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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-104-04


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-104-04
Last-Modified: 1999/06/14

Q. That will do.  Now, you want to indicate or explain to me
your position on the foot march - so would you explain this,
please!

A. Certainly, by all means.  I have already said that I was
ordered to proceed from Berlin to Hungary.  In Hungary,
according to orders, I had to advise how such a foot march
should be carried out, and I did so.  To that extent some of
what I have read out in this Sassen material is even
correct, about the days, the reporting of the daily
progress.  I did not have any success with my delivery of
the orders of the Chief of the Security Police and the
Security Service from Berlin, because Winkelmann, together
with Veesenmayer, had pursued this matter further, and it
was then Veesenmayer who made official representations to
the Hungarian Government, for confirmation at least of
25,000 as the first instalment, instead of the 50,000 which
Berlin had demanded, and Veesenmayer had to conduct these
negotiations with Szalasi, the then head of state.
Veesenmayer then received the instruction from Winkelmann to
arrange the details with the Minister of the Interior...no,
not with the Minister of the Interior - with some minister
or other whose name escapes me.  Together with Winkelmann,
Veesenmayer reached an agreement on arranging these points
of detail with this minister.  I believe his name was
Kovacz, and that did in fact come about.  The Hungarian
Government then made 25,000 available.  The condition - and
I had also been informed of this in Berlin - was for able-
bodied male Jews capable of marching.  These conditions were
also laid down by Winkelmann and Veesenmayer.

The first contingents which set out on the foot march
reached the border in very good order and condition.  They
were several thousand, but, as the days wore on, the food
depots and the rest points, overnight points, were not
properly maintained and replenished as they should have been
by the Hungarian executive bodies which ran the transports,
and were responsible for them.  In the end, the whole thing
finally came to be run under the overall charge of the Arrow
Cross people, and that was what led to disaster.  I myself
had nothing to do with these transports.  It is true that I
did act as consultant at the beginning; I played an advisory
role, as the orders stipulated.  But nothing was done, nor
did I have any authority, and apparently Winkelmann, as the
Higher SS and Police Leader, also had no authority, as he
was unable to stop the transport being run by the Arrow
Cross.  It was the Hungarian head of state himself who one
day had to halt these foot marches.  I would point out that
if I had had even the slightest thing to do with this, with
the actual execution of transports, the commission chaired
by Dr. Breslauer, which investigated all of this on the
spot, would without any doubt have mentioned my name or the
name of one of my people, and I would then have appeared in
the report.  That is not the case.

This is basically what I would like to say about this.  The
idea of the foot march did not originate with me, but this
idea in fact originated with the...

Q. Originated with German or Hungarian authorities?

A. There you are asking me what is beyond my knowledge.  I
cannot say.  I do, however, know that this idea was
presented to Berlin by Winkelmann.

Q. Today, you do not know...

A. That is what the document says.

Q. So you claim that the initiative for the foot march came
from the German authorities, from Winkelmann.

A. I can only, on the basis of a document...

Q. What do you say, you yourself, not documents - what do
you remember?

A. I do not remember anything at all, but the document says
that at the request - it says here "at the request of the
local Higher SS and Police Leader and on the orders of the
Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service,
Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann today returned - returned
today to Budapest," and so on.  And the next document...

Q. Very well, just forget the documents for the time being.
I can read documents for myself.  You went to look at the
foot march, and you saw two corpses, you said that yourself,
didn't you?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Why did you go to observe the foot march?

A. I did not go to observe the foot march; I was on my way
from Budapest to Vienna.

Q. And you saw this scene?

Presiding Judge: Yes, he has already said so.

Attorney General: You also saw old people, you saw little
children, too; is that correct?

Accused:    Little children - I do not know, no, that
children...there were not, in fact, any...they were not sent
out on the march even by the Hungarian - by the Arrow Cross
- this is the first time that I have heard this.

Q. That is what you said: "As the groups reached the border,
they were put to work with the German women, children and
the elderly, whom they helped to dig anti-tank traps."

A. I did not understand that.

Presiding Judge: Where are you quoting from, Mr. Attorney
General?

Attorney General: From Life.

Presiding Judge: I did not understand it - I did not
understand the quotation.

Attorney General: I shall ask the Accused myself.  Do you
remember seeing elderly people?  Old people?

Accused:    No, I cannot remember any particular images, but
I did see tottering figures, that is correct.

Q. When you were in Budapest, you lived in the Villa
Aschner, didn't you?

Presiding Judge: How do things stand, Mr. Hausner?  We shall
come to this after the recess.

Attorney General: I am very close to the end, Your Honour.

Presiding Judge: Please be seated, we shall deal with this
after the recess.

[Recess]

Presiding Judge: Please proceed.

Attorney General: Do you remember to whom the house where
you lived in Budapest belonged?

Accused:    No, I do not remember that - but I do remember
where I lived.

Q. So where did you live?

A. I first lived on the Schwabenberg...I was given notice to
leave there on the instructions of the Higher SS and Police
Leader - he had me moved to a second lodging, on the
Rosenberg or Rosenhuegel (Rose Mount or Rose Hill) in
Apostol...in Budapest.

Q. Was there a fruit orchard there?

A. Yes, there was a big fruit orchard there.

Q. Did Jews work there?

A. It is only here that I have remembered this again: I had
positions for riflemen dug - not positions for mortars, as
was said - but these were positions for riflemen against
bombing raids.

Q. Did Jews work there?

A. I gathered that here, yes...

Q. All right... Was Slawik the foreman in charge of the work
there?

A. No, he was not a foreman - because there was no other
work there - he was the second caretaker, I would say; there
was a Hungarian caretaker there, and Slawik was the person
who supervised the house...

Q. I am talking about the supervision of this work!  Did
Slawik not supervise this work?

A. That is certainly possible...he would have given
instructions for the work to be done there...

Q. Did you have an amphibian vehicle?  A vehicle capable of
travelling both on water and on land?

A. Yes, it was called a floating car (Schwimmwagen) - I had
one.

Q. And a chauffeur called Teitel?

A. I do not know - I am not aware of the name.

Q. Have you heard the name Engineer Kolbach?

A. No, I have never heard it.  This is the first time I have
heard it.

Q. And about the incident where Slawik had something to do
with a Jewish youth - did you not hear about that, that he
was arrested several years later in connection with this?

A. No, never heard about it.  This is the first time I have
heard of this.

Q. And about an incident where a Jewish boy was thoroughly
beaten for stealing fruit.  You have never heard of that?
That is quite simply an invention, I suppose?

A. This is also the first time I have heard of this.

Q. You have not heard anything about this incident earlier?
This never reached your ears?  That a boy was beaten to
death in your house and then thrown into the Danube - you
never heard that?

A. First of all I have never heard this - this is the first
time - and it cannot possibly have happened; I cannot say
any more about this.

Q. Did you hear the testimony by witness Gordon,  here in
the courtroom?  Are you saying that he lied from A to Z?

A. I heard this testimony - I was amazed, and at the same
time I was horrified.  I cannot say that what a witness
testified was not true, as he was in fact sworn in - because
he swore an oath - but from my own experience I know only
too well how one confuses things - how one believes
something and sticks to it, and considers it to be
unassailable, whereas in fact one should really say, "yes, I
was wrong about that."  I must totally reject everything in
the testimony given by witness Gordon, because I never did
anything of this kind, nor did I ever hear it or see it.

Q. I would like you to identify for the Court the picture of
your assistant, Novak.  May I have T/1147.

Presiding Judge: Please take it.

Attorney General: Please look at this picture.  Is this man
known to you?

Accused:    Yes, this is Novak.

Q. You have told us of your conversations with the
Mufti, and that he was in the company of certain other
gentlemen.  Do you remember that one of them was called the
"Heydrich of the Near East"?

A. Yes, I remember that.

Q. This group attended a brief crash course at the Gestapo
offices, did it not?

A. I would not call it a course - they were...they had to go
through the Sections of Department IV, for information
purposes, perhaps also through the other Departments as
well.

Q. Can you confirm the following sentence? "They were to
some extent, through a form of speedy procedure,
reconditioned into experts for any Gestapo to be set up in
the Near East."

A. I am sorry, I did not understand.  It [the translation]
did not come through.

Q. Very well, please read through what I am handing you.  On
page 653 of the Sassen Document.  Just these two lines,
please.  Is what is said there correct?

A. These two lines are correct, yes.  What appears before
this is not right.

Q. Just these two lines.  All right.  I would like this to
be translated, these two lines.

Interpreter: I have already translated it.

Attorney General: Thank you very much.

Dr. Servatius:  Could you tell me which lines these are?

Attorney General: "They were to some extent, through a form
of speedy procedure, reconditioned into experts for any
Gestapo to be set up in the Near East."  You remember that a
proposal was made for someone from your office to act as
adviser to the Mufti after the great victory.

A. I do not remember, but I am sure that would necessarily
have happened.  I can safely say that.  But I do not
remember that.

Q. But you cannot dispute Wisliceny's words in this matter,
that it was suggested that he be the Mufti's adviser.

A. I believe that this is pure imagination on Wisliceny's
part, because at that time there could be no question of
proposals about personnel, and if there had been, Wisliceny
would have been the last person not to have been happy about
taking up such a new post, because of the novelty, the
surroundings, the journey, and so on.

Q. That is what Wisliceny himself says also, but you will
admit that he could only have heard something like this from
you, that the fact that such a proposal even existed he
could have heard only from you.

A. He could not have heard this only from me, he could also
have heard it directly from Mueller, because in fact
Wisliceny did...

Q. So that means either from Mueller or from you, that is
what you mean, is it not?

A. Yes, he could have heard it.

Q. That will do.  You had close ties with Kaltenbrunner,
didn't you?  In 1941 you were still able personally to
recommend to him one of your colleagues or subordinates,
Kraus, although at that time there was no longer any joint
activities with Kaltenbrunner, correct?

A. Yes, what is in here is right, it was Hauptsturmfuehrer
Kraus who was acting as honorary Gruppenfuehrer.

Q. I am not interested in the content of the letter; what I
am interested in is whether you were on sufficiently good
terms to be able to intervene with him in person on behalf
of one of the people who in the past had worked with you.

Presiding Judge: This is T/1431.

Accused:    Yes, this was an official matter, and I
submitted the proposal for promotion to Kaltenbrunner.

Attorney General: And the good terms on which you were with
Kaltenbrunner never cooled off, never worsened?

Accused:    With the qualification that once he became my
superior, our ties were purely official and stopped being
private, as they had been previously.

Presiding Judge: Had you been the superior of this Kraus in
Vienna?

Accused:    I was not Kraus' superior; the superior was the
Inspector of the Security Police and the Security Service.
I was also on friendly terms with Kraus.

Presiding Judge: Very well.  So this was not a normal
official matter, but an entirely private recommendation?

Accused:    Not private with regard to Kaltenbrunner, but it
was private with regard to Kraus.

Presiding Judge: Did you wish to add something?

Accused:    I simply wanted to add that I did Kraus the
favour for which he had asked me.

Judge Halevi:  But you wrote the truth, you did not just
want to do him some favour or other, but what you wrote
about Kraus was the truth, was it not?

Accused:    It was the truth, because when I was in Austria,
Kraus had in fact run the emigration fund there, that is
correct.

Attorney General: You told us that Jewish Affairs had to be
heavily camouflaged even vis-a-vis the Foreign Ministry; but
you will admit that these camouflage systems and methods
were also applied to other countries, for example to the
Slovaks.

Accused:    I never denied that; in fact, Himmler gave these
orders.

Q. But you carried them out?

A. I was not the only one who carried them out.


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