The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 63
(Part 6 of 8)


Attorney General: With regard to reports on cases of death in the camps, an instruction was issued by Gluecks, in our document No. 416. Gluecks was an SS Brigadefuehrer and a Major General of the Waffen-SS, and he was the chief official in charge of supervision of the concentration camps. On 21 November 1942, he issued new orders relating to matters concerning cases of death. This is a sequel to the document we have just submitted - as the reference shows. Thus, in paragraph 1: "Cases of death of Jews and Jewesses must be reported in a collective list. It must mention the name, place and date of birth, and the nationality."

Presiding Judge: To be exact: In future, reports must be submitted about them in a collective list only.

Attorney General: And it says: "In order to simplify the procedure."

Presiding Judge: In other words - one form.

Attorney General: The court will notice immediately that the procedure is to make the reporting easier. But the consent of the dispatching authority is always required. With regard to protective detainees sent by IVC2 or by Department V, a special report must be submitted. That is to say, all these criminals, anti-social elements, homosexuals, etc. - reporting about them has a special value. All the other Jews who were dispatched are to be included in collective reports on one form.

Presiding Judge: The one form could be for the sake of secrecy.

Attorney General: Your Honour, we shall see right away - there are developments concerning these documents.

Presiding Judge: Please continue.

Attorney General: Again it mentions, in the paragraph before the last, that there is no alteration in the order that a report is always to be sent to the dispatching authority about each case of death. And, at the end, it says:

"Camp commanders are responsible to the Reichsfuehrer- SS and to me personally that, despite this easing up in the reports, nobody in the camp is to forget that there is responsibility even for the life of every criminal."
Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1279.

Attorney General: The Court will find the Accused's reaction to this document on pages 3495-3496 of his statement.

Directions for a meeting at which procedural matters in concentration camps were dealt with are contained in our document No. 175. With regard to cases of death - this appears on the second page - there are special instructions for Jews and for Poles, and it says the following: In the case of Jews, the reporting is to be done only by lists. The monthly notifications about Jews who died are to be sent, according to the order of 21 November 1942, either to the RSHA or the RKPA (Reichs-Kriminalpolizeiamt) (Reich Criminal Police Office). The documents must indicate precisely whether the transport referred to is of transport Jews (IVB4a) or of Jews who are protective detainees (IVC2). With regard to the latter, their death must be marked in red. This already bears the signature of Rudolf Hoess who was, at that time, the Chief Officer in charge of concentration camps.

Presiding Judge: What is D1?

Attorney General: This was in the Economic-Administrative Head Office.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge. With regard to this point on page two, about the transfer of prisoners, may I be permitted to read one point into the record: "With regard to applications for the transfer into other camps, especially to Grade III" - it says here - "to the Head Office for Reich Security and to the Reich Criminal Police Office - there is no such thing. Orders for transfers will, in principle, be given only from here." This means that the reference was to "here" - to the Department D1 of the Economic-Administrative Head Office. This relates to the transfers that have already been discussed here, and of which Eichmann has been accused.

Judge Halevi: Dr. Servatius, perhaps you know the meaning of "vor allen Dingen - Stufe III"?

Attorney General: I also don't know the meaning of the words "Especially Grade III" - I would first have to go into this.

Attorney General: Grade III, to our knowledge, were the worst camps, of the type of Mauthausen and others. If I may, I would draw attention to two items. In the second paragraph, in the same section which Defence Counsel mentioned, it says there is no necessity to report about the transfer of Russians and Jews from camp to camp, and, at any rate, this does not affect the basic directive that dispatch to the camps was carried out in accordance with the same directive which I have already submitted.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1280.

I should like to clarify something once again. Even at this advanced stage, a basic matter in the office structure is not clear to me. Was the Economic-Administrative Head Office part of the Head Office for Reich Security?

Attorney General: No, it was one of the twelve main offices of the SS. One of them was the Head Office for Reich Security, one was the Economic-Administrative Head Office, and there were others for historical research, and so on. We have a list of all twelve.

Presiding Judge: Have you submitted it?

Attorney General: I think we have, but I will check that. There were twelve of these offices. At any rate, from a formal point of view, Pohl had the same status as Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner. Both of them were subordinates of Himmler, the head of the SS.

Presiding Judge: This marking is misleading.

Attorney General: Our following document deals with a number of concentration camps - this is document No. 558. On 5 April 1944, Pohl reports to the Reichsfuehrer that the total number of concentration camps had now reached twenty; the number of labour camps, in the localities listed here, totalled 165. And he adds in his own handwriting: "In Eicke's time, there were only six, now there are 185!" What appears here as page two is a shorthand note for the reply of the Reichsfuehrer. We have not managed to decipher all of it, since this is a system of shorthand which is not familiar to the people we consulted. But, to the extent that we have succeed in deciphering it, Himmler expresses his full satisfaction at the fact that the number of concentration camps has risen at such a rate under Pohl's administration.

Judge Halevi: When was Eicke replaced?

Attorney General: Eicke was the notorious commander of Dachau who subsequently set up a school there for all the criminals.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1281. Pardon me, who has written the answer with an expression of thanks for this report?

Attorney General: That is Himmler - it says so on top.

Presiding Judge: This is not Himmler's signature.

Attorney General: This is only a shorthand draft.

Presiding Judge: After that, there is another letter - or perhaps it was included by mistake?

Attorney General: I do not have it - perhaps I may see what the Court is referring to. [After examining the document] There is a reply in the original which I do not have, but I have the passage in shorthand. Himmler replies to Pohl

Presiding Judge: Is that Himmler's signature?

Attorney General: Yes, I believe it is.

Presiding Judge: No.

Attorney General: This is in Himmler's name - apparently someone replied. I cannot say for certain; I think that this is not Himmler's signature, as I have seen it in other documents. At any rate, there is, here, an expression of thanks for the letter of 5 May with the list of concentration camps "and from this sample, it is possible to see how our affairs have expanded, and you are not the last of those to whose credit it will be recorded." This was not in my possession; I only had the first two pages, and, apparently, this page was not photographed in the laboratories of Bureau 06, so that I was not aware of it.

Presiding Judge: I have separated it and will give it a separate number. I am marking it T/1282.

Perhaps you would take it back and make two more copies. Please also make a copy for Dr. Servatius.

Attorney General: Yes, certainly. Prosecution document No. 1252 is a document which was submitted at Nuremberg Trial No. 6, testifying to the instantaneous effectiveness of the Zyklon gas, which immediately affects the breathing and which directly causes death.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1283.

Judge Halevi: But this was after the War?

Attorney General: This was an expert opinion on the effectiveness of those gases, which was used in the Nuremberg Trials of war criminals.

Attorney General: The next document is likely to give rise to some difficulty and, accordingly, I prefer to make my remarks at once. It was submitted to the Accused and is before you as T/37(313). It is an article published in the Romanian newspaper Jurnalul de Dimineata, after the liberation of Romania, when the Romanians published several documents from the period of Nazi influence over their country. These are the minutes of a meeting that took place in Berlin on 26 and 28 September, 1942, on the subject of the deportation of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement and the Jews of Romania. They deal with the number of Jews, the number of trains, the destinations of these trains - Treblinka, Belzec, Lublin, Chelmno and Sobibor - and it is important for us. We procured this document, which was apparently submitted by a claimant for reparations from the German authorities; it is authenticated by the German consulate in New York, but this is the only source of verification that we have.

Presiding Judge: And this paper is not an official publication?

Attorney General: I cannot say that it is official.

Presiding Judge: This is apparently a Sunday newspaper; I do not know Romanian, but I gather that from the name.

Attorney General: I think it is a morning paper - if my guess is correct.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Rosen, perhaps you can help us?

Translator Rosen: It is a morning paper; my colleague in the French section confirms to me that it is a morning paper.

Attorney General: This is a translation into French. There is also a Hebrew translation, if that would facilitate matters.

Presiding Judge: Were you not able to get in touch with the editors of this paper?

Attorney General: All I can say to the Court is that, so far, our attempts have not proved successful.

Presiding Judge: Did you do that?

Attorney General: Yes.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, what do you have to say about this document?

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I have no formal objection; the probative value of what it says and its assessment - that is another matter.

Presiding Judge:

Decision No. 69

We allow the submission of this document, which purports to be the minutes of a meeting that took place in Berlin on 26 and 28 September, 1942. Defence Counsel does not object to its being submitted.

The document will be marked T/1284.

Attorney General: Before I address myself to an analysis of the document, may I say that the Accused reacted to it on page 3539 and the following pages, and on page 3548 he was asked about the person of Klemm, who signs this report or record of proceedings, and he says that Klemm's name is known to him - Klemm and the railways counsellor Stange were the ones who had consulted together over the transport plans. Thereafter, he was asked: "Did your man Novak participate in these meetings?" And he replied: "Novak, yes, yes" (on page 3548).

What is this document, which was the record of a meeting drawn up by the Reich railways department, and in which, according to the Accused's statement, Novak participated, at least in meetings of this kind?

Judge Halevi: I request a Hebrew translation - it is difficult to read this.

Attorney General: [handing over the document] The meeting took place on 26 and 28 September, 1942, and refers to the deportation of 600,000 Jews from the Generalgouvernement, and 200,000 Jews from Romania into the area of the Generalgouvernement. With regard to the deportation of the Polish Jews it was decided: Two trains would run daily from the Warsaw district to Treblinka, one train per day from the district of Radom to Treblinka, one train per day from the district of Cracow to Belzec, and one train per day from the district of Lvov to Belzec; these would be carried out in two hundred freight cars.

After the completion of the construction of the railway line Lublin-Chelmno, apparently on 1 November 1942, additional urgent deportations will have to be carried out, that is to say: one train per day from the district of Radom to Sobibor, one train per day from the district of Lublin-North to Belzec, and one train per day from the district of Lublin-Central to Sobibor, as far as would be possible, and, to the extent that it would be possible, to supply the required number of freight cars. This was as far as the deportations of the 600,000 Jews of the Generalgouvernement were concerned.

With regard to the deportation of the Jews of Romania, the Romanian railway administration announced on the day of the meeting that for budgetary reasons, it was unable to participate, and it requested the postponement of the meeting. The meeting, which took place without representatives of the Romanian railways, came to the following conclusions: The station for the departure of the special trains in Romania would be Adjud on the Ploiesti- Czernowitz line, the frontier station for the area of the Generalgouvernement would be Sniatyn, and the terminal station would be Belzec. It was intended that, every other day, a special train would depart, consisting of fifty freight cars, and one passenger coach for accompanying personnel, for about two thousand people. The general representative of the German Reich railways in Bucharest was requested to come to an agreement with the Romanian railways, under which they would supply the freight cars for carrying out the deportations, and this would apparently be a little later than had been planned. The delivery of the special trains by the C.F.R. (the Romanian railways) would take place on time on transport days in co-ordination with the Reich railway office in Cracow, so that they could be sent from Sniatyn to Lvov at 1.03 hours. It also states that, in order that there should not be any movement of empty cars, use should be made of closed German cars that will be in Romania or will arrive there.

Document No. 1540 is a notice which von Thadden sent on 2 May 1944, to Eichmann, containing a copy of a notification which the German Foreign Ministry had received from the embassy in Istanbul. In Istanbul, information was spread - and the embassy writes that in the Palestine Post of 12, 13 and 15 March, and in the Egyptian Gazette of 22 March, items were published about atrocities in Poland, about labour camps which were being liquidated, about the fact that all the Jewish children in Poland had been killed, that the concentration camp in Auschwitz was a German death factory - the largest - to which there had been brought sixty thousand Jews from Greece, fifty thousand Jews from Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, and sixty thousand from Germany. Von Thadden sends this notice to Eichmann for his information.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1285.

Attorney General: Through the courtesy of the Jerusalem Post of today - then the Palestine Post - I am in a position to submit to the Court two copies of the paper of 13 March 1944, which appears to contain the news item that the German representatives in Istanbul conveyed to the Accused. It says here: "All Polish Jewish children killed." This is the item that the Palestine Post published from London, that the Polish Government-in-exile accused the Germans of the murder of all the Jewish children in occupied Poland.

Presiding Judge: Have you marked that here?

Attorney General: It has been marked in a frame.

Presiding Judge: This copy will be marked T/1286.

What about the other copy?

Attorney General: There are two copies of the same issue, I believe.

Presiding Judge: No, one is dated 13th and one 15th March.

Attorney General: In the second copy, there is also the same item: "Massacres stepped up." I have also marked this one with a frame.

Presiding Judge: This copy will be marked T/1287.


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