Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-106-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/14

Session No. 106
8 Av 5721 (21 July 1961)

Presiding Judge: I open the one hundred and sixth Session of
the trial.  The Accused will now continue with his testimony
and will reply to questions by the Judges.  I remind the
Accused that he is still testifying under oath.

Accused:    Yes, I am aware of the fact.

Attorney General: If it please the Court, I met with Counsel
for the Defence, and we agreed on the number of handwritten
pages to be submitted to the Court, on the basis of
yesterday's Decision.  Here is a list of consecutive pages
which are herewith submitted, and the material itself, now
arranged in one copy, in accordance with the list which I am
submitting, in four copies.

Presiding Judge: will you later submit three further copies?

Attorney General: Later we shall submit three further copies
of the material itself.

Presiding Judge: Does Dr. Servatius has any comments? Dr.
Servatius:  I have looked through these passages; they all
have comments by Eichmann, and correspond to the Decision.

Presiding Judge: I mark this list T/1432, and I mark the
pages consecutively 1432/1 and so on.

Judge Raveh:   Accused, yesterday we were still on the
subject of numbers.  You gave Heydrich the statistical
material for the Wannsee Conference.

Accused:    Yes.

Q. Approximately when did you prepare that?

A. I had...I would reckon today that it was prepared about
two weeks, three weeks, I would reckon today, before the
beginning of the date originally scheduled in December 1941.

Q. So about November, the beginning of December 1941?

A. It must have been about that time.

Q. What were your sources?

A. The sources, as far as I remember, were at that time
first of all Jewish annuals, but above all they were also
the reports from all sorts of places, teletype enquiries to
the various offices, where there were no figures, and then
further enquiries to local offices; in short, at that time I
used all the possibilities available to me...whether this
was all of them, I am not sure, but at least I used the
possibilities available to me to obtain the statistical
material.

Q. Including the Operations Units reports.

A. Certainly I used those, too, although I do not remember,
because here an overall figure was taken, I believe.  In
fact, every country was taken as a whole, not divided up by
regions.

Q. In your police interrogation you said positively that you
used the figures of the Operations Units.  If you do not
have this, I shall show it to you.

A. I do not want in any way to deny this; it is possible,
because when Korherr drew up his report later, enquiries
were also made from all and sundry.

Q. If you tell me it is possible, I must show you what you
said to Captain Less.  You put it fairly clearly there.
Perhaps you would just look at this, pages 850-852, as I
have marked them here.

A. Yes.  Ah, these, these places, these countries, the
Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and so on - this
definitely - this can in fact only be from the Operations
Units.  Yes, that is in fact right.  Here I was thinking of
the figure for Russia, because the number for Russia, I
believe is indicated as five million.  That is why I said
that the countries are stated en bloc in this report for the
Wannsee Conference.

Q. The last figure I wish to discuss with you is the figure
of one million, dating from 1944, with Joel Brand.

A. Yes.

Q. Do you remember saying in your police interrogation that
this figure actually covered all the Jews still in the
entire German sphere of influence?  To quote you more
precisely, you said that the figure might be between eight
hundred thousand and one and a half million.

A. That is an approximate estimate.  I remember.  Yes.

Q. That means, I presume, that around May 1944 you believed
that between eight hundred thousand and a million and a half
Jews were still present in the entire German sphere of
influence.

A. That is a...that used to be called a "house number" (a
rough estimate).

Q. But was that what you thought then?

A. Yes, yes.

Q. Now I would like to turn to questions of organization -
your Section, Department IV, Head Office for Reich Security.
First of all here, a point of terminology.  You have here
used the terms "Section Head" (Referent), "Division Head"
(Dezernent), "Official-in-charge" (Sachbearbeiter), and I
should like to know from you whether these are identical
expressions, or whether you differentiate between them.

A. Certainly.  The older generation of civil servants, from
the Weimar period, for example, used the older form of
"Division Head," "Division."  Apparently that was the normal
term at that time.  The more recent higher-ranking civil
servants then used the term "Section Head" together with
"Section."  And this "Section Head" and "Section," this
actually prevailed and was the official designation.  The
other term was one which was valid, it was a parallel one,
but even in correspondence no distinction was made, it was
exactly the same.

Q. So "Section" and "Division" are the same, and "Section
Head" and "Division Head" are the same?

A. Exactly the same.

Q. And what was an "Official-in-charge"?

A. Every Section had several Officials-in-charge, and the
number varied between two, four, five, depending on the size
of the Section.

Q. So now we understand.  You were the Section Head and Suhr
was an Official-in-charge.

A. Suhr was a cross between an Official-in-charge and a
Section Head, because he was a State Counsellor but could
not yet have a Section of his own with me, so he was listed
as an Official-in-charge.  Although he was a Section Head
all those years, under me he was, in practical terms, an
Official-in-charge, because there was no vacancy on the
organizational plan.

Q. Was he an Official-in-charge in IVB4?

A. Yes, he was an Official-in-charge in IVB4.

Q. Hunsche?

A. When Hunsche was an assessor, he was an Official-in-
charge, definitely, and when he became a State Counsellor,
the situation was exactly the same, because a State
Counsellor could consult with the Department Chief directly,
while a Chief Inspector of Police, for example, who was also
an Official-in-charge, was not able to do so.

Q. Do you mean that if Suhr wanted to, he could go to
Mueller without asking you?

A. Good manners and courtesy would have required him to
inform me.  But it was a question of the individual.  If
someone was ambitious, they used the time or an opportunity
when one was not present, and then went there.  For example,
if I had been a lawyer, Suhr would not have had this
opportunity.  But that was precisely the result of the fact
that I was not a lawyer, and Suhr could not and did not wish
to discuss these legal questions with me, but instead
obtained his instructions directly from the Department
Chief,  although that did not change anything about the fact
that I was the Section Head and Suhr's superior.

Q. Let us see, in fact, how this worked in practice.  Did
Suhr go to Mueller without your knowing about it, or did he
not?  Or did you always know that he had gone to Mueller?

A. No, I did not have to know that, because in fact the
lawyers worked in a separate part of the building, and we
could not have any idea of what they were doing and where
they were.  For example, unlike inspectors or chief
inspectors of police or government employees, assessors and
state counsellors did not need to report off-duty, if they
left the building during working hours.

Q. It is strange that you say that Suhr did things about
which you knew nothing.

A. Naturally, in the end I knew about them, because, for
example, once what he had been working on was finished, it
had in any case to pass through my hands, because, after
all, I had to countersign.

Q. That is exactly what I wanted to find out.  So that means
that in the end Suhr's work passed through your hands and
had to be approved by you by means of your signature.

A. I did not have to approve it, because these were legal
matters which I could neither impede nor influence.  But the
official channels had to be observed.

Q. Then we must take an example.  For example, what did Suhr
deal with?

A. Suhr dealt with property law matters, and also Suhr or
Hunsche - I do not remember exactly which of them it was -
in any case one of them dealt with the matter of "treatment
of Jews with foreign nationality" - in other words, legal
matters.

Q. Very well, that is a legal matter.

A. Precisely, a legal matter.

Q. Now, as far as matters of property are concerned.

A. Yes.

Q. The question of principle, of deportees being relieved of
their entire property, is not in fact a legal question, is
it?  The legal aspect is how that is dealt with in detail.

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Then I understand that you did not check the details of
Suhr's work.  But I cannot imagine that you did not ensure
that the principle was observed.

A. Suhr could obtain the principles just as well from
Mueller, as I also had to do, because I could not, in fact,
issue orders or instructions about anything on my own
initiative, and the same applied to the treatment of Jews
with foreign nationality.

Q. Look, I am now talking about work procedure and
organization.  The reply you have just given has nothing to
do with work procedure and organization.  The question is
this: Did Suhr provide a draft?

A. Yes.

Q. What happened to this draft?

A. Suhr produced a draft, this draft also came into being
only after prior discussions with the other central
authorities, and then this draft went...Suhr first had to co-
ordinate this draft with the other central authorities.
Then, after these central authorities had initialled it, the
matter went to me, I appended my signature to it, and then
it went to Mueller and to Heydrich or Kaltenbrunner, and one
of these three then signed it, and the decree was ready.

Q. You see, this is what I wanted to find out all the time,
that everything which came from your Section had to go
through your hands, or, in your absence, those of your
permanent deputy, and had to be signed by you or, in your
absence, by your permanent deputy.

A. Yes, that is so.

Q. And the same applied to matters which were dealt with by
your field offices.  Some proposal from the field offices
came to your Section, and this proposal went through your
hands, if it went to some higher authority.

A. Here again things were arranged differently, because this
was not exclusively the prerogative of the Section since,
regardless of the name one gives these field offices,
whether Senior Commander of the Security Police or State
Police or State Police Regional Headquarters or Adviser and
so on, there are various special features which must be
borne in mind. For example the provincial and district
administrative heads and governors had a right to give
directives.

Q. No, no - just a moment, one moment.  Just look at what
you said on page 967 of your police interrogation, the part
I have marked.

A. Yes, it could in fact be like that, and furthermore,
these people had a direct way of approach to the Department
Chief, and a direct approach to the Chief of the Security
Police and the Security Service, and here they received
direct instructions from the latter, and conversely their
reporting could also be carried out directly.

Q. Just a moment, first of all what is written here and what
you said on page 967 about reports and channels for the
field offices' proposals - is that correct?

A. That is correct.

Q. You are saying that that was not the only channel?

A. No, no.

Q. Now the areas of activity: Suhr, you say, property
matters and foreign nationals.

A. It was not delineated precisely. For example in the case
of illness, periods of leave, and so on, the work load of a
particular Official-in-charge was taken over by other people
during that time.

Q. Was Hunsche Suhr's assistant, or was he an independent
Official-in-charge?

A. Hunsche was - as far as I can remember, as long as he was
an assessor...there was a time when they were both in the
Section, Suhr was a State Counsellor and Hunsche was an
assessor.  Then Hunsche was promoted to this position.

Q. So, as long as Hunsche was an assessor, he was Suhr's
assistant?

A. I believe that Suhr left earlier, before Hunsche became a
Counsellor, but I can no longer say for certain.

Q. Now, of what was Guenther Official-in-charge when you
were in the office?

A. When I was in the office, he really took care of
everything.  First of all he had all the...all the incoming
and outgoing mail, distribution of mail.  Then he handled
everything, any visitors, consultations, and he had exactly
the same rights and powers as a Section Head.

Q. Now your official relations with Mueller.  I understood
you to say that you submitted the various matters to Mueller
and asked for his instructions, without making any proposals
to him.

A. Yes, I described the contents of the file to him, and
asked for instructions.

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