Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Appeal/Appeal-Session-03-07 Last-Modified: 1999/06/15 Attorney General: Hoess left at the end; after the Hungarian operation he was brought back to Auschwitz specifically for that purpose. Justice Silberg: The operation in Hungary began in May. I was asking about the summer months. In the summer was he already in Auschwitz? Attorney General: I believe that he came to Auschwitz - and I shall immediately check this in his autobiography - in June 1944. Justice Silberg: How long was he in Auschwitz? Attorney General: I do not remember, Your Honour. President: On which document do you base yourself, Mr. Attorney General, when you say that Hoess was brought back to Auschwitz after the operation in Hungary? Attorney General: On the autobiography. Justice Silberg: Hoess was unable to say anything about the scope of the extermination in the summer months, about the numbers. He did not know about the numbers. Attorney General: He knew exactly. He was the central director of the concentration camps at that time. He had a precise picture of the extent of the numbers. That is my next point. President: Afterwards he was appointed deputy director of the concentration camps, correct? Attorney General: Yes. I should like simply to add that in T/470, a telegram from Eichmann's Section to Knochen, there is a reference at the end to the fact that the Jews living in mixed marriages were also to be transported, even if this was against instructions, but they were to be transported as if they were Schutzhaeftlinge (in protective custody). In other words, this distinction between Transportjuden and Schutzhaeftlinge was punctiliously observed. Justice Agranat: How was this expressed in practical terms? Attorney General: In practical terms - we heard in Raya Kagan's testimony that those people who arrived at the concentration camps by way of punishment, for example, for making a public telephone call and so on, would not go through the selections, were not liable to be exterminated, they were privileged prisoners, for them a concentration camp was a place where they were segregated from the general society because of some offence or other. President: And when one of them died, would that be registered? Attorney General: That would be registered. And in accordance with the characteristic Nazi perversion, they of all people were the ones to be kept on, while all the Jews who arrived as Transportjuden were exterminated. Evidence was given here before the Court about Hoess and his testimony about Eichmann by the psychologist Professor Gilbert, who was the American Army's psychiatrist in the Nuremberg jail. He talked to the leading Nazis, including Rudolf Hoess. In Session 55, Vol. III, on pages 1003-1006, he testified as follows: "What did Hoess say about Eichmann? "A. Well, he seemed to be unable to discuss the extermination programme without referring to Eichmann, and at first I hardly noticed this, but when I started to get written statements from him for psychological purposes, the name came in more and more, and it gradually dawned on me that this man must be a key figure in the whole extermination programme." After this, Professor Gilbert related in Court that when Hoess testified that in Auschwitz two and a half million people were exterminated, and Goering said that was impossible, that it was a lie, Professor Gilbert approached Hoess, gave him a sheet of paper and wrote on the top: "Goering wants to know how it was at all possible, from a technical point of view, to destroy two and a half million people in the course of three and a half years." And Gilbert kept this document of Hoess' all the time until it was submitted to the Court here. And this is what Hoess wrote on that sheet of paper. Gilbert read it into the record, it is on pages 1005-1006, T/1170. President: What is T/1170? Attorney General: The manuscript by Hoess in reply to Goering's query as to how it was possible to destroy two and a half million Jews. Justice Silberg: Was the manuscript submitted during the trial? Attorney General: Hoess' own manuscript. It was submitted and you have it before you. Justice Silberg: Is that a transcript? Attorney General: No, the original was submitted. The transcript may be in the other files. But Gilbert read the following into the record: "The freight trains with the Jews destined for extermination moved along a special railroad installation which had been laid down especially for this purpose right up to the extermination installations. Notification of these trains was given in advance by Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann of the RSHA, and they were allocated consecutive numbers, together with letters of the alphabet, in order to prevent a mix-up with transports of other prisoners. Each cable relating to these transports bore the reference: `In accordance with the specified directives, and are to be subjected to special treatment.' These trains consisted of closed freight cars and contained, on the average, about 2,000 persons." I now omit a few lines. "On the basis of the figure of 2.5 million, which is the number of people who - according to Eichmann - were brought to Auschwitz for extermination, it may be said that, on the average, two transports arrived daily, with a combined total of 4,000 persons, of whom twenty- five per cent were fit for work, the balance of 3,000 were to be exterminated." Further down it says: "I have to keep to the figure mentioned by Eichmann, for he was the only SS officer who was allowed to keep records concerning these liquidation operations, according to the orders of the Reichsfuehrer-SS. All other units which took part in any way had to destroy all records immediately. Eichmann mentioned this number in my presence when he was called upon, in April 1945, to present a report to the Reichsfuehrer-SS. I had no records whatsoever." Concerning the mental state of Hoess when he wrote these words in the Nuremberg jail, Professor Gilbert made the following comments, on page 1007: "He was apathetic - as he always was, I gathered from the psychological examination; he was resigned to his death; he had no interest whatever in falsifying any testimony; what he had already told me in his cell in Nuremberg, in our conversations, he repeated again on the witness stand. It was all an automatic culmination of a career that was marked by death and must end in death, and he had no particular feelings about any of this - he just automatically wrote what he knew, when asked." Hoess wrote about Eichmann himself in his book, on pages 214- 215. The book was submitted in the English translation, and I shall read this in English: "Eichmann was absolutely convinced that if he could succeed in destroying the biological basis of Jewry in the East by complete extermination, then Jewry as a whole would never recover from the blow. The assimilated Jews of the West, including America, would, in his opinion, be in no position (and would have no desire), to make up this enormous loss of blood and there would therefore be no future generation worth mentioning... "Eichmann was completely obsessed with his mission and also convinced that this extermination action was necessary in order to preserve the German people in the future from the destructive intentions of the Jews. This was the way in which he regarded his task, and he employed all his energy in fulfilling the plans for extermination which the Reichsfuehrer-SS had made. Eichmann was also a determined opponent of the idea of selecting from the transports Jews who were fit for work. He regarded it as a constant danger to his scheme for a `final solution,' because of the possibility of mass escapes or some other event occurring which would enable the Jews to survive. In his view action should be taken against every Jew that could be got hold of, and such actions ought to be pursued to their conclusion as quickly as possible, since it was impossible to anticipate the final result of the War." It will therefore come as no surprise that at the end of the War, Eichmann expressed his satisfaction that he at least had won his war, and although the Reich collapsed and Hitler lost his war, Adolf Eichmann won. And that is the finding of the Judgment on this matter, at the end of paragraph 293. There remains the incontrovertible fact in respect of Eichmann that at the end of the War, he expressed satisfaction at the death of millions of Jews and declared that the thought of this would make it easier for him to jump into the pit. This was satisfaction at the major blow that had been dealt the enemy of the Reich on that front on which the Accused was active during the years of the World War as well as prior to it. This psychological stock-taking, which the Accused carried out in the midst of the general despair surrounding him, is sufficient to show us his real attitude to the murderous work he performed. Wisliceny was one of his chief assistants. They were also on friendly terms. T/85 is one of Wisliceny's reports which were submitted. Wisliceny describes in great detail Eichmann's work on all fronts, his great authority, together with his unswerving tendency to cover himself for every single action on his part. What he says here is too long to read out to the Court, and I would ask the Court to examine this document, in which one of his main assistants describes the blood-stained work which continued over so many years. I shall quote just one passage, from page 3: "It was not until later that the expression `Final Solution' acquired an entirely different meaning, and Himmler and Eichmann used it as a term of camouflage for the biological extermination of European Jewry. This was done deliberately by Eichmann, in order to mislead other authorities, who were introduced to the secret of the resettlement plans, by using the password which until then had been used for the resettlement operation." I questioned Eichmann on his various tactics of deception, and these are his replies in Session 104, Vol. IV, page 1791: "Q. You told us that Jewish Affairs had to be heavily camouflaged even vis-a-vis the Foreign Ministry: but you will admit that these camouflage systems and methods were also applied to other countries, for example to the Slovaks. "A. I never denied that; in fact, Himmler gave these orders. "Q. But you carried them out? "A. I was not the only one who carried them out. "Q. It is you who are the Accused here, and not others...And you suggested referring the Slovak Government to Fiala's articles and the deportees' postcards, didn't you? "A. Yes, exactly as I was ordered. "Q. And you signed the letter to the effect that the Slovak Government's fears and concerns about the fate of the deportees were unfounded, and that there was no reason for concern. Is that not true? "A. Yes, that was the required use of words, and I had to apply it. "Q. And you suggested to the Slovak Government that it would say what had been stated about the fate of the Jews was only atrocity stories (Greulmaerchen ) and nothing more. "A. Yes, that was ordered, too." After this comes the definitive reply: "Q. So the camouflage system and the camouflage staff worked in all directions, both vis-a-vis the foreign governments, vis-a-vis the Jews, and also vis-a-vis the Foreign Ministry, did they? "A. Yes." I asked him about the meeting in March 1944 with the Jewish representatives in Hungary. "Q. ...At this meeting you promised the Jews that nothing would happen to them... "A. At that time I did not know that they were being transported to Auschwitz, I have already said that. But I did know that they were being deported. "Q. But you told them exactly the opposite! You told them that nothing would happen to them, that they would not be sent away from Hungary. Is that right? "A. Yes, those were my orders." Justice Silberg: When did Eichmann first see the Auschwitz camp? Attorney General: In the summer of 1941. Justice Silberg: When was this camp set up? Attorney General: Approximately at that time. Justice Silberg: He visited there five times, correct? Attorney General: Including at the end of the War, when in April 1945 he had a meeting with a Red Cross representative - T/865, that is an International Red Cross report dated June 1946 about the Red Cross operations to help civilian detainees in concentration camps in Germany; the person making the report indicates that on 6 April he met with Eichmann, the specialist in all Jewish affairs, and he quotes Eichmann as saying that Eichman told the Red Cross official that he was the direct plenipotentiary - der direkte Bevollmaechtigte des Reichsfuehrers-SS for all Jewish affairs, and Eichmann stated this (page 3); as far as the general question of the Jews was concerned, Eichmann is of the opinion that Himmler now wishes to consider humane methods. Eichman personally does not quite agree to these methods (Eichmann persoenlich billige diese Methoden nicht gaenzlich), but as a good soldier he of course will carry out the Reichsfuehrer's instructions. Justice Silberg: This was in April 1945? Attorney General: Yes. In T/294, to which I have already referred, the minutes of the meeting on 10 October 1941, in which reference is made to a solution to the problem of the Jews in the Protectorate and the Old Reich, the question was where to send the 88,000 Jews in the Protectorate. It was said that consideration must be paid to the difficulties confronting the authorities of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, i.e. Lodz. The decision was taken to transport 50,000 Jews to Minsk and Riga, after Eichmann indicated that the camps of Nebe and Rasch in the East could accommodate these Jews. Nebe and Rasch were Operations Units commanders, and in their camps the Jews were shot immediately. Justice Silberg: Riga belonged neither to Nebe nor to Rasch, but to Stahlecker.
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