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Article
6 (c) of the Charter. As a result, "murder,
extermination, enslavement, deportation, and
other inhumane acts" and "persecutions
on political, racial, or religious grounds"
in connection with this occupation constitute a
Crime against Humanity under that Article.
As
Gauleiter of Vienna, Von Schirach came under the
Sauckel decree, dated 6 April 1942, making the
Gauleiters Sauckel's plenipotentiaries for
manpower with authority to supervise the
utilization and treatment of manpower within
their Gaue. Sauckel's directives provided that
the forced laborers were to be fed, sheltered,
and treated so as to exploit them to the highest
possible degree at the lowest possible expense.
When Von Schirach became Gauleiter of
Vienna the deportation of the Jews had already
been begun, and only 60,000 out of Vienna's
original 190,000 Jews remained. On 2 October
1940 he attended a conference at Hitler's office
and told Frank that he had 50,000 Jews in Vienna
which the General Government would have to take
over from him. On 3 December 1940 Von Schirach
received a letter from Lammers stating that
after the receipt of the reports made by Von
Schirach, Hitler had decided to deport the
60,000 Jews still remaining in Vienna to the
General Government because of the housing
shortage in Vienna. The deportation of the Jews
from Vienna was then begun and continued until
the early fall of 1942. On 15 September 1942 Von
Schirach made a speech in which he defended his
action in having driven "tens of thousands
upon tens of thousands of Jews into the ghetto
of the East" as "contributing to
European culture".
While the Jews
were being deported from Vienna, reports,
addressed to him in his official capacity, were
received in Von Schirach's office from the
office of the Chief of the Security Police and
SD which contained a description of the
activities of Einsatzgruppen in exterminating
Jews. Many of these reports were initialed by
one of Von Schirach's principal deputies. On 30
June 1944 Von Schirach's office also received a
letter from Kaltenbrunner informing him that a
shipment of 12,000 Jews was on its way to Vienna
for essential war work and that all those who
were incapable of work would have to be kept in
readiness for "special action".
The
Tribunal finds that Von Schirach, while he did
not originate the policy of deporting Jews from
Vienna, participated in this deportation after
he had become Gauleiter of Vienna. He knew that
the best the Jews could hope for was a miserable
existence in the ghettos of the East. Bulletins
describing the Jewish extermination were in his
office.
While Gauleiter of Vienna Von
Schirach continued to function as Reichsleiter
for Youth Education and in this capacity he was
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