The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 72
(Part 6 of 8)


Presiding Judge: These photographs will be marked T/1372. Are the photographs in the same order as they are referred to in this detailed list?

Attorney General: They were supposed to have been arranged in this order, Your Honour, but it is difficult for me to answer yes or no. I asked that it should be prepared in this way - I hope that is what was done. And now, since there is no objection to the submission of Rajewski's evidence, I would ask the Court to admit it.

Presiding Judge: Professor Rajewski?

Attorney General: Now he is Professor, but here he appears as a witness.

Presiding Judge: Was this in Warsaw?

Attorney General: In Warsaw. This is his certified evidence. The excerpts upon which I rely will be found by the Court in our No. 1273, which I submitted this morning.

Judge Halevi: That was T/1356.

Presiding Judge: Let us call this T/1356a.

Attorney General: Now, Rajewski states that he was arrested on 10 May 1940, because he had celebrated the third of May, which was the Polish national holiday; that he was the principal of a secondary school in Warsaw; that he was dispatched to Auschwitz on 22 October 1940, and remained there until October 1944. He worked there in the Aufnahmestube (reception office), Politische Abteilung - that is to say, the Political Department.

On page 174, he says:

"As for mass transports, the people did not arrive with individual questionnaires, but came only with lists of complete transports, and cards with their names were added later. As from March 1942, the transports of the RSHA commenced, and the office would have had to do too much work, in order to be able to record these groups individually." Accordingly, an order was given to prepare a rubber stamp and to mark the sheets containing the data with the numbers that I am now going to submit to the Court. The cards had the following markings:

RSHA IVB4a 3233/41g/1085: Juden aus Frankreich, Belgien, Holland (Jews from France, Belgium and Holland).

IVB4a 2093/42g/3913: Juden aus Deutschland (Jews from Germany).

IVB4a 2927/42g/1148: Juden aus Griechenland (Jews from Greece).

IVB4a 3013/42g/1310: Juden aus Kroatien, Juden aus dem Protektorat, Juden aus Theresienstadt, Juden aus Rumaenien, Juden aus Ungarn, Juden aus Italien (Jews from Croatia, Jews from the Protectorate, Jews from Theresienstadt, Jews from Romania, Jews from Hungary, Jews from Italy.)

After that, IVB4a 2093/42g/39: Juden aus GG and Bialystok (Jews from the Generalgouvernement and Bialystok).

And, finally, we see Poles:

IVB4a 3666/42g/1505 Polen-Arien (Poles-Aryans).

Presiding Judge: That ought to be "Arier".

Attorney General: Yes.

Presiding Judge: That is not clear at all. What has IVB4a to do with Aryans?

Attorney General: That will be understood immediately if we read the next sentence: "I myself saw this sign on a document from Zamosc, as Zamosc went through Oswiecim." These were the "Aussiedlungen" of Poles, which IVB4 continued to handle as the successor to IVD4 within the framework of the evacuation of the Polish population from the zones that were annexed to the Reich, in order to make room for Volksdeutsche.

The Prosecutor General asks the witness: "The Polish transports which were destined for extermination in the gas chambers without a register of names - did they have the same numbering as Jews?" The witness answers: "Yes."

Presiding Judge: But I see that this was not "Umsiedlung", but that he says they were sent to the gas chambers.

Attorney General: Pardon me, Your Honour, I did not understand the question.

Presiding Judge: I remember that at a certain time, the Accused's Section also dealt with the Umsiedlung of Poles. It seems to me that this is the first time we hear of a contention that he also dealt with the extermination of Poles.

Attorney General: We are talking here of the deportation of Poles. There were also Polish transports that were exterminated. These were not sent by Eichmann's Section, but there were transports of Poles that were dispatched by Eichmann's Section to Auschwitz as a concentration camp.

Presiding Judge: Please remember that we are to receive an authenticated translation of this document. This is really important. I again see some strange things here.

Attorney General: We shall see to it that an exact translation is prepared.

I pass now to a chapter which is different from the type of chapters that we have been dealing with today - that is the matter of sterilizations. With the Court's permission, I should like to recall the record of proceedings of Wannsee, where there was talk of the sterilization of the children of mixed marriages, and of the problems that confronted the Nazis - how to deal with the offspring of mixed marriages, and also document T/100, which is a report of a meeting in IVB4. They were discussing the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

The meeting took place on 6 March 1942. According to the list of those present, Wilfinger also participated. We have already spoken of the problem of the presence of the Accused on that date. The question arose how to deal effectively with the children of mixed marriages. A sequel to this was the meeting on 27 October 1942, which also took place in the Accused's Section. This time he already participated. That is T/190.

At the beginning of the meeting, there was an account of experiments for sterilization in a simple way, which it was possible to perform in wartime. It referred to the experiments being conducted on how to achieve speedy sterilization and, as far as possible unobtrusively, of the offspring of mixed marriages. Further to the meeting of 6 March 1942, Suhr, a member of the Accused's Section, writes our document No. 877. He refers to the meeting of 6 March 1942, and asks the German Foreign Ministry to adopt a stand on the subject.

Presiding Judge: The document will be marked T/1373.

Attorney General: We have documents proving the nature of the experiments that were planned for the purpose of achieving this object.

Thus, first our No. 556 - a letter from Viktor Brack to the Reichsfuehrer-SS. In one of the documents which we have already submitted, "Bracksche Methoden" (Brack's methods), we shall have a glimpse of the Bracksche Methoden. Brack furnishes Himmler with the result of the research into possible methods of sterilization or emasculation by X-rays. The report refers to the fact that "doses of X-rays destroy the internal secretions of the ovary or the testicles; small doses would not prevent the capacity to fertilize, except for a short period."

Presiding Judge: Do we need to hear these details orally as well?

Attorney General: I think I am called upon to explain the evidence.

Presiding Judge: I think we are capable of reading. This will be marked T/1374.

Attorney General: Your Honour may believe that I do not enjoy this.

Presiding Judge: I am certain of that, and hence, I believe I am helping you by this observation.

Attorney General: Thank you. Our No. 11 is Brack's letter to Himmler which again talks of sterilization, and this time it is in connection with the Jewish operation, since two to three million Jewish men and women had to be kept alive, out of ten million - those capable of working well - so that those should work. In his opinion, it is worthwhile to keep them alive, while sterilizing them by means of X-rays.

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1375.

Judge Halevi: What was Brack's function, what was his position?

Attorney General: He was an Obergruppenfuehrer. He belonged to the headquarters of Hitler himself.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I believe he was on the staff of the Party Headquarters.

Attorney General: Our next document is signed by him. I presume Defence Counsel will be able to help us in this matter, and I shall accept what he has to say about it. Our document No. 405 is a letter from the headquarters of the Fuehrer, written by Brandt, again dealing with the sterilization of Jewish women and the practical implementation of this evil scheme. It is stressed that the matter is extremely confidential, and all those participating in the experiments and the discussions must be made to preserve secrecy.

Presiding Judge: The document will be marked T/1376.

Attorney General: Our document No. 326 is Brandt's letter to Professor Glauberg in Koenigshuette - this time we are already coming nearer to our topic. One of those referred to in the letter was IVB4 - Guenther. In pursuance of those experiments, the writer went to Ravensbrueck; the method of performing the sterilization is referred to, and also the system of checking whether the sterilization was carried out properly. The Court will find this at the end of the letter. In view of the Presiding Judge's observation, I shall refrain from reading these portions.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1377.

Attorney General: Meanwhile, other methods are also mentioned; there is some method known as Madaus, which is mentioned in our document No. 407, a minute by Brandt. It also refers to the utilization of some kind of substance which is extracted from an American plant, which is apt to cause sterilization. This document is also registered with the Court as T/37(180), while T/37(178) is T/1377.

Presiding Judge: Your document No. 407 will be marked T/1378.

Attorney General: The operation continues - there is a letter to Guenther, IVB4. A sun-print of a report of the Madaus process is sent to him, with the request to work on this subject in closest co-operation with the office of SS Gruppenfuehrer Pohl. That is T/37(181).

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1379.

Attorney General: Our document No. 555 shows that this activity continues. SS-Obersturmfuehrer Fischer sends Dr. Brandt a copy of his letter to Guenther.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/1380.

Attorney General: Our next document contains the internal minutes of Rademacher of the German Foreign Ministry about the problems of the sterilization; the comparison that he made for himself between the Wannsee Conference and the meeting of 6 March, and the conclusions that he draws from the correspondence with the German Minister of Justice on the same subject.

All this constitutes, with us, one of the documents of the Foreign Ministry - our No. 597. The first page consists of a letter that Rademacher drafted but which he was instructed not to send.

Presiding Judge: We need another copy of this.

Attorney General: Yes, certainly, Your Honour.

Presiding Judge: This will be exhibit T/1381.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, may I point here to the date and request that attention should be paid to the words at the top of the document. Here, one can see the source, the origin of all these matters of sterilization, and also the legal basis. I refer especially to page 1, item 7 - it is the State Secretary Stuckart, of the Ministry of the Interior of the Reich, who proposes this sterilization. In particular, there is here a department which deals with persons of mixed parentage, with marriages of such persons, with proposals to arrange speedy divorces without legal proceedings. This is the central issue here.

Attorney General: May I be permitted merely to point to the fact that the section to which Defence Counsel referred is a summary of the Wannsee Conference, the Conference of State Secretaries, dated 20 January 1942.

I would now request the directive of the Court, how we should proceed. I shall tell you what still lies ahead, and the Court will direct us as to what it still wishes to hear today, and what we shall have to defer. There are still a number of documents concerning the plunder of property. There is one testimony of Advocate Aharon Hoter-Yishai who, after the War, went through some dozens of camps of survivors, and it was our intention that he should describe to the Court what he saw.

Presiding Judge: What would the length of this testimony be, roughly, in your estimate?

Attorney General: Three quarters of an hour to an hour. And we have the document of Sassen that will require some clarification, and the explanation of a handwriting expert, on the basis of whose evidence we desire to authenticate the document.

Presiding Judge: There are still a number of loose ends to be tied together.

Attorney General: We have some ends remaining from the chapter of Hungary and other chapters. I am not so worried about these - these are shorter items.

Did you also succeed in deciphering the Mufti's handwriting?

Attorney General: Yes. Mr. Hagag has something to say in this connection.

Presiding Judge: We still have quite a number of matters.

Attorney General: Whatever the Court may decide.

Presiding Judge: I do not think we shall sit for more than another half hour today. That means our time is limited, for it is clear that it will not be possible to complete everything, even if we were to sit another hour or even two hours.

Attorney General: No, we shall not complete it. If that is so, let us take the report of Sassen and try to see how we stand on this matter.

Presiding Judge: Let us see how it develops. That would be best. You were simply too optimistic about today's session.

Attorney General: I admit that, Your Honour; we are behind by at least two to two and a half hours.

I have in my possession the expert opinion of Inspector Hagag. He is here and is ready to be questioned. He has examined the complete manuscript of Sassen's report.

Presiding Judge: For the present, we shall accept it only for perusal.

Attorney General: I shall merely explain matters briefly. Inspector Hagag came to the conclusion that the whole of this typescript consists of material that was typed on three typewriters, and part of it is handwritten. To facilitate the examination, he divided the typewritten material into sixteen files, and placed the handwritten material in a separate file and marked it No. 17. He gave consecutive numbers to all the pages.


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