14 Dec.
45
"Thanks to the heroic courage of our
soldiers this territory has become German; and the time will come when
the valley of the Vistula, from its source to its mouth at the sea,
will be as German as the valley of the Rhine."
I
now turn to another phase of the program that I mentioned earlier, that
is the conspirators' plan to confiscate the property of Poles, Jews, and
dissident elements. As I previously mentioned, the evidence will show
that these plans were designed to accomplish a number of objectives.
Insofar as the Jews were concerned, they were part and parcel of the
conspirators' overall program of extermination. Confiscation was also a
means of providing property for German settlers and of rewarding those
who had rendered faithful service to the Nazi State. This phase of their
program likewise made available dispossessed Polish farmers for slave
labor in Germany and operated to further the conspirators' objective of
preventing the growth of another generation of Poles.
Proof of the fact that the conspirators confiscated the property of
Poles in furtherance of their Germanization and slave labor program is
contained in Document Number 1352-PS, previously introduced by Mr. Dodd
as Exhibit Number USA-176. This exhibit contains a number of reports by
one Kusche, who appears to have been one of Himmler's chief deputies in
Poland. Mr. Dodd quoted from one of Kusche's confidential reports, dated
22 May 1940, at our Page 4, Paragraph 5 of the English text. In the
German text it is at Page 9, lines 16 to 18. In this statement Kusche
pointed out that it was possible, without difficulty, to confiscate
small farms and that — and I now quote:
"The former owners of Polish farms
together with their families will be transferred to the Old Reich by
the labor offices for employment as farm workers."
I
now desire to quote from another report by Kusche contained in the same
exhibit and bearing the same date, 22 May 1940. 1 think the upper
right-hand corner numbers might simplify it. The report from which I now
quote is marked "secret" and is entitled, " . . . Details
of the Confiscation in the Bielsko Region." Initially, I should
like to quote from the last paragraph at the bottom of Page 1 of this
exhibit. This exhibit, you will recall, is 1352-PS, last paragraph at
the bottom of Page 1. The German text is at Page 11, Paragraphs 1 and 2.
Kusche stated, and I quote:
"Some days ago the commandant of the
concentration camp being built at Auschwitz called on Staff Leader Müller
and requested support for the carrying out of his assignments. He said
that it was absolutely necessary to confiscate the agricultural
enterprises within a certain area around the concentration camp, since
not only the fields but also in some cases