Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day026.13 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 Q. No? A. The background is that obviously the civil administration found these mass executions unpleasant, the way they were carried out, and they are looking for guidance from the Ministry for the Eastern Territories, and they come back and say, well, basically these executions have to be carried out and any problem has to be solved together with the highest SS and police leader. So I think this Altemeyer's response could reflect the same kind of discussions which was going on, that one has to do it in a . P-113 different way. It did not say that the mass executions have to be stopped. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that. MR RAMPTON: That is all. I was anxious to put the two beside each other, because, my Lord, plainly, when they are side by side, what Bruns said about the continuation of shootings implicitly is supported by the contemporaneous documentation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did use the word resonance. MR RAMPTON: Yes, resonance. Then I want to ask you about something else very briefly, Dr Longerich. You were asked again last week by Mr Irving in effect this. Did they not always have to have a pretext when they shot the Jews in the East, such as, oh well, they were plundering, or they were partisans and so on and so forth? A. It becomes clear from the Einsatzgruppen reports. Q. You said, well, there was one absurd case where they killed 7,000 Jews because the NKVD had massacred some Ukrainians. A. Yes. Q. Can we just have a look at the Jager report, with which I know you are familiar. You find that at page 147 of the blue file, I hope. It is awfully long and it is very grisly reading, so I am certainly not going to go through it, but it is Einsatzkommando 3, which is part of Einsatzgruppen A, is it not? . P-114 A. Yes. Q. This is by the subordinate officer, somebody called Jager, and it reports that by the 1st December, or the end of November, they have succeeded in slaughtering 137,346 people. That is on the sixth page. A. Yes. Q. Pass over the first few pages to page 3, will you? Now we are in the middle of August 1941, and one needs only to glance at the page, does one not, to see that they are recording the murder of large numbers of Jewish men, women and children without any reference to any kind of pretext, excuse or justification? A. Yes. Q. Very occasionally, if you turn, for example, to page 151, page 5 of the document, you see a pretext. You also see incidentally, do you not, that some people from Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Vienna and Breslow were killed in November, towards the end of November, but you see in brackets, after some of the entries for October and at the bottom of the page, some kind of excuse or pretext, do you not? A. Sorry, pretext of the killing of the German Jews? Q. Yes. For example, the last entry for 2nd September 41, a teil kommando in Vilner shot a total of about 3,500 Jewish women and Jewish children in what they called a Sonderaktion because some German soldiers were shot at or . P-115 shot at by some Jews. Is that right? A. Yes. Q. Do you know why it is that, throughout this document, such pretexts or excuses are so scarce? A. I think the Jager report is simply a different kind of document than the Eignismeldung, so I think the people who had to write Eignismeldung had clear orders to give a reason for every killing. This is a different kind of report. This is a summary report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you have partisans listed and then just Jews? A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: This is the raw material, is it, upon which the Eignismeldungen would have been written, do you think? A. I am not absolutely sure, because the Eignismeldung were written on a daily basis, or on a monthly basis, and this is a summary report. So it is part of a different reporting system, if you want to say so. Q. Who would this have been reported to, do you know? You cannot tell from looking at it. A. It says five copies. I do not know whether it is actually mentioned here. Q. My document runs out on page 9 ---- A. One has to look at the end whether there is a list of distribution, but it definitely would go to the Einsatzgruppen R. . P-116 Q. Yes. A. And probably, I do not know, a copy to the civil administration, but I am not sure about that. Q. What I was driving at is quite a simple point really. Do you think, Dr Longerich, that it is possible that, if this was, as it were, a local document, in other words this document is kept within Einsatzgruppen A's area, yes, before the figures were compiled and sent to Berlin, that there would be more openness than there was when the figures went on from wherever it was to Berlin? A. Yes. I think it is simply the number of copies is very limited. Q. Yes. A. We know that the Eignismeldung had 55 and more copies. So I think this is a confusion which is possible. Q. I have one final thing I want to ask you about, which will not take very long, and it is this. You were telling us, I think it was on Thursday last week but it might have been Wednesday, about a system which either was planned or which evolved whereby the Jews and the General Government were deported and killed at the extermination camps to make way for Jews from the West or from the south. A. At the beginning, yes. Q. I would like, because I think this will help us all and certainly me, at the end of the day if we could do a short chronology. The gassings in the Warthegau at Chelmno . P-117 began on 8th December 1941? A. Yes, that is correct. Q. Who were the Jews that were killed there, first of all? A. The local Jews. The Jews from villages from the Warthegau. Q. And then? A. Then the Jews from the Lodz ghetto beginning in January. Q. The German for Chelmno is Kulmhof? MR JUSTICE GRAY: How is that spelt? MR RAMPTON: K U L M H O F. Chelmno, I call it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I call it Chelmno. MR RAMPTON: Do you know roughly how many of the local Jews were killed at Kulmhof or Chelmno? A. The estimation is about 140,000 minimum, plus then the German Jews who were ---- Q. I was coming on to that. Were some German Jews killed at Chelmno in due course? A. Yes. We know about one so-called action where about 10,000 Jews from Central Europe, Germany, Austria the Protectorate, were killed in Chelmno in May 1942. Q. In May 1942? A. Yes. Q. And what about the Reinhardt camps? Belzec was being built in late 41, was it not? A. They started to build it in November 1941. Q. And when did they start killing people at Belzec? . P-118 A. They started in March 1942. Q. March 42? A. Yes. Q. And the other two, Treblinka and Sobibor? A. They started to build Sobibor approximately in February, and it became, what do you say about an extermination, it became operational, I think, in May 1942. Then Treblinka, they started to build Treblinka in May and the systematic killing in Treblinka started in July 1942. Q. Systematic killings at Treblinka and Sobibor? A. Sobibor started a little bit earlier. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did they have the same pattern, Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, starting by killing the local Jews? A. Yes. Q. Then the Jews from Germany? A. It is a little bit different from camp to camp. In Belzec they started first of all to kill the local Jews and then later on also, as far as I recall it rightly, other Jews. It is a different operation. Belzec was built first of all to kill the Jews of the district of Lublin whereas, when you move on two or three months, you can see that actually the three Reinhardt camps were there to kill all the Jews in the Generalgouvernement, so it is different. You can see that they moved a step forwards during spring 1942. MR RAMPTON: Did they eventually start killing Jews from the . P-119 outReich, the Protectorate and other parts of Europe systematically at these three camps? A. Not at these three camps. You can see that the systematic killings of Jews from central Europe started, for instance, in Minsk. It is the same pattern, like in Chelmno. They first of all brought into the ghetto, but then from May 1942 onwards they killed them on the spot before they came into the ghetto in a small concentration camp called Malitrostiness. MR JUSTICE GRAY: By shooting them? A. By shooting them, yes. MR RAMPTON: Then of course we have left out of account Auschwitz. A. Yes. Q. Most, I believe I am right, I do not know whether you agree, of the Jews that were taken there were not Polish Jews? A. Yes, but I should add this. In Belzec, of course, they started to kill the local Jews and then, a little bit further, the German Jews who were brought into the ghettoes in the district of Lublin. Then, as far as they survived the conditions of the ghetto, taken to Belzec from approximately May/June 1942 onwards. Q. I just want to look finally, if we may, Dr Longerich, at one document which illustrates, I think, at least I believe I am right, what you have been telling us about . P-120 the way this system worked, or how it developed. It is at page 243, I think. This is one document, my Lord, for which I humbly apologise we have no translation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is unusual in that respect. MR RAMPTON: No. We have improved a lot. A lot of the documents do have translations. Is this a printed version, the document No. 218, of a Gestapo report from Lodz dated 9th June 1942? A. Yes, it is. Q. There is a table above it. Do you know who compiled that table? A. They are two different documents. Q. I know they are. A. It says here, the Meldeburo, the registration office. I think that is probably the registration office of the Jewish Council of Lodz, because they would do the registration work. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is deaths in the ghettoes, is it not? A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: These are the comings and goings into the ghetto and out of the ghetto, are they not? A. Yes. Q. There are some people coming in on the left-hand side under zugang? A. Yes. Q. Ein gesiedelte aus dem Reich und - what is WRTL? . P-121 A. Wartheland. Q. Yes, I see. In May 7,000 odd came into the ghetto, but I am interested more in the Abgang column which is the people who had gone for one reason or another. The left hand column, Gestoben, are the dead people, are they not? A. Yes. Q. Then the greatest number by far, a total I think of about 55,000, are said to have gone, they have been ausgesiedelt nach Kulmhof? A. Yes. Kulmhof is a very small village. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Chelmno. A. That is Chelmno. MR RAMPTON: Some were ausgesiedelt zur arbiet, do you see? A. Yes. Q. Not very many but some were. Then the totals. Can we look at the Gestapo report of 9th June which is just underneath that table. Can I read to you a translation, if you would not mind following it in the German. It is on the subject of the Jews or Judentum, is that right? A. Yes. Q. You tell me, with the help the interpreter, when I go wrong. "With regard to the Jews" or Jewry "the work of the State police focused on the Gau Ghetto in Litzmanstadt". That is German for Lodz, is it not? A. Yes, the German name. Q. Litzmanstadt, "which was to be built according to the . P-122 instructions of the Gauleiter". A. Yes. Q. Good. I did not do this translation so I take no credit for it. "Upon instruction of the Gauleiter all Jews not fit for work shall be evacuated and those fit for work in the whole Gau collected in the Litzmanstadt ghetto". Yes? A. Yes. Q. "From here larger proportions of Jews shall be used in the Gau area for various kinds of work (building of rail track and roads) and shall be returned into the ghetto again after the end of work. Those Jews remaining in the ghetto shall be without exception used for work there. In the course of building the Gau ghetto, firstly, it appeared necessary to create space for the Jews who were to be settled there. For this purpose a larger number of Jews not fit for work was evacuated from the ghetto and handed over to the sonderkommando". Correct? A. Yes.
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