Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-102-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/14

Session No. 102
6 Av 5721 (19 July 1961)

Presiding Judge: I declare the one hundred and second
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 Yes, I am aware of that.

Attorney General: Do you remember that you once wrote a
book, "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question"?

Accused A book?

Q. Yes, which was printed in 50,000 copies by the Nordland
Verlag.

A. That was not printed in 50,000 copies: that got no
further than the galley proofs, and certainly there were
never 50,000 copies.

Q. Very well, we shall discuss the number of copies later;
so you wrote a book which got as far as the stage of galley
proofs? So what was the content of this book, and what
happened to this book?

A. First of all, this was not a book; it was a manuscript,
and in fact it was the...the situation, that is to say the
statistical documents for all the transports, in the sphere
of the Jewish Question, the deportation of Jews, including
emigration. In short, a survey of everything which took
place up to the point where I wrote it. But that was never a
book. It was never turned into a single book, because it was
banned.

Presiding Judge: Because it was what?

Accused:    Because it was banned. The manuscript, when the
galley proofs were read, was banned by my Chief. So
obviously this matter of 50,000 copies is a pure invention -
not one single copy was ever printed.

Attorney General: When did you write it?

Accused I forget the exact year: it was...it must have been
around...I believe, yes...in any case it was before
Heydrich's death.

Q. That was also dedicated to Heydrich, was it not? A
special dedication to Heydrich?

A. No. Not a special dedication to Heydrich, but, as was the
practice at that time, everything which was written by any
Section Head concerning his work could only be brought out
through the Chief of the Security Police and the Security
Service. Naturally a Section Head could not publish any
works in his own name.

Q. It contained about one hundred typewritten pages, did it
not?

A. I cannot say for sure; it was not a thick volume, nor a
very slim one: it was...it might have been the equivalent of
a thinner booklet.

Q. You once gave a lecture at the Preussenhaus. Do you
remember?

A. Yes, indeed. I remember that. But that must have been
towards the end of the War.

Q. That was a meeting organized by Kaltenbrunner, which was
also attended by Goebbels and some 300 or 400 Police
Commanders, right?

A. First of all, Goebbels was not present, and secondly it
was only a police meeting. But there were not three or four
hundred participants. I do not believe that...there may have
been...there may have been at the most half of that, at the
most, but Goebbels was not present.

Q. And Skorzeny also gave a talk there on the operation to
free Mussolini, right?
A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. And the topic of your lecture was "Results of the
Ideological Struggle Against Opponents." That was the topic
of your lecture.

A. I can hardly believe that, as I could only have spoken
about what was happening in the sphere of solving the Jewish
Question. But the theme of the struggle against ideological
opponents, I do not believe that was the theme.

Q. So what was the theme of your lecture then?

A. The theme of this lecture will have been roughly the same
as that in the booklet, that is the work from the beginning
of emigration up to the day of the lecture. I do not know
for sure, but that would necessarily have been the case.

Presiding Judge: When did this lecture take place?

Accused It really was not a lecture, but a presentation I
had to give. It took place - it was a ten minute
presentation, and it took place towards the end of the War:
possibly 1944, 1943...I cannot say for sure.

Attorney General: And I am telling you that the facts were
different from those you have described, and that you gave
Sassen the following, more correct, description of the
facts: "Kaltenbrunner had called an official meeting at the
Preussenhaus, between the release of Mussolini and March
1945, and this took place at the Preussenhaus. However, it
is also possible that I was ordered to come from Hungary to
Berlin for this purpose. I do not remember now. In any case
very late in the War, Kaltenbrunner called this meeting,
because there was no room at the State Police Office. The
Preussenhaus had been partly bombed out. Leipzigerstrasse,
near Potsdam Square."

Is this correct so far?

Accused So far this is correct. But this precise definition,
Potsdam Square and so on, this cannot be from me at all, as
I do not know this.

Attorney General:

     "All of the State Police leaders were there, all of the
     Inspectors, all of the Commanders of the Security
     Police and the Security Service. Whether the Chiefs of
     the Operations Units and the Operations Commandos were
     there, I do not know. In any case, this was a gathering
     of three hundred men, it might even have been four
     hundred. And Goebbels was also present."

Is that correct?

Accused No, that cannot be correct, because as far as I know
I last saw Goebbels when I was still at the Security Service
Head Office. After that, I never saw him again throughout
the entire War, right up to the end. I do not remember any
instance when I saw him, and he really could not be
overlooked, not with his gait.

Q. "And Lange too, an SD Oberabschnittsfuehrer (District
Leader) was also present." Is that correct?

A. Lange, Dr. Lange.

Q. Was he there?

A. A Dr. Lange was also present when Sassen...at the time he
took these things down from  me...Oberabschnittsfuehrer of
the Security Service, Dr. Lange. That is quite possible, as
I did in fact see Lange in Buenos Aires, and he may have
said that. It is possible, but I do not know whether I said
it, or whether he said so. But this business about Goebbels
can easily be checked, because in the case of such highly
placed Ministers, their presence or attendance at meetings
can be checked by other means, as to whether that is true or
not. In any case I must dispute this.

Attorney General:

     "And I gave my lecture about the results of the
     ideological struggle against opponents. This was
     already very late in the course of the War. Before me,
     Skorzeny spoke about his freeing Mussolini."

Is that correct so far?

Accused:    Yes, that is correct, but I must add that this
is not this Dr. Lange who is repeatedly being referred to
here. But this Dr. Lange, he was in fact called Dr. Klan,
and was a former District Leader of the Security Service in
Austria.

Attorney General

     "And on that day I had to give a lecture, a draft of
     which I had to submit to Mueller, and I also asked
     Mueller whether I should give a statistical review, I
     had noted down a few figures, and I did not know how to
     present it to those present. They were in fact men from
     whom one did not have to hide things. I was not able to
     determine the number of Jews actually killed, I did not
     have it."

Is that correct?

A. That I did not have the number of Jews killed...

Q. Is this passage, the passage I have read out to you. Is
this correct?

A. Basically this is correct: as to whether this is exactly
how things occurred, I do not know.
Attorney General:

     "Mueller told me not to say anything about these
     matters, but to disregard them, and to say that the
     Fuerer had given the Reichsfuehrer an order according
     to which the Reichsfuehrer assigned the Final Solution
     to the Economic-Administrative Head Office."

Is that correct?

A. I do not know whether as it stands there it is correct. I
cannot say, since in fact...the easiest way to check this is
to listen to the tape, then this can be checked. In fact, a
great deal here has...

Presiding Judge: Very well, but we do not have the tape, and
that is why you are being asked. So you will say what you
remember and that will be all.

Attorney General:

     "And then I said finally, 'Let us hope that the scourge
     of mankind over thousands of years will bring peace
     once and for all'."

Accused:    I am sorry...what was that?

Q. Here you are. You can look at this. Did you say that? If
you wish to see this in writing, please do so. At the bottom
here.

A. Even if I had said that at the Preussenhaus, at the time,
I would have been a complete fool if I had said that on the
tape in Buenos Aires. That is number one. Number two,
Mueller would never have put up with such a generalization
as a lecture. I had to give a factual review, and not my
personal or impersonal opinion. This sentence also entirely
fits into the picture of representing me to be interested in
this matter, so that the book would sell better. I cannot
say anything further about this, either.

I would immediately acknowledge this, obviously, if I were
to hear the tape. That is what I must say here. But it must
be borne in mind - it must be realized that I must either
have been a fool to have pronounced something like that,
even if it corresponded to the truth.

Q. But does it correspond to the truth or not?

A. No, I cannot...I cannot accept that.

Q. You cannot accept that?

A. No. And I would ask that you see whether you can get hold
of the tape. After all anyone...there are so many pages,
entire pages, and it is possible...possible to slip in
sentences and slip in words...

As a supplement, I should like to add that whether Goebbels
took part in this meeting should be checked. I say he did
not. That can be checked easily. This fact would then
confirm as well...of course it would not confirm the later
detail, but then it would be more or less clear how things
were.

Q. Did you draft monthly reports about Jewish matters?
Reports, which were then distributed to the police units?

A. Monthly reports to...no, I did not draft anything like
that. I did not draft any reports whatsoever, but for a
while the information which came during the month
had...monthly reports had to be produced for notifying the
upper echelons, but they did not go down the line. There was
something else...

Q. I see. The upper echelons, very well. So the upper
echelons. Let us stay there for a moment. What was the
circulation of these reports? To whom were they distributed?

A. These monthly reports which the Section had to produce, I
gave them to Mueller only, and he certainly passed them on
to the Chief of the Security Police, but not as a report
from a single Section, but as a report from the entire
Department because each Section Head did in fact have to
give such a report. This was simply for the purpose of
informing Mueller, the Chief of the Security Police and
certainly also, in a heavily abridged form, Himmler. Because
Himmler did in fact give orders, and at the end he ordered -
this can be proved - that in future he did not wish to know
anything more every month other than the number of the Jews
deported. That was the order. Until then all sorts of things
had to be reported on.

Q. All right. Do you admit that your rank in the SS at the
beginning was equivalent to the ranks of other Section
Heads, while later it was in fact higher than the normal
rank of a Section Head?

A. No, because the organization chart shows immediately that
they were Government Counsellors and Senior Government
Counsellors, if they were civil servants, and that is
equivalent to Sturmfuehrer and Obersturmbannfuehrer. As long
as I...

Presiding Judge: Would you please keep your answers short.

Attorney General: When you appear in 1941 in T/99, you
appear as Section Head, and there your rank fits in with the
ranks of other Section Heads: Hauptsturmfuehrer as you were
at the time, were you not?

Accused:    On 1 March 1941. If I take Group IVB, the Group
Leader is Sturmbannfuehrer, the Deputy is Sturmbannfuehrer,
the Section Head of IV1 is Sturmbannfuehrer, the Section
Head of IVB2 is Sturmbannfuehrer, IVB3 is vacant and I am
IVB4, also Sturmbannfuehrer. But then in March 1941, I then
- six months or three-quarter of a year later - I became
Obersturmbannfuehrer. But that is a perfectly normal thing,
because...

Q. All right, that will do. So that is exactly what I said.
Here your rank fits in with the ranks of the other Section
Heads, but shortly after that you were promoted, were you
not?

A. Yes, in November I was promoted.

Q. Very well. Now please look at T/104. Here you already
have a higher rank, and that would suit a Group Leader, for
example like the Commander of Group IVC, if I am not
mistaken. That is on page 4, the deputy Chief of IVC, and
the deputy Chief of IVE on page 9.

A. I am not the only one here either, because I see here,
for example...

Q. Not the only one. I said relatively. I did not say you
were the only one, I said relatively.

A. It depends on what happened in terms of promotion. As
long as I was Obersturmbannfuehrer...I could not go higher
as a Section Head, but I could become that. One finds here
also Obersturmbannfuehers as Section Heads, here in this
organization chart.

Q. All right. And Mueller did not promote you to a higher
rank simply because he feared difficulties with other
Section Heads. Is that correct?

A. No, because from that point on something opposite
happened. Men who previously held the same rank, perhaps one
grade lower, they suddenly overtook me. This was connected
with the fact that I...I have already briefly described this
...in any case I know this, I am also aware of this because
I did not take any decisions of my own...

Q. All right, we have already heard that. I should like to
know whether what you said to Sassen in the following words
is correct or not:

     "So if I had somehow been proposed by Mueller for
     promotion when I was Section Head, there would have
     been a row among the other twenty-nine. They were civil
     servants. Some of them were after pensions and all that
     stuff. There would have been all sorts of quarrels."

Is that correct?

A. There were not "all sorts of quarrels." The rest is
correct. And I have also said this here in Bureau 06.

Q. And the scope of your Section also increased constantly.
After the Head Office for Reich Security was set up, you
received two Sections - IIB2, which had been II/112 of the
Security Service Head Office, and IVD3, which had taken over
the duties of the Gestapo, and IVD4, where you worked on
evacuation and resettlement. Is that correct?

A. No, that is not entirely correct. It is not correct. I
did not take over three Sections. Three Sections were not
turned into one Section. If I had taken over II/112, then
there would not have been any need for any further existence
in Department VII of a Jewish Affairs Section.

Q. But it is here in writing. Just look at it. Page 24 of
exhibit T/99, where the new designations of the Sections and
Departments are listed compared with the previous ones. Do
you see IIB2 there?

A. The only thing that this can mean is what was previously
II/112, that now became IIB2, but that does not mean II/112
as well as IIB2.

Q. Quite - that is precisely what I am arguing. Of course I
agree with you. Neither exist any more. Today, it is IIB2.

A. Exactly.

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