The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 63
(Part 2 of 8)


Attorney General: Yes, Your Honour, I thank you for the correction.

The sixth appendix relates to the transfer of Hungarian and Slovakian Jews to Palestine.

The seventh appendix deals with the advancement of the "rescue" of European Jewry, an issue which Jewish organizations raised, as appears from many publications in the enemy press. The memorandum mentions the approach of the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. Hull had promised Jewish delegations that negotiations would be conducted to furnish American passports to persons who would be travelling to Turkey and to Spain in furtherance of the programme. "For this reason, one may definitely assume that the enemy powers will intensify their activities on the question of the Jews of Bulgaria, Romania, France, and so on, in the near future. And again, we shall have to prevail upon governments friendly to us, upon our Allies, or those dependent upon us, to adapt their practices in dealing with the question of Jewish emigration to that of the government of the Reich."

This is as far as the German Foreign Ministry is concerned, but the matter did not remain within the province of the Foreign Ministry.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1256.

Judge Halevi: Yes - this is only an internal proposal.

Attorney General: The next document is our No. 219, which was also submitted to the Accused and was given the reference T/37(49). This is a notification by the Foreign Ministry to Eichmann on the same topics.

Von Thadden informs Eichmann that, pursuant to the discussion that took place with Guenther on the subject of the departure of Jewish children from Romania, he was passing on to Eichmann the text of the instruction which the German Foreign Ministry had given to the German embassy in Bucharest for the handling of this matter. The instructions repeat the line taken in the documents of the Foreign Ministry: Transfer to Palestine must not be permitted; if the English want the Jews, they should take them themselves. This was agreed upon between von Thadden and Guenther, Eichmann's deputy.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1257.

Attorney General: This practice of giving exit permits to Jews was known by the name "Feldscher Action" - after the name of the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Feldscher. This document is Prosecution document No. 1389. The Foreign Ministry advises, in connection with the five thousand Jewish children, that at that time - it was 5 May 1944 - according to a statement by the Head Office for Reich Security which it made confidentially (this is in the third paragraph), there were no longer five thousand Jewish children available at all. Perhaps only in Litzmannstadt was there still such a number of children, but this ghetto was also going to be dismantled shortly on the orders of the Reichsfuehrer-SS.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1258.

Attorney General: To sum up this matter, here is a memorandum from von Thadden that the Foreign Minister had given orders that nothing should be done at present concerning Feldscher - that is to say, the English request to allow the exit of five thousand Jews. "We shall rely on Dr. Megerle's plan, if the English should again raise the subject."

Presiding Judge: Do you know what that is?

Attorney General: Your Honour will find it in that exchange of Foreign Ministry letters which I submitted previously - this appears in that correspondence, in document No. 1387.

Judge Raveh: Mr. Hausner, may I return to exhibit [document] No. 1389? There, on the top, in handwriting, are the words "Arab Committee" - do you know what that is?

Attorney General: We are coming to the criminal collaboration maintained in this matter between Hajj Amin al- Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, and the authorities of the Reich and of the satellite countries, for preventing the departure of those children. I shall reach that forthwith.

Presiding Judge: Prosecution document No. 1390 will be marked T/1259.

Attorney General: I shall now submit a number of documents about a man who was associated, behind the scenes, with the prevention of this rescue activity. In all sincerity, I have to say that I do not know whether, if it had not been for Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Germans would have allowed these five thousand Jewish children to be saved. But there was someone who took the trouble to apply for, to encourage, to demand, and to insist upon putting this plan to nought. And I shall prove who he was. Prosecution document No. 1310 is a letter from Hajj Amin al- Husseini to von Ribbentrop. On 13 May 1943, the Grand Mufti writes:

"The English and the American Governments recently conducted negotiations through the representatives of their interests in the Balkan countries, and principally in Bulgaria, with the aim of permitting the emigration of Jews and their transport to Palestine. In this connection, the British Minister for the Colonies, Sir Oliver Stanley, expressed his pleasure lately in the House of Commons at the fact that the negotiations with the Bulgarian authorities concerning the emigration of four thousand Jewish children, together with five hundred accompanying adults, and their transfer to Palestine, had been crowned with success, and he hoped to achieve similar results with the authorities of the remaining Balkan countries, such as Romania and Hungary, for example."
The letter concludes:
"I request Your Excellency to do everything possible to dissuade Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary from implementing the Jewish-Anglo-American plan, and to give special attention to this question; by so doing, you would be rendering an unforgettable service to the friendly Arab people, avoiding, at the same time, the co-operation of these elements which are ranged against you. With the greatest esteem, Amin al-Husseini."
Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1260.

Attorney General: On 10 June 1943, Hajj Amin again approaches the German Foreign Ministry, in Prosecution document No. 1311, and says: "On 13.5.43, I submitted a memorandum to Your Excellency on the subject of the emigration of the Jews of Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Palestine, in which I drew attention to the efforts of the British and the Jews and to the statement of the British Minister for the Colonies, in regard to the transfer of 4,500 Jews from Bulgaria to Palestine... "Since the aforementioned memorandum was submitted, we have learned of the following important details: A transport consisting of seventy-five Jews, among them also important personalities, left Bucharest on 10th March, in order to arrive in Palestine close to the end of the month, via Bulgaria. It was received by delegations of Jewish organizations." (The Mufti is referring to a newspaper dated 25 March 1943.)

Further, in paragraph two, he says:

"The Jewish Agency for Palestine published a bulletin concerning the Jews who were on their way to Palestine via Turkey... It appears that 270 young Jews from Romania and Hungary, consisting of three groups, had already arrived, and a fourth, comprising seventy-five persons who were on the way from Bucharest, are ready to depart; seven hundred Jews from Poland, who have parents in Palestine, are ready to leave; five thousand refugees from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia have immigration certificates in their possession."
The Mufti continues:
"In the light of this important information and the great and incessant efforts of the Jews and of the English, which are obviously being made in their own interests, and in the light of the desire of these enemies to transfer rapidly many thousands of Jews from Europe to Palestine, upon which the English have brought disaster by dispatching waves of Jews from all corners of the globe, it seems to me that I should bring to the knowledge of Your Excellency the fact that the Arabs, loyal friends of the Axis, feel themselves hurt when they notice that their friends of the Axis powers facilitate the Judeo-English objective of the transfer of Jews, who are agents of the British and the communists, enemies of the Arabs and the enemies of Europe, to Arab Palestine. For this reason, I would request Your Excellency to direct your attention to this important subject, and to adopt the necessary measures with the governments of Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, with the object of preventing the departure of these Jews, and to frustrate the attempts of the Jews, the English, and their allies. The Arabs will be grateful to Your Excellency for your action in this matter. Please accept, Your Excellency, my highest esteem." Signed: Amin al-Husseini.
Presiding Judge: The document will be marked T/1261.

Judge Raveh: Do these dots on the second page indicate that something is missing?

Attorney General: No, we did not translate it; you have the original document in full, but we only translated these passages.

Judge Raveh: I am referring to page two of the original.

Attorney General: This is how we have it. It is the original letter, even the signature is there.

We have in our possession a number of documents from the Mufti's archives which fell into the hands of the Allied forces in 1945 in Badgastein, in Austria, where the Mufti kept his last office before the German surrender. I have the affidavit of Mr. Tuvia Arazi, of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, authenticating the documents which I intend to submit to this Court in proceeding with this subject. This is his statement to which the documents are annexed, which - apart from this - I shall submit one by one.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, with reference to document No. 1311, I have it before me in the French language, and it seems to be a photocopy; whereas it bears the Mufti's signature, I nevertheless hear that dots appear on page two, and this gives the impression of something having been omitted. It is difficult to explain the meaning of this photocopy with the omission, and this matter ought to be clarified.

Judge Raveh: This is the same question that I asked.

Attorney General: I submitted to the Court three copies of Mr. Arazi's affidavit.

Presiding Judge: No, Dr. Servatius' question still referred to the previous exhibit; perhaps we could first dispose of this question.

Attorney General: I should like to see whether Mr. Arazi also mentions document No. 1311 amongst those that were seized - then at least we could have a formal answer.

Presiding Judge: First of all, let us dispose of the dots in this document.

Attorney General: He does not mention it. All that I can say is: That is the nature of the document in our possession; I do not know what is the explanation for this omission by means of dots.

Presiding Judge: I am not sure that this is an omission. Perhaps it was the end of a section. It could be that it indicates the end of the description of facts, and in the light of these facts, instead of drawing a line, he put a set of dots.

Attorney General: In the main, I should like to be permitted to add - with all due respect to the Court's observation - that the dots do not follow after the last word, in which case they would have shown, or pointed to, an omission, but they come between one section and the next in the body of the letter; possibly this is the way which whoever typed or copied that letter chose, in order to distinguish between sections or chapters.

Presiding Judge: Nevertheless, it is a possibility.

Attorney General: I have no other information to explain the reason for the dots appearing in the middle of the page. The document seems to me to be complete, for the next section comes as a logical continuation of the previous one, and it does not appear as if there were something else in between.

Judge Halevi: Where is the original?

Attorney General: This is, according to the markings of our catalogue, the collection of the German Foreign Ministry, namely the Alexandria collection.

Judge Halevi: And what was the technique? How did you receive the photographs?

Attorney General: We ordered rolls of film, as Mr. Bar Shalom testified when he gave evidence on the method of submitting the material. We ordered complete rolls of film, and this is what was supplied to us.

Attorney General: Dr. Servatius, do you have anything to say about these dots?

Dr. Servatius: Yes. I presume that the argument is taking place only because I heard the Attorney General - so it appeared to me from the translation - offer an explanation for the dots, as if there had been an omission there. Hence, my question: How can there be a signature on this photocopy, if there is an omission here. But, in my view, this is not an omission, but a separation between different themes.

Presiding Judge: The question was raised not by the Attorney General, but by Judge Raveh - he asked a question about this. I believe that we now have agreement, more or less, on this.

Attorney General: I merely want to amend my reply to the question of His Honour, Judge Halevi. My colleagues point out to me - and, after checking the point, I find this to be correct - that the original of our No. 1311, the Mufti's letter to Ribbentrop, is not in Alexandria, but comes from the documents of Dr. Verete, as we called them - that is to say, of the German Foreign Ministry, from London.

Judge Halevi: That is to say, that it was in this form that the government office in London supplied it?

Attorney General: This is the way it was supplied to us, or to Yad Vashem, when Yad Vashem asked for it to be supplied.

Judge Halevi: If that is so, there is no fear of an omission.

Attorney General: And now, a number of documents...

Presiding Judge: One moment, Mr. Hausner, allow us to read it, since it is submitted in this form... [reads from the document] "Affidavit"...

Attorney General: There are marks here, initials, on each one of these.

Presiding Judge: Why did you not bind them together in a better way?

Attorney General: Yes, in fact I requested that this morning - I regret that it was not done. We shall submit them one by one. Each one is identified by the initials of Mr. Arazi, and also of Mr. Bach, before whom Mr. Arazi made his declaration.

Presiding Judge: Very well, then perhaps we shall take them separately as they appear here on our table.

Attorney General: As the Court pleases.

Presiding Judge: The affidavit of Mr. Arazi will be marked T/1262.

Attorney General: Perhaps the Court would kindly return these documents to me, and I shall now submit them, one by one. Now, this is what was ascertained about Hajj Amin from his archives. We have a copy of a letter discovered amongst the documents of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry. I submit the photocopy in Arabic and in German as they were discovered. This is our No. 1309. This is a draft in Arabic, a translation of the draft into German, and the final German text.

Presiding Judge: The final text will be marked T/1263. The draft will be marked T/1263A.


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