The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 75
(Part 4 of 7)


Attorney General: Now, to complete the picture of the Krumhuebel Conference, I submit our document No. 168. It is a document of the German Foreign Ministry dated 4 March 1944. I wish to direct the Court's attention to the second passage which says that the conference will be held on 3rd and 4th April, with an agenda worked out in co-operation with the Head Office for Reich Security.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/1410.

Attorney General: Some documents about the activities of the Einsatzgruppen. Our document No. 1612 is a report of 12 November 1941. I should like to direct your attention to two passages: At the bottom of page 6 it says that the Wehrmacht displayed full understanding for the security operations of the Sonderkommando 4b. On page 7, in connection with a document which we have already submitted about the executions of the Jews of Kiev at Babi Yar in the course of two days, we have an addendum here to which we wish to draw the attention of the Court. In the fourth paragraph (on page 7) it says that after the executions at Zhitomir and Kiev, 137 trucks of clothing were delivered to the National Socialist Welfare Association.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/1411.

Attorney General: I pass on to our document No. 1615. I apologize in advance if some pages are not easy to read; the original is legible. The document is important because it is a report of 4 September 1942 in which the Court will find hardly any reference to operations against Jews. The report is a long one on all the activities in the occupied areas, but as for Jews, the Court will only find that warfare against partisans is mentioned several times and that Jews were also caught. It is always stated that the Jews co- operate with the partisans. But for reasons which we shall point out in our summing-up, the Einsatzgruppen do not include Jews in their regular report in September 1942. There is a reason for this which we have in my opinion already proved in earlier documents.

I should like to draw attention, if I may, because of its significance, to what is stated on page 4 about the fighting methods of the Einsatzgruppen. The loyalty of the population to the occupying forces was once tested and the Reich Security people dressed up as partisans, came to two small towns and spoke before the general public. After enthusiastic contact had been made they of course disclosed their real identity. Whereupon eight persons - a woman who had said she was ready to co-operate and seven Jews - were handed over for Sonderbehandlung (special treatment).

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I should only like to point to the heading of the letter. It says "Head of the Security Police and the Security Service Command Headquarters" i.e., this is the authority which issues these reports, which is apparently in command of this operation. So that the Accused is altogether excluded from this affair.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1412.

Attorney General: Our document No. 1611 is a file minute of the KdS (Commander of the Security Police and the Security Service) Minsk, Obersturmbannfuehrer Strauch: A conversation with Gauleiter Kube. This is a report on an interesting conversation in which Gauleiter Kube maintains that the removal of Jews working in his enterprises is in his eyes a deliberate chicanery and a personal affront directed against him. This is his reaction to the fact that the KdS of Minsk has executed 70 Jews, as mentioned in the first paragraph of the minute.

The conversation then turns to the activities of the Einsatzgruppen and the killings in general. The KdS says: "I stressed that I could not understand why Germans should quarrel because of a few Jews." To this Kube replied that "such behaviour is unworthy of Germans, of the Germany of Kant and Goethe." "I replied," concludes Strauch, "that it was enough that we had to do this unsavoury work ("diese ueble Arbeit") and that there was no need to throw dirt at us in addition."

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1413.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, here I also shall only point to the letterhead. It says here: "The Commander of the Security Police and the Security Service, White Ruthenia" - who is subordinate to the Commander of the Security Police and the Security Service, who is in turn subordinate to the Senior Commander of the SS and the Police, who is directly under Himmler. So that the Accused is also excluded from this matter.

Presiding Judge: This was T/1413, this quarrel with Kube. Regarding Kube we already had a quarrel before.

Attorney General: Yes, we did. In the end he was killed by a woman partisan.

In our document No. 845, an order of the Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories - that was Rosenberg - is transmitted to all his subordinates as follows: "On account of a particular incident, I herewith prohibit the active participation of officials of the Administration, and in particular of the East, in execution of any kind. The implementation of executions, and in particular the liquidation of Jews is the task of the Security Police and the Security Service.

Presiding Judge: Who wrote this?

Attorney General: A person whose name we have not been able to decipher.

Presiding Judge: But what office is this?

Attorney General: This is the office of the Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, Rosenberg. He announces: My staff will not deal with executions. Executions, and especially the liquidation of Jews, are the task of the Security Police and the Security Service.

Presiding Judge: Does "HA" mean "Hauptamt" (Main Office)?

Attorney General: Yes, "Hauptamt."

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1414.

Attorney General: Our document No. 544 is an internal office memorandum about an arrangement between the German Foreign Ministry and the Head of the Security Police and the Security Service, dated July 1942, on the transmission of official mail from the Police Attaches abroad to Germany. It says that ordinary official mail should be sent in accordance with a certain routine and then it prescribes how so-called illegal mail (illegaler Schriftverkehr) shall be handled.

In paragraph 2 the meaning of "illegaler Schriftverkehr" is explained: Mail of illegal documents includes instructions from the Reichsfuehrer-SS and from the Head of the Security Police and the Security Service. These are to be transmitted in closed, green envelopes. On page 3 it states that most such mail has so far been sent by Mr. Moyzisch from Ankara on matters connected with "Operation Cicero."

Other green letters have come from Madrid, Lisbon, Stockholm and Lausanne. And then the author of the memorandum, Steengracht, who succeeded Weizsaecker as State Secretary, explains his guidelines regarding the transmission of SS and Security Police letters, which in this official memorandum are called "illegal documents."

Presiding Judge: That is to say, illegal documents as far as the Foreign Ministry is concerned, which can be disowned in case of need?

Attorney General: Yes.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, this is the privileged position of Bureau VII, the foreign intelligence service of the SS. You will remember Schellenberg and our witness Hoettl, who collaborated with the Security Service and who had a good opportunity here to get his mail through.

Presiding Judge: Are you saying, Sir, that this is signed by Steengracht?

Attorney General: By Steengracht, who replaced Weizsaecker in 1943.

Presiding Judge: No, he was one of his subordinates.

Attorney General: I think that he later became State Secretary.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1415.

Attorney General: Our document No. 1560 is a communication from Himmler, a few days after the Wannsee Conference, to Gluecks, the Superintendent of concentration camps. The document is dated 25 January 1942. He informs Gluecks that, as Russian prisoners of war cannot be expected in the near future, he will send 100,000 Jews and 50,000 Jewesses from the Reich to the concentration camps. SS-Gruppenfuehrer Pohl will provide him with detailed information.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1416.

Attorney General: Document No. 1175. This is an order from the SS Economic-Administrative Head Office concerning the management of Jewish property, or what remained of it on the date of this order - 4 July 1944. In paragraph 1 it is said that all Jewish property in the area of the Reich, the areas of occupation, the Generalgouvernement, Bohemia and Moravia must be handed over; for each area the address for delivering the rights to Jewish property is given.

Paragraph 3 deals with property and rights of deceased persons in assembly camps (Sammellager) of the Security Service which cannot be delivered to the addresses given for reasons of secrecy; these must be handed over to the Head Office for Reich Security.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1417.

Judge Raveh: With regard to the previous document: it seems that there is no mention of extermination there.

Attorney General: No, it mentions concentration camps.

Judge Raveh: Because important economic tasks are mentioned here.

Attorney General: Yes, this fits the Wannsee Conference exactly. After all, we remember what was said there, that Jews would be supplied in large columns for work in the East. We can see how the implementation begins five days later.

And the last document, our No. 115. It is an order by the Security Police and the Security Service in the Generalgouvernement, of 20 July 1944, that all prisons are to be emptied with all possible speed and that the prisoners are to be transferred to concentration camps as far as possible. If transfer is not possible, the prisoners must be killed on the spot in order to prevent their being liberated. The bodies must be destroyed, if possible, for example by burning or blowing up. On page 2 it says: Prisoners or Jews must not be liberated by the enemy under any circumstances, whether by the Red Army or by fighters of the resistance movement (Widerstandsbewegung); they must not be liberated or fall alive into the hands of the liberation forces.

This completes the case for the Prosecution.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1418.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hausner.

We shall now have an intermission of twenty minutes.


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