far as they affected Poland and Germany, had already been taken. Of the destruction of the ghettos and the slaughter of their populations General Stroop's report on the Warsaw action is eloquent evidence. But the fate of the Jews in Warsaw was only typical of the fate of the Jews in every othe ghetto in Poland. transported to the gas chambers. Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, described the procedure :
"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 the liquidation of the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto." Hoess describes the improvements that he made at Auschwitz. He introduced the new gas, Cyclone B which "took from 3-15 minutes tc kill the people in the death chamber, dependent upon climatic conditions.
We knew when the people were dead because their screaning stopped ...... Another improvement we made over Treblinka wa that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at a time, where at Treblinka their 10 as chambers only accommodated 200 people each". And he describes the selection of the victims from the daily transports that arrived :
"Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Other were sent immediately to the extermination plant. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since, by reason of their youth, they were unable to wor Still another improvement we made over Trablinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavoured to fool the victims into thinking that they were going thourgh a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realised our true intentions. Very frequently the women wouldhide their children under their clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminat We were required to carry out these exterminations in great secrecy, but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodie permeated the entire area and all the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations *---* going on at Auschwitz."
So also must they have known in the districts surrounding Belzek, Treblinka, Welzek, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Flossenburg, Neuengamme, Gusen, Natzweiler Lublin, Buchenwlad and Dachau.
I do not repeat these things in order to make the blood run cold. It is right that a few of these typical matters should be extracted from the great mass of the evidence which is accumulated here so that one may see this thing in its true perspective and appreciate the cumulative effect of what has been proved. Einsatz Commandos followed in their wake. Their dreadful work had been planned and prepared in advance. In the file describing the operations of the Task Force A there is a map of the Baltic countries showing the number of Jews that were living in each State who were to be hounded out and killed. Another map shows the results achieved after those two or three month's work -a total of 135,567 Jews destroyed. In another report on their operations during October 1941 it is proudly stated that they continued "on the march with the advancing troops into the sectors which have been assigned to them". They were carried out in co-operation with the Army Commanders with the full knowledge of Keitel and Jodl and, indeed, because every soldier fighting in the East must have known about them, with the knowledge also of every member of the Government and of the commanders of its Armed Forces.
"Our task", so states the report of the Task Force A. "was hurriedly to establish personal contact with the commanders of the armies and with the commander of the rear army. It must be stressed from the beginning that cooperation with the armed forces was generally good. In some cases, for instance, with Panzer Group 4 under Col. Gen. Hoeppner, it was very close, almost cordial."
The German Generals were "almost cordial" as they weltered in the blood of hundreds of thousands of helpless, innocent men, women and children. Perhaps they enjoyed this work -in the same way as the members of the Einsatz Commandos themselves apparently enjoyed it.
"It should be mentioned", states the report, "that the leaders of the armed SS and of the uniformed police, who are reserves, have declared their wish to stay on with the Security Police and the SD".
Again and again in the reports of the Einsatz Commandos,'progress, cooperation with the army authorities *---* emphasized. After describing how thousands of Lithuanian Jews had been made harmless durirg a particular person in June, it is stated :
"These self-cleansing actions went smoothly because the army authorities who had been informed showed understanding for this procedure". Nor was it only cordiality and understanding that the army authorities showed In some cases they themselves took the initiative. After describing the murder of inmates of lunatic asylums that had fallen into their hands, the Einsatz Commando report continues :
"Sometimes authorities of the Armed Forces asked us to clear out in a similar way other institutions which were wanted as billets. However, as the interests of the Security Police did not require any intervention, it was left to the authorities of the Armed Forces to take the necessary action with their own forces." And again :
"The advance of the forces of Action Group A which were intended to be used for Leningrad was effected in agreement with and on the express wish of Panzer Group 4. vast territories, carried out with the co-operation of the Armed Forces as they advanced and in the rear areas that they administered have remained unknown to the leaders in Germany? Even their own Commissioners in the occupied territories protested. In October 1941 the Commissioner for White Ruthenia was forwardin to the Reich Commissioner for Eastern Territories at Rica a report on the operations in his district. Some idea of the horror of those operations can be seen frm the report.
"Regardless of the fact that the Jewish people, among whom were also tradesmen were mistreated in a terribly barbarous way in the face of the White Rutbenian people, the White Rutbenians themselves were also worked over with rubber clubs and rifle butts.
.... the whole picture was generally more than ghastly .... I was not present at the shooting before the twon. Therefore I cannot make a statement on its brutality. But it should suffice if I point out that persons shot have worked themselves out of their graves some time after they had been covered." But protests such of this kind were of no avail; the slaughter continued with unabated hastliness.
In February 1942, in Heydrich's activity and situation report on the Einsatz Commandos in the U.S.S.R. of which a copy was addressed to Kaltenbrunner personally, it was stated :
"We are aimin at cleansing the Eastern Countries completely of Jews... Estonia has already been cleared of Jews. In Latvia the number of Jews in Rica, of wich there were 29,500 has now been reduced to 2,500." By June 1943, the Commissioner for White Ruthenia was again protesting. Afte referring to 4,500 enemy dead, he says :
"The political effect of this large scale operation upon the peaceful population is simply dreadful in viewof the many shootings of women and children". to Rosenberg, the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories in Berlin, added :
"The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussions. However, it appears ahrdly believable that this is done in the way described in the report of the General Commissar. What is Katyn against that? Imagine only that these occurrences would become known to the other side and exploited by them. Most likely such propaganda would have no effect if only because people who read and heard about it simply would not be ready to believe it." How true that comment is. Are we ready even now to believe it? Describing the difficulty of distinguishing between friend and foe, he says:
"Nevertheless, it should be possible to avoid atrocities and to bury those who have been liquidated. To lock men, women and children into barns and set fire to them does not appear to be a suitable method of combatting bands, even if it is desired to exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause and hurts our reputation severely." in the district of Libau, and 7,000 of them had been killed in the naval port itself.
How can any of these Defendants plead Ignorance of these things? Wh Himmler was speaking of these actions openly amongst his SS Generals and all the officers of his SS Divisions in April 1943, he told them :
"Anti-semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology: It is a matter of cleanliness. In just the same way, anti-semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness which now will soon have been dealt with. We shall soon be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished off within the whole of Germany." And again in October of that year:
"Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000." termination centres was becoming a State industry with many by-products. Bales of hair, some of it, as you will remember, still plaited as it had be shorn off the girls' heads, tons of clothing, toys, spectacles and other articles went back to the Reich to stuff the chairs and clothe the people of the Nazi State.
The gold from their victims' teeth, 72 transports full, went to fill the coffers of Funk's Reichsbank. On occasion, even the bodies of their victime were used to make good the wartime shortage of soap.
The victims came from all over Europe. Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia Hungary, Rumania, Holland, Soviet Russia, France, Belgium, Poland and Greece were being herded together to be deported to the extermination centers or to be slaughtered on the spot. take action against the Jews in Hungary. Horthy asked:
"What should he do with the Jews now that he had deprived them of almost all possibilities of livelihood; he could not kill them off.
The Reich Foreign Minister declared concentration camps.
There was no other possibility."
Hitler explained:
"In Poland the state of affairs had been fundamentally cleared up.
If the Jews there did not want to work they were shot.
If they could not work they had to succomb.
They had to be treated like tuberculosis baccillae. This that no harm is caused by them."
In September 1942, Ribbentrop's State Secretary, Luther, was writing:
"The Reich Foreign minister has instructed me today by the Jews from different countries.
.... After a short of getting evacuation started in those countries."
Auschwitz. In the German Embassy in Bucharest, the files contained a memorandum:
"110,000 Jews are being evacuated from Bukovina and The purpose of the action is the liquidation of these Jews."
pointing to the sky while they waited to take their place in blood-soaked, communal graves. 12,000,000 men, women and children have died thus, murdered in cold blood; millions upon millions more today mourn their fathers and mothers, their husbands, their wives end their children.
What rights has any man to mercy who has played a part -- however indirectly -- in such a crime?
Let Graebe speak again of Dubno:
"On 5th October 1942, when I visited the building office at long and 3 metres deep.
About 1,500 persons had been killed daily.
All of the 5,000 Jews who had still been living in Dubno before the pogrom were to be liquidated.
As the metres high.
Several trucks stood in front of the mounds.
the supervision of an S.S. man. The militia men acted as guards on the trucks and drove them to and from the pit.
All these My foreman and I went directly to the pits.
Nobody bothered us.
the earth mounds. The people who had got off the trucks -- men, of an S.S. man, who carried a riding or dog whip.
They had to top clothing and underclothing.
I saw a heap of shoes of about for a sign from another S.S. man, who stood near the put, also with a whip in his hand.
During the 15 minutes that I stood near I heard no complaint or piea for mercy.
I watched a family about 20 - 24.
An old woman with snow-white hair was holding tickling it.
The child was cooing with delight. The couple were looking on with tears in their eyes.
The father was him softly; the boy was fighting his tears.
The father something to him.
At that moment the SS man at the pit shouted something to his comrade.
The latter counted of about 20 persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound.
Among them was the family which I have mentioned.
I well remember a girl, slim herself and said, "23". I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave.
People were closely heads were visible.
Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads.
Some of the people shot were still moving.
Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive.
The pit was already two thirds full.
I estimated that it already contained about 1,000 people.
I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an SS man, who into the pit.
He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.
The people, complately naked, want down some steps directed them.
They laid down in front of the dead or injured people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice.
Then I heard a series of shots. I looked into motionless on top of the bodies which lay before them.
Blood was running away from their necks.
I was surprised that I was not uniform nearby.
The next batch was approaching already. They victims and were shot.
When I walked back round the mound I This time it included sick and infirm persons.
An old, very were already naked, while two people held her up.
The woman appeared to be paralysed.
The naked people carried the woman around the mound.
I left with my foreman and drove in my car metres away from it.
Some of them were still alive; they looked who stood a round.
A girl of about 20 spoke to me and asked me to give her clothes and help her escape.
At that moment we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was an SS detail.
I moved away to my site.
Ten minutes later we heard shots from the vicinity of the put.
The Jews still alive had been ordered to throw the corpses into the pit; then they had themselves to lie down in this to be shot in the neck."
perpetrated to support the Nazi war machine and the policy of genocide becomes the more clear when you consider the evidence with regard to another great crime little heard of during the course of this trial but which, as clearly as any other, illustrates the wickedness of these men and of their regime - the murder of some 275,000 persons by so-calld mercy killing.
To what base uses that beautiful word was put ! ill and aged people in Germany who were no longer of productive value for the German war machine. Frick, more than any other man in Germany, was responsible for what took place as a result of that decree. Of his knowledge and of the knowledge of a great many people in Germany there is abundant evidence. In July, 1940, Biship Wurm was writing to Frick:
"For some months past, insane, feeble-minded and epileptic the Reich Defense Council.
Their relatives, even when the transfer until after it has taken place.
Mostly they are the body has had to be cremated.
At a superficial estimate along must have met their death in this way ... Owing to stir in our small province.
Transports of sick people who can be noticed even from a considerable distance.
... all this Castle.
....Everybody is convinced that the causes of death which are published officially are selected at random.
When, notice that all endeavours to preserve the patients' life were in vain, this is felt as a mockery.
But it is above all the air of mystery which gives rise to the thought that some-cannot therefore be defended by the Government.
This point is numerous oral and written statements which come to us."
Frick's ears were deaf to pleas for jutice and ethics such as that. A year later, in August 1941, the Bishop of Limbourg wrote to the Reich Ministries of the Interior, of Justice, and Church Affairs:
"About 8 km. from Limbourg in the little town of Hadamar, used as an nursing home.
This institution was renovated and for months, approximately since February 1941.
The fact Wiesbaden.
..Several times a week buses arrive in Hadamar with a considerable number of such victims.
School children of the vicinity know this vehicle and say:
'There comes the murder box again.
' After the arrival of the vehicle citizens pecially when repulsive odours annoy them.
The effect of names and say:
'You're crazy, you will be sent to the baking ovens in Hadamar.
' Those who do not want to marry or find no opportunity say:
'Marry, never' Bring children into the world so that they can be put into the bottling machine.
' You hear old folks say:
'Don't send me to a State Hospital:
less eaters whose turn it will be are the old people'.....
severe threats. In the interests of public peace this may be well intended, but the knowledge and the conviction it.
The conviction will be increased with the realisation Facta loquantur."
relatively insignificant murders, when the Ministries of Justice, of the Interior and of Church Affairs were receiving protests from the Bishops of two districts far removed from each ether, on what was common knowledge in their dioceses, how much greater were the security problems of the Einsatz Commandos in the East. In May 1942 an SS leader reporting to Berlin on a tour of inspection of the progress of the extermination drive wrote of the gas vans:
"By having small windows introduced, one on each side of as one sees often on peasant's houses in the country, I have living in.
The cars are so well known that not only the as the "Death Car" as soon as one of these vehicles appear.
for any length of time."
Can these defendants have remained in ignorance? What peculiar dispensation of providence was there thatprotected them from knowledge of these matters, matters which were their concern? out Germany and of articles in the world press - must have been known to every one of these men. How much more then must they have known of the concentration camps which, during those years, covered like a rash the whole of Germany and the occupied territories. If only they could acquiesce in the mercy killings, with what favour they must have regarded the extermination of the Jews. hausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenburg and Ravensbruck. Frick's budget for the Ministry of the Interior for that year includes a sum of RMS.
21,155,000 for armed SS and concentration camps - no less than a fifth of the total budget. By April 1942 there had been added to those six camps nine more, and more were to follow afterwards.
But these were only the core of the system. Like planets, each of them had its attendant satellites. Ziereis has given you some idea of the extent of this system. He describes the subsidiary camps that were based on Mauthausen alone. 33 of them he mentioned by name, giving the numbers of prisoners at each - a total of over 102,000. Besides those 33, there were another 45, also all under the authority of the Mauthausen Commandant. these mainsubsidiary concentration, camps as are known. Over 300 of them are marked on that map.
prisoners, which included 90,000 from Hungary, 60,000 from the police prison and ghetto of Litzmannstadt, 15,000 Poles from the Government General, 10,000 convicts from eastern territories, 17,000 former Polish officers, 400,000 Poles from Warsaw and between 15,000 - 20,000 continually arriving from France. capacity was no longer worth the nuisance that their continued existence mean Then they took their place in the daily detail for the as chambers. stench over the countryside. When the Bishop of Limbourg could write to Frock of the repulsive odours from the comparatively insignificant evens at Hadamar, can we doubt the evidence of Hoess that I mentioned ?
"the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz." Whole Reich on their way to the extermination centers or their own slavery. Many arrived dying and even dead through the appallin concitions under which they journeyed. An official at the railway station at Essen has described the arrival of workers from Poland Galicia and the Ukraine :
"They cae in goods wagons in which potatoes, building materials and also cattle had been transported. The trucks were jammed full with people. My personal view was that it was inhuman to transport people in such a manner. The people were squashed closely together and they had no room for free movement. It was enraging to every decent German to see how the people were beaten and kicked and generally maltreated in a brutal manner. In the very beginning, as the first transports arrived, we could see how inhumanly these people were treated. Every wagon was so overfull that it was incredible that such a number could be jammed into one wagon ... The clothing of prisoners of war an civilian workers was catastrophic. It was ragged and ripped and the footwear was the same. In some cases they had to go to work with rags round their feet.
"even in the worst weather and bitterest cold I have never seen that any of the wagons were heated. Those men were not destined for concentration camps that was certain. How much worse the conditions of these who were. Great columns, too, trekked one foot olong the highways of the Reich. They walked until they could walk no more; then they died by the side of the road Ziereis, Commandant of Mauthausen, in his dying confession said :
"In the presence of Baldur von Schirach and others I received the following order from Himmler :
"All Jews of localities in the south east, working on the socalled fortification-commands, are to be sent on foot to Mauthausen."
"In consequence of this order we were expecting to receive 60,000 Jews at Mauthausen, but in fact only a samll fraction of this number arrived. I remember that cut of one convoy of 4,500 Jews which started out from somewhere in the country, only 180 arrived. The women and children had been without shoes and clothes and were very verminous. In that convoy complete families had started out to ether but an immense number hat died on the way from exposure, weakness, etc." Now whatever may have been hidden from view behind the stockades of the concnetration camps, these things were open for all to see. Every one of these defendants must have seen them and the thousands of concentration camp prisoners working in the fields and factories adorned in their striped pyjamasa uniform that was as familiar as any other in Germany. of human pity, have continued to take active part in support of a system that was responsible for such suffering ? But they had no pity - and by their ideology and teaching they had deprived the German people of pity. the concentration camps and their inmates when the advancing Allied Armies brought with them the danger of capturing these camps and of disclosing the guilt of the Nazi Government :
"Prisoners were to be led into thetunnels of the of the prisoners was to be effected in this manner."
Even Ziereis, murderer of Mauthausen's 65,000 dead, shied and refused that order. issued by the Commandant of theSipo and SD in the Government General, which has been put in as evidence:
"Should the situation at the front necessitate it, of prisoners.
Should the situation develop suddenly, in disposed of as far aspossible, (burning, blowing up the building, etc.)
. If necessary, Jews still employed in the in the same way.
The liberation of prisoners of Jews by must be avoided under all circumstances.
Nor may they fall into their hands alive."
out. With this evidence before us, there can be only one meaning to that teleprint message which was found amongst his papers on his arrest:
"Please inform the Reichsfuehrer SS and report to sonally today."
either a Minister or a leading executive in a State which, within the space of six years, transported in horrible conditions some 7,000,000 men, women and children for labor, exterminated 275,000 of its own aged and mentally infirm and annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting what must at the lowest computation be 12,000,000 people, remained ignorant of or irresponsible for these crimes.
You are asked to accept that the horrors of the transports of the conditions of this slave labour, deployed as it was in labour camps throughout the country, the smell of the burring bodies, all of which were known to the world, were not known to these 21 men by whose orders such things were done. When they spoke or wrote in support of this horrible policy or genocide you are asked to accept that their utterances were made in ignorance of the facts, as part of their general duty to support the policy of their Government, or finally, should be regarded merely as tactical - that is to say, thatonly by talking or writing in such a way could they divert Hitler from cruelty or aggression. It is for you to decide.
Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Funk, Schacht, Doenitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel, Jodl, VonPapen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann - these are the guilty men. upon those whose close complicity in themost sordid crimes of all, the bestial murders, has possibly been less manifest.
Goering's responsibility in all these matters is scarcely to be denied. Behind his spurious air of bon homme, he was as great an architect as any in this satanic system. Who, apart from Hitler, had more knowledge of what went on, or greater influence to affect its course? The conduct of government in the Nazi State, the gradual build-up of the organization for war, the calculated aggression, the atrocities - these things do not occur spontaneously or without the closest cooperation between the holders of the various offices of State, Men do not advance into foreign territory, pull the trigger, drop their bombs, build the gas chambers, collect the victims, unless they are organized and ordered to do it. Crimes on thenational and systematic scale which occurred here must involve anyone who forms a part of the necessary chain, since without that participation, plans for aggresssion here, mass murder there, would become quite impossible. The Fuehrer principle by which the Nazis placed their bodies and their very souls at the disposal of their leader was the creation of the Nazi Party, and of these men. When I addressed you at the opening of this trial, I remarked that there comes a time when a man must choose between his conscience and his loader. No one who chose, as these men did, to abdicate their consciences in favour of this monster of their own creation can complain now if they are held responsible for complicity in what their monster did.
And least of all, Hess. The role Hess played in the Nazi Party is well established. But not content with creating the Monster, he aided it in every aspect of its monstrous work.
I mention only one instance. You will recall, in connection with the extermination of the Eastern peoples, his direction to Party Officials to support recruitment for the Waffen SS. He said, "it consists of National Socialists who are more ality."
Ribbentrop's part, also, is clear. No one in history has so debauched diplomacy: no one been guilty of meaner treachery. But he, like the rest of them, is just a common murderer. Ribbentrop it was who, since 1940, had been directing the minions in his embassy and legations throughout Europe to accelerate the execution of such "political measures" that is, measures of racial extermination. It was not Himmler, but the Reich Foreign Minister who proudly reported to the Duce in February, 1943, that, "All Jews had been transported from Germany and in the East."
the conference called by Steengracht, his permanent Under Secretary of State, betray the meaning of these ghastly euphemisms. than Ribbentrop. You will remember his advice to the Italians on how to deal with strikes:
"In such a case only merciless action is any good.
In the occupied territories we would endeavour to reach an agreement."
the successes of "brutal measures" in Norway, "brutal action" in Greece, and in France and Poland the success of "Draconian" measures.
Were Keitel and Jodl less involved in murder than their confederates? They cannot deny knowledge or responsibility for the operations of the Einsatz Commandos with whom their own Commanders were working in close and cordial cooperation. The attitude of the High Command to the whole question is typified by Jodl's remark about the evacuation of Danish Jews:
"I know nothing of this. If a political Office."
Kaltenbrunner, as chief of the RSHA, must be guilty. The Reports of the Einsatz Commandos were sent to him monthly. You will remember the words of Gisevius, a witness for the defence:
"We asked ourselves whether it was possible that such a monster as Heydrich .... Kaltenbrunner came.
... and things got worse every day.... We Gestapo."
at which Kaltenbrunner discussed every detail of the gas chambers and of the technique of mass murder.
Rosenberg's guilt as the philosopher and theorist who made the ground fertile for the seeds of Nazi policy is not in doubt, and it is beyond belief that he, as Reich Minister for Eastern Occupied Territories, did not know of and support the destruction of the ghettos and the operations of the Einsatz Commandos. In October, 1941, when the operations of those Commandos were at their height, one of Rosenberg's ministerial departmental chiefs was writing to the Reich Commissioner for the East in Riga informing him that, the Reich Security Main Office had complained that he had forbidden the executions of the Jews inLibau and asking for a report upon the matter. On 15th November, the report comes back addressed to the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories:
"I have forbidden the wild execution of Jews in manner in which they were carried out.
I should date all Jews in the East?
Shall this take place without regard to age and sex and economic interests?
is a necessary task; its solution, however, must be harmonized with the necessities of war production."
Frank - if it is not sufficient to convict him that he was responsible for the administration of the Government General and for one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters in Nazi history - has himself stated:
"One cannot kill all lice and all Jews in one Year."
It is no coincidence that that was exactly Hitler's language.
And again:
"As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell in one way or another .... Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity.