Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-060-05
Last-Modified: 1999/06/07

State Attorney Bach:  The next document is No. 153.
Veesenmayer reports to the Foreign Office in a cable dated
13 June 1944 that they have succeeded, in the meantime, in
deporting 289,357 Jews in ninety-two trains.  In paragraph
four, there is an account of combined action in all the
districts: On 11 June, a briefing had taken place of the
German-Hungarian authorities who were participating in
dealing with District 4.  At the end he says: "The last
district, No. 6 (the Budapest city zone), is to be started
at one swoop, with special precautionary measures."

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1207.

State Attorney Bach:  The following is our No. 385.  It was
shown to the Accused and was given the number T/37(149).
This is a cable sent by Veesenmayer to the Foreign Office on
14 June 1944, and he gives a description here of what we
have heard was called "Re-tour," although he does not call
it that.  He says that whereas on 19 March many Jews were
still migrating from Slovakia into Hungary, now - as a
result of our taking matters into our own hands - a
migration in the reverse direction could be noticed.  He
requests that measures should be taken in Slovakia to
prevent this.  He is ready to have a meeting with Ludin for
this purpose.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1208.

Dr. Servatius:  It is of some importance to me that more
detailed attention be paid to this document.  This is a
letter from Veesenmayer, in which he says: "It would greatly
facilitate the work here" - Veesenmayer's work - "if
thorough steps against the Jews were to be undertaken now in
Slovakia."  And at the end it says: "I would then meet
Ludin" - that was the (German) Minister in Slovakia - "for
the purpose of discussing this matter, in order to work out
practical proposals together."

State Attorney Bach:  Your Honours, Defence Counsel's
argument could have been weighty, if it had not been for the
next document which I am about to submit.  This is our
document No. 164 which was shown to the Accused and was
marked T/37(113).  Veesenmayer continues and sends another
cable concerning this meeting in Pressburg on the same
matter.  And he states who should take part in this meeting,
who should conduct it from the Hungarian-German side.  And
then he writes: "Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann and the
officer dealing with the subject, Hauptsturmfuehrer
Wisliceny, who had previously been the adviser on Jewish
affairs in Bratislava...but for the reasons stated in the
report dated...they cannot absent themselves from here
before the end of July.  Therefore [we] propose a
postponement accordingly."  We see that it was not so much
Veesenmayer who was thinking of personal action, but that
Eichmann and Wisliceny were those who had to conduct the
negotiations.

Presiding Judge: That is to say, Veesenmayer took the
initiative in these two instances,in relation to this
action.

State Attorney Bach:  He is the person reporting to the
Foreign Office, but we see that the actual negotiations had
again to be conducted by Eichmann and Wisliceny, and they
were the ones who had to go to Pressburg, in order to
participate in that meeting.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1209.

State Attorney Bach:  The following document is our No. 159,
and it was given the reference T/37(112) when shown to the
Accused.  It is Veesenmayer's report to the Foreign Office.
Meanwhile, he has reached a total of 381,000 deported Jews,
but it is mainly the last sentence which is important here:
"An additional number of special transports were put in
motion, with 'political' Jews and Jewish intellectuals,
those with large numbers of children, and skilled workers.
These were sent off in special transports."

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1210.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, may I be
permitted to revert to document No. 164?  It would appear
from its heading that it does not refer to that discussion
between Veesenmayer and Ludin, but to some other discussion.
It does not bear the same reference mark.

Presiding Judge: I also see this.

State Attorney Bach:  I do not believe that this is
necessarily the case.  Here we have a document from
Veesenmayer, and that is also a document of Veesenmayer as a
reply to another letter from the Foreign Office.

Presiding Judge: Here, at any rate, there is mention of a
letter of 22 June, which apparently you do not have.

State Attorney Bach:  22 June - that should have been a
letter from Berlin to Veesenmayer.  But it is difficult to
assume that the reference is to the meeting which was to
take place in Pressburg.  The number here is not consecutive
at all.

Presiding Judge: Very well, let us not now get into the
pleading stage.  There will still be an opportunity for
that.

State Attorney Bach:  Next, Your Honours, we have our
document No. 114.  This was a document which was also
submitted in Nuremberg at the main trial and published in
IMG, Vol. 33, pp. 167-169. This is the well-known letter
from Kaltenbrunner to his friend Blaschke in Vienna.  In
this letter he requests that some deportation transports be
transferred to Vienna, to Strasshof.  The reference is to
twelve thousand Jews who would be arriving shortly in
Vienna.  "From the experience we have acquired so far, these
transports will include about thirty per cent - in the
present case about 3,600 Jews - who will be fit for work,
whom it will be possible to employ in the projects
discussed, subject to the condition that it will be possible
to send them away at any time."  Later on he writes: "All
the women and children who are unfit for work, all these
Jews must be kept for a special action" - Sonderaktion -
"and therefore they will be removed one of these days, and
they must remain guarded in the camp in the daytime as well.
Additional details may be obtained from Dr. Ebner and SS
Obersturmbannfuehrer Krumey, of the Special Operations Unit
for Hungary, who is at present in Vienna."

Judge Halevi:  Was this the initiative for the transport to
Vienna?

State Attorney Bach:  This was, in fact, the initiative for
what was called the "Strasshof transport."  Later we see
that.  I believe that I have read you extracts from the
Kasztner report, pages 49 and 50 of the report, that
Eichmann subsequently represented the transport of those
twelve thousand Jews as a concession on his part and
demanded money from the Jews.  I think that Mrs. Brand has
already testified that the Jewish community was obliged to
pay and to support these Jews who were working in Strasshof.
Naturally, neither Dr. Kasztner nor the other Jews who
conducted the negotiations knew that this anyhow was on
instructions from Kaltenbrunner, which becomes clear from
the present document.

Judge Halevi:  Was it Wisliceny or Eichmann who sold it to
them as a favour?

State Attorney Bach:  Eichmann said this constituted a
certain concession, and they believed it was an achievement
and paid for it accordingly.

Judge Halevi:  They certainly did not know about the
condition of the Sonderbehandlung (special treatment).

State Attorney Bach:  Of this they were certainly not aware.
But here there was talk not of "Sonderbehandlung" but of
"Sonderaktion," that these were women and children who were
not fit for work, who had to be preserved for the
Sonderaktion, and that in fact only thirty per cent were
capable of working.

I draw your attention to the heading: IVA4b.  Although
Kaltenbrunner is the signatory, the letter was drawn up in
Section IVA4.

The following document is Prosecution document No. 677,
which was given the reference T/37(223).  This is a report
of Veesenmayer to the Foreign Office, dated 6 July 1944, and
here he reports that "he has just been informed in a
telephone conversation with Sztojay that the Regent,
evidently with the approval of the Hungarian Government, has
stopped the continuation of the operation against the Jews,"
and he says "the fact of the arrival of Jewish-Hungarian
millionaires at Lisbon has aroused excitement throughout
Hungary."  And he adds that the Hungarians were impressed by
the news that the Allies had prepared a list of those
responsible for the implementation of the Hungarian and
German operations against the Jews, with the object of
punishing them after the War.  There were also many cables
and protests from various countries, and also from the
Vatican, and these also were making an impression upon the
Hungarians.

One further excerpt: On page two, Veesenmayer reports that
"Sztojay declared to me that he personally was not upset by
the threat, for in the event of our being victorious, he
regarded the matter as being of no consequence, and if it
turned out otherwise, he was anyhow resigned to his life
coming to an end.  Despite that, he was obviously strongly
impressed by the cables, concerning which I have meanwhile
heard that they were brought before the Council of Ministers
where they had a corresponding effect."

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1212.

State Attorney Bach:  And now to document No. 849.  Here,
Veesenmayer cables the Foreign Office on 11 July 1944. By
now we arrive at a figure of 437,402 from the districts
which had been cleared of their Jews, and there still
remained only the operation against Budapest.  Incidentally,
the Court will take note that the final Hungarian report
speaks of approximately two thousand Jews less.  There an
amount of approximately 435,000 was mentioned, and here it
is 437,000.  The difference lay in that first deportation
from the Kistarcsa camp at the end of April, which was
indeed an exclusively German initiative, and this figure was
not included in the Hungarian statistics.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1213.

State Attorney Bach:  And now I come to a number of
documents which are perhaps the gravest we are able to
submit against the Accused.  The Court will recall that, in
a number of similar cases, both in connection with Holland
and in regard to Italian documents, I have said that he was
perhaps more extreme than the Fuehrer himself.  In the
documents I shall bring before you now, it seems to me we
shall find the strongest justification for this conclusion.

The first document is our No. 772.  Here, Ribbentrop informs
Veesenmayer that the Fuehrer is very annoyed at the change
which has come about in the Hungarian attitude, and that he
protests against the latest developments.  In the fifth
paragraph it states:

     "The Fuehrer expects that the Hungarian Government will
     now implement the operations against the Jews of
     Budapest without any further delays, making allowance
     for all those exceptional and special cases which the
     Reich Government confirmed in principle to the
     Hungarian Government, in accordance with the proposals
     of Ambassador Veesenmayer.  But no delay whatsoever
     must occur, because of these exceptions, in executing
     the general anti-Jewish regulations, otherwise the
     Fuehrer will be compelled to reconsider and cancel the
     consent to these special privileges."

And the Fuehrer

     "expresses his regret that evidently those influential
     elements have again succeeded in advising the Regent to
     adopt measures which are likely to lead Hungary to a
     total catastrophe."

At the end of the page he says:

     "Let the Regent not be intimidated by any ridiculous
     Jewish-American threats that are known to us.  These
     should not make any impression upon him - in the same
     way as they are incapable of having any effect on us,
     for at the end of this war, Germany and her Allies, and
     not the Americans, will emerge as the victors in
     Europe.  On the contrary, the Fuehrer hopes that the
     Regent, as one of the pioneer fighters against
     Bolshevism, will be convinced, and will even have to be
     convinced, that any deviation from the path which was
     adopted at Klessheim, along which they have progressed
     ever since, will necessarily lead to the most serious
     conflicts between Germany and Hungary, and therefore
     perhaps to unpredictable results, affecting the
     existence of Hungary and the Hungarian people."
     
Presiding Judge: Was this the ultimatum?

State Attorney Bach:  This was the Fuehrer's ultimatum.  Its
significance here is the demand for action against the Jews,
otherwise he would not be able to agree any longer to those
exceptional instances, those special cases.  What was the
content of these exceptional privileges to which he had
agreed, we shall see from the next document which, as I have
said, is one of the central documents...

Presiding Judge: First of all, let us mark the previous
document.  It will be marked T/1214.  There is a further
document here, but it only repeats the previous one.

State Attorney Bach:  This is a document about the
"Sonderzug" (special train) and, in addition, a letter that
was sent to Budapest, but the contents of the two are
identical.

Now for Prosecution document No. 161, which was shown to the
Accused and was given the reference T/37(92).  Here,
Veesenmayer reports to the Foreign Office that the Swiss
embassy was already making preparations for the reception of
those Jews who, according to the Fuehrer's decision, could
be taken out of Hungary.  There is a reference to about
8,700 families, amounting to approximately forty thousand
souls, and apart from that, about one thousand children.
This is stated in the first paragraph of the letter.

In the second paragraph, the following appears:

     "The chief of the SD's local Sondereinsatzkommando for
     the Jews, SS  Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, has
     expressed his opinion that as far as he is aware, the
     Reichsfuehrer-SS does not agree, under any
     circumstances, to the emigration of Hungarian Jews to
     Palestine.  The Jews who are under consideration
     constitute, without exception, valuable human material
     from a biological point of view.  Many of them are
     veteran Zionists, whose immigration to Palestine is
     definitely undesirable.  It is his intention, in view
     of the Fuehrer's decision which had been brought to his
     notice, to report to the Reichsfuehrer-SS and, if
     necessary, to ask for a renewed decision by the
     Fuehrer.  It was further settled with Eichmann that if
     additional deportations of Jews from Budapest are
     approved, they must try to carry them out suddenly
     (schlagartig) and speedily, so that the deportation of
     the Jews being considered for emigration should be
     completed already before  the formal arrangements are
     carried our.  The legations concerned had already been
     informed that the planned operation could obviously
     only relate to those Jews who were still in the
     country.  With this object in view, they would also try
     to induce the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior to
     give a negative reply to the Swiss proposal, by which
     the Jews registered for emigration would be
     concentrated in special camps.  As far as this plan was
     concerned, Eichmann was considering - in the event of
     permission for emigration to Western countries - to
     prevent the progress of the transports by taking
     appropriate steps, for example on French territory."
     
Presiding Judge: Which were these exceptions?  Were they
Jews who had immigration certificates for Palestine?

State Attorney Bach:  That was simply a certain number which
had been agreed upon.  The Swiss Government - this is
mentioned most specifically in the first paragraph of this
document - had said that if such-and-such a number of
families cross into Switzerland within the framework of
certificates for Palestine which existed anyway, they would
transfer them to Palestine.  And it had then been agreed on
the part of Veesenmayer - and we shall notice this again in
the next documents - that if the Hungarian Government agreed
to the deportation of the Jews of Budapest, they would be
prepared to agree to the departure of that particular number
of Jews for Switzerland.  The Fuehrer consented to that.
And then Eichmann appealed against this decision by the
Fuehrer.  He said that, if necessary, he would request a new
decision from the Fuehrer which would change this decision.
And if he did not obtain a change of the decision, he would
endeavour, by means of administrative measures, to block the
Fuehrer's decision through an immediate and speedy
implementation of the deportation in such a way that it
would be impossible to complete the formal arrangements for
the transfer of the Jews to Switzerland.  This document was
shown to the Accused, and he reacts to it on page 1317.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1215.

State Attorney Bach:  When we come to the part where the
deportation must be carried out at speed, at such a pace
that the people would not be able to complete the formal
arrangements for their emigration, he says that the tempo
"was determined by Endre and was so intense and so forceful
that Auschwitz had great difficulty in coping suitably with
all these transports."

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