1)      Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree.

Persons of mixed blood of the first degree will, as regards the final solution of the Jewish question, be treated as Jews.

From this treatment the following persons will be exempt:

           a)    Persons of mixed blood of the first degree married to persons of German blood if their marriage has resulted in children (persons of mixed blood of the second degree). Such persons of mixed blood of the second degree are to be treated essentially as Germans.

           b)    Persons of mixed blood of the first degree to whom up till now in any sphere of life whatsoever exemption licenses have been issued by the highest Party or State authorities. Each individual case must be examined, in which process it will still be possible that a decision unfavorable to the persons of mixed blood can be passed.

In any such case only personal essential merit of the person of mixed blood must be deemed a ground justifying the granting of an exemption. (Net merits of the parent or of the partner of German blood.)

Any person of mixed blood of the first degree to whom exemption from the evacuation is granted will be sterilized—in order to eliminate the possibility of offspring and to secure a final solution of the problem presented by the persons of mixed blood. The sterilization will take place on a voluntary basis. But it will be conditional to a permission to stay in the Reich.

Following the sterilizations the “person of mixed blood” will be liberated from all restrictive regulations which have so far been imposed upon him.

2)      Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the Second Degree.

Persons of mixed blood of the second degree will fundamentally be treated as persons of German blood, with exception of the following cases in which persons of mixed blood of the second degree will be treated as Jews:

           a)    The person of mixed blood of the second degree is the result of a marriage where both parents are persons of mixed blood.

           b)    The general appearance of the person of mixed blood of the second degree is racially particularly objectionable so that he already outwardly must be included among the Jews.

           c)    The person of mixed blood of the second degree has a particularly bad police and political record sufficient to reveal that he feels and behaves like a Jew.

But also in these cases exceptions are not to be made if the person of mixed blood of the second degree is married to a person of German blood.

3)      Marriages between Full Jews and Persons of German Blood.

Here it must be decided from one individual case to another whether the Jewish partner is to be evacuated, or whether in consideration of the effects produced by such measure upon the German relatives of the mixed marriage he is to be committed to a ghetto for aged Jews.

4)      Marriages between Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree and Persons of German Blood.

           a)    Without Children.

If no children have resulted from the marriage, the parents of mixed blood of the first degree will be evacuated or committed to a ghetto for old Jews. (The same treatment as in the case of marriages between full Jews and persons of German blood, Point 3).

           b)    With Children.

If the marriage has resulted in children (persons of mixed blood of the second degree) these children will be evacuated or committed to a ghetto together with the parents of mixed blood of the first degree, if they are to be treated as Jews. If the children are to be treated as Germans (regular cases) they will be exempt from evacuation and in that case the same applies to the parent of mixed blood of the first degree.

5)      Marriages between Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree and Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree or Jews.

In the case of these marriages (including the children) all members of the family will be treated as Jews, therefore evacuated or committed to a ghetto for old Jews.

6)      Marriages between Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree and Persons of Mixed Blood of the Second Degree.

Both partners will be evacuated, regardless of whether or not they have children, or committed to a ghetto for old Jews, since as a rule these children will racially reveal the admixture of Jewish blood more strongly than persons of mixed blood of the second degree.

SS-Gruppenführer HOFMANN advocates the opinion that sterilization must be applied on a large scale; in particular as the person of mixed blood placed before the alternative as whether to be evacuated or to be sterilized, would rather submit to the sterilization.

Under Secretary of State Dr. STUCKART maintains that the possible solutions enumerated above for a clarification of the problems presented by mixed marriages and by persons of mixed blood when translated into practice in this form would involve endless administrative work. In the second place, as the biological facts cannot be disregarded in any case, it was suggested by Dr. STUCKART to proceed to forced sterilization.

Further, for the purpose of simplifying the problem of mixed marriages it would be required to consider how it would be possible to attain the object that the legislator can declare: “This marriage has been dissolved.”

Regarding the question of the effects produced by the evacuation of the Jews on the economic life, Under Secretary of State NEUMANN declared that the Jews assigned to work in plants of importance for the war could not be evacuated as long as no replacement was available.

SS-Obergruppenführer HEYDRICH pointed out that besides, according to the directives approved by him governing the carrying out of the evacuation program in operation at that time, these Jews would not be evacuated.

Under Secretary of State Dr. BÜHLER stated that it would be welcomed by the Government General if the implementation of the final solution of this question could start in the Government General, because the transportation problem there was of no predominant importance and the progress of this action would not be hampered by considerations connected with the supply of labor. The Jews had to be removed as quickly as possible from the territory of the Government General because especially there the Jews represented an immense danger as a carrier of epidemics, and on the other hand were permanently contributing to the disorganization of the economic system of the country through black market operations. Moreover, out of the two and a half million Jews to be affected, the majority of cases was unfit for work.

Under Secretary of State BÜHLER further stated that the solution of the Jewish question in the Government General as far as the issuing of orders was concerned was dependent upon the chief of the Security Police and the SD, his work being supported by the administrative authorities of the Government General. He had this one request only, namely that the Jewish question in this territory be solved as quickly as possible.

Towards the end of the conference the various types of possible solutions were discussed; in the course of this discussion Gauleiter Dr. MEYER as well as Under Secretary of State Dr. BÜHLER advocated the view that certain preparatory measures incidental to the carrying out of the final solution ought to be initiated immediately in the very territories under discussion, in which process, however, alarming the population must be avoided.

With the request to the persons present from the Chief of the Security Police and the SD that they lend him appropriate assistance in the carrying out of the tasks involved in the solution, the conference was adjourned.

Source: Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. 13. Document NG-2586. Office of the United States U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 210–17.

 

Commentary

The conference on January 20, 1942, at a luxury villa on Berlin’s Lake Wannsee, was convened to discuss the best way to coordinate the process of annihilation of the Jews beyond the work already being accomplished in the occupied Soviet Union by the Einsatzgruppen. The fundamental objective of the conference was thus to systematize and coordinate the Final Solution.

Those invited included a range of state secretaries whose bureaucratic departments would later become fully involved in the murders of Europe’s Jews. Thus, this conference marked the official coordination of those efforts. Eight of the 15 participants had PhDs; many were lawyers by training. All were familiar with the work of mass killing already taking place in the areas under Nazi control.

Organized by the head of the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, the items for discussion included the use of mobile gas-killing vans and large-scale, stationary gas chambers. Other topics included estimating the size of Europe’s Jewish population, organizing a systematic sweep of Europe to eliminate all Jewish remnants, and establishing criteria for dealing with mixed marriages and Jews of so-called “mixed-blood” (Mischlinge). The decision to annihilate 11 million European Jews, including those in Britain and all of the still-neutral countries, had already been made. Contrary to popular wisdom, the conference was not called to discuss whether or not to implement the Final Solution, but to discuss the various and best ways of achieving a Judenrein (“Jew-free”) Europe.

The entire meeting lasted 90 minutes, with Adolf Eichmann serving as conference secretary. A stenographer carefully composed a complete record of the discussions, after which Heydrich gave Eichmann strict instructions about how to draw up the protocols based on the stenographic record. The result was a short summary document in which the purposes of the meeting were outlined, together with conclusions as to next steps. Thirty copies of these minutes were sent out, with instructions that all were to be destroyed later. One, however, remained; in 1947, Martin Luther’s copy was located, enabling the story of the conference at Wannsee to be reconstructed.

15. Otto Ohlendorf: Extracts from Testimony Regarding the Einsatzgruppen, June 1941–June 1942

Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing units that followed the German armies into Russia, tasked with the job of killing Jews and communists. There were four such units (A through D), each with approximately 750 men. The commander of Einsatzgruppe D was Otto Ohlendorf. It was in that capacity that he was responsible for the murder of 90,000 Jews during a single year, from June 1941 to June 1942, as a result of which he was tried in the “Einsatgruppen Trial” held in Nuremberg from September 1947 through February 1948. Ohlendorf was the lead defendant.

The following extracts are from Ohlendorf’s trial testimony. One of the areas of examination in this document is the close role that the Wehrmacht, the professional German military, played in support of the Einsatzgruppen, something the Wehrmacht long denied. Ohlendorf provides a detailed description of how the Jews were executed, including the use and construction of gas vans used to kill women and children. He is being cross-examined by Colonel John Harlan Amen, a United States Army Intelligence officer and Nuremberg Prison Chief Interrogator.

COLONEL JOHN HARLAN AMEN (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, I wish to call as a witness for the Prosecution, Mr. Otto Ohlendorf.

COL. AMEN: When did you become a member of the SA?

OHLENDORF: In the year 1925.

COL. AMEN: When, if ever, did you join the SD?

OHLENDORF: In 1936.

COL. AMEN: What was your last position in the SD?

OHLENDORF: Chief of Amt III in the RSHA.

COL. AMEN: Did you tell us for what period of time you continued to serve as Chief of Amt III?

OHLENDORF: I was part-time Chief of Amt III from 1939 to 1945.

COL. AMEN: Turning now to the designation “Mobile Units” with the Army shown in the lower right hand corner of the chart, please explain to the Tribunal the significance of the terms “Einsatzgruppe” and “Einsatzkommando.”

OHLENDORF: The concept “Einsatzgruppe” was established after an agreement between the Chiefs of the RSHA, OKW, and OKH, on the separate use of Sipo units in the operational areas. The concept “Einsatzgruppe” first appeared during the Polish campaign.

COL. AMEN: To the best of your knowledge and recollection, please explain to the Tribunal the entire substance of this written agreement.

OHLENDORF: I said, this was the relationship between the Army and the Einsatzgruppen and the Einsatzkommandos. The agreement specified that the army groups or armies would be responsible for the movement and the supply of Einsatzgruppen, but that instructions for their activities would come from the Chief of the Sipo and SD.

COL. AMEN: Let us understand. Is it correct that an Einsatz group was to be attached to each army group or army?

OHLENDORF: Every army group was to have an Einsatzgruppe attached to it. The army group in its turn would then attach the Einsatzkommandos to the armies of the army group.

COL. AMEN: And was the army command to determine the area within which the Einsatz group was to operate?

OHLENDORF: The operational area of the Einsatzgruppe was already determined by the fact that it was attached to a specific army group and therefore moved with it, whereas the operational areas of the Einsatzkommandos were then fixed by the army group or army.

COL. AMEN: Did the agreement also provide that the army command was to direct the time during which they were to operate?

OHLENDORF: That was included under the heading “movement.”

COL. AMEN: And also to direct any additional tasks they were to perform?

OHLENDORF: Yes. Even though the Chiefs of the Sipo and SD had the right to issue instructions to them on their work, there existed a general agreement that the army was also entitled to issue orders to the Einsatzgruppen, if the operational situation made it necessary.

COL. AMEN: What position did you occupy with respect to this agreement?

OHLENDORF: From June 1941 to the death of Heydrich in June 1942, I led Einsatzgruppe D, and was the representative of the Chief of the Sipo and the SD with the 11th Army.

COL. AMEN: And when was Heydrich’s death?

OHLENDORF: Heydrich was wounded at the end of May 1942, and died on 4 June 1942.

COL. AMEN: How much advance notice, if any, did you have of the campaign against Soviet Russia?

OHLENDORF: About 4 weeks.

COL. AMEN: How many Einsatz groups were there, and who were their respective leaders?

OHLENDORF: There were four Einsatzgruppen, Group A, B, C, and D. Chief of Einsatzgruppe A was Stahlecker; Chief of Einsatzgruppe B was Nebe; Chief of Einsatzgruppe C, Dr. Rasche, and later, Dr. Thomas; Chief of Einsatzgruppe Dl, I myself, and later Bierkamp.

COL. AMEN: To which army was Group D attached?

OHLENDORF: Group D was not attached to any army group, but was attached directly to the 11th Army.

COL. AMEN: Where did Group D operate?

OHLENDORF: Group D operated in the Southern Ukraine.

COL. AMEN: When did Group D commence its move into Soviet Russia?

OHLENDORF: Group D left Duegen on 21 June and reached Pietra Namsk in Romania in 3 days. There the first Einsatzkommandos were already being demanded by the Army, and they immediately set off for the destinations named by the Army. The entire Einsatzgruppe was put into operation at the beginning of July.

COL. AMEN: You are referring to the 11th Army?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: In what respects, if any, were the official duties of the Einsatz groups concerned with Jews and Communist commissars?

OHLENDORF: On the question of Jews and Communists, the Einsatzgruppen and the commanders of the Einsatzkommandos were orally instructed before their mission.

COL. AMEN: What were their instructions with respect to the Jews and the Communist functionaries?

OHLENDORF: The instructions were that in the Russian operational areas of the Einsatzgruppen the Jews, as well as the Soviet political commissars, were to be liquidated.

COL. AMEN: And when you say “liquidated” do you mean “killed”?

OHLENDORF: Yes, I mean “killed.”

COL. AMEN: Prior to the opening of the Soviet campaign, did you attend a conference at Pretz?

OHLENDORF: Yes, it was a conference at which the Einsatzgruppen and the Einsatzkommandos were informed of their tasks and were given the necessary orders.

COL. AMEN: Who was present at that conference?

OHLENDORF: The chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen and the commanders of the Einsatzkommandos and Streckenbach of the RSHA who transmitted the orders of Heydrich and Himmler.

COL. AMEN: What were those orders?

OHLENDORF: Those were the general orders on the normal work of the Sipo and the SD, and in addition the liquidation order which I have already mentioned.

COL. AMEN: And that conference took place on approximately what date?

OHLENDORF: About 3 or 4 days before the mission.

COL. AMEN: So that before you commenced to march into Soviet Russia, you received orders at this conference to exterminate the Jews and Communist functionaries in addition to the regular professional work of the Security Police and SD; is that correct?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: Did you, personally, have any conversation with Himmler respecting any communication from Himmler to the chiefs of army groups and armies concerning this mission?

OHLENDORF: Yes. Himmler told me that before the beginning of the Russian campaign Hitler had spoken of this mission to a conference of the army groups and the army chiefs—no, not the army chiefs but the commanding generals—and had instructed the commanding generals to provide the necessary support.

COL. AMEN: So that you can testify that the chiefs of the army groups and the armies had been similarly informed of these orders for the liquidation of the Jews and Soviet functionaries?

OHLENDORF: I don’t think it is quite correct to put it in that form. They had no orders for liquidation; the order for the liquidation was given to Himmler to carry out, but since this liquidation took place in the operational area of the army group or the armies, they had to be ordered to provide support. Moreover, without such instructions to the army, the activities of the Einsatzgruppen would not have been possible.

COL. AMEN: Did you have any other conversation with Himmler concerning this order?

OHLENDORF: Yes, in the late summer of 1941 Himmler was in Nikolaiev. He assembled the leaders and men of the Einsatzkommandos, repeated to them the liquidation order, and pointed out that the leaders and men who were taking part in the liquidation bore no personal responsibility for the execution of this order. The responsibility was his, alone, and the Führer’s.

COL. AMEN: And you yourself heard that said?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: Do you know whether this mission of the Einsatz group was known to the army group commanders?

OHLENDORF: This order and the execution of these orders were known to the commanding general of the army.

COL. AMEN: How do you know that?

OHLENDORF: Through conferences with the army and through instructions which were given by the army on the execution of the order.

COL. AMEN: Was the mission of the Einsatz groups and the agreement between OKW, OKH, and RSHA known to the other leaders in the RSHA?

OHLENDORF: At least some of them knew of it, since some of the leaders were also active in the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos in the course of time. Furthermore, the leaders who were dealing with the organization and the legal aspect of the Einsatzgruppen also knew of it.

COL. AMEN: Most of the leaders came from the RSHA, did they not?

OHLENDORF: Which leaders?

COL. AMEN: Of the Einsatz groups.

OHLENDORF: No, one can’t say that. The leaders in the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos came from all over the Reich.

COL. AMEN: Who was the commanding officer of the 11th Army?

OHLENDORF: At first, Ritter von Schober; later, Von Manstein.

COL. AMEN: Will you tell the Tribunal in what way or ways the commanding officer of the 11th Army directed or supervised Einsatz Group D in carrying out its liquidation activities?

OHLENDORF: An order from the 11th Army was sent to Nikolaiev stating that liquidations were to take place only at a distance of not less than 200 kilometers from the headquarters of the commanding general.

COL. AMEN: Do you recall any other occasion?

OHLENDORF: In Simferopol the army command requested the Einsatzkommandos in its area to hasten the liquidations, because famine was threatening and there was a great housing shortage.

COL. AMEN: Do you know how many persons were liquidated by Einsatz Group D under your direction?

OHLENDORF: In the year between June 1941 to June 1942 the Einsatzkommandos reported 90,000 people liquidated.

COL. AMEN: Did that include men, women, and children?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: On what do you base those figures?

OHLENDORF: On reports sent by the Einsatzkommandos to the Einsatzgruppen.

COL. AMEN: Were those reports submitted to you?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: And you saw them and read them?

OHLENDORF: I beg your pardon?

COL. AMEN: And you saw and read those reports, personally?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: And it is on those reports that you base the figures you have given the Tribunal?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: Do you know how those figures compare with the number of persons liquidated by other Einsatz groups?

OHLENDORF: The figures which I saw of other Einsatzgruppen are considerably larger.

COL. AMEN: That was due to what factor?

OHLENDORF: I believe that to a large extent the figures submitted by the other Einsatzgruppen were exaggerated.

COL. AMEN: Did you see reports of liquidations from the other Einsatz groups from time to time?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: And those reports showed liquidations exceeding those of Group D; is that correct?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: Did you personally supervise mass executions of these individuals?

OHLENDORF: I was present at two mass executions for purposes of inspection.

COL. AMEN: Will you explain to the Tribunal in detail how an individual mass execution was carried out?

OHLENDORF: A local Einsatzkommando attempted to collect all the Jews in its area by registering them. This registration was performed by the Jews themselves.

COL. AMEN: On what pretext, if any, were they rounded up?

OHLENDORF: On the pretext that they were to be resettled.

COL. AMEN: Will you continue?

OHLENDORF: After the registration the Jews were collected at one place; and from there they were later transported to the place of execution, which was, as a rule an antitank ditch or a natural excavation. The executions were carried out in a military manner, by firing squads under command.

COL. AMEN: In what way were they transported to the place of execution?

OHLENDORF: They were transported to the place of execution in trucks, always only as many as could be executed immediately. In this way it was attempted to keep the span of time from the moment in which the victims knew what was about to happen to them until the time of their actual execution as short as possible.

COL. AMEN: Was that your idea?

OHLENDORF: Yes.

COL. AMEN: And after they were shot what was done with the bodies?

OHLENDORF: The bodies were buried in the antitank ditch or excavation.

COL. AMEN: What determination, if any, was made as to whether the persons were actually dead?

OHLENDORF: The unit leaders or the firing-squad commanders had orders to see to this and, if need be, finish them off themselves.

COL. AMEN: And who would do that?

OHLENDORF: Either the unit leader himself or somebody designated by him.

COL. AMEN: In what positions were the victims shot?

OHLENDORF: Standing or kneeling.

COL. AMEN: What was done with the personal property and clothing of the persons executed?

OHLENDORF: All valuables were confiscated at the time of the registration or the rounding up and handed over to the Finance Ministry, either through the RSHA or directly. At first the clothing was given to the population, but in the winter of 1941–42 it was collected and disposed of by the NSV.

COL. AMEN: All their personal property was registered at the time?

OHLENDORF: No, not all of it, only valuables were registered.

COL. AMEN: What happened to the garments which the victims were wearing when they went to the place of execution?

OHLENDORF: They were obliged to take off their outer garments immediately before the execution.

COL. AMEN: All of them?

OHLENDORF: The outer garments, yes.

COL. AMEN: How about the rest of the garments they were wearing?

OHLENDORF: The other garments remained on the bodies.

COL. AMEN: Was that true of not only your group but of the other Einsatz groups?

OHLENDORF: That was the order in my Einsatzgruppe. I don’t know how it was done in other Einsatzgruppen.

COL. AMEN: In what way did they handle it?

OHLENDORF: Some of the unit leaders did not carry out the liquidation in the military manner, but killed the victims singly by shooting them in the back of the neck.

COL. AMEN: And you objected to that procedure?

OHLENDORF: I was against that procedure, yes.

COL. AMEN: For what reason?

OHLENDORF: Because both for the victims and for those who carried out the executions, it was, psychologically, an immense burden to bear.

COL.AMEN: Now, what was done with the property collected by the Einsatzkommandos from these victims?

OHLENDORF: All valuables were sent to Berlin, to the RSHA or to the Reich Ministry of Finance. The articles which could be used in the operational area, were disposed of there.

COL. AMEN: For example, what happened to gold and silver taken from the victims?

OHLENDORF: That was, as I have just said, turned over to Berlin, to the Reich Ministry of Finance.

COL. AMEN: How do you know that?

OHLENDORF: I can remember that it was actually handled in that way from Simferopol.

COL. AMEN: How about watches, for example, taken from the victims?

OHLENDORF: At the request of the Army, watches were made available to the forces at the front.

COL. AMEN: Were all victims, including the men, women, and children, executed in the same manner?

OHLENDORF: Until the spring of 1942, yes. Then an order came from Himmler that in the future women and children were to be killed only in gas vans.

COL. AMEN: How had the women and children been killed previously?

OHLENDORF: In the same way as the men—by shooting.

COL. AMEN: What, if anything, was done about burying the victims after they had been executed?

OHLENDORF: The Kommandos filled the graves to efface the signs of the execution, and then labor units of the population leveled them.

COL. AMEN: Referring to the gas vans which you said you received in the spring of 1942, what order did you receive with respect to the use of these vans?

OHLENDORF: These gas vans were in future to be used for the killing of women and children.

COL. AMEN: Will you explain to the Tribunal the construction of these vans and their appearance?

OHLENDORF: The actual purpose of these vans could not be seen from the outside. They looked like closed trucks, and were so constructed that at the start of the motor, gas was conducted into the van causing death in 10 to 15 minutes.

COL. AMEN: Explain in detail just how one of these vans was used for an execution.

OHLENDORF: The vans were loaded with the victims and driven to the place of burial, which was usually the same as that used for the mass executions. The time needed for transportation was sufficient to insure the death of the victims.

COL. AMEN: How were the victims induced to enter the vans?

OHLENDORF: They were told that they were to be transported to another locality.

COL. AMEN: How was the gas turned on?

OHLENDORF: I am not familiar with the technical details.

COL. AMEN: How long did it take to kill the victims ordinarily?

OHLENDORF: About 10 to 15 minutes; the victims were not conscious of what was happening to them.

COL. AMEN: How many persons could be killed simultaneously in one such van?

OHLENDORF: About 15 to 25 persons. The vans varied in size.

COL. AMEN: Did you receive reports from those persons operating these vans from time to time?

OHLENDORF: I didn’t understand the question.

COL. AMEN: Did you receive reports from those who were working on the vans?

OHLENDORF: I received the report that the Einsatzkommandos did not willingly use the vans.

COL. AMEN: Why not?

OHLENDORF: Because the burial of the victims was a great ordeal for the members of the Einsatzkommandos.

COL. AMEN: Now, will you tell the Tribunal who furnished these vans to the Einsatz groups?

OHLENDORF: The gas vans did not belong to the motor pool of the Einsatzgruppen but were assigned to the Einsatzgruppe as a special unit, headed by the man who had constructed the vans. The vans were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen by the RSHA.

COL. AMEN: Were the vans supplied to all of the different Einsatz groups?

OHLENDORF: I am not certain of that. I know only in the case of Einsatzgruppe D, and indirectly that Einsatzgruppe C also made use of these vans.

COL. AMEN: [W]ill you explain to the Tribunal why you believe that the type of execution ordered by you, namely, military, was preferable to the shooting-in-the-neck procedure adopted by the other Einsatz groups?

OHLENDORF: On the one hand, the aim was that the individual leaders and men should be able to carry out the executions in a military manner acting on orders and should not have to make a decision of their own; it was, to all intents and purposes, an order which they were to carry out. On the other hand, it was known to me that through the emotional excitement of the executions ill-treatment could not be avoided, since the victims discovered too soon that they were to be executed and could not therefore endure prolonged nervous strain. And it seemed intolerable to me that individual leaders and men should in consequence be forced to kill a large number of people on their own decision.

COL. AMEN: In what manner did you determine which were the Jews to be executed?

OHLENDORF: That was not part of my task; but the identification of the Jews was carried out by the Jews themselves, since the registration was handled by a Jewish Council of Elders.

COL. AMEN: Did the amount of Jewish blood have anything to do with it?

OHLENDORF: I can’t remember the details, but I believe that half-Jews were also considered as Jews.

Source: Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. Blue Series, vol. 4. Office of the United States. U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 311–34.

 

Commentary

The Nuremberg trial testimony of Otto Ohlendorf, SS-Gruppenführer and commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe D, was a terrifying statement of how the mobile killing squads operated in the occupied Soviet Union. Colonel John Amen, the U.S. prosecutor, permitted Ohlendorf full rein to explain how the Einstazgruppen operated, and the matter-of-factness with which he presented his testimony makes for disturbing reading, even today.

While disclosing the intricacies of the murder process through shooting—the “Holocaust by bullets,” to use the term coined by Holocaust scholar Fr. Patrick Desbois—Ohlendorf also disclosed details of how the gas vans operated in occupied Poland. While these details had been known in certain circles during the war, public disclosures of the kind made here were shocking for the public to hear.

Moreover, Ohlendorf described the disbursement of victims’ property; the psychological impact of the murders on those doing the killing; and, importantly in the context of perpetration, the relationship between the Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht, which, for several decades after the war, claimed an air of noncomplicity regarding the Holocaust.

All in all, this document, reproduced at length in this collection, is a key statement of how the early phase of the Holocaust was carried out in Poland and the Soviet Union. It is a demonstration of how the Nazis were able to engage in inhuman activities in pursuit of an antihuman ideology, and the way that Ohlendorf did so is both morally repugnant and very, very disturbing.

16. Heinrich Himmler: Order for the Completion of the Final Solution, July 19, 1942

By this single order, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler directed that the “resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the Government-General” be carried out and completed by December 31, 1942. Accordingly, all Jews in this densely populated region were to be gathered in “collection camps in Warsaw, Cracow, Czestochowa, Radom, and Lublin.”

I herewith order that the resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the Government-General be carried out and completed by December 31, 1942.

From December 31, 1942, no persons of Jewish origin may remain within the Government-General, unless they are in collection camps in Warsaw, Cracow, Czestochowa, Radom, and Lublin. All other work on which Jewish labor is employed must be finished by that date, or, in the event that this is not possible, it must be transferred to one of the collection camps.

These measures are required with a view to the necessary ethnic division of races and peoples for the New Order in Europe, and also in the interests of the security and cleanliness of the German Reich and its sphere of interest. Every breach of this regulation spells a danger to quiet and order in the entire German sphere of interest, a point of application for the resistance movement and a source of moral and physical pestilence.

For all these reasons a total cleansing is necessary and therefore to be carried out. Cases in which the date set can not be observed will be reported to me in time, so that I can see to corrective action at an early date. All requests by other offices for changes or permits for exceptions to be made must be presented to me personally.

Source: Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Documents on the Holocaust, Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981, pp. 275–76. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem Publications.

 

Commentary

The summer of 1942 saw an intensification of the killing processes of the Holocaust, during which Aktion Reinhard, named in honor of slain SD leader Reinhard Heydrich, swung into action. The operation was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder the approximately 2 million Jews surviving in the Generalgouvernement.

The killing had started in the fall of 1941, but Heydrich’s assassination in June 1942 led to a vengeance campaign and the development of murder processes at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka—the so-called Operation Reinhard camps. Understanding the context in which this document appeared, therefore, is crucial. Himmler’s order that the “resettlement of the entire Jewish population” was to be “carried out and completed” by the end of 1942 was a clear direction that the murder of 2 million Jews had six months to be achieved. By directing that the only Jews still permitted to be in the Generalgouvernement after December 31, 1942, could be those in “collection camps”—holding centers prior to deportation—Himmler was ordering that the ghettoization and slave-labor phases of Jewish existence had come to an end. Henceforth, “a total cleansing” would be carried out of the population in the Generalgouvernement, “with a view to the necessary ethnic division of races and peoples for the New Order in Europe.” Into this could be read the extermination of a Jewish presence and the path made clear for the resettlement of Germans in the now-depopulated lands.

Acting upon this order, Nazi officials throughout the Generalgouvernement, led by Governor Hans Frank, breathed a sigh of relief. The Generalgouvernement would now be the major site of anti-Jewish activity, something that had been desired for the past two years.

This document, in short, was an order to take Holocaust killing up to the next and deadliest level.

17. Martin Luther: Joachim von Ribbentrop’s Instructions on Speeding up Evacuation of Jews from Europe, September 24, 1942

In this document, Martin Luther, Foreign Office Undersecretary (Unterstaatssekretär), conveys to State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker a decision made by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to expedite evacuation of Jews from various occupied countries in Europe. At this time, mass murders were occurring at extermination camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, where only two months earlier more than 4,000 children deported from Paris were exterminated. The reason given for the need to increase evacuations is that the Jews “stir up” others against the Nazi regime. In fact, the increased evacuations were part of the overall Nazi plan to deport as many Jews as possible to “the East,” meaning to their deaths in the extermination camps.

The Reich Foreign Minister has given me instructions today over the telephone to hurry as much as possible the evacuation of Jews from the various countries of Europe, because it is a known fact that the Jews stir up people against us everywhere and that they must be made responsible for attempts of murder and acts of sabotage. Upon a brief report concerning the present stage of evacuation of the Jews from Slovakia, Croatia, Rumania, and the occupied territories, the Reich Foreign Minister has given instructions now to start contacting the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Denmark with the object of starting the evacuation of the Jews from these countries.

With regard to the settlement of the Jewish question in Italy, the Reich Foreign Minister has reserved for himself all steps to be taken. This question shall be discussed personally either between the Führer and the Duce or between the Reich Foreign Minister and Count Ciano.

Herewith to the State Secretary v. Weizsaecker with the request to take notice. All steps taken by us will be submitted to you at the time for your approval.

Source: Trial of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council No. 10. Green Series, vol. 13. Document NG-1517. Office of the United States. U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 255–56.

 

Commentary

Martin Luther, undersecretary at the Foreign Office, represented his minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. In this document, issued nine months later, Luther conveys the content of a telephone conversation he had with Ribbentrop to the effect that deportations of Jews in the German-allied and German-occupied countries should be speeded up.

In this way, the Holocaust became a truly international affair. Luther, reporting to his immediate superior, Ernst von Weizsäcker, noted that Jews were already being “evacuated” (in the euphemistic code language of the Third Reich) from Slovakia, Croatia, and Romania—all allied countries—as well as from the German-occupied territories. Overtures were now to be made to other allied governments in Bulgaria and Hungary, as well as to the government of occupied Denmark “with the object of starting the evacuation of the Jews from those countries.”

Given the more highly developed relationship between Germany and Italy, Luther noted, Ribbentrop would take charge of these negotiations personally; if they were not negotiated at the level of foreign minister with the Italian counterpart, Count Galeazzo Ciano, then Hitler and Mussolini would undertake to discuss developments themselves.

This document represents both a formalization and a broadening of the Holocaust as a truly Europe-wide Nazi project. In this case, the Foreign Office is exercising its jurisdiction over an area that was, in most other respects, a purely SS matter. It is with this in mind that we should read Martin Luther’s involvement more clearly, as he was the conduit between the Wannsee Conference, at which the SS established its control over the Final Solution, and Ribbentrop.

18. Alice Mackert: Preliminary Interrogation, May 11, 1945

“Alice La Blonde” was the nickname given to Alice Mackert, who served as the secretary general of the Gestapo in Nice, France, during the German occupation. This document, reproduced here for the first time, is an excellent illustration of how far some collaborators went in their efforts to placate the Nazis—whether out of conviction or for ulterior motives. Born in Switzerland and an immigrant to France before the war, she arrived in Nice in 1943 as support staff to the Gestapo. As the document shows, she then had a very active life moving throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, engaging in denunciations of Jews, and mixing in high Nazi circles.

Herewith is Preliminary Interrogation Report of Alice MACKERT, mistress of OSTRICH, captured by Third Army in April 1945. Subject will be interrogated further at Camp 020 in the U.K.

Preliminary Interrogation of Alice MACKERT @ Antoinette LINSER

Alice MACKERT worked for SD Amt VI/S and was evidently highly esteemed and trusted by those with whom she worked. She was the former mistress of OSTRICH. She claims she is of Swiss nationality.

Before working for the SD MACKERT says that she was with the German army administration. She says that she worked for this service in Normandy from November 1940 until April 1942; from April to December 1942 at Lille and Sens; at Frankfort from December 1942 until April 1943; in Sens in April and then back to Frankfort where she stayed until July 1943. These statements are contrary to a report which says that MACKERT was in Alencon from 1939 until 1942 and that she was presumably engaged in espionage activities from 1940. The report also says that MACKERT became a naturalised German subject in 1942.

In July 1943 MACKERT went to work for Hauptsturmführer Dr. FISCHER @ SCHNEIDER, SD Referat 3b at 60 Avenue Foch, Paris. She says that she wrote reports on Brittany and the Basque country. While working for FISCHER, MACKERT did a penetration job for Standartenführer Dr. ADAM. Posing as ADAM’s mistress, she was introduced to a group of German officers who frequented the Hotel St. James in Paris and who were extremely well-informed as to German military plans.

In July 1943 MACKERT was sent to Nice with Dr. FISCHER who was to be Hauptsturmführer RETZECK’s deputy at Cannes. MACKERT says that RETZECK was formerly a military instructor with the GFP at Rennes and she also states that the GFP was absorbed by the SD.

With RETZECK in Nice were the following: Hauptscharführer Dr. FILLMAN who had been in Paris; Hauptscharführer LAUSER who had been in Paris with FISCHER and who acted as a courier in Nice; Hauptscharführer SCHULZ (cover name); Sturmscharführer NAGEL; Oberscharführer NEBEL; Oberscharführer WOHLFAHRT; Untersturmführer MERBREIER @ GAUTHIER who had been at Boulevard Flandrin in Paris, later at Vichy and had also worked for Amt VI in Corsica. MERBREIER acted as liaison officer between the Italian consul and Amt VI and between Amt VI and Group MAX. According to MACKERT, Group MAX was an Italian intelligence network which was turned around and worked for Amt VI. Its chief was a Colonel BARANCO, an Italian, who, MACKERT says, is now in hiding in Italy. She says that he had all his teeth pulled out to change his appearance.

The head of Amt VI at Nice was Untersturmführer MOSER who was formerly with Amt VI at Montpellier. MOSER sent reports to RETZECK who forwarded them to 11 Boulevard Flandrin in Paris. MACKERT says that MOSER sent agents to Italy but not to Spain. He was still in Nice when MACKERT left in March 1944. With MOSER in Nice were: Sturmbannführer GOHL; WOEBEKING, deputy to MOSER; and a female secretary DREIBHOLZ who was from Coblenz. Also in Amt VI at Nice was Hauptscharführer SCHWINN, formerly a feldwebel in the Brandenburg Division and later with Jagdverband Sudwest and attached to SKORZENY. MACKERT says that she made out laisser-passer for SCHWINN’s agents and also gave SCHWINN reports on the usefulness of his agents. She also says that at one time SCHWINN organised a group which he sent to penetrate the maquis. She saw SCHWINN for the last time in Berlin on 5 February 1945.

Also in Nice when MACKERT was there were MUELLER and KRAUSE (both cover names) with Amt IVb. The head of the Kripo in Nice was Oberscharführer NIVERA.

With the Abwehr at Nice was Rittmeister BUCHOLZ. MACKERT says the Abwehr called on the SD for aid in making arrests.

The Amt VI representative at Marseille, according to MACKERT, was SENNER. With him was a man named MARTIN who took care of SENNER’s agents who were sent to Spain and Italy. MACKERT made out laisser-passer for SENNER’s agents among whom were the SCHIFFMANN family, working in Spain, and the AGNELY family.

MACKERT says that RETZECK was transferred to Belgrade in March 1944 after some kind of trouble in Nice. She says that she thinks he may have been sent into Albania to fight the maquis. She last heard of him in connection with a proceeding against him in Paris in May 1944 in which she was supposed to be a witness against him. She says that KNAPP replaced RETZECK at Nice.

While at Nice MACKERT says that they had occasion to use a Fliegendes Kommando which was attached to Drancy prison in Paris. This kommando, which was the only one of its kind in France, was called upon by various Sipo and SD offices throughout France to deal with Jewish questions. MACKERT says that when there were Jewish problems in Nice the Fliegendes Kommando would arrive. If they needed a train for deportees or any other supplies, they were furnished by MACKERT’s office.

In March 1944 MACKERT was transferred to Kaunas, Lithuania where she stayed until April when she went to Riga where she stayed until July 1944. In Riga she worked with Referat IVN under the Befehlshaber Ostland Oberst der Polizei Dr FUCHS who had previously been in the Balkans and later in Lithuania. While at Riga MACKERT acted as an interpreter, worked with agents and dealt with foreign workers, sentencing them to labour camps. MACKERT says that there was also a Fliegendes Kommando at Riga which worked with the guards of the ghetto dealing with Jewish questions.

In August 1944 MACKERT went to Berlin to the Berkaer Strasse where Hauptsturmführer MUELLER sent her to Obersturmbannführer BERNHARD who wanted her to act as interpreter for HITLER and HIMMLER. MACKERT did want to stay in Berlin and succeeded in being attached to SKORZENY. She was sent to Paris in August 1944 where she was with Sonderkommando HAGEDORN. She left with the kommando for Fischingen and Badenweiler. In October 1944 she acted as a courier between Badenweiler and BESEKOW in the Berkaer Strasse.

In November 1944 MACKERT accompanied a group of Amt VI/S agents to the Gasteinhuette at Schwarz, a pension requisitioned by SKORZENY for ski instruction for his agents. With MACKERT were the following: AMICO, BIANCHI, Daniel and Jacques MARISSAL, SORDI, BOURVEAU, Claude and Gerald AGNELY, GUY, Michel HARISPE, Edouard LOCQUET, PIERRE and RICARDO. MACKERT says that she saw the name of SKORZENY’s wife, Amy, on the registry of the pension. The proprietor of the Gasteinhuette was a certain HACK and the ski instructors were Oberscharführer GROSS, a Swiss from Pontresil, and Unterscharführer AUER from Kitzbuhl. The men who took part in the kidnapping of MUSSOLINI had been sent to the Gasteinhuette for ski instruction.

MACKERT stayed at Schwarz until January 1945 when she returned to Berlin where she worked with Hauptsturmführer BESEKOW and Hauptsturmführer RADL, deputy and righthand man of SKORZENY. She went to Friedenthal at the end of January where she was working with BESEKOW taking care of French agents and reporting to Berlin on their usefulness. While at Friedenthal MACKERT saw RADL, BESEKOW, HAGEDORN, SCHMIEL, BRAUMFELD, DOBREWITCH, MAYER, ULLBRICH, secretary in SKORZENY’s office, and Anna-Marie KRUGER, secretary to BESEKOW and SKORZENY.

The 12 February MACKERT left with Hauptsturmführer DOBREWITCH for San Remo. DOBREWITCH was with the Sipo at Verona. MACKERT passed through Verona, Milan and Genoa on her way to San Remo. At Milan she saw Sturmbannführer GOHL, the head of Amt VI at Milan and chief of all kommandos for Italy. She had previously seen him at Nice where he had been with Untersturmführer MOSER. GOHL did not wish to let MACKERT proceed to San Remo because orders had been received that all women were to be forbidden to go south of the Po. However, MACKERT had SKORZENY’s orders and she was allowed to proceed.

At Verona MACKERT says that Hauptsturmführer Heinz TUNNAT was head of the Amt VMS kommando. He was chief for Southern Italy and employed only Italian agents.

In Genoa she says that the Amt VI office was in a Casa delli Estudianti.

At San Remo MACKERT worked with Obersturmführer NEISSER to whom she had brought a large sum of money from Berlin. She made out laisser-passer for SENNER’s agents all of whom were to be sent to France except two who were destined for the Italian maquis. NEISSER and SENNER lived in the Villa Alice and about ten agents lived in the Villa Verdi. MACKERT says that Amt VI was entirely detached from the main office of the Sipo and SD.

While at San Remo MACKERT saw Rosita CASIER @ Yvonne or Rosita de VILLIERS who was a former mistress of BESEKOW. She had been suspected of playing a double game and had been sent to the Gasteinhuette at Schwarz and then had gone on to San Remo. She was supposed to return to Berlin but refused to go. As far as MACKERT knows she was still at San Remo when MACKERT left there.

MACKERT left San Remo 5 March 1945 and went to Wiesbaden. From there she went to Mayence where she was arrested.

Source: Central Intelligence Agency, FOIA Electronic Reading Room, Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act Collection, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/NEBEL,%20LUDWIG%20%20%20VOL.%202_0116.pdf.

 

Commentary

Alice Mackert, known to many of her victims as “Alice La Blonde,” served as the secretary-general of the Gestapo in Nice, France, during the German occupation of the area. As this document shows, however, the extent of her collaboration with the Nazis extended to much more than simple administration activities.

The document, which is a report of her initial interrogation after her capture by Allied forces at the end of World War II, refers to another of her aliases (Antoinette Linser). She gives an account of her life in France and elsewhere during the war, along the way exposing a curriculum vitae covering a broad expanse of territory—in France, Germany, Italy, and Latvia, to name just a few of the places in which she operated. At one point, she even went to Berlin, where there was an attempt to have her seconded to the staff of Adolf Hitler.

It is apparent that Mackert was deeply involved with the Gestapo, as is also shown by the vast number of contacts and acquaintances referred to in the interrogation report. Many of these would have been known to the Allied prosecutors; others, however, might have been less familiar, which would have underscored the value of Mackert’s testimony. That said, she was certainly an important catch in her own right, particularly with regard to her activities as a Gestapo agent involved in anti-Jewish operations in Nice and in Riga.

Although the document does not refer to it, Alice La Blonde was known in Nice as a sadistic and brutal torturer who used a sharp whip on victims and was treated with caution even by other officials. Strong evidence pointed to her as an antisemite who employed every opportunity for self-aggrandizement and the opportunity to exercise her biases.

This document has been included in this collection as a representative sample of how some non-Germans saw their role during both the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation. While there was a vast range of motivations and justifications for collaborationist actions in support of the Gestapo’s actions in arresting and deporting Jews, this one example shows that the Holocaust was not simply a Nazi or German project. It had many supporters and facilitators who undertook a wide variety of tasks.

19. Julius Streicher: Article in Der Stürmer Regarding Hitler’s Promise to Free the World of Jews, January 28, 1943

Der Stürmer, the Nazi Party tabloid published by Julius Streicher, was one of the primary means by which the Party disseminated its antisemitic propaganda. This extract from late January 1943 reflects Streicher’s obsession with the complete destruction of the Jews, as he looks back to Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939 in which he stated that the Jews would be annihilated in the event of another world war. He then characterizes what was happening to the Jews in January 1943—the extermination of two-thirds of all Jews in Europe was well on its way by then—as a fulfillment of Hitler’s promise.

When, with the outbreak of the Second World War, world Jewry again began to manifest themselves as warmongers, Adolf Hitler announced to the world, from the platform of the German Reichstag, that the World War conjured up by world Jewry would result in the self-destruction of Jewry. This prophecy was the first big warning. It was met with derision by the Jews, as were also the subsequent warnings. But now, in the fourth year of this war, world Jewry is beginning, in its retrospective reflections, to understand that the destiny of Jewry is finding its fulfillment at the hands of German National Socialism. That which the Führer of the German people announced to the world as a prophecy, at the beginning of this second World War, is now being fulfilled with unrelenting inevitability. World Jewry, which wanted to make big international business out of the blood of the warring nations, is rushing with gigantic steps towards its extirpation!

When Adolf Hitler stepped before the German people 20 years ago to submit to them the National Socialist demands which pointed into the future, he also made the promise which was to have the greatest effects in its results—that of freeing the world from its Jewish tormentor. How wonderful it is to know that this great man and leader is making action to follow this promise also! It will be the greatest ever to take place amongst mankind. As yet we are too close to the events of the present time to be able to applaud in pious devotion the action that has been commenced. But the day will come when the whole of humanity will enjoy an international peace such as it has longed for for thousands of years.

Source: Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), Red Series, vol. Supplement A., pp. 1210–11, Document M-136.

 

Commentary

Julius Streicher was, arguably, second only to Adolf Hitler as the most notorious antisemite in history. His acknowledgment of the Holocaust in this document is worth noting. Referring to Hitler’s Reichstag speech of January 30, 1939, in which the Führer made his infamous prophecy regarding the next war and the certain annihilation of Europe’s Jews (see Document 12), Streicher alerts his readers to the fact that the prophecy is now being carried out.

Streicher’s language is worth noting. Without providing details, he declares that “World Jewry” is now “rushing with gigantic steps towards its extirpation.” Even though “we are too close to the events of the present time to be able to applaud in pious devotion,” the actions that are currently being undertaken—probably Streicher, who by this stage was largely sidelined from the Nazi inner circle, did not himself know the closely guarded details—nevertheless “the day will come when the whole of humanity will enjoy the peace” thereby created. This peace, he writes, is one which has been “longed for thousands of years.”

The propaganda value of an article such as this, appearing as it did in January 1943, was substantial. The Final Solution was then in its most intense phase, and although ordinary Germans (as well as Streicher) had little to no idea as to the minutiae of the killing process, the signs of Jewish disappearances were apparent everywhere. In this sense, Streicher’s triumphalist statement, though light on details, was a recognition that the Jews were in the process of bearing the full force of the Führer’s fury.

20. Jürgen Stroop: “The Warsaw Ghetto Is No More,” May 16, 1943

SS General Jürgen Stroop’s role in suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on 1943, and his book-length account of that operation, made him one of the better-known Nazi officers during and after the Holocaust. Resistance against the Nazis began in January 1943 when, for the first time, Germans who entered the Warsaw Ghetto were met with small arms fire. They were forced to withdraw, but on April 19, 1943 they returned in force, this time under Stroop’s command. Although outmanned and outgunned, the Jewish fighters were able to repel Stroop’s forces. It was not until May 16, 1943, that the uprising was completely ended—an extraordinary feat of resistance.

The creation of special areas to be inhabited by Jews, and the restriction of the Jews with regard to residence and trading is nothing new in the history of the East. Such measures were first taken far back in the Middle Ages; they could be observed as recently as during the last few centuries. These restrictions were imposed with the intention of protecting the aryan population against the Jews.

Identical considerations led us as early as February, 1940 to conceive the project of creating a Jewish residential district in Warsaw. The initial intention was to establish as the Ghetto that part of the City of Warsaw which has the Vistula as its Eastern frontier. The particular situation on prevailing in Warsaw seemed at first to frustrate this plan. It was moreover opposed by several authorities particularly by the City Administration. They pointed in particular that disturbances in industry and trade would ensue if a Ghetto were founded in Warsaw, and that it would be impossible to provide the Jews with food if they were assembled in a closed area.

At a conference held in March 1940, it was decided to postpone the plan of creating a Ghetto for the time being, owing to the above objections. At the same time a plan was considered to declare the District of Lublin the collecting area for all Jews within the Government General, especially for the evacuated or fugitive Jews arriving from the Reich. But as early as April 1940, the Higher SS and Police Leader, East, Cracow, issued a declaration that there was no intention of assembling the Jews within the Lublin District. In the meantime, the Jews had increasingly taken to crossing the frontiers without permission and illegally. This noted especially at the limits of the Districts of Lowicz and Skierniewice. Conditions in the town of Lowicz became dangerous from the point of view of hygiene as well as from that of the Security Police, owing to these illegal migrations of Jews. The District President of Lowicz therefore, began to install Ghettos in his district in order to avoid these dangers.

The experiences in the district of Lowicz, after Ghettos had been installed, showed that this method is the only one suitable for dispelling the dangers which emanate repeatedly from the Jews.

The necessity of erecting a Ghetto in the City of Warsaw as well became more and more urgent in the summer of 1940, since more and more troops were being assembled in the district of Warsaw after termination of the French campaign. At that time the Department for Hygiene urged the speedy erection of a Ghetto in the interest of preserving the health of the German Forces and of the native population as well. The original plan of establishing the Ghetto in the suburb of Praga as intended in February 1940, would have taken at least 4 to 5 months, since almost 600,000 persons had to be moved. But since experience showed that greater outbreaks of epidemics might be expected in the winter months and since for this reason the District Medical Officer urged that the resettling action ought to be completed by 15 November 1940 at the latest, the plan of establishing a suburban ghetto in Praga was dropped; and instead, the area which hitherto had been used as a quarantine area for epidemics was selected for use as a Jewish residential area. In October 1940, the Governor ordered the Commissioner of the District, President for the City of Warsaw, to complete the resettlement necessary for establishing the Ghetto within the City of Warsaw by 15 November 1940.

The Ghetto thus established in Warsaw was inhabited by about 400,000 Jews. It contained 27,000 apartments with an average of 21/2, rooms each. It was separated from the rest of the city by partition and other walls and by walling-up of thoroughfares, windows, doors, open spaces, etc.

It was administered by the Jewish Board of Elders, who received their instructions from the Commissioner for the Ghetto, who was immediately subordinated to the Governor. The Jews were granted self-administration in which the German supervising authorities intervened only where German interests were touched. In order to enable the Jewish Board of Elders to execute its orders, a Jewish Police force was set up, identified by special armbands and a special beret and armed with rubber truncheons. This Jewish Police force was charged with maintaining order and security within the Ghetto and was subordinated to the German and Polish Police.

 

II

It soon became clear, however, that not all dangers had been removed by this confining the Jews to one place. Security considerations required removing the Jews from the city of Warsaw altogether. The first large resettlement action took place in the period from 22 July to 3 October 1942. In this action 310,322 Jews were removed. In January 1943 a second resettlement action was carried out by which altogether 6,500 Jews were affected.

When the Reichsführer SS visited Warsaw in January 1943 he ordered the SS and Police Leader for the District of Warsaw to transfer to Lublin the armament factories and other enterprises of military importance which were installed within the Ghetto including their personnel and machines. The execution of this transfer order proved to be very difficult, since the managers as well as the Jews resisted in every possible way. The SS and Police Leader thereupon decided to enforce the transfer of the enterprises in a large-scale action which he intended to carry out in three days. The necessary preparations had been taken by my predecessor, who also had given the order to start the large-scale action. I myself arrived in Warsaw on 17 April 1943 and took over the command of the action on 19 April 1943, 0800 hours, the action itself having started the same day at 0600 hours.

Before the large-scale action began, the limits of the former Ghetto had been blocked by an external barricade in order to prevent the Jews from breaking out. This barricade was maintained from the start to the end of the action and was especially reinforced at night.

When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire. When I ordered a second attack, about 0800 hours, I distributed the units, separated from each other by indicated lines, and charged them with combing out the whole of the Ghetto, each unit for a certain part. Although firing commenced again, we now succeeded in combing out the blocks according to plan. The enemy was forced to retire from the roofs and elevated bases to the basements, dug-outs, and sewers. In order to prevent their escaping into the sewers, the sewerage system was dammed up below the Ghetto and filled with water, but the Jews frustrated this plan to a great extent by blowing up the turning off valves. Late the first day we encountered rather heavy resistance, but it was quickly broken by a special raiding party. In the course of further operations we succeeded in expelling the Jews from their prepared resistance bases, sniper holes, and the like, and in occupying during the 20 and 21 April the greater part of the so-called remainder of the Ghetto to such a degree that the resistance continued within these blocks could no longer be called considerable.

The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits. Its plan was to hold the Ghetto by every means in order to prevent us from invading it. The Jewish and Polish standards were hoisted at the top of a concrete building as a challenge to us. These two standards, however, were captured on the second day of the action by a special raiding party. SS Untersturmführer Dehmke fell in this skirmish with the bandits; he was holding in his hand a hand-grenade which was hit by the enemy and exploded, injuring him fatally. After only a few days I realized that the original plan had no prospect of success, unless the armament factories and other enterprises of military importance distributed throughout the Ghetto were dissolved. It was therefore necessary to approach these firms and to give them appropriate time for being evacuated and immediately transferred. Thus one of these firms after the other was dealt with, and we very soon deprived the Jews and bandits of their chance to take refuge time and again in these enterprises, which were under the supervision of the Armed Forces. In order to decide how much time was necessary to evacuate these enterprises thorough inspections were necessary. The conditions discovered there are indescribable. I cannot imagine a greater chaos than in the Ghetto of Warsaw. The Jews had control of everything, from the chemical substances used in manufacturing explosives to clothing and equipment for the Armed Forces. The managers knew so little of their own shops that the Jews were in a position to produce inside these shops arms of every kind, especially hand grenades, Molotov cocktails, and the like.

Moreover, the Jews had succeeded in fortifying some of these factories as centers of resistance. Such a center of resistance in an Army accommodation office had to be attacked as early as the second day of the action by an Engineer’s Unit equipped with flame throwers and by artillery. The Jews were so firmly established in this shop that it proved to be impossible to induce them to leave it voluntarily; I therefore resolved to destroy this shop the next day by fire.

The managers of these enterprises, which were generally also supervised by an officer of the Armed Forces, could in most cases make no specified statements on their stocks and the whereabouts of these stocks. The statements which they made on the number of Jews employed by them were in every case incorrect. Over and over again we discovered that these labyrinths of edifices belonging to the armament concerns as residential blocks, contained rich Jews who had succeeded in finding accommodations for themselves and their families under the name of “armament workers” and were leading marvelous lives there. Despite all our orders to the managers to make the Jews leave those enterprises, we found out in several cases that managers simply concealed the Jews by shutting them in, because they expected that the action would be finished within a few days and that they then would be able to continue working with the remaining Jews. According to the statements of arrested Jews, women also seem to have played a prominent part. The Jews are said to have endeavored to keep up good relations with officers and men of the armed forces. Carousing is said to have been frequent, during the course of which business deals are said to have been concluded between Jews and Germans.

The number of Jews forcibly taken out of the buildings and arrested was relatively small during the first few days. It transpired that the Jews had taken to hiding in the sewers and in specially erected dug-outs. Whereas we had assumed during the first days that there were only scattered dug-outs, we learned in the course of the large-scale action that the whole Ghetto was systematically equipped with cellars, dug-outs, and passages. In every case these passages and dug-outs were connected with the sewer system. Thus, the Jews were able to maintain undisturbed subterranean traffic. They also used this sewer network for escaping subterraneously into the Aryan part of the city of Warsaw. Continuously, we received reports of attempts of Jews to escape through the sewer holes. While pretending to build air-raid shelters they had been erecting dug-outs within the former Ghetto ever since the autumn of 1942. These were intended to conceal every Jew during the new evacuation action, which they had expected for quite a time, and to enable them to resist the invaders in a concerted action. Through posters, handbills, and whisper propaganda, the communistic resistance movement actually brought it about that the Jews entered the dug-outs as soon as the new large-scale operation started. How far their precautions went can be seen from the fact that many of the dug-outs had been skilfully equipped with furnishings sufficient for entire families, washing and bathing facilities, toilets, arms and munition supplies, and food supplies sufficient for several months. There were differently equipped dug-outs for rich and for poor Jews. To discover the individual dug-outs was difficult for the units, as they had been efficiently camouflaged. In many cases, it was possible only through betrayal on the part of the Jews.

When only a few days had passed, it became apparent that the Jews no longer had any intention to resettle voluntarily, but were determined to resist evacuation with all their force and by using all the weapons at their disposal. So-called battle groups had been formed, led by Polish-Bolshevists; they were armed and paid any price asked for available arms.

During the large-scale action we succeeded in catching some Jews who had already been evacuated and resettled in Lublin or Treblinka, but had broken out from there and returned to the Ghetto, equipped with arms and ammunition. Time and again Polish bandits found refuge in the Ghetto and remained there undisturbed, since we had no forces at our disposal to comb out this maze. Whereas it had been possible during the first days to catch considerable numbers of Jews, who are cowards by nature, it became more and more difficult during the second half of the action to capture the bandits and Jews. Over and over again new battle groups consisting of 20 to 30 or more Jewish fellows, 18 to 25 years of age, accompanied by a corresponding number of women kindled new resistance. These battle groups were under orders to put up armed resistance to the last and if necessary to escape arrest by committing suicide. One such battle group succeeded in mounting a truck by ascending from a sewer in the so-called Prosta, and in escaping with it (about 30 to 35 bandits). One bandit who had arrived with this truck exploded 2 hand grenades, which was the agreed signal for the bandits waiting in the sewer to climb out of it. The bandits and Jews—there were Polish bandits among these gangs armed with carbines, small arms, and in one case a light machine gun, mounted the truck and drove away in an unknown direction. The last member of this gang, who was on guard in the sewer and was detailed to close the lid of the sewer hole, was captured. It was he who gave the above information. The search for the truck was unfortunately without result.

During this armed resistance the women belonging to the battle groups were equipped the same as the men; some were members of the Chaluzim movement. Not infrequently, these women fired pistols with both hands. It happened time and again that these women had pistols or hand grenades (Polish “pineapple” hand grenades) concealed in their bloomers up to the last moment to use against the men of the Waffen-SS, Police, or Wehrmacht.

The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could be broken only by relentlessly using all our force and energy by day and night. On 23 April 1943 the Reichsführer SS issued through the higher SS and Policeführer East at Cracow his order to complete the combing out of the Warsaw Ghetto with the greatest severity and relentless tenacity. I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire, including the blocks of residential buildings near the armament works. One concern after the other was systematically evacuated and subsequently destroyed by fire. The Jews then emerged from their hiding places and dug-outs in almost every case. Not infrequently, the Jews stayed in the burning buildings until, because of the heat and the fear of being burned alive they preferred to jump down from the upper stories after having thrown mattresses and other upholstered articles into the street from the burning buildings. With their bones broken, they still tried to crawl across the street into blocks of buildings which had not yet been set on fire or were only partly in flames. Often Jews changed their hiding places during the night, by moving into the ruins of burnt-out buildings, taking refuge there until they were found by our patrols. Their stay in the sewers also ceased to be pleasant after the first week. Frequently from the street, we could hear loud voices coming through the sewer shafts. Then the men of the Waffen-SS, the Police or the Wehrmacht Engineers courageously climbed down the shafts to bring out the Jews and not infrequently they then stumbled over Jews already dead, or were shot at. It was always necessary to use smoke candles to drive out the Jews. Thus one day we opened 183 sewer entrance holes and at a fixed time lowered smoke candles into them, with the result that the bandits fled from what they believed to be gas to the center of the former Ghetto, where they could then be pulled out of the sewer holes there. A great number of Jews, who could not be counted, were exterminated by blowing up sewers and dug-outs.

The longer the resistance lasted, the tougher the men of the Waffen-SS, Police, and Wehrmacht became; they fulfilled their duty indefatigably in faithful comradeship and stood together as models and examples of soldiers. Their duty hours often lasted from early morning until late at night. At night, search patrols with rags wound round their feet remained at the heels of the Jews and gave them no respite. Not infrequently they caught and killed Jews who used the night hours for supplementing their stores from abandoned dug-outs and for contacting neighboring groups or exchanging news with them.

Considering that the greater part of the men of the Waffen-SS had only been trained for three to four weeks before being assigned to this action, high credit should be given for the pluck, courage, and devotion to duty which they showed. It must be stated that the Wehrmacht Engineers, too, executed the blowing up of dug-outs, sewers, and concrete buildings with indefatigability and great devotion to duty. Officers and men of the Police, a large part of whom had already been at the front, again excelled by their dashing spirit.

Only through the continuous and untiring work of all involved did we succeed in catching a total of 56,065 Jews whose extermination can be proved. To this should be added the number of Jews who lost their lives in explosions or fires but whose numbers could not be ascertained.

During the large-scale operation the Aryan population was informed by posters that it was strictly forbidden to enter the former Jewish Ghetto and that anybody caught within the former Ghetto without valid pass would be shot. At the same time these posters informed the Aryan population again that the death penalty would be imposed on anybody who intentionally gave refuge to a Jew, especially lodged, supported, or concealed a Jew outside the Jewish residential area.

Permission was granted to the Polish police to pay to any Polish policeman who arrested a Jew within the Aryan part of Warsaw one third of the cash in the Jew’s possession. This measure has already produced results.

The Polish population for the most part approved the measures taken against the Jews. Shortly before the end of the large-scale operation, the Governor issued a special proclamation which he submitted to the undersigned for approval before publication, to the Polish population; in it he informed them of the reasons for destroying the former Jewish Ghetto by mentioning the assassinations carried out lately in the Warsaw area and the mass graves found in Catyn; at the same time they were asked to assist us in our fight against Communist agents and Jews (see enclosed poster).

The large-scale action was terminated on 16 May 1943 with the blowing up of the Warsaw synagogue at 2015 hours.

Now, there are no more factories in the former Ghetto. All the goods, raw materials, and machines there have been moved and stored somewhere else. All buildings etc., have been destroyed. The only exception is the so-called Dzielna Prison of the Security Police, which was exempted from destruction.

 

III

Although the large-scale operation has been completed, we have to reckon with the possibility that a few Jews are still living in the ruins of the former Ghetto; therefore, this area must be firmly shut off from the Aryan residential area and be guarded. Police Battalion III/23 has been charged with this duty. This Police Battalion has instructions to watch the former Ghetto, particularly to prevent anybody from entering the former Ghetto, and to shoot immediately anybody found inside the Ghetto without authority. The Commander of the Police Battalion will continue to receive further direct orders from the SS and Police Führer. In this way, it should be possible to keep the small remainder of Jews there, if any, under constant pressure and to exterminate them eventually. The remaining Jews and bandits must be deprived of any chance of survival by destroying all remaining buildings and refuges and cutting off the water supply.

It is proposed to change the Dzielna Prison into a concentration camp and to use the inmates to remove, collect and hand over for reuse the millions of bricks, the scrap-iron, and other materials.

 

IV

Of the total of 56,065 Jews caught, about 7,000 were exterminated within the former Ghetto in the course of the large-scale action, and 6,929 by transporting them to T.II, which means 14,000 Jews were exterminated altogether. Beyond the number of 56,065 Jews an estimated number of 5,000 to 6,000 were killed by explosions or in fires.

Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 3. Document 1061-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 718–28.

 

Commentary

Through the summer of 1942, the Germans deported or executed more than 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, leaving fewer than 60,000 there. In order to obstruct future German deportations, some of the younger ghetto inhabitants formed the Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ŻOB) and when, on April 19, 1943, Waffen-SS, police, and Wehrmacht units moved into the ghetto to finish the liquidation, the ŻOB, reinforced by fighters attached to a separate group, the Jewish Military Union (ZZW), struck with pistol fire, homemade hand grenades, and Molotov cocktails. The battle, beginning on April 19, lasted until May 16.

SS General Jürgen Stroop was sent to Warsaw by SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to suppress the revolt. He was given command of 2 Waffen-SS battalions, 100 infantry troops, units of local police, and local Security Police. He ordered the entire ghetto to be systematically burned down and blown up, building by building. Except for a few who made it into the Aryan side of Warsaw via the sewers, nearly all the survivors—including men, women, and children—were either killed on the spot or deported to extermination camps. On May 16, Stroop reported, “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more! More than 56,000 Jewish bandits have been captured.”

In victory, he a compiled a detailed 75-page book-length account with 69 pictures, along with memoranda and communiqués relevant to the suppression of the revolt and illustrated with pictures of the devastation. The report covered the period April 24, 1943, to May 24, 1943. Bound in black leather and entitled The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More! the report was intended as a souvenir album and was later presented to Heinrich Himmler and General Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, while Stroop kept one for himself.

21. Heinrich Himmler: Order for Liquidation of Ostland Ghettos, June 21, 1943

This order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to the chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, Oswald Pohl, requires that all Jews in ghettos in the Ostland region (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Belarus) be moved to concentration camps. Himmler provides more specific instructions regarding where Jewish male laborers should be assigned and reminds Pohl that nothing done pursuant to this order is to result in the reduction of productivity for the Wehrmacht. He also makes it clear that any Jews not able to serve the Nazis’ needs were to be “evacuated to the East,” the standard euphemism for deportation to the death camps in Poland.

        1.    I order that all the Jews still remaining in ghettos in the Ostland area have to be collected in concentration camps.

        2.    I prohibit any taking out of Jews from concentration camps for [outside] work projects beginning 1 August 1943.

        3.    There has to be erected a concentration camp in the vicinity of Riga, to which has to be transferred all the manufacturing of clothing and equipment in outlying works maintained by the Wehrmacht. All private firms have to be cut out. The workshops are to become plain concentration camp workshops. The chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office is requested to take care, that this reorganization does not cause any reduction in the necessary production for the Wehrmacht.

        4.    The biggest possible part of the male Jews has to be brought to the concentration camp in the oil shale area for the mining of oil shale.

        5.    Members of the Jewish ghettos not required are to be evacuated to the East.

        6.    Fixed day for the reorganization of the concentration camps is 1 August 1943.

Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council No. 10. Green Series, vol. 5. Document NO-2403. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, p. 626.

 

Commentary

Just as in his order of July 19, 1942, expelling all Jews from the Generalgouvernement (see Document 16), in this document, SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler expands the scope of the Holocaust to the region of the occupied Soviet Union referred to by the Nazis as the “Ostland” (eastern lands).

Here, he orders that any Jew still found in the region should be apprehended and taken into concentration camps, where he or she is to be incarcerated. No Jews are permitted to remain at large, Jewish slave labor is to be restricted, and Jews are no longer to be assigned as aussenarbeit (labor outside the camp). All work should be undertaken under controlled conditions inside the concentration camp, and where camps do not yet exist, as in Riga, they will have to be built. Ominous here is the statement that any ghetto residents “not required” will have to be “evacuated to the East.”

Himmler’s order should be read within the context of the war on the Eastern Front in the middle of 1943. The summer campaign known as Operation Citadel (the Battle of Kursk) was the final strategic offensive the Germans were able to launch on the Eastern Front, and because of the timing, it represented one of the last opportunities for the SS to destroy the Jews of the Soviet Union. While Citadel was being planned, Himmler decided that the rear areas would need to be secured; thus, all Jews would have to be placed into thoroughly controlled spaces, where their labor would be exploited, or if this was impractical, they would be deported and killed. Given the context, it should be noted that this phase of the Holocaust was not a random occurrence and could be connected directly to the war situation Germany was then facing.

22. Heinrich Himmler: Extracts from Speech to Senior SS Officers, October 4, 1943

In October 1943, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler delivered a three-hour speech to SS officers. The extracts below include his comments on such matters as the situation in the fifth year of the war, Russian leadership, foreigners in the Reich, the evacuation of the Jews, the principle of selection, and the future. While each section provides insights, a common theme throughout is that the only people who matter are Germans. Himmler says that members of the SS must be honest, decent, and loyal, but only “to members of our own blood.” Elsewhere, “it is a crime against our own blood to worry about” others. Himmler also speaks of “the extermination of the Jewish race” without resort to euphemisms. The speech ends with these words: “We want to be worthy of being permitted to be the first SS men of the Führer Adolf Hitler. . . . Now let us remember the Führer Adolf Hitler who will create the Germanic Reich and will lead us into the Germanic future.”

I have considered it necessary, now at the beginning of the fifth year of war, to call you, the high leader corps of the SS and Police together. Sober as we always were, truthful toward ourselves, we will discuss several matters in this troop leader meeting. Just as I was accustomed to do during long years of peace, I will give you my opinion of the situation, as I see it, about our tasks, about what we have done and achieved, as well as about what the future holds for us, as briefly as possible.

 

The Russian Leadership

The 1941 attack.—In 1941 the Führer attacked Russia. That was, as we can well see now, shortly—perhaps 3 to 6 months—before Stalin prepared to embark on his great penetration into central and western Europe. I can give a picture of this first year in a few words. The attacking forces cut their way through. The Russian Army was herded together in great pockets, ground down, taken prisoner. At that time we did not value the mass of humanity as we value it today, as raw material, as labor. What after all, thinking in terms of generations, is not to be regretted but is now deplorable by reason of the loss of labor, is that the prisoners died, in tens and hundreds of thousands, of exhaustion and hunger. . . .

One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men—we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and, to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, or to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only so far as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude toward animals, will also assume a decent attitude toward these human animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes to me and says: “I cannot dig the antitank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,” then I have to say, “You are a murderer of your own blood because if the antitank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are sons of German mothers. They are our own blood.” That is what I want to instill into this SS—and what I believe have instilled into them—as one of the most sacred laws of the future. Our concern, our duty is our people and our blood. It is for them that we must provide and plan, work and fight, nothing else. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the SS to adopt this attitude to the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians. All else is vain, fraud against our own nation, and an obstacle to the early winning of the war. . . .

 

Foreigners in the Reich

We must also realize that we have 6 to 7 million foreigners in Germany. Perhaps it is even 8 million now. We have prisoners in Germany. None of them are dangerous so long as we take severe measures at the merest trifles. It is a mere nothing today to shoot 10 Poles, compared with the fact that we might later have to shoot tens of thousands in their place and compared to the fact that the shooting of these tens of thousands would then be carried out even at the cost of German blood. Every little fire will immediately be stamped out and quenched, and extinguished—otherwise—as in the case of a real fire—a political and psychological surface fire may spring up among the people. . . .

 

The Evacuation of the Jews

I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June 1934 to do the duty we were bidden and stand comrades who had lapsed up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary.

I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It’s one of those things it is easy to talk about, “The Jewish race is being exterminated,” says one Party Member, “that’s quite clear, it’s in our program—elimination of the Jews and we’re doing it, exterminating them.” And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has watched it, not one of them has gone through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time—apart from exceptions caused by human weakness—to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators, and troublemongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916–1917 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.

We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict order, which SS Lieutenant General Pohl has carried out, that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individual men who have lapsed will be punished in accordance with an order I issued at the beginning which gave this warning; whoever takes so much as a mark of it is a dead man. A number of SS men—there are not very many of them—have fallen short, and they will die without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us. But we have not the right to enrich ourselves with so much as a fur, a watch, a mark, or a cigarette, or anything else. Because we have exterminated a germ, we do not want in the end to be infected by the germ and die of it. I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterize it. Altogether however, we can say that we have fulfilled this most difficult duty for the love of our people. And our spirit, our soul, our character has not suffered injury from it.

 

The Principle of Selection

We are a product of the law of selection. We have made our choice from a cross-section of our people. This people came into being aeons ago, through generations, and centuries, by the throw of the dice of fate and of history. Alien peoples have swept over this people and left their heritage behind them. Alien blood streams have flowed into this people, but it has, nevertheless in spite of horrible hardships and terrible blows of fate, still had strength in the very essence of its blood to win through. Thus, this whole people is saturated with and held together by Nordic-Phalian-Germanic blood, so that after all one could and can still speak of a German people. From this people of such varied hereditary tendencies as it emerged from the collapse after the years of the battle of liberation, we have now consciously tried to select the Nordo-Germanic blood, for we could best expect this section of our blood to contain the creative, heroic, and life preserving qualities of our people. We have gone partly by outward appearances and for the rest have kept these outward appearances in review by making constantly new demands, and by repeated tests both physical and mental, both of the character and the soul. Again and again we have sifted out and cast aside what was worthless, what did not suit us. Just as long as we have strength to do, thus will this organization [Orden] remain healthy. The moment we forget the law which is the foundation of our race and the law of selection and austerity toward ourselves, we shall have the germ of death in us and will perish, just as every human organization, every blossom in this world, does some time perish. It must be our endeavor, our inner law, to make this blossoming and fructifying last for our people as long as possible, bringing as much prosperity as possible and—don’t be alarmed—if possible for thousands of years. That is why, wherever we meet and whatever we do, we must be mindful of our principle—blood, selection, and austerity. The law of nature is just this—What is hard is good, what is vigorous is good; whatever wins through in the battle of life, physically, purposefully, and spiritually, that is what is good—always taking the long view. Of course sometime—and this has happened often in history—someone can get to the top by deceit and cheating. That makes no difference to nature, to the fate of the earth, or to the fate of the world. Really, that is nature. Fate removes the impostor after a time—time not reckoned in generations of man but in historical periods. It must be our endeavor never to deceive ourselves but always to remain genuine, that is what we must continually preach and instill into ourselves, and into every boy and each one of our subordinates. . . .

 

The Future

When the war is won—then, as I have already told you, our work will start. We do not know when the war will end. It may be sudden, or it may be long delayed. We shall see. But I say to you now, if an armistice and peace comes suddenly, let no one think that he can then sleep the sleep of the just. Get all your commanders, chiefs, and SS Führers attuned to this; only then, gentlemen, shall we be awake, for then, so many others will fall into this sleep. I am going so to rouse the whole SS, and keep it so wide awake that we can tackle reconstruction in Germany immediately. Then Germanic work will be begun immediately in the General SS, for then the harvest will be ripe to be taken into the granary. We shall then call up age groups there by law. We shall then immediately put all our Waffen-SS units into excellent form, both as regards equipment and training. We shall go on working in this first 6 months after the war, as though the big offensive were starting on the next day. It will make all the difference, if Germany has an operative reserve, an operative backing, at the peace or armistice negotiations, of 20, 25, or 30 SS divisions intact.

If the peace is a final one, we shall be able to tackle our great work of the future. We shall colonize. We shall indoctrinate our boys with the laws of the SS organization. I consider it to be absolutely necessary to the life of our peoples, that we should not only impart the meaning of ancestry, grandchildren, and future, but feel these to be a part of our being. Without there being any talk about it, without our needing to make use of rewards and similar material things, it must be a matter of course that we have children. It must be a matter of course that the most copious breeding should be from this racial superstratum of the Germanic people. In 20 to 30 years we must really be able to present the whole of Europe with its leading class. If the SS, together with the farmers—we together with our friend Backe, then run the colony in the East on a grand scale, without any restraint, without any question about any kind of tradition, but with nerve and revolutionary impetus, we shall in 20 years push the national boundary 500 kilometers eastward.

I requested of the Führer already today, that the SS—if we have fulfilled our task and our duty by the end of the war—should have the privilege of holding Germany’s eastern-most frontier as a defense frontier. I believe this is the only privilege for which we have no competitors. I believe not one person will dispute our claim to this privilege. We shall be in a position there to train every young age group in the use of arms. We shall impose our laws on the East. We will charge ahead and push our way forward little by little to the Urals. I hope that our generation will successfully bring it about that every age group has fought in the East, and that every one of our divisions spends a winter in the East every second or third year. Then we shall never grow soft, then we shall never get SS members who only come to us because it is distinguished or because the black coat will naturally be very attractive in peacetime. Everyone will know that “if I join the SS, there is the possibility that I might be killed.” He has contracted in writing that every second year he will not dance in Berlin, attend the carnival in Munich, but that he will be posted to the Eastern Frontier in an ice-cold winter. Then we will have a healthy elite for all time. Thus, we will create the necessary conditions for the whole Germanic people and the whole of Europe: controlled, ordered, and led by us, the Germanic people, to be able in generations to stand the test in her battles of destiny against Asia which will certainly break out again. We do not know when that will be.

Then, when the mass of humanity of one to one and one-half billions line up against us, the Germanic people numbering, I hope, 250 to 300 millions and the other European peoples making a total of 600 to 700 millions (and with an outpost area stretching as far as the Urals or a hundred miles beyond the Urals) must stand the test in its vital struggle against Asia. It would be an evil day if the Germanic people did not survive it. It would be the end of beauty and culture, of the creative power of this earth. That is the distant future. It is for that we are fighting, pledged to hand down the heritage of our ancestors.

We see into the distant future because we know what it will be. That is why we are doing our duty more fanatically than ever, more devoutly than ever, more bravely, more obediently, and more thoroughly than ever. We want to be worthy of being permitted to be the first SS men of the Führer Adolf Hitler in the long history of the Germanic people which stretches before us.

Now let us remember the Führer Adolf Hitler who will create the Germanic Reich and will lead us into the Germanic future.

Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.

Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council No. 10. Green Series, vol. 13. Document 1919-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 318–27.

 

Commentary

It was not often that senior members of the SS discussed the extermination of the Jews in an open forum such as in this document. Here, SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler is completely candid in his statements regarding a variety of important issues.

While much of the document is a reinforcement of SS ideals regarding race—he speaks a lot, for instance, about “blood” and the necessity of safeguarding German purity at the expense of “lesser races”—Himmler’s comments on the Jews and the Final Solution then being undertaken by the SS must have fallen on the fertilest ground. One of these statements has since entered Holocaust historiography as the quintessential admission of SS guilt and concealment. Referring directly to “the extermination of the Jewish race,” he states that “This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written.” Interestingly, Himmler invokes the Nazi Party purge of June 1934 as a precedent for this silence.

As a motivation to his officers to maintain their enthusiasm for the cause (especially given that the war has begun to turn against Germany), Himmler speaks confidently about the time after “the war is won.” At this moment, he states, the real work of the SS will begin. Such work will be the racial reorganizing of Germany and of Europe, a task that will be enhanced through Hitler granting the SS “the privilege of holding Germany’s eastern-most frontier as a defense frontier.” In this way, Himmler reaffirms the often-quoted goal of the SS to be the new Teutonic Knights, upholders of civilization against the barbaric hordes to the East. He concludes with the admonition to his officers to “remember the Führer Adolf Hitler who will create the Germanic Reich and will lead us into the Germanic future.”

23. Adolf Hitler: “My Political Testament,” April 29, 1945

On April 29, 1945, one day before Adolf Hitler and his newlywed wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide as Allied forces approached Berlin, the Führer signed two documents: his private will and testament, and what he called his Political Testament. The latter, which is reproduced here, expresses his view that it was international Jewry that wanted a world war despite his best efforts to avoid one. He expels Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler from the Nazi Party and appoints a new cabinet. It is notable but not surprising that in his final statement—the last words he would impart to the world—he refers to “the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.”

More than thirty years have now passed since I in 1914 made my modest contribution as a volunteer in the first world-war that was forced upon the Reich.

In these three decades I have been actuated solely by love and loyalty to my people in all my thoughts, acts, and life. They gave me the strength to make the most difficult decisions which have ever confronted mortal man. I have spent my time, my working strength, and my health in these three decades.

It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests. I have made too many offers for the control and limitation of armaments, which posterity will not for all time be able to disregard for the responsibility for the outbreak of this war to be laid on me. I have further never wished that after the first fatal world war a second against England, or even against America, should break out. Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred against those finally responsible whom we have to thank for everything, International Jewry and its helpers, will grow.

Three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war I again proposed to the British ambassador in Berlin a solution to the German-Polish problem—similar to that in the case of the Saar district, under international control. This offer also cannot be denied. It was only rejected because the leading circles in English politics wanted the war, partly on account of the business hoped for and partly under influence of propaganda organized by international Jewry.

I also made it quite plain that, if the nations of Europe are again to be regarded as mere shares to be bought and sold by these international conspirators in money and finance, then that race, Jewry, which is the real criminal of this murderous struggle, will be saddled with the responsibility. I further left no one in doubt that this time not only would millions of children of Europe’s Aryan peoples die of hunger, not only would millions of grown men suffer death, and not only hundreds of thousands of women and children be burnt and bombed to death in the towns, without the real criminal having to atone for this guilt, even if by more humane means.

After six years of war, which in spite of all set-backs, will go down one day in history as the most glorious and valiant demonstration of a nation’s life purpose, I cannot forsake the city which is the capital of this Reich. As the forces are too small to make any further stand against the enemy attack at this place and our resistance is gradually being weakened by men who are as deluded as they are lacking in initiative, I should like, by remaining in this town, to share my fate with those, the millions of others, who have also taken upon themselves to do so. Moreover I do not wish to fall into the hands of an enemy who requires a new spectacle organized by the Jews for the amusement of their hysterical masses.

I have decided therefore to remain in Berlin and there of my own free will to choose death at the moment when I believe the position of the Führer and Chancellor itself can no longer be held.

I die with a happy heart, aware of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our soldiers at the front, our women at home, the achievements of our farmers and workers and the work, unique in history, of our youth who bear my name.

That from the bottom of my heart I express my thanks to you all, is just as self-evident as my wish that you should, because of that, on no account give up the struggle, but rather continue it against the enemies of the Fatherland, no matter where, true to the creed of a great Clausewitz. From the sacrifice of our soldiers and from my own unity with them unto death, will in any case spring up in the history of Germany, the seed of a radiant renaissance of the National-Socialist movement and thus of the realization of a true community of nations.

Many of the most courageous men and women have decided to unite their lives with mine until the very last. I have begged and finally ordered them not to do this, but to take part in the further battle of the Nation. I beg the heads of the Armies, the Navy and the Air Force to strengthen by all possible means the spirit of resistance of our soldiers in the National-Socialist sense, with special reference to the fact that also I myself, as founder and creator of this movement, have preferred death to cowardly abdication or even capitulation.

May it, at some future time, become part of the code of honour of the German officer—as is already the case in our Navy—that the surrender of a district or of a town is impossible, and that above all the leaders here must march ahead as shining examples, faithfully fulfilling their duty unto death.

 

Second Part of the Political Testament

Before my death I expel the former Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering from the party and deprive him of all rights which he may enjoy by virtue of the decree of June 29th, 1941, and also by virtue of my statement in the Reichstag on September 1st, 1939, I appoint in his place Grossadmiral Doenitz, President of the Reich and supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

Before my death I expel the former Reichsführer-SS and Minister of the Interior, Heinrich Himmler, from the party and from all offices of State. In his stead I appoint Gauleiter Karl Hanke as Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police, and Gauleiter Paul Giesler as Reich Minister of the Interior.

Goering and Himmler, quite apart from their disloyalty to my person, have done immeasurable harm to the country and the whole nation by secret negotiations with the enemy, which they conducted without my knowledge and against my wishes, and by illegally attempting to seize power in the State for themselves.

In order to give the German people a government composed of honourable men,—a government which will fulfill its pledge to continue the war by every means—I appoint the following members of the new Cabinet as leaders of the nation:

President of the Reich: Doenitz.

Chancellor of the Reich: Dr. Goebbels.

Party Minister: Bormann.

Foreign Minister: Seyss-Inquart.

Minister of the Interior: Gauleiter Giesler.

Minister for War: Doenitz.

C-in-C of the Army: Schoerner.

C-in-C of the Navy: Doenitz.

C-in-C of the Air Force: Greim.

Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police: Gauleiter Hanke.

Economics: Funk.

Agriculture Backe.

Justice: Thierack.

Education and Public Worship: Dr. Scheel.

Propaganda: Dr. Naumann.

Finance: Schwerin-Grossigk.

Labour: Dr. Hupfauer.

Munitions: Saur

Leader of the German Labour Front and Member of the Reich Cabinet: Reich Minister Dr. Ley.

Although a number of these men, such as Martin Bormann, Dr. Goebbels etc., together with their wives, have joined me of their own free will and did not wish to leave the capital of the Reich under any circumstances, but were willing to perish with me here, I must nevertheless ask them to obey my request, and in this case set the interests of the nation above their own feelings. By their work and loyalty as comrades they will be just as close to me after death, as I hope that my spirit will linger among them and always go with them. Let them be hard, but never unjust, above all let them never allow fear to influence their actions, and set the honour of the nation above everything in the world. Finally, let them be conscious of the fact that our task, that of continuing the building of a National Socialist State, represents the work of the coming centuries, which places every single person under an obligation always to serve the common interest and to subordinate his own advantage to this end. I demand of all Germans, all National Socialists, men, women and all the men of the Armed Forces, that they be faithful and obedient unto death to the new government and its President.

Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.

Given in Berlin, this 29th day of April 1945. 4:00 a.m.

Adolf Hitler

Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 6. Document 3569-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 260–63.

 

Commentary

At around 4:00 a.m. on April 29, 1945, with Germany’s defeat imminent, Adolf Hitler composed his final political testament in his Berlin bunker. The document, divided into two parts, is reproduced here. Prior to dictating it to his secretary, Traudl Junge, he married his mistress of many years, Eva Braun, in a civil ceremony. After disposing of his assets in his personal will, he then expressed his final thoughts.

In the document, he begins by discussing his life story up to that time, mentioning the three decades following World War I and the way that he had built his party. He then offers up the claim that neither he nor anyone else in Germany “wanted the war in 1939”; it was, rather, “desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests.” Hitler shows himself to have been a man of peace throughout the days leading up to the outbreak of war, even going so far as to recount his offer of peace to the British ambassador in Berlin three days before the invasion of Poland.

While much of the content resembles many of his speeches from earlier times, perhaps its most important elements can be found in the political line of succession he lays out after his death—a death which, he states, he will undergo “with a happy heart.” He strips Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring from all their offices of state and their party membership, and he names Admiral Karl Dönitz to be the next führer and supreme commander of the armed forces. He then appoints a new cabinet, featuring Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann in key positions.

He also takes the opportunity—one final time—not only to blame the Jews for the war but also to command the German people to “scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.” Thus, right to the very end of the war and his life, Hitler expressed no contrition or remorse for the destruction he had unleashed on Germany and continued to the very end with his antisemitic invective.

On the afternoon of April 30, 1945, a day and a half after he signed his last will and testament, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.

24. Rudolf Hoess: Regarding Extermination at Auschwitz, May 1940–December 1943

In May 1940, SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Hoess received his first senior posting when appointed to be the commandant of a new camp, which he would establish, at Auschwitz. His initial orders were to build a transit camp capable of accommodating ten thousand prisoners, but he later became responsible for carrying out the Nazi “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” at Auschwitz through the industrial mass murder of Jews sent from across Europe. In 1945 he was arrested by the Americans and transferred to Polish jurisdiction. The document produced here is an affidavit produced by Hoess and sworn at Nuremberg on April 5, 1946.

I, RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HOESS, being first duly sworn, depose and say as follows:

        1.    I am forty-six years old, and have been a member of the NSDAP since 1922; a member of the SS since 1934; a member of the Waffen-SS since 1939. I was a member from 1 December 1934 of the SS Guard Unit, the so-called Deathshead Formation (Totenkopf Verband).

        2.    I have been constantly associated with the administration of concentration camps since 1934, serving at Dachau until 1938; then as Adjutant in Sachsenhausen from 1938 to May 1, 1940, when I was appointed Commandant of Auschwitz. I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December, 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens, mostly Jewish) from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

        3.    WVHA (Main Economic and Administration Office), headed by Obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl, was responsible for all administrative matters such as billeting, feeding and medical care, in the concentration camps. Prior to establishment of the RSHA, Secret State Police Office (Gestapo) and the Reich Office of Criminal Police were responsible for arrests, commitments to concentration camps, punishments and executions therein. After organization of the RSHA, all of these functions were carried on as before, but, pursuant to orders signed by Heydrich as Chief of the RSHA. While Kaltenbrunner was Chief of RSHA, orders for protective custody, commitments, punishment and, individual executions were signed by Kaltenbrunner or by Mueller, Chief of the Gestapo, as Kaltenbrunner’s deputy.

        4.    Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer 1941 and continued until Fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until the first of December 1943 and know by reason of my continued duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps WVHA that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took place under the direct order, supervision and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA.

        5.    On 1 December 1943 I became Chief of AMT I in AMT Group D of the WVHA and in that office was responsible for coordinating all matters arising between RSHA and concentration camps under the administration of WVHA. I held this position until the end of the war. Pohl, as Chief of WVHA, and Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of RSHA, often conferred personally and frequently communicated orally and in writing concerning concentration camps. On 5 October 1944, I brought a lengthy report regarding Mauthausen Concentration Camp to Kaltenbrunner at his office at RSHA, Berlin. Kaltenbrunner asked me to give him a short oral digest of this report and said he would reserve any decision until he had had an opportunity to study it in complete detail. This report dealt with the assignment to labor of several hundred prisoners who had been condemned to death—so-called “nameless prisoners.”

        6.    The “final solution” of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time there were already in the general government three other extermination camps; BELZEK, TREBLINKA and WOLZEK. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The Camp Commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was a crystallized Prussic Acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.

        7.    Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.

        8.    We received from time to time special prisoners from the local Gestapo office. The SS doctors killed such prisoners by injections of benzine. Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and could put down any reason at all for the cause of death.

        9.    From time to time we conducted medical experiments on women inmates, including sterilization and experiments relating to cancer. Most of the people who died under these experiments had been already condemned to death by the Gestapo.

      10.    Rudolf Mildner was the chief of the Gestapo at Kattowicz and as such was head of the political department at Auschwitz which conducted third degree methods of interrogation from approximately March 1941 until September 1943. As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for incarceration or execution. He visited Auschwitz on several occasions. The Gestapo Court, the SS Standgericht, which tried persons accused of various crimes, such as escaping Prisoners of War, etc., frequently met within Auschwitz, and Mildner often attended the trial of such persons, who usually were executed in Auschwitz following their sentence. I showed Mildner throughout the extermination plant at Auschwitz and he was directly interested in it since he had to send the Jews from his territory for execution at Auschwitz.

I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion; after reading over the statement, I have signed and executed the same at Nurnberg, Germany on the fifth day of April 1946.

Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. Blue Series, vol. 33. Document 3868-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 275–79.

 

Commentary

Rudolf Hoess was the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz. In this affidavit, he is completely candid, admitting his role in the Final Solution and estimating that approximately 3 million people, mostly Jews, were killed at Auschwitz during his three and a half years in command. He boasts of the improvements he made when constructing and running Auschwitz as compared to the way things were done at Treblinka. The objective and nonchalant manner of his statement here is startling, considering that he discusses, among other things, the selection process, the way the victims were kept unaware that they were headed for a gas chamber, and the fact that medical experiments were performed on prisoners who, as he explains, “had been already condemned to death by the Gestapo.” Hoess was tried for murder by the Supreme National Tribunal in Poland. Sentenced to death on March 29, 1947, he was hanged on April 16 the same year.

25. Extracts from Judgment, Nuremberg Trial: “The Persecution of the Jews,” September 30–October 1, 1946

The judgment handed down at the International Military Tribunal Trial of Major War Criminals, held in Nuremberg, Germany, includes a section on the persecution of the Jews. This document provides some of the essence of the judgment, beginning with the words: “The persecution of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi Government has been proved in the greatest detail before the Tribunal. It is a record of consistent and systematic inhumanity on the greatest scale.” Referring to the murderous policies pursued during the war in the occupied territories, the judgment describes the selections made at the camps of who would go immediately to their death and who would die more slowly through slave labor. It also addresses the medical experiments conducted on the Jews, their deaths in the gas chambers, and the total number of Jews killed by the Nazis.

The persecution of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi Government has been proved in the greatest detail before the Tribunal. It is a record of consistent and systematic inhumanity on the greatest scale. Ohlendorf, Chief of Amt III in the RSHA from 1939 to 1943, and who was in command of one of the Einsatz groups in the campaign against the Soviet Union testified as to the methods employed in the extermination of the Jews. He said that he employed firing squads to shoot the victims in order to lessen the sense of individual guilt on the part of his men; and the 90,000 men, women, and children who were murdered in one year by his particular group were mostly Jews.

When the witness Bach Zelewski was asked how Ohlendorf could admit the murder of 90,000 people, he replied: “I am of the opinion that when, for years, for decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav race is an inferior race, and Jews not even human, then such an outcome is inevitable.”

The anti-Jewish policy was formulated in Point 4 of the Party Program which declared “Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.” Other points of the program declared that Jews should be treated as foreigners, that they should not be permitted to hold public office, that they should be expelled from the Reich if it were impossible to nourish the entire population of the State, that they should be denied any further immigration into Germany, and that they should be prohibited from publishing German newspapers. The Nazi Party preached these doctrines throughout its history. Der Stürmer and other publications were allowed to disseminate hatred of the Jews, and in the speeches and public declarations of the Nazi leaders, the Jews were held up to public ridicule and contempt.

With the seizure of power, the persecution of the Jews was intensified. A series of discriminatory laws was passed, which limited the offices and professions permitted to Jews; and restrictions were placed on their family life and their rights of citizenship. By the autumn of 1938, the Nazi policy towards the Jews had reached the stage where it was directed towards the complete exclusion of Jews from German life. Pogroms were organized, which included the burning and demolishing of synagogues, the looting of Jewish businesses, and the arrest of prominent Jewish business men. A collective fine of 1 billion marks was imposed on the Jews, the seizure of Jewish assets was authorized, and the movement of Jews was restricted by regulations to certain specified districts and hours. The creation of ghettos was carried out on an extensive scale, and by an order of the Security Police Jews were compelled to wear a yellow star to be worn on the breast and back.

The Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany before the war, severe and repressive as it was, cannot compare, however, with the policy pursued during the war in the occupied territories. Originally the policy was similar to that which had been in force inside Germany. Jews were required to register, were forced to live in ghettos, to wear the yellow star, and were used as slave laborers. In the summer of 1941, however, plans were made for the “final solution” of the Jewish question in Europe. This “final solution” meant the extermination of the Jews, which early in 1939 Hitler had threatened would be one of the consequences of an outbreak of war, and a special section in the Gestapo under Adolf Eichmann, as head of Section B 4 of the Gestapo, was formed to carry out the policy.

The plan for exterminating the Jews was developed shortly after the attack on the Soviet Union. Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, formed for the purpose of breaking the resistance of the population of the areas lying behind the German armies in the East, were given the duty of exterminating the Jews in those areas. The effectiveness of the work of the Einsatzgruppen is shown by the fact that in February 1942 Heydrich was able to report that Estonia had already been cleared of Jews and that in Riga the number of Jews had been reduced from 29,500 to 2,500. Altogether the Einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied Baltic States killed over 135,000 Jews in three months.

Nor did these special units operate completely independently of the German Armed Forces. There is clear evidence that leaders of the Einsatzgruppen obtained the co-operation of Army commanders. . . .

Part of the “Final Solution” was the gathering of Jews from all German-occupied Europe in concentration camps. Their physical condition was the test of life or death. All who were fit to work were used as slave laborers in the concentration camps; all who were not fit to work were destroyed in gas chambers and their bodies burnt. Certain concentration camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz were set aside for this main purpose. With regard to Auschwitz, the Tribunal heard the evidence of Höss, the commandant of the camp from 1 May 1940 to 1 December 1943. He estimated that in the camp of Auschwitz alone in that time 2,500,000 persons were exterminated, and that a further 500,000 died from disease and starvation. Höss described the screening for extermination by stating in evidence:

“We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under their clothes, but of course—when we found them—we would send the children in to be exterminated.”

He described the actual killing by stating:

“It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one half-hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.”

Beating, starvation, torture, and killing were general. The inmates were subjected to cruel experiments at Dachau in August 1942, victims were immersed in cold water until their body temperature was reduced to 28° Centigrade, when they died immediately. Other experiments included high altitude experiments in pressure chambers, experiments to determine how long human beings could survive in freezing water, experiments with poison bullets, experiments with contagious diseases, and experiments dealing with sterilization of men and women by X-rays and other methods.

Evidence was given of the treatment of the inmates before and after their extermination. There was testimony that the hair of women victims was cut off before they were killed, and shipped to Germany, there to be used in the manufacture of mattresses. The clothes, money, and valuables of the inmates were also salvaged and sent to the appropriate agencies for disposition. After the extermination the gold teeth and fillings were taken from the heads of the corpses and sent to the Reichsbank.

After cremation the ashes were used for fertilizer, and in some instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap. Special groups traveled through Europe to find Jews and subject them to the “final solution.” German missions were sent to such satellite countries as Hungary and Bulgaria, to arrange for the shipment of Jews to extermination camps and it is known that by the end of 1944, 400,000 Jews from Hungary had been murdered at Auschwitz. Evidence has also been given of the evacuation of 110,000 Jews from part of Rumania for “liquidation.” Adolf Eichmann, who had been put in charge of this program by Hitler, has estimated that the policy pursued resulted in the killing of 6 million Jews, of which 4 million were killed in the extermination institutions.

Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. Blue Series, vol. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 247–53.

 

Commentary

With the end of World War II, an international military tribunal (IMT), based in the German city of Nuremberg, sat to try 22 major Nazis. They were accused under any of four counts: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and (the chief indictment) conspiring to commit any of the foregoing in a “Common Plan.” The trials took place at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice from October 18, 1945, to October 1, 1946.

The major emphasis of the IMT was to bring to justice those who had upset the international order by waging aggressive war, not those who had exclusively committed crimes against humanity. For the IMT, the most criminal act was foisting aggressive war upon a world previously clearly committed to avoiding it. As a result, Nuremberg should be seen as more than simply a trial sitting in judgment on the Holocaust. When the tribunal (comprised of two judges each from Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union) handed down its decisions, there were few surprises. Six of the accused were found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to hang; another six were found guilty of some counts and similarly sentenced. Others among the Nazis received long prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted.

Owing to the shocking revelations and film footage that came to light in evidence, however, there has been a perception in the popular awareness ever since that the trials were actually a judgment on the Holocaust, even though it was not on trial. The revelations that came through the trials served to confirm for people living in the Allied countries why the struggle against the Nazis had been too important to lose.

The extracts in this final document, therefore, are intended to serve as an illustration of how those meting out postwar justice viewed the heinous nature of the crimes over which they had just adjudicated. They provide a chilling and damning indictment of the perpetrators’ actions across the wartime years of the Third Reich.