Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Dieter Wisliceny's Nuremberg Testimony
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Wisliceny

Archive/File: holocaust/nuremberg wisliceny.001
Last-Modified: 1994/02/21

"	    The Final Solution of the Jewish Question

To the [Nuremberg] judges and the world it was Dieter Wisliceny who,
following Ohlendorf to the witness stand, explained the meaning of the
phrase `the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.'

Wisliceny's interrogation, like Ohlendorf's, had been the responsibility of
Colonel Brookhart; and since Amen did not regard Wisliceny's appearance as a
witness as highly as Ohlendorf's, he permitted Brookhart  to conduct the
examination in court.

`Do you know Adolf Eichmann?' Brookhart inquired of the thirty-four-year-old
Wisliceny who, as Eichmann's deputy for Slovakia, had supervised the
shipment of Alfred Weczler, Rudolf Vrba, and the other Slovakian Jews to
Auschwitz. 

`Yes, I have known Eichmann since 1934.'

`Under what circumstances?'

`We joined the SD about the same time, in 1934. Until 1937 we were together
in the same department.'

`How well did you know Eichmann personally?'

`We knew each other very well. We used the intimate `du,' and I also knew
his family very well.' 

In response to Brookhart's questions about Eichmann's position, Wisliceny
replied: `Eichmann had special powers from Gruppen fu"hrer Mu"ller, the
Chief of Amt IV [Gestapo], and from the Chief of the Security Police. He was
responsible for the so-called solution of the Jewish question in Germany and
in all countries occupied by Germany.'

Wisliceny related that when -- at the time of the shipment of the Slovakian
Jews -- he had requested verification, `Eichmann told me he could show me
this order in writing if it would sooth my conscience. He took a small
volume of documents from his safe, turned over the pages, and showed me a
letter from Himmler to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD
[Heydrich]. The gist of the letter was roughly as follows:

`The Fu"hrer had ordered the final solution of the Jewish question; the
Chief of the Security Police and the SD and the Inspector of Concentration
Camps [Richard Glu"cks] were entrusted with carrying out this so-called
final solution. All Jewish men and women who were able to work were to be
temporarily exempted from the so-called final solution and used for work in
the concentration camps. This letter was signed by Himmler himself. I could
not possibly be mistaken since Himmler's signature was well known to me.'

`Was any question asked by you as to the meaning of the words `final
solution' as used in the order?' Brookhart continued.

`He said that the planned biological annihilation of the Jewish race in the
Eastern Territories was disguised by the concept and wording `final
solution.' In later discussions on this subject the same words `final
solution' appeared over and over again.'

`Did you make any comments to Eichmann about his authority?'

`Yes. It was perfectly clear to me that this order spelled death to millions
of people. I said to Eichmann, `God grant that our enemies never have the
opportunity of doing the same to the German people.' In reply to which
Eichmann told me not to be sentimental; it was an order of the Fu"hrer and
would have to be carried out.'

Eichmann, Wisliceny said, `was in every respect a confirmed bureaucrat,' a
characterization given graphic meaning by a communication dispatched in 1942
by Eichmann's representative in France, Hauptsturmfu"hrer Theodore Danneker.
In June of 1942, Eichmann had pressured the Vichy government, through
Ribbentrop's ministry, to hand over fifty thousand Jews from the unoccupied
territory for shipment to the east. Premier Laval, however, had refused to
expel French citizens and agreed only to hand over `stateless' Jews -- those
unfortunates who had managed to flee from the Nazis in Germany, Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Poland. On the evening of July 14, 1942, Eichmann had
telephoned Danneker from Berlin and testily demanded to know why the
transport scheduled for the next day had been cancelled.

`The train due to leave on 15 July 1942 had to be canceled,' Danneker
replied, `because, according to the information received by the SD Kommando
at Bordeaux, there were only one hundred and fifty stateless Jews in
Bordeaux. There was not time to find enough Jews to fill the train.'

Eichmann, Danneker had related in his message, was furious: `SS
Oberturmbannfu"hrer Eichmann replied it was a question of prestige. [He] had
to conduct lengthy negotiations about these trains with the Reichsminister
of transportation, which turned out successfully; and now Paris canceled the
train. Such a thing had never happened to him before. The matter was highly
shameful. He did not wish to report it to SS Gruppenfu"hrer Mu"ller right
now, for the blame would fall on his own shoulders. He was reflecting
whether he would not do without France as an evacuation country altogether.'

Unfortunately, Eichmann had not adhered to his threat to leave the Jews of
France alone because of the insult he had suffered. But the episode revealed
the inhuman banality of the pepetrators of the Final Solution -- Eichmann
had not thought in terms of human beings, of despair and agony, terror and
torture, but of Judenmateriel: So and so many Jewish carcasses that he had
contracted to deliver.

`Were there distinct periods of activity affecting the Jews?' Brookhart
asked Wisliceny.

`Yes.'

`Will you describe to the tribunal the approximate periods and the different
types of activity?'

`Yes. Until 1940 the general policy was to settle the Jewish question in
Germany and in areas occupied by Germany by means of a planned emigration.
The second phase, after that date, was the concentration of all Jews in
Poland and in other territories occupied by Germany in the East, in ghettos.
This period lasted approximately until the beginning of 1942. The third
period was the so-called final solution of the Jewish question, that is, the
planned extermination and destruction of the Jewish race; this period lasted
until October 1944, when Himmler gave the order to stop their destruction.'

As early as September 15, 1935, Hitler had, in speaking about the Nuremberg
Laws, employed the term `final solution.' If the laws did not `create a
ground on which the German people may find a tolerable relation toward the
Jewish people,' the Fu"hrer had said, then the problem `must be handed over
by law to the National Socialist Party for a final solution.'

...

Concluding his questioning of Wisliceny, whom he called `a walking adding
machine on the Final Solution,' Brookhart asked: `In your meetings with the
other specialists on the Jewish problem and Eichmann, did you gain any
knowledge or information as to the total number of Jews killed under this
program?'

`Yes,' Wisliceny replied. `He [Eichmann] expressed this in a particularly
cynical manner. He said he would leap laughing into the grave because the
feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a
source of extraordinary satisfaction.'

Exerpted from--------------------------------------------------------
JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG. Conot, Robert E. New York: Harper & Row, 1983
pp 257-258, 273
---------------------------------------------------------------------

 Brookhart: Lt. Col. Smith W Brookart, whom Conot describes as "the rock-eyed
son of a famous midwestern senator, Wildman Smith Brookhart. Brookhart was
the deputy of Colonel John Harlan Amen, the chief of the Interrogation
Division, and was responsible for questioning Kaltenbrunner and other SS and
Gestapo personnel. He was interviewed by Conot with regard to the Nuremberg
trials.

 Six weeks before, during an interrogation, Wisliceny had been more
specific: `Eichmann personally was an extreme coward. He did not start
anything, he did not do anything, he did not attempt anything without being
completely covered down to the slightest detail by both Mu"ller and
Kaltenbrunner. He feared every responsibility.'

 On November 15, Wisliceny had told Brookhart that, of the total of 5.25
million, two-thirds had come from Poland, 458,000 from Hungary, 420,000 from
Romania, 250,000 from Czechoslovakia, 220,000 from France, 180,000 from
Germany, and the remainder from a variety of other countries.

=30=

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