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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts//Sessions/Session-098-01


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-098-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/13

Session No. 98
4 Av 5721 (17 July 1961)

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

Accused:    Yes, I am aware of that.

Attorney General: When you came to Berlin in 1939, were your
offices at Kurfuerstensrasse 116 right from the beginning?

Accused:    Yes, Kurfuerstenstrasse 116.

Q. Did the office at the time look as it appears in this
newspaper?

A. Yes, that is the office, this building in the middle.

Presiding Judge: I mark this document T/1424.

Attorney General: How many rooms did your office have there?

Accused:    As far as the number of rooms in this building
housing my office was concerned, there were possibly - one
moment, I have to work this out - there were perhaps eight
rooms occupied, maybe ten, I am not sure - I think more like
eight than ten.  And then there were a few halls in the
building, but they were not used, they were empty, except
for a large hall which was initially fitted out as a central
office and after that was completely empty, and then there
were other rooms for other Sections in this office building.

Q. Your appointment as Head of Section IVD4 applied to the
entire Eastern areas, did it not?

A. Do you mean, Mr. Attorney General, my responsibilities as
Section Head?

Q. Yes.

A. No, not to all the Eastern areas; I have already said,
except for the Generalgouvernement and except for the
Russian Eastern Occupied Territories, only in cases...

Q. I am talking about IVD4, at that time there were no
Russian Eastern Occupied Territories as yet, that was in
1939.  When in T/170 it says "Eastern areas" (Ostraum), what
did you mean by that, to what does that refer?

A. Not IVB4, but IVD4.

Q. I am talking about IVD4.

A. Oh, I understood IVB4.  Yes, this evacuation concerned
the newly incorporated Eastern territories.  But this
document is not from IVD4 - this document is the
confirmation of the setting up of a special Section.  The
special Section continued until the new organizational plan
was issued.

Q. And when it speaks about Eastern areas, it refers to all
the Eastern territories, including the Generalgouvernement,
does it not?

A. It says here "carrying out evacuation in the Eastern
areas."

Q. Evacuation?

A. Yes, at that time the evacuation concerned...at that
time, my Section was not actually called "Jewish Affairs."
The evacuation meant the nationalization of the German
Eastern provinces, in accordance with the decree from the
Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom.

Q. That we already know.  What qualifications did you have -
you had been handling emigration - that now you were
suddenly put in charge of evacuation?  After all, those are
totally different areas and duties.

A. Yes, that is quite true.  I had first to familiarize
myself gradually with the subject, and I believe that the
reason for my posting to Berlin was...Heydrich's and
Mueller's considerations...the man has been dealing with and
handling transport matters for years, and since the whole
subject of the evacuation of the Eastern provinces was
basically a technical transport matter, I was ordered to
Berlin.  That is the only explanation I have for this.
Because there were no evacuations from the
Generalgouvernement; on the contrary, at the time people
were moved from the Eastern provinces to the
Generalgouvernement.

Q. So what you are saying is that your experience in Vienna
made you suitable in Heydrich's eyes to carry out this new
assignment?  Is that correct?

A. Yes, in this sector.

Presiding Judge: I now repeat the Attorney General's
question: When here it says Eastern areas, what does that
mean?  All the territories occupied in the East by Germany,
or something else?  This was in December 1939.

Accused:    When it says here Eastern areas, Your Honour,
that means all the Eastern provinces which had recently been
incorporated into the Reich; in the reference it says
evacuation in the Eastern provinces, that is without the
Generalgouvernement, because there was, in fact, no
evacuation from the Generalgouvernement.

Q.  Were Poles who were, for example, evacuated from the
Warthegau not evacuated to the Generalgouvernement?

A. Yes, that is precisely what I mean, Your Honour,
evacuation from the new Eastern provinces; the Warthegau was
a new Eastern province.  And at the top it says Zichenau, as
it was called.  I no longer remember the details.  In
accordance with Himmler's orders, Jews and Poles were moved
from all these provinces to the Generalgouvernement.  And
this was called the evacuation of the Eastern provinces.
That also emerges from the Basic Decree of Himmler as Reich
Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom.

Attorney General: Do you agree that at a later date you
carried out evacuations in the Generalgouvernement, and in
particular in the Zamosc district?

Accused:    Yes, this is the Zamosc business, a totally
different matter again, which had nothing to do with Jewish
Affairs.  It is really the continuation - if I can put it
this way - in a subsequent year of the activities of the
Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom,
which had been more or less terminated in a certain year,
and were now taken up again.  Because in accordance with
Himmler's orders, the entire Zamosc district was to be made
German, and since under these orders all of the non-Germans
resident there had to be transported out of this district.
My Section was also involved in these technical transport,
that is to say, timetable-related matters.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, where is the Zamosc district?

Attorney General: In central Poland.

Presiding Judge:  In Congress Poland?

Attorney General: Yes, Congress Poland.  We shall later
identify these areas on the map, as Judge Raveh has
requested, but I will not do this until we will get to the
specific subject of (territorial) division.

[To the Accused] So the UWZ (Centre for Migration) offices
were under your control?

Accused:    No, they were not under my control; centralized
overall control and charge of the Migration Central Offices
were in the hands of Department III - and where within
Department III, I do not know.  In my case it was
Standartenfuehrer Ehlich, as can be seen from the
organization chart.  Migration and Resettlement, I think, is
what it was called...Evacuation and Resettlement, I think,
is what it was called.  It was...the Migration Central
Offices belonged to Department III.  Wherever matters had to
be processed in timetable terms, these affairs were
naturally handled and discussed with the competent man in
the Centre for Migration.  Krumey, who was himself head of a
Migration Central Office, in Litzmannstadt, said the same
thing.

Q. The offices of the Centre for Migration were in Posen, in
Lodz and in Gdansk, were they not?

A. Yes, there were several offices.  Today, I do not
remember where they were, but I know that there was a
Central Office in Posen, a form of branch office of this
Central Office was in Lodz, and there was also a Central
Migration Office in Danzig.  But as to the third place you
referred to, Mr. Attorney General, I do not know about that.
But something like that is quite possible; I do not know.

Q. Do you admit that you caused guidelines and obligatory
instructions to be sent to these offices?

A. Yes, where this was within the scope of my duties, I had
to do so.

Q. According to the report T/361, during your term of office
under this operation 534,384 persons were resettled.  Is
that total number correct?

A. Today, I am not able to say yes or no about this.  I
would rather answer as follows: Himmler ordered the numbers
to be evacuated.  This was also laid down in the
consultation on 30 January 1940, chaired by Heydrich, and
then, wherever the matter involved timetable-related
matters, my Section had to do the work.  The District
Officers had to carry out the rounding-up, and Department
III dealt with the racial matters.  But that is
approximately...

Q. You have answered everything except my question.  My
question is whether the scope of this operation included
altogether over half a million people who were evacuated or
resettled.

A. I have said that today I do not know the figure; I only
know the figure ordered by Himmler.  Whether they were
actually evacuated, I cannot say; that is just as possible
as not.

Q. Very well. I show you T/361.  Do you have any reason to
assume, or do you have any reason to doubt, the accuracy of
the figure given here?

A. It is hard for me here to say yes or no, because it does
not show who drew up the list; there is no signature or
initials.  I have already said that I do not remember any
figure - if I knew it I would admit it at once, because the
figures Himmler gave in his orders are available, but I do
not know whether it was possible in - how shall I put it ? -
in actual practice to process these numbers.  According to
what I have read -  I do not remember myself - there were
stoppages, and then things continued, and so on.  I would be
very happy to answer this question, but as I have said,
these are just figures without any letterhead and without
any signature.  It is quite possible that this is true - but
it is equally possible that it is not.

Q. What was the co-operation like between the German railway
administration and the railway administration of the
Generalgouvernement, with reference to these resettlements
or evacuations?  We have always heard from you that in the
Generalgouvernement there was a separate railway
administration which operated autonomously.  So what was the
co-operation like between the German Reich railway
administration and the railway administration of the
Generalgouvernement?

A. Today, I am able to say something about this only from
the documents and not from my own knowledge, because I
myself, I believe, did not personally take part in these
conferences on timetables.  But things were as follows:
State Secretary Ganzenmeller in the Reich Ministry of
Transport was the head of the various Directorates-General
of the German Reich Railways and, far in the East, of the
Directorate-General of the Eastern Railways.  For evacuation
purposes a distinction must be made as to whether the
efforts to make rolling stock available were disposed of
locally, or whether these had to be made in Berlin.  This,
first of all, depended on the time when the timetable was
drawn up, and secondly this depended on what the
instructions stipulated.  If I may give examples to
illustrate this, I shall be ready to do so.

Q. I am interested to know whether the co-operation or
coordination was directed by some central body, and if so,
which central body?

A. For evacuation matters within the province of the Reich
Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom, at the
beginning the local authorities had to make rolling stock
available.  This led to all sorts of major confusion, and
that was the reason why I was ordered to Berlin, for this
newly established Section to handle technical transport
matters centrally from Berlin.

Q. That is what I was asking about.  That is the answer,
then.  You concentrated the co-ordination of the
resettlement or evacuation operations, both for the Reich
Railways and for the Railway Administration of the
Generalgouvernement.  So that is the answer to the question
which I asked you fifteen minutes ago.

A. Yes, but it is not quite right, Mr. Attorney General, it
applies only to this first part, to the evacuations from
Reich territory to the Generalgouvernement.  But as far as
evacuation matters within the Generalgouvernement itself
were concerned, they were handled by the local authorities
in direct agreement with the Directorate-General of the
German Eastern Railways.  That is proved by two documents
which I consider to be most important, that is to say the
correspondence between SS General Wolff and the State
Secretary at the Reich Ministry of Transport, Ganzenmueller,
in which these large-scale transports within the
Generalgouvernement were directed from a higher level, since
the local Generalgouvernement authorities were no longer
able to cope.  In any case, I had nothing to do with this.

Q. Very well, we shall return to this later.  When you were
Head of Section IVD4, you continued to deal with the
emigration of Jews, didn't you?

A. IV, D for Dora, 4?

Q. IVD4.

A. Yes, until the autumn of 1941, I believe.

Judge Halevi:  One moment, please.  According to the
previous document T/361, these activities continued in 1942
and 1943 as well - is that correct?

Attorney General: That is correct.  I shall have further
questions, Your Honour, about this subject, too.

Judge Halevi:  I do not know whether this reply is correct,
that he only handled this matter until 1941.  Please look at
T/361.

Accused:    About emigration?

Q. About the evacuation of Poles.

A. I understood the Attorney General's question to be
whether I did not continue to deal, in addition also, with
emigration after that.  Emigration was permitted up until
1941.

Q. You are right; I did not understand this properly.  But
as far as the resettlement of Poles is concerned, you
handled this at least until the end of 1943.  Is that
correct?

A. Yes, with pauses which I made, of course.  But I believe
Zamosc was...

Q. But this assignment was not given to someone else, was it
- so that as long as this was being handled, you were the
person handling it, is that true?

A. As far as that was part of my Section and for the matters
covered by my Section, yes.

Judge Halevi:  Thank you very much.

Presiding Judge: Let me make this clear: In 1943 you were
still handling the resettlement of Poles from the areas
where they were living?

Accused:    I believe that it was in 1943, Your Honour, that
the order was given to Germanize the Zamosc district, and
this Zamosc district was, as far as I know, the first and
last of Himmler's projects in these matters.  And when that
was carried out, of course my Section was involved just as
much as was the case previously in the resettlement of Poles
from the Eastern areas to the Generalgouvernement.  It was
simply now the other way round - that is to say, in the last
operation, Himmler had given orders for Poles to be
transferred from the Generalgouvernement, in part to Reich
territory, in part to Auschwitz, but in part they were to
remain in the Generalgouvernement in what were called
"peripheral villages" (Raenderdoerfer).  These so-called
race and resettlement rated groups were again defined by the
Head Office for Race and Resettlement, and it was in these
terms that things had to be done and orders were to be
given.

Q. I thought that IVB4 dealt with Jews only, but did it
handle others as well, on the basis of the organizational
plan?

A. Yes, it did, whenever technical transport matters were
involved, such as timetables, and so on.  This also covered
a restricted number of groups, however, - there were
Gypsies, Poles, Slovenes and Jews.  I do not think anyone
else was involved.


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