Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression 3. Crimes Against the Jews
The most savage and numerous crimes planned and committed by
the Nazis were those against the Jews. These in Germany, in
1933, numbered about 500,000. In the aggregate, they had
made for themselves positions which excited envy, and had
accumulated properties which excited the avarice of the
Nazis. They were few enough to be helpless and numerous
enough to be held up as a menace.
Let there be no misunderstanding about the charge of
persecuting Jews. What we charge against these defendants is
not those arrogances and pretensions which frequently
accompany the intermingling of different peoples and which
are likely despite the honest courts of government,
to produce regrettable crimes and convulsions. It is my
purpose to show a plan and design, to which all Nazis were
fanatically committed, to annihilate all Jewish people.
These crimes were organized and promoted by the Party
Leadership, executed and protected by the Nazi officials,
as we shall convince you by written orders of the Secret
State Police itself.
The persecution of the Jews was a continuous and deliberate
policy. It was a policy directed against other nations as
well as against the Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism was
promoted to divide and embitter the democratic peoples and
to soften their resistance to the Nazi aggression. As Robert
Ley declared in Der Angrff on May 14, 1944, "The second
German secret weapon is Anti-Semitism because if it is
constantly pursued by Germany, it will become a universal
problem which all nations will be forced to consider."
Anti-Semitism also has been aptly credited with being a
"spearhead of terror." The ghetto was the laboratory for
testing repressive measures. Jewish property was the first
to be expropriated, but the custom grew and included similar
measures against Anti-Nazi Germans, Poles, Czechs,
Frenchmen, and Belgians. Extermination of the Jews enabled
the Nazis to bring a practiced hand to similar measures
against Poles, Serbs, and Greeks. The plight of the Jew was
a constant threat to opposition or discontent among other
elements of Europe's population --
[Page 135]
pacifists, conservatives, communists, Catholics,
Protestants, socialist. It was, in fact, a threat to every
dissenting opinion and to every non-Nazi's life.
The persecution policy against the Jews commenced with
nonviolent measures, such as disfranchisement and
discriminations against their religion, and the placing of
impediments in the way of success in economic life. It moved
rapidly to organized mass violence against them, physical
isolation in ghettos, deportation, forced labor, mass
starvation, and extermination. The Government, the Party
formation indicated before you as criminal organizations,
the Secret State Police, the Army private and semipublic
associations, and "spontaneous" mobs that were carefully
inspired from official sources, were all agencies concerned
in this persecution. Nor was it directed against individual
Jews for personal bad citizenship or unpopularity. The
avowed purpose was the destruction of the Jewish people as a
whole, as an end in itself, as a measure of preparation for
war, and as a discipline of conquered peoples.
The conspiracy or common plan to exterminate the Jew was so
methodically and thoroughly pursued that despite the German
defeat and Nazi prostration, this Nazi aim largely has
succeeded. Only remnants of the European Jewish population
remain in Germany, in the countries which Germany occupied,
and in those which were her satellites or collaborators. Of
the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in Nazi dominated Europe, 60
percent are authoritatively estimated to have perished.
5,700,000 Jews are missing from the countries in which they
formerly lived, and over 4,500,000 cannot be accounted for
by the normal death rate nor by immigration; nor are they
included among displaced persons. History does not record a
crime ever perpetrated against so many victims or one ever
carried out with such calculated cruelty.
You will have difficulty, as I have, to look into the faces
of these defendants and believe that in this Twentieth
Century human beings could inflict such sufferings as will
be proved here on their own countrymen as well as upon their
so-called "inferior" enemies. Particular crimes, and the
responsibility of defendants for them, are to be dealt with
by the Soviet Government's Counsel, when committed in the
East, and by Counsel for the Republic of France when
committed in the West. I advert to them only to show their magnitude as
evidence of a purpose and a knowledge common to all
defendants, of an official plan rather than of a capricious
policy of some individual commander, and to show such a
continuity of Jewish persecution from the rise of the Nazi
conspiracy to its collapse as forbids us to believe that any
person
[Page 136]
could be identified with any part of Nazi action without
approving this most conspicuous item of its program.
The Indictment itself recites many evidences of the
antisemitic persecutions. The defendant Streicher led the
Nazis in anti-Semitic bitterness and extremism. In an
article appearing in Der Stuermer on March 19, 1942 he
complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way
of "radical solution of the Jewish question in Europe," and
quoted enthusiastically as the Twentieth Century solution
the Fuehrer's proclamation of February 24, 1942 that "the
Jew will be exterminated." And on November 4, 1943,
Streicher declared in Der Stuermer that the Jews "have
disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish 'Reservoir of
the East' from which the Jewish plague has for centuries
beset the people of Europe, has ceased to exist." Streicher
now has the effrontery to tell us he is "only a Zionist"he
says he wants only to return the Jews to Palestine. But on May 7, 1942 his newspaper, Der Stuermer, had this to say:
"It is also not only an European problem! The Jewish question is a world question! Not only is Germany not safe in the face of the Jews as long as one Jew lives in Europe, but also the Jewish question is hardly solved in Europe so long as Jews live in the rest of the world."
And the defendant Hans Frank, a lawyer by profession I say
with shame, summarized in his Diary in 1944 the Nazi policy
thus: "The Jews are a race which has to be eliminated,
whenever we catch one, it is his end." (Frank Diary,
3/4/1944, p. 26). And earlier, speaking of his function
as Governor General of Poland, he confided to his diary this
sentiment: "Of course T cannot eliminate all lice and Jews
in only a year's time." (2233-C-PS) I could multiply
endlessly this kind of Nazi ranting but I will leave it to
the evidence and turn to the fruit of this perverted
thinking.
The most serious of the actions against Jews were outside of
any law, but the law itself was employed to some extent.
There were the infamous Nurnberg decrees of September 15,
1935 (Reichsgesetzblatt 1935, Part I, p. 1146). The Jews
were segregated into ghettos and put into forced labor; they
were expelled from their professions; their property was
expropriated; all cultural life, the press, the theatre, and
schools were prohibited them; and the SD was made
responsible for them (212-PS, 069-PS). This was an ominous
guardianship, as the following order for "The Handling of
the Jewish Question" shows:
[Page 137]
"The competency of the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service, who is charged with the mission of solving the European Jewish question, extends even to the occupied eastern provinces. *********
"An eventual act by the civilian population against the Jews is not to be prevented as long as this is compatible with the maintenance of order and security in the rear of the fighting troops *********
"The first main goal of the German measures must be strict segregation of Jewry from the rest of the population. In the execution of this, first of all is the seizing of the Jewish populace by the introduction of a registration order and similar appropriate measures *********
"Then immediately, the wearing of the recognition sign consisting of a yellow Jewish star is to be brought about and all rights of freedom for Jews are to be withdrawn. They are to be placed in Ghettos and at the same time are to be separated according to sexes. The presence of many more or les closed Jewish settlements in White Ruthenia and in the Ukraine makes this mission easier. Moreover, places are to be chosen which make possible the full use of the Jewish manpower in case labor needs are present *********
"The entire Jewish property is to be seized and confiscated with exception of that which is necessary for a bare existence. As far as the economical situation permits, the power of disposal of their property is to be taken from the Jews as soon as possible through orders and other measures given by the commissariat, so that the moving of property will quickly cease.
"Any cultural activity will be completely forbidden, to the Jew. This includes the outlawing of the Jewish press, the Jewish theatres and schools.
"The slaughtering of animals according to Jewish rites is also to be prohibited *********" (212-PS).
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Volume
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Justice Jackson's Opening Address for the United States of America
(Part 7 of 17)