadt - that is where there is confusion - be
turned into a concentration camp, and that Greiser objected
to a concentration camp, and wanted to leave it as a ghetto.
To do that he arranged - this is what Greiser did - for
those from Litzmannstadt who were unable to work to be
killed.  Section IVB4 had nothing to do with that. The
records are here. I was not then able to state this with as
much precision. I tried to reconstruct it, but now the
records show this quite precisely and accurately.

Q.  The Presiding Judge: passed on to you the part of your
interrogation to which I referred. Previously you had spoken
about Litzmannstadt, and you were then questioned about
other cases. And then you said that in all other cases, the
dissolution of ghettos and the transfer of the inhabitants
to concentration camps passed through you. So is that true
or not?

A.  Here it is not expressed clearly. It would be clear if
it stated here: If the ghetto is to be withdrawn from the
control of the local Security Police Office, because in this
case the Chief of the Security Police and the Security
Service has to authorize such a change. And if the ghetto is
turned into a concentration camp, the transfer is, so to
say, between the Head Office for Reich Security, or the
Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, and
the Economic-Administrative Head Office, or the Chief of the
Economic-Administrative Head Office.

Presiding Judge: This is not clear to me now. Here the
reference is not to the Security Police, but to IVB4. And
here you said "all other cases."

Accused:    At that time I myself was ordered to go down to
Litzmannstadt.

Q.  I want to make quite sure that we understand what is
written here. What it says here does not apply to
Litzmannstadt. That can be seen clearly from what was said
by Captain Less. Do you agree?

A.  Yes, but not for ghettos for example, which were in the
Generalgouvernement. Section IVB4 obviously had nothing to
do with them.

Q.  Then which ghettos are referred to?

A.  I would assume it means the ghettos which belonged to
the Eastern Territories which had recently become part of
the Reich. The local State Police Offices had to control
Security Police matters. If somewhere or other, one of these
ghettos was turned into a concentration camp or removed,
this ghetto had to be released from the control of the local
Security Police. In such cases Section IVB4 would be ordered
to notify the head of these local offices that he was being
released - that he was no longer in control, and this part
would then fall under the responsibility of the
administrative area at the head office.

That is what I meant, and that is also how things were, and
that is also reflected in the records, Your Honour. For
example, these ghettos in Warsaw, Cracow and so on - IVB4
had nothing to do with these, and I do not believe that
anyone in the Head Office for Reich Security had anything to
do with them - that was the exclusive competence of the
government in the Generalgouvernement. In Security Police
matters, the State Secretary for Security in the
Generalgouvernement concerned himself with that. That was
Krueger.

Q.  But does what you have said apply, for example, to the
ghettos at Riga or Minsk or Kiev?

A.  Section IVB4 had nothing to do with them, either.

Q.  So which ghettos did you mean when you said this?

A.  Well, it is Litzmannstadt which I remember, and
perhaps...

Q.  It is clear, is it not, that these words do not apply to
Litzmannstadt?

A.  But when I said this, I had this Litzmannstadt document
in my hand, and I assumed - and I must still assume today -
that it concerned all ghettos in what were then the German
Eastern Territories. Because Heydrich's order was issued at
the time when Himmler became Reich Commissioner for the
Strengthening of German Folkdom, to transfer these areas to
the Generalgouvernement, and there were very many ghettos in
these territories.

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