The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-093-02


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-093-02
Last-Modified: 1999/06/13

Q.  If you have already admitted this, is what your Defence
Witness Professor Six says also correct? On page 4 it says:
"It was known that Eichmann himself had information about
the concentration of the Jews, and it was obvious that
Eichmann was the person who could have given me details
about the persecution of the Jews, and similar matters."

So, is it correct that you were the person to see about
Jewish affairs?

A.  I was not the person to see about Jewish affairs. What
is true, however, is that as a result of the reports - the
clear reporting - I had to provide, from the top downwards
and from the bottom upwards, as a transmission channel, I
was quite well informed and could have given information as
well. But I was not the man on Jewish affairs.

Q.  And in another document, submitted by your Counsel, in
the sworn statement by Morgen - N/96, Prosecution document
No. 48, it says that there was a special apparatus for all
extermination and technical matters. And on page 4, in
reference to extermination and its practical implementation,
it says towards the bottom of the page...

Presiding Judge: Is that page 10 in the original numbering?

Attorney General: Yes, page 10 in the document, where it
says "At the Chief of the operation was SS
Obersturmbannfueherr Eichmann of the Head Office for Reich
Security with his staff." Is that also not correct?

Accused:    Judge Morgen contradicts himself here as well,
because just before that he says: "The Eichmann organization
was independent of this," and before that describing the
sites of execution, etc., he writes "Eichmann was
independent of this." Then there appears this passage; Judge
Morgen is totally contradicting himself here, and what he
says also fails to fit the facts.

Q.  Read it through first: You do have a good grasp of the
documents, but you should still read it. What you said about
the separate Operations Unit appears in N/95, not in N/96,
and I refer you to N/96. You should look at this at well.
Have you read it?

A.  Yes.

Q.  So what he says is not correct?

A.  It is partly correct and partly incorrect; he has
combined fact with fantasy here. A great deal is correct,
and a great deal is also absolutely incorrect and the
substance has been changed.

Q.  Hoess in his statement with which you are familiar,
Wisliceny in his statement known to you, Hoffmann and
Mildner in the statements submitted by your Counsel, Six in
the testimony he was called upon by you to give, and Morgen
in the statement you are familiar with - they all state that
you had a special position and special assignment within the
Head Office for Reich Security - and they are all lying?

A.  Obviously, because if I had had a special position, then
I would have had authority, and then it would not have been
necessary for everybody who called themselves my superiors
to deal with matters themselves.

Q.  That will do, I only wanted to have an answer. They are
all lying, only you are telling the truth?

A.  I am basing myself on the documents.

Q.  Very well.

So what appears in T/247 about the liquidation of the Lodz
Ghetto, that you are Kaltenbrunner's deputy, his
representative - that is also incorrect?

A.  I have stated my position on this: I said that I was
there, and I must also have had orders from Kaltenbrunner,
but I was not Kaltenbrunner's deputy, after all I was not a
Department Chief at the Head Office for Reich Security.

Interpreter: We have to look for the documents.

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, may I ask for the exhibit
numbers to be given first as well, I am also unable to
follow.

Presiding Judge: The Attorney General referred to the number
just now, and he always gives the numbers.

Dr. Servatius:  Yes, but they come through very late in the
translation, at the end of the passage, and sometimes the
interpreters have no time left, because they have to keep
going with the translation.

Presiding Judge: If you have not received such a number, Dr.
Servatius, you can immediately ask the Court. Very well, you
may now proceed. That was T/247.

Have you translated that?

Interpreter: Yes.

Attorney General: The instructions you issued immediately
after the Wannsee Conference - I am referring to the
instructions about deportations - were part of the Final
Solution, were they not?

Accused:    Yes, that is true.

Q.  And after that the Final Solution depended on two
factors: The number of places available in the camps in the
East, and the number of trains which could be made
available. Is that true?

A.  Things depended on the orders given by my superiors.
They depended primarily on those orders.

Q.  The decision to exterminate the Jews already existed.
Heydrich had received the powers to proceed, and now it was
a question of implementation. Implementation, therefore, now
depended on two factors: The number of places for absorption
in the camps, and transport resources. Is that correct?

A.  That is wrong, Mr. Attorney General. Each individual
wave had to be ordered afresh. The documents show this also.
And once such orders had been issued, if I was competent to
act and received orders from my superior, the entire matter
of trains, for example, also had to be dealt with. That is
correct. As for the camps in the East, or the absorption
stations, they were named- how they...

Presiding Judge: The question is directed to the physical
possibilities of extermination - that is how I understand
the question, and that would appear to depend on two factors
- as mentioned by the Attorney General - transport
possibilities and absorption possibilities.  Is that
correct?

Accused:    In principle that is correct, Your Honour, but
first the orders had to be issued.

Attorney General: But an order already existed - there was
this order - this order by the Fuehrer from summer of 1941,
and you saw this document, signed by Goering.

Accused:    In that case for all practical purposes, after
the Wannsee Conference Heydrich, for example, would have had
to say to me: "Well, Eichmann, everything is settled,
approved, see to it now, do what you want, but the matter
must be settled one-two-three."

But that is not how things were: Himmler kept issuing
orders, time and time again he issued orders. All the many
hundreds of offices who were somehow involved had to carry
out their part, and I was also unfortunately caught up in
this. As a result of these measures I had to deal with the
matters on which I received orders - I have never denied
this and am not denying it, either. I cannot deny it,
because that is what happened...

Q.  ...because so many documents exist...

A.  No, because that is how things happened...

Q.  Very well, let us see how things were...let us therefore
take T/730 - document No. 1278. This is an instruction
issued by you - by your Section, signed by you. "To all
State Police Regional Headquarters in the Old Reich - to the
State Police Regional Headquarters in Vienna - to the
Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Vienna, and also for
information to all Inspectors of Security Police and the
Security Service in the Old Reich, and to the Inspector of
the Security Police and the Security Service, Vienna."

This was issued immediately after Wannsee, on 31 January
1942. And here in the document which, as I have said, is
signed by you, here it says that the evacuation of Jews to
the East recently carried out in certain areas is the
beginning of the Final Solution in the Old Reich (Germany in
its pre-1937 borders), the Ostmark (Austria) and the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. And in the second
paragraph it says that the State Police Regional
Headquarters have now to carry out their part of the
operation, and that the only factors to be considered are
the absorption possibilities in the East and transport
problems. And that is why I was right when I said to you
that these were the only practical problems.

Presiding Judge: All right, meanwhile he has already agreed
to that.

Attorney General: But he said that he required special
orders for each case, and I said: no, there was no further
need for any special orders, and the problem was simply the
carrying out of part of the operations.

Judge Halevi:  Mr. Attorney General, the second paragraph is
a summary of the past. It is in the past tense: "These
evacuation measures initially applied..." But now, in the
third paragraph, new matters are being planned.

Attorney General: I am prepared to pass the document to the
Accused.

Accused:    Yes, I am familiar with this document, it is
true, this affair is - I have to admit it is a matter I had
to deal with, and it is a result of the Wannsee Conference,
where top brass gave orders for the Final Solution, and here
it was really important for the first time and the figures
had to be ascertained. I received an order to take steps to
ascertain the precise statistical information about the
number of Jews living in the Reich and the Protectorate, and
that is what I did by means of this express letter.

Q.  So when you informed the various offices "no further
problems from this end," that means that there are no
further problems in these two areas, and that they have been
solved, does it not?

A.  What it means is what I have said: That I provided the
information I was assigned to provide. May I look at this
document, please?

Q.  Please do so (T/424, document No. 58). "No further
problems from this end with regard to implementation," it
says. In other words, there are trains, there are absorption
possibilities, and so deportations can be carried out.

A.  Yes, but at the end it says that by order I...

Attorney General: That will do, that will do.

Accused:    I was sent on Mueller's orders to Paris and I
indicate that I will be arriving around 30 June 1942 on the
orders of Department Chief IV, SS Gruppenfuehrer Mueller, to
discuss the final details; I signed this; it was preceded by
Himmler's order, that some 130,000 or 150,000 Jews, I
believe, were to be evacuated from France. Mueller ordered
me to go to Paris in execution of his order. This appears
here in black on white.

Q.  You have put your finger on an interesting point. You
refer here to Mueller's instruction. But this is the only
document among the hundreds of documents shown to you where
you refer to Mueller: in all the other documents you use the
form "I."  Can it not be deduced from this that when you
really are acting on the basis of some instruction from
Mueller, that you state this explicitly, as you did here,
but that elsewhere, where you do not refer to Mueller, you
are proceeding on the basis of your general powers?
A.  No, that certainly cannot be deduced from this, and
cannot be understood from this, because I also speak here
about myself in the third person, although I signed this
telegram, I refer to myself in the text in the third person.
In other words, this matter is dealt with in proper official
style by the Section Head in the Head Office for Reich
Security Department IV, and I provide notification of the
fact that my superior, Mueller, has sent me off to Paris.

Q.  That is not an answer to my question, however, you have
done this also on various other occasions, but this is the
only time that you refer to Mueller directly, is that the
case?

A.  No, for example...

Q.  Can you show me any other document?

A.  Yes, for example there is a memorandum - it is true that
I did not dictate it myself, it was dictated by the
Paris...which says that I received an order from Himmler via
Mueller on such-and-such date in 1942 to go to Paris and to
announce there that Himmler had ordered that all Jews were
to be evacuated from France.

Q.  I am asking where you refer to Mueller. As your
authority. Can you show me one single document?

A. No, not of those presented here - I remember, but after
all, this is just a small fraction of some twenty thousand
or thirty thousand documents.

Q.  All of which you burned?

A.  I was ordered to do so and had to obey orders.

Q.  You did everything to ensure that the possibility of any
single Jew somehow escaping from the Final Solution would be
precluded. Look at the case, for example, where Jews in
Holland obtained foreign citizenship, you immediately issued
a ruling; the fact that they have foreign citizenship is not
to be taken into account, but rather the people concerned
are to be deported as a priority, and they are to be
transported to the East. T/550, document No. 600.

Presiding Judge: In this instance I would suggest that you
read out the text in German, and then translate it into
Hebrew, to avoid any problems arising.

Attorney General: Yes, Your Honour.

Accused:    It is just like all authorities in - I assume -
most countries, when something goes through any bureaucracy,
it is dealt with and processed.

This document says that it refers to a previous document. In
other words, the Senior Commander of the occupied Dutch
territories made an enquiry here, and the central authority
in Berlin had to provide the information. If some piece of
paper follows the channels through the authorities and the
individual offices, I cannot myself just drop it, but have
to have the matter processed in accordance with my
instructions.

Q.  Very well, I shall show you a document, which does not
refer to any previous document.

Presiding Judge: Please, wait a minute.

Attorney General: I was only going to continue, Your Honour.

Presiding Judge: But you can see, Mr. Attorney General, that
the longer the passages to be translated, the more difficult
it is to translate. This is a problem which cannot be
avoided.

Attorney General: It makes the cross-examination process
more cumbersome.

Presiding Judge: Yes, I know. If we could proceed in Hebrew,
it would be easier. We will not now discuss consecutive or
simultaneous interpretation. The interpretation is
consecutive, and we must make it easier for the interpreters
by ensuring that the passages are shorter.

Attorney General: I will show you where there is no previous
reference. It says here: "Reference: None."

When you found out that a single Jew was trying to leave
France for Switzerland, you issued instructions that he
should immediately be added to a transport to the East. No
one contacted you. This poor man could have escaped and
managed to survive. Why did you preclude Max Golub's chance
of survival?

Accused:    This was none of my business, because in the
first line it already says "as has been indicated here in
strictest confidence, third parties in Switzerland are
trying..." Who notified the Head Office for Reich Security
of this, who then passed the information on to Department
IV, and how I received it - I am unable to say today. In any
case it was my superiors who dealt with this matter. I wrote
how I did not...it was...I did not even dictate it myself,
but I did sign it. The fact that this is indicated in
strictest confidence was not a whim or wish on my part. Here
I also had to operate in accordance with orders and
instructions received. This was true in this case as well.

Q.  This is T/496, document No. 665. Yes, obviously you were
advised that Max Golub wants to escape - you could not see
that for yourself. But you did give instructions to prevent
this and to block his escape route?

A.  I did not give the instructions personally.

Q.  And when you learned that well-off Jews were escaping
from Romania, so that by the time you reached Romania with
your Final Solution you would no longer find any rich Jews
there, that was also a matter for you to deal with. And you
apply to your Foreign Ministry, in order to get it to stop
the emigration of rich Jews from Romania, to avoid only poor
Jews being left there - T/1016, document No. 1228. How did
it come to be your business to interfere in Romania's
domestic affairs?

A.  It was not my affair. But if I received relevant orders,
I had to deal with the matter in accordance with
instructions. I do not deny this, and I have not denied it,
because I had to do what I was ordered to do, in accordance
with my oath of loyalty and my pledge. Unfortunately, I
could not get out of this, nor did I ever try to do so. But
it was not on my initiative or of my own will, as can be
shown by what I tried to do at first.

Q.  Listen to what you write: Jews are able to escape from
Romania and to escape the Final Solution which they know is
certain death, and you are preventing this. See what it says
here: it says here "I."

A.  But at the top it also says that it was dictated by the
official-in-charge and obviously I signed it. It also shows
that the official-in-charge obtained his instructions
through official channels. This is exactly what I have said,
and I can only repeat that I do not wish to evade this at
all, nor do I have any right to do this, nor may I do it,
because what I was ordered to do, unfortunately I had to
carry out.


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