The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 74
(Part 2 of 2)


Dr. Servatius: I shall inform you of my attitude on this by noon tomorrow.

State Attorney Bar-Or: The Court, in the course of receiving Prosecution documents admitted documents from the Aussenstelle (Field Office) Wuerzburg File which were submitted through the affidavit of Mr. Wahler. Several months ago we ordered authenticated copies of the file of the Duesseldorf Gestapo Leitstelle (Office in Charge); this was the complete file of the correspondence of a Gestapo Leitstelle during wartime, which we knew still existed.

Through the International Tracing Service, we managed, although somewhat late, to secure these documents; many of the documents in these files repeat what is already known to the Court from the Wuerzburg documents and I do not intend submitting them again in this way. There is a small number of documents touching on the Accused and his Section, which are to be found in this file, since the Accused was obviously in touch with the Gestapo Leitstelle and not with the Aussenstelle of the Leitstelle.

I propose to submit to the Court these four volumes; I have made photographs especially of those documents to which I want to draw the Court's attention. I propose doing so because, in this way, and only in this way, I shall be able to give the Court a picture of the correspondence and office activity in some place where there was a Gestapo Leitstelle in Germany. I thought that this would be of considerable value for seeing matters in their general setting. This relates to the years 1942 and 1943 only, and the documents relate exclusively to that zone in Germany over which that Leitstelle had command. That is to say I shall not again go over the dozens of letters. I have expecially extracted three sets of those documents to which I wish to draw the Court's attention and which are not to be found in the files of the Aussenstelle Wuerzburg.

Presiding Judge: How many documents are there - have you counted them?

State Attorney Bar-Or: Approximately two hundred.

Presiding Judge: Two hundred that have been selected?

State Attorney Bar-Or: No, of those we selected eleven documents - all the rest do not seem to us to require special attention, or they repeat the same Richtlinien (guidelines) which I have already been able to prove in another way. We shall refer the Court to eleven documents only from this file. But, as I have said, I thought it would be right to produce the entire file to the Court, since a perusal of it, nevertheless, gives a picture of the activity of such a Leitstelle which is different from the one I could have given by means of a document here and there, to which I could have had access through Mr. Wahler.

Presiding Judge: So that later on we could refer to documents other than the eleven, or not? What is your request?

State Attorney Bar-Or: Of this Duesseldorf File, I am going to rely for the Prosecution's case only on those eleven documents which I have had photocopied especially. Generally, I do not need to rely on other documents since they appear anyhow amongst those I have already submitted. To the extent that we are dealing with repeated instructions, these appear in the Nuremberg and Duesseldorf Files.

Presiding Judge: In that case, why do we need all the files - why not confine ourselves to these eleven documents?

State Attorney Bar-Or: Your Honours, as far as I am concerned, I would be prepared to be satisfied with that; I only thought that I would be serving the Court, if I provided it with the complete files, since here matters are quite fragmentary. What I am submitting is not something complete.

Presiding Judge: That means that you want to do this only in order that these eleven documents may be understood - is that what you wanted to say?

State Attorney Bar-Or: I think that anyone reading this material will also, in fact, understand what happened at Wuerzburg. Wuerzburg is not a file that bears a relationship to the Accused. Had I been able to obtain the Gestapo Leitstelle Nuremberg File, I would then have been able to dispense with this file.

Presiding Judge: You cannot have it both ways. If you want the entire file, we shall consider it.

State Attorney Bar-Or: I propose submitting the whole file.

Presiding Judge: What is the difference between the file and the eleven documents you suggested submitting?

State Attorney Bar-Or: The main difference between it and the documents I have submitted will emerge from those eleven documents which I have extracted from these files. In these files I want to submit there are matters with which the Court is familiar from the Wuerzburg File from their contents, not from the addressee. Hence I request that file 42 and 43 of the Leistelle Duesseldorf be admitted, and after these files will have been admitted, I shall ask for the Court's attention to a small number of documents.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, what do you say about these documents?

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I have seen these documents this afternoon for the first time, and I deeply regretted not having seen them earlier. What is contained here does, indeed, have only cumulative value - all this appears already in the Wuerzburg File, but as Defence Counsel I regard it as important that not only excerpts should be submitted, but the complete files. They show us how they all co-operate. The Accused finds himself in good company - the chief Finance President, the Social Welfare, the "Red Cross."

People mock at Eichmann's theory of the small cogwheel, whereas here we see the other cogwheels. The Accused tells me it is a disaster that all the files have been destroyed. Where are the others? Here we only see the Accused's activity and, consequently, if the material is submitted, I want to ask that it should be submitted in its entirety, or else it should be rejected.

Presiding Judge:

Decision No. 80

We decide to allow the submission of the entire Duesseldorf File.

State Attorney Bar-Or: These are the four files, arranged as Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4; the numbers appear on the tags attached to them.

Presiding Judge: Have you not made a complete copy of them?

State Attorney Bar-Or: No, only a small number, which I shall submit, one by one.

Dr. Servatius: Since I do not have a copy, may I also receive the files themselves from the Court?

Presiding Judge: Yes. Mr. Bodenheimer, please attend to that. I have marked these files T/1395, T/1396, T/1397 and T/1398.

State Attorney Bar-Or: The first document which I want to discuss is No. 1663 - which is on page 128 in these files. The Court will notice that each page is marked at the top. This document is No. 128. These documents that I am dealing with now, have, of course, also been given to the Defence Counsel. It is the Accused's letter, dated 6 June 1943, to which he attaches his directives, this time also signed by him, in connection with the deportation of the Jews from the Reich territory to Izbica in the Lublin district. Its importance is proved when we compare this document with T/737, Prosecution document No. 1279, which I submitted from the Wuerzburg File - there we see unsigned orders which were sent from Nuremberg to Wuerzburg in March 1942, whereas here we have the directives which came from the Accused himself in June 1942.

Presiding Judge: How can one locate it in this file here?

State Attorney Bar-Or: According to the number, Your Honour - 128. The date and the number ought to make that clear.

Presiding Judge: The numbers are outlined in red.

State Attorney Bar-Or: That is right, Your Honour.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/1399.

State Attorney Bar-Or: In order to save the Court's time, I shall now submit photocopies of further documents from these files, in three copies, and shall dwell briefly on each of those. The first is on page 51 - this is a memorandum from Duesseldorf dated 18 April 1942.

Presiding Judge: Do you not have an extra copy of these two documents?

State Attorney Bar-Or: I am sorry, I do not have another copy. On the first page, in paragraph 2 of the memorandum, the writer refers to a telephone conversation with Franz Novak, of the Head Office for Reich Security concerning delay in including Jews in deportations only if it can be proved that they were really essential workers in ammunition factories. Pages 57, 58 and 59, which come next, beginning from 21 April 1942, deal - all three of them - with an investigation, conducted between Duesseldorf and the Head Office for Reich Security, into letters of protest sent by Aryan spouses because their children, from a mixed marriage, had been included in deportations. The correspondence shows that the matter was dealt with in the Accused's office, by a man called SS Obersturmfuehrer Hasmann of the Jewish Section of the RSHA.

Pages 62 and 63 constitute a cable, signed by the Accused, dated 22 April 1942 in which there is a complaint that it had come to the notice of the Accused that in various zones of a Gestapo Leitstelle that in these transports in Spring 1942, the staff of the branches of the Reichsvereinigung had also been included. The Accused maintains that this is not to be done, because, by deporting these Jews, the expulsions to be carried out in the future, will not be able to be implemented conveniently. Accordingly, he gives instructions that these Jews working as functionaries, must be kept behind and only included in the last transport.

Page 69 is a notice - which seems to me to be typical - of the Gestapo Leitstelle Duesseldorf dated 22 April 1942 concerning the running of a transport in the direction of Izbica, in accordance with the paragraph on "Meldewesen" (the manner of reporting) according to these directives, namely: (a) to Eichmann, (b) to the Commander of the Security Police and the SD in Cracow, (c) to the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district. This is the implementation of a directive the Court is already familiar with from documents that have been submitted.

Pages 76, 77, and 78 constitute a detailed report of the Gestapo Leitstelle in Duesseldorf, dated 29 April 1942 on the above-mentioned deportation to Izbica. It refers to a special account, "W". But what is mentioned is the confiscation of 2,593 marks and some pfennigs to the special account "W". It is not of a donation to the account, but confiscation. It includes also a notification about suicides before the deportation.

Then there is a cable signed by the Accused, dated 6 June 1942, in which he gives orders to several Gestapo Leitstellen - including Duesseldorf - about organizing a further deportation to the district of Lublin, and he gives orders that in the four hundred and fifty from the district of Koblenz mental patients in a hospital in Bendorf were to be included.

On page 149, the Court will find an order of 20 July 1942, which was given by the Gestapo Leitstelle Duesseldorf to its field offices - the Aussenstelle. The order relates to an instruction received from the RSHA regarding the deportation of the families of concentration camp prisoners, which was contrary to what had previously been stated on this subject. This was that the family of anyone in a concentration camp should immediately be included in the next transport.

On page 150 there is an order of the Gestapo Leitstelle, also based on the directives of the RSHA, that the words "deportation to the East" were not to be mentioned, nor any destination of the deportation at all. From now on, the report must state that the person "has moved to an unknown address" or "has emigrated," because there are complaints that enterprises in which Jews were employed were beginning to send inquiries in writing as to there whereabouts of these Jews.

Pages 242, 243 and 244 consist of a cable signed by Dr. Kaltenbrunner, bearing the mark of the Accused's Section, IVB4, which is addressed to all Gestapo centres. This cable conveys an order by the Reichsfuehrer-SS that all Jews of the Greater Reich are to be deported to the East and to Theresienstadt, and that this deportation should be completed by 30 June 1943.

And, finally, on page 244, there appears at the end of a cable - right at the end - an addendum addressed to the Gestapo Leitstelle of Katowice and Litzmannstadt only. It states that the question of the transportation of Jews from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto and also those employed in the "Schmelt" organization will be discussed by the Accused on his visit there.

Presiding Judge: I have marked the set of these documents T/1400.

State Attorney Bar-Or: There remain two more documents. The first document is our No. 1654. This is what is called an "Einsatzbefehl", that is to say, an order to report which is issued by the Staatspolizeistelle in Hamburg on 7 February 1945, to Mrs. Hertha Sara Thiel bearing the mark IVB4. There were apparently persons who were transferred to IVB4 instead of IIB and the lady was ordered to report on Wednesday, 14 February 1945 at a place which had formerly been a school, a Jewish religious school (Talmud Torah) in Grindelhof. She is given instructions as to what she should do with her children.

It is clear from the last paragraph that this refers to the last of the spouses of mixed marriages for it states especially that children under the age of sixteen must be left behind and that a representative is to be appointed for them in conjunction with the local branch of the "Reichsvereinigung".

Presiding Judge: This document will be marked T/1401.

State Attorney Bar-Or: And in conclusion I should like to submit to the Court a photostat of what was called a "Guide" issued on behalf of the Hauptamt SS Gericht (Main Office SS Court) attached to the Reichsfuehrer-SS and the Chief of the German Police for the use of the SS and the police. The guide sets out the jurisdiction and the regulations regarding that jurisdiction, as they were in force on 1 July 1944.

In addition, I shall submit to the Court a photocopy of certain pages of this brochure which we we intend to refer to in our summing-up. These pages contain only those extracts, those paragraphs from this guide which one learns about the application of the military penal code, and also the civilian criminal law, to SS personnel, both those serving in regular SS units and those serving in police units - either local or central.

Presiding Judge: This will be T/1402. The individual pages will be marked T/1402a.

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, the files of the police headquarters of Duesseldorf, which were submitted here in four volumes, are not all-inclusive files. The documents submitted here already constitute a selection, and it would be important, obviously, to see all the material. Thus, for example, there is reference to the deportation of a woman who is of unsound mind. How could Eichmann have known, in Berlin, about the existence of a woman in Bendorf who was of unsound mind? There must have been those who suggested such a deportation, there were those who were taking care of such matters, there were those who were setting the wheels in motion; there are also documents here which point to the fact that the Ministry of the Interior was involved and interested in the matter. In order to obtain a total picture, it would have been desirable to see the whole file.

I also wish to refer, here, to the internal SS police jurisdiction. While I have received a resume, I have not received the complete document. And here, too, it would have been desirable to peruse the complete document. Here, for example, on page 20, I should like to draw attention to a most significant sentence. It says, here, that the discipline of members of the SS and the police was above conscience and religion. The obligation to discipline took precedence over the obligation to one's conscience and the obligation to religion.

On pages 42 and 43 it says, specifically, that any person who tries to avoid carrying out his duties, for any excuse whatsoever, is in breach of discipline and in breach of faith - and is to be punished by death. The reference here is to men who pretend to be sick and seek to avoid carrying out their duties. Your Honours, these documents must be examined seriously.

Presiding Judge: We shall also place at your disposal, this full, complete document, T/1402, so that you may examine it.

What about the Duesseldorf Files - is this all that you have?

State Attorney Bar-Or: Yes, Your Honour.

Presiding Judge: And where did you receive it from?

State Attorney Bar-Or: From Arolsen, the headquarters of the I.T.S. (the International Tracing Service), an institution of the International Red Cross. These files were passed on to them to enable them to trace people. The Court will find, therein, a list of the names of the Jews of Duesseldorf, Essen and of the entire area. They were transferred, immediately after the War to the headquarters of the Red Cross in Arolsen, which dealt with them. It provided the authentication, and this authentication was ultimately also confirmed by the authorities of the State of Israel. Therefore, the Court will find two confirmations on each single document.

Presiding Judge: That is to say, these envelopes...

State Attorney Bar-Or: Were arranged in Arolsen - we did not arrange that. The Court has received the documents exactly as they were issued at Arolsen.

Presiding Judge: But apparently a selection from the files was made there.

State Attorney Bar-Or: Your Honour will find at the top of each of the four files, a small mark. It even says there that despite the fact that the order of the documents was not always logical and chronological, it was left in the way they were found.

Presiding Judge: These marks, in a red frame - who made them?

State Attorney Bar-Or: They were there.

Presiding Judge: Was that not done at Arolsen?

State Attorney Bar-Or: It may only be that the surrounding red frame was made at Arolsen, but the mark was there.

Presiding Judge: If that is the case, Dr. Servatius, it seems that these are complete files, since the numbers are consecutive.

Dr. Servatius: I am not able to form an opinion on that; I tried to make a hurried examination, but I have not been able to reach a final conclusion.

State Attorney Bar-Or: Your Honour, the files are complete. With regard to those mental patients who were to be included, apparently there was information, but it could not appear in the Duesseldorf File. I am referring to a cable that was sent to a large number of Gestapo Leitstellen in the West, amongst others also to Koblenz. If I had the file of the Gestapo Leitstelle Koblenz, I would have been able to check what happened to that Pflegeanstalt (nursing home). Duesseldorf received this item as a copy, which was sent to other places as well.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, you will be able to peruse these files and raise whatever you wish to raise afterwards.

Dr. Servatius: Thank you.

Judge Halevi: I have a question to the Attorney General. Since you are still going to submit some minor items at the next session, I merely want to check one point. In the book of the late Rabbi Weissmandel Min ha-Mezzar ("From the Depths"), which was mentioned here by a number of witnesses in connection with the negotiations with Wisliceny, also referred to by witnesses, there is some evidence of the late Shlomo Gross of Bratislava, which, according to this account, constituted the beginning of the contact, not only with Wisliceny, but also with the Accused, Eichmann, whose name is specifically mentioned. This was to the effect that the Jews of Bratislava, through Wisliceny, came into contact with him [the Accused], to negotiate with him, and that was still before the Wansee Conference, and something is also mentioned there about the Mufti.

Since many matters have been mentioned here which we have touched on, beginning on page 12 of the book, if the Attorney General will find this evidence is prima facie, admissible and relevant, and if Defence Counsel does not object to its being submitted - something which is most likely, since it does not, on the surface, prejudice the Accused, but might even be to his advantage, I cannot decide that, it is up to him to decide - then I would suggest that you consider submitting, by consent, one document of the evidence of Gross or the late Rabbi Weissmandel, as it appears on page 12, if it is worth-while to take it into consideration. In view of the advanced stage of the trial, I would suggest that you do this only if there is consent, only in the event of there being no dispute over the question; I think that, then, there would be nothing to prevent the Court from admitting it.

Attorney General: There is no doubt that we shall give every consideration, Your Honour, to what has been said. We now await the Court's directives as to what should follow; we have to arrange the Sassen Document, in the light of the Court's decision. I should like to consider it, before we submit the material. Since there was, at one stage, a decision to have a break in the sessions, I would ask the Court to inform us when they will be resumed.

Presiding Judge: At any rate, has the Prosecution's case been concluded?

Attorney General: The Prosecution's case has been concluded, subject to this reservation that we wish to use the coming days in order to check whether we have not forgotten anything. I presume there are not many documents which we have overlooked. We shall not look for new material now, and we have, in fact, already "closed the door" to the introduction of new material. But it is possible that amongst the hundreds of documents which we have not submitted, we may, on due consideration, nevertheless wish to ask the Court to admit a few, and we accordingly ask for permission to do so when the Court resumes its session.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, what do you say about this application?

Dr. Servatius: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, I ask you not to accede to this request. For it is quite clear that the door must be either closed or open. If I proceed to prepare my material and subsequently additional documents are produced, then obviously that is going to disturb the course of my preparations. Accordingly, I ask you to reject it.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, we are now going to have a recess in order to enable Dr. Servatius to digest the material which has been submitted so far; obviously it has to be taken into account that, after the recess, you will not re-open the case with all kinds of new chapters. Thus, if there is going to be some sort of combing through, we do not want to close the door to you absolutely - this combing ought to be made with a very fine comb. Please take that into account.

Attorney General: Yes, we shall do that.

Judge Raveh: Perhaps in the course of two days, you would be able at least to show Dr. Servatius the documents you wish to submit to the Court and then he would know what you will present.

Attorney General: Yes, we shall do that.

Presiding Judge: Now the recess that we have been talking about will commence. The question is only when we will renew our sessions, since a change has meanwhile come about: we sat today contrary to what we had anticipated. We are ready to hear you, Dr. Servatius, on this matter.

Dr. Servatius: I would request the Court not to regard today's Session as being at my expense, and to allow me a full week for my preparations.

Presiding Judge: The next Session will be held on Tuesday, 20 June 1961 at 8.30 a.m. We shall begin at 8.30 in the morning and then terminate the Session at 1.30 - and we shall do likewise throughout that week, and after that we shall see what the further order of sessions will be.

Attorney General: I understand that we shall have an opportunity of submitting those excerpts from the Sassen Document which were not submitted so far.

Presiding Judge: That we expect anyhow. It would be desirable if, as far as possible, you would co-ordinate the selection of these extracts between you, so that subsequently there should be no argument as to what relates to the comments of the Accused and what does not, as far as you can manage to do so between yourselves, and where you cannot succeed - we shall of course have to go into this matter ourselves.

With that we conclude today's Session - the next Session will be held on Tuesday, 20 June 1961, at 8.30 in the morning.


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