18 Dec. 45
the furniture, et cetera, obtained
through the 'M Action' was to be put at the disposal of bombed-out
persons within Germany."
The
report continues with a description of the efficient methods employed in
looting the Jewish homes in the West (top of Page 4 of translation):
"The confiscation of Jewish homes
was carried out as follows: When no records were available of the
addresses of Jews who had fled or departed, as was the case, for
instance, in Paris, so-called requisitioning officials went from house
to house in order to collect information as to abandoned Jewish homes.
— They drew up inventories of those homes and sealed them ... In
Paris alone, about twenty requisitioning officials requisitioned more
than 38,000 homes. The transportation of these homes was completed
with all the available vehicles of the Union of Parisian Moving
Contractors who had to provide up to 150 trucks, 1,200 to 1,500 French
laborers daily."
If Your
Honor pleases, I am omitting the rest of the details of that report
because our French colleagues will present the details later.
Looting on such a scale seems fantastic. But I feel I must refer to
another statement, for though the seizure of the contents of over 71,000
homes and their shipment to the Reich in upwards of 26,000 railroad cars
is by no means a petty operation, the quantities of plundered art
treasures and books and. their incalculable value, as revealed in the
document I am about to offer, will make these figures dwindle by
comparison.
I next refer to the stacks of leather-bound volumes in front of me, to
which the Justice referred in his opening statement.
These 39 volumes which are before me contain photographs of works of
art secured by the Einsatzstab and are volumes which were prepared by
members of the Rosenberg staff. All of these volumes bear our Number
2522-PS, and I offer them in evidence as Exhibit USA-388.
I am passing to Your Honors eight of these volumes, so that each one of
you — they are all different — might see a sample of the
inventory. I call Your Honors' attention to the inside cover page. Most
of them have an inventory, in German, of the contents of the book; and
then follow true photographs of each one of these priceless objects of
art, separated by fine tissue paper.
There are 39 of these volumes that were captured by our forces when
they overran a part of southern occupied German areas.
THE PRESIDENT: Is there anything known about the articles photographed
here?