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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-078-04


Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-078-04
Last-Modified: 1999/06/08

Dr. Servatius:  I proceed to the next exhibit, T/395,
document No. 1179.  This is a letter from Eichmann to the
Foreign Ministry, Department II, dated 19 November 1941.  I
would quote from the last paragraph on page 1:

     "With the request to keep this highly confidential, I
     can also inform you in this context that the
     Reichsfuehrer-SS and the Chief of the German Police has
     meanwhile directed that all emigration of Jews should
     be prevented, except in very special individual cases,
     for example where there is a positive Reich interest,
     in which case the Head Office for Reich Security may
     authorize the emigration of individual Jews."  Signed,
     Eichmann.

Witness, you signed the document.  Were you able to issue
these individual permits in special cases?

Accused:    No, every such special individual case had to be
approved by the Chief of Department IV, Mueller, and he,
too, did not give his personal approval in most cases, but,
in turn, obtained approval from his superior.

Judge Halevi:  I have a question in respect of this
document.  My question concerns the words in the first
passage, "that, in view of the forthcoming Final Solution of
the European Jewish Question, emigration is to be
prohibited."  When you signed this letter, did you know what
was "die kommende Endloesung der europaeischen Judenfrage"?

Accused:    I did not know what it would be, but I could see
that something was being planned, on the basis of the
documents which were constantly being exchanged between the
Head of the Security Police and SD and the Foreign Ministry.
It was, I believe, at this time that the Madagascar Project
was gradually dropped, which, until then, had been
considered as a solution to the European Jewish Question;
but, as a result of the ties between Heydrich and
Ribbentrop, considerations were gaining weight which
indicated that other measures were being taken by the senior
echelons.  Then there was also talk internally - by this
time, the large areas in the East had been occupied by
German troops - many departments were now pushing for a
territorial final solution in these eastern areas rather
than Madagascar, and lastly, de facto, I personally heard of
this final solution in the East for the first time at the
Wannsee Conference.

With your permission, Your Honour, I should like to add
something to avoid lack of clarity.  Prior to this, I had to
comply with an order issued by the Chief of the Security
Police and the SD to make an official tour to the
Generalgouvernement, where I was to inspect certain matters
and report back to him.  However, according to the plan of
the Defence, I am to give a detailed explanation of this
later, but I just wished to make this point now, in order to
avoid any mistaken impression being created with regard to
my first statement.

Judge Halevi:  Thank you.

Dr. Servatius:  I turn now to exhibit T/308, document No.
42.  This is a draft of a letter by the official in charge,
District Councillor Wetzel of the Reich Ministry for
Eastern Occupied Territories, dated Berlin 29 October 1941,
to the Reich Commissioner for the Eastern Occupied
Territories (Ostland).

The letter concerns gas equipment for the Final Solution of
the Jewish Question.  There are four parts to the paper in
this exhibit, and they are best read with the order
inverted.  We will start then with the last one, which is a
handwritten draft; then there is a clean typed copy, then
there is a draft without a date, and then there is the first
letter, a draft dated 25 October 1941.  There is reference
to the fact that gassing equipment is to be procured, and
there is a chemist, Dr. Kallmeyer, who is dealing with this,
and then, at the end of the draft on the first page, it
says: "I would draw your attention to the fact that
Sturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, the official in charge of Jewish
questions in the Head Office for Reich Security, is in
agreement with this procedure."

Witness, do you wish to state your position on this
document?

Accused:    In the handwritten draft, at the end of the
document, neither my name nor that of Wetzel is given; it
does not appear.  In the clean-typed text after that, the
name Eichmann has been inserted wrongly.  It also appears in
the actual draft and appears again in the final version of
the draft.  I can only say that, apparently, the official in
charge was not aware at the time with whom he would really
have to deal, because the documents available here indicate
that, in these matters, there was exclusive responsibility
and competence, as far as the Head Office for Reich Security
was concerned, of Department II, Section IIB3.  What is also
worth mentioning is the fact that my name never comes up
again, and a study of the documents shows that I saw Wetzel
for the first time in 1942.  We did not meet until then,
either in consultations or, as far as I am aware, anywhere
else.  Finally, I should like to say that I never received a
letter of this nature, and I do not know whether these
drafts were ever actually dispatched.

Judge Raveh:   Perhaps there is a question about the
handwriting - there is something there - perhaps the Accused
can help us to decipher it...In the sixth line, there are
two words "dem Sacharbeiter" (to the Specialist Officer),
and after that, there is something - perhaps the Accused can
help us to decipher it?

Accused:    I can make out "Sacharbeiter" - then there is a
space, and after that it says - it might be:
"Sturmbannfuehrer" - I think in the abbreviated form - I am
not sure, it is obliterated on my copy.  And I would tend to
assume - I do not know if it is a justified assumption -
that the person who wrote this draft may well have consulted
the organizational plan.

Dr. Servatius:  There are now some exhibits which concern
individual instances, where petitions have been turned down
by Eichmann.  First of all, exhibit T/677, document No.
1061: a letter from Eichmann to the Foreign Ministry -
Ambassador Luther.  This refers to money to be sent to a
mother who has been transferred to the unoccupied zone of
France. Eichmann refuses to authorize this transfer of
money.

Witness, do you wish to state your position on this?

Accused:    Yes.  Decisions of this nature were taken in
principle and consistently by the Department Chief, and not
by the Specialist Officer.  I was here using my right of
referral back, and the right to be given instructions.  In
such cases, I asked for my superior's instructions, and then
it was up to me to answer in accordance with such
instructions.  Twice a week, on an average, I was received
by my Department Chief, in order to clear up cases of this
type, and to get the requisite directions.

Dr. Servatius:  The next document is exhibit T/679, document
No. 66.  This concerns a rejection of the possibility of
German Jews leaving Yugoslavia.  This is refused; signed,
Eichmann.

Do you wish to state your position on this also?  It is a
letter to the Foreign Ministry.

Accused:    I had to get instructions from my Department
Chief in this case as well, as he, as Head of the Reich
Central Office for Emigration, was responsible also for such
matters.  This is a letter dated 12 March 1941, when the
Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police had not yet
issued the ban on emigration.  However, as Head of the Reich
Central Office, Mueller was concerned that, if approval were
given for emigration from the countries under German
influence, emigration from the area of the Reich would be
affected.

Dr. Servatius:  The next document is exhibit T/212, document
No. 1177.  Another letter to the Foreign Ministry, dated 9
May 1941.  Here, permission for transfer of money to those
deported to the Generalgouvernement is refused.

Do you wish to state your position on this?

Accused:    In principle, I would like to make the same
point here as on the other documents.  This was turned down
by my chiefs, and I then had to word a letter stating this
refusal, giving the reasons for the refusal, and dispatch
it.

Dr. Servatius:  There are other documents which I shall pass
over now, as they all have similar contents.  What does
strike me, however, is that all these letters are to the
Foreign Ministry.

Were these queries which had been received through the
Foreign Ministry?  And did the Foreign Ministry thus
indicate that it would support such measures?

Accused:    This was just routine transmission by the
Foreign Ministry of interventions it received as a result of
approaches from the various foreign missions to the internal
authorities for decision, so that the Foreign Ministry could
advise the members of the foreign missions who had made
these representations.

Dr. Servatius:  If I understand you correctly, these cases
were always dealt with as individual cases?

Accused:    That is correct.

Dr. Servatius:  Did you receive direct applications from the
Reich, from the relatives of Jews still living in Germany,
or from others?

Accused:    I do not actually recollect applications from
individuals direct to the Head Office for Reich Security.
But the overwhelming majority of such petitions normally
came from the local State Police departments and District
State Police headquarters.  People submitted their
applications to the Secret State Police in their area, and
if they could not be answered by the officials in charge, or
by the chief of the District State Police headquarters on
the basis of existing decrees, ordinances, and so on, then
they were passed on to the Head Office for Reich Security,
with a request for instructions as to how to proceed in that
particular instance.

The local State Police departments normally only sent
petitions to the Head Office for Reich Security for which
there were no precedents, which meant that I could not take
a decision myself but had, in such instances, always to
approach my Department Chief, in order to ask him for
instructions.

Dr. Servatius:  Were there any general guidelines for
dealing with these questions which were to be followed by
the lower echelons, and who drew up these guidelines, if
they existed?

Accused:    Basic orders by Himmler were circulated to the
subordinate departments.  The matters covered by such basic
orders were thus dealt with automatically.  That meant that
the local chiefs of the State Police departments could take
decisions on their own responsibility.  There were no
directives containing these decisions in any general form.
For example, when Himmler issued a ban on emigration, this
ban on emigration was transmitted by a circular order and,
in accordance with this circular, the local State Police
chiefs were obliged to refuse all applications for
emigration.

Dr. Servatius:  I shall pass over the other documents listed
in this file, particularly the Polish documents, which I
wish to deal with later, and I must make sure that I get
translations of some of them which are not entirely clear to
me.  I now turn to the documents enumerated in List 7.  I
shall start with a document which does not yet have a T
number.  This is document No. 1560.

Attorney General: This was submitted on the last day of our
submission of evidence.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, this has already been
submitted by the Prosecution.

Dr. Servatius:  May I please have the T number?

Presiding Judge: This is T/1416.

Dr. Servatius:  This is a telegram from Himmler to SS
Brigade Commander Gluecks, inspector of the concentration
camp at Oranienburg.  The communication is dated 25 January
1942.  It announces the allocation of 100,000 male and
50,000 female Jews to the camp for economic tasks.  I will
quote the brief text:

     "Since no Russian prisoners of war can be expected in
     the near future, I shall be sending to the camps a
     large number of the male and female Jews who are to be
     emigrated [sic] from Germany.* {* In the German
     original: "...die aus Deutschland ausgewandert
     werden...} Make arrangements to receive 100,000 male
     and up to 50,000 female Jews in the concentration camps
     in the next" - it is not possible to read the figure -
     "weeks.  The concentration camps will be called upon to
     cope with major economic tasks and assignments in the
     next few weeks.  SS Gruppenfuehrer Pohl will give you
     detailed information."  Signed: Himmler.

The next exhibit is T/297, document No. 349.  This is a copy
of a letter from Heydrich to the Reich Minister for the
Eastern Occupied Territories, dated 10 January 1942, with
reference to the "Brown File" for the Ukraine.  He makes
reference to the enclosed proposed modifications, and
because clarification is required, reference is made to a
Point 15, but only part is given.  The police is in overall
charge of Jewish affairs, reference is made to guidelines
about migrating Jews, and it is said that, for clarification
purposes, the official in charge should be contacted - SS
Sturmbannfuehrer Eichmann.

This is connected with the next letter, which I wish to
submit before posing my question to the Accused; this is
exhibit T/298, document No. 1088.  This is a letter from the
Reichsfuehrer-SS to the Minister for Eastern Occupied
Territories, dated 29 January 1942.  This is a letter
transmitting the guidelines which had previously been
referred to, and it says, "in the form I consider
necessary." Witness, will you state your position on these
two documents and tell us what was now the extent of your
participation in this matter?

Accused:    I was not...I had nothing at all to do with this
matter.  In the first document, I am mentioned in Point 10
as the official in charge.  This is signed by Heydrich in
the version stipulated by the Head Office for Reich
Security, which could give the impression that I was the
official in charge of these questions in the Head Office for
Reich Security.  I was the official in charge of Jewish
questions not in the Head Office for Reich Security, but in
Department IV, the Secret State Police Bureau.

In the second letter, signed by Bilfinger, transmitting the
guidelines to Dr. Wetzel in the Reich Ministry for the
Eastern Occupied Territories, I must state that these
directives did not originate with me, and they are not
initialled or signed either by myself or by anyone else from
my Section.  But there is a reference on page 3 which might
contribute to clarification: There are two words which have
been crossed out and replaced by something else in
handwriting - I am no expert, but it seems to me that there
is a similarity in the handwriting between the attestation
which was made by the Chancellery official, Keller, and
these corrections.  If that is the case, then the matter
would be completely explained, because that would mean that
the guidelines were issued by Section IIA3, and then a
Chancellery official made these handwritten changes. It also
all belongs to the correspondence of Section IIA2.

Dr. Servatius:  Next exhibit T/299, document No. 1102.  This
is a minute by the Ministry for Eastern Occupied
Territories, dated 30 January 1942, about a consultation for
the purpose of determining the concept of "Jew" in those
areas.  The basic point in dispute is who can decide whether
a person is a Jew or not, and thus subject to the provisions
on property and other service instructions.  The question
which keeps coming up, is whether the decision is to be
taken by the Commissioner General of the Civil
Administration or by the Commander of the Security Police
and the SD.

The last page of the document gives the list of
participants: The Accused does not appear himself, but his
Section does, represented by Regierungsrat Suhr, while the
Head Office for Reich Security is represented by Department
II, Neifeind.

Witness, did you deal with the definition of the term "Jew,"
and thus with the decision about the fate of individuals?

Accused:    No, I did not deal with this; it was purely a
legal matter.


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