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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-044-02


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-044-02
Last-Modified: 1999/06/02

State Attorney Bar-Or:  In my copy this is the first
sentence on page 2.  I shall read one more sentence: "During
the week under review, the Head of the Palestine Office was
in Berlin, in order to report to Hauptsturmfuehrer Eichmann
about his journey to Geneva."

Presiding Judge: Is this from the first volume?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Yes.

Presiding Judge: We shall designate this T/828(a).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Now I turn to our document No. 1332,
the report for the week ended on 22 March 1940.

Presiding Judge: These volumes are from 1942, as we can see
on the cover.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I stopped in the year 1940.  These
volumes are already in the archives of the Court.  They have
already been deposited with the Court.  These here are
exhibits T/162 and T/163.

Presiding Judge: We shall cancel the marking T/828 (a).
This will be T/162(a).  I want to refer always to the volume
in question.  This is from 1940.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  From March, 1940.  It refers to page
152.  The report is marked: Report No. 12.  Are you asking
about our document No. 1331 or 1332, Your Honour?

Presiding Judge: If you say that this is from 1940 - it must
be document No. 1332.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Yes, I understand.

Presiding Judge: This must be T/163.  The report will
finally be T/163(a).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  You are now marking Prosecution
document No. 1331, Your Honour?

Presiding Judge: Yes, this is correct.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  Thank you. I think the Court has
before it document No. 1332, which refers to the week ended
on 22 March 1940.  It is the report which begins on page
152, No. 12.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/163(b).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  In paragraph II, Situation Report, I
should like to direct your attention to several points.
Here we have an order according to which all Jews, Jewish
enterprises and Jewish associations are obliged to deposit
with the authorities all securities, objects made of gold,
platinum or silver, as well as precious stones.  And then it
says: "On 18 March 1940, the heads of the Jewish Religious
Community and of the Palestine Office appeared before SS
Hauptsturmfuehrer Eichmann and were given instructions with
regard to the implementation of the order of the Reich
Protector in Bohemia and Moravia for the care of the Jews
and the Jewish organizations." I go on to report 1333 for
the week ended on 29 March 1940.  It begins on page 185 of
the volume which is before the Court.

On page 185a it says, among other things, that "The deputy
head of the Jewish Religious Community appeared in Berlin
before SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Eichmann on matters of
transport."

And then: "The Jewish monuments in Prague - Moses and Rabbi
Loew - the reference is to the Great Rabbi - have been
removed."

Presiding Judge: This will be T/163(c).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I pass on to document No. 503.

Presiding Judge: Are you not submitting any reports from the
other volumes?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I shall revert to them later.  I am
following the chronological order.

Presiding Judge: There are three documents here.  Are they
being submitted together?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  This is, in fact, a batch of
documents which belong together.  We have here an exchange
of letters, a consultation about the question of designating
the Jews in the area of the Protectorate with the Jewish
Star.  Letters are exchanged between Lammers' Reich
Chancellery and the Minister of the Interior.  Of course,
the opinion of the State Secretary representing the Reich in
the Protectorate, SS Gruppenfuehrer Frank, has also to be
ascertained.  On behalf of the Minister of the Interior, we
have here the opinion of Dr. Stuckart, whom we have already
met, of 14 August 1941.  In the end the matter is decided in
the office of Lammers.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/831.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I go on to document No. 911, a
letter from the Accused to the Foreign Ministry.  This deals
again with individual Jews in Prague and who have apparently
pleaded, according to the Foreign Ministry, that they are
neither citizens of the Reich nor citizens of the
Protectorate.  The Accused lets it be known that he intends
to send them to what he calls "Arbeitseinsatz," i.e., he
wants to send them to a work assignment.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/832.

Something has been struck out in the document.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  The deletion is in the original.  It
was, of course, not made in the office of the Accused, but
in the Foreign Ministry, and it is explained thus: The
Foreign Ministry had to reply to the applicant in this
document; instead of writing a new letter, the answer is
given on Eichmann's reply itself.  What has to be notified
is left in, the rest is struck out.  We shall find this in a
number of documents.

With your permission, I should like to revert for a moment
to T/294 and to draw the Court's attention to it.  It was
originally submitted by the Attorney General together with
several basic documents.  It is the report of a meeting held
in Prague on 10 October 1941 about the solution of the
Jewish problem.  The document was submitted at the time
because of the connection, which appears here - so we
maintain - between the Operations Groups led by Nebe and the
Accused.  But the principal importance of the document lies
not with Nebe and not with his Operations Group.  The
principal importance lies in the fact that here, for the
first time, a plan for the establishment of Theresienstadt
Camp was prepared (in connection with some press conference,
which was or was not held).  This is actually the chief
importance of this document.  And in this connection, I
should like to direct the attention of the Court to several
passages:

First, on page 4 of the document, we find references to the
difficulty of evacuating this village or fortress, which was
inhabited by Czechs, in order to adapt it to the changed
requirements.  Concessions have to be made because of the
mentality of the Czechs in the Protectorate, etc.

On page 5 we see that the participants in the meeting
decided to put the large apartments in the good houses in
Theresienstadt exclusively at the disposal of the external
branch of the Central Ghetto Authority, the Council of
Elders, the Foodstuffs Office, and, last but not least, the
guard units.  In other words, not at the disposal of the
ghetto inmates who were to be taken there.  "The Jews will
have to find accommodation under the ground," as it says
here.

And furthermore, it says that Jews are not to be buried in
Theresienstadt and that their bodies will have to be
cremated in a place that is inaccessible to the public.  The
Court will certainly remember the drawing which was
submitted by Mr. Ansbacher and which shows how this
regulation was put into effect.

Finally it says: "The Gypsies who are detained for
evacuation may be taken to Riga, to Stahlecker, whose camp
has been constructed on the model of Sachsenhausen."  And
the document ends:

     "Since the Fuehrer wants the Jews, as far as possible,
     to be removed from the German area by the end of the
     year, all pending questions have to be solved
     immediately, including the question of transport, lest
     it pose a difficulty in this respect."

I do not know whether this was brought to the attention of
the Court at the time when this document was first
submitted.  It was put before the Accused, who referred to
it in extenso on pages 3424 ff of his Statement.  I should
like to read only one passage from the Statement.  It
describes his participation in the meeting, how the various
matters were dealt with, how each participant expressed his
opinion.  On page 3443 the Accused says that there was a
press conference, and that Heydrich said that within one
month the entire Protectorate would be judenrein.  But in
the end he could not keep this promise - the means to be
used had to be planned.  In order that nothing would be
promised that could not be implemented, he, Eichmann,
prepares the Unterlagen (data), the details for the meeting,
and he concludes:

"Ich bin jedenfalls mit meinen Unterlagen - also ich will
mal so sagen: ich bin vorbereitet hingegangen wie jeder.  Es
wird ja jeder - es ist - wird ja jeder informiert sein - und
habe eben das dann zur Kenntnis gebracht, was der Chef
Heydrich von mir erfragt hat, um diese Sache hier eben zu
besprechen.  Und jeder wird eben sein - sein Kommentar von
sich aus dazu gegeben haben" (I came at any rate with my
facts - well, I want to put it this way: I came prepared
like everybody else.  After all, everyone will be - is -
informed, aren't they - and I then gave the information
which the boss, Heydrich, asked of me, in order to discuss
this matter.  And everyone will have contributed his own
comment).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I pass on to document No. 1236.  The
Court will see a form called "Einweisungsbescheid" (Transfer
Order), actually an order to make a deposit in the
Emigration Fund for Bohemia and Moravia; and attached to it
is a sample form for payment of Auswanderungsumlage
(emigration tax), as it is called here, dated 6 October
1941.  In this way assets, property and monies were
transferred to what here is called the "Emigration Fund for
Bohemia and Moravia," the fund which, in the end, had to pay
for the upkeep of Theresienstadt Camp.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/833.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I go on to document No. 732 of 18
September 1942.  Here we see a sample of the correspondence
between the Reichsfuehrung-SS in Berlin and the
Dresdnerbank, the German Bank which carried out the
financial transactions, about which we shall hear from a
witness in the course of today.  These were transactions
made especially in the Protectorate, and also in other
places such as Vienna, in which the Jews were obliged to
transfer their monies.  The Dresdnerbank is in charge of
keeping the accounts of this fund in Prague, the
Reichsfuehrung-SS in Berlin.  The report of 18 February
mentions accounts in the Dresdnerbank to the credit of the
Reichsfuehrung-SS and points to respectable amounts which
have accumulated in these accounts already in February 1942.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/834.

Judge Raveh:   A small point concerning the previous
document No. 1236.  There is a new name there:
"Zentralstelle fuer die Regelung der Judenfrage"  (Central
Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question).

State Attorney Bar-Or:  The only Zentralstelle which changed
its name during the War was the Zentralstelle in Prague.  In
the beginning, in 1939, it was called, as in Vienna and
later in Berlin, Zentralstelle fuer juedische Auswanderung
(Central Office for Jewish Emigration), and this
Zentralstelle later changed its name to the name you have
just mentioned.  Your Honour, the two names are completely
identical.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I go on to document No. 1012.  This
is a minute from the files of the Foreign Ministry, dated 2
June 1942, and it says:

     "According to information from the Chief of the
     Security Police and the Security Service (Regierungsrat
     Suhr), out of the 2,000 Jews of Slovak nationality
     resident in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,
     approximately 1,000 have been deported to the East, or
     transferred to the ghetto in Theresienstadt.  No
     difficulties were encountered during the implementation
     of this measure."

Presiding Judge: This will be Exhibit T/835.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  I pass on to document No. 1195.  It
is an interesting document, not so much from the point of
view of its contents, as because of its form.  It contains
an exact statistical survey of the Jews in the Protectorate
as of 31 March 1942.  Here, for the first time, the Court
can see those statistical tables that the Accused liked so
much, as we know, and which increasingly filled his rooms in
Berlin.  The surveys were made not by the Gestapo, but by
the Community in Prague, by the Jews of the Community
themselves.  The interesting thing about the document is the
covering letter signed by Guenther, who was in charge of the
Zentralstelle, and who forwarded the document to the Accused
in Berlin.  On the document the Court will find the marking
of the Zentralstelle and an incoming mail stamp; it seems
that this is the only document that passed through the
registry of the Accused, the entry stamp says "IVB4 a."  The
explanation of how the document was found is easier than
appears at first sight.  We have already heard, and shall
hear again, that a large part of the archives of the Accused
was transferred to Theresienstadt towards the end of the War
and was burned there.  We have heard evidence about this.
The document before us was obtained from the authorities in
Prague.  I have the impression that it is one of the few
documents saved from that fire.

Presiding Judge: We shall give it a separate number.

State Attorney Bar-Or:  We have attached it because it comes
with the statistical report; it transmits the statistical
report to the Accused.

Presiding Judge: This will be Exhibit T/836 (together with
the letter).

Judge Halevi:  What was burned - all the documents from the
office of the Accused?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  The documents of the Accused were
burned.  The archives of the Accused were sent to
Theresienstadt and burned there in March 1945.

Judge Halevi:  What was sent to Theresienstadt - the
complete archives?

State Attorney Bar-Or:  The archives of the office at
Kurfuerstenstrasse 116.  Because of the bombings, a safe
place had to be found.  The area was populated by Jews in
its entirety, a fact known to the Allies, and it was found
suitable for housing these archives.

Two more remarks: The Court will certainly note that here it
says not only IVB4, but that the marking "a" is added; we
find it on documents, and it is also printed on the stamp.
And the registry distributes the mail to sub-sections. This
document was shown to the Accused and was numbered
T/37(295).

I go on to document No. 1334, entitled: Monthly Report for
February 1942.  It refers to Volume 42 and begins on page
167.

Presiding Judge: This will be Exhibit T/828(a).


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