Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-024
Last-Modified: 1999/05/27

The First Expulsions within the Framework of the "Final Solution"

83. On 10 October 1941 a meeting held in Prague was
attended, amongst others, by Heydrich (to whom in the
meantime had been entrusted - in addition to his tasks as
head of the Head Office for Reich Security - effective rule
in the Protectorate)  and the Accused.  A memorandum of this
meeting has been preserved and was submitted to us as
exhibit T/294.

At this meeting, a programme was set for future action for
the solution of the Jewish question in the Protectorate and
the territory of the Old Reich, but measures already taken
were also mentioned.  The main points may be summed up thus:

     (a) The date for the beginning of evacuation had
     already been set earlier for 15 October 1941.
     
     (b) Reference was made to difficulties with the
     authorities in Lodz (the Lodz Ghetto was intended to be
     one of the main places of reception for deported Jews).
     
     (c) 50,000 Jews were to be sent to Minsk and Riga.
     
     (d) "SS Brigadefuehrer Nebe and Rasch could also
     receive Jews in camps for Communist detainees within
     the operations areas.  This had already begun, as was
     reported by SS Sturmbannfuehrer Eichmann."

In connection with paragraphs (c) and (d), we shall see
presently that Riga was the centre for Operations Unit A,
commanded by Stahlecker, that Nebe commanded Operations Unit
B (with Minsk as its centre), and that Rasch was commander
of Operations Unit C.

     (e) Terezin (Theresienstadt) was decided upon as the
     place for the concentration of Jews from the
     Protectorate, and the memorandum includes many details
     in connection with the carrying out of the
     concentration and the administration of the ghetto to
     be set up there. (We shall devote a separate chapter to
     this later on.)
     
     (f) Gypsies were to be transferred to Riga.

At the end of the memorandum, there is a remark:

     "Since the Fuehrer's wish is that, by the end of the
     year, the Jews be removed, to the extent possible, from
     the German area, all pending problems are to be solved
     immediately.  Even the problem of transportation is not
     to present difficulties in this matter."

First, Jews were expelled to Lodz.  On 30 September 1941,
Brunner, one of the Accused's assistants, who at the time
was in charge of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in
Vienna, informs Dr. Loewenherz that:

     "because of the need of the Aryan population to change
     their residences, due to air raids, some of the Jews
     from the Old Reich, from the Protectorate and Vienna
     must be removed to Lodz."

A quota of 5,000 people was fixed.  They were permitted to
take with them luggage up to 50 kilogrammes and 100
Reichsmark only.  Thus, from 15 October up to 2 November
1941, 5,002 people were deported (Loewenherz Report, T/154,
pp. 35, 36 of the original).

We have received a series of documents (T/200, dated
9.10.41; T/243, dated 11.10.41; T/222, dated 19.10.41, and
T/244 - the date is not clear, but appears to be 22.10.41),
all of which show that as from 15 October 1941, 20,000 Jews,
including 5,000 Jews of Vienna, were deported from the Reich
to the Lodz Ghetto, and also 5,000 Gypsies.  As far as we
know, these were the first expulsions from Reich territory
after Hitler issued the order for the Final Solution.

The Loewenherz Report (T/154) also describes the
deportations to Riga and Minsk.  Dr. Loewenherz received
information on this from Brunner on 27.10.41, and on
25.11.41, 28.11.41 and 2.12.41, 3,000 Jews were deported
from Vienna to Riga and Minsk.

Amongst the deportees from Vienna to Riga was the witness
Liona Neumann (Session 30, Vol. I, p. 508), who was deported
in January 1942.

84. The documents submitted to us illustrate the method of
carrying out these expulsions to Riga and Minsk, as follows:

     (a) T/714, on 24 October 1941, the head of the Order
     Police (Ordnungspolizei) in Berlin (General Daluege)
     writes to the commanders of the Order Police of the
     Reich in Vienna, Prague and Riga that, during the
     period 1 November 1941 - 4 December 1941, the Security
     Police will expel 50,000 Jews from the Old Reich, from
     Austria and the Protectorate, to the East to the
     vicinity of Riga and Minsk, and continues:
     
     "According to what has been agreed with the head of the
     SD and the Security Police, the Order Police undertakes
     to guard the deportation trains by posting an
     escort...details should be worked out in co-operation
     with the local SD authorities.  The duty of the
     escorting guards ends with the handing over of the
     transports in due order at the places of destination to
     the competent authorities of the Security Police ..."

(b) Document T/720 shows, by way of example, how the plan
was carried out at the local level.  On 11 November 1941,
the Nuremberg Gestapo office sends to its affiliated
authorities organizational instructions for the evacuation
of Jews on 29 November 1941.  The instructions were given in
reliance upon a decree by the Reichsfuehrer-SS (Himmler)
dated 31 October 1941, bearing the reference number of the
Accused's Section IVB4, and therefore issued from this
Section.  The directives were styled with the accuracy of a
military operation order and allocated the various duties -
who would receive the Jews arriving from other places; who
would transfer them to the place of concentration; who would
guard them until they were loaded on to the freight cars of
the train.  Nor was the robbery of the evacuees' property
forgotten.  This, too, would be carried out according to
plan.  On a certain date, Jews were to be informed that,
retroactively as from 15 October 1941, all their property
was considered as confiscated by the State Police, and that
they were to draw up a full list of their property for this
purpose. On the day of expulsion, their apartments were to
be closed and sealed by the police.  A search was to be
carried out upon the persons of the evacuees, and every
object of value was to be taken away, except a watch and a
wedding ring.

(c) Document T/719 includes three letters dated 27.11.41,
3.12.41 and 11.12.41 sent from the Accused's office and
signed by Heydrich and Mueller.  They contain instructions
to prevent the irregular transfer of property by Jewish
evacuees.

(d) In document T/302 (December 1941), the local authority
in Duesseldorf informs the Accused's Section - for the
attention of the Accused or his deputy, and the commander of
the SD and Security Police, Operations Unit A in Riga, that
on 11 December 1941 a train with 1,007 Jews left the
Duesseldorf railway station for Riga.  Handwritten notes are
attached to this document which cannot fail to stir the
heart of the reader.  They show the composition of the
transport, according to age, sex and profession.  1,007
personal tragedies found their expression in lines - one
line per man, woman or child, four straight lines cut by one
slanting line, until the full number is reached.  The
document is continued in exhibit T/303 dated 26 December
1941, in which Police Captain Salitter, the commander of
this transport, reports on the journey, up to the handing
over of the unheated train at its destination in a
temperature of 12 degrees below zero on the night of 13-14
December.  According to the report, there were in Riga
previously 35,000 Jews who had been transferred to the
ghetto, and he continues:

     "Now, from what I have heard, there are in this ghetto
     only 2,500 male Jews exploited as manpower.  The other
     Jews were directed to some other suitable occupation
     (Verwendung) or shot to death by the Latvians."

85. During the period of these expulsions, Regulation No. 11
was published under the Reich Nationality Law (exhibit
T/637), dated 25 November 1941.  According to para. 1 of
this regulation:

     "a Jew whose regular place of sojourn is abroad cannot
     be a German national.  The regular place of sojourn is
     abroad when a Jew stays abroad under circumstances
     which show that he is not staying there only
     temporarily."

Para. 3 provided that the property of a Jew, who lost his
German nationality according to these regulations, is
confiscated for the benefit of the Reich.  The sting in
these regulations - "the legal trick," to use the expression
of Counsel for the Defence - lies in the fact that this
"legal" arrangement was used also against Jews expelled from
the Reich territory, as if they moved their places of
residence of their own will to the place to which they were
expelled.

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