The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)
Nuremberg, war crimes, crimes against humanity

The Trial of German Major War Criminals

Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany
16th April to 1st May, 1946

One-Hundred-and-Sixteenth Day: Monday, 29th April, 1946
(Part 10 of 12)


[LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES continues his cross examination of Julius Streicher]

[Page 344]

Q. It is quite clear that there were plenty of figures for you, quoted in this "Israelitisches Wochenblatt" over the period that we are discussing. Plenty of figures, it now appears, doesn't it?

A. Pardon?

Q. We will go on. Now, I just want to put one or two further articles of your own to you. You remember what I am suggesting? That you were inciting the German people to murder. We know now that at least you had read one article in the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt" where murder is mentioned. I just want to see what you go on to publish in your own paper after that date.

Would you look at Page 47A. This is an article by yourself on 6 January, 1944. This is after you had been living on your estate for some time.

"After the National Socialist uprising in Germany, a development began in Europe, too, from which one can expect that it will free this continent for all time of the Jewish disintegrator and exploiter of nations; and, over and above this, that the German example will, after a victorious termination of the second World War, bring about the destruction of the Jewish world tormentor on the other continents as well."
What example was the German nation setting to the other nations of the world? What example do you mean there?

A. This article collaborates what I have been saying all along. I spoke of an international solution of the Jewish question. I was convinced that if Germany had won this war or had been victorious over Bolshevism, then the world would have agreed that an understanding should be reached with the other nations for

[Page 345]

an international solution of the Jewish question. If I wrote here about destruction it is not to be understood as destruction by mass killing; as I have said, that is an expression, I have to point out that I do not believe that Erich Kauffmann really wanted to kill the German people by sterilisation, but he wrote it, and we wrote in the same manner, echoing the sounds that we heard in the other camp.

Q. You have not yet told us what is this international solution that you were advocating by talking about extermination; if it is not murder, what is it? What is the solution?

A. I have already said that I founded the Anti-Semitic Union, and through this Anti-Semitic Union we wanted to create movements among the nations which should, above and beyond governments, act in such a way that an international possibility would be created, such as has been presented today here in this trial - as I conceive it, to form an international congress which would solve the Jewish question by the creation of a Jewish State and thereby destroy the power of the Jews within nations.

A. That is your answer - that you were advocating a Jewish State? Is that all that this comes to? Is it simply that you were advocating a Jewish National Home? Is that what you have been talking about in all these extracts that we have read? Is that the solution which you are advocating?

A. Well, I do not know what you are driving at with that question. Of course, that is the solution.

Q. Very well. Let us just go on now. Turn to Page 48A now, will you? This is 24 January, 1944:-

"Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal, and he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the same fate - annihilation, death."
Are you still advocating a National Jewish Home?

A. Yes, that has nothing to do with the big political plan. If you take every statement by a writer, every statement from a daily newspaper as an example, and want to prove a political aim by it, then you miss the point. You have to distinguish between a newspaper article and a great political aim.

Q. Very well, let us turn now to the next Page, 2 March, 1944:-

"Eternal night must come over the born criminal race of Jews so that eternal day may bless awakening non-Jewish mankind."
Were they going to have eternal night in their national Jewish State? Is that what you wanted?

A. That is an anti-Semitic play of words. Again it has nothing to do with the great political aim.

Q. It may be an anti-Semitic play of words, but the only meaning it can have is murder. Is that not true?

A. No.

Q. Will you turn to the next page, 25 May, 1944, and I remind you that these are all after you must have read of the murder in "Israelitisches Wochenblatt." I quote the second paragraph?

"How can we overcome this danger and restore humanity to health? Just as the individual human being is able to defend himself against contagious diseases only if he proclaims war against the cause of the disease, the germ, so the world can be restored to health only when the most terrible germ of all times, the Jew, has been removed. It is of no avail to battle against the outward symptoms of the world disease without rendering the morbific agents innocuous. The disease will break out again sooner or later. The cause and the bearer of the disease, the germ, will see to that. But if the nations are to be restored to health and are to remain healthy in the future, then the germ of the Jewish world plague must be destroyed, root and branch."

[Page 346]

Is that what you mean? Are you saying there when you say "must be destroyed root and branch" - did you mean to say "ought to be given a Jewish National State?"

A. Yes, it is a long way from such a statement in an article to the act, or to the will to commit mass murder.

Q. Turn over to 10 August.

"When it looses the struggle, Judaism will be ruined, then the Jew will be extinguished. Then will Judaism be annihilated down to the last man."
Are we to read from these words: Provide the Jews with a Jewish National State?

A. That is a vision of the future. I would like to call it an expression of a prophetic vision. But it is not incitement to kill five million Jews. That is an opinion, a matter of belief, of conviction.

Q. It is the prophetic vision of what you wanted, isn't it - of what you have been advocating now for the last four years from the beginning of the war? Isn't that what it is?

A. Sir, I cannot tell you today what I may have been thinking years ago at a certain moment when writing an article. But still I admit that when I saw lying before me on the table confessions from the Jewish front, confessions saying "the German nation has to be destroyed, bombard the cities, do not spare women, children, or old men" - if one has confessions like these in front of one, it is possible that things will come from one's pen such as I have often written.

Q. You know, do you not, now, even if you do not believe the full figures, that millions of Jews have been murdered since the beginning of the war? Do you know that? You have heard the evidence, have you not?

A. I believe it -

Q. I only wanted to know whether you had heard that evidence. You can answer yes or no, and I presume it will be yes.

A. Well, I have to say evidence for me is only the testament of the Fuehrer. There he states that the mass executions took place upon his orders. That I believe. Now I believe it.

Q. Do you think that it would have been possible to carry out the extermination of six million Jews in 1921? Do you think the German people would have stood for it? Do you think it would have been possible under any regime in 1921 to have carried out the murder of six million men, women, and children of the Jewish race?

A. Whether that would have been possible with the knowledge of the people - no, it would not have been possible. The Prosecutor himself has said here that since 1937 the Party had full control over the people. Now even if the people had known this, according to the opinion of the prosecution, they could not have done anything against that dictatorship because of that control. But the people did not know it. That is my belief, my conviction and my knowledge.

Q. Was it possible to exterminate people in that way only after some twenty years of incitement and propaganda by you and other Nazis. Is that what made that possible?

A. I deny that the population was incited. It was enlightened, and sometimes a harsh word may have been directed against the other side as an answer. It was enlightenment - not incitement. And if we want to keep our place before history I have to state the German people did not want any killings, whether individually or en masse.

Q. I am not going to let you go into another history about the German people. I am going to remind you of what you have said.

A. Adolf Hitler -

Q. I am going to remind you of what you said yesterday. I read from the

[Page 347]

transcript: You speak of a Jewish question at the time - that is 1923 - "I would like to say that the public distinguished Jews only by their religion, to speak about a Jewish problem then would have been nonsense."

Was that because there was no Jewish problem then, and that the Jewish problem had only been created by you and the Nazi regime?

A. It was my aim, and I partly reached that goal, to make the people realise through laws which made sexual intercourse between different races impossible, that Jewry does not mean religion but people and race. I helped to create that basis. But mass killings were not the result of the enlightenment, or, as the prosecution says, incitement. Mass killings were the last acts of will of a great man of history who was probably desperate because he saw that he would not win.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: I have no further questions. Perhaps I might be allowed to just sort out the exhibits and then mention to the Tribunal their numbers. If the Tribunal would agree, those that I have put in evidence, which are the other parts of the bundle other than I have actually quoted from, perhaps I could put them all in as one number and hand the exhibits in to the clerk, if that would be the convenient course.

THE PRESIDENT: I think so, yes. If they are in one bundle, and you are going to give one number to a number of documents, it had better be in one bundle, had it not?

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, do you want to re-examine?

DR. MARX: I do not consider it necessary.

THE PRESIDENT: Then the defendant can return to the dock. Dr. Marx, will you continue the defendant's case?

DR. MARX: I call now, with the permission of the Tribunal, the witness Fritz Herrwerth.

(The witness took the stand.)

THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name?

THE WITNESS: Fritz Herrwerth.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me:

I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth, and will withhold and add nothing.

(The witness repeated the oath.)

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY DR. MARX:

Q. Since when do you know the defendant Streicher?

A. Since the Party Rally in 1934.

Q. When did you enter his service and in what capacity?

A. I was employed on 15 October, 1934, in Nurnberg - not in the personal service of Herr Streicher himself, but in the municipal motor pool. However, I worked for the then Gauleiter Streicher.

Q. When did you leave that service?

A. In August, 1943.

Q. For what reason?

A. It was a personal dispute, and mainly due to my fault.

Q. Did you have any other tasks to carry out for Streicher?

A. Yes.

Q. And which?

A. Well, whatever arose. I did agricultural work also at the end.

Q. Thus you were very often with Streicher?

A. Yes.

[Page 348]

Q. And therefore you knew about the most important incidents during that period?

A. Yes. I don't know, however, what you call important incidents. There were things that I don't know about, that is, at least I assume that.

Q. I will ask you later in detail.

A. Yes, if you please.

Q. The defendant Streicher is accused of having caused acts of violence against the Jews and of having participated in these acts. Do you know of any such case?

A. Not a single one.

Q. Will you please wait until the end of my question, and then I shall say "end of question." On 9 November, 1938, did you drive Streicher back to Nurnberg from Munich, and when? End of question.

A. It was on 9 November, yes. I do not know the time exactly. At that time Streicher left Munich a bit earlier, and it may have been about - I do not know for certain - 9 o'clock perhaps.

Q. Did Streicher know already during that ride back that same night, that something was to be done against the Jewish population?

A. No, he knew nothing about that.

Q. Then, during the night of 9 November, did you witness a conversation between Streicher and the S.A. Fuehrer von Obernitz?

A. Yes.

Q. Where did that conversation take place?

A. In order to answer that question, I have to explain. When Streicher went to bed in the evening, I was usually with him or the house superintendent. On that evening Streicher went to bed earlier than usual. I do not know the reason. And that concluded my work for the day. I went from Herr Streicher to the Casino of the Gauleitung. That was in the cellar of the Gauleitung Building on Schlageter Strasse. I played cards there. And then the former S.A. Obergruppenfuehrer von Obernitz came and called me, as was customary, by the name of Fritz and told me -

Q. Speak more slowly.

A. Well, he addressed me by the name of Fritz -

THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute, Witness, when you see that light go on, it means that you are going too fast. Will you try to speak more slowly?


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