The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 96
(Part 3 of 4)


Q. Perhaps you could show me where this is - I cannot see it. Perhaps you can find it.

A. If it is not here, then it must be somewhere else. In my statement at the time I definitely said this.

Q. Well, it is difficult to deny facts. Have you found it?

A. It is not here, but I definitely said it, just as I have repeated it here.

Q. Very well, we shall look for it. But what are the facts? You wrote to Richter, Suhr wrote to Richter. Richter replied to you directly, you gave instructions which were carried out?

A. I have never disputed this.

Q. There you are. Yesterday you agreed that Dannecker was someone who chose his words carefully. You said, "He was a fairly meticulous man." Is that true?

A. I did not say that he chose his words carefully; he was a meticulous, bureaucratic worker.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, this is not on page 673.

Attorney General: Thank you, Your Honour. We shall find it.

Presiding Judge: Very well. Let us continue in the meanwhile; we shall find it later.

Attorney General: Very well, we shall continue. Exhibit T/400, document No. 316. This is a minute by Dannecker, dated 22 February 1942, in which he writes that, as a result of various decrees from the High Command of the Armed Forces, the High Command of the Army and the Military Commander in France, the Paris office has been given practical responsibility for combatting inimical tendencies originating in Jewish circles. He also says that in European terms the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, in accordance with the decree of the Reich Marshal, dated 31 July 1941, is for all practical purposes the "Jewish Affairs Commissioner for Europe." Is what Dannecker wrote correct?

Accused: I do not believe that someone like Dannecker was in a position to have a complete picture of these facts.

Q. I am asking if this is correct.

A. No; factually as well, to my mind and according to my feeling, this is not correct.

Q. Not correct at all?

A. According to my feeling, not correct.

Q. According to your feeling?

A. Yes, and I will explain why, because if this were so, the Chief of the Security Police would have been the sole person to give orders to all the other offices, while it can be seen clearly that all the central bodies interfered and worked their way in.

Q. And this is the meticulous Dannecker?

A. His opinion has nothing to do with whether or not he carried out bureaucratic work meticulously. It is simply not correct in factual terms.

Q. Again something incorrect in a document, is it not? These are the documents on which you are relying, about which you keep saying that that follows from the documents. That follows from the documents...

A. Well, all the time only those documents are selected which the Prosecution considers to be important and correct, but the other documents then indicate that what it says somewhere is not true, because it can be seen how the Foreign Ministry worked, it can be seen how the Ministry of the Interior worked, this can be seen here, there and everywhere. And therefore, because I know this, I have to say that this statement by Dannecker is factually not correct. I cannot say anything else about this.

Q. Look how Dannecker concludes this document: "The acknowledged leadership expressed itself in the holding of the consultation at this office." So that was the acknowledged leadership for the solution of the Jewish Question in Europe - your leadership.

A. I could even go a step further in the statement made here by Dannecker. I could say that, after all, Heydrich did receive full powers from Goering, but despite these full powers, which he had received from Goering, it is nevertheless strange that over all these years matters were constantly directed by the central authorities mentioned. So there had to be some mistake there or...I cannot imagine that what I read could not be right.

Q. Perhaps you would agree to acknowledge as correct what was admitted on this subject as evidence from your mouth in the Sassen Document?

Presiding Judge: What would that be?

Attorney General: This appears in those pages which were accepted with the agreement of Counsel for the Defence. You speak of men who worked abroad, "whom I had out there": "who also had to observe these provisions, so I had the central authority..." You were the central authority? Look at it.

Accused: Exactly the same as I said before about all these things, documents, applies here, too. Who can guarantee to me that it is true that, for example, the word which is being emphasized was said by me...

Q. If you wish to carry on making a laughing-stock of yourself, you are free to do so.

A. No, I do not in any way want to make a laughing-stock of myself...

Q. But you have been doing this for two weeks.

A. I said that I do not know, and I made a formal request for the tapes to be obtained, but I cannot admit to something which I myself do not know, whether I said this or not. If I knew, I would say so.

Presiding Judge: Is this from the part agreed on with the Defence?

Attorney General: Yes. The men who dealt with Jewish affairs abroad, in the occupied territories, were also designated IVB4, were they not?

Accused: Not all of them, but that is of no importance. In France, I believe this office under the Senior Commander of the Security Police and the Security Service was called IVJ; in Holland IVB4, in Italy I read that it was called IV4B.

Q. In the Generalgouvernement, there too it was IVB4?

A. I did not deal with the Generalgouvernement.

Q. No, but what was the Section called - not IVB4?

A. I do not even know that - that can be checked. In fact, there are no documents about this here. I know that in Holland and France and Italy there were different designations, I know that from the documents here, too. But I do not mean that...the difference is actually of no importance; the principle is the same.

Q. And as a staff officer in the Head Office of the Gestapo, you co-ordinated the activities of Sections IVB4 or the Jewish Affairs Sections, whatever their name was in the occupied countries? That is true, is it not?

A. No, not co-ordinated, I would not say that; rather, I provided these divisions with the instructions with which I had to provide them.

Q. And your duties, or one of your duties was to eliminate the difficulties they came up against, and to help them in their work, was it not?

A. If these difficulties involved Security Police matters, yes. If they fell under the sphere of - let us say under the jurisdiction of - the Foreign Ministry, no.

Q. Look at what you said about this, for example, on pages 199 to 203, on page 387, and on other pages which I shall show you shortly. You did in fact say that your duties involved eliminating difficulties. Pages 199 to 203. Have you found the passage?

A. Yes, I have it. I have skimmed through it, but I must say that what it says here is basically correct, and it also coincides with the documents.

Q. You repeated all of this in a concise, summary fashion at the bottom of page 666:

"Because as long as the matter had not been initialled as receiving the full approval of all the relevant authorities, as I have already pointed out several times, nothing was allowed to happen. Because otherwise there would have been difficulties. And I was responsible - that was, after all, also my assignment, to ensure that there were no difficulties."
A. Yes, I had those orders. That can also be seen from the documents.

Q. So one of your duties was to ensure that the overall measures were implemented smoothly.

A. To ensure that any difficulties did not in fact occur - that is also shown by the documents. If my responsibility was exceeded, my Department Chief Mueller intervened personally, as the documents also show.

Q. I wanted to know what was the scope of your activities. When, for example, Himmler writes in T/252, document No. 1537, "I have been in touch from here with the offices involved, and it would appear that all the measures are being implemented smoothly," does that mean that you were this office contacted, in order to ensure implementation of these matters?

A. Who is supposed to have said that, Himmler?

Q. Yes.

A. No, then I was definitely not the office in question, because Himmler never talked to me about such matters.

Q. Himmler says that he has been in touch with the appropriate offices; that does not mean that he was in direct contact with you.

A. This document, to which your comments apply, Mr. Attorney General, is a letter by General Wolff of Himmler's personal staff to the State Secretary at the Reich Transport Ministry, Ganzenmueller, in order to handle timetable matters concerning timetables in the Generalgouvernement. Section IVB4 of the Head Office for Reich Security never handled any such matter - they were handled by the Generalgouvernement's own authorities, and in this document it can be seen that it was Wolff - doubtless on Himmler's orders - who directly contacted the State Secretary of the Reich Transport Ministry. IVB4 is not meant by these "offices involved," nor is the whole of the Head Office for Reich Security meant. I can even go as far as this about that.

Perhaps I could further emphasize the veracity of what I am saying by referring to the fact that, in accordance with a decree, which is also available here, the State Secretary for Security and Higher SS and Police Leader, Krueger, was appointed in a Letter of Commission to deal with these matters.

Presiding Judge: Are you going to get to the Generalgouvernement?

Attorney General: Yes, certainly. I just wanted to know whether this smooth implementation applied to him. He said "no.. We shall return to this chapter later, at the appropriate time.

I understand that the men who worked on Jewish affairs abroad, such as Wisliceny, Dannecker, Richter and Guenther were summoned to your office from time to time?

Accused: Yes, that is correct.

Q. And such meetings took place, as far as we know, on 4 March 1942, 6 March 1942, 11 June 1942 and 28 August 1942.

A. I do not know, but I am sure that is correct.

Q. Can you tell me who took part in these conferences?

A. I cannot say offhand, but there are, for example...I do not know of which, but there are even the records of some of these conferences among the documents.

Q. Very well. Try to remember. Just forget these documents for a moment.

A. Dannecker certainly, Ahnert, I read, Zoepf was definitely also present at consultations - I cannot in fact remember whether he was there at these...on the dates given - Wisliceny, because there is a document in which the embassy requests permission for the Foreign Ministry to authorize Wisliceny to attend a meeting to which he was invited or summoned; Richter was probably in Berlin.

Q. Roethke, Abromeit.

A. Roethke, certainly, although I do not have any recollection of him personally, but it could easily...why...I mean I can neither deny nor confirm this, but it is probable that he also came to Berlin. I cannot remember.

As for Abromeit, I cannot say, as Abromeit was often in Berlin, particularly when he had to visit Department III on something to do with the newly annexed Eastern Territories. There was a Central Migration Office, and here it was controlled by Department III. And when he was making these calls and obeying his summons, he also came repeatedly to my Section, but I cannot say anything about when that was.

Q. You presided at these consultations?

A. If I was there, I presided. Otherwise one of the other officials-in-charge presided over them. For these consultations, orders for which were given by the Department Chief, an agenda had to be drawn up, and this agenda was worked through during the consultation.

Q. Who from the Head Office took part apart from you?

A. I have just now read about this only from the documents submitted - the officials-in-charge, I have already said so - all sorts of officials-in-charge were there, and their names appear...

Q. Who, who?

A. ...and they are referred to, such as Woehrn, Hunsche or Suhr... I do not remember, but in any case their names appear, Guenther's name appears, my name appears. I think that is...

Q. You do not know that from what you remember, only from what it says in the documents?

A. Not at the moment, but I must say - and this can be ascertained any time - it is not a question of any intention on my part at the moment...this need only to be ascertained, I myself have read the document. It occurs to me just now...Novak, too.

Q. Tell me what was discussed at these consultations?

A. Over a certain period of time, all sorts of problems accumulated with Mueller which he got from the Commanders of the Security Police and the Security Service directly. From the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service or, during this period when there was no Chief, from Himmler, deportation orders were received. These matters then went through Mueller and came to me, and I had instructions from Mueller to discuss such and such a matter, in accordance with his orders. These matters were then talked over at these discussions.

Q. What was their subject matter?

Presiding Judge: Do you want to know the subjects?

Attorney General: The subjects which were discussed.

Presiding Judge: He has already referred to deportation orders.

Attorney General: Was there a discussion on introducing the Jewish Badge?

Accused: That is also possible, although I cannot remember, but I will not deny it. Timetable matters were discussed, I remember.


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