Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-077-02
Last-Modified: 1999/06/08

Dr. Servatius:  Yes, this may be so.  I also see now that it
is not clear, and that this does not necessarily have to
read Rademacher.  But I consider this to be unimportant,
because the following document confirms this matter.  It
states there, on top, "for DIII."  This must be the Foreign
Ministry Department Deutschland III.  The top part of the
letter is difficult to read.  A report about removal or
deportation, I can...

It probably is this matter, because this transpires from the
text.  That the previous letter probably also belongs to the
files of the Foreign Ministry appears likely from the seal
located at the bottom.  One bears the number K 204/454 and
the other, K 204/456.  This letter is dated Karlsruhe in
Baden, 30 October 1940, and states in the introduction: "At
the request of the Gauleiter (District Leader) and
Reichsstatthalter (Reich Plenipotentiary) Josef Buerckel, at
present at Metz, and the Gauleiter Wagner, at present at
Strassburg, during the night - (I am skipping a section
here) - all Jews of Baden and the Saar-Palatinate were
arrested in their homes and immediately deported."  Whereas
previously reference was made to a request by the District
Leader, the last paragraph reads: "The shipping off of the
Jews was carried out in such a way that all persons of
Jewish race, insofar as they were capable of being
transported, had to be deported, regardless of age or sex."
Then, single exceptions are listed.

Witness, the first letter names Guenther.  What was your
knowledge of and participation in this affair?

Accused:    I was not involved in this operation, only in
the second and last phase, that is to say, purely in the
matter of transportation.  This is a typical example of how
evacuations could come about altogether.  Even in a case
like this, even the Chief of the Security Police and the SD
had to obey orders, since the Gauleiter and
Reichsstatthalter - and here I would like to make reference
again to the holder of sovereign power - gave instructions,
on the basis of a consent by Hitler, to the State Police
office in his sphere of jurisdiction, and hence the
expression "order of the Gauleiter" - and this should have
been, to be perfectly correct, the same as in the first line
above: "of the Gauleiter and the Reichsstatthalter," or the
particular state function should also have been mentioned.
Then this Gauleiter could give this order to the office of
the State Police, an order which, in this case, was also
covered by Hitler himself.  I myself received orders to see
to it that these transports should be dispatched into the
unoccupied area, and if that should not be possible, to
bring them back into a concentration camp, which would then
be named.  I personally accompanied this transport as far as
Chalon-sur- Saone, and there, when I ran into difficulties,
I negotiated with the French chief of the railway station,
which was the last station in occupied territory, and we
agreed to declare these transports as German army
transports, so that they could cross the demarcation line,
and the signals in the occupied territory could be set
accordingly.  I had to give this declaration because,
otherwise, I would have had to lead these Jews back, and
would have had to be given an instruction where they were to
sent to, into which concentration camp.

Dr. Servatius:  The next exhibit is T/673, document No. 892.
It is a letter from Heydrich to the Foreign Ministry, sent
to Luther, on 29 October 1940.  This is the announcement
that these transports to the south of France have been
carried out.  The Prosecution has pointed out that this
document was drafted by the Accused.

Witness, would you, first of all, comment on the file number
IVD4?

Accused:    Yes, Sir.  I should really say here almost
exactly what I said as regards Prosecution document No. 464,
and I think...

Dr. Servatius:  It strikes one here that the office number
is written by hand.  Does this point to the origin of this
document?

Accused:    Too much time has elapsed by now for me to say
that with certainty.  However, as a rule, it was typed, but
I would not want to express a definite opinion here whether
this communication was maybe, as also frequently happened,
on the part of the typist of the Office Chief or the Chief
of the Security Police and the Security Service directly
without... That is also a way which I forgot to mention in
connection with the preceding document, there were instances
where material was dictated to the secretary of the Office
Chief, and the Chief of the Security Police, and of the
Security Service, and then was given the reference number
IVD4, according to the office work plan; in such a case the
book number was obtained from the registry after the
dictation, and after the document was drawn up, and it was
entered by hand.  It is, therefore, very difficult to say of
every document if it originated in that particular manner,
but I should like to add that this is an additional, fourth,
way that I forgot to mention.

Dr. Servatius:  I now come to document No. 1488, which is
still without a T number.

Presiding Judge: It will be marked N/11.

Dr. Servatius:  It is a communication of 11 November 1940,
signed by Abromeit, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer, to the District
Office at Posen, concerning placing of persons being
resettled.  It says there: "The Resettlement Centre Danzig
is taking over the Poles to be evacuated.  In a discussion
at the [office of] the Reich Commissioner for the
Strengthening of German Folkdom in Berlin on 1 November
1940, SS Sturmbannfuehrer Eichmann also declared himself in
agreement with this arrangement."

Witness, would you explain the contents of this
communication?

Accused:    I apologize for first wishing to make a small
correction, Dr. Servatius.  I think that my agreement does
not refer to the setting up of a resettlement office in
Danzig.  Instead, what this agreement refers to is that the
430 Weichsel-German peasant families...to evacuate, for
settlement of the 430 Weichsel-German peasant families...
which this Resettlement Central Office in Danzig undertakes
to evacuate in Poland.  The Head Office for Reich Security
had, in any case, in accordance with a directive, approved
this establishment of the Resettlement Central Office in
Danzig.  I, therefore, no longer had to give my permission,
as I said.  What this is about here, is that these Poles who
are to be evacuated be taken over by this office, the
Resettlement Central Office in Danzig, which had been
authorized by the directive of the Head Office for Reich
Security, and to that...

Dr. Servatius:  I have still not understood why your
agreement is mentioned there.  Why should you agree?

Accused:    Viewed from a practical standpoint, I obviously
preferred that an evacuation ordered by the Higher SS and
Police Leader be carried out by a department, rather than
that it be chaotically carried out by individual, local
agencies.  And today, I can only explain it to myself that
my agreement was at all requested at this discussion at the
Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom
in Berlin because this district, where these Poles were to
be evacuated for the settlement of the Weichsel-German
peasant families, might actually have been outside the area
of competence of the Danzig Resettlement Central Office, or,
as regards transport technicalities, was not as favourable
as the ambit of this Resettlement Central Office otherwise
was. And, for that reason, a separate agreement was needed
on the part of the Central Authority, that in this case the
Resettlement Central Office exceeds its sphere of
responsibility.

Presiding Judge: I did not understand this reply.  The
question was, why was the consent of the Accused necessary?
And I add: On the basis of what authorization would he have
had to give his consent?  What is the answer to that?

Dr. Servatius:  Your Honour, it is not a question of
consent, but of agreement; that is to say, a matter of the
establishment of contact.

Presiding Judge: That is how I translated it into Hebrew.
It is a matter of agreement; well then, what is the answer
to it?  That was your question, Dr. Servatius, was it not?
So what is the answer to it, why was the agreement of the
Accused necessary?

Accused:    Your Honour, the Litzmannstadt (Lodz)
Resettlement Central Office, for example, was responsible
for the Litzmannstadt administrative district.  The Danzig
Resettlement Central Office, with which we are concerned
here, was responsible for the relevant political Danzig
area.  Now I assume - of course it is so long ago that I can
no longer say so exactly, but it must have had its reason -
I assume that the area from which these Poles were to be
evacuated, may have been outside the area of responsibility
of the Resettlement Central Office.  Now the local office
enquired, that is to say, the Reich Commissioner for the
Strengthening of German Folkdom, which locally took direct
measures for evacuation and gave the local orders, as
emerges from documents already dealt with, that this office
enquired at the Head Office for Reich Security whether the
Danzig Resettlement Central Office could, in this instance,
undertake the evacuation, or whether it was to be carried
out also there directly by the heads of the local
administration,  in the matter of transportation as well.  I
would have received instructions from my Office Chief,
because I could not decide this myself, that in this
discussion of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening
of German Folkdom I was to adopt this position.

Presiding Judge: All right, thank you.  Please continue, Dr.
Servatius.

Judge Raveh:   Was the Office Chief present at the
discussion on 1 November 1940?

Accused:    Today, I am no longer able to say that with
absolute certainty.  There were a number of discussions at
which my Office Chief Mueller was present and asked me to
come along, and there were also a number of discussions
where I was ordered to go there and, having received clear
marching orders, as it were, to adopt this or that position.

Judge Raveh:   And if Mueller was present, would his
agreement have been mentioned, or your agreement?

Accused:    In this case, it would on no account have been a
matter of my personal agreement, but of the agreement of the
Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, to
whom this Resettlement Central Office was subordinate.

Judge Raveh:   Perhaps my question was not correctly
translated.  Let us assume that Mueller was present at the
discussion on 1 November 1940; would one then have written
in this letter that Mueller had given his agreement or that
you had given your agreement?

Accused:    In that event, it would have been correct to
write: Mueller has given his agreement, from which I deduct
that, on the occasion of this discussion, Mueller had
probably not been present, and I had to act solely on
Mueller's orders.

Judge Raveh:   Must it be presumed, then, that two
discussions took place - one in which you said that you
cannot decide and must ask Mueller, and the second
discussion, in which you announced Mueller's point of view?

Accused:    I do not think so, because these arrangements
for discussions and for the agenda were fixed in such a way
that, in the particular case, the relevant office of the
Reich Commissioner informed the Office Chief that, on such
and such a date, a discussion is to take place with this or
that subject on the agenda.  As a result, the Office Chief
had already decided on his position.  When I received the
order from him - and by that I mean clear marching orders -
I came there with the instructions already in my pocket to
adopt this or that viewpoint; in this case, it was to agree.
Since I gave it personally, I was, as was official usage
then, I was personally named. Had the reporter been a
bureaucratically-minded person, he would have had to write
that I was heard as a representative of Department IV of the
Chief of the Security Police and had agreed, according to
the instructions of my superior.  But that was too
complicated at that time, and the matter was then put in the
abbreviated form.  But that was the way.

Dr. Servatius:  I now come to exhibit T/174, document No.
172, the Madagascar Plan.  I do not wish to go into this
plan in detail, but just ask the witness a few questions.
Witness, you have already given some testimony about the
formation of this plan; on page 5, you will find an entry
which states: "But, in fact, this mandate ought to take the
internal form of a police state."

Accused:    Sorry, I haven't found it.

Dr. Servatius:  On page 5: "Constitutional and Territorial
Categorization."  In the second paragraph, the word police
state is underlined.

Accused:    Yes.  As to that, I have to say...

Dr. Servatius:  Just a moment.  Who drew up this plan, as it
appears here?

Accused:    Altogether, it may have been sixteen or eighteen
heads of administrative departments of the different central
authorities.

Dr. Servatius:  If I understand your earlier testimonies
correctly, you said that the basic idea had been yours.
Were these other authorities also included?

Accused:    Yes.

Dr. Servatius:  With whom do these regulations originate,
concerning the constitutional form, from page 5 onwards?

Accused:    That was a joint effort of the jurists, of
Department II of the Head Office for Reich Security, as well
as of the so-called Party Chancellery; at that time, I think
it was still called Chancellery of the Deputy Fuehrer.
Those had been the jurists of the Foreign Ministry.  In
short, this constitutional form was an activity that did not
interest me in the slightest and on which, also in practical
terms, I had nothing to say.  My sole endeavour was - and I
let myself be guided by it - to make some suggestion or
other that somewhere - as I again and again expressed myself
- land be placed under the feet of the Jews.

Presiding Judge: I ask for complete silence [in the
courtroom].

Dr. Servatius:  Is there any further part of this draft
which originates with you?

Accused:    Yes.  I can say with absolutely certainty, the
whole of part II - climate, population, the land, the
economy, transport - in any event, all the points which it
seemed important to me to discuss as a pre-condition to
whether such a territory could be considered at all for
receiving a sizable number of people.  At that time, I
myself travelled to Hamburg, to the Institute of Tropical
Hygiene, for advice.  I scoured all places where I could
hear details about Madagascar, and that was really the basis
that enabled me, after I had told my superior my ideas, who
then had the matter approved by higher authority, to put
forward a proposal here, on a broader basis, which could
definitely not have been relegated to the realm of Utopia.

Dr. Servatius:  I now come to exhibit T/672, document No.
1059.  It concerns a minute of the Foreign Ministry dated 3
March 1940 regarding the deprivation of Reich-German Jews in
the east of citizenship.  Those are Reich-German Jews who
had emigrated to Poland and, because of the events of the
War, in which a part of Poland came to be under Soviet
Russia, now wished to return.

On page 2 of the communication, it says: "It must,
therefore, remain a principle of the highest order that it
is undesirable, under any circumstances, to receive Jews
into the Reich.  In order to make resettlement more
difficult for the Jews, an attempt must first of all be made
to reduce the number of those entitled to resettlement by
means of deprivation of citizenship."  That is on the upper
part of page 2.  It then says: "The representative of the
Security Service, Eichmann, who was present, stated that he
has the gravest misgivings as regards the wholesale
deprivation of citizenship of Jews, because such a measure
was likely to influence those states which so far had taken
in Jewish immigrants and issued entry permit endorsements."

Witness, at this meeting, as the first paragraph on page 1
indicates, the Foreign Ministry, R.J. - which is probably
the Reich Ministry of Justice - is also represented.  What
caused you to take up this position, what was the motive?

Accused:    In principle, it is exactly the same as in the
document discussed earlier on, regarding the Danzig
Resettlement Central Office, insofar as the function, that
is the orders given, is concerned.  My immediate superior,
Office Chief Mueller, had been simultaneously managing
director of the Reich Central Office.  This Reich Central
Office had to handle emigration, for this was long before
emigration was prohibited.  And here he was obviously
greatly interested in bringing about the emigration of the
largest possible contingents; and since I was his
representative for the management of the Reich Central
Office at Danzig, let us say, his Section Head - for the
implementation of these emigration matters also in the Old
Reich, in accordance with orders, one had undoubtedly to
consider a wholesale deprivation of citizenship as a
tremendous setback in the progress of emigration.  For one
thing, the Jews could no longer emigrate.  Secondly, the
Reich, which had ordered emigration and wished to force its
pace, would likewise be at a disadvantage.  Hence, if such
wishes were being voiced here, it must have been made known
to my superior before the beginning of the discussion.  I
acted here according to instructions, taking up an opposing
position.  And one sees right away from the very next
documents, that these reservations were not listened to.
Emigration was prohibited, and other departments pursued the
mass deprivation of nationality with increasing force, a
fact which my superior as well as I, who was, after all,
concerned with the practical work of emigration, strongly
opposed.  But that proved useless, one just had to obey.

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