The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 31
(Part 4 of 5 )


Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann trial, holocaust, Jewish holocaust
After Brussels, Dannecker also writes to Amsterdam, attention Sturmbannfuehrer Lages, who was then commander of the Security Police in Amsterdam. Our number here is 1259.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/406.

State Attorney Bach: Dannecker tell Lages about a conversation he had with Asche in Paris (Asche was also one of those in Belgium) and I draw attention to paragraph (d) which says: "It does not seem necessary to give a special reason for the designating to outsiders. To the German Services the measure has to be explained as a necessary step towards the general solution of the Jewish Question."

Presiding Judge: Who signed this?

State Attorney Bach: This is signed by...the signature here is not very clear but it is clear that the drafting was again Dannecker's.

The next document is a telegram from Eichmann to the commanders of the Sipo (Security Police) and the SD in Belgium and France. Our number is 690. He mentions a consultation on 6 March 1942 with Hauptsturmfuehrer Dannecker and speaks again of the prospect that, in addition to the 1,000 Jews in Compiegne another 5,000 Jews may be deported. I especially draw your attention to the date of that meeting. The Court will see that there was a meeting with Dannecker on 6 March 1942 - and we shall submit further evidence concerning its contents. You will remember, Your Honours, that a week or more ago the Attorney General submitted several documents on a meeting at which there was a discussion on the sterilization of Jews, after Wannsee. There were two such meetings - the first one on 6 March 1942 and the other in October of that year. Both meetings took place in the office of the Accused and the Attorney General stated that, while in the minutes of the meeting of 27 October the name of the Accused appears together with the names of several staff members of his unit as participants, his name does not appear at the meeting of 6 March 1942. A possible explanation for this fact is to be found in the present document which shows that on the same day, 6 March 1942 there was a meeting with the members of his staff, as a matter of fact with his officers from the Stapostellen (Gestapo Units) in Germany, but also with Dannecker, and it is quite possible that in view of his having to take part in this meeting, he could not go to the other one or could not get there on time.

Presiding Judge: I understand the desire to explain this at the present stage but it seems to me that the place for such explanations is at the end. This is of course more boring, if one may put it this way, for the moment, but it cannot be avoided.

State Attorney Bach: I wanted to make things easier for the Court.

Presiding Judge: In any case you will repeat this at the end, of this I am almost certain. Am I right?

State Attorney Bach: Possibly.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/407.

State Attorney Bach: The next document is No. 587. I shall only summarize the contents of the letter: Dannecker writes to the Commander of the Army in France and asks him to act in accordance with the decision of the Head Office for Reich Security in the matter of the deportation of the Jews.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/408.

State Attorney Bach: The next document is our No. 55, which was already submitted to the Court together with the Police Statement and was numbered T/37(22). Here we have a correspondence between the Commander of the Army in France and the Accused, and Eichmann decides that 34 Yugoslavs, among others, may be deported to Auschwitz, but notice has to be given separately about their arrival.

Presiding Judge: Jews holding Yugoslav nationality in the past?

State Attorney Bach: Yes, Your Honour. It is a question of Jews holding Yugoslav nationality in the past.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/409.

State Attorney Bach: The next document is our No. 1210. It is a report by Dannecker on a conversation he had with Novak of the RSHA-IVB4:

"On 20 March 1942 SS Obersturmfuehrer Novak of the RSHA- IVB4 'phoned and announced that the Reich Ministry of Transport has already fixed the timetable for the deportation train as follows: Departure from Paris on 28 March 1942; time of arrival in Auschwitz 5 a.m. on 30 March."
Presiding Judge: This will be T/410.

State Attorney Bach: And here is the letter to which I referred already earlier. Our No. 1211, drafted by Dannecker, signed by Knochen. To IVB4. The subject is the deportation of the same first 1,000 Jews from Compiegne and it says: "The Commander of the Army has now definitely informed us that he cannot detail any security forces for the transport. Since nothing further can be done here in the matter of guard personnel I request you to get in touch with the OKH, since the order for the arrest and deportation of these Jews was also obtained from them through the Fuehrer's Headquarters.

Presiding Judge: What is OKH?

State Attorney Bach: OKH, these are the initials of Oberkommando des Heeres and OKW are the initials of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.

Judge Halevi: What is the difference between Wehrmacht and Heer?

State Attorney Bach: Wehrmacht includes all the armed forces, Heer is the Army proper.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/411.

State Attorney Bach: The next document is our 1213. Dannecker signed it himself. He describes the instructions he has given to the Head of the Department for Jewish Affairs at the French Police and says:

"Director Schweblin of the anti-Jewish Police was entrusted by me with the task of separating on 27.3.1942 those Jews in Drancy who are going to be deported and to search them very thoroughly. They must not take any metal objects with them, except spoons."
Presiding Judge: What is "antijuedische Polizei"? Is this a French unit?

State Attorney Bach: This is a French unit. In one of the earlier reports, which I did not read in its entirety, he describes how he established that unit and how that unit employed his own office. It was a unit of the French Police which had to carry out certain tasks in connection with the arrest and the deportation of Jews, under his supervision and command.

"I gave order that every Jew should be allowed to take with him only one suitcase or knapsack."
Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/412.

State Attorney Bach: In Document No. 444 Dannecker proposes to engage the help of the German authorities in order to bring pressure to bear on the French, so that they should consent to the designating of the Jews.

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/413.

State Attorney Bach: In the next document, No. 1358, Dannecker informs the office of the Accused that the same method of designating the Jews as is in use in Holland will be introduced. "Jews who have reached the age of six are forbidden to appear without the Jewish star."

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/414.

State Attorney Bach: The following telegram is numbered 1360. It is signed by Regierungsrat Suhr from Section IVB4 and was sent to the Paris office:

"The arrangement whereby only Jews of foreign nationality, whose home countries have already introduced designation are subject to obligatory designation, also corresponds to the regulations within the Reich. In any case the Protectorate areas of Bohemia and Moravia have to be included for the purpose of designation. In case we should succeed, through the intermediary of the Foreign Ministry, to impose the designation also on Jews of other nationalities within the Reich, I shall immediately send further information."
Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/415.

State Attorney Bach: The next document, No. 1214, a telegram from Guenther to Paris. It contains minutely detailed instructions for the deportation of the Jews from Compiegne to Auschwitz. The number to be put in each railway carriage, those who are to be put on and in what way. Furthermore, only Jews who can work are to be included, mainly men, not more than five per cent women, no children. This was the situation still at that date.

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/416.

State Attorney Bach: The next document is No. 1394. Dannecker reports on the second transport of Jews from France, of 1,000 Jews and he addresses his report to IVB4, to the Inspector of Concentration Camps, Oranienburg and to the Commander of Concentration Camp Auschwitz, in this order.

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/417.

State Attorney Bach: The next document is No. 56, which also received the Number T/37(23). Here I shall not go into details. We have here an exchange of correspondence between the Accused and the Paris Office in connection with a meeting which is to take place in Berlin, again a coordination meeting with the subordinates in Belgium, Holland and France. At the end he summons the meeting for 11 June 1942 and informs Dannecker that he has also invite Asche and Zoepf. Asche is his man in Belgium, Zoepf,the Section Officer with the BdS in Holland.

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/418. There are two documents here.

State Attorney Bach: I think, even three, a note from Dannecker and a telegram in reply from Eichmann.

The next document, our No. 585, is a report on that meeting of 11 June 1942, the meeting which, to a certain extent, led to a turning point in the policy of deportations from the West.

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/419.

State Attorney Bach: The subject of our document No. 873 is the same meeting in IVB4 and it says:

"For military reasons the deportation of the Jews from Germany to the Eastern areas of operations can no longer take place during the summer. The Reichsfuehrer- SS has therefore ordered the transfer of large numbers of Jews from the South East (Romania) or from the Occupied Western areas to the Auschwitz concentration camp for labour. As a basic condition the Jews (of both sexes) must be between the ages of 16 and 40. Ten per cent of the Jews who are not able to work may be sent along with them."
This was actually the first time such an order was given, that it was also permissible to deport Jews who were unfit to work.
"It was agreed that 15,000 from Holland, 10,000 from Belgium and a total of 100,000 Jews from France including the unoccupied zone would be deported. In accordance with a proposal by the undersigned it was decided that, beside the age limit, the range of persons to be deported should include only those Jews who are obliged to wear the Jewish star (Judenstern) if they do not cohabit in mixed marriages."
At the end it says that Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann has ordered the participating chiefs to report again in Berlin on 2 July 1942.

Judge Halevi: And the expenses are to be covered by France.

State Attorney Bach: This is also a very important point.

"The agreement of the French Government has to be obtained to issue a law according to which all Jews living outside the borders of the French State or emigrating later will lose their French citizenship and right of domicile. The costs of transport as well as the poll tax (about 700 Reichsmark per Jew) must be borne by the French State. The same applies to equipment for the Jews and food for two weeks starting from the day of deportation."
Dannecker now gives instructions for the technical implementation of the deportation. And here at any rate he is certainly a party to the camouflage because he says: "In order to avoid any collision with operation 'French Workers for Germany` mention will only be made of 'resettlement of Jews'."

In paragraph 2 he says: "I intend to clear, first of all, all the Jews from the provincial area."

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/420.

State Attorney Bach: There is no longer any doubt here that Dannecker is speaking about himself. He signs the letter and he announces that he intends to do so and so.

The next document is our No. 57 - T/37(24). A letter from Dannecker to IVB4 and a telegram in reply from Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann. Dannecker refers to a conversation with Novak and asks whether, in spite of technical difficulties which he mentioned in an earlier letter, it is possible to deport the 3,000 Jews who are ready to move. Eichmann answers in the affirmative.

Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/421.

State Attorney Bach: Document No. 82 - T/37(62), to Rademacher.

"It is envisaged that, to begin with, starting in the middle of July or the beginning of August this year, about 40,000 Jews from the occupied French zone, 40,000 Jews from the Netherlands and 10,000 Jews from Belgium are to be deported for work in the Auschwitz camp in daily special trains containing 1,000 persons each. The range of people included comprises, for the present, Jews who are able to work, in so far as they do not cohabit in mixed marriages and are not nationals of the British Empire, the USA, Mexico and the Middle and South American enemy states, or of the neutral and allied states [allied to Germany]. I request that note be taken of the above and assume that there is no objection to these measures on the part of the Foreign Ministry either." Signed on instruction - Eichmann.
Presiding Judge: This document is marked T/422.

State Attorney Bach: The Court will note that there is no hint here of the ten per cent mentioned in the letter to the RSHA.

Judge Halevi: Is that less serious?

State Attorney Bach: The instruction was that ten per cent unfit persons could be included, but in the letter to the Foreign Ministry this was not mentioned. And we shall see this time after time, in most countries, that there is one letter to the officials of the SS and a different letter, which does not reveal the whole truth, even vis-a-vis the German Foreign Ministry.

The next document is our No. 1525, a report on a meeting between Dannecker and Leguay, the representative of the police in the occupied area. Leguay says that he has to speak to Laval about the deportation of the Jews and Dannecker points out that there is nothing to discuss. This is a German order and it has to be carried out, even if the French Government does not issue a parallel order. Even if the French Government has not, or not yet, issued such an order, it has to be carried out because it is a German order.

Judge Halevi: In the occupied French zone there was the French Laval Government?

State Attorney Bach: This was a matter of a certain action to be carried out by the French police, which was nevertheless subordinate to the French Government. And then Dannecker said: "This concerns the occupied zone and therefore this is a German order; if your government has not ordered you to do this, we tell you to do it and you have to follow through."

Judge Halevi: But we are talking of the Vichy Government headed by Laval?

State Attorney Bach: Yes.

Judge Halevi: But I do not understand the status of the area. The area is the occupied zone which is not under the Vichy government at all. Did the question of the police receiving any orders at all from the Vichy Government not arise?

State Attorney Bach: Apparently to a certain extent it did. It seems that this was one of the conditions of the armistice agreement, that the Vichy Government had control over the French police in the whole of France.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/423.

Judge Raveh: This is not signed by Dannecker?

Presiding Judge: It says here: i.V.(per pro).

State Attorney Bach: On top it says: Dannecker and Roe. It was in fact written by Roethke.

Presiding Judge: At the top it does not say: Dannecker.

State Attorney Bach: No. This report was written by Roethke, who arrived there exactly at the same time as Dannecker. And he writes about Dannecker's actions. On the left side there is Dannecker's signature showing that he approves of the contents. Mr. Roethke will still appear in quite a number of documents and we shall submit evidence on the activities and conduct of every one of these gentlemen.

The next document is our No. 58. Here Eichmann cancels the meeting called for 2 July 1942 and announces that he will come to Paris on instructions from Mueller in order to discuss the final details. By the way, this is T/37(25).

Presiding Judge: This will be T/424.


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