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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-018-05


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-018-05
Last-Modified: 1999/05/30

I now pass on to Prosecution document No. 917, which is a
letter from the Juedischer Kulturbund in Deutschland  to the
Juedischer Kulturbund in Vienna, of 14 April 1939, addressed
to Dr. Gruen.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Bar-Or, are we now moving to Austria?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  In fact, this belongs more to
Germany. We have here a request by the Kulturbund in Berlin
to assure that Jewish musicians who live in Vienna will be
allowed to participate in musical performances under the
auspices of the Kulturbund. The document reveals that Dr.
Gruen is asked to apply to Eichmann in Vienna, so that he
will arrange - they have been told that he can arrange -
that these Viennese Jews will be allowed to come temporarily
to Berlin. This document was submitted to the Accused; it is
number 275 of T/37 and the Accused speaks about it on pages
3336-3341 of his statement.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/126.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  This document was submitted to the
Accused because it would appear from it - and we asked the
Accused to state what was his attitude regarding it - that
at that time he was not only responsible for matters
concerning the emigration of Jews from Austria, but that an
Austrian Jew could not move anywhere, even if it were not
for emigration, but for any purpose, without Eichmann's
authorization.

This document, Your Honour, must be read together with a
second letter signed by Schwartz of the Juedischer
Kulturbund dated 10 August 1939, also to Dr. Gruen of the
Kulturbund in Vienna, which I now submit in the original.

Presiding Judge: Is that a reply to the previous letter?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  It is a reminder. The letter begins
with the words "Unfortunately I have not received a
reply..."

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/127.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I shall read from this letter only
one passage which explains why this was a reminder. They
wrote: "The Ministry of Propaganda has assumed again and
again, and today once more that we bring here all musicians
who are available in Vienna and who are by their quality
suitable for us, and that the appropriate applications are
forwarded by the Viennese branch of the Kulturbund to
Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann. Mr. Eichmann was said to be
aware of these procedures and of the urgency."

I propose to call now Dr. Meretz to testify.

Presiding Judge: Is that all you had on Austria? You may
diversify as you wish. I would only like to know where we
stand.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I have now completed the two matters
I wished to submit this morning: I submitted to the Court
documents that show the structure of the departments in
which the Accused worked, and I submitted to the Court all
the documents that relate to Germany proper until the
beginning of the War. If it is convenient and agreeable to
the Court, I would now prefer to submit the documents that
deal with Austria.

Presiding Judge: What is more convenient? I heard here two
suggestions.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  From the point of view of the
structure of the indictment and the submission of the case,
it is more convenient to submit now documents.

Presiding Judge: If that is so, please submit the documents.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  The first document I wish to submit
is Prosecution document No. 1601. I shall submit the
original. It is a letter from the "Leiter der SD-
Aussenstelle Wien 2" (Office in charge of the SD Local Unit
Vienna 2) to "SD Fuehrer des Unterabschnittes Wien" (SD
Leader of Sub-Section Vienna), dated 17 October 1938 and it
deals with excesses against Jewish synagogues and homes. As
mentioned, I submit the original.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/128.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  With the Court's permission, and
because of its importance, I wish to read it in the
original:

     "Report: On 15 October 1938, between 19.00 and 23.00 h.
     following material damage was caused by unknown
     perpetrators in the area of the Post at 12 Franz-
     Hochedlingerg.: At the synagogue in District 2 - at 13
     Gr. Schiffgasse, several windows were smashed in and
     the interior was partly destroyed. At the synagogue in
     District 2 - 24 Gr. Schiffgasse, unknown perpeptrators
     destroyed the entrance door and also the interior,
     prayer benches etc.
     
     At the Herminengasse, windows of ground floor and first-
     floor Jewish apartments were smashed with stones.
     
     In the Lilienbrunngasse, two shop windows of the
     knitwear store of Mendel Seidler, District 2,
     Lilienbrunngasse 13-15, were smashed, as well as one
     shop window of the tailor Baruch Taenzer, also at
     Lilienbrunngasse.
     
     The unknown perpetrators, mostly youths, could not be
     found, but may well belong mainly to the Hitler-Jugend
     (Hitler Youth). The attacks were well organized,
     cyclists warned of guards approaching and when these
     arrived, only a few bystanders were still there who
     refused, however, to furnish any information."

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I now pass on to Prosecution
document No. 1512. This is a letter to someone, called here
"Dear Herbert" in a handwriting which appears to be the
handwriting of the Accused and which was sent from Vienna to
Berlin on 23 April 1938. This document reached us through
the National Archives Record Service in Washington. We have
here a group of documents which arrived under the same
certification. I shall have to come back to these documents.
I marked the relevant document with Prosecution number 1512.
I shall of course also submit copies. I attached a copy, or
rather a typed transcript of the manuscript for the
convenience of the honourable Court. This is the first page,
it is marked 1512, this is the one I refer to and wish to
submit.

Presiding Judge: Can we keep this?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I only wish to return to it.
Everything is marked and the Court can easily find it when I
refer to the numbers of the documents of the Prosecution.

Presiding Judge: This will be exhibit T/129.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I shall read the letter:

     "Vienna, 23 April 1938. Dear Herbert, in pencil for
     lack of pen and ink. I read just now that the
     organization booklet of the NSDAP costs only 2.80
     Reichsmark. Please order it for me through Fischer and
     send it to me to the office. Loewenherz was released. I
     ordered him and Rothenberg to prepare until 27 April a
     precise programme of action regarding the Jewish
     community and the Zionist Organization for Austria,
     including a precise list of functions with personal
     details. I'll send you a copy to Berlin. 200,0000 marks
     were already paid. Engel must see to it that more is
     collected. The general lines of our work in Austria, as
     discussed with the Obersturmbannfueher and worked out
     by you at the time, I communicated yesterday to Freytag
     (who knew nothing of it) and to Hasselbacher, so that
     here everything is coordinated. When we have the
     results of the investigation, you will be informed
     immediately via Wolf. Ebert of the Schwarzes Corps
     (Black Corps) asked today for the Jewish Museum. I gave
     him 25 documents to photograph and asked him to return
     them. He was very glad and wants to write an article
     for the 'Black Corps,' something like 'From Metternich
     to Schuschnigg.'

     Situation in general:
     
     Preparations for activating Jewish political activity,
     particularly with regard to Jewish emigration, have
     been completed. Toward the end of next week the Jewish
     community and shortly thereafter the Zionist shop will
     be open. Thereafter the Aguda and finally the re-
     establishment of an organization similar to the
     Hilfsverein (Aid Society). Friedmann will arrive here
     within the next few days. On Wednesday I am going to
     Eisenstadt in connection with the archives. The
     material in the basement will be packed on Monday and
     sent to Berlin. I shall also visit the competent
     officer of the UA Vienna (Unterabschnitt -
     Subdivision), instruct him and give him guidelines,
     because for us Vienna is the most important.
     
     I will also soon get the yearbooks for Hungary, CSR,
     SHS and Italy and send them to you. Gehrmann became
     Department head. It is unlikely that I shall stay here
     as a minor head of section. But first the second man
     has to be here and be worked-in. I heard that I shall
     then go to a UA. That's OK with me. In 2-3 years I'll
     knock again on the door in Berlin. For the booklet on
     the Nuremberg laws I do thank you. Enough scribbles for
     to-day; I only wanted to give you some little
     information. The Voelkische Beobachter of today (23
     April) has on its front page, in boldface: 'The
     Rothschilds are expropriated.' Regards to all comrades.
     Heil Hitler! Adolf."

Presiding Judge: Who is Herbert?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  We assume that it is Herbert Hagen.

Dr. Servatius:  If it is permitted to explain what UA means
- Unterabteilung (Sub-Section).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  With the Court's permission, I now
pass on to Prosecution document No. 1515. It is part of the
Collection from Washington which I already submitted, it is
marked 1515. I shall submit additional copies. This is also
a letter in the handwriting of the Accused to Herbert,
written in Vienna on 1 May 1938. I would add that these
letters which the Accused wrote privately, as it were from
Vienna, were filed by Hagen in the files of the SD Head
Office. They were found by the American authorities, and
through them they reached us. I shall submit copies and
photostats of the manuscript.

Presiding Judge: Weren't these files burned?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  These [files] were not burned. The
files of the SD Head Office were found by the American
authorities immediately after the end of the War. The
Gestapo files were burned, but these are not Gestapo files.
This was an SD file of the Reichsfuehrer Administration of
the SS Head Office. Many documents were found there.

Presiding Judge: T/130.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I shall read this letter:

     "Dear Herbert, I want to write you a short letter again
     today. I just came back from a tour of all the sub-
     sections. I gave the people working there a survey of
     the material for which they were very grateful, as, so
     far, they had no idea. I hope to have soon the
     "Juedische Jahrbuecher" (Jewish Yearbooks) of all
     bordering countries and I shall then send them to you.
     I consider them to be of great help. All Jewish
     Organizations in Austria have been ordered to submit a
     report every week. These will be handed to the relevant
     desk officer at II 112 (Sub Sections). The reports are
     to be divided into a situation report and an activity
     report. In Vienna they must be submitted every Monday,
     elsewhere in the country every Thursday. I hope to be
     able to send the first reports to you with the rest
     tomorrow. The first issue of the Zionist Rundschau will
     appear on Friday, next week. I had them send the
     manuscripts to me and I am doing the boring work of a
     censor just now. The paper will, of course, be sent to
     you. In a certain sense, it will be 'my' paper. In any
     event, I put these gentlemen on the double, believe me.
     They are working now very diligently. I have demanded
     from the Jewish community and from the Zionist
     Organization of Austria the emigration figure
     (Aussonderungszahl) of 20,000 Jews without means for
     the period 1 April 1938-1 May 1939 and they promised me
     that they will comply. I have asked Assessor Lange to
     see me in the office on Tuesday. I shall give him an
     appropriate introductory speech, since he knows very
     little as yet about II 112. But he is an excellent
     fellow. Tomorrow I shall inspect again the shop of the
     Jewish community and of the Zionists. I do this every
     week at least once. I have them completely in my hands,
     they dare not take a step (Schritt) without first
     consulting me. That is as it should be, because then
     better control is possible. We can save ourselves the
     trouble of establishing a fourth Jewish political roof-
     organization (such as the Hilfsverein) because I
     ordered the Jewish community to establish itself a
     Central Emigration Office for all countries except
     Palestine. Preparations for this are already under way
     (Im Gange). Quite in broad outlines, the situation is
     now as follows:
     
     We deal with Aryanization, Jews in the economy etc. per
     the decree of Gauleiter Buerckel. The far more
     difficult task of getting these Jews to emigrate goes
     to the SD. And indeed, after the reorganization of the
     Jewish community and the Zionist Organization for
     Austria their work is also being directed towards
     emigration.
     
     I hope that herewith I have given you a brief account
     of current developments.

     I believe that I shall be appointed as Department head
     of a Sub-Section, now that things are running well in
     Vienna and a desk officer ha got into the work. You
     know I am sincerely sorry that I shall probably have to
     leave the work I liked to do and in which I felt as it
     were 'at home' for many a year, but you will surely
     understand that at the age of 32, I should not like to
     take a 'step backwards.' Our Chief is an excellent
     boss, who understands such things. Regards to all
     comrades of II 112. Yours, of old, Adolf. Please
     confirm to me in short receipt of my letters, from time
     to time."

Presiding Judge: Mr. Bar-Or, I am not convinced that it was
necessary to read and translate all this. That is to say,
after it was read, it had of course to be translated. There
is also a time-factor in this trial.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I thought that these were the first
quotations of the Accused in 1938.

Presiding Judge: Correct, but there are passages here that
have no bearing on the matter at all. Please select whatever
you consider important.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Thank you, Your Honour.

I now pass on to Prosecution Document No.1509. It is also
from a file of the SD Head Office, contained in the second
collection we received from Washington: a letter to Dr.
Spengler, signed by Dannecker, of 15 March 1938, that is
immediately after the Anschluss (integration of Austria into
the German Reich), in which he informs the Department of a
request by the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to
integrate also the Austrian Jews under their authority. The
request is described here as "impudence" and was rejected.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/131.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I proceed with Prosecution document
No. 1516. It is included in the collection I have already
submitted, and marked with a slip of paper. We received it
from Washington. It was found among the documents of the SD
Head Office: a letter from the Accused, typewritten, to
Herbert Hagen, dated 30 April 1938. This is, in fact, the
first letter the Accused wrote, immediately after he got
organized in his new function in Vienna.

Presiding Judge: This has been marked T/132.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  In this letter, the Accused advises,
among other things, that the President of the Jewish
Community in Vienna, Dr. Desider Friedmann, was transferred
from Dachau to Vienna and is now in a police prison. He also
asks for an office assistant to organize his office.

I now pass on to Prosecution document No. 1169. This
document, too, came to us from reel No. 4 from Alexandria.
It is a letter sent to SS-Oberfuehrer Naumann from Berlin on
16 May 1938. This is a copy of the letter that was sent;
only the copy of the letter was seized, the original was in
Vienna at the time and we do not know where it is.

Presiding Judge: This document has been marked T/133.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I shall read its translation. It is
short.

     "Berlin, 16 May 1938. To SS-Oberfuehrer Naumann, SS-
     Unit Austria, Vienna.

     Re: SS-Untersturmfuehrer Eichmann.
     
     Dear Comrade Naumann, I have learned just now that you
     intend to transfer SS-Untersturmfuehrer Eichmann as
     Department Head to the Sub-Unit (Unterabschnitt) in
     Linz and have taken Kronberger in his stead. I regret
     that I have to state in this connection that I gave
     SS-Untersturmfuehrer Eichmann to the SD-Unit of Austria
     only on condition that he should be responsible for the
     central direction of the Jewish question in Austria.
     The large concentration of Jews in Vienna requires the
     presence of an experienced man of practice, like
     Eichmann. This is all the more necessary because f the
     expansion of the Jewish Department of the State Police
     unit in Vienna. If the transfer of Eichmann is again
     related to his desire for the position of a Department
     Head, I can only say that under these circumstances it
     is necessary to develop the Jewish desk in Vienna to a
     Department and appoint                 SS-
     Untersturmfuehrer Eichmann accordingly. I am willing to
     submit this plan, together with you, to the Chief of
     the SS Head Office and to make suggestions accordingly.
     I beg you to understand that only reluctantly did I
     release a well-informed and specialized man like
     Eichmann from our Head Office and that I miss him and
     have not been able to find a replacement, so that I
     cannot agree to a transfer only to fill a post. Under
     those circumstances, I would have the Chief of the SD
     Head Office transfer Eichmann back to Berlin.
     
     I shall be thankful for your early reply.
     
     Heil Hitler, Yours..."


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