Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-063-02
Last-Modified: 1999/06/07

Attorney General: Yes, Your Honour, I thank you for the
correction.

The sixth appendix relates to the transfer of Hungarian and
Slovakian Jews to Palestine.

The seventh appendix deals with the advancement of the
"rescue" of European Jewry, an issue which Jewish
organizations raised, as appears from many publications in
the enemy press.  The memorandum mentions the approach of
the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.  Hull had
promised Jewish delegations that negotiations would be
conducted to furnish American passports to persons who would
be travelling to Turkey and to Spain in furtherance of the
programme.  "For this reason, one may definitely assume that
the enemy powers will intensify their activities on the
question of the Jews of Bulgaria, Romania, France, and so
on, in the near future.  And again, we shall have to prevail
upon governments friendly to us, upon our Allies, or those
dependent upon us, to adapt their practices in dealing with
the question of Jewish emigration to that of the government
of the Reich."

This is as far as the German Foreign Ministry is concerned,
but the matter did not remain within the province of the
Foreign Ministry.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1256.

Judge Halevi:  Yes - this is only an internal proposal.

Attorney General: The next document is our No. 219, which
was also submitted to the Accused and was given the
reference T/37(49).  This is a notification by the Foreign
Ministry to Eichmann on the same topics.

Von Thadden informs Eichmann that, pursuant to the
discussion that took place with Guenther on the subject of
the departure of Jewish children from Romania, he was
passing on to Eichmann the text of the instruction which the
German Foreign Ministry had given to the German embassy in
Bucharest for the handling of this matter.  The instructions
repeat the line taken in the documents of the Foreign
Ministry: Transfer to Palestine must not be permitted; if
the English want the Jews, they should take them themselves.
This was agreed upon between von Thadden and Guenther,
Eichmann's deputy.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1257.

Attorney General: This practice of giving exit permits to
Jews was known by the name "Feldscher Action" - after the
name of the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Feldscher.  This
document is Prosecution document No. 1389.  The Foreign
Ministry advises, in connection with the five thousand
Jewish children, that at that time - it was 5 May 1944 -
according to a statement by the Head Office for Reich
Security which it made confidentially (this is in the third
paragraph), there were no longer five thousand Jewish
children available at all.  Perhaps only in Litzmannstadt
was there still such a number of children, but this ghetto
was also going to be dismantled shortly on the orders of the
Reichsfuehrer-SS.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1258.

Attorney General: To sum up this matter, here is a
memorandum from von Thadden that the Foreign Minister had
given orders that nothing should be done at present
concerning Feldscher - that is to say, the English request
to allow the exit of five thousand Jews.  "We shall rely on
Dr. Megerle's plan, if the English should again raise the
subject."

Presiding Judge: Do you know what that is?

Attorney General: Your Honour will find it in that exchange
of Foreign Ministry letters which I submitted previously -
this appears in that correspondence, in document No. 1387.

Judge Raveh:   Mr. Hausner, may I return to exhibit
[document] No. 1389?  There, on the top, in handwriting, are
the words "Arab Committee" - do you know what that is?

Attorney General: We are coming to the criminal
collaboration maintained in this matter between Hajj Amin al-
Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, and the authorities of the
Reich and of the satellite countries, for preventing the
departure of those children.  I shall reach that forthwith.

Presiding Judge: Prosecution document No. 1390 will be
marked T/1259.

Attorney General: I shall now submit a number of documents
about a man who was associated, behind the scenes, with the
prevention of this rescue activity.  In all sincerity, I
have to say that I do not know whether, if it had not been
for Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Germans would have allowed
these five thousand Jewish children to be saved.  But there
was someone who took the trouble to apply for, to encourage,
to demand, and to insist upon putting this plan to nought.
And I shall prove who he was.
Prosecution document No. 1310 is a letter from Hajj Amin al-
Husseini to von Ribbentrop.  On 13 May 1943, the Grand Mufti
writes:

     "The English and the American Governments recently
     conducted negotiations through the representatives of
     their interests in the Balkan countries, and
     principally in Bulgaria, with the aim of permitting the
     emigration of Jews and their transport to Palestine.
     In this connection, the British Minister for the
     Colonies, Sir Oliver Stanley, expressed his pleasure
     lately in the House of Commons at the fact that the
     negotiations with the Bulgarian authorities concerning
     the emigration of four thousand Jewish children,
     together with five hundred accompanying adults, and
     their transfer to Palestine, had been crowned with
     success, and he hoped to achieve similar results with
     the authorities of the remaining Balkan countries, such
     as Romania and Hungary, for example."

The letter concludes:

     "I request Your Excellency to do everything possible to
     dissuade Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary from
     implementing the Jewish-Anglo-American plan, and to
     give special attention to this question; by so doing,
     you would be rendering an unforgettable service to the
     friendly Arab people, avoiding, at the same time, the
     co-operation of these elements which are ranged against
     you.  With the greatest esteem, Amin al-Husseini."

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1260.

Attorney General: On 10 June 1943, Hajj Amin again
approaches the German Foreign Ministry, in Prosecution
document No. 1311, and says:

     "On 13.5.43, I submitted a memorandum to Your
     Excellency on the subject of the emigration of the Jews
     of Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Palestine, in which
     I drew attention to the efforts of the British and the
     Jews and to the statement of the British Minister for
     the Colonies, in regard to the transfer of 4,500 Jews
     from Bulgaria to Palestine... "Since the aforementioned
     memorandum was submitted, we have learned of the
     following important details: A transport consisting of
     seventy-five Jews, among them also important
     personalities, left Bucharest on 10th March, in order
     to arrive in Palestine close to the end of the month,
     via Bulgaria.  It was received by delegations of Jewish
     organizations."
     
(The Mufti is referring to a newspaper dated 25 March 1943.)

Further, in paragraph two, he says:

     "The Jewish Agency for Palestine published a bulletin
     concerning the Jews who were on their way to Palestine
     via Turkey... It appears that 270 young Jews from
     Romania and Hungary, consisting of three groups, had
     already arrived, and a fourth, comprising seventy-five
     persons who were on the way from Bucharest, are ready
     to depart; seven hundred Jews from Poland, who have
     parents in Palestine, are ready to leave; five thousand
     refugees from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia
     have immigration certificates in their possession."

The Mufti continues:

     "In the light of this important information and the
     great and incessant efforts of the Jews and of the
     English, which are obviously being made in their own
     interests, and in the light of the desire of these
     enemies to transfer rapidly many thousands of Jews from
     Europe to Palestine, upon which the English have
     brought disaster by dispatching waves of Jews from all
     corners of the globe, it seems to me that I should
     bring to the knowledge of Your Excellency the fact that
     the Arabs, loyal friends of the Axis, feel themselves
     hurt when they notice that their friends of the Axis
     powers facilitate the Judeo-English objective of the
     transfer of Jews, who are agents of the British and the
     communists, enemies of the Arabs and the enemies of
     Europe, to Arab Palestine.  For this reason, I would
     request Your Excellency to direct your attention to
     this important subject, and to adopt the necessary
     measures with the governments of Bulgaria, Romania and
     Hungary, with the object of preventing the departure of
     these Jews, and to frustrate the attempts of the Jews,
     the English, and their allies.  The Arabs will be
     grateful to Your Excellency for your action in this
     matter.  Please accept, Your Excellency, my highest
     esteem."  Signed: Amin al-Husseini.
     
Presiding Judge: The document will be marked T/1261.

Judge Raveh:   Do these dots on the second page indicate
that something is missing?

Attorney General: No, we did not translate it; you have the
original document in full, but we only translated these
passages.

Judge Raveh:   I am referring to page two of the original.

Attorney General: This is how we have it.  It is the
original letter, even the signature is there.

We have in our possession a number of documents from the
Mufti's archives which fell into the hands of the Allied
forces in 1945 in Badgastein, in Austria, where the Mufti
kept his last office before the German surrender.  I have
the affidavit of Mr. Tuvia Arazi, of our Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, authenticating the documents which I intend to
submit to this Court in proceeding with this subject.  This
is his statement to which the documents are annexed, which -
apart from this - I shall submit one by one.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, with reference to document No.
1311, I have it before me in the French language, and it
seems to be a photocopy; whereas it bears the Mufti's
signature, I nevertheless hear that dots appear on page two,
and this gives the impression of something having been
omitted. It is difficult to explain the meaning of this
photocopy with the omission, and this matter ought to be
clarified.

Judge Raveh:   This is the same question that I asked.

Attorney General: I submitted to the Court three copies of
Mr. Arazi's affidavit.

Presiding Judge: No, Dr. Servatius' question still referred
to the previous exhibit; perhaps we could first dispose of
this question.

Attorney General: I should like to see whether Mr. Arazi
also mentions document No. 1311 amongst those that were
seized - then at least we could have a formal answer.

Presiding Judge: First of all, let us dispose of the dots in
this document.

Attorney General: He does not mention it.  All that I can
say is: That is the nature of the document in our
possession; I do not know what is the explanation for this
omission by means of dots.

Presiding Judge: I am not sure that this is an omission.
Perhaps it was the end of a section.  It could be that it
indicates the end of the description of facts, and in the
light of these facts, instead of drawing a line, he put a
set of dots.

Attorney General: In the main, I should like to be permitted
to add - with all due respect to the Court's observation -
that the dots do not follow after the last word, in which
case they would have shown, or pointed to, an omission, but
they come between one section and the next in the body of
the letter; possibly this is the way which whoever typed or
copied that letter chose, in order to distinguish between
sections or chapters.

Presiding Judge: Nevertheless, it is a possibility.

Attorney General: I have no other information to explain the
reason for the dots appearing in the middle of the page.
The document seems to me to be complete, for the next
section comes as a logical continuation of the previous one,
and it does not appear as if there were something else in
between.

Judge Halevi:  Where is the original?

Attorney General: This is, according to the markings of our
catalogue, the collection of the German Foreign Ministry,
namely the Alexandria collection.

Judge Halevi:  And what was the technique?  How did you
receive the photographs?

Attorney General: We ordered rolls of film, as Mr. Bar
Shalom testified when he gave evidence on the method of
submitting the material.  We ordered complete rolls of film,
and this is what was supplied to us.

Attorney General: Dr. Servatius, do you have anything to say
about these dots?

Dr. Servatius:  Yes.  I presume that the argument is taking
place only because I heard the Attorney General - so it
appeared to me from the translation - offer an explanation
for the dots, as if there had been an omission there.
Hence, my question: How can there be a signature on this
photocopy, if there is an omission here.  But, in my view,
this is not an omission, but a separation between different
themes.

Presiding Judge: The question was raised not by the Attorney
General, but by Judge Raveh - he asked a question about
this.  I believe that we now have agreement, more or less,
on this.

Attorney General: I merely want to amend my reply to the
question of His Honour, Judge Halevi.  My colleagues point
out to me - and, after checking the point, I find this to be
correct - that the original of our No. 1311, the Mufti's
letter to Ribbentrop, is not in Alexandria, but comes from
the documents of Dr. Verete, as we called them - that is to
say, of the German Foreign Ministry, from London.

Judge Halevi:  That is to say, that it was in this form that
the government office in London supplied it?

Attorney General: This is the way it was supplied to us, or
to Yad Vashem, when Yad Vashem asked for it to be supplied.

Judge Halevi:  If that is so, there is no fear of an
omission.

Attorney General: And now, a number of documents...

Presiding Judge: One moment, Mr. Hausner, allow us to read
it, since it is submitted in this form... [reads from the
document] "Affidavit"...

Attorney General: There are marks here, initials, on each
one of these.

Presiding Judge: Why did you not bind them together in a
better way?

Attorney General: Yes, in fact I requested that this morning
- I regret that it was not done.  We shall submit them one
by one.  Each one is identified by the initials of Mr.
Arazi, and also of Mr. Bach, before whom Mr. Arazi made his
declaration.

Presiding Judge: Very well, then perhaps we shall take them
separately as they appear here on our table.
Attorney General: As the Court pleases.

Presiding Judge: The affidavit of Mr. Arazi will be marked
T/1262.

Attorney General: Perhaps the Court would kindly return
these documents to me, and I shall now submit them, one by
one.  Now, this is what was ascertained about Hajj Amin from
his archives.  We have a copy of a letter discovered amongst
the documents of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry.  I submit
the photocopy in Arabic and in German as they were
discovered.  This is our No. 1309.  This is a draft in
Arabic, a translation of the draft into German, and the
final German text.

Presiding Judge: The final text will be marked T/1263.  The
draft will be marked T/1263A.

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor