Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-113-05
Last-Modified: 1999/06/14

At the Wannsee Conference, the problem of children of mixed
marriages occupied the participants quite a lot.  This was
an internal problem which weighed on the Third Reich.  And
you will remember, Your Honours, that in the minutes of the
meeting of 3 March 1942, Eichmann's name is not mentioned
among the participants, and that he was questioned about
this both by Counsel for the Defence and by me.  On that
day, there was another meeting in his office, as was proved
to you.  And it seems that he was not present, or only
partly present, at the meeting of the Wannsee Conference; at
any rate, the truth is that his name does not appear.  But
he was ordered to call the meeting in his office as a result
of the Wannsee Conference, as a direct sequel of what was
decided there about offspring of mixed marriages.  And this
meeting was called in his office; his office is the venue.
And nobody will of course believe the absurd explanation
that Department II, or the Fuehrer's Chancellery, which
ought to have handled this matter, had no room in which to
bring these people together.  Only in Kurfuerstenstrasse
116, says Eichmann, was there a vacant room where - how many
were they? - ten or twelve people could be assembled.

We know that as a result of the discussions at that meeting
experiments and research were undertaken, with a view to
finding a method of sterilization.  We know that it was with
his office that the methods proposed by the German pseudo-
scientists were discussed, plant poisons, X-rays, the
Klauberg method, and the Madaus method.  We know about the
meetings and the co-operation with Guenther, and the close
contact with Auschwitz on this subject.  The Court will find
in our written summary the exact bureaucratic follow-up,
which proves that this matter was treated under the same
marking and in the same way, and under the heading "Final
Solution," and I shall therefore not take up your time here.

There follows the second meeting, in which Eichmann already
takes part, together with several men from his Section.  At
that meeting, the recommended means for sterilization were
again discussed and finalized, insofar as this concerned the
participants.

Now, Honourable Judges, you will either believe these
documents and what follows from them, or you will believe
Eichmann, who changed his version three times here: Once he
said that the meeting was called by Reischauer; once he said
that it was held in his office for the purpose of camouflage
- this is what he said in the police interrogation (T/37,
pp.  868 and 1332); or you will believe what he said here,
that the action was in the hands of Department II of the
Head Office for Reich Security, that they were
"federfuehrend" (in charge of the subject), but because of
lack of space in Department II, the meeting was held in his
office.  And in reply to my question why others from his
Department also took part, he said it was good to meet with
colleagues from other offices, and to vary the office
routine a little in this way.

The matter of sterilization again points to his standing as
the man who implemented the Wannsee decisions.  It seems
that not much was said there about the extermination of the
Jews.  That was accepted.  But what to do about the children
of mixed marriages - to this question a lot of attention was
given.  And Eichmann was, as Dannecker wrote, "die
anerkannte Fuehrung" (the accepted leadership in carrying it
out.

Presiding Judge: This was actually only carried out on a
large scale in Holland, if I remember rightly.

Attorney General: It was carried out only in Holland, and
the truth is that Guenther did not agree to have it done in
Holland, and in his malice he went so far as to give an
order to the effect that "because you did it without my
consent - even those who have already been sterilized will
be deported."

But experiments were performed in Auschwitz, and abortions
in Terezin and in Kovno, as we proved by the evidence of
witnesses: by the evidence of Dr. Peretz, by the evidence of
Rahm, and with the help of the order of the day from
Terezin, and other documents.  To blot out the memory of the
Jews from of the face of the earth, even if this memory
already takes the form of half-non-Jews.  The Court will
find that our written summary expresses what we have to say
about the interconnection of these things and their
intrinsic cohesion.

I move on to the crimes committed by them against the non-
Jewish population.  As a matter of fact, no denial and no
defence was offered with regard to the ninth, tenth and
eleventh counts of the indictment.

Eichmann admits that he uprooted hundreds of thousands of
Poles from their homes and the homes of their fathers, and
transferred them to other places, in order to make room for
German families.  You will remember the plans which were
made to separate children from their parents, to open
special camps for Polish children, in order to find out
which of them were fit to be included with the children of
the master race (Reichsverdeutschung).  No reply and no
defence was made in this respect, either regarding the
Poles, or the Slovenes, or the Gypsies.  In our written
summary the Court will find details of the documents, as
well as Eichmann's admission of these events; he is the
expert and recognized uprooter of populations.  And when
Hitler suddenly takes it into his head to expel Slovenes -
the job is given to Eichmann.  And when it is decided to
clear the Reich of Gypsies - through whom does this go?
Through IVB4, to Lodz.

Presiding Judge: Are you saying that this was a special
task, or that this came within the scope of work of his
Section?

Attorney General: Uprooting came within the scope of his
Section; it was called "Aussiedlungen" (resettlement).

But he transfers not only Jews.  He has a reputation.  He
knows how to carry out work of this nature.  And therefore:
Jews - to death; others - to life, for the time being.  You
have heard here, from Dr. Beilin, about the terrible
disaster of the Gypsies in Auschwitz.  You have heard about
the shocking Gypsy camp where people died like flies, even
without gas chambers, and about the sudden emptying of this
camp when the order was given: Everybody to the chambers.
The crowding of Gypsies into the Lodz Ghetto started before
that.  As early as 21 September, the deportation of thirty
thousand Gypsies to Poland was discussed at the famous
meeting from which Eichmann makes desperate efforts to
extricate himself.  And thus, they were seized together with
the Jews, and there was that quarrel about the transfer of
the Jews and the Gypsies to the Lodz Ghetto, that quarrel in
which a German administration official accused Eichmann of
using horse traders' methods.  And Eichmann admits that the
assertion is justified.  Gypsies were deported to their
death from Germany, from Yugoslavia, and from other places.
Tens of thousands were sent to their death.  All the reports
about deportation trains carrying Slovenes, which we
submitted to you, thirty-three trains did leave, and those
who carried this out were men from Eichmann's Section:
Seidl, Hoeppner and Krumey.  Of those uprooted and expelled,
the largest number were Poles.  And when I asked him about
the numbers - and we have an official report about them - he
says he does not know, it may be so, the document speaks for
itself.

This action is a crime against humanity.  This is
deportation of a civilian population, it is an inhumane act,
it is a war crime committed by him - and he has no defence
against this.

Now I come to the last counts in the indictment - membership
in hostile organizations.  The judgment of the International
Military Tribunal has defined a number of organizations as
hostile organizations.

Judge Halevi:  To which count do the children of Lidice
belong?

Attorney General: I am very grateful to the Court.  It is
the twelfth count, and I have to deal with it before I get
to the thirteenth count.  I would not have forgotten it, but
for the sake of good order I shall deal with it now.  There
was a dispute about one hundred children from the Czech
village of Lidice, which the Nazis had wiped off the face of
the earth in revenge for the assassination of Heydrich.  All
the men were killed on the spot, the women sent to camps,
and the children taken away.  The Court will find this in
the booklet we have submitted - although this is not the
purpose for which it was submitted, and admitted, but it
depicts the situation which the Nazis created.  The Court
will see the description which the Czechs published after
the war: "Where are the children of Lidice, we are looking
for them!  Where are our children? What happened to the
children of Lidice?  They were taken to Lodz!"

Krumey approached Eichmann, this Krumey who was stationed
there and dealt with matters of population resettlement.
They called it "Umwanderungszentrale" (Resttlement Office).
He asked for instructions (Sonderbehandlung).  He thought
that the children were intended for "special treatment."
And why did he think so?  This is explained in the letter, a
copy of which Krumey himself submitted to the German judge
when he was interrogated in Germany, as a witness for the
defence in this trial: Because he had received a letter from
SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Fischer which said that the
children, among them toddlers aged two and three, had
arrived without extra clothes or other belongings, and would
be sent to the East via the Polish camps.  He added,
stressed and underlined, that there was no need for special
supervision - and we had a discussion with the Defence about
this.  But even without this sentence in the letter - which
goes so much against the grain with the Defence - the very
fact that two- and three-year-old children are transported
naked and destitute, and that an order is given to send them
to the East via Polish camps, and that this is accepted as
authentic - even if we forget the additional sentence for
the moment - do these facts not tell us what fate was in
store for those children?

It has been argued here that "special treatment" has several
meanings.  Counsel for the Defence has submitted documents
to you which prove, or purport to prove, that the meaning of
this word is not always "killing."  For argument's sake, let
us agree for a moment that it is actually so.  But when
Krumey receives such children with such an order, he turns
to Eichmann because, as far as he knows, "special treatment"
of this kind is a matter for Section IVB4.  To transport
children to the East via the camps, destitute, without
clothes or other belongings - in a case of such a kind of
Sonderbehandlung, the first thing, or one of the first
things, that comes to his mind, one of the first addresses
one has to approach and to ask - one has to ask what
Eichmann has to say about this?  At any rate, the document
was received from Krumey, including this addition, the
addition which says that "there is no need for special
supervision."  And thus it is already quite clear to us why
Krumey is looking to Eichmann for the solution for those
children, who had suddenly been sent to him to Lodz -
because matters like this belong to him.  But there is more:
If what Eichmann says is true, that he immediately told
Krumey, "Listen, this is not my business, I do not deal with
such children" - why then did Krumey approach him again in
connection with another twelve children from Lidice?  Once
again he asks him for instructions, and he gets them, signed
by Guenther.  Sonderbehandlung for infants aged two and
three, who have to be transferred to camps in the East naked
and destitute - in Krumey's eyes, this is an Eichmann
operation, and it is from him one has to receive orders
about what to do.  One can understand what happened to these
children, if indeed they were brought there in the state
which the documents describe, and if they were sent on in
this state, and if they were destined for "special
treatment."

We are told: Yes, but in Pushka several dozen children were
seen at the end of the War who were said to belong to the
Lidice children.  There is no contradiction here.  It is
true that here, too, experiments in Germanization were made
with a number of children.  And, in fact, Hanfova testified
that some of them were taken to Pushka, and we have
submitted her evidence to you.  In the Czech booklet, which
we submitted to you as rebutting evidence, it also says that
some of the children whom the Germans should live, and whom
they hoped to attach to the German people over the dead
bodies of their parents, were found alive in Pushka, and
there is no contradiction at all between these two.  But
there were only a few there, and not dozens, as Hanfova
testified, and as the booklet we have submitted proves.

I now turn to the last counts of the indictment.

Our legislator defines as a crime: "...being a member of an
organization...which has been declared by a judgment
of...the International Military Tribunal to be a criminal
organization" (Section 3 of the law).  I shall not have done
my duty if I do not tell the Court immediately that Section
12 of the law also applies here, i.e., the section dealing
with prescription, and I shall be able to ask for a
conviction for such membership only with respect to a period
not exceeding twenty years.  This is what Section 12 of the
law says.  Only offences under Sections 1 and 2 are not
subject to prescription at all.  The other offences are
prescribed after twenty years.  It has been held law that
the period of prescription is interrupted by the order for
arrest; and as the first order for the arrest of Adolf
Eichmann was given here in May 1960, I can ask for his
conviction for membership in these  organizations only from
May 1940 onward.

As for the membership itself: The International Military
Tribunal - and I have before me the first volume of the Blue
Series in English - which analyses the nature of those
organizations, determines that they are hostile
organizations, because they banded together and conspired to
commit criminal acts, and therefore anyone who held an
executive position in them is to be guilty of membership in
a hostile organization.  The Court will remember that the
International Military Tribunal only had to determine the
nature, the framework of hostile organizations.  It was then
the municipal courts which had to try and to punish persons
who had belonged to those organizations.  And this is what
was actually done - to the extent that it was done - and
that is the process of de-Nazification, according to those
findings.

On page 264, the International Military Tribunal has this to
say about the Gestapo and the SD, after analysing the way in
which the Head Office for Reich Security came into
existence:

     "The Security Police and SD was a voluntary
     organization.  It is true that many civil servants and
     administrative officials were transferred into the
     Security Police.  The claim that this transfer was
     compulsory amounts to nothing more than the claim that
     they had to accept the transfer or resign their
     positions, with a possibility of having incurred
     official disfavour.  During the war a member of the
     Security Police and SD did not have a free choice of
     assignments within that organization, and the refusal
     to accept a particular position, especially when
     serving in occupied territory, might lead to serious
     punishment.  The fact remains, however, that all
     members of the Security Police and SD joined the
     organization voluntarily, under no other sanction than
     the desire to retain their position as officials."

Therefore the final conclusion, which can be found on pages
267-268, is that all those who were active in executive
positions in the Gestapo, and in other departments of the
Head Office for Reich Security, are declared members in a
hostile organization, and it no longer makes any difference,
as far as this conclusion is concerned, whether they joined,
or remained, voluntarily or under duress.  I emphasize this
because, with respect to the SS, for instance, the judgment
emphasizes the difference.  It says, after analysing the
nature of the SS, which is also declared a hostile
organization, a criminal conspiracy, on page 273:

     "The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the
     meaning of the Charter the group composed of those
     persons who had been officially accepted as members of
     the SS, as enumerated in the preceding paragraph, who
     became or remained members of the organization, with
     the knowledge that it was being used for the commission
     of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter,
     or who were personally implicated as members of the
     organization in the commission of such crimes,
     excluding, however, those who were drafted into
     membership by the state in such a way as to give them
     no choice in the matter, and who had committed no such
     crimes."
     
In other words: The judgment makes a distinction, and about
the SS it says that only persons who voluntarily joined and
took part in crimes shall be guilty of membership in a
hostile organization.  Persons who were taken into and
recruited to the SS against their will, and who did not take
part in crimes, will not be accused of membership in their
organization.  But that does not apply to the Gestapo.
There, no difference at all is made between becoming, or
remaining, a member voluntarily, because the Tribunal
decided that participation in a criminal conspiracy of such
enormous proportions - whether voluntarily or otherwise - is
a crime, and every participant must suffer his punishment.

As for Adolf Eichmann, we know that he joined the SS
voluntarily, and that he entered the SD long before the War;
he says that there was some error there, that he wanted
something else, and that in the end he found himself within
the framework of the SD; but this had happened long before
the War, and at that time it was certainly possible for him
to make a free choice - apart from the oath which he
invokes, since he had already sworn allegiance to the SD.
And in the course of his examination he admitted that he
joined voluntarily, and that he remained a member in these
organizations for as long as they remained in existence.
According to our law, there is no difference between
voluntary and involuntary membership.  The membership itself
is defined as an "offence" in Section 3.  But this is a
theoretical distinction as far as Eichmann is concerned,
because he has admitted that he joined and remained of his
own free will.

As I already said yesterday in the context of the SS,
Article 47 of the Military Jurisdiction Law applies to him,
and in exhibits T/1402 and T/1402a the Court will find the
official instructions to the personnel of the SS and the
police, as published, which contains this article.  And in
exhibit T/646 the Court will see that, as from 17 October
1939, this German Military Jurisdiction Law, including its
Article 47, was applied to the whole of the SS.  The defence
that they committed those crimes under duress, that they
were forced to do so by orders, was of no avail to the
members of the SS in the German courts.  There is no need
for me to state once again that such arguments were of no
avail either before the International Military Tribunal, or
before the other military courts in Nuremberg.  I shall only
mention the decision of the German Court of Appeal which can
be found in the second volume of Entscheidungen des
Bundesgerichtshofs (Decisions of the Federal Supreme Court),
pages 252-258.  I have a long list of decisions of German
courts of law on this subject, but I think I shall content
myself with this single reference.  If the Court would like
to see other decisions as well, they are of course at its
disposal.

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