Judgment in the Trial of Adolf Eichmann 

[Part 15]

Living Conditions in the Camps

129. We heard evidence about the reign of terror in Auschwitz in the shadow of the smoke going up from the crematoria, and in the many camps connected with Auschwitz.  There was evidence, similar in content, about conditions in the Majdanek camp in the East and in the many labour and concentration camps scattered throughout eastern Europe.  The system was uniform, with local variations, according to the sadistic inventiveness of the commanders and of the guards, who had the lives of the Jews at their mercy.  We shall quote witnesses on this subject, too, who suffered this regime with their own bodies.  Here, too, the items we picked at random from the enormous amount of evidence brought before us will suffice to illustrate that the aim of this entire regime was to exterminate the Jew by making him work under inhuman conditions until the last drop of strength had been squeezed out of him.  This applied also to the few who were kept alive in the extermination camps, to be employed for a time in the camp, until they, too, went the way of their exterminated brethren. 

 We heard the following about the Majdanek camp from Yisrael Gutman (Session 63, Vol. III, p. 1154): 

"There stood very long huts, stables for horses, and this was where we were housed... There was a notice on the hut that it could hold fifty-two horses...we were about eight hundred people in this hut...the bunks we slept on were in three tiers.  I imagine that the width of such a bunk was about 80 centimetres, perhaps 60... They made two people lied down in one bunk of this kind... Our daily work schedule was as follows: They made us get up at 4.30 for the morning roll- call... We carried stones from one place to another... The stones had to be placed in the folds of our clothes, and they used to check whether we had taken enough stones.  The work had to be done at the double... They gave us wooden clogs for our feet - plain pieces of wood which had a strap of cloth one and a half or maybe one centimetre wide and that was a valued possession.  And, on one of the early nights, one of these clogs was stolen from me, and at these roll-calls,  at 4.30 in the morning - I had to stand with one foot bare - and the weather was extremely cold at the time.  Some days later, I ran a high temperature." 

Dr. Aharon Beilin describes the living conditions in the Auschwitz camp: 

"It was terribly overcrowded, sixteen of us lay on a ledge which was intended, more or less, for six people.  We would only lie on our side, for if one of us wanted to turn over, everyone had to turn over.  If someone got down during the night in order to relieve himself, he could not come back and had to lie down on the concrete floor of the block...it was too crowded, and he would annoy all the others because he would be disturbing their sleep.  I remember a case where...a man got down and froze.  This was during the winter and the block was not heated.  The crowded condition also had an advantage - we kept each other warm.  That man lay the whole night on the concrete floor - he had diarrhoea.  I must point out that seventy per cent of the people in this block died in the course of these four weeks." (Session 69, Vol. III, p. 1256). 

Nor did the persecutors spare the women.  Judge Beisky gives evidence about the Plaszow camp in the suburbs of Cracow (Session 21, Vol. I, p. 353-354):                 

  "I don't know what the significance of a labour camp is.  A labour camp is a different concept.  For us, it was an extermination camp... There was work within the camp which was done solely by women and this was the task of dragging stones from the quarry which was below that new area being prepared for building a road.  They used to load stones on to eight to ten waggons on the short railway tracks.  At the end of the train, there were long ropes and along the ropes on both sides, women  of the camp were harnessed. Nd in this way they would walk up a fairly steep road from the quarry below,  for a distance of two and a half kilometres, up the hill, under all weather conditions for twelve hours.  The most horrible thing was that the women were dressed like us, with wooden shoes which used to slip in the snow and the mud.  And in this way one could visualize the picture which I am unable to describe - and I do not know whether others would be able to describe  - how women walked for a whole night, stumbling and pulling these waggons."

And this is what Yitzhak Zuckerman said about forced labour of Jews from Warsaw in the Kampinos camp (Session 25,  Vol. I, p. 409): 

"We were taken before dawn - a community of several hundred Jews, a weakened community...men who had not had enough to eat for a long time...  When we arrived, we had to work on diverting rivers...and draining swamps.  So we used to work for ten to twelve hours, standing in the water almost up to our necks.  Afterwards we were taken back and had to sleep in the same clothes.  It was Spring, cold, very cold.  The same thing happened the next morning - the food was meagre -  a beverage they called coffee, 15 or 20 deka of bread, and I need hardly add that, after two years of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, these Jews who had come to work populated the Kampinos cemetery already in the first few weeks - they died." 

Witnesses described cruel corporal punishments - the "Stehbunker" (standing cell), a narrow cell, where a man could not turn around nor move his hands.  People were kept standing there for ten to twelve hours and more, and when they emerged, tortured and dazed, they had to go back to work immediately.  They related how a man was hanged in the presence of his comrades during roll-call, because of some potatoes he had taken to still his hunger.  They told of endless tortures, such as marksmanship competitions among SS men, using live men as targets.  Dov Freiberg says in evidence (Session 64, Vol. III, p. 1171-1172 ): 

"I can talk about one of the many days that passed.  We were then working in the sorting camp [in Sobibor].  We began sorting out the piles that had been heaped up in the course of time.  We finished taking out personal belongings from one of the sheds.  Paul was then our commander.  It so happened that, between the rafters and the roof, a torn umbrella had been left behind.  Paul sent one of our boys to climb up and bring the umbrella down.  It was seven to eight metres high - these were large sheds. The lad climbed up though the rafters, moving along on his hands.  He was not agile enough, fell down and broke his limbs.  For falling down, he received twenty-five strokes of the whip and Beri [Paul's dog] dealt with him.  This appealed to Paul, and he went and called other Germans.  I remember Oberscharfuehrer Michel, Schteufel.  He called out to them: `I have discovered parachutists amongst the Jews.  Do you want to see?'  They burst out laughing, and he began sending people up, one after the other, to go on to the rafters.  I went over it twice - I was fairly agile; and whoever fell from fear...fell to the ground.  When they fell to the ground, they were given murderous blows, and the dog bit them incessantly... After that someone invented something else... When the personal effects were piled up, there were a lot of mice.  The order was given: `Five men were to go outside, the others were to catch the mice. Everyone had to catch two mice; whoever failed to do so would be put to death'...  They tied up the bottoms of the trousers of five men and we had to fill them with mice.  The men were ordered to stand at attention. They could not stand that.  They wriggled this way and that, and were given murderous blows.  The Germans roared with laughter."  

Let these examples suffice.  Of course, more could be added from the stories of woe and suffering to which we listened, in order to prove that the reign of terror in the camps was bound to break a man's spirit, as well as his mental and physical powers of resistance. 

130. We have listened to much evidence on living conditions in the ghettos in the East. From Lodz to Vilna, Kovno, Bialystok, Riga in the north, and Cracow, Przemysl, Kolomea and Lvov in the south, to the largest of them all, the Warsaw Ghetto, into which some half a million Jews were crammed. 

The witness Zivia Lubetkin gave a description of the life of the Jews in this ghetto, which can apply to the other ghettos as well.  She spoke of the economic decrees introduced by the Germans already during the first period, when they entered the city, and of later decrees affecting cultural and social life, including the prohibition of the opening of schools and libraries.  She told of how synagogue services were forbidden and public bodies disbanded; and continues (Session 25, Vol. I, pp. 398-399): 

"I have already said previously that, in fact, we became the objects of anarchy.  And if there had only been these laws and these restrictions, which, as we saw, were intended to depress us, degrade us, to bring us to the ignominy of starvation, we thought that, nevertheless, in spite of this, the Jews would somehow have been capable of circumventing the restrictions and carrying on with their lives.  But life did not turn out this way, since, as I have already said, we had been placed beyond the law... I recall a day when I went out in the morning to attend to certain matters, and the streets were full of Jews hastening to their work, to seek a source of livelihood. Suddenly, a convoy of Germans passed by in a hurry, and for no reason at all began shooting in all directions, without distinction, and we were left lying prone on that day, at that hour, as I saw it, scores of people, women and children and men, without knowing for what or why.   When this happened day after day, we realized that this was a way of frightening us, of terrorizing us, so that we should be afraid. And indeed, the Jews feared they would pay with their lives.  

"The second method, also beyond the scope of any law, was the kidnapping for forced labour.  A person would leave his house in the morning, and would never know when he would return, and if he would return.  Various formations of Germans were able to come in during the day, in the morning, or towards evening, to close a street, and with screams of such a nature, that it would be difficult today to describe them as actually being human voices, they would first of all collect people by shooting, and without regard of age or sex, seize people and take them off to work.  Some of them, on their return, related that they had never engaged in any work... Again it was clear that this was a method of torture, of terror, of making our lives worthless." 

The witness also gave evidence about the terrible sanitary conditions resulting from tremendous congestion, the typhus epidemic which broke out, and the hunger which struck down hundreds of victims daily. 

Such were the conditions of Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto until the large "actions" which began in July 1942, when Jews were rounded up en masse and deported to Treblinka for extermination. 

Dr. Meir Mark Dworzecki and Dr. Aharon Peretz, in their evidence, spoke about medical aspects of Jewish life in the ghetto.  The rations given to the Jews had a value of 170-200 calories per day, whereas a person who is not working needs 2,300 calories and a working man needs 3,000-5,000 calories.  Dr. Dworzecki carried out research on this subject and found that, with these rations, all inhabitants of the Vilna Ghetto would starve to death within a month or two.  This did not happen, because the ghetto residents succeeded in smuggling food into the ghetto, sufficient to provide 800-1,000 calories per soul per day.  He further calculated that, even with the aid of smuggled food, the inmates of the Warsaw Ghetto would have died of starvation to the very last man within eight years.  A passage from the diary of Hans Frank is worth mentioning here (T/253, p. 44).  It relates to a meeting of the heads of the Generalgouvernement in Cracow on 24 August 1942, when the subject on the agenda was "The absorption and feeding plan for the Generalgouvernement."  The directive of the Main Department for Nutrition and Agriculture stated there that,                          

  "The supply of necessities, previously geared to an estimated Jewish population of one million, now concerns only an estimated number of 300,000 Jews still working for the German cause as artisans or in other occupations...the remaining Jews, who number 1.2 million, will not receive any more means of sustenance ..."

Dr. Dworzecki also gave evidence about the diseases and epidemics raging in the ghettos, owing to poor hygienic conditions and malnutrition, scurvy, lice, typhus, tuberculosis and the swelling of the body in the last stages of starvation, as well as diarrhoea, which took toll of tens of thousands of victims in the ghettos and the concentration camps. 

We heard evidence about children in the ghetto, about the dashing of a child's head against the pavement before his mother's eyes (evidence of Noah Zabludowicz, Session 21, Vol. I, pp. 335); about children torn from their mothers' arms and taken off for extermination; about the children in Lodz who were thrown from hospital balconies into trucks which came to round up the sick and the children, in order to deport them for extermination (evidence of Henryk Ross, Session 23, Vol. I, p. 380); about mass kidnapping of children in the "Children's Action" (evidence of Peretz, Session 28, Vol. I, p. 479); and about whole orphanages evacuated from Warsaw, and the children and their teachers taken to Treblinka (the evidence of Dr. Adolf Berman, Session 26, Vol. I, p. 426-427). 

131. The extermination of the Jews was connected everywhere with the plunder of their property, down to their clothes and personal belongings which they brought with them on their way to extermination, and including all their other possessions.  And finally, the murderers did not stop short of violating the corpses by removing the gold teeth from the victims' mouths. 

Enormous quantities of clothing and personal belongings of the victims were accumulated in Auschwitz in stores known as "Canada."  The witness Gedalia Ben-Zvi, who worked in those stores, testified that twenty railway trucks, full of such articles, were sent every week from Auschwitz to Germany.  This continued during his entire stay there of about one year (Session 71, Vol. III, pp. xxxx-xxxx). 

The seventh count of the indictment lists the objects which were found in six "Canada" stores, found unburnt when the camp was liberated: 348,820 men's suits, 836,255 women's suits, and 38,000 pairs of men's shoes.  These figures were taken from the official bulletin of the Polish Government Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes (T/204, p. 44 in the English translation), which is a reliable description.  And thus it was in the other extermination camps.  Kalman Teigman, who worked on the sorting of the belongings of those killed in Treblinka, stated in evidence (Session 66, Vol. III, p. 1207): 

"[There was] an enormous quantity.  There were actually heaps outside on the ground, several storeys high...clothes, personal possessions, children's toys, everything... medicines and instruments, everything." 

Exhibit T/1385 contains detailed directions about how to use the property plundered in the district of Lublin and in Auschwitz, from jewellery to spectacles, fountain pens, children's clothes and prams - nothing was forgotten.  The document says that in future all these were to be referred to as "the property of thieves, receivers of stolen property and hoarders." 

In exhibit T/1387, a letter addressed to Himmler by the Economic-Administrative Head Office, the destination of each kind of article is stated.  Money, jewellery, gold teeth, etc. are to go to the Reichsbank, to the account of the Economic-Administrative Head Office; articles of clothing are to be sold to public institutions in Germany; watches to SS men and submarine crews, etc. (see also T/1386, T/1387). Exhibit T/1389 is the final report by Globocnik, Commander of the SS and the Police in the Lublin area, dated 18 January 1944, on "the economic aspect of Reinhard Operation."  This was the name given to the extermination of Polish Jewry in the camps of the Lublin area.  We shall quote from this report only the final figures for textiles, plundered from the victims: 1901 railway trucks of clothing, underwear, bed feathers and rags, valued at 26 million marks; more goods of the same kind in stores were valued at 20 million marks. Industrial property (machines, raw materials, etc.) was handed over to an institution called OSTI (Ostindustrie - Industries of the East), set up by the SS for the management and exploitation of this booty (see also the declaration by Pohl, Chief of the Economic-Administrative Head Office - T/1384).

The Activities of the Accused in the East 

132. We shall now deal with the question whether, and to what extent, it has been proved that the Accused was active in connection with all those crimes committed by the Germans in eastern Europe.  Certainly, such activity has been proved in regard to victims from the other countries in Europe who had been rounded up there and deported to the East by the Accused and his subordinates, to be killed there immediately or sometime later - for instance, as regards the Stettin Jews who were taken to the vicinity of Lublin and there were mixed with the local population, later to meet the same fate as their brethren.   Certainly the Accused's activities were amongst the causes of their death and their suffering before their death.  The same applies to the Jews sent by the Accused from the Reich to the Lodz Ghetto, to Nebe and to Rasch, to Riga, Minsk, etc., and above all, to the masses of Jews he sent to Auschwitz and to extermination camps in the Generalgouvernement area. 

But what about the crimes perpetrated against the Jews of the East, in their home towns - their subjection to inhuman living conditions in camps and in ghettos, the plunder of their property, and their murder? 

To give a precise answer to this question, attention must be paid to the way the Germans divided the eastern territories which fell into their hands during the War years.  They annexed to the Reich vast areas of western and northern Poland; the areas previously known as the Polish Corridor, namely western Prussia, the Poznan district and additional parts of western Poland, including Lodz (Litzmannstadt), which were known as the Warthe district (Warthegau); and all the area which was Upper Silesia before World War I.  But, in addition, they also annexed nearby stretches in western Poland, so that Auschwitz itself came within the Reich; and parts of Poland to the north, bordering on East Prussia and including Zichenau (Ciechanow) and Bialystok and district.  In what was left of Poland up to the demarcation line with Soviet Russia in the East, the Generalgouvernement district was set up, under the rule of Hans Frank, who was given extensive administrative autonomy.  After additional conquests, which came with the outbreak of the war with Russia, eastern Galicia and Lvov were annexed to the Generalgouvernement area.  As for the remaining territories conquered in the East, to the extent that they were transferred from military to civilian rule, Rosenberg was appointed as Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories.  His subordinates were Lohse in the north, in charge of the Reich Ostland Administration (principally in the Baltic countries), and Koch in the south, in charge of the Reich Ukrainian Administration. 

133. As to the Warthe [Warthegau] district, the Accused claims that there special orders were given for the Solution of the Jewish Question, and that the authorities in that region, headed by the Reich Governor, Greiser, dealt with the matter independently, without the participation of the Accused's Section, IVB4. 

We do not accept this argument.  It is possible that Greiser showed activity and enthusiasm of his own in bringing about the Final Solution, but one cannot conclude from this that the Warthe district was outside the jurisdiction of the Accused's Section in the RSHA.  We have already spoken about deportations during the year 1939-1940 from the areas annexed to the Reich in the East and including the Warthe district, and have shown that the Accused, through his Section IVB4, directed these deportations by virtue of his central authority. 

The Accused's authority in the Warthe district is confirmed by him personally in his Statement to Superintendent Less (T/37, p. 3083): 

"Q. If so, do I understand you correctly that the district offices of the State Police (Stapoleitstellen) in the Warthe area were also subordinate to the RSHA? 

"A. Yes, yes, this is self-understood. 

"Q. And as far as Jewish matters were concerned, were these also subject to the authority of your Section? 

"A. This is quite clear, yes." 

As to the Lodz Ghetto - the second largest of all the ghettos, also situated in the Warthe district - we have mentioned Kaltenbrunner's cable dated 30 June 1943 (from the files of the Duesseldorf Gestapo).  He there gives notice of a visit to be paid by the Accused to the Lodz Ghetto in connection with the deportation of Jews from there.  Then, at a later stage, it seems at the beginning of 1944, the Accused's name appears as Kaltenbrunner's representative at talks about liquidating the Lodz Ghetto and turning it into a concentration camp, to be handed over to the Economic-Administrative Head Office (T/247).  In another document (T/248) also, we read that the Accused took part in the preparation of a report on economic enterprises in the Lodz Ghetto, together with Horn, the manager of OSTI.  From these documents, we learn that the Accused held sway over the affairs of the Lodz Ghetto, since he was the person handling Jewish affairs on behalf of the RSHA. 

134. As to other areas annexed to the Reich in the East , the Accused himself admits that his powers there were not different from those in the Old Reich.  He confirms the contents of the statement made by Friedel (T/293, pp. 16, 21), the man in charge of the ghetto in Bialystok, that the evacuation of the Jews from the Bialystok Ghetto to Treblinka in February 1943 was carried out by Guenther, the Accused's permanent deputy.  This is what he says on the subject (Session 100, Vol. IV, p.xxxx9): 

"Bialystok was within the Reich territory, that is the territories in the East annexed to the Reich.  As far as I know, the order for deportation in regard to all those Eastern Occupied Territories were given by Himmler, and Section IVB4 had to deal with and prepare the action." 

(Deportations carried out by Guenther are also mentioned by the witness Karasik, Session 28, Vol. I, p. 468-473).  The deportation of 30,000 Jews from Bialystok is also mentioned in Mueller's cable of 16 December 1942, bearing the reference number of the Accused's Section (T/292). 

Similarly, in relation to Ciechanow: The Accused transmits to the local Gestapo station Himmler's order for the execution by hanging of seven Jews "in the presence of members of their race."  The report on the carrying out of these hangings is to be sent to the Accused's Section (T/200; see also T/201). 

The Accused's Activities in the Generalgouvernement Area 

135. Were the Accused and his Section active against the Jewish inhabitants of the Generalgouvernement, and to what extent?  We do not include in this question the actual acts of extermination in the camps in the East, for these we shall discuss separately later.  The Accused alleges that within the Generalgouvernement matters were run according to special orders from Himmler, of which he, the Accused, had no knowledge.  This is not an easy question, for, on the one hand, many special factors are connected with it - factors which did not exist in other countries - whilst, on the other hand, the evidence brought before us in connection with the Generalgouvernement area and the measures adopted against the millions of Jews who lived there at the time of the Germans' entry into the area is rather scanty.  Amongst the factors mentioned, the one to be stressed particularly is the very existence of autonomous rule in that area, with a government of its own, headed by Frank.  This in itself was an unfailing source of friction between Frank, who jealously guarded his prerogatives as all-powerful ruler in the area entrusted to him, and the Reich authorities, who strove to centralize power in their own hands.  This competition was especially noticeable between Frank and Himmler and his representative in the Generalgouvernement area, Krueger, Senior commander of the SS and the Police, who served at the same time also as State Secretary for Security Affairs in the Frank government. 

In Frank's diary (T/253), we read his statement to his government on 16 December 1941: 

"...with regard to the course of action against the Jews, we act within the general framework of the Reich..." (p. 22) 

but on the other hand, on 21 September 1942, he still emphasized: 

"...all the main departments, having the interest of the Reich at heart, must pay attention to the fact that the sole responsibility for what is happening in this area, in the land of the Generalgouvernement, has not been denied to us by a single person to date...to my regret, I notice here and there perhaps a cautious trend in another direction.  They think that now perhaps it is possible, gradually, to relax the complete and close links which exist with the Generalgouvernement, by a closer relationship with central authorities in the Reich... May I therefore remind you, Messrs. Directors of the main departments, as well as the gentlemen from the State Secretariat for Security Matters again and again, that in the unitary and complete administration of this area there has not been the slightest change." (p. 27) 

At another meeting, on 25 January 1943, he protests strongly at the fact that Krueger executed Himmler's order without informing him (Frank).  He adds that this is a typcial example of the way police actions are executed in accordance with the Reichsfuehrer's order, "about which I have had no knowledge, in contradiction to the Fuehrer's order, and to which I have not given my consent" (p. 31).  Yet, Frank explains that the responsibility for the extermination of the Jews does not lie with the government of the Generalgouvernement area, since "the order to exterminate the Jews came from higher authorities" (p. 29). 

Perhaps, in order to overcome Frank's isolationist aspirations, it was necessary for Himmler from time to time to exert his authority by issuing orders for police actions against Jews directly to his representative Krueger, and not via Heydrich and the RSHA.  Krueger, for his part, would act through the police and SS commanders, such as Globocnik in the Lublin district and Katzmann in Galicia, neither of whom belonged to the RSHA establishment.  An important fact pointing in this direction is that the final report of 30 June 1943 on "The Solution of the Jewish Question in Galicia," which states that 434,329 Jews had been exterminated (T/215), came from Katzmann and was submitted by him to Krueger.  This proves that these actions were carried out in accordance with orders transmitted in the line of command from Himmler to Krueger to Katzmann, and we have no evidence of RSHA participation through a line of command from Himmler to Heydrich (Eichmann) to the BdS, Cracow.  As against this, it should be said that, at any rate as from the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich's general authority in connection with the Final Solution was recognized, without territorial limitations.  The representative of the Generalgouvernement, State Secretary Buehler, who participated in the conference, also fully admitted this authority when saying that: 

"The centralizing authority for the Solution of the Jewish Question in the Generalgouvernement area lies in the hands of the Head of the Security Police and the SD, and his actions are supported by the Generalgouvernement authorities."  (T/185, p. 15) 

Buehler was invited to the Wannsee Conference, in order to clarify this very question (see T/182), and as already stated, Heydrich won the day, when the representative of "the opponent" surrendered without a fight and admitted his authority.

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