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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-013-03


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-013-03
Last-Modified: 1999/05/30


Judge Halevi:  Perhaps, Professor Baron, you would be able
to tell us something about what was called "The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion" in connection with your address.

Witness Baron: "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in
actual fact had been drawn up already before the First World
War. They were compiled from several sources, such as
Goedsche and others, and Father Nilus in Russia. They were
essentially part of an anti-Semitic movement in Russia and
perhaps it is worthwhile recalling in this context that the
Russian Czar expended monies, his own monies, his private
funds, in order to pay for anti-Semitic propaganda at the
beginning of this century. This became known to us from the
archives of the year 1917. The tendency was to prove that
the Jews were plotting to conquer the whole world and that
they had a mysterious, clandestine organization which met
from time to time in preparation for this conquest of the
world. But only after the First World War, was the book
translated  into most languages, and distributed amongst all
peoples as an instrument to destroy the Jewish people. This
was one of the more outstanding examples of the use of the
total lie, a lie that had no basis whatsoever, in order to
bring about the triumph of anti-Semitism. In this particular
case it was one of the students at Columbia University -
Curtiss - who wrote a book which I believe to be the most
enlightening about the emergence of that legend, that myth.
In particular that book, entitled The Protocols  was used in
Germany with special intensity, they published it in several
editions, Alfred Rosenberg himself wrote a kind of
commentary on the basis of this book.

Judge Halevi:  In view of the fact that the Nazis made use
of it, they published the so-called `Protocols' as if they
actually existed, I merely wanted to hear from you: do all
serious historians, not only Jews who perhaps will be
regarded as being affected by it, but also other historians
agree that this was a forgery and there had been no such
thing?

Witness Baron: It seems to me that there is no historian at
the present time who will deny that the book was a forgery.
Curtiss himself is not a Jew and he wrote this treatise
under the aegis of the greatest historians in America of his
generation. This was about twenty years ago; Carlton Hayes,
for example, Havens and others, who in a congress of
historians arrived at the final and definite conclusion that
there was no basis at all, or the smallest grain of truth in
all those forgeries.

Judge Halevi:  Do you know that Hitler in Mein Kampf
mentions this as an important doctrine; he says that the
fact that the Jews deny it confirms the truth of the matter?

Witness Baron: This could be said about many things.

Judge Halevi:  Many of the Nazi generation began to believe
this. Accordingly, it had a practical effect.

Witness Baron: It had a practical effect throughout the
world. In the United States, a by no means unimportant
person, Henry Ford, himself publicized  this book and
circulated it in The Dearborn Independent in Detroit. But
when he was pressed on this point, he afterwards
acknowledged and was not ashamed to admit in Court that he
had come to realize that he had erred, that this was a
current forgery, and that one should not rely on it at all.
Even in Germany there were many voices proving that this was
a forgery, but whoever did not want to  - did not hear this.

Judge Y. Raveh  I have a demographic question, Professor
Baron. You said that today the population of the Jewish
people is estimated to be twelve million. Is it possible to
tell us roughly how this is divided in the various parts of
the world - Europe, America and Asia?

Witness Baron: The two greatest Powers in this connection
are the United States, where we believe there are about five
and a half million Jews, and Soviet Russia, which has about
two and a half million Jews, although the 1959 census
disclosed only two and a quarter or slightly more who
reported themselves to be members of  Jewish nationality.
There they do not ask about religion but about nationality.
We are almost positive that there were one hundred thousand
or more Jews who did not publicly admit that they belonged
to the Jewish nationality, although they were Jews in some
sense, in religion or in some other way. Together with
Israel with its two million Jews, we already have ten
million. The remaining two million are dispersed. The
largest communities are in England, Canada, Argentina, and
some in South Africa. There are also many Jews in North
Africa. Of course, some Jews remained in Western Europe.

Judge Y. Raveh  A matter of special interest is: In the
whole of Western Europe - Europe apart from Russia - what
is, more or less, the Jewish population?

Witness Baron: In France there is the largest number. Apart
from France the numbers are small. Even in Poland there are
today no more than 40,000 Jews. In Rumania and Hungary there
are somewhat more, since more Jews were saved, owing to the
fact that these countries were Allies of the Nazis. But even
there, to talk of half a million would be an exaggeration.
Altogether in Europe, apart from England and Soviet Russia,
the number of Jews comes to one million.

Q. You said that you estimated that, had it not been for the
Holocaust, the Jewish population in the world would have
reached approximately 19,000,000-20,000,000. Now a very
difficult question, possibly arises - I do not know to what
extent it is possible to answer it. The question is:
Supposing that there had been no Holocaust and the Jewish
population in the world had reached 20,000,000, how would
they have been distributed according to countries?

A. If we accept the fact that in Europe, in 1939, there were
almost ten million Jews, and if they had increased on the
average as they increased previously, their number would
have reached almost twelve million.

Q. That is to say, all the countries of Europe together?
Does this include Russia this time?

A. This time it includes Russia and also England. However,
there was emigration. There was emigration before the First
World War, and it continued to a lesser  extent between the
Wars. And had the borders been open, whether in the United
States, in South America or particularly in Palestine, then
a large section of this additional two million would
certainly have emigrated to those countries. Perhaps the
number in Europe would then not have been so large, for some
would have gone to other places, but, in that case, the
numbers in other countries would have been larger. Instead
of receiving, for example, a quarter of a million
immigrants, the United States would have been able to absorb
a million. Palestine which received only a certain part from
Europe and also a large number from Moslem countries, would
have been able, without any doubt, to absorb a much greater
share of European Jewry. Perhaps, instead of two million
Jews, there would now have already been two and a half
million or somewhat more. But it is difficult to imagine
today what would have been the distribution, since the
question depends on several factors. The main factor is
always the economic one. There were also political elements,
cultural and so on. Generally speaking I would say that if
it is possible to guess at all, then, out of twenty million
Jews there would evidently have been eleven million living
in Europe. Today the majority, albeit a small majority,
would still be living in Europe, but not perhaps in three
years time, and the minority would have been living in all
the other countries of the world.

Judge Raveh:   Thank you very much.

Presiding Judge: Thank you very much, Professor Baron.

Who is the next witness?

Attorney General: I now wish to submit a number of personal
documents relating to the Accused. A few of them have
already been submitted to the Court together with the
statement, and I shall merely refer to them now and ask the
Court to give them a new number as an exhibit.

Presiding Judge: Are these the documents that were shown to
the Accused?

Attorney General: They were shown to the Accused at the time
of the interrogation.

04Presiding Judge: We shall not mark them twice.

Attorney General: As the Court wishes. But I draw your
attention to this - I submit document No. 292.

Presiding Judge: Is this our number or that of Bureau 06?

Attorney General: This is the Court's number - our number
26.

Presiding Judge: What is your purpose in mentioning these
documents anew?

Attorney General: With the Court's permission, I now desire
at this stage to submit what we call the "personal file" - a
number of documents referring to the Accused in his
Department in the SS, his rise in rank, the decorations he
received, the resume of his life as signed by him, before we
proceed to the next stage of the evidence.

Presiding Judge: But in connection with the documents that
have already been submitted, I think that you will be able
to make some reference to this file. It is not the practice
to submit the same document twice, even when it appears in a
different context.

Attorney General: Your Honours, when we attached a document
to the statement, this did not as yet verify it. We now want
to show that the document is genuine and proves the truth of
its contents, since sometimes the reaction of the Accused to
the documents presented to him was: "I do not recognize this
document." This also depends on his reaction to the
document, whether the document is admissible or whom it
helps, and I do not want to rely on the fact that every
document has been shown to him. I now want to submit those
documents.

Presiding Judge: Now I understand this more clearly.

Judge Halevi:  In this connection I should like to point
out: there are 317 exhibits. The Court has not yet managed
to get to study every one of them. We do not know them. For
us this is a large complex. We are only aware that they are
documents presented to the Accused at the time of his
interrogation. This does not mean to say that their contents
are correct.

Attorney General:  Exactly.

Judge Halevi:  But this does not only concern the personal
file. It is possible that they contain much material which
is not an exhibit or a document in the full sense of the
term.

Attorney General: Each one of these documents will be
resubmitted when the time comes, and will be proven again,
and we shall ask you to admit them as evidence.

Presiding Judge: If that is the case, what do you presently
have before you?

Attorney General: Document No. 26, relating to the statement
of the Accused, No. 292 and containing a number of pages,
the contents of which are as follows: One is dated  22
December 1933, his appointment to SS-Scharfuehrer,
commencing 24 December 1933, a document dated  23 October
1937, his appointment to SS-Hauptscharfuehrer, the
appointment of Adolf Eichmann from August 1938 - I believe
from  August 26 - to Untersturmfuehrer, from 2 February 1939
to Obersturmfuehrer, from 1 August 1940 to
Hauptsturmfuehrer. The next document recommended a
promotion, and as from 9 November 1941, to Obersturm-
bannfuehrer. There is also here the appointment in the
Reserves of the Waffen SS dated 13 January 1944.
Notifications of these to the personnel department in the SS
are contained in document No. 16 which I hereby wish to
submit.

Presiding Judge: Please continue. If you find it necessary
to describe them in detail, please do so, and thereafter we
shall mark the whole file as one exhibit.

Dr. Servatius:   May I suggest that the Attorney General
indicate from time to time whether the documents have
already been submitted, for then they will have been signed
by the Accused?

Attorney General: I would point out that the documents which
I have just now quoted were mentioned in the statement on
pages 3390-3394. The next document was marked by the Court
as No. 301, our number 1182, its date is 6.2.1936, from
Department II 112, the one about which Captain Less spoke
this morning - the appointment of Scharfuehrer Eichmann to
the Department for the Orthodox. It is mentioned on page
3450-3451 of the statement.

Now there is a document which was not attached to the
statement, our number 28, "Personal-Bericht" the personal
report on Adolf Eichmann.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, again in order to simplify
this matter, perhaps we shall already at this stage, give a
number to the whole of this file - that will be T/55 - and
to each batch separately. This first batch will be -
T/55(1), the second - T/55(2) and so on.

Attorney General: Does the Court wish us to mark it now or
should Mr. Bodenheimer mark it?

Presiding Judge: You can help us with this.

Clerk of the Court  No. 28 has already been submitted.

Presiding Judge: This is not important - we shall mark it
T/55(1), T/55(2). And perhaps you would add in brackets to
that same document that was shown to the Accused the number
given to it, if it is known to you.  Meanwhile we have
reached T/55(2).

Attorney General: Our number is 28, and Mr. Bodenheimer has
informed us that it has been presented to the Accused, this
is the "Personal-Bericht" of Adolf Eichmann. "From the point
of view of race, Eichmann is Dinaric-Nordic. As a member of
the party he is a convinced member of the NSDAP. From the
personal point of view he is a man without blemish. From the
point of view of service he is a good man and from the point
of view of his achievements, likewise we can say nothing but
good about him. General picture - very good. A very active
man, in particular an expert on matters of administration,
in matters of organization and techniques, an expert in his
field..."

Presiding Judge: What is "techniques"?

Judge Raveh:   "An expert of administration and
organization, and especially an expert in this field." This
is signed by Dieter Wisliceny, the person who was at that
time his superior and afterwards served under him.

Presiding Judge: This will then be T/55(3).

I would ask Mr. Bodenheimer afterwards to count the number
of pages in each supplementary document and to indicate that
on the document itself.

Attorney General: In the "Personal-Bericht" of 30 January
1939 we read the same account with the addition of the
words: "Meanwhile Eichmann had to be at the head of the
Central Office of the Reich for Jewish Emigration, and he
conducts all the affairs of the emigration of the Jews."
Amongst the documents is one from Prague of 31 March  1942,
in which Eichmann gives notice of the birth of his third
son, Dieter, and also a notice signed by someone unknown to
us, but it is part of the document, and therefore, I mention
it. The Accused denies its accuracy, in stating that the
Accused's wife had left the Church.

Presiding Judge: If so, the sub-number is 3.

Attorney General: Our next document has the Court number
296; ours is 1167. It refers to the establishment of Branch
II 112 for the budget year 1938. Here we notice that
Department II 112, which includes Zionists, is now entrusted
to SS Untersturmfuehrer Eichmann. The document was submitted
to the Accused, and his response is found on pages 3412 to
3420 of the statement.

Presiding Judge: This will be sub-number 4.

Attorney General: The following number is our number 22, and
it contains an account of the service of the Accused,
(Dienstlaufbahn).

Judge Raveh:   Mr. Hausner, are you going to submit this in
three copies? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to hand us two
copies at this stage, so that we may be able meanwhile to
follow it and mark it.

Attorney General: My colleague is already arranging this.

...Beginning from 1932, his entry into the SS and until
1944.

Presiding Judge: Sub-number 5, T/55(5).

Attorney General: The next document which was contained in
the Accused's personal file and which we received from the
Documentation Centre, Berlin, refers to one of his
subordinates, Dr. Rajakowitsch. It was handed to the Accused
on pages 2592-2595 and it is signed by the Accused. Inter
alia, the Accused talks of the service of this subordinate
over a period of four weeks in Galicia.

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