The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 60
(Part 5 of 6)


State Attorney Bach: The next document is No. 153. Veesenmayer reports to the Foreign Office in a cable dated 13 June 1944 that they have succeeded, in the meantime, in deporting 289,357 Jews in ninety-two trains. In paragraph four, there is an account of combined action in all the districts: On 11 June, a briefing had taken place of the German-Hungarian authorities who were participating in dealing with District 4. At the end he says: "The last district, No. 6 (the Budapest city zone), is to be started at one swoop, with special precautionary measures."

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1207.

State Attorney Bach: The following is our No. 385. It was shown to the Accused and was given the number T/37(149). This is a cable sent by Veesenmayer to the Foreign Office on 14 June 1944, and he gives a description here of what we have heard was called "Re-tour," although he does not call it that. He says that whereas on 19 March many Jews were still migrating from Slovakia into Hungary, now - as a result of our taking matters into our own hands - a migration in the reverse direction could be noticed. He requests that measures should be taken in Slovakia to prevent this. He is ready to have a meeting with Ludin for this purpose.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1208.

Dr. Servatius: It is of some importance to me that more detailed attention be paid to this document. This is a letter from Veesenmayer, in which he says: "It would greatly facilitate the work here" - Veesenmayer's work - "if thorough steps against the Jews were to be undertaken now in Slovakia." And at the end it says: "I would then meet Ludin" - that was the (German) Minister in Slovakia - "for the purpose of discussing this matter, in order to work out practical proposals together."

State Attorney Bach: Your Honours, Defence Counsel's argument could have been weighty, if it had not been for the next document which I am about to submit. This is our document No. 164 which was shown to the Accused and was marked T/37(113). Veesenmayer continues and sends another cable concerning this meeting in Pressburg on the same matter. And he states who should take part in this meeting, who should conduct it from the Hungarian-German side. And then he writes: "Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann and the officer dealing with the subject, Hauptsturmfuehrer Wisliceny, who had previously been the adviser on Jewish affairs in Bratislava...but for the reasons stated in the report dated...they cannot absent themselves from here before the end of July. Therefore [we] propose a postponement accordingly." We see that it was not so much Veesenmayer who was thinking of personal action, but that Eichmann and Wisliceny were those who had to conduct the negotiations.

Presiding Judge: That is to say, Veesenmayer took the initiative in these two instances,in relation to this action.

State Attorney Bach: He is the person reporting to the Foreign Office, but we see that the actual negotiations had again to be conducted by Eichmann and Wisliceny, and they were the ones who had to go to Pressburg, in order to participate in that meeting.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1209.

State Attorney Bach: The following document is our No. 159, and it was given the reference T/37(112) when shown to the Accused. It is Veesenmayer's report to the Foreign Office. Meanwhile, he has reached a total of 381,000 deported Jews, but it is mainly the last sentence which is important here: "An additional number of special transports were put in motion, with 'political' Jews and Jewish intellectuals, those with large numbers of children, and skilled workers. These were sent off in special transports."

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1210.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, may I be permitted to revert to document No. 164? It would appear from its heading that it does not refer to that discussion between Veesenmayer and Ludin, but to some other discussion. It does not bear the same reference mark.

Presiding Judge: I also see this.

State Attorney Bach: I do not believe that this is necessarily the case. Here we have a document from Veesenmayer, and that is also a document of Veesenmayer as a reply to another letter from the Foreign Office.

Presiding Judge: Here, at any rate, there is mention of a letter of 22 June, which apparently you do not have.

State Attorney Bach: 22 June - that should have been a letter from Berlin to Veesenmayer. But it is difficult to assume that the reference is to the meeting which was to take place in Pressburg. The number here is not consecutive at all.

Presiding Judge: Very well, let us not now get into the pleading stage. There will still be an opportunity for that.

State Attorney Bach: Next, Your Honours, we have our document No. 114. This was a document which was also submitted in Nuremberg at the main trial and published in IMG, Vol. 33, pp. 167-169. This is the well-known letter from Kaltenbrunner to his friend Blaschke in Vienna. In this letter he requests that some deportation transports be transferred to Vienna, to Strasshof.

The reference is to twelve thousand Jews who would be arriving shortly in Vienna. "From the experience we have acquired so far, these transports will include about thirty per cent - in the present case about 3,600 Jews - who will be fit for work, whom it will be possible to employ in the projects discussed, subject to the condition that it will be possible to send them away at any time." Later on he writes: "All the women and children who are unfit for work, all these Jews must be kept for a special action" - Sonderaktion - "and therefore they will be removed one of these days, and they must remain guarded in the camp in the daytime as well.

Additional details may be obtained from Dr. Ebner and SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Krumey, of the Special Operations Unit for Hungary, who is at present in Vienna."

Judge Halevi: Was this the initiative for the transport to Vienna?

State Attorney Bach: This was, in fact, the initiative for what was called the "Strasshof transport." Later we see that. I believe that I have read you extracts from the Kasztner report, pages 49 and 50 of the report, that Eichmann subsequently represented the transport of those twelve thousand Jews as a concession on his part and demanded money from the Jews. I think that Mrs. Brand has already testified that the Jewish community was obliged to pay and to support these Jews who were working in Strasshof. Naturally, neither Dr. Kasztner nor the other Jews who conducted the negotiations knew that this anyhow was on instructions from Kaltenbrunner, which becomes clear from the present document.

Judge Halevi: Was it Wisliceny or Eichmann who sold it to them as a favour?

State Attorney Bach: Eichmann said this constituted a certain concession, and they believed it was an achievement and paid for it accordingly.

Judge Halevi: They certainly did not know about the condition of the Sonderbehandlung (special treatment).

State Attorney Bach: Of this they were certainly not aware. But here there was talk not of "Sonderbehandlung" but of "Sonderaktion," that these were women and children who were not fit for work, who had to be preserved for the Sonderaktion, and that in fact only thirty per cent were capable of working.

I draw your attention to the heading: IVA4b. Although Kaltenbrunner is the signatory, the letter was drawn up in Section IVA4.

The following document is Prosecution document No. 677, which was given the reference T/37(223). This is a report of Veesenmayer to the Foreign Office, dated 6 July 1944, and here he reports that "he has just been informed in a telephone conversation with Sztojay that the Regent, evidently with the approval of the Hungarian Government, has stopped the continuation of the operation against the Jews," and he says "the fact of the arrival of Jewish-Hungarian millionaires at Lisbon has aroused excitement throughout Hungary."

And he adds that the Hungarians were impressed by the news that the Allies had prepared a list of those responsible for the implementation of the Hungarian and German operations against the Jews, with the object of punishing them after the War. There were also many cables and protests from various countries, and also from the Vatican, and these also were making an impression upon the Hungarians.

One further excerpt: On page two, Veesenmayer reports that "Sztojay declared to me that he personally was not upset by the threat, for in the event of our being victorious, he regarded the matter as being of no consequence, and if it turned out otherwise, he was anyhow resigned to his life coming to an end. Despite that, he was obviously strongly impressed by the cables, concerning which I have meanwhile heard that they were brought before the Council of Ministers where they had a corresponding effect."

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1212.

State Attorney Bach: And now to document No. 849. Here, Veesenmayer cables the Foreign Office on 11 July 1944. By now we arrive at a figure of 437,402 from the districts which had been cleared of their Jews, and there still remained only the operation against Budapest. Incidentally, the Court will take note that the final Hungarian report speaks of approximately two thousand Jews less. There an amount of approximately 435,000 was mentioned, and here it is 437,000. The difference lay in that first deportation from the Kistarcsa camp at the end of April, which was indeed an exclusively German initiative, and this figure was not included in the Hungarian statistics.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1213.

State Attorney Bach: And now I come to a number of documents which are perhaps the gravest we are able to submit against the Accused. The Court will recall that, in a number of similar cases, both in connection with Holland and in regard to Italian documents, I have said that he was perhaps more extreme than the Fuehrer himself. In the documents I shall bring before you now, it seems to me we shall find the strongest justification for this conclusion.

The first document is our No. 772. Here, Ribbentrop informs Veesenmayer that the Fuehrer is very annoyed at the change which has come about in the Hungarian attitude, and that he protests against the latest developments. In the fifth paragraph it states:

"The Fuehrer expects that the Hungarian Government will now implement the operations against the Jews of Budapest without any further delays, making allowance for all those exceptional and special cases which the Reich Government confirmed in principle to the Hungarian Government, in accordance with the proposals of Ambassador Veesenmayer. But no delay whatsoever must occur, because of these exceptions, in executing the general anti-Jewish regulations, otherwise the Fuehrer will be compelled to reconsider and cancel the consent to these special privileges."
And the Fuehrer
"expresses his regret that evidently those influential elements have again succeeded in advising the Regent to adopt measures which are likely to lead Hungary to a total catastrophe."
At the end of the page he says:
"Let the Regent not be intimidated by any ridiculous Jewish-American threats that are known to us. These should not make any impression upon him - in the same way as they are incapable of having any effect on us, for at the end of this war, Germany and her Allies, and not the Americans, will emerge as the victors in Europe. On the contrary, the Fuehrer hopes that the Regent, as one of the pioneer fighters against Bolshevism, will be convinced, and will even have to be convinced, that any deviation from the path which was adopted at Klessheim, along which they have progressed ever since, will necessarily lead to the most serious conflicts between Germany and Hungary, and therefore perhaps to unpredictable results, affecting the existence of Hungary and the Hungarian people."
Presiding Judge: Was this the ultimatum?

State Attorney Bach: This was the Fuehrer's ultimatum. Its significance here is the demand for action against the Jews, otherwise he would not be able to agree any longer to those exceptional instances, those special cases. What was the content of these exceptional privileges to which he had agreed, we shall see from the next document which, as I have said, is one of the central documents...

Presiding Judge: First of all, let us mark the previous document. It will be marked T/1214. There is a further document here, but it only repeats the previous one.

State Attorney Bach: This is a document about the "Sonderzug" (special train) and, in addition, a letter that was sent to Budapest, but the contents of the two are identical.

Now for Prosecution document No. 161, which was shown to the Accused and was given the reference T/37(92). Here, Veesenmayer reports to the Foreign Office that the Swiss embassy was already making preparations for the reception of those Jews who, according to the Fuehrer's decision, could be taken out of Hungary. There is a reference to about 8,700 families, amounting to approximately forty thousand souls, and apart from that, about one thousand children. This is stated in the first paragraph of the letter.

In the second paragraph, the following appears:

"The chief of the SD's local Sondereinsatzkommando for the Jews, SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, has expressed his opinion that as far as he is aware, the Reichsfuehrer-SS does not agree, under any circumstances, to the emigration of Hungarian Jews to Palestine. The Jews who are under consideration constitute, without exception, valuable human material from a biological point of view. Many of them are veteran Zionists, whose immigration to Palestine is definitely undesirable. It is his intention, in view of the Fuehrer's decision which had been brought to his notice, to report to the Reichsfuehrer-SS and, if necessary, to ask for a renewed decision by the Fuehrer. It was further settled with Eichmann that if additional deportations of Jews from Budapest are approved, they must try to carry them out suddenly (schlagartig) and speedily, so that the deportation of the Jews being considered for emigration should be completed already before the formal arrangements are carried our. The legations concerned had already been informed that the planned operation could obviously only relate to those Jews who were still in the country.

With this object in view, they would also try to induce the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior to give a negative reply to the Swiss proposal, by which the Jews registered for emigration would be concentrated in special camps. As far as this plan was concerned, Eichmann was considering - in the event of permission for emigration to Western countries - to prevent the progress of the transports by taking appropriate steps, for example on French territory."

Presiding Judge: Which were these exceptions? Were they Jews who had immigration certificates for Palestine?

State Attorney Bach: That was simply a certain number which had been agreed upon. The Swiss Government - this is mentioned most specifically in the first paragraph of this document - had said that if such-and-such a number of families cross into Switzerland within the framework of certificates for Palestine which existed anyway, they would transfer them to Palestine. And it had then been agreed on the part of Veesenmayer - and we shall notice this again in the next documents - that if the Hungarian Government agreed to the deportation of the Jews of Budapest, they would be prepared to agree to the departure of that particular number of Jews for Switzerland. The Fuehrer consented to that. And then Eichmann appealed against this decision by the Fuehrer. He said that, if necessary, he would request a new decision from the Fuehrer which would change this decision. And if he did not obtain a change of the decision, he would endeavour, by means of administrative measures, to block the Fuehrer's decision through an immediate and speedy implementation of the deportation in such a way that it would be impossible to complete the formal arrangements for the transfer of the Jews to Switzerland. This document was shown to the Accused, and he reacts to it on page 1317.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1215.

State Attorney Bach: When we come to the part where the deportation must be carried out at speed, at such a pace that the people would not be able to complete the formal arrangements for their emigration, he says that the tempo "was determined by Endre and was so intense and so forceful that Auschwitz had great difficulty in coping suitably with all these transports."


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