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Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-029
Last-Modified: 1999/05/27

100. In Vichy France it was Abetz, Hitler's Ambassador, who
first proposed measures against the Jews as early as August
1940.  But Heydrich, jealous of the authority of the RSHA,
immediately demands that the Security Police unit in the
country be brought in (T/388).  In fact, the handling of
Jewish affairs is handed over to Advisers from the Accused's
Section, first Dannecker, and then Roethke and Brunner.  The
first document written by Dannecker, in T/389, is dated 28
January 1941 and contains a proposal to set up concentration
camps for Jews of foreign nationality, of whom there were
many in France.  Indeed, we see that in October 1941 over
seven thousand Jews had already been placed in the
concentration camps of Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune_la-
Rolande, most of them stateless Jews.  In a memorandum dated
22 February 1942 (exhibit T/400), Dannecker describes the
continuation of preparations for evacuation, with the help
of the Judenpolizei of the Vichy Government and stresses the
central role which he demands for himself in all activities
against the Jews of France.

On 11 June 1942, a consultation was held in the Accused's
Section in Berlin, attended by the Advisers on Jewish
Affairs in Paris, Brussels and The Hague.  It was decided
that the evacuations would include 15,000 Jews from Holland,
10,000 from Belgium and 100,000 from France (including the
unoccupied territory) - see T/419.  Dannecker prepares
detailed instructions concerning the categories of Jews to
be evacuated, and methods of carrying out the evacuation
(T/425, dated 26 June 1942).  On 1 July 1942, a conversation
takes place between the Accused and Dannecker, in which
Himmler's order for the evacuation with all speed of all
Jews from France is mentioned.  There will be no difficulty
in implementing the evacuation in the occupied part of
France, but when it comes to the unoccupied part, the Vichy
Government begins to make difficulties; therefore pressure
must be put on it.  In the meantime, transports will begin
from the occupied territory.  The proposed rate of three
weekly transports of one thousand Jews each is to be
increased considerably within a short time (T/428).
Dannecker continues preparations for transports to Auschwitz
(T/429) and agrees with representatives of the French police
that the latter carry out, on 16 July 1942, a round-up of
thousands of stateless Jews in Paris for the transports
(T/440).  On 1 July 1942, Dannecker fixes the places from
which the first transports will be dispatched (minutes,
attached to T/429, of a conversation with the Security
Police officials).

The first train was due to leave the city of Bordeaux on 15
July, but it transpired that not enough Jews had been made
ready to fill this train.  Therefore, the Paris office
cancelled the train (T/435).  This enraged the Accused, as
is evident from document T/436, which was signed by Roethke
and is worthy of quotation, as evidence of the Accused's
driving power and his status in the eyes of his
subordinates:

On 14.7.42...SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Dr. Eichmann, Berlin,
telephoned.  He wanted to know why the train scheduled for
15 July 1942 was cancelled.  I answered that originally the
`wearers of the Star' in the provincial towns as well were
to be arrested, but because of a new agreement made with the
French Government, only stateless Jews were to be arrested
in the meantime.  The train scheduled for 15 July 1942 had
to be cancelled, because, according to information received
from the SD unit in Bordeaux, there were only 150 stateless
Jews in Bordeaux.  Because of the short time at our
disposal, we could not find other Jews for this train.
Eichmann pointed out that this was a matter of prestige.
This matter had necessitated drawn-out negotiations with the
Reich Ministry of Transport, which had been successfully
concluded, and now Paris caused the cancellation of the
train.  A thing like this had never happened to him.  The
whole business was `disgraceful.'  He would not inform
Gruppenfuehrer Mueller of this at once, in order not to
disgrace himself.  He would have to consider whether France
should not be dropped altogether, as far as evacuation was
concerned.  I requested that this should not be done and
added that it was not the fault of our office if this train
had had to be cancelled...the following trains would leave
according to plan."

And indeed, the trains left, although the arrests did not
bring the desired results (T/445), and on 3 September 1942 a
report was submitted, showing that, up to that date, 27,000
Jews had been evacuated, of them 18,000 from the occupied
territory and the remainder from the unoccupied territory
(T/452).

Notice of each transport was sent to the Accused's Section
and to the place of destination.  Many such reports were
submitted to us (T/444, T/447 (1)-(18), T/455, T/457, T/461,
etc.), which refer to the period from July 1942 to March
1943.  Most of the transports were directed to Auschwitz,
and in such cases notices were sent to the Accused's office,
to the Inspector of Concentration Camps in Oranienburg, and
to the Auschwitz camp.  A number of transports were sent "in
the direction of Cholm" (for instance, T/1421, T/1422),
which was a railway junction near Lublin, and in these cases
the notices were sent to the Accused's Section and to
Commanders of the SD and Security Police in Cracow and
Lublin.

We heard the testimony of Professor Wellers (Session 32,
Vol. II, pp. 579-591), who was arrested in December 1941,
held at the Drancy camp from June 1942, and sent on to
Auschwitz in June 1944.  He described the round-up of the
Jews and the expulsion from the Drancy camp to the East.  An
especially horrifying chapter was the expulsion of 4,000
children, separated from their parents and sent off to
extermination, accompanied by heart-rending scenes described
to this Court by the witness.  In the documents, this
chapter is reflected in an enquiry from Dannecker to the
Accused on 10 July 1942, asking what was to be done with
these 4,000 children (T/438).  On 20 July 1942, Dannecker
makes notes of a telephone conversation between himself and
the Accused (T/439):

     "The question of the deportation of children was
     discussed with Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann.  He
     decided that, as soon as transports could again be
     dispatched to the Generalgouvernement area, transports
     of children would be able to roll"  (Er entschied, dass
     sobald der Abtransport in das Generalgouvernment wieder
     moeglich ist, Kindertransporte rollen koennen).

On 13 August 1942, Guenther, of the Accused's Section, sends
a cable (T/443), saying that the children can be included in
the transports to Auschwitz.

In France, as in other countries, the Germans acted as it is
written: "Thou hast murdered, and thou hast also inherited."
The looting of the victim's property was carried out here by
a special unit, set up for this purpose by Alfred Rosenberg
(see report T/508 and the evidence of Professor Wellers, who
was employed by the Germans in this unit - Session 32, Vol.
II, p. 588).  Nor did the Accused leave out the Jews who
escaped to the Principality of Monaco in Southern France.
His Section requested the Foreign Ministry to intervene with
the Government of Monaco, so that the latter extradite the
Jews from that territory (exhibits T/492-495).

According to a summary dated 21 July 1943, the number of
Jews evacuated had increased to 52,000 (T/488).  Two factors
hindered the speeding-up of evacuations: (a) Collaboration
by the Vichy Government in evacuating Jews of French
nationality became halfhearted; (b) the Italians refused to
collaborate in the part of Southern France they had
conquered, and even permitted Jews to find shelter in
territories occupied by them.  The Accused's Section and his
representatives in France went to some trouble to remove the
obstacles. (See, for instance, exhibit T/613 - a letter
marked IVB4, signed by Mueller, mentioning current
negotiations carried on by the Accused with the German
Foreign Ministry to put an end to interference by the
Italians.)

In connection with Belgium, it was planned, as already
stated, in the Accused's office on 11 June 1942 that 10,000
Jews be evacuated (T/419).  On 1 August 1942, the Accused
instructed the representative of the Chief of the Security
Police and the SD in Brussels (Ehlers, who was the first
Adviser on Jewish Affairs in Belgium) to evacuate stateless
Jews (T/513).  By 15 September 1942, 10,000 such Jews were
evacuated.  By 11 November 1942, the number of those
evacuated reached 15,000 (T/515).  A decisive date in the
fate of the Jews of Belgium was the night of 4 September
1943.  In the plan for action of the Security Police for a
round-up to be carried out that night (T/519), it is stated:

     "On the night of 3-4 September 1943, a large-scale
     operation will be carried out for the first time for
     the seizure of Belgian Jews, for posting to the East
     (Osteinsatz), as required by the Head Office for Reich
     Security."

In the Belgian Government's report (T/520), the round-up is
described as follows (p. 28):

     "At first, the hunt affected only Jews of foreign
     nationality.  Belgian Jews could believe at that time
     that they would never be molested.  A promise to this
     effect was made by General von Falkenhausen...on the
     initiative of Queen Elizabeth, who was supported by
     Cardinal van Roy.  In spite of these undertakings, on
     the night between the 3rd and 4th of September 1943,
     Gestapo men and Flemish collaborators broke into the
     apartments of Belgian Jews in Antwerp and removed them
     forcibly from their homes, to be taken in trucks to the
     Dossin barracks in Malines.  From this date onwards,
     there began the Jew-hunts all over the country,
     although the pace was slower in Brussels, because there
     the Gestapo did not have the same influence upon the
     other German administration services as they enjoyed in
     other places."


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