21 Nov. 45
have been charged with the execution
of the anti-Jewish action." (406-PS)
Jews as a whole were fined a billion Reichsmarks. They were
excluded from all businesses, and claims against insurance companies
for their burned properties were confiscated, all by decree of the
Defendant Göring. (Reichsgesetzblatt, 1938, Part I, Pp.
1579-82)
Synagogues were the objects of a special
vengeance. On November 10, 1938 the following order was given:
"By order of the Group
Commander: All Jewish synagogues in the area of Brigade 50 have to be
blown up or set afire.... The operation will be carried out in
civilian clothing .... Execution of the order will be reported
...." (1721-PS)
Some 40 teletype messages from various police
headquarters will tell the fury with which all Jews were pursued in
Germany on those awful November nights. The SS troops were turned
loose and the Gestapo supervised. Jewish-owned property was
authorized to be destroyed. The Gestapo ordered twenty to thirty
thousand "well-to-do-Jews" to be arrested. Concentration
camps were to receive them. Healthy Jews, fit for labor, were to be
taken. (3051-PS)
As the German frontiers were expanded by war, so
the campaign against the Jews expanded. The Nazi plan never was
limited to extermination in Germany; always it contemplated
extinguishing the Jew in Europe and often in the world. In the West,
the Jews were killed and their property taken over. But the campaign
achieved its zenith of savagery in the East. The eastern Jew has
suffered as no people ever suffered. Their sufferings were carefully
reported to the Nazi authorities to show faithful adherence to the
Nazi design. I shall refer only to enough of the evidence of these to
show the extent of the Nazi design for killing Jews.
If I should recite these horrors in words of my
own, you would think me intemperate and unreliable. Fortunately, we
need not take the word of any witness but the Germans themselves. I
invite you now to look at a few of the vast number of captured German
orders and reports that will be offered in evidence, to see what a
Nazi invasion meant. We will present such evidence as the report of
"Einsatzgruppe (Action Group) A" of October 15, 1941 which
boasts that in overrunning the Baltic States, "Native
anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against the Jews
during the first hours after occupation ...." The report
continues:
"From the beginning it was to be
expected that the Jewish problem in the East could not be solved by
pogroms alone. In accordance with the basic orders received, however,
the