| Source: http://www.nizkor.org Accessed 18 October 1999 Judgment in the Trial of Adolf Eichmann [Part 12] 106. As far as Serbia
is concerned, we must go back to an earlier period, to the year
1941, to describe an event which is fraught with meaning for the
evaluation of the Accused's general attitude, as well as for the
evaluation of his evidence before us. In April 1941, Germany attacked Yugoslavia, and Serbia became
German-occupied territory. In
the autumn of 1941, 8,000 male Jews were rounded up in Belgrade.
A series of documents was submitted to us describing the fate of
these Jews. On 8 September
1941, the representative of the German Foreign Ministry in Belgrade,
Benzler, proposed sending them to one of the islands in the Danube
delta. This proposal is not
accepted. Benzler continues
his efforts to deport the Jews, and his next proposal is to send them to
the Generalgouvernement area or to Russia.
On the cable containing this proposal (exhibit T/874, dated
12.9.41), there is a note dated 13 September in the handwriting of
Rademacher, at that time the Foreign Ministry Adviser on Jewish Affairs,
which reads as follows:
In the year 1948,
Rademacher was questioned at Nuremberg in connection with this document
and said (T/875, p. 3) that he made this note while reporting on the
matter to Luther (his superior in the German Foreign Ministry); and he
continues: "I
still remember distinctly that I was sitting opposite him (Luther), when
I telephoned the Head Office for Reich Security, and that I wrote down
in my own handwriting key words from Eichmann's reply and passed them
over to Luther during the telephone conversation.
Eichmann said words to the effect that the army were responsible
for order in Serbia and that it would just have to kill the rebellious
Jews by shooting. In reply
to my further question, he repeated simply: `Kill by shooting' (Erschiessen)
and hung up." The Accused
categorically denied before us that he had said these words.
According to his contention, Rademacher forged the document, by
adding the words in question later on. This was not the
spontaneous reply given by the Accused when Superintendent Less put this
document before him for the first time.
Then he did not doubt the correctness of the note and said: "...I
did not myself give the order to kill by shooting, but, as all those
matters, I handled this one in the service channels, and the order by my
superiors was at the time in fact: To kill by shooting." (T/37, p.
2356.) But already on p.
2417 of his Statement, the Accused changes his contention, and in fact
puts forward the same version (in a milder form), as the one he told us,
namely - forgery on the part of Rademacher. The Accused
explained this version at length during his examination-in-chief
(Session 83, Vol. IV, pp.xxxx16-18) and his cross-examination (Session
97, Vol. IV, p. xxxx34 et seq.). The
gist of his contention was that Rademacher carried out the forgery a few
days after 13 September, following differences of opinion within the
Foreign Ministry about the manner of dealing with this matter. This version is
neither based on facts, nor is it logical, as the forgery could have
been discovered immediately, and then (a few days later) the truth would
very easily have been established.
Under the circumstances, it is inconceivable that Rademacher
would have taken such a risk upon himself. Thus, what remains
is the Accused's denial that he ever uttered these or similar words at
all, and this denial we do not accept.
Document T/874 was kept in the files of the German Foreign
Ministry. Prima facie it
appears that the note was made during the usual course of business;
hence its truth can be assumed not only from the formal aspect, but also
as regards its contents; that is to say, that the conversation with the
Accused took place and that the Accused said what was noted.
The Accused did not succeed in reversing this assumption, because
his denials, both in his Statement and in his evidence in Court, lacked
credibility, and we are convinced that the Accused expressed himself as
written in T/874. The Foreign
Ministry informed Belgrade on 5 October 1941 (T/880) that a special
representative of the RSHA would reach Belgrade shortly to settle the
matter. This representative
was to have been the Accused himself (T/881), but it was finally decided
to send two other men in his stead.
One of them was Suhr, who is known to us as a member of the staff
of his Section. He was
accompanied by Rademacher, who submitted the report on the results of
this journey. It transpired that
it was not a matter of 8,000 male Jews,
but only of 4,000, and it was decided that 500 of them were
needed by the German State Police to maintain health services and order
in the Belgrade Ghetto. The
rest "would be shot by the end of this week, thus solving the
problem raised by the Embassy" (T/883). Already in April
1941, a Special Operations Group of the Security Police, headed by a man
by the name of Fuchs, was sent to operate in this country.
In Belgrade, Krauss and Helm were in command of one of the
sub-units of this Group. On
16 May 194l, heads of departments of the RSHA were informed accordingly
(T/887). We have before us
declarations about the murderous activities of this Group (T/893-896).
It set up the Sajmiste concentration camp, where Jews were killed
in gas vans. Some of the
camp prisoners were taken off to the East.
The official Yugoslav report (T/892) also describes the death of
the Jews in the Sajmiste camp by disease, evacuation and gassing.
This report states that of the 47,000 Serbian Jews, there were
only slightly more than 5,000 survivors. The ordinary lines
of command in dealing with the Jews of Serbia did not become quite clear
to us, in contrast to the situation in other countries dealt with in
this chapter. Fuchs, who
commanded the Special Operations Group there, says in his affidavit
(T/894) that it was known to him that "a Standartenfuhrer, named
Eichmann, specially appointed by the Head Office for Reich
Security," used to transmit instructions to them in connection with
the handling of the Jews. There
is, however, no clear evidence that the Accused used to issue or
transmit directives to this Operations Group right from the commencement
of its activities in April 1941 (except for the proposal he put forward
in connection with the 8,000 detainees, about whom we have already
spoken at length.) On the
other hand, it appears from the affidavit of Meisner, Senior Commander
of Police in Serbia from 1942, that a special Department for Jewish
Affairs was attached to one Schefer, Senior Commander of the Security
Police (BdS), who was active in Serbia in Meisner's days, and that this
department received its orders from the RSHA.
It has not been proved that in Serbia there was an Adviser on
Jewish Affairs who belonged directly to the Accused's Section, but it is
to be assumed - and thus we find - that the instructions to the Jewish
Department attached to the BdS in Belgrade were transmitted to them
through the Accused's Section, in accordance with the usual RSHA
routine. 107. The northern
part of Greece was a German military-occupied territory, named
"Salonika-Aegaeis." In
July 1942, the Accused's Section already shows interest in the marking
of Greek Jews (T/955, signed by Suhr).
Wisliceny was sent to Greece in January 1943 "to prepare and
carry out the deportation of the Jews from the Salonika region as
planned within the framework of the Final Solution of the Jewish
Question in Europe" (T/959, dated 25.1.43, a letter from IVB4
signed by Guenther). Actual
operations begin in 1943 with the carrying out of the marking.
Basic "legislative" action is taken by Merten (who
testified in this case for the Defence) in the name of the German
Military Governor (T/960, dated 6.2.43), and Wisliceny publishes
regulations for executive measures (T/961 and T/962).
In accordance with the well-tried method, Merten appoints the
Jewish community as trustee for all Jewish property in March 1943 (Order
No. VII, dated 13.3.43, attached to Merten's second testimony of
7.6.61), and Wisliceny on 15 March 1943 completes the robbery by giving
further instructions (T/965). Already
in February 1943, the Jews of Salonika are concentrated in a ghetto
(report of 26 February 1943 sent through the German Foreign Ministry to
the Accused, T/970), and the expulsion of 56,000 Jews from this area to
the Generalgouvernement area (T/971) began on 15 March 1943 and was
completed at the end of May 1943 (Wisliceny's declaration, T/992, p. 4). Already in March
1943, the Accused also interested himself in the deportation of the Jews
who lived in Italian-occupied territory, especially those in Athens
(T/991), but for the time being without results.
After the coup in Italy, action did begin in Athens as well, but
in the meantime most of the Jews of Athens had succeeded in hiding or
escaping, so that only 1,200 Jews remained there.
But the 1,200 Jews of the Island of Rhodes still fell into the
hands of the murderers in June 1944 (declaration by Lentz, T/999). As a result of the deportation, the Jewish population of Greece decreased from 77,000 to 10,000 (T/953). 108. As far as we
know, the RSHA and the German Foreign Ministry both began to show keen
interest in the Jews of Bulgaria
in November 1942.
A letter, signed by the Accused, dated 17 January 1942, to the
Foreign Ministry (T/928) deserves special mention.
It says: "I
must add once again that sufficient possibilities exist for the
reception of Jews from Bulgaria. I
therefore consider it appropriate to approach the Bulgarian Government
once again, with the aim of transferring all the Jews from Bulgaria to
the Reich now, as part of the process of the general solution of the
European Jewish problem. The
Police Attache in Sophia will take care of the technical implementation
of the deportation." Dannecker is sent
to Sophia in December 1942 as "Assistant to the Police Attache, to
handle Jewish Affairs" (letter from the Accused's Section, signed
by Mueller, dated 10.12.42, T/931).
Dannecker reaches an agreement with Belev, the Bulgarian
Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, on 22 February 1942 for the deportation
of 20,000 Jews "to the Eastern areas of Germany" (T/938), and
15 March 1943 is set as the date for the beginning of the deportation
(T/936, letter signed by Guenther from the Accused's office, dated
9.3.43). On 5 April 1943,
the RSHA receives a report that until then over 4,000 Jews had been
evacuated from Thrace and over 7,000 from Macedonia.
On the other hand, the Bulgarians objected to the evacuation of
Jews from the old part of Bulgaria (T/941), and they themselves
mobilized 6,000 Jews from this area for work in Bulgaria.
The Accused's office, in a letter dated 17 May 1943 (T/942,
signed by Guenther), objects to this change of policy on the part of the
Bulgarian Government and demands intervention by the German Foreign
Ministry to ensure the renewal of deportations to the East; but later,
the Bulgarian authorities are content with transferring the Jews from
Sophia to the provinces (report dated 7.6.43, T/943).
We know of no further deportations across the borders of
Bulgaria. 109. In Italy,
the position of the Jews in the national economy was impaired under the
Fascist regime, but until the Badoglio coup in September 1943, they were
not physically hurt (Mrs. Campagnano's evidence, Session 36, Vol.
II, p. 656). During
this period, the efforts of the RSHA and the Accused's Section were
chiefly directed to removing obstacles put in their way by the Italians
in the territories occupied by the latter, namely Southern France,
Dalmatia, and Southern Greece. The road towards
execution of the Final Solution against the Jews of Italy was cleared in
September 1943, when the Germans established their domination over the
greater part of Italy. SS
men began carrying out arrests (Mrs. Campagnano's evidence, supra, pp.
656, 657). The detainees
were concentrated in camps in Northern Italy and were deported across
the Italian border (Vitale's declaration, T/633). An order was given
by Himmler in October 1943 to arrest the 8,000 Jews of Rome and transfer
them to Northern Italy for extermination (T/615).
This task was given to the witness for the Defence, Kappler, who
headed the local unit of the Security Police and the SD, and the
Accused's assistant, Dannecker, who had already shown particular energy
in other countries, was sent to Rome to assist him.
Arrests were carried out on 17 October 1943, but the results
disappointed the Germans, for only 1,259 Jews were caught, and after the
release of the children of mixed marriages and foreign nationals, only
1,007 remained for deportation. Further
arrests followed (evidence of Kappler, p. 38), and the detainees were
sent to Northern Italy. Kappler contends in
his testimony, given in this trial, that not he, but Dannecker alone,
carried out the operation in Rome.
He does not deny the truth of the report on the action, signed by
himself, but claims that he did not draft it (supra, p. 33).
We do not need to decide exactly which part was played by each of
these two men. It is clear
to us that both Kappler and Dannecker took part in the action in Rome on
17 October 1943, that both of them acted in accordance with RSHA
directives, and that Dannecker received his instructions from the
Accused's Section. After Mussolini's
release, the Italian Government, which was under Hitler's orders,
decided to concentrate all the Jews in Italian concentration camps. In
all, 7,500 Jews were deported from Italy, and only just above 600 of
them returned (Vitale's declaration, T/633). 110. Romania Dr. Loewenstein
Lavi gave evidence about mass extermination actions taken against the
Jews of Romania in the year 1941 (Session 48, Vol. 11, p. 870): "During
the conquest of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, an almost complete
extermination took place... from the beginning of June 1941 to September
1941, 160,000 were killed in Bessarabia.
Then this was followed by a second wave in Bukovina...the
survivors were transported to Transnistria." The RSHA Operation
Group D was active in this area. On
9 July 1941, one of the Operation Units belonging to this Group reports
from Czernowitz that 100 "Jewish Communists" were killed
(T/1000). The Operation Group sends information in August 1941 about
the killing of 3,106 more Jews in Czernowitz and the Dniester area
(T/319, p. 11). Most of those
deported to Transnistria were also exterminated, so that in this period,
until mid-1942, between 250,000-300,000 Jews lost their lives (pp. 872
and 876 of Dr. Loewenstein's evidence).
On 18 June 1942, the Romanian Central Office of Statistics
estimates that 290,000 Jews remained in Romania (excluding Transnistria)
(T/1018). An agreement was
concluded between the Germans and the Romanians on 30 August 1941 in
regard to the administration of the area between the Dniester and Bug
rivers (Transnistria) and the area between the Bug and the Dnieper
rivers (T/1002). With regard to the Jews, it is stated: "Deportation
of Jews from Transnistria: Their deportation across the Bug is not
possible at the moment. For
this reason, they should be concentrated in concentration camps and put
to work until it is possible to move them to the East after the
[military] operations are completed." Nonetheless, the
Romanians tried to send Jews who were concentrated in Transnistria
across the Bug river into German-occupied territory.
A letter sent by the Accused's office, signed by him on 14 April
1941 (T/1013), shows that the RSHA and the German Ministry for Eastern
Occupied Territories object to this attempt.
In his letter the Accused says inter alia:
The Accused goes
into security and economic reasons in detail and continues: "Moreover,
this disorderly and premature expulsion of Romanian Jews to occupied
areas in the East seriously endangers the evacuation of German Jews,
which is already in full swing." In conclusion, he
states that if the Romanians continue the deportations, "I
reserve the right to bring the Security Police into action." The import of these
last words becomes clear from a handwritten note on document T/1014,
that 28,000 Jews had been exterminated, and on p. 3074 of his Statement
T/37 the Accused says: "This
is clear. If these Jews
from Romania were marched here illegally now...then the appropriate
authorities of the Eastern Administration made use of his (Himmler's)
orders and dealt with the matter in their own way through their
units." "Q.
By exterminating them? "A.
Yes." The Romanian
gendarmerie reports from March to June 1943 (T/1010-1012) should also be
mentioned in this connection in regard to the killing of Jews by the SS
police. Richter, one of the
Accused's men, acts against the Jews in other parts of Romania as an
Adviser for Jewish Affairs attached to Ambassador Killinger.
Two conversations take place on 12 December 1941 and on 23
January 1942 between him and Mihai Antonescu, the Romanian Deputy Prime
Minister (T/1004, T/1008). The
introduction of anti-Jewish legislation and the prohibition of the
emigration of Jews from Romania were the subjects discussed at these
talks. The evacuation of
the Jews from Romania is mentioned for the first time in a letter from
the Accused's office, signed by Mueller, on 26 July 1942 (T/1021).
The evacuation was to begin on 10 September 1942, and the plan
was to deport them to the Lublin region, "where
those who are fit will be put to work, while the rest is to undergo the
special treatment" (T/1023). In a memorandum by
the German Foreign Ministry, dated 17 August 1942, it is stated
(T/1027): "According
to a request made by Marshal Antonescu, authority was given by the
Deputy Prime Minister, Mihai Antonescu, for the evacuation of Jews from
Romania to be carried out by German units..." The German Foreign
Ministry informs the Accused on 17 September 1942 that the German
Embassy contacted the Romanian Government, expressing the opinion that
preparatory negotiations were over, and demanding that the Romanian
Government state its final attitude (T/1032).
Talks were held between the RSHA representative and the
representative of the German Railways on 26 and 28 September 1942, in
connection with the transport of 200,000 Jews from Romania in the
direction of Lvov - the final destination was to be Belzec (T/1284).
A change occurred, however, in October 1942.
A further conversation took place between Mihai Antonescu and
Richter on 22 October, in which it became clear to Richter that Marshal
Antonescu had rejected the evacuation (T/1039). The Accused's
Section is active during the following months, with a view to preventing
the immigration of Jews from Romania to Palestine (see, for example,
T/1048, dated 3.3.42, signed by the Accused; T/1049, dated 10.3.43,
signed by Guenther; and T/1054, dated 3.5.43, signed by the Accused).
But Guenther, the Accused's deputy, on 22 May 1943 once again
requests the Foreign Ministry to suggest to the Romanian Government the
evacuation of the Jews of Transnistria to the East (T/1057).
However, Marshal Antonescu does not yield to German pressure, and
there were no more deportations from Romanian territory.
The Accused, his Section and his men, and also the German Foreign
Ministry had therefore, of necessity, to limit their future activities
to the prevention of emigration from Romania. Dr. Safran, the
former Chief Rabbi of Romania, in his declaration (T/1072) describes how
the assistance of the churches, the Red Cross and neutral countries was
mobilized, in order to bring about the change in Marshal Antonescu's
attitude. This is how about half of Romanian Jewry was saved from
extermination at the hands of the Germans. 111. The last act
in the tragedy of European Jewry under the Hitler regime is the
catastrophe which befell Hungarian Jewry.
This chapter calls for a special place in the totality of events.
This large Jewish community, which until then lived comparatively
intact in the ocean of destruction which surrounded it, felt the heavy
hand of fate which erased most of its members suddenly from the Book of
Life within a few weeks. The
Hungarian chapter is different from those which preceded it in other
countries, also so far as the Accused's activities are concerned, as
will be explained presently. At the beginning of
the Second World War, Hungarian Jewry numbered 480,000 souls, and
increased during the war years to 800,000, due to the annexation of
additional areas to Hungary. The
official policy of the Hungarian Government was anti-Semitic even before
the War broke out, and it became intensified especially after Hungary
entered the War on the side of Germany in 1941.
Racial legislation on the Nuremberg pattern was introduced, as
well as laws aimed at ousting Jews from the economic life of the
country. In the summer of
1941, a mass deportation of stateless Jews from Hungary to Galicia was
carried out, and 12,000 of them were killed by the Germans at
Kamenets-Podolski. From
1940, male Jews were mobilized to work for the Hungarian army, and
60,000-80,000 Jews were sent to work in the German-occupied areas in
Galicia and the Ukraine in the years 1941-1942.
Of these, some 45,000-50,000 died (evidence of Pinhas Freudiger,
Session 51, Vol. III, pp. 932), but in spite of this, the storm had not
yet hit Hungary itself, and this land appeared to be a haven of safety
for the few refugees, survivors of the Holocaust, who reached Hungary
from Slovakia and Poland. As
the Red Army approached the gates of Hungary in March 1944 through the
Carpathian Mountains, Hitler decided to establish his domination in
Hungary. He summoned the
Regent, Horthy, and by the use of threats extorted from him an agreement
to replace the Kalai government, which was inclined to desert the Axis,
by another government which would do the Germans' bidding.
Hungary was seized by the German army on 19 March 1944, and the
SS units appeared on the scene together with the army.
Hungarian sovereignty became a "farce" from that day,
as Horthy said in his evidence at Nuremberg (T/1246), and the Germans
became masters of the state. The
hour had arrived for which the Germans had waited, to implement the
Final Solution also against the Jews of Hungary.
Veesenmayer, whom Hitler later appointed Reich Plenipotentiary in
Hungary, writes, as far back as 10 December 1943, in a report to the
German Foreign Ministry: "It
appears for a variety of reasons that the order of the day is to get a
firm hold on the Jewish problem (ein gruendliches Anpacken).
The liquidation of this problem is a prerequisite for involving
Hungary in the war conducted by the Reich for its defence and
existence" (T/1144, p. 28). From a letter,
T/1136, dated 25 September 1942, to the German Foreign Ministry, in
reply to a proposal to deal separately with the Jews who escaped to
Hungary, we learn about the Accused's own attitude.
He objects to this proposal because "experience
shows that the preparation and implementation of partial actions require
the same effort as comprehensive plans geared to cover, as far as
possible, all the Jews of that country.
Therefore, I do not regard it appropriate to set in motion the
whole machinery of evacuation for the sake of resettlement (Aussiedlung)
of those Jews who escaped at the time to Hungary, and afterwards,
without any progress in the Solution of the Jewish Question in Hungary,
the action will be held up again. For
these reasons, I believe that it is preferable to defer this action
until Hungary is ready to include the Hungarian Jews also within the
framework of these measures." This
"strategic" approach to the matter, shown by the Accused, was
fully justified by later events. The
turn of Hungarian Jewry came after the Final Solution had been carried
out almost to the end in the other countries in which the Accused and
his men had been active. Now
they were free to concentrate on the implementation of the task which
still lay before them - the extermination of Hungarian Jewry.
So the Accused left his Berlin office and moved to the scene of
action himself, with most of his assistants, and the "Eichmann
Special Operations Unit" set up its headquarters in Budapest.
There he appeared at the head of the Security Police and Order
Police column, which had been formed a few days earlier in the
Mauthausen camp, and entered Hungary on 19 March 1944, immediately after
Horthy's surrender. The
Accused brought with him Himmler's order for the expulsion of all the
Jews from Hungary, after combing the country from East to West, and
their deportation to Auschwitz (Session 103, Vol. IV, p.xxxx3).
The Accused did his utmost to carry out the order, and if in the
end about a third of the Jews of Hungary, and in particular the Jews of
Budapest, were saved, that was in spite of his obstinate efforts to
complete the operation to the very last Jew. He found loyal
collaborators in Hungary, who were with him heart and soul: Endre, the
State Secretary in the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, a fanatical
anti-Semite, was his chief collaborator, and with him Baky and Ferenczy
of the Hungarian gendarmerie. A
personal friendship also developed between Endre and the Accused. 112. The first week
after the German entry into Hungary saw the implementation of
anti-Jewish laws which were published in quick succession, and aimed, on
the German model, at ousting the Jews from economic life, robbing them of their
property, confiscating their homes, limiting their freedom, and rounding
them up in readiness for deportation.
The Jews in the provinces were thrown into ghettos from 16 April
1944, and in mid-May deportations to Auschwitz began.
They continued at a feverish pace until 9 July 1944.
During this period of less than two months, 434,351 Jews were
deported in 147 trains of sealed freight cars, about 3,000 men, women
and children to each train, and the average was two to three trains
daily. Ferenczy's report on
9 July 1944, which gives this total (T/1166) provides the information
that: "The
Jewish community has now been evacuated from all regions of the country,
except from the capital Budapest. For
the time being, only labour service men of the Honved (Hungarian armed
forces) are in the country." The Auschwitz gas
chambers were working to full capacity, and could hardly cope with the
pace of the transports (T/37, p. 1321). From the minutes of
a meeting which took place in Munkacs between representatives of the
Hungarian gendarmerie and the German Gestapo, we learn about the
transport conditions. The
Hungarian officer remarks: "If
necessary, one hundred people can be put into a single freight car.
They can be packed like salt herrings, for the Germans need
strong people. Those who
cannot hold out will fall. Fashionable
ladies are not needed there in Germany." Thus, Veesenmeyer
reports on 25 May 1944 on "the increased exploitation of the
railway waggons" (staerkere Belegung der Waggons), enabling a much
quicker completion of the programme of evacuation from Carpatho-Russia
(T/1193). Mr. Ze'ev Sapir
gave evidence about the deportation of Jews from Munkacs.
His community, 103 souls, were loaded into one freight car
without food and without water for the whole three-day journey to
Auschwitz (Session 53, Vol. III, pp. 971-972). When the late Dr.
Kasztner and the witness Hansi Brand came to the Accused to tell him
that a hundred people had been loaded into one freight car, this is how
the Accused reacted: "He told us we were not to worry, because this only concerned Jews from Carpatho-Russia, whose families were blessed with many children. These children, therefore, did not need so much air and so much room, and nothing would happen to them." (Session 58, Vol. III, p. 1048.) |
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