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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