So, if this forced emigration to Madagascar was seriously considered, how were the Jews supposed to arrive there, and how would they survive?But the answer to that is that from 1933 to at least 1941, the preferred German solution for the "Jewish Problem" in Germany and the whole of Europe was likewise forced emigration to some colony outside Europe, eg Madagascar.
http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/e ... /pl112.asp
12. HITLER`S SUPPORT FOR PLANS TO DEPORT FOUR MILLION JEWS TO MADAGASCAR
12.1 After the victory over France in June, 1940, the plan to push the Jews into a "reservation" (Reservat) in Poland was replaced with another project for the territorial solution of the Jewish problem: the so-called Madagascar plan.
12.2 As early as 25, May Himmler had presented Hitler with a memorandum which included the following key sentence with respect to the fate of the Jews: "I hope to see that by means of the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or to some other colony - that the concept of Jew will be fully extinguished". In the same document Himmler had still rejected "the Bolshevist methods of physical extirpation (Ausrottung) of a people because of inner conviction, as un-German and impossible". Hitler judged this memorandum to be "very good and correct", according to Himmler's note of 28 May. The document however was "to be held in the greatest secrecy"; Himmler was to show it to Frank at some point "in order to tell him that the Führer finds it correct".
12.3 Plans for the re-settlement of altogether four million Jews to the island off the African east coast were worked out in the German Department of the Foreign Office as well as in the Reich Security Head Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). From the surviving records of the German Foreign Office it is clear that the Madagascar plan (like the plan of a "Jewish reservation" in Poland) was not a new variation of a solution for emigration (Auswanderungslösung), but rather that here the Jews were to play the role of hostages; the Jews under German control would be used in this way to prevent the United States from entering the war. Thus in a note from the Jewish expert of the German Department, Rademacher, it is said that under a German "police governor" (Polizeigouverneur) "the Jews" should be set up as security under German control for the future good behaviour of their racial associates in America"; and in another note, the same expert wrote that the Security Police was "experienced with carrying out appropriate punishments which had become necessary because of unfriendly activities by Jews in the USA against Germany". The mere fact that Madagascar lacked the basic conditions necessary for existence for four million European Jews makes it clear that the plan itself was a threat to the further existence of Jews in the area of German dominance.
12.4 Hitler's extreme interest in the Madagascar plan is fully documented. Ribbentrop and Hitler sketched out the plan to the Italian Foreign Minister Ciano and Mussolini during their talks in Munich on 17 and 18 June. Hitler mentioned the Madagascar project on 20 June to the Commander in chief of the Navy, Raeder. On 12 July Frank passed on to his collaborators the following information from a conversation with Hitler which had taken place four days earlier:
Very important is also the decision of the Führer which came from a proposal of mine that there be no further transports of Jews into the Generalgouvernement. In general political terms I would like to say that it is planned to transport the entire Jewish clan from the German Reich, the Generalgouvernement and the Protectorat to an African or American colony in the shortest conceivable time span following the peace settlement. Madagascar is being considered; it would be separated from France for this purpose.
12.5 At the beginning of August, Hitler in a discussion with his Ambassador to Paris, Abetz, returned to the plan of expulsion (Vertreibung) of all Jews from Europe; a similar statement of Hitler`s from the middle of August is mentioned in Goebbels’s diary.
13. HITLER`S PARTICIPATION IN FURTHER DEPORTATIONS AND PLANS FOR DEPORTATION
13.1 Hitler's particular interest in the furthering of "Jewish policy" becomes obvious especially through the fact of his personal involvement in subsequent plans for deportation.
13.2 The initiative for the deportation of 7000 Jews from the two Gaue (i.e. Party districts), Baden and the Saar-Palatinate area, to France on 22 and 23 October was most probably due to the intervention of the two responsible Gau chiefs, Bürckel and Wagner. These abductions were specifically approved by Hitler, as is clear from a handwritten note by the Jewish expert of the foreign office, Rademacher.
13.3 At the beginning of November, Hitler made a personal decision concerning the distribution of 200,000 ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) who were to be accommodated in the Reich before the end of the year, thanks to agreements with the Soviet Union and Romania negotiated in September and October. In this connection, on the occasion of a conference with leading military leaders on 4 November, 1941, he made a decision about the further deportation of Poles and Jews from the annexed Eastern territories: "Gouvernement: plus 150-160,000 Poles and Jews from the newly won territories".
13.4 On the very same day, discussions began on the agreement to a quota for those to be deported from the ex-Polish areas, as we learn from the Goebbels` diaries; According to this source, Hitler created "joyful peace" between the Gauleiters Koch (from East Prussia) and Forster (Danzig-West Prussia):
All would like to throw their rubbish in to the Generalgouvernement: Jews, the sick, the lazy, etc. And Frank resists. Not entirely without justification. He would like to make an exemplary country out of Poland. That is going too far. He can not and should not do this. Poland should be a large work reservoir for us - this is what the Führer has decided. [...] And the Jews - we will throw them out of these areas later as well.
13.5 At this same meeting or directly thereafter, deportation quotas were set for the two Gaue - and according to this commitment mass deportations of more than 47,000 Poles, Jews and non Jews from the annexed territories into the Generalgouvernement followed in the next months.
13.6 At the beginning of December, Lammers told Schirach (Gauleiter in Vienna) of his wish expressed two months earlier - that the deportation (Abschiebung) of Vienna Jews be approved by Hitler. This is further proof of Hitler`s direct involvement in the plans for deportation:
As Reichsleiter Bormann explained to me, the Führer has decided, on the basis of one of your reports, that in the Reichsgau of Vienna, 60.000 Jews who have housing should be deported to the Generalgouvernement as rapidly as possible, i.e. while the war is still going on, because of the housing shortage in Vienna.
In anticipation of this deportation, beginning in February and March, 5000 Jews from Vienna were deported to the Generalgouvernement.
A CURRICULUM VITAE
(i) For the last twenty years my academic work has been concentrated on the Nazi Dicatorship, its structure, its origins and ist legacy. My work in this field which consists in particular of a dozen monographs and editions is highly regarded both in Germany and internationally.
(ii) I can declare my self an expert in working with archival documents, mostly unpublished, from this period. During the last twenty years I have workd in about 40 archives in Germany, Britian, Israel, Lithuania, the Soviet Union and the United States.
(iii) From the very beginning of my academic research I have been particularly interested in the structure of the Nazi system and the decision making-process. This interest developed when I wrote my dissertation, a study about bureaucratic infighting and decision-making in the Nazi Propaganda machinery. After completion of my dissertation I worked for several years at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. During a period of more than five years at the Institute I edited the Second Part of the Project Akten der Partei-Kanzlei, an attempt to reconstruct the lost original files from the Nazi Party Chancellery, the central office of the Nazi party which coordinated the organisation of the Party and controlled the state bureacracy. This work which envolved the reading and summing up of about 80.000 pages of documents from the Nazi period gave me a unique insight into the day to day history of the Nazi system and a subtle understanding for the bureaucratic language and the behaviour of officials in this system. During my stay at the Institute I wrote two other books, a history of the Nazi Stormtroopers and a organisation history of the Party chancellery.
(iv) Since the end of the eighties my interest concentrated more and more on what I see today as the central chapter of the Nazi period: The persecution and murder of European Jews. I started this work by editing a collection of documents about the Holocaust in 1989. When I edited the book I war particularly concerned with the authenticity of the material and therefore consulted the great majority of the dorcuments as originals in archives.
(v) The publication of the German version of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (together with Eberhard Jäcke and Julius H. Schoeps) a work which included an updating of many of the articles, provided me with an excellent overview about research in this field
(vi) An invitiation to spent ten month at the International Center for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, gave me the opportunity to lay the cornerstone for a major monograph of the Holocaust, a book which was issued in 1998 (in German) under the title policy of annihilation and containes a comprehensive history of the persecution of the Jews in the period between 1933 and 1945. The manuscript of this book was accepted as Habilitationsschrift by the University of the Armed Forces in Munich in early 1999. (The Habilitation is the highest qualification at a German University and the basic condition for the award of a professorship). During the last two years I had the opportunity to give papers about the main results of this research at numerous Universities, Research Centres and Museums in Germany, Britain, the United States and Israel.
(vii) I have never stopped to attemped to look at the Holocaust and the Nazi period in a broader historical perspecitive; the last book before the book on the Holocaust was a comprehensive history of the Weimar Republic and at the moment I am working on a comparative study about manpower mobilisation in Germany and Great Britain during the Second World War.
Peter Longerich: Born 4 February 1955, Krefeld, Germany: German Citizen
Education and Decrees
1961-65 St. Franciscus Schule (Primary School), Krefeld, Germany
1965-73 Kaiser-Karl-Gymnasium, Itzehoe, Germany
1973 Abitur
1973-74 University of Göttingen: History, Sociology, Public Law
1974-75 National Service
1975-76 Studies at University of Göttingen: History, Sociology, Public Law
1976-80 Studies at University of Munich: History, Sociology
1980 Magister Artium
1983 Dr. Phil, University of Munich (Thesis title: Die Presseabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes unter Ribbentrop. Supervisor: Professor Gerhard A. Ritter).
1999 Habilitation, University of the Armed Forces, Munich
Research Grants
1990 Research grant from the German Historical Institute, London
1992-93 Research grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
1995-96 Research grant from Yad Vashem, the Israeli Research Center for the Holocaust, Jerusalem, to enable me to work there for 10 months.
Appointments held
1976-1979 Department of History, University of Munich: Research Assistant to Dr. Klaus Tenfelde and Professor Gerhard A. Ritter. Project: Bibliographie zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterschaft und Arbeiterbewegung (published: Braunschweig, Bonn: Institut für Sozialgeschichte, 1981)
1983-89 Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich: Research worker and (from 1985) responsible for the project: Rekonstruktion der Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, Teil II
1987-89 Department of History, University of Munich: Part-time undergraduate teaching: German and European history.
1993-96 Lecturer, Department of German, Royal Holloway, University of London
1996 to date Reader, Department of German, Royal Holloway, University of London
Other professional activities
1991-92 Consultant historian to the Crown Office War Crimes
Investigation Team, Edinburgh. I advised the Crown Office on the basis of documentation which I collected from archives in Germany, Israel, Lithuania and the Soviet Union
Consultancies for Second German Television, Piper Publisher (Munich), Pendo Publisher (Munich)
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Holocaust Education.
Publications
Monographs
Propagandisten im Krieg. Die Presseabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes unter Ribbentrop, (Munich: Oldenburg, 1987, Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 33) 356pp
Die braunen Bataillone. Geschichte der SA (Munich: C.H. Beck 1989) 285pp
Hitlers Stellvertreter. Führung der NSDAP und Kontrolle des Staatsapparates durch den Stab Heß und Bormanns Partei-Kanzlei (Munich: Saur, 1992) 283pp
Deutschland 1918-1933. Die Weimarer Republik Handbuch zur Geschichte, (Hannover: Fackelträger, 1995) 425pp
Die Wannsee-Konferenz vom 20. Januar 1942: Planung und Beginn des Genozids an den europäischen Juden (Berlin: Edition Hentrich) 90pp
Politik der Vernichtung. Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich: Piper 1998) 772pp
Editing of Documents
Akten der Partei-Kanzlei, Teil II Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes, 3 Vols. (Munich: Piper, 1992)
Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden. Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust (Munich: Piper, 1989, 2 editions) 480pp
Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? Dokumente zur Frage der deutschen Einheit, (Munich: Piper, 1990, 4th edition 1996)
Die zweite Republik. Dokumente zur Geschichte des Weimarer Staates, (Munich: Piper, 1992)
Editions
Enzyklopädie des Holocaust. German edition (3 Vols.) with Eberhard Jäckel and Julius Schoeps (Berlin: Argon, 1993) [German version of the Hebrew and English editions published by Yad Vashem]
Articles and Chapters
Joseph Goebbels und der totale Krieg. Eine unbekannte Denkschrift des Propagandaministers, in: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 35 (1987), 289-314 [Reprinted in the series Zum Nachdenken, 1988]
Vom Massenmord zur "Endlösung". Die Erschie8ungen von jhdischen Zivilisten in den ersten Monaten des Ostfeldzuges im Kontext des nationalsozialistischen Judenmordes, in: Zwei Wege nach Moskau. Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt bis zum "Unternehmen Barbarossa", edited by Bernd Wegner, (Munich: Piper, 1991) 251-274. English translation: From Mass Murder to "Final Solution": The Shooting of Jewish Civilians during the First Month of the Eastern Campaign within the Context of Nazi-Jewish Genocide, in From Peace to War. Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939-41, edited by Bernd Wegner (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1997), 253-276.
Der Rußlandkrieg als rassistischer Vernichtungskrieg, in Der Mensch gegen den Menschen. Überlegungen und Forschungen zum deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941, edited by Hans-Heinrich Nolte (Hanover: Fackelträger, 1992), 78-94.
Nationalsozialistische Propaganda, in: Deutschland 1933-1945, edited by Karl Dietrich Bracher, Manfred Funke and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (Munich: Piper, 1993), 291-314.
Vom Straßenkampf zum Anstaltsterror. Die Oranienburger SA und "ihr" Konzentrationslager, in: Konzentrationslager Oranienburg, edited by Günter Morsch, (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994), 23-33.
Der Untergang der Weimarer Republik und die Machtüernahme der Nationalsozialisten, in: Der neue alte Rechtsradikalismus, edited by Ulrich Wank (Munich: Piper, 1993), 65-94
In addition I have 23 entries in Enzyklopädie der Holocaust, German edition (Berlin: Argon 1993)
I have reviewed several books in academic journals and newspapers.
Papers and Broadcasts
1991 30-minute radio programme on total war for the Westdeutsche Rundfunk, Cologne. Broadcast in January 1991.
1991 to date Numerous radio broadcasts on aspects of Nazi history arising from my publications.
1991 (June) University of Hannover: International symposium to mark the 50th anniversary or the German attack on the Soviet Union: Paper: "German Racist Warfare in the East".
1992 (May) University of Munich: Paper on German documents in Soviet archives.
1993 (March) History Society, Bad Nauheim: Paper on German Nationalism.
1993 (July) University of Munich: public lecture on the rise of the Nazi Party.
1994 (April) Oldenburg: participated in a public, recorded discussion with Professor Israel Gutman (Yad Vashem) and Professor Eberhard Jäckel (University of Stuttgart) on the occasion of the awarding of the Ossietzky Prize for the publication of the Encylopaedia of the Holocaust, in which I collaborated for the German edition.
1994 (July) Wiener Library, London: Paper on the Bomb plot of 20 July 1945.
1994 (Nov) University of St Andrews, Department of History: Paper on the commemoration of historical events in post-war West Germany.
1995 (Sept) Wiener Library, London: Paper on the Nürnberg Laws.
1996 (Jan) Hebrew University, Jerusalem: Paper: "The German Dictatorship and the Persecution of Jews"
1997 Papers on my book Politik der Vernichtung at the (June/July) following universities: Cologne, Berlin, Freiburg, Stuttgart.
1998 (Jan) Annual lecture: Haus der Wannseekonferenz, Berlin.
1998 (Jan) Talk on the Wannseekonferenz, Imperial War Museum, London.
1998 (April) University of Florida: paper on decision-making and the Holocaust.
1998 (Nov) 45 minutes TV discussion of my book Politik der Vernichtung, in the programme, Lesezeichen, 3SAT, German Public Television
1998 (Nov) Lecture, German Historical Institute, London on Politik der Vernichtung
1998 (Dec) Paper on the genesis of the "Final Solution", International Conference, Tel Aviv University
1999 (Jan) Paper on Himmler and the Holocaust, Symposium,
Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, Hamburg
1999 (March) Paper in a German-Israeli round table discussion on the state of Holocaust research
1999 (April) Lecture tour, organised by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, Clark University)
1999 (May) Paper on my book Politik der Vernichtung, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 110
(Part 5 of 7)
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[Attorney General, Continued]
The German Court in Ulm, whose lengthy and detailed judgment I submitted when presenting my preliminary argument, follows the ruling of the German Supreme Courts, which no longer recognize duress as a legal defence, as was laid down in various trials, and I shall quote only from the Ulm judgment (p. 467):
"Whoever served, as the accused did, for a period of years in the Gestapo and the SD during the time of the National Socialist regime, cannot be absolved of criminal liability simply because of a claim that he was in danger of life and limb, if he refused to go on participating in the criminal acts."
And perhaps I may be permitted to submit, without quoting, a judgment of the German Supreme Court on belonging to the RSHA, and acts that were committed as a result therefrom.
Presiding Judge: Is there only one copy of this?
Attorney General: We have only one copy.
Presiding Judge: This is headed: "The matter of Krause and others." Which court was it?
Attorney General: This is the German Supreme Court (B.G.H.).
Presiding Judge: Has Dr. Servatius seen it?
Attorney General: We have not shown him these authorities, but if the Court wishes...
Presiding Judge: I shall mark this with my initials and meanwhile will pass it on to Dr. Servatius.
Attorney General: I can hand over to Dr. Servatius the appropriate passages upon which I shall mainly rely.
Presiding Judge: Very well. I shall pass this on to Dr. Servatius and he can return the judgment to us when presenting his final argument.
Attorney General: In view of the legal principles of conspiracy, three questions have accordingly to be asked: What was the criminal conspiracy? What was done to execute it? What was the role of Adolf Eichmann in this evil design?
The desire to cast the Jews out of Europe became transformed in 1940 into consideration of the Madagascar Plan. I should not have devoted special attention to it here, had it not been for the fact that the Accused wanted to rely on this plan, and to point to it also as his personal attempt to seek a positive solution, as it were, to the Jewish Question and to provide, as he expressed it, ground beneath the feet of the Jews.
Already in Vienna, as we learned from a document, these matters were weighed in his office. Already at that time he planned, in fact, annihilation by means of emigration to Madagascar. One may believe that the "Stuermer" and no other source provided the inspiration for this plan. Incidentally, I have studied Adolf Boehm's book and could not find in it any trance of the Madagascar idea. And it must be remembered that we have to judge Eichmann, the planner of concentrating the Jews in Madagascar, not in the light of what occurred subsequently, and not in the light of the possible physical extermination which was not yet being discussed at that time, but in the light of the actual circumstances prior to the War and prior to the order for physical extermination.
The plan took its final shape during the War. Eichmann admitted that it had been devised and passed on by his Section after consultations and discussions with other authorities. Under this plan all the local inhabitants of Madagascar, about four million persons were to be uprooted, to be removed and deported from there, and in their stead the Jews were to be settled on that island, the main advantage of which was, according to what was specifically stated, that its occupants would be prohibited from coming into any contact - even business contacts - with other nations. There they would be living under the control of the Gestapo and would never achieve any independence. They planned to dump a million Jews there each year. Whoever studies this atrocious plan which originated with him, will come to the conclusion that its principal objective was to take control of the Jews, to throw them out of Europe, and to transport them to a country of exile, a country in which they would be isolated from the world. Whether the Jews succeeded in surviving there, or not - that did not matter, that Eichmann did not take into consideration.
He was questioned about the plan. The Court will find his replies on the subject. From the point of view of its cruelty and lack of consideration for human life, its being pervaded with hatred of Jews, its being drawn up in total disregard for the inhabitants of the island of Madagascar themselves and for the Jews destined to be deported there - it was not much better than a plan for actual extermination. Whoever was capable of preparing such a plan, recommending it and striving for its implementation - would not find it too difficult to move to the next stage of the criminal plot. But it was impertinent and insolent to mention this plot in the same breath as Herzl and the Zionist movement.
Possibly Eichmann was incensed that his schemes were not adopted. Possibly he expected that his name would be linked, as it had been linked at the ministerial meeting of 12 November 1938, with the practical solution of getting rid of the Jews - the aim which a veteran National Socialist should obviously have aspired to achieve. Possibly he toyed with the idea that if his programme were to be implemented, he - and not Heydrich - would be the Supreme Commissioner for Jewish Affairs.
At any rate,instead of Madagascar, there came the extermination plan. Eichmann admits that he knew about it already from its early stages, in the summer of 1941, and that he had an active role in its realization. As I have said, he tried to persuade the Court with all his might, that it was only through lack of an alternative and because he could not free himself, that he had to become engaged in this activity. Although, as I have said, it makes no difference, as regards his being found guilty, whether a murderer acts out of an eager lust for blood or out of "pessimism," as Eichmann portrayed his mental condition regarding the Final Solution. But for the purpose of assessing the man, of considering his testimony and evaluating the personality which he tried to present for himself, for understanding the group of his collaborators and their assistants who carried out the numerous works, there is some importance also in this enquiry. The truth came out as it emerged from a particular passage from his conversation with Sassen, about which he was questioned twice. This is what Eichmann said to Sassen:
"And this is what happened with the Jews when I, at that time was given the task without being ready for it, just like a baby, to act against the quest of the host people. I gave my thought to the matter, and when I came to recognize the necessity, I implemented it with the same fanaticism which a man would expect of himself as a veteran National Socialist, and which the superiors of the man who had been assigned to this task undoubtedly expected of him. And there was no doubt that they regarded me as the right man."
"...And this is what I say today, in 1957, to my own detriment. I could also have made matters more simple for myself. I could have said: This was an order which I had to fulfil as a result of my oath of loyalty and in my case I wore blinkers like a horse. No - that is cheap nonsense; that is an easy excuse, for which I cannot bear responsibility before my inner conscience. Therefore, I must declare expressly that, after carrying out my initial orders blindly and without thinking, I tried later on to get to the substance of the matter. For Fate endowed me with a spiritual horizon which apparently fitted me for the job."* {*Sassen Document, tape 3, p. 28}
When I first asked him whether he had uttered these words, he vehemently denied it, and said it was totally out of the question that he could have said it. Evidently there had been distortions and forgeries here. But his counsel also read out to him a passage from the Sassen Document, a passage actually preceding these words, and in re- examination the Accused replied that he had indeed said the words as they were recorded there and that, in fact, they were correct. After he had been questioned by the Court, the Court allowed me to ask him, once again, about the continuation of the quotation. The Court will find his reply on pages 16 and 17 of Session No. 107 [Volume IV, p. xxxx]. The Accused first read the following statement recorded as having been made by him (and I quote):
"But I am the kind of man who thinks his thoughts. I can carry out work blindly, and then I do so without any joy. But when I recognize the necessity and the reason for it - then I perform the work gladly and imaginatively."
When questioned, he replied that he had, in fact, said this and that he had been telling the truth, but that the remarks applied to his work in Vienna. And then I asked him to read out the continuation of his remarks, those very words which he had absolutely denied in the cross-examination. This was the continuation of the quotation that Defence Counsel had read to him, and which he confirmed. This time, in reply to my questions, he admitted that he had uttered these words as well, and that they too, were correct, but that they also applied, so he maintained, to the first period of his activity. However, when he was further asked who were the "guest people" against whom he was supposed to act, he replied "the Jews," and he admitted that the "host" who had to be freed of the Jews was Europe.
Throwing out the Jews from Europe - this Adolf Eichmann carried out, to use his own words, "gladly and imaginatively." Do we need any further evidence of his mental state, of his intentions, of his total identification with the evil design?
It is sufficient to peruse the whole quotation from the Sassen Document, as it was read to him for the first time, for it to become immediately clear that all these words actually referred to the period in which he was engaged in the out-and-out extermination. The Court should please examine the quotation. It is in the record. Eichmann appears to his superiors as the right man. He operated - not blindly, not without thinking his thoughts, but voluntarily and with complete self-dedication. After examination he acknowledged the accuracy of another quotation from the same document:
"I was not an ordinary recipient of orders. If I had been so, I would have been an idiot. I was thinking while carrying them out. After all, I was an idealist."
The Devil also claims to be an idealist.
Rudolf Hoess writes in his autobiography that he tried more than once to understand Eichmann's nature, and to assess his spiritual make-up. According to him, Eichmann manifested an extreme fanaticism for the destruction of every Jew, and he convinced Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, that any compromise would recoil upon them in the future. Hoess, the direct murderer of millions, testifies about himself, saying that his conversations with Eichmann gave him the mental encouragement to continue with this awesome task and helped him to overcome his own doubts and hesitations.
The two of them were friends. Eichmann acknowledged that in Court. He went further and admitted, under cross- examination, that Hoess was the epitome of exactness and meticulousness and that he had no reason to lie, to diminish the responsibility of others and inculpate Eichmann instead. With less enthusiasm, which can certainly be ascribed to the fact that, this time, he was speaking to an Israeli interrogator, Eichmann, when being questioned by Superintendent Less, in response to a statement by Wisliceny who accused him, Eichmann, personally of playing a decisive role in the disaster which overtook the Jews of Europe, said the following: (T/37 page 2525)
"I belong to that category of people, as I have already stated, who did not say in 1945, or up to this day `I was always against it,' and who were seeking, through a cheap excuse such as this, to escape the hangman's noose. That would not be correct; I had no such thoughts. Such an idea would be unbecoming. I am not able to say today - to justify myself - that I was against it."
We have thus obtained from Eichmann himself, in an interrogation in Israel as well, an admission that he had no moral objection to the execution of his duty, and in talking to Sassen, he added that he had perpetrated these monstrous deeds with feelings of joy and satisfaction.
But, even without these admissions of his, and even if we did not possess abundant evidence of his fanatical attitude and approach to the execution of his task, and if all we knew about him was that he had been appointed to the post of Head of the Section of Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo, after Heydrich had prepared the massacre of the Jews in September, 1939, and after Heydrich certainly knew what would be the duties of the Head of that Section, we must of necessity say that Heydrich selected the right man for the job. And we must remember this: In the chart showing the division of authority in the Head Office for Reich Security he was the sole Section Head who was in charge of all Jewish affairs. You will look in vain amongst the executive section of Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner for a Section comparable in its scope and description to Juden-Angelegenheiten, that is to say "Jewish Affairs."
In what were those dealing with the Jews in the Third Reich engaged in from the beginning of the War onwards? What were their Juden-Angelegenheiten? We know: they were engaged in annihilating and exterminating the Jews.
Accordingly, I say that if all we knew about him were that he was the Gestapo man for Jewish Affairs, that there was the enormous campaign of extermination, and that the Gestapo handled it, and irrespective of all the other evidence of his role in the criminal design, a very weighty presumption would have arisen to the effect that he was at the centre of the evil-doing.
But we know more about him - much more. We know, for example, that he remained in his post at the nerve centre of the Final Solution for a period of five years. He was neither transferred nor replaced. We also know that this work involved a continuous struggle, initiative and tactics which required the utmost ruthlessness, toughness and cunning. Is it not absolutely clear that his superiors saw him as being the right man in the right place? Is it not clear that, had he voiced some moral or personal reservation in respect of the task which had been allotted him, it would have become necessary to replace him? Even with the technological means which Nazi Germany placed at Eichmann's disposal for the task of extermination, it was a tremendous undertaking of abomination to accomplish the destruction of millions, to set the huge machinery in motion, to obtain the means, the men and the instruments for implementation - and all this under conditions of total war, while contriving the ruses, the craftiness and the required methods.
But there is also abundant evidence to establish that he laboured fanatically and relentlessly to achieve his purpose. His object was the annihilation of Jewry. He believed that by striking at the Jews of Europe he would cause death-blows to the whole of Jewry, as he expressed himself to Wisliceny.
"The core of the biological strength of the Jewish People lay with the Jews of Poland. They have been exterminated to the last man. Jewry will never recover from this blow."
These words, as spoken by Eichmann, were recorded in the summer of 1944, in Budapest.
To the heart-breaking grief of the Jewish People, whose wound will bleed for generations, and to the everlasting disgrace of the murderers and to the shame of the generation which stood by, not moving or stirring, while a people was murdered - the deed was in fact accomplished. At least six million Jews were destroyed and are no more. This is what Professor Salo Baron testified, after examining all the historical sources. He also made a historical and sociological analysis of the nature of the Jewish communities that were doomed to destruction and his conclusion was: They were the heart of the nation. The horrific counsel to destroy them - and thus to achieve the annihilation of the entire Jewish People - was not without foundation. It was designed to destroy the people to the last man.
As for this number of victims, there is also other evidence. Grell's testimony in this trial confirms what he stated in his affidavit. Eichmann admitted to Grell in Hungary that he had six million victims on his conscience. That same number of six million Jews who had been liquidated Hoettl had heard from Eichmann.
Eichmann himself quotes his own words in his statement to the police and describes how, on the verge of the downfall, he addressed his officers. He says he spoke of five million Jews. Afterwards he went on to say - and I quote him from T/37
"I am not a statistician. I worked this out by rough calculation and said to myself that approximately six million had been killed."
If we add up the number of persons exterminated by the Operations Units and of the victims of the death camps, including Auschwitz, according to the evidence of Hoess and the Polish reports - we reach a much larger figure.
In reply to questions from the Court, Eichmann said, in connection with the famous transaction "blood for goods," that in 1944 he thought that of the total number of European Jewry there remained alive between 800,000 to one and a half million Jews. An analysis of these figures leads to a result far exceeding six million victims.
The Jewish underground in Poland, in its pamphlet "Voice from the Depths" in 1944, that is to say before the destruction of Hungarian Jewry, and before the extermination of hundreds of thousands of others who had still survived, also arrived at a figure of five million victims of the slaughter.
Presiding Judge: Incidentally, I believe that, so far, we have not received a translation of this pamphlet - if I am not mistaken. Would you kindly make a note of that?
Attorney General: It is T/256.
This, then is the blood harvest that has no parallel throughout mankind's history on earth, in its extent, cruelty and the methods of execution.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eic ... 91-06.htmlThe Trial of Adolf Eichmann
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Q. Do you agree with me that there is not a single reference here as to how these four million Jews who were to be brought there over a period of four years, were to earn their living?
A. As far as I recall, and I believe that is also expressed in this file, the idea was that of a so-called dove-tailing system. This meant that the first groups of immigrants would have to create the conditions so that those who would follow them would find means of livelihood, and that is how it would go on. If the necessary capital were pumped in, if those in charge of the island were to allow the required freedom of investment, then in these times of war, after all, millions upon millions of human beings were moved around and sent all over the world, then I can see no reason why this would not have been possible. At any rate, significantly better than the proposal put forward by the Foreign Office - rather by the German Ambassador in Paris - to send the Jews to the East, to the Eastern Occupied Territories.
Q. When you are speaking of deportation to the East, you mean deportation for the purpose of extermination, because in the East things were not at all that bad, three and a half million Jews lived there, didn't they?
A. I mean, in this connection, the deportation to the occupied Russian areas, as this is expressed in a letter by embassy counsellor Zeitschel to his ambassador. This letter - I think, I am not sure - is not included in these documents, but it was published in Poliakov (Red). It was, I think, a subject at Nuremberg....
Q. Are you referring to deportation for extermination, or not? That is my question.
A. Deportation for extermination that I cannot judge, as it had not been determined in advance whether they were going to extermination or not. That was not known to the authority concerned with the matter of the drawing up transport timetables.
Q. And as you saw that the Madagascar Plan was not going to be carried out, you said to yourself, with a rude curse on your lips: Well, I shall now carry out the task my superiors have set for me - that is deportation, and I shall do that?
A. No, this interpretation of my thinking is not correct. Rather - and this I remember very clearly after I received the decision that Madagascar had been abandoned at that point - and I want to stress this, I was very bitter that this attempt also went awry and failed. I told myself: "All right, now there is no sense any longer to make plans on my own intiative. I am too weak and too powerless for that. I shall now - it was war time - do only that which I am ordered and whatever I am responsible for." I was in uniform, I could not get away, I tried to get away, as was established, and I had to obey. For my part, I recognized my powerlessness with regard to my own proposal, or my own idea, because these were ground up and crushed by stronger powers.
Judge Halevi: How many inhabitants were there in Madagascar at the time?
Accused: I do not know this, Your Honour, but I do know that at that time....
Judge Halevi: How many, approximately?
Accused: Perhaps two or three million, I do not know, I can't say exactly any more, and those were to have been resettled, I think, under the peace treaty.
Judge Halevi: According to this report, there were four million people there. Where were they to have been resettled? Where were they supposed to have emigrated to?
Accused: Your Honour, I cannot give a precise answer to this. It was to have been negotiated in the peace treaty. Of course, always according to the conception of those days, that Germany was to be on the winning side.
Attorney General: For you, the main thing in this plan was that Madagascar was an island, and that thereby contact between the Jews and the outside world be prevented, as is stated on page 2 of the plan.
Accused: That was most surely not my plan, or my idea or my wish. Quite the contrary - and I have other evidence for this - it was my wish and my idea to help in the creation of a spot where the Jews could live.
Q. Go ahead and declaim about this spot. Is it true that this plan was approved?
A. The plan was approved, that is correct, yes.
Q. And why was it not implemented?
A. Because the military situation overtook this whole matter.
Q. If so, whom were you angry at?
A. I was angry first at the constant attempts by the Foreign Office, and secondly at fate, which at that time robbed us of the Madagascar opportunity.
Q. The Foreign Office eventually agreed to implement this plan, but you say that the military situation no longer made this implementation possible.
A. I think that the lack of consent by the Foreign Office and the impossibility of implementing the plan on military grounds coincided somehow, because as far as I know this concerned, in both cases, the latter part of 1941.
Q. And at that time you said to yourself: They are demanding that I carry out deportations, so I shall carry out deportations. Is that correct?
A. Whether I was asked to carry out deportations at that time - I do not think so. I think I was occupied with this much earlier, and that was concerning the expulsion, the preparation of the railway timetables in the new Eastern territories annexed to the Reich, into what was called the Generalgouvernement. Therefore, this cannot have been casually connected with the deportation. I very definitely expressed my indignation, at that time, to myself. Whether I expressed it vis-a-vis other persons, I do not know, because I now learned that all attempts at a normal solution had failed and that pressure was being applied for other attempted solutions. Therefore, I say that this was late in the year 1941, when I learned for the first time of new methods.
Q. I am sorry but you will have to read a section here which will not cause you any pleasure. This is from File 17, page 726. Read the passage which I have marked for you.
A. Yes, Sir.
"And when, at last, matters were ready, the military situation had become a thing of the past. It was suddenly also approved, just when it was outdated. Had we started deporting to Madagascar right away, perhaps the Allies would not have interfered in this. And the interested powers had me where they wanted me. I recited to myself the quotation from Goetz von Berlichingen, and I told myself that I had become an ordinary official, for that which belonged to my official sphere of competence, and acted in accordance with directives, regulations, laws. And I covered myself by that."
Q. And is that correct?
Accused: That is what I must have said.
Q. And from then on you foiled every attempt at Jewish emigration?
A. No, that is not right either. Rather, emigration was stopped at some point by Himmler, and in accordance with the directives and regulations which were in force at any particular time, I had to adapt myself. Thus, after the ban on emigration, I was no longer allowed to decide whether a particular Jew could emigrate or not. This decision was reserved by my Department Chief, Mueller, for himself in person. I had no right to decide in matters of emigration. If I did ever make an exception, then these exceptions could on no account be presented to me through official channels. But these were matters which were, let us say, especially the Grueber Bureau, especially on the part of the then...
Q. Would you stop your declamations. I am asking you whether from that point on you fought any attempt at Jewish emigration? Even before Himmler's decree?
A. I did not fight this. No. On my part, I did not fight a single case of emigration.
Q. For instance, when two Jews from Vienna, Fleischmann and Kollman, found an opportunity to escape to Afghanistan, in February 1941, you were the one who prevented this. Correct?
A. I cannot have been the one, by any means, because I did not decide such matters.
Q. I will read to you what you wrote to your Foreign Office on 28 February 1941, in exhibit T/808.
"With reference to your letter of 18 February 1941, I wish to inform you that in the meantime I have instructed the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, that the Jews mentioned in the report from the German Embassy in Afghanistan dated 14 December 1940, Fleischmann and Kollman, will be included among the Jews to be deported from Vienna to the Generalgouvernement, in one of the next trains. The matter will presumably be disposed of thereby."
And you signed this. You were authorized to give the Central Office instructions.
A. Nor was I authorized to give the Central Office instructions on my own and, furthermore, it appears from the reference in this document that the Foreign Office made representations in this matter, which indicates to me that in such a matter I did not have the authority to make a decision at all, but had to obtain a decision by my chief. This instruction, which I received from my Department Chief, I subsequently put in writing and signed it "im Auftrage," (by order). I had received the order, I had the directive and I had to act in accordance with orders.
Q. Do you wish to tell me that the fact that you signed "by order," that this mere fact indicates that you were acting on someone's behalf?
A. In the first place, this would...
Q. Yes or no?
A. ...this fact alone would...
Q. I want an answer: yes or no?
A. "Im Auftrage" means on behalf of someone else.
Q. I tell you, then, that you are lying here, too. The letters "i.A." or the words "im Auftrage" were a required formula, under your standing orders, and that these words meant nothing other than that you had signed as ordered. I shall now show you the instructions how you had to sign, in T/94 and T/97.
Dr. Servatius: [Rises to speak.]
Attorney General: I would ask Counsel for the Defence not to interfere in the course of the cross-examination.
Presiding Judge: Mr. Attorney General, you do not know yet what Counsel for the Defence wants to say. This occurs in trials every day. Go ahead, Dr. Servatius.
Dr. Servatius: The Accused is being charged here that he is lying, but he is not given the opportunity to explain his answer, that is to say what is the meaning of "im Auftrage." He was restricted to the point: does "im Auftrage" mean you signed in your own name or acted in someone else's name. Thereupon he replied "yes." But his subsequent explanation was cut short. He must be given the chance to give this explanation.
Presiding Judge: No, we do not have the impression that any wrong was done to the Accused. In any event, he will have the opportunity to have his say; it is obvious that the cross-examination is not yet over.
Attorney General: In exhibit No. T/94, the instructions from the Gestapo, from as far back as 1936, it says in paragraph 4 who has to sign "i.V." (on behalf of) and who has to sign "i.A.03." (by order). These are routine instructions, and the signature indicates nothing other than that you have signed in the form which has been required of you.
Accused: This directive for correspondence dated 1936 was issued at a time before the centralization of offices. It was issued at a time when, for instance, Mueller still had to sign "by order." It was issued at a time which was long before reorganization of these offices of the Security Police and the Security Service.
Q. And you mean to say that it was changed afterwards? Yes or no?
A. Yes, I can say at least that it changed insofar as a Section Head...
Q. Without "because" - yes or no? Then look at T/97 and you can see that it did not change at all. This is already after the concentration of the offices, after the consolidation. And that you signed "i.A." in accordance with routine directives.
A. This is no routine directive. Rather it says here "i.V." for the Department Chiefs, not for the Section Heads. For the Department Chiefs it is "i.V." or "i.A.03," depending on the letterhead used. Thus when it says: Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, the Head of the Bureau signed "i.V." (in Vertretung" (by order).
Presiding Judge: As far as I understand these directives, you could not sign in any other way than with the addition of the letters "i.A.03" Is that correct?
Accused: Yes, that is correct.
Attorney General: And therefore the fact that you signed "i.A." or "im Auftrage" in fact means nothing.
Accused: It means everything. Yes, Sir.
Q. Because you were ordered to sign in this way whether you were acting on behalf of someone else or not. That was the form in which you had to sign?
A. Then I would not have had to check back with my Department Chief, then I could have simply written "Eichmann".
Q. I am not asking you why, I am asking you about the fact, and the Presiding Judge: asked you this: Every letter which went through you, had to be signed ""i.A.," and in no other way. Even when you had to draw up some kind of a receipt for anything, you were not allowed to sign differently. Is that right?
A. When this receipt...
Presiding Judge: No, Mr. Attorney General, please let him answer. Please continue your answer.
Accused: If a simple receipt had the letterhead "Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service" or "Reich Security Office" I would have had to sign even these "i.A." because as a Section Head I did not have any authority of my own to decide.
Attorney General: Do you mean that for every letter you wrote, you received a special instruction from Mueller?
Accused: If for some instance, whatever it might be, there was as yet no previous ruling by Mueller, some form of precedent, which had not yet been replaced in the course of time, as long as that was the case, in every individual instance I went to see Mueller, two or three times a week, with some twenty original queries every time...
Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, I assume that you will be continuing with this subject?
Attorney General: Yes indeed.
Presiding Judge: Then we shall now recess.
The Court will reconvene at 3.30 this afternoon.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eic ... 91-05.htmlThe Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 91
(Part 5 of 6)
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Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, I understand this comment, but still it is out of place. If it is necessary for purposes of explanation, he is entitled to mention this name.
Attorney General: Well, if I do have to discuss Herzl with you, Adolf Eichmann, I wish to tell you that there is not a single word about Madagascar in Herzl's book. You got the idea of Madagascar from the Stuermer, didn't you?
Accused: It is possible that this is not mentioned in a book by Theodor Herzl. I did not claim this. I read it in Adolf Boehm's The Jewish State.
Q. What is the name of that book?
A. I think... I do not want to say for sure, The Jewish State by Adolf Boehm, or something like that. I don't know, at any rate Adolf Boehm is the author of a...
Q. Adolf Boem has written a book about the Zionist movement.
A. That is it, yes. It is possible that this is the one...
Q. And that is where you read about Madagascar?
A. In a book by Boehm I read about Madagascar, yes.
Q. Which book by Boehm have you read?
A. I cannot remember the names of the books any more. But I can explain, since I still remember the general sense of what I read then.
Presiding Judge: Perhaps the reference was to Uganda and not to Madagascar?
Accused: Your Honour, the Presiding Judge, it has just occurred to me that I have also read about Uganda.
Attorney General: Well then, the first time you mentioned Madagascar, in your own handwriting, was in Vienna. That was in connection with the negotiations between France and Poland, as Streicher had written in January 1938 and then again in May 1938. It says here: "Negotiations have already taken place between Poland and France."
Accused: As I was not a reader of the Stuermer, I could not have taken this from the Stuemer, but surely other newspapers also carried this, because these negotiations were not reported exclusively by the Sturermer at that time.
Q. You did not read the Stuermer? Your Fuehrer used to read it every week.
A. That may be so. I, at any rate, did not read it.
Q. Inasmuch as you knew, then, that negotiations were taking place between Poland and France, you also knew that a Polish Commission had gone to Madagascar.
A. I do not know the details any longer. But one thing I know with certainty, that in those days I did not think about implementing the Madagascar Plan any more than anyone else, because at that time there was no war, and it did not occur to anybody that Madagascar would even enter into the sphere of this kind of a process of thought. But this was the kind of thinking at the time - to make available a territory, a piece of land in this way.
Q. But it does say here, in your own handwriting, as I showed you earlier, that you proposed Madagascar in 1938, in connection with the negotiations between Poland and France.
A. That in my own handwriting the Madagascar idea was mentioned, that I know naturally. But I cannot remember anything about the connection with the negotiations between Poland and France. This I do not know.
Q. Look at this.
A. Yes. That is written on the first page. This was written, signed and dictated by my chief. This is not by me. Mine are merely these handwritten comments. This is clear from the file itself, without doubt.
Q. And you did not know that?
A. And it shows on the other hand that my chief at that time was intensively active in this matter. Undoubtedly I must admit, I must have known about this. In any event, my idea was not inspired by such negotiations.
Q. You then continued to take an interest in the Madagascar Plan, and you requested information from various offices in the Reich.
A. No. This was the beginning of 1938, and the War broke out only in the autumn of 1939. Only when the campaign against France was in progress, or was completed, then Madagascar appeared for the first time to be feasible.
Q. Yes, I am talking about that period. After the campaign against France was over, you took a continued interest in the Madagascar Plan?
A. Yes, Sir, that is correct.
Q. And you received information from the Reich authorities?
A. I got that, wherever I could, yes.
Q. And I assume that among these items of information, you also received the Polish report of the Madagascar Commission? That was a three-man Commission headed by Major Lepecki, who found that Madagascar had room for perhaps 40,000 Jewish settlers. Another member of the Commission estimated that there was room for 400 families, and the third member of the Commission found that Madagascar had no room for Jewish settlers at all, and that the local inhabitants were against any Jewish immigration. Did you know that?
A. I did not see the Polish report at that time. Furthermore, a basic distinction must be made between the considerations which may possibly have been raised between the Polish and French Commissions and the time when, according to the thinking at that time, the area of the German Reich, could have included the island of Madagascar, following negotiations of a peace treaty. This would have provided all kinds of other possibilities and points of departures.
Q. In report No. T/196 which Luther submitted in this matter, he writes that the Madagascar Plan had been processed by the appropriate office of the RSHA. That was your Section, wasn't it?
A. Yes, Sir. I have already said that. The Madagascar Plan was processed by my Section in accordance with orders.
Q. And that report is report No. T/174, signed by Dannecker. And it was for that purpose you brought Dannecker, as you reported yesterday, together with representatives of the Jewish Community, so that he could discuss the possibilities with them?
A. I do not wish to deny this, as I read with my own eyes yesterday that Dannecker had spoken to Dr. Loewenherz on this matter. This report, which we have before us, is the outcome of perhaps ten or fifteen - I don't know how many - consultations with all central authorities, which had been ordered to deal with this at the time by superior offices.
Q. But that was from your Section? That is what I want to know.
A. This report is not the result of the thinking of members of the Section. It is the outcome of numerous talks by all expert officials and other members of the Section who took part in this, as well as other persons appointed to this task.
Q. No, no. Answer my questions.
Presiding Judge: Your Section dealt with the matter of Madagascar, didn't it?
Accused: Yes, Sir, But under an assignment that all relevant central authorities had to join in working on this common task, since the Reich Security Head Office alone could not have worked on this, if for no other reason than for lack of authority.
Attorney General: Just a minute. I would like to have an answer to my question. Luther writes here, in report T/196, that the appropriate office at the Reich Security Head Office is working out a minutely detailed plan for the evacuation of the Jews to Madagascar and their settlement there, a plan which had been approved by the Reichsfuehrer- SS. This appears on page 2, and you confirm that the appropriate authority was your Section. And the plan is that which we find in exhibit No. T/174, that is the plan which your Section was working on. Is that correct?
Accused: Then I have to ask myself why were ten to fifteen consultations with department officials necessary for all that, with fifteen to twenty participants each time?
Q. It may be that you had participants or helpers or advisors, but the report came from your Section, didn't it?
A. The plan is the outcome, as I can confidently state, it is the outcome of consultations of many experts, as is, incidentally always the practice with the authorities.
Presiding Judge: But who prepared this plan after all the consultations?
Accused: After all consultations, Section IVB4 naturally had to do this.
Attorney General: Let us, then, regard this, as your plan to provide the Jews with soil under their feet. On page 5, paragraph 2, it says that this would be a police state. Is that right? Is that how you saw the Jewish State? And the police would be the German police?
Accused: Legal questions were not within the competence of Section IVB4. Rather, the responsibility for these legal questions, lay chiefly with Department I of the Ministry of the Interior, and certainly both Himmler and Heydrich gave the relevant orders. I do not want to dispute this in any way; nor can I dispute this in any way.
Q. This is not a matter of directives nor of orders; this is a matter of a plan about which you admitted that it was the plan of your Section.
I would now like to discuss the details of this plan with you. Please turn to page 6: "The overall administration of the Jewish State will be in the hands of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service." Is that correct? That is how it was planned; is that correct?
A. The overall direction refers here in my opinion to the evacuation and resettlement. Nothing has as yet been said here, as far as I can see, about the constitutional form of the Jewish State. Perhaps nothing could as yet have been said in this respect, at that time.
Q. No, nothing was said about it then. Turn to page 11, and see whether it was not referred to. There was talk about creating a command post of the Security Police, which would be in charge of the matters in Madagascar. Is that correct?
A. Yes, that is right as far as the stage of settlement is concerned. Nothing else can be inferred from it.
Q. And one of the important advantages, in the eyes of your Section, of the Madagascar Plan is to be found on page 4. In the paragraph before the last - "that Madagascar is an island, and the Jews would therefore no longer be able to come in contact with the outside world."
A. I have already said that this was not the thinking of Section IVB4, but the thinking of all participants at these consultations. Who presented it, whether it came from the Chancellery of the Party, or some other central Authority, whether it came from IVB4 as well - also a possibility - that I do not know. In any event, one of these participants must have put it forward.
Q. The plan was to have been implemented in such a way that each year one million Jews were to have been thrown onto the island? It says so, on page 10, paragraph 3.
A. Yes, that is quite possible, if the appropriate financial means were made available, large-scale organizational arrangements made, and the appropriate preparatory work for housing, agriculture and industry undertaken, then this would have been quite possible, according to the calculations of that time. I did not make these calculations.
Q. I am sure you did not. But look at page 13. Where did you intend to get the money - by confiscating Jewish property. Correct?
A. Yes, that is right, but this was not the idea of IVB4, because IVB4 was much too small for that. Rather, this must have originated with the appropriate economic offices, which after all passed the laws for disposing of Jewish property.
Q. There is no mention here of laws, or how you were going to implement this. Here, there is reference to a plan, and I would like to see how you were going to plan the placing of ground under the feet of the Jewish people, as this is written in exhibit T/174. Right? That is the plan of your Section.
A. That is the plan not only of my Section, but that is the outcome of the general consultation. As a matter of principle, I have to say about this, that it is always very difficult to make a start with such enormous undertakings. The initiative is the most difficult part. The organization comes later. One would have seen how the whole thing would have been organized and began to operate. Every beginning, I must say at this point, is very difficult, especially when one has to struggle against opposition. After all, it was not a matter of having all central authorities throw themselves into this Madagascar affair, head over heels.
Q. Heydrich made efforts to have this plan implemented, is that right?
A. Yes, that is right.
A. And who was against it?
A. As far as I can remember, the main difficulties, in the beginning, were created by the Foreign Office. I, myself, incline towards the view, which was strengthened by various matters which occurred later, that it was a matter here of rivalry between Heydrich and Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop was afraid that the Chief of the Security Police, or rather the Ministry of the Interior would intervene in an area for which he regarded himself exclusively responsible.
On the other hand, Heydrich had political ambitions. I inferred this from a remark he made that he was happy to be able to leave the negative police work, to some extent, and to change over, as he put it, to positive political work, when he became the Acting Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. From these passing remarks which I remember, I would say that this was also a political issue within the high echelons and the highest leadership of the Reich at that time.
Q. You will agree that in terms of colonization, this plan had no basis whatsoever, and that if it had been carried out, it would have meant that four million Jews would have been sent to Madagascar, to die there.
A. No, this I must refute most decisively and I can prove that. Because who was it, after all, who caused the Madagascar Plan to collapse. Strictly in the external sense it was essentially opposed by the Foreign Office, and specifically the German Ambassador in Paris, Abetz, who on the occasion of a visit to the then Head of State - in what was called his Fuehrer headquarters - made the proposal that instead of letting the Jews sail around on the high seas, simply stick them into some territory in the occupied Russian area. This is where the obstacles originated, and this proves precisely what I said in my last answer. Madagascar was definitely not a plan to exterminate the Jews or annihilate them, because otherwise it would not have included the passage which is naturally a side issue, but it stands out that there are seven or eight million heads of cattle on the island, and nutrition for the Jews who would come to the island would be ensured. This passage would not have been necessary at all, if such an evil idea had been behind this conception.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eic ... 92-01.htmlThe Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Session 92
(Part 1 of 4)
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Session No. 92
27 Tammuz 5721 (11 July 1961)
Presiding Judge: I declare the ninety-second Session of the trial open. We are continuing with the cross-examination of the Accused. I remind the Accused that he is still testifying under oath.
Accused: I am aware of the fact.
Attorney General: Accused, when you signed either with the abbreviated form, i.A. , or in full, im Auftrage (by order), that meant that you were observing the general directives and were signing in accordance with the general rule, did it not?
Accused: I am not familiar with any general rules or general directives; the only thing I do know is that when I signed im Auftrage, by order, whether abbreviated or in full, I was so ordered by my chief, because in every single instance I would make sure I consulted my superiors, and observed the right of any specialist officer to have instructions issued to him.
Presiding Judge: I do not understand. In all instances when you had to sign a letter in a file, you received instructions from your chief?
Accused: In all instances which were new, on which my chief had not yet taken a decision. If that is not sufficient, I can give examples.
Presiding Judge: That will suffice.
Judge Halevi: Does that mean that there was never a single letter signed by you which was not marked i.A. or im Auftrage?
Accused: There was not a single letter signed by me which was not signed i.A. or im Auftrage. I was prohibited from doing this throughout my entire activity in Department IV.
Attorney General: And this is true both for matters on which you had to consult your superiors and for matters which had already been decided, and where you did not have to consult anyone. Is that true?
Accused: Signing im Auftrage? Yes, that is true.
Q. So you will agree with me that the mere fact that you signed im Auftrage or i.A. actually meant nothing at all?
A. I am sorry, Mr. Attorney General, I could not follow you there - I had my orders, and this is shown by the term im Auftrage, by order, and the term was not just for show. It was just like the term in Vertretung, on behalf of, the Chief of Department. The Department Chief had his authority; the specialist officer had a right of implementation of his own, that is true. But I did not even make use of this right of implementation, as can be confirmed by the testimonies - I was known for this far beyond my own Section, for running, for going to my superior on every single matter.
Presiding Judge: In any case, the fact that a letter is signed i.A. adds nothing, nor does it detract from the question of whether in a specific instance you received instructions from your superior, or whether you received these, as you put it, in the shape of directives, guidelines and so on. That is correct, is it not?
Accused: Yes, it is. In all cases I had to - I could not sign other than im Auftrage, whether in that particular instance I had approached my superior for instructions, or whether I had signed straight away on the basis of some previous instruction which had established a precedent.
Attorney General: Look at exhibit T/681, document No. 1444. Here you have put your signature on stationery of the Reichsministerium des Innern (the Reich Ministry of the Interior), on an order in which, on the basis of the powers granted to you, you order the transfer of the property of the various Jewish communities, listed individually, to the Reich Association of the Jews in Germany. And you sign i.A. On behalf of whom were you signing this order, for example?
Accused: Without going into the contents, the letterhead reads: "Reich Minister of the Interior, Police SIVB (new)." This is the Section, and according to instructions in this case, the letterhead to be used here was that of the Reich Minister of the Interior, together with the prefix "Pol.," the use of which is covered by regulations, and also the designation of the Section. After my chief had settled that, I also had the right to write "by order." That was perfectly normal according to the prevailing regulations.
Q. But by whose order was it signed?
Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, do we have Regulation 10 which has been submitted in evidence?
Attorney General: I do not have the document before me, but I believe that a photostat has been submitted to the Court.
Presiding Judge: This would show us who is authorized to issue instructions, I assume.
Attorney General: (To the Accused) Did something like this have to be passed on to a minor specialist officer? That could not have been done without Mueller having to sign this, according to what you have said?
Accused: No, not if I already had my chief's instructions. I believe that in some written internal instruction or other it was stated explicitly that these matters are to be settled from case to case, with individual instances being decided and clarified. That has been submitted here and can be examined in writing.
Q. So that means by order of the Reich Minister, does it not?
A. I do not know how this is to be construed; but certainly the "S" appears there, and below that the indication of the police. Today, I do not know what explanation for this was given by the administrative legal specialists. I am sure that at the time I knew it.
Q. But you cannot have signed by your own order. After all, IVB4 is you yourself, and you cannot mean to say that you were signing on your own order - Eichmann by order of Eichmann. You were signing by order of the Minister of the Interior.
A. I believe that if you look at the relevant decree on this matter, the emphasis will - I believe - be on this little word "Pol." Today, I would imagine this to be Police Department or Department of Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. It has to be something along those lines. In any case, it can be read in this decree.
Q. In your interrogation by the police, you said that every time you signed i.A. , this meant that you were doing so on behalf of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service. You said so, for instance, on page 1830 [of the Accused's Statement], and you said so also in connection with a whole series of documents submitted to you. You certainly know on behalf of whom you were signing, and certainly this did not become clear to you as a result of the documents which you saw.
I therefore ask you whether what you said on page 1830, "at the very most I signed by order, i.e., by order of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service" - I ask you whether this is correct?
A. There were two letterheads: "Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, III" or "Reich Ministry of the Interior." Every time that I signed "by order," it was of course by order of the incumbent of the office which appeared on the letterhead. The specialist officers in the Reich Ministry of the Interior signed "by order," and the specialist officers in the Head Office for Reich Security had exactly the same right to sign, as the Head Office for Reich Security was, I believe, a division or a main division in the Reich Ministry of the Interior.
Q. Let me now show you two documents, one signed by you and one by Suhr. The first document is No. 600, T/550, which is signed by you. This is headed "Head Office for Reich Security," and you signed im Auftrage. The same applies to T/401 as well - our number 694, where you are writing under the RSHA heading and sign "i.A. Eichmann." That means then that here you are acting by order of the Head Office for Reich Security. Is that correct?
A. Yes, it is, in accordance with instructions.
Q. And when you sign a document such as T/771, or any one of these documents where you signed under the heading Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service and added your signature with "by order," that means that you signed on behalf of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service.
A. Yes, that is what this means.
Q. That means that everything you have told the Court - that these signatures mean that you always acted by order of Mueller - that is incorrect.
A. No, it is not incorrect - on the contrary, Mueller was the representative of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service; he was the person who had to give me my instructions, and he gave them to me.
Q. Yes, we have already heard that. When did you first learn of Hitler's order to carry out the Final Solution of the Jewish Question?
A. I learned of this when I was summoned to see the Chief of the Security Police, who at that time was Heydrich - this was after the German-Russian war - I have already stated that it was some time after the twin battles of Minsk and Bialystok, and it must have...
Q. Approximately when was that?
A. I have lost any recollection of that - it could be worked out, because the battlefields had already been cleared up by the Building Site Commandos - so that it might have been, in my estimate, August-September - in any case it must have been before the trees started shedding their leaves.
Q. We shall try to go back through the documents and identify when this was. When you wrote in T/733, document No. 1558, to the Foreign Ministry about preventing the emigration of the Jewess Flora Sara Bucher, in the light of the approaching Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe, and that was on 19 November 1941, you already knew about Hitler's order, which is why you spoke of the approaching Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe.
A. This was not yet termed the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, because at that time the Madagascar Plan had not yet, to the best of my knowledge, been shelved.
Q. But this very morning we heard that the Madagascar Plan was shelved at the end of 1940 or the beginning of 1941. So there could be no talk of Madagascar in November 1941.
A. This is the first time I have heard that the Madagascar Plan is supposed to have been shelved at the beginning of 1941. I have never heard that.
Q. So when was it shelved?
A. I remember very clearly that when Heydrich ordered me to undertake this official journey, I secretly...that is to say as far as I was concerned I knew nothing...Madagascar was what was important for me.
Q. So when was the Madagascar Plan shelved?
A. I am not sure when it was exactly, but in any case the date given here, February 1942, is too late - it was shelved earlier than that. One can imagine that the Madagascar Plan was definitively shelved when orders were given for the deportations to Minsk and Riga. I think that it was then.
Q. So when was that?
A. That was November 1941.
Q. Therefore, if the Madagascar Plan was present in your mind when you signed T/733, it would not have been reasonable to forbid the Jewess Mrs. Bucher to travel to unoccupied France, because why should one have prohibited her travelling to unoccupied France?
Presiding Judge: Perhaps we can clarify this. Accused, according to what you said, the Madagascar Plan was shelved because of political developments.
Attorney General: He referred to military developments, Your Honour.
Presiding Judge: Political and military, right? This was after the De Gaulle uprising, and after De Gaulle gained control of the French colonies in Africa, was it not?
Accused: That is correct, Your Honour, and immediately after that there was the action taken by Ambassador Abetz in Paris, and I think that should give us a very good idea of the date.
Presiding Judge: Very well, but was that not much earlier than November 1941?
Accused: Your Honour, I have also tried to determine the date accurately with the help of the material available to me. Abetz visited Hitler for this purpose in autumn 1941, I believe, and that is when Abetz submitted that the Madagascar Plan was no longer really valid and recommended looking for a solution in the East. Thus, I believe that this date is also important when it comes to determining the time when the Madagascar Plan was shelved, and this date is to be found in Poliakov (Red), which reproduces the entire contents of the letter of Embassy Councillor Zeitschel to his ambassador, including a date.
Attorney General: In reply to a question from His Honour, the Presiding Judge, you said that the shelving of the Madagascar Plan was linked to De Gaulle's seizure of the French fleet and French overseas territories, in 1940. Is that correct?
Accused: I believe...I must add that when I say linked, that means at around the same time, as far as I can tell, as the presentation of the ambassador in Paris to Hitler. Today, twenty or more years later, I can no longer remember the exact dates. I do not know.
Q. Do you know when Madagascar itself was conquered by the Free French forces?
A. No, I do not know that. I did not find this in any of the documents which refer to the matter.
Q. I shall remind you of the exact date - I shall tell you that it was long before 19 November 1941, so that when you wrote on 19 November 1941, about the approaching Final Solution, you could no longer be dreaming of Madagascar.
A. If, when I wrote this, the deportation orders for Riga and Minsk had already been issued, then obviously I could not have - but I do not know when the deportations to the East were ordered and carried out.
Q. Very well, I can help you - it was in October 1941. Do you want to see?
A. Yes, please, if I may.
Q. I shall show you in just a moment - what I have now is not the document I am thinking of. In any case, what I wish to know is this: When on 19 November 1941, you talk about the "approaching Final Solution," you cannot mean Madagascar any more, because at that point you already know of the Fuehrer's order, and that the "Final Solution" means extermination.
A. As I have said, once orders came from the top for deportations to the East - to the Russian areas - at that point obviously, in accordance with orders, that is what would have been meant by the Final Solution, but as long as that had not happened, in accordance with prevailing terminology of the day, the Final Solution meant the Madagascar Plan. I cannot say any more about this than was indicated in orders at the time - I have no reason to deny this.
Q. We shall see in a moment whether you cannot say any more. In exhibit T/395 you wrote once more to your Foreign Ministry - on the same date, 19 November 1941 - that "in the light of the impending Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe, emigration of Jews from the territories occupied by us will be prohibited." That, too, is not because of Madagascar?
A. There is a basic order from Himmler about this, included in the files here, prohibiting emigration from the occupied territories.
Presiding Judge: That was not the question - the question was, what is the meaning of the words "the impending Final Solution" in this letter?
Accused: It is the date, Your Honour, which is not clear, and I am saying quite honestly and frankly that if at that time the Madagascar Plan had been shelved on orders from the top, then this phrase "the Final Solution" meant the eastern arrangement. But if, when this letter was written, the Madagascar Plan was still in force, then it referred to the Madagascar Plan.
Judge Raveh: Perhaps you would show us the document to which you are referring in Poliakov (Red). Here it is. Please show us the document to which you are referring.
YesEbusitanus wrote:Trapon, your ability to find information is to be comended but the forum reader would surely more than thankful if you could go through the trouble and like Roberto did, highlight the most interesting passages instead of copy-paste entire volumes. If that was your intention from the get go then a quick link as to read the document there would have suficed.
Thanks
The Jews would travel by ship. This is what the German leftist historian Goetz Aly writes in "Architects of Annihilation", page 162.So, if this forced emigration to Madagascar was seriously considered, how were the Jews supposed to arrive there, and how would they survive?
What would they do and how would they survive?
With regard to young Jews trained in agriculture, there were quite a few of these. The Zionist pioneer organisation Hechalutz had maintained agricultural training schools called "Hachsharot" in Germany for Jewish youth intending to settle in Palestine. These schools were allowed to continue their activity under Nazi rule, as they furthered the German Government aim of fostering Jewish emigration.The new resettlement plan envisaged the deportation to Madagascar of the four million European Jews then living under German rule. In the bureaucratic jargon of Eichmann's relocation organisation, it was an 'overseas solution of an insular character'. In constitutional terms the idea was to 'establish a Jewish homeland under German sovereignty'. In overall charge of the project would be the head of the security police and the SD [Heydrich], who would thereby be continuing the work that Goering had entrusted to him on 24 january 1939 as 'special commissioner for jewish emigration'. The plan envisioned two ships a day docking in Madagascar for the next four years, each one carrying 1,500 deportees. The new arrivals would be put to work reclaiming the land, constructing highways and draining swamps. On the model of the abortive 'Jewish reservation' in Lublin, an advance party of younger Jews with a good grounding in the skilled trades and agriculture would be sent out ahead of time to make basic arrangements for 'housing the masses that were to follow'. On the island the deportees would remain under German police surveillance, living in the shadow of large German air force and naval bases, and of course subject to a german monopoly on foreign trade. The project was to be financed by English and American Jews as 'restitution for Versailles'. According to a memorandum of the Foreign Office, the following 'practical division of labour' was proposed:
1. Conduct of negotiations with the hostile powers on the basis of the peace treaty and with the other Europena powers on the basis of special treaties - Foreign Office.
2. Registration of Jews in Europe, transportation to Madagascar, resettlement there and future administration of the island ghetto - Central Office for the Security of the Reich [RSHA}.
3. Registration of Jewish assets held in Europe, establishment of an inter-European bank to act as trustee in administering and realising these assets and to undertake the financing of the resettlement enterprise - Four-Year Plan Office, Councillr Wohltat.
4. Propaganda measures designed to prepare public opinion for the plan and forestall a possible smear campaign from the USA:
(a) for the domestic audience: the Ministry of Propaganda, senior executive officer Dr Taubert with his 'Anti-Semitic Campaign';
(b) for foreign audiences: the public information department of the Foreign Office.
As far as the Jews of western Europe were concerned, the Four-Year Plan Authority and the Foreign Office speeld out their particular priorities in relation to the madagascar plan: 'The aim is to replace Jewish economic influence in Europe at a single stroke, so to speak, with German economic influence, but without disrupting the economies of the countries concerned by the closure of large Jewish-owned firms'.
The beauty of Aly's approach is that it places German planning vis-a-vis the Jews squarely within the context of overall German planning for the reordering of global spheres of influence, and thereby enables us to understand the real function of the plans for the Jews. That avoids the basic flaw in the thinking of Tarpon27 and all the other Tarpons, which is to examine the planning in relation to the Jews in isolation from other German planning, thus preventing a true understanding of it.The German Foreign Office was in overall charge of the Madagascar project. It commissioned two reports to evaluate the project paper drafted by the Central Office for the Security of the reich. One of these reports was prepared by Friedrich Schumacher, professor of geology at the freiberg Mining Academy in Saxony; the other was drawn up by the president of the Bavarian Office of Statistics, the demographer Professor Friedrich Burgdoerfer. Schumacher presented his report on 1 August 1940; Burgdoerfer had submitted his two weeks earlier. Responding to the brief he had been given, Schumacher concluded that Madagascar possessed little in the way of valuable mineral resources - thus dismissing fears that the island might be too good for the Jews, so to speak, Burgdoerfer wholeheartedly endorsed the plan for 'resettling' 6.5 million Jews on the island. But his report went far beyond the terms of the brief. Not only did he quote numbers for 'world Jewry' as a whole, he also calculated that it would be possible to resettle other Jewish populations on Madagascar too: not just the nearly four million who were then living under German rule, but also another million Jews from Palestine and 1.6 million 'from other parts of the world' (excluding the Soviet Union and the USA). Burgdoerfer summarised his findings:
"At the last census (1.7.1936) Madagascar had a population of 3.8 million, which, on a total land area of 616,000 sq. km., is equivalent to 6.2 persons per sq. km. The total number of Jews being considered for resettlement is thus only 2.7 million greater than the present population of the island. If the island were to be given over exclusively to the Jews, the presence of 6.5 million Jews on the island would increase the population density to just 10 persons per sq. km. If the intention is to resettle the 6.5 million Jews there in addition to the existing indigenous population, the mean population density would rise to around 16 per sq. km., which is the average figure for the earht's surface as a whole - and slightly more than one tenth of the population density of the German Reich. Even this figure should be well within the natural capacity of the island."
The Madagascar plan proved impossible to implement. It was closely associated with another plan, the subject of serious discussion within the Wehrmacht, Hitler and the Foreign Office: namely the proposal for creating a German 'colonila empire in Central Africe' following the defeat of France. This was to serve as a 'colonial satellite region', with the 'ultimate aim' of safeguarding 'supplies of food and other essentials for 150 million people' living in the "Greater European trading area'. The Madagascar plan was not an isolated project, therefore, but an integral part of Germ,an expansion plans. And it was a condition of those Plans that the Jews of Europe and Palestine should be relocated to the margins of the new German empire. As it became obvious, however, that British naval power could not be broken, the Madagascar and Central African projects were abandoned in the autumn of 1940 in favour of the 'eastern solution', ie preparations for the war against the Soviet Union.
ROFL! Thanks, Michael...your statement(s) above make it all so much more clear.The beauty of Aly's approach is that it places German planning vis-a-vis the Jews squarely within the context of overall German planning for the reordering of global spheres of influence, and thereby enables us to understand the real function of the plans for the Jews. That avoids the basic flaw in the thinking of Tarpon27 and all the other Tarpons, which is to examine the planning in relation to the Jews in isolation from other German planning, thus preventing a true understanding of it.
One of the reasons I posted the excerpts from Eichmann's trail was to at minimum, allow readers to read Eichmann's account during what you call the "tendentious material" (you need a new phrase, because you use that "tendentious" far too often) of the "Jewish Prosecution" of him.Furthermore, Aly, by examining the original German plans, has been able to avoid the distortion created by relying on such tendentious material as the case put forward by the Jewish Prosecution in the Eichmann Trial, which of course was not concerned with uncovering the truth about the Madagascar plan but rather with painting it in the blackest possible colours so as to incriminate Eichmann because of his involvement with it.
You defeat your own point, don't you?Finally, one might well compare the calculations of the population density in Madagascar after the resettlement of several million Jews there with the actual current population density of the former Palestine, a much smaller territory than Madagascar. Into that tiny land are crammed over five million Jews and God knows how many Arabs. Yet the Jews seem to be surviving quite well.
Off course, the five million Jews presently living in the former Palestine are heavily subsidised from outside, which would not likely have been the case with Jews living in Madagascar. Presumably the 6.5 million Jews scheduled for resettlement in Madagascar would have ended up existing at a standard of living comparable to that of the native inhabitants. But hey, does the Law of Moses require that Jews live like Californians?
Thank you, and thanks for allowing me to post here.Tarpon27 -- Replying to perceived insults in a gentlemanly way, as you have done, is encouraged.