The Eichmann Sassen Transcripts

From which main thesis shall we proceed with this book?

The following: various ideas, various possibilities that have occurred to me, to set them out individually and as precisely as possible. They can then accordingly serve as a kind of leitmotif. In my opinion, it would make no sense for us to try to trivialize the matter; nor does it make sense to exaggerate the matter itself and say what the opponent wants to hear. Is there a middle way that would also serve the truth at the same time?

After all, what ultimately matters to us is to examine the truth and, insofar as the … of the objective—after all, what ultimately matters to us is to examine the truth, to investigate the truth. I think one possibility would be to portray the German people before and during the war as a people that, barely fifty years earlier, with a difference in time… had achieved its unity through Bismark. In the First World War it saw all the opposing forces united against it; through the unspeakable hardship after the First World War—the Jews were undoubtedly the beneficiaries of the German people's hardship.

One need only recall the mortgage affairs and the evictions of farmers in the north of the country: slowly but surely, a campaign of annihilation of the lower and upper middle classes, all of whom became victims of Jewish interest policy. The reason why the question of interest in particular met with such a wide response in the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) program. That precisely in the period after the First World War there was a regression in political and economic terms, through which many of the efforts toward unity established with so much trouble through Bismark were largely undone again…

That this people, after the seizure of power in '33, had one foot on the path toward the development of a … realization of the national program, but the other foot on the warpath. That, through the course of the war, this people was suddenly called on across the board to undertake leadership tasks for which it lacked experience, and also that body of experience which gradually crystallizes into a certain technique, which does not have to be learned, which cannot be learned in crash courses either, but is the result and accumulation of many generations, of the bitter experiences of generations.

The German people, then, without this body of experience, was confronted with a leadership task for which experience and strength were utterly lacking. As German influence spread over the whole of Europe through the course of the war, and Jewish legislation had been proclaimed in Germany itself since 1936, there were still so many disturbing gaps in the practical implementation of that legislation. On the other hand, in the modern Reich that the Third Reich was, a problem now had to be solved with due regard for laws and regulations, and also for a certain distribution of power within the state.

All this led to great difficulties within Germany itself. Even Germany's efforts to solve the Jewish problem within Germany through emigration, with the involvement of foreign countries, remained without really tangible results. In such a way that one can say that, looking back, it becomes very clear that the foreign countries which later became enemy countries had from the outset kept this whole Jewish question as a weapon in reserve, and sought by every means to prevent this

weapon from becoming ineffective, for example through a solution of the Jewish question, precisely at the moment when a war would break out—a war that had to break out for political and also economic reasons, and in which the Jewish problem could then be the opposing side's strongest weapon. That the opposing side had intended the Jewish question to serve this function is almost certainly something that became clear to the authorities and leadership of the Third Reich, if at all, only in the very last stage of the war.

When I say that the enemy side preserved the Jewish question, the Jewish problem, as the most important of its weapons as far as possible, and therefore avoided every solution with stubborn deliberateness, a distinction must also be made here between the propulsive enemy front, the dynamic enemy front, and the static enemy front.

I would like to explain this parallel a little further by saying that, in this context, by the static enemy front I mean those great and small powers which, for political, democratic, parliamentary and economic reasons, were hostile to the dangerous experiment of the Third Reich—these political antagonisms, these economic antagonisms toward the Third Reich, overarched and exploited by the great powers, among which in 1939 one could certainly count England, America of course, and France too, to a lesser extent.

From this static enemy front I would exclude the Soviet front from the outset, because it is a chapter of its own and presents at least as strong a challenge to the static front just described as National Socialism and the Third Reich do. This static enemy front, where it was already clear before 1933 that, under the threat of the Bolshevization of Germany, it could for a moment rise to a certain rational, more or less joyful welcome of the National Socialist seizure of power, because it now believed National Socialism would form an impregnable wall against this Bolshevik process—yet it soon became clear that the traditional antagonisms still had the upper hand.

Developments in the Soviet Union itself may have contributed to this in no small measure. One need only recall the great Kula… extermination campaigns and the great trial of 1936, which really gave foreign countries the impression that the Soviet Union had very great internal difficulties to contend with and was thereby, to a certain extent, neutralized, to a certain extent prevented from taking part in the international struggle for power.

It became clear soon after 1933 that the traditional hostility of England, for example—traditional in this respect too, just as before the First World War: politically, England feared that the attraction of a united Germany, of the German people renewed by National Socialism, would disturb the balance of Europe. This balance, held together by the Bak policy—France–Czechoslovakia, England–France–Poland–Romania–France—with artifice and flying apparatus (Flugwerk), was now disturbed by this Third Reich. But above all, England's traditional hostility in the economic sphere, because after a very short time it was already beginning to become apparent that in this economic war England would somehow be the underdog and, sooner or later, would be outstripped by Germany.

France also belonged to this static hostile front, of course, with its efforts to remain a great power and its glaring failure to conjure out of Germany's defeat a life-insurance policy that would make effort and work unnecessary for France. France, where after '35, after Dardieux was replaced by Blum, the Popular Front government naturally made use of France's traditional hostility toward England and placed it in the service of the struggle of the left-wing, more or less … forces against this clear expression of a renewal of the Right that National Socialism represented. These Popular Front forces made use of this traditional hostility to turn it into a purely political one. One can hardly speak of economic antagonisms toward Germany on France's part, because economically France was, is, and will remain an absolute zero, and could in no way feel spurred on by Germany's economic rise.

Into this whole traditional hostility of France there naturally fits the whole Back policy, and the attempt, on the part of a section of it, to gain some importance through a policy of encirclement against the Third Reich—importance that was not really there. This hostile static front naturally included the small democratic parliamentary states that in any case followed in the wake of the great democratic parliamentary states.

For example, Belgium with its military pact with France; Holland with its traditional parliamentary… and the tendency, probably beginning shortly before the World War, for its public, economic and political life to become more and more oriented toward England. Just like the small states in the Balkans which, although under different circumstances, likewise allowed the great powers to make them into instruments in the struggle to encircle Germany; just like the Scandinavian states, Switzerland, and so on and so on…

This static hostile front, which already represented the coming war against Germany in potential, found a…

[Judge Jackson in Nuremberg:]

He said that this man was in truth the darkest figure of this century, particularly because, as the witnesses probably said, he had clearly recognized the outcome of the war long beforehand. That is reproduced word for word. I read it in captivity, in a small pamphlet, “The Nuremberg Trial.”

What is your fundamental attitude toward the Jewish question in relation to our people? If you had had a free hand, how would you have attempted a solution—and in this context that means a political solution?

My attitude: we must go back into history at least as far as the Middle Ages, insofar as the German people is concerned, namely when the rulers of the small German states very often got into financial difficulties through their way of life, and Jewry, which was often confined to ghettos… I mean here coexistence, separation, annihilation; as seen from the present.

Now, knowing from history—coexistence with this people, which has lived in dispersion for 2,000 years and was prevented from pursuing certain fields of life, and concentrated on particular branches, for example trade, and also intellectual professions. And when I saw that this minority within the German people, taking 1932 as the reference date, dominated to an unheard-of percentage those fields which were of vital importance to the German people and occupied their key positions, I said to myself that there must be a separation.

And it was not I who said that: the Party program said it, other national fighters said it before me, and Jewish leaders on the other side said it too. Now, since a solution was absolutely necessary—for that is what our Party leadership said, and later the leadership of the German Reich too—I said, and I believe everyone who had some part in thinking about this agreed with me, that such a solution could only be a political solution.

But a political solution only means smashing shop windows, does not mean killing, does not mean dragging them off into slavery, but a spatial separation from the territory of this people to which I, for example, belong. There are probably people of the same mind in other countries who wish for a separation of this kind. Such a separation had already been taken in hand before the national A…. But the driving force there was not the German; the driving force was the Jew himself, the Zionist, first under … hersel, the pioneer of territorial separation in the first place.

That is to say, if you had had the say in your sector, if you had had to carry out a solution, what would you have done in practice?

If I had been able to carry out the solution and had had full authority, I would have done what I had already begun to attempt: first of all, to give the Jew a certain self-administration, an administration of his own, so that he would acquire administrative training and thus be able to maintain and govern himself. I saw, and still see today, that the Jewish question can be brought to a final solution only when the Jew is given land and soil under his feet. Where is a matter for the politicians.

How did you feel about your task personally and as a human being, that is, as you were able to carry it out with the means at your disposal, under the conditions…

At that time I also thought personally: first, I was an officer, a soldier, sworn in, and had to obey the orders I received. I was sworn in twice. First, with the troops…

We were loaded up on the day Hindenburg died and sent to Munich, where we took the new oath to A.H. (Adolf Hitler). The oath was of course voluntary. The second oath was to the SD [Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service] (Security Service), in 1934, in the autumn of 1934, when I was ordered from the troops to the SD. And for the third time when I was ordered from the SD to the Gestapo Office. I was of course always sworn to A.H. (Adolf Hitler), but the latter two service oaths concerned secrecy, and that I—the orders of my superiors… Here, however, with the addition of secrecy.

Only your attitude toward your task. You said that, as an officer, you felt in the first way.

Second, my attitude. When I first had the Jewish question assigned to me in the SD Main Office, and from 1940 in the Gestapo Office, I did not of course work on it as a head of cattle acting under orders. On the contrary, it pleased me enormously, it gripped me, that I was allowed to work on these matters. You must not forget that I had a chief, Heydrich… that under him I had extensive opportunities to occupy myself with religious scholarship, that I pursued religious scholarship for two years, and that he also sent me to the Near East, which helped me greatly to perfect my knowledge.

I learned Hebrew, though badly, but could in any case read all Jewish newspapers effortlessly, and so I was glad to be able to deal with precisely this subject. It is extraordinarily appealing to sit in a central authority and be able to help solve a problem that weighed so heavily on my people and on the Jews themselves as well.

You once said that, if you had been a Jew, you would have been a fanatical Zionist?

Yes, I said that to Dr. Richrad Loewenherz in Vienna, with whom I had countless conferences, and also to Dr. Kastner. I told both of them that I could imagine nothing else, given my entire disposition toward the national idea: if I were not German but a Jew, I would be the most committed Zionist they could imagine.

It is claimed that you yourself carried out mass shootings in Poland. Is that true?

No. Neither in Poland nor anywhere else in Europe have I carried out even a single shooting.

How far did your authority extend in the physical actions?

In the whole solution of the Jewish question in this sector, which was ordered in '41… my task was solely to round up this group by police action. It was designated as the enemy because, through the mouth of its spokesman Dr. Clain Weizmann, war had been declared on the German people over Radio London. So I instructed the police contingents in the individual districts or individual Gaue of the Reich, according to a timetable drawn up by my transport officer, who arranged it in cooperation with the Reich Transport Ministry, to

round up the contingents and deliver them to the destination stations named by the chief of the SDHA (SD Main Office). That ended all responsibility on the Gestapo's part. Unlimited authority does not exist in an office. Rather, everyone in an office, whether low-ranking or high-ranking, from the criminal-police assistant up to the Chief of the Security Police [Sicherheitspolizei, Security Police], has to issue instructions and orders in accordance with existing laws, regulations and decrees. There was no third possibility, and there is none. Nobody in an administrative apparatus can do whatever he wants. He has to do what he is ordered to do; and such orders and instructions can be issued within an office only by invoking the relevant laws.

And this body of law on which your work rested—was that the Nuremberg Laws No. 35?

No, it was a Führer order. Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service), told me that the Führer had now ordered the liquidation of the Jews. At that time that was law, because, as you know, the Führer's words had the force of law. That applied to all German members of the national community.

You were not brought in to help draft the Nuremberg Laws?

No, at that point I had nothing at all to do with the office.

Now please repeat it as exactly, word for word, as you can…

[Farewell.]

It was in Berlin, in my office on Kurfürstenstrasse. The war was drawing to an end; everything was lost, finished. I either summoned all my officers, or it arose out of a meeting. These were more or less my last days in office, and, formally taking my leave, I said that, if it had to be so, I would gladly and joyfully jump into the pit, knowing that five million enemies of the Reich had jumped in with me. I know I spoke those words very harshly, because I felt extraordinarily happy at the time. If I had to bite the dust like a dog, then at least I would not be alone in there. That was how I felt, and I expressed it to my men. With that I had, in effect, left the stage.

Are you sure you used the words “enemies of the Reich” and not “Jews”?

No, I had no reason to use that. I did not hate only the Jews; in those days I hated everything that was going for the German people's throat.

Not the word “human beings” either?

No, “enemies of the Reich.” To me, “enemies of the Reich” was something like the word “devil” to a clergyman.

Did A.H. (Adolf Hitler) speak to you about the Jewish problem, or give you any instructions about it?

The Führer? No, my office was far too junior for that. The superiors I dealt with, from the top down, were the RF (Reichsführer-SS). I was summoned to him three or four times. Except on one occasion, when he was based on Prinz Albrecht Strasse, I was always summoned to his field command post. Otherwise there was the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Heydrich, and then his successor, Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and then my regular superior, with whom I dealt several times a week: that was Müller, Heinrich Müller.

I had no other superiors.

Did Himmler speak to you about this problem, or give you any instructions? Do you therefore know his attitude toward it?

Yes, I can say that. First, Himmler repeatedly spoke of the harshness of the struggle the German people had to wage against its Jewish opponents, and that this struggle had to be waged because never again would we have leadership strong enough to defend ourselves against such a dangerous opponent. The RF (Reichsführer-SS) himself, I believe, never indulged in programmatic explanations to his subordinates. He did speak to a larger gathering about the general handling of things. With an individual, I would say, in his impulsive manner he hammered in order after order.

He jumped from one thing to another and very often left the general level to pick out some small, ridiculous individual case and make a personal decision about it. Many in our office knew this peculiarity of the Reichsführer, and it often caused us difficulties. His attitude was quite clear to me: harshness where harshness was necessary, but where harshness could be avoided, it should be avoided. I repeatedly gave written expression to this view of the Reichsführer in my orders. In implementing regulations or orders for actions, which always had to be issued in writing to subordinate offices, I pointed out again and again that avoidable harshness was to be avoided. The police itself also tolerated no excesses in its actions.

From your personal dealings with the RF (Reichsführer-SS), do you know whether he regarded the problem of combining police duties with SS duties at the later stage as fortunate or unfortunate? Police duties and Waffen-SS duties.

I cannot say anything about that. They were of course linked. It was one corps with different areas of duty. If the head of this corps, the Reichsführer, considered it useful or expedient, he surely combined the commands deliberately. Just as he placed me, who came from the troops, in the Gestapo Office, although I am not a civil servant and refused to become one when Müller once approached me about it. On the contrary, I regard this whole matter as a secondment and wish to return to the troops when the task is completed.

When did the term “Final Solution” first appear, and who introduced it? What did the term encompass?

The term “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”—I no longer know exactly today whether I coined it or it came from Müller. I cannot even say that. When I read The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, written by A. Boehm, he spoke of the solution of the Jewish question. Soon afterward, when the Zionist association was assigned to me as a subject area in the SD Main Office, I had already begun to write “Re: Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in the files, because the Reichsführer's aim was to bring about a final solution. The term “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” has nothing to do with a physical end or the end of a physical person. This file heading, “Re:,” was carried on continuously from the SD Main Office, beginning in '35, through 1945. It was not a term specially devised.

To your knowledge, did Hitler already hold the view in the early stages of the war that a German victory would automatically mean the physical annihilation of all European Jewry?

No, nobody had ever thought of that. I am convinced that Heydrich, who was a very cold man, a very self-controlled man—even he shuddered inwardly at the words “physical annihilation.” He told me about this in a way he otherwise did not use. Normally he was brusque and forceful, whereas in this matter he spoke in a kind of softer conversational language, certainly never in the form of an order. Psychologically, one might perhaps infer that he too was surprised at the time. After all, all the offices had in mind getting the Jews out of the country.

Even during the war a series of attempts was made somehow to detach the Jews from the body of the German people. But it may well be that, as victory kept slipping further away from us and A.H. (Adolf Hitler) committed himself more and more in every speech, one day he gave this order. He must undoubtedly have given it to the RF (Reichsführer-SS), who must have given it to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service). The head of the WVHA [SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt, SS Economic and Administrative Main Office] (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office) will have received the remaining directives personally from the Reichsführer.

Did Hitler concern himself directly with the Final Solution? Did he intervene directly and issue instructions directly?

[Crossed-out text: …]

No, never. What he communicated to the RF (Reichsführer-SS), I naturally do not know. The Reichsführer intervened directly and also looked at the matters himself.

[Höss matter—Auschwitz—remark.]

Did Hitler or Himmler look at the camps?

[Typed answer cue: Hitler never—RFSS (Reichsführer-SS) yes.]

No, never. I would know that for certain; it would have spread like wildfire.

Was the RF (Reichsführer-SS) also in the other camps besides Auschwitz?

I do not know, although I know that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) and Glo…

[Typed addition: Globronizz.]

got on very well with one another—let us say they were friends.

When the attack on Rath took place on November 9, '38, that was the day this freedom…?

[Night of Broken Glass?]

Who, in your view, had a hand in it?

Who it was I cannot say. Certainly not official Reich offices. I know that neither the SD (Security Service) nor the Gestapo initiated anything here. On the contrary, they were shocked, because they had laboriously built up bodies in accordance with the RF's (Reichsführer-SS's) directives, for example the Jewish religious communities, and equip them for emigration. We continually sent the Jewish political functionaries around—in this case I sent them around—to collect foreign currency and secure opportunities for immigration.

We endeavored to let the organized work of these Jewish functionaries proceed as undisturbed as possible, because we were building up the organization with the help of these Jews. We were therefore speechless when these institutions were smashed, just like the businesses. Apart from the fact that such mob actions do not fit the character of the police—the SD had been an extended arm of the German police—these excesses certainly did not meet with the understanding of a Josef Goebbels either. The responsible workers in his ministry with whom I dealt at the time were shocked by these measures too. It must somehow have been directed and steered. I have

… really no idea. Perhaps it came from Ley. I experienced it in Vienna at the time. I had my office on Prinz Eugen Strasse, and the Central Office for Jewish Emigration was there. That evening, when the affair apparently began, several Jewish functionaries came to me and asked me to protect them. I offered them the office, and they spent the night there. My guard was posted outside the palace both by day and by night.

[Typed correction: The religious community was not ablaze; it was the synagogue built onto it.]

When I went to the Israelite religious community, which was already ablaze, I found—I regret to have to say it—a senior leader of the General SS. I saw him or one of his men, at any rate, slam a typewriter from the religious community onto the floor. I was outraged and took the Oberführer to task.

[Typed addition: SS Oberführer or SS Brigf. (Brigadeführer).]

That led to a dispute, because at the time I was a Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) and had taken on an Oberführer. In any case, the affair came to nothing, except that I secured these men's withdrawal from the religious community building and placed a guard of several criminal-police officers there until the commotion was over. In that way I at least retained the extensive holdings, particularly the card index, because it recorded the possibilities for emigration. After all, we were dealing with a thousand people a day, and you can imagine that the card index we kept was not small. Otherwise I would probably have needed weeks or months to build up something like it again.

This card index was in the Jewish religious community itself? You did not have it in your office?

No. This preliminary work—obtaining foreign currency and the like, corresponding with foreign missions in Austria, or the Ostmark, or abroad—was exclusively the work of the Jewish functionaries. That was what I had appointed them for. They were decent people, largely Zionists who wanted to emigrate anyway.

[Typed explanation: “Farewell” is of course not to be taken literally; it means attending to the authority’s interest in the departure of each individual Jew.]

I handled only the official side: the clearance of an individual by the authorities that had some interest in his person—the economic offices, the police offices, the foreign-currency offices, and so on. I therefore handled the official work involved in issuing a passport. At this assembly line, so to speak, there were also delegates from Vienna's Jewish religious community who checked the Jew's questionnaire. The Jew passed along the assembly line and dropped off the end of it with his passport in his hand.

The other side claims that people were admitted abroad only because their papers were forged, or incomplete, and so on.

No, that cannot possibly be. They were proper passports, the kind any one of us would have been issued if he traveled abroad. The only difference was that these passports had a “J” three centimeters high and three quarters of a centimeter wide on the first passport page. This designation was regulated through the normal administrative channels by a passport ordinance, so that it acquired a legal administrative basis. Through the Foreign Office, this was handed to all the representatives of other peoples, accre… in Germany, with whom we had diplomatic relations. They therefore naturally had to accept a regulation issued by the Reich, just as we must accept the passport regulations of other countries.

Is it true that the proposal for the “J” came from the Swiss side?

No, I do not believe so…

… People with a J were then not allowed across the border.

Yes, I remember that the urge to emigrate was so strong that Jews frequently crossed the border illegally. I remember that the Foreign Office had difficulties, and that … were exchanged here. I am more inclined to think that the Foreign Office ordered this “J” regulation. We, the police, did not order it.

[Typed addition: I believe that this J regulation—a ….]

Where and how did you experience July 20?

[Thank you for the “slow…”]

I was in Hungary, in Budapest, and heard there of the attack on the Führer. We made no preparations of a defensive kind, because we were fortunate to have such good and influential friends in the … and the government that not the slightest danger could threaten us from that quarter. Nor did we have to concern ourselves with any German military offices. From that side too, unlike in other countries, personnel were detained, as I later heard; we had good contacts with them as well, so that in Hungary the day passed without any incident.

Did anyone in your office know anything about a conspiracy of that kind being planned?

Yes. It was like this: we had one, sometimes two, so-called desk officers' meetings a week, chaired by Müller. About twenty desk officers attended. At these meetings Müller himself raised matters of general interest, but the individual desk officers also often brought up matters they sometimes could not discuss with their chief, so naturally one heard a great deal. Conversely, reports of general interest made by an official to the head of Office IV were then presented at these desk officers' meetings when they were of some importance to everyone. There one could naturally hear again and again from the officer responsible for the national opposition, SS Stf. Huppenkothen. For my part, I always believed the matter to be in the best hands.

If an official such as Huppenkothen was handling it, that surely had to reassure us in some way. I was therefore very astonished and surprised that such a thing could happen. Because, as an old pessimist, and because the papers I received on my desk every day made me aware of moods, efforts and so forth within the Reich, although I had no responsibility for these things at all and could not intervene… And precisely because of this pessimism, I repeatedly expressed the wish that, before we dealt with the enemy assigned to me, we should first put the requisite number of Germans, our own fellow countrymen, up against the wall, so that there would finally be peace in our own stable.

[Impression of the victory parade in Paris.]

That was the beginning. It was when Bock reviewed his troops at the parade. Around that time we met, as we did every Thursday, in Müller's private apartment: Huppenkothen, my humble self, and three other comrades. We were five department heads from Office IV. They were harmless evenings, with chess and so on. We discussed official duties quite calmly, just among ourselves, and I thought I could also voice my misgivings there. It was around this time that I really began to become pessimistic…

Out of this fear for Germany I said to Huppenkothen: I am very pessimistic, and I believe that, if this goes on, we will lose the war. I also hinted at the conditions inside the country, because H. was the man responsible. H. contradicted me, fastening specifically on the word “pessimism.” We National Socialists of all people ought not to be pessimistic, he thought… A small dispute followed in which I said the opposite, word for word: we of all people, who sit on the green wood, have the right to pessimism.

If we could not be pessimistic, or were not bound up with pessimism, we would never have the strength or the possibility to confront, judge and condemn the opponent who publishes pessimistic trains of thought. Of course, I must not communicate such pessimism to a third person; I share this pessimism only here, on the green wood, and only out of fear for the Reich. Müller then intervened, agreeing partly with Huppenkothen and partly with me, and that settled the matter.

You told Hu. that, in your view, it was necessary—or rather, justified—to put 500,000 Germans up against the wall in order to win the war?

Did I say that to Hu.? No. On that occasion I said it to Müller. I said that we would first have to put 500,000 Germans up against the wall; only then would we have the right to wipe out the enemy. But as long as we did not do that, or were not permitted to do it, we would have no right to do so. I expressed that to Müller repeatedly, in the years afterward too. Müller said neither “yes” nor “no.” With a quiet, fatherly smile he said: “Yes, yes, Comrade Eichmann.”

Which people did you have in mind with the 500,000?

[Typed explanation: Not a cinema newsreel, but the press review, the press digest.]

All the saboteurs, all that rabble, such as we saw on July 20. I read it in so many things: the Red Orchestra, the press review, T.U., and whatever else there was. Some of these T.U. sheets were also sent to me. A conversation was set out there in telegraphic wording, and one such T.U. contained perhaps three, four or five matters. What concerned me was marked IV B 4.

[Typed addition: Circulation folder.]

It then passed through the various sections in a circulation folder, and everyone had to pick out what concerned him. It is quite clear that, over time, a picture emerged: man… there is so much trouble in the country; why does someone not finally come down hard on it? It was the task of Office 3, Ohlendorf, to know about that in greater detail. After all, Hu… also drew on the intelligence from Office 3. Office 3 collected, exploited and processed all this as intelligence, identified the forms the opposition took, and then passed them to the Gestapo for ex… treatment.

[Typed addition: … then the press section (domestic … foreign) … not only to the Gestapo but to … interested offices of the RSHA [Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Security Main Office] (Reich Security Main Office).]

In just the same way, one would have had to draw on the findings of a Dr. Six, the office chief …. He had been responsible for combating ideological opponents, and did it scientifically. Naturally he too had his eyes and ears everywhere, and knew who headed this or that institution, or who this or that person was, and so on. I needed only half of this, because I came from his shop myself. I came from the field of scientifically combating opponents, from the office of Six, who had been my superior for a long time. When I was sent to the Near East, Six was my immediate superior, until I took over the Central Office in Vienna.

[Typed addition: SS Oberführer, Government Director Dr. Stallecker; Commander of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service) with the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.]

And from that time on my direct superior in Vienna was Dr. Stahlecker. Then, from Vienna, when in the meantime I also set up the Central Office in Prague—

[Typed addition: Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Prague.]

where for a very short time I was subordinate to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD in Prague—

[Typed correction: Subordinate to the Commander of the Security Police and the SD with the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia for the period of establishing the Central Office for Jewish Emigration.]

that was only a matter of a few months—I was then ordered to Berlin in the autumn of '40, and Müller was my immediate superior.

[Keyword: Palestine.]

When and why did you travel to Palestine? It is claimed that you gave the order to establish contact with the Grand Mufti. Is that true? Did you go to Palestine for that reason?

That is nonsense, of course. This is what happened. I told you that I struggled with Hebrew for two and a half years… Around that time I observed legal and illegal immigration into Palestine, because I knew that colleagues of mine in Schellenberg's office had very close contacts with the Arabs. That was about the time Mussolini declared himself the Sword of Islam… And I wanted to know to what extent Jewry in Palestine was artificially keeping itself in the minority, when in fact its numbers already far exceeded those of the population resident there, or whether approximately that number had already been reached.

I already knew from Jews that they were only waiting to have the numerical majority in order to take possession of the country. Jewish functionaries had told me that. So I was interested in establishing when the time might come to set up this new Jewish state. Since uprisings down there were an everyday occurrence, I also assumed the Jews must have some secret militant organizations. By chance one of the Jewish newspapers came onto my desk, and I read an article about the Hagana. That interested me. The article spoke of a Jewish armed force.

Through a man who had lived in Palestine for a long time, a Mr. von Bol… (probably Bolschwingh), who was in turn a good friend of SS Ustf. (Untersturmführer) Mildenstein, then my department head for Jewish affairs—at the Reich Security Main Office I heard of the arrival in Berlin of a Jew from Palestine who was active in some Jewish ex-militant or political capacity, or I heard that he was in a neighboring country. In short, I obtained from Dr. Six, and he in turn from Bol, an invitation to this Jew—

[Typed correction: Not as my guest, but as a guest of the SD Main Office.]

as my guest in Berlin.

[Typed addition: Through him I heard of the arrival in Berlin of a Jewish … functionary of the Haganah.]

May the name Bol… be given?

Yes, he was only a simple informant of mine… This Jew came to Berlin, and I declared him a guest of the Reich Security Main Office. I met with him a few times; we ate at the Traube and talked about this and that. But the man would not really open up. He told me interesting things. I also wrote a report about it for my superiors, and Heydrich rated it “good,” a sign that Heydrich was interested in it. When he was not interested, he ran his blue pencil across the whole thing. The invitation extended to me through this man was accepted, and in the autumn of 1937 I traveled with the then SS Oschf. (Oberscharführer) Hagen, a colleague of Six, through Poland, Romania and Syria to Palestine, and then on to Egypt. There had just been several bombing incidents in Palestine at the time…

… I arrived in Haifa. The representative of the German News Bureau, Dr. Reichert—who meanwhile had had a car accident—received me in Haifa. Since Palestine was not favorable ground, I obtained permission to go ashore at all only with the greatest difficulty, but I made use of that one day.

[Landscape descriptions.]

I then traveled straight on to Alexandria, where my companion and I spent three days as guests of the president of the young Arab lawyers, who had traveled with us on the ship, a certain Henry Lakasch. His father had been president of the Arab lawyers. Dr. Reichert was waiting for me there, together with a certain Mr. Genz, the local DNB (German News Bureau) representative. Through Dr. Reichert's mediation, my former Jewish guest from Berlin also came from Cairo. We met one evening at Mena House. Various things were proposed; among other things, he proposed a German airline. In any case, the affair was not very productive…

Dr. Reichert handed me, as a gift so to speak, a mail sack from the Mandate airline that Arabs had stolen. It contained several important letters addressed to the High Commissioner and to a senior judge.

[Typed addition: The English senior judge of the Mandate ….]

These letters passed from us to the Foreign Office, and on September 1, 1939, when war broke out with Poland, they were published on the front page of the Völkischer Beobachter. They were matters that did not interest me at all, because I had no responsibility whatsoever for that subject.

The contents of the documents?

They concerned cooperation between the Mandate and the official Jewish bodies to the disadvantage and harm of the Arabs… That was why they were published. Those were the Reich's interests: to demonstrate that the Arabs were in some way being outmaneuvered by other powers. I did not meet the Grand Mu… (Grand Mufti). The DNB (German News Bureau) had planned a visit to the then King Abdalla. They had already obtained a chess set for me and pointed out that I must lose the game in any event, because that was the custom… In any case, I did not get to the Grand Mu… (Grand Mufti). There was great unrest down there at the time, and bombs were being planted. When I tried a second time, because I had again arranged to meet my former Jewish guest from Berlin in Haifa or Te…, I went to the British consulate general in Alexandria—

[Typed addition: to the British passport office in Cairo.]

and although I could show a writer's identity card from the Berliner Tageblatt, the official responsible said to me, “I'm sorry,” and that disposed of the matter. The journey had been begun at a time when, suddenly, even during the outward journey, circumstances became as unfavorable as possible, which one could not have known beforehand. In quieter times it would certainly have been better and more favorable, and one could have studied quite a few things more closely.

When did you get to know the Grand Mu… (Grand Mufti)?

I met him when he was an official guest in Berlin. That is, he came to Berlin for the treatment of an eye ailment, when he broke off his stay in Italy and went to Germany. Here he was under the protection of Office VI, later Schellenberg's office. The office had its guesthouse at Wannsee, and

… there was an evening to which the Grand Mu… (Grand Mufti) was invited, along with other Arabs and all the other desk officers whose areas of responsibility in some way extended into Arab affairs. Mine extended into that area, and I was included too, particularly since immediately afterward three Iraqi officers were assigned to me for information. One was a nephew of the Grand Mu… (Grand Mufti), and, as I later heard—I am not entirely certain—he was the one who later did away with King Ab…. He was shot at once as well. He had been there, so I was told, and two others. I was told that this nephew was intended to be the Heydrich of the Near East after the victory of German arms down there…

Abdullah was shot in 1952?

I read the whole thing, that it had been the Grand Mufti's nephew. It was in all the newspapers… I was told at the time that he was the nephew. They were Iraqi majors, and, since I knew he was the nephew, I naturally now put it together: aha, that was him; now he is gone…

Well, the three had been with me and gone through for information. I had orders to open everything to them, without reservation, in accordance with orders. All the safes stood open to them. I let them go through all my subject areas and also devoted considerable attention to the three gentlemen myself. One spoke good German, the other broken German. It was not a social gathering; it was an introduction to the office, so that at any time they would have been able to transplant my administrative apparatus—a desk—into the great or small Arab empire.

But they did not go through my office alone. They also went through various other desks that in some way came within their sphere. The reason is quite clear: if I am told that one of them is the Heydrich of the Near East, then he is the future or intended Chief of the Security Police of the great Arab empire… Perhaps one was intended to handle the Jewish question down there. But all three were interested in everything and were as willing to learn as pupils. They received all the files from me, and these were explained to them…

Now Wi… claims in his statements that you were commissioned in August to draw up a Madagascar plan?

That is wrong, “commissioned.” I said before that I was a living file rack. I acted in accordance with orders, but I also thought for myself, because I lived in this subject. Otherwise I would have been an auxiliary worker, just a cog, something mindless and dead… So when emigration stalled—we will talk later about why it stalled—I thought about it, when the various attempts came to me, such as Theresienstadt, such as the Lublin district. Boehm writes in his Jewish State that Herzl had tried everything, had even gone knocking on the Sultan's door; he had wanted to negotiate with Kaiser Wilh. (Wilhelm). Herzl stirred up heaven and earth for the Jews, and in his distress Madagascar came up too… Herzl fell out with the particularly right-wing Orthodox, who all insisted on the Holy Land, Eretts-I. (Land of Israel).

The First World War offered them a homeland in Palestine, and with that all other considerations, Madagascar and so on, had become obsolete. Only in our own day, in our shortage of land and our need to bring the problem to a solution, did the Madagascar idea arise again. I myself, as the IV B4 desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office, put the Madagascar idea to Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service)—after first presenting it to Müller, of course—and received permission to set everything useful in motion.

In the period that followed—Madagascar was, at that time, half open to us; as a non-military man and non-politician I cannot establish that quite correctly. In any case, we had defeated France, and Madagascar was a French island and had been a French possession. There were a whole series of desk officers' meetings, attended by officials sent from all the central authorities. The Foreign Office had a spokesman, the Führer's Chancellery had a spokesman: the first was represented by von Thadden, the second by Reischhauer —

[Typed addition: Senior Government Councillor Dr. Reischauer.]

who was assigned as the permanent liaison officer between the Führer's chancellery representative and the desk. All the other offices that had to be involved even marginally were involved too, because every central authority, as ever, jealously watched to ensure that its own powers were not bypassed in any way. I believe that at least fifteen to twenty large meetings about the Madagascar project took place at my office, each attended by about twenty to twenty-five people, to give you some idea of the intensity of the work. Through the lawyers I had at my disposal, I had a proper draft law drawn up, together with a Triampel, for the resettlement and settlement of the Jews on Madagascar: a territory that was to be declared Jewish territory and on which the Jew was to govern and live freely and without constraint. Under the protectorate of the Greater German Reich, I would say, of course.

This would have been a great help to all those Jews, not just those of the German Reich but also those throughout our European sphere of influence, insofar as we could have transported the Jews to Madagascar in large numbers. At that time I obtained figures on the climatic conditions and capacity for receiving people from the Reich Office for Emigration Affairs in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, specifically from its head—an office which, as is known, had already been established in 1…

[Handwritten addition: long ….]

to advise Germans who wished to emigrate. The figures were not satisfactory; they were extraordinarily satisfactory.

I still remember today that Madagascar would have had to be divided, as it were, into two zones, an upper and a lower one. One would have been very good climatically, the other somewhat worse. How that would have worked out in detail would not have been our task, but that of Jewish self-administration, of the Jewish Madagascar government. I still remember that the collection of clauses amounted to about 80?, about 100 or 120. I know that work had already begun on implementing regulations. In any case, the bureaucratic obstacles were enormous.

When, after weeks and months, the matter was finally ready for the ministers, and the draft was circulating for initialing through the state secretaries of the individual ministers and around the ministerial offices, France was suddenly finished for us again. The balance of the war tipped so that Madagascar was beyond our reach. It was the uprising… de Gaulle. I believe there was something in Dakra. In any case, we had some setbacks to take; Madagascar ceased to be of interest and had to be abandoned, to my heartache even today, because at that time I was still living entirely in the Madagascar idea.

What French witnesses are there for this Madagascar plan? Or which French politician or official was contacted to carry out the plan—or was no one contacted?

Naturally the Vichy government was contacted, because Legation Councillor von Thadden, the Foreign Office desk officer, was present at every meeting, and every draft had to be initialed by the Foreign Office. It was a step-by-step process, and on several cardinal points the Foreign Office had to initial its statement that there were no objections. For me, as a member of the Gestapo, that settled the question of agreement with the Vichy government. For the Foreign Office to have disposed of a territory on its own, without negotiating with the responsible gentlemen—that would contradict every established practice of any central authority. No central authority can do that. The moment the Foreign Office initialed a matter for me as unobjectionable, it had naturally covered itself in some way on every aspect extending into foreign affairs.

You yourself…

Just as I had to cover myself on my own matters and bring them into agreement, I believed I need not concern myself with this at all, and I never did concern myself with it, because the Foreign Office's initials alone, and nothing else, were binding for me.

But the credibility of Germany's serious intention to pursue a peaceful solution in the form of Madagascar naturally increases if you learned, either directly or indirectly, which French Vichy offices discussed these matters. Do you have any idea?

No. I know only that the Foreign Office had an office in (Vichy?), and that this same matter was put to Legation Councillor von Thadden—that is, taken up during the discussion. He could never express a personal position on it: his rank was much too low, his official position much too junior for that. He took these matters to the Foreign Office, and the Foreign Office contacted its permanent representative in Vichy. The permanent representative in Vichy naturally reported to the Foreign Office only what LeValle —or what was the name of the man he negotiated with?—had told him.

Did you learn that these negotiations were conducted directly with Laval, or with Champaire, or with whom?

No, with Laval. The other name is completely unknown to me. I know that the Foreign Office negotiated with Laval on Madagascar-project matters. Von Thadden told me that. He withdrew—that is, he explained… From him the matter went to Reichhauer, who had authority, as the Führer's deputy, to initial something immediately, on the spot, or not. He then explained that he could only take it up and discuss it then, because they had to contact Vichy. I never heard any name other than Laval from von Thadden.

Darlan, the admiral?

Yes, I know the name, but he never played a role in my negotiations.

Was any role envisaged for the French fleet to carry out the transport?

For the transport, some man calculated how much tonnage we would need altogether to transfer the Jews to Madagascar within a short time, because the …

transfer was to proceed decently, because the Jews were to arrive down there fit for labor. It was not to become just some ghetto, nor was it to become a concentration camp. It was to be a proper protectorate government, exactly like Slovakia—that was precisely the sort of government it was to be. That was why everything had been settled down to the smallest detail through all the responsible central authorities, and not, say, in the form of a coup arranged by some Waffen-SS unit with some arranged-for or daredevil U-boat crew, or towing some steamers to Madagascar.

No, there was to be an orderly solution, established by law, which was to meet with the approval of all the central authorities, including the island's present ruler; the island's fate was to be settled in some treaty. Hence my order to involve every single office that came into consideration—the unusually large accumulations of ministerial practices, and the large number of desk officers at the discussions.

Were you ever introduced to the Führer? Did you speak with him?

No.

Given the official position you held, didn't it strike you as embarrassing that you were never introduced to the Führer?

No, that could not have struck me as embarrassing, because in the civil-service hierarchy I held the position of a department head. Above me, as my immediate superior, I had an office chief, a main-office chief, a Reichsleiter, and then came the Führer.

But the importance of your tasks, or the success with which you were able to crown some operations, could surely have made it possible for you to be received by the Führer, for example? Or to be introduced to him?

No, that would have been impossible, because this problem was so pressing and so much to the fore—it is also well known that the Führer dealt with the problem in every one of his speeches, sometimes at length, sometimes very explicitly. So, as with no other problem, the Reichsführer-SS, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service), Heydrich, later Kaltenbrunner, and also my immediate chief threw themselves into this problem and concerned themselves personally with its individual points to a degree scarcely found in any section of my colleagues at the time—that is, comrades.

That was also the difficulty of my position. While my fellow section officers at the time simply acted rigidly according to laws, regulations and decrees, I always had to look left and right, like a horse without blinkers, to see whether one of the gentlemen—for example, Heydrich—whether they had made some individual decision, created a precedent. I had to be careful not to ruin that decision again through some other matter.

To the extent that my superiors concerned themselves with the affairs in such detail, I naturally had no possibility of being introduced to the Führer in any way, because my superiors could present these details to him. Only Heydrich, later Kaltenbrunner, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler went to the Führer on Jewish affairs. Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller was never introduced to the Führer, either on Jewish affairs or on any other matter. It was not like that for us, unlike the years of struggle, when there had been comradely contact: for us the Führer was unreachable ….

Was Müller never introduced to the Führer?

Undoubtedly, while he was still in Munich, with the police. Later, I don't think so. Müller never said a word about it. Müller was a very assiduous, hardworking paper-pusher, and I was one too as Müller's underling. Neither of us would ever have had a pathological ambition to be introduced to the Führer. The subordination to which we voluntarily submitted—that is, duty, that is, the oath, that is, orders—had already made me immune to any pathological striving for advancement of the kind that perhaps a little private individual has to possess… Instead, we quietly and modestly did our duty as soldiers of the Third Reich.

Who do you believe originated the idea of entrusting Eichmann with carrying out the measures for the Final Solution?

The position is this: I have handled Jewish affairs since 1935. Now, from 1935 to 1945, in those ten years, I had 1,000 discussions with Jewish and non-Jewish bodies—not only in Germany, in the Old Reich (Altreich), in the Eastern March (Ostmark), in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, but in many territories where we exerted our influence at the time. I was known everywhere. I had to concern myself with every single detail, with matters of principle. Jewry had simply grown accustomed to it—I read it in the various foreign newspapers laid on my desk—that Jewish affairs in the Reich, unless they involved Streicher stories or Stürmer matters, were the business of the 'Tsar of the Jews,' as they used to put it. The Pariser Tageblatt brought that out, more or less as a beginning… Eichmann did that.

How did it begin?

With a front-page editorial in the Paris newspaper, entitled 'The Tsar of the Jews.' That must have been in 1939, in the spring… This article said that this man had now held sway in the Old Reich, then in the Eastern March, and would now persecute them in Bohemia and Moravia too. If those Paris scribblers had only known how beneficial my work had been for Jewry, and how much blood the Reich had preserved for them through my work, which I had been ordered to do, they would never, ever have written the article. It was written by bunglers.

How often did you see the Reichsführer-SS and also speak with him?

The Reichsführer-SS—seen him, yes, and spoken to him when I was still a sergeant or senior sergeant, at a Yule celebration in the Reich Security Main Office. I had number 59 at the time; that is, I was the fifty-ninth bone rattling along in this SD (Security Service) structure. For this Yule celebration in 1934, the Reichsführer-SS had announced that he was coming. He wanted to celebrate it with us. We had been a small, close-knit community.

Heydrich had been our chief, and Sturmbannführer Brandt, later police president of Graz, was my immediate superior. Professor Schwarz-Bostunitsch was my intellectual teacher. At that time I dealt with Freemasonry, specifically the third degree, St John's Freemasonry. In that capacity I had my collection of seals, and that was probably the extent of the whole third degree, because it is not a degree that calls for extensive study… So this Yule evening took place among these Freemason index cards. The Reichsführer-SS arrived late with his …

…wife. I saw her for the first and last time. She gave the impression of a South Bohemian farmer's wife, and it was a very pleasant, intimate evening. We sang a few pleasant folk songs. Darré, the Agriculture Minister, sat beside me. He gave each of us a book… I also asked him to put his signature (KaiserWilhelm) underneath it… That was when I spoke to the Reichsführer-SS for the first time. I had seen him more often, because around that time he personally showed the Gauleiter and the ministers around, unless he could not get away and Heydrich did it. Almost every day Reichsleiter came to look at the place.

Did he discuss any Jewish question at this celebration?

No, no Jewish questions were discussed at all at that time. Only ideological questions were discussed then. The Reichsführer-SS assured himself of the inner steadfastness of the people he knew were in those positions.

When did you speak with him for the second time?

The second time was already during the war.

Were you invited to give a report, or…?

No, I was not invited to give a report; I was ordered to report to him, three or four times during the war. I was once ordered to him when he was still in Albrechtstrasse, when Wolff was still his adjutant. It may have been shortly before the Polish crisis. In any event, we still had civilian customs. The other times I was ordered to his field headquarters. He was then in a former Russian cadet school, I think near Minsk, or by Kiev. The second time was on a special train, Special Train Heinrich, which also stood in some forest in the East. The third time I was ordered to his field headquarters northeast of Berlin, in an old castle. That was in April, a few days before the major air raid on Brixlegg on April 17, 1945, because I was actually supposed to die that day, which is why I still know the date so precisely…

What was the subject of your conversation shortly before the Polish campaign?

The subject of my conversations with the Reichsführer-SS was always this: he wanted to know the figures, first the emigration figures—that was the most important thing for him—and the difficulties: who was causing the difficulties, (a) our own Reich offices, (b) foreign countries. That was generally all the Reichsführer-SS wanted to know from me, until the date when he prohibited emigration by order.

Do you still remember the course of this conversation more or less precisely? How one point led to another?

I remember this conversation very well, because it was the first I had to have with the highest of my superiors. It was a very civilian affair. The Reichsführer-SS was seated. I made my formal report and remained standing. At that time I was either an Obersturmführer or a Hauptsturmführer, in any case a junior rank. The Reichsführer-SS asked me how many Jews had emigrated… That isn't right… That was already when I was in Austria, and already in Bohemia… It was before my posting to Berlin, when I did not yet hold office in Berlin… I was a Hauptsturmführer… I must correct myself to this extent: it was probably before the Russian crisis… because I had already founded the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, and likewise the Central Office…

…for Bohemia and Moravia, which I had founded as well. Theresienstadt is uncertain… In any event, the Reichsführer-SS was still living under civilian official conditions. Wolff was his chief adjutant. The Reichsführer-SS wanted to know the exact number of Jews who had emigrated. He wanted to know the main receiving countries. He wondered why so many difficulties arose. At the time I thought the Reichsführer-SS might take it the wrong way: that I wanted to exaggerate the difficulties to put myself personally in a better light, as occupying a position where, as a little man, I was trying to master virtually impossible difficulties.

I told the Reichsführer-SS that every country was putting up a barrier to admitting Jews, while claiming that it wanted to admit them; that the Jewish officials traveled abroad on my instructions and under our control; and that the Jews returned partly (probably dejected), partly full of hope. Then, in the practical work, it emerged that, for example, Löwenherz had obtained 3,500 places for Jews in the USA, and then it turned out that in truth there were only 500 or 600, and these Jews still had to have proof-of-funds money in foreign currency. All this interested the Reichsführer-SS.

I also said at the time—it was quite a bold thing to do, or so I thought; I did not yet speak freely with my superior… I did not yet know him…—I told him I found it very surprising that the Jews in the USA constantly wrote about our persecution measures, but in reality would not take even a single one from us, although they also insisted that their country was open to them. The conversation did not last long, about ten minutes, perhaps a little more. No one else was present. The Reichsführer-SS never had anyone else present, except at the second conversation I had with him, when Müller was present…

Now I must correct myself again… Becher was present at the third conversation, and at the last conversation I was alone with the Reichsführer-SS. So I had four conversations with him; I was ordered to report to him four times. He also spoke to me in Breslau, when we had a conference in Breslau and he addressed his leadership corps there… During the greetings he also came over to me and said, as though suddenly remembering: 'Ah, Eichmann.' That pleased me very much at the time, because I lived for the Reich. I greatly respected, honored and revered the Reichsführer-SS, and I still do exactly the same today…

Did the Reichsführer-SS make any notes during this first conversation?

No, he never made notes, nor did he read anything out. He spoke briefly and abruptly, always in a friendly manner and with great assurance. Unlike Heydrich, he spoke like a father to his son.

Did the second conversation you had with him concern the same subject?

I made the second report I had to make together with my immediate superior. That was when the Reichsführer-SS—when the Reichsführer-SS was near Minsk or Kiev. In any event, I had to fly there in a courier aircraft. An admiral and other senior officers were sitting on boxes in that aircraft—a naval admiral (Marainadmiral). Müller was already there. We were housed in a former Russian cadet school, an ice-cold building that had meanwhile been furnished in the SS style with natural-wood furniture… One morning I walked the security lines with Müller, because I was the only close confidant of the Grf. (Gruppenführer) there. There were certainly many acquaintances there, but none so close to Müller. Müller had the task of inspecting the arrangements there to see whether there were any shortcomings.

I accompanied him. He drew my attention to the shortcomings, which had nothing to do with my responsibilities and did not interest me. He immediately arranged for tighter cordons and checks for the Reichsführer-SS's security. We had lunch there, and in the afternoon we were ordered to report to the Reichsführer-SS. While the two of us were inside, only Jewish affairs were discussed, and the Reichsführer-SS finally stopped emigration there. It must have been in the autumn of 1941.

I also remember it because I smiled at the Goebel… lies, which I too had believed: instead of starving people, I saw farm boys and farm girls bursting with health. This second report may also have lasted a quarter of an hour, or even twenty minutes. The Reichsführer-SS asked me for something like a general report. The Reichsführer-SS wanted a complete overview of Security Police work across the whole field of the attempt to solve the Jewish question. I told him everything, some of which I had already reported to him. This time I spoke much more freely.

First, my chief was there; I had a higher rank; I was accustomed to dealing and negotiating with the senior Reich offices. The numbers of Jews held in concentration camps were not available to me, because we had a separate section for concentration camps, with which I had nothing to do, in Office IV. Sending Jews to a concentration camp—that is, deciding after a State Police headquarters submitted an application concerning Jew XY, for this or that reason, for some infringement, and so on—deciding that was naturally my office's responsibility.

The State Police headquarters was then instructed to transfer the person named to the concentration camp under the existing regulations, invoking the law or the Emergency Decree for the Protection of People and State—that too was invoked. The camp figures, or care, and so on, were not my section's responsibility. Another section within Office IV was responsible and kept a constant check on them, because the responsible section officer had a person X transferred to a concentration camp, whatever group he belonged to.

He recognized the substance of the State Police headquarters' application as justified or unjustified—then it was rejected anyway. But that was never left to an individual's opinion. It was the laws and decrees or regulations that said so; no person said so. They stated the law. He had then ordered, in the order under 111, that the file be submitted again to review the detention date in a quarter or half a year. Then this section within our own office had to send me that file, so that I would observe the detention-review date and establish whether the inmate had been inside long enough or not.

So in practice it was handled like this: the local Gestapo head was written to, 'In accordance with the detention-review date, such-and-such, you are requested…' That office then asked the relevant concentration-camp command whether XY could be released. They replied, the Gestapo office replied to me, and then I issued another order: 'The person concerned is to be released with effect from …' Or, 'The application to leave the named person in the concentration camp for another half … for improvement…' Then the file was submitted to me again…

[Typed parenthesis: Viva, Anta…]

The second conversation with the Reichsführer-SS was a general report on what we had set in motion on the Security Police side, what we had achieved, and what we had not achieved: (a) because of Jewish resistance, (b) because of non-Jewish resistance from world public opinion—that is, the other nations, to which we had no power to give orders.

Did the word 'Final Solution' come up at all in this second conversation?

The word 'Final Solution' naturally came up all the time, as early as Mildenstein's years, 1934, when I took over the Jewish section… No, it was early 1935, when the Jewish section was founded, namely the section in the SD-HA (Security Service Main Office), namely the section for research into the … It was not yet an Ex… section. Scholarly research only existed from 1935 onward; the term 'Final Solution' has existed since then. That has nothing to do with the physical Final Solution.

Was there any discussion in this report of gassing or of other methods of physical extermination?

No, not a word.

At one of the following reports?

About these matters with the Reichsführer-SS? No, not a word… At one of the few reports, yes… In fact, it was already the next report and the one after that… It was the report for which I was ordered to the Reichsführer-SS with Becher, but by then I had already been in Hungary.

In what form was it discussed?

At the first report it was: 'We give you Jews; what do you offer us?' At the second report: 'We have offered you; what have you given us?' Those were really my third and fourth reports to the Reichsführer-SS, as counted from my side. I had the first back at the Yule celebration; the second was with Müller somewhere in Russia; the third and fourth were together with Becher; and then, at the end, came the fifth.

So at the second came the question: 'We offer; what do you give?'

Or rather, at my third ordered report—at the first audience with Becher. At the fourth, and the second report together with Becher, it was said: 'What have we offered, and what do we get now?' Between the first and the second, the Reichsführer-SS had stopped the liquidation of the Jews by an order to Pohl. Nothing more was physically destroyed, because at that time we had big business in prospect—that is, big projects—because we had big worries. The war was drawing to a close, we had a shortage of material, and in O, O the Reichsführer-SS wanted to motorize two divisions, from one day to the next.

How did the Reichsführer-SS formulate his order to Pohl to stop the measures for the physical extermination of Jews? Did he give reasons?

I cannot say, because I do not know how the Reichsführer-SS used to deal with his main-office chiefs… I imagine the Reichsführer-SS either sent for Pohl or telephoned him, but I am more inclined to imagine he sent for him, because he sent for Müller and me too. He will have said to him: 'Pohl, keep all the Jews; I need them. I have discussed some things with Müller. We will send the Jews abroad… Pohl, we will keep the Jews and then give them away and motorize our two divisions.

It will be a good thing…' Pohl also had to see to the equipment, so that will certainly have been fuel to the fire for him. The Reichsführer-SS will have spoken to Pohl just as impulsively as he spoke to me on my last visit, my last report, when, as my highest superior, he slapped [? me] on the thigh and said: 'We will get a better peace than the Peace of Hubertusburg. We will have to …ssen …, but it will be better.' It was on the occasion of my last …, shortly before April 17. He wanted at least 100 of the most prominent … who were under our control kept very properly in a safe place—wi….

For he was negotiating with Bernadotte at the time and thought he could also play the 100 prominent Jews as a card in his plan. I believed that this was also why the Reichsführer-SS sent for me: to toughen me up once more. He wanted to make sure of me once more, because when Kaltenbrunner asked me in Alt Aussee what I intended to do now, I answered, 'I will go away and offer resistance in the mountains.' Kaltenbrunner then said, 'That pleases me.

The Reichsführer-SS will also be very glad to know that, because when he is now negotiating with Eisenhower, he knows Eichmann is in the mountains, and our opponents know perfectly well that Eichmann and his men will not surrender…' Those are the words Kaltenbrunner used to me, word for word. From this statement by the Chief of the Reich Security Main Office I now also infer the Reichsführer-SS's view of me. At the very end he wanted to make sure of his Eichmann once more. I can imagine nothing else, because I cannot imagine that 100 Jews alone could really play so large a role in political negotiations of that scale as to tip the balance.

Admittedly, it was probably something like that, because with the white-painted Swedish trucks that drove from Auschwitz somewhere through Germany in enormous kilometer-long columns, the Reichsführer-SS did release 1,000 and indeed thousands of Jews to Bernadotte. They were enormous white-painted columns of super-trucks, so my affair was only a little cog in the game he thought he was playing. Afterward I had to discover that he really was playing, because that was why the Führer finally demoted him and declared him an outlaw, and then appointed someone else—I think Hanke of Breslau—as chief of the SS.

At this last report, did the Reichsführer-SS mention any names in connection with these 100 prominent Jews?

No, he left that to me; he did not actually [? know] that himself either.

Did you suggest any names to him? Did you have any names ready?

Yes, we had quite a number of very prominent Jews in Theresienstadt, and quite a number of very prominent Jews in the concentration camps too. I think Léon Blum was still there… There were plenty of names. I had a few Austrian generals who were Jews; I had a whole lot of people, some of whom had also been former Reich ministers—… were. There were plenty. I could easily have assembled the 100.

Can you remember any more of the names precisely?

As I said: Léon Blum, who had once been French prime minister. There was quite a considerable number. They included people whose names were known not merely in Europe but throughout the world. Most were probably of European standing.

Do you remember whether, at the last report, shortly before April 17, the Reichsführer-SS also spoke about the Führer, and in what way?

As far as I know, the Reichsführer-SS did not do that on the last day. As far as I know, Becher was there, at the next-to-last report… I had already been in Hungary then, and the Reichsführer-SS said, 'I absolutely cannot tell the Führer that…' He meant the trade, because the Führer would probably have chopped off his fingers: the Führer had ordered the extermination, and the Reichsführer-SS had called it off. He could not possibly tell the Führer that he was negotiating to exchange the Jews for 10,000 trucks.

I mean, don't you remember that at the last report the Reichsführer-SS, who after all…

…was already negotiating with Bernadotte, spoke of it for some reason, or perhaps had a premonition of what could happen afterward—that he would be cast out, and so on?

The Reichsführer-SS said, 'I have never been so optimistic, never before… We will get a better peace,' and so on… 'And I'll tell you one thing, Eichmann: if I have it to do again, I will set up the concentration camps on the English model. I made a great mistake there. I must set them up on the English model…' I could make nothing of it, because I had never run a concentration camp. I could not picture what he meant. At the time I thought of the English concentration camps for the Boers, but perhaps he also meant the whole English police system… I don't know.

So you don't know what he meant by an English concentration-camp system?

No.

And where he had made the mistakes? He did not indicate that more precisely?

No. He had made mistakes—that was what he said.

Did he put it as 'if I HAD it to do again' or 'if I HAVE it to do again'?

'If I HAVE it to do again, I will do it that way.' And he said it in a pleasant, gentle manner, so that what could certainly be understood from it was that these concentration camps had to become more elegant, more refined, better behaved—that was how I understood it in my own mind.

Did he ever mention the name Bernadotte to you?

Yes, he mentioned him to me. He also mentioned him the last time I was there with Becher. That must have been in the autumn of 1944. I am quite sure the name Bernadotte came up then. In any event, the Reichsführer-SS had prepared the whole affair well in advance.

When were the preparations for the Ardennes offensive?

In November.

So around that time, when the offensive had not yet taken place—it was around Christmas, December 16, 1944.

So shortly before that, the Reichsführer-SS was on Special Train Heinrich. Becher and I were ordered there. A Bavarian Stf., the train commander, entertained us and greeted us. He inspected my fingernails to see whether they were free of nicotine; otherwise I would have been given pumice stone and lemon, or else the Reichsführer-SS would have imposed a three-month smoking ban. In the anteroom of this carriage there was a senior SS leader working like a coolie amid X general-staff majors in Wehrmacht uniform and X SS leaders. And he said to me—someone said to me, whether it was the train commander or another commander—he told me, 'They're cramming away there for the new offensive the Reichsführer-SS will lead.' Aha, so that is what an ox-led offensive looks like…

We went past, because we had to go through to the study in his carriage. The Reichsführer-SS then invited Becher and me to have lunch or dinner; I no longer know exactly which. It was a Mitropa dining car, and a Mitropa waiter served in a Mitropa uniform. I wondered then whether the man belonged to the Reichsführer-SS's staff and to the SS, and he did. Instead of an orderly's uniform, he wore a Mitropa uniform. There were about eighteen to twenty general-staff majors in this carriage; the rest consisted of SS bigwigs. We sat there as people normally sit in a dining car. That was the precise time of my last discussion WITH Becher at the Reichsführer-SS's.

Did you ever negotiate with Bar…?

Yes, I spoke with him once… Bar…, who was in Poland, who was in charge of anti-partisan operations… Also formerly a Higher Police Leader…

You had no official dealings with him?

No.

No, but wasn't the Warsaw ghetto under his direction…?

Stroop had an album made, photographs with pictures taken by war correspondents. I got it from the Commander of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service) in Krakow, I think… In any event, I got it from above… It showed hard fighting… And the Reichsführer-SS had had it in his hands, because it came signed HH. It was later burned while in my keeping. I had nothing to do with Bar…, not in Hungary either, because there was no anti-partisan fighting in Hungary at all; there was none…

After April 25, 1945, once the affair between AH (Adolf Hitler) and the Reichsführer-SS was known, did you still have contact with Kaltenbrunner?

I remained in contact with Kaltenbrunner for a long time… The days May 7, 8 and 9 have vanished from my memory, because I had a shock then. I gave orders like an automaton, but what and how, I no longer know. I can still remember some things: my men wanted to separate from me, and I granted their request. I came back after the Reichsführer-SS's order—

[Typed parenthesis: 100 prominent Jews, etc.]

—from Tyrol, where, through Gauleiter Hofer—who no longer received me, but where I pressed the matter forcefully—it concerned the places at the Brenner… I then returned to Salzburg and met Günther at the Salzburg State Police. He reported that during my absence he had received an order from Müller to go to Salzburg with the founding files and deposit them somewhere in the mountains there. The founding files were the files of the then Prussian Minister President H.G., when a Secret State Police was first established, and so on.

I then drove on to Linz. At that time there was a terrible air raid there, in which a friend of mine, a Dr. Pifrater…, fell victim. He was Inspector of the Security Police for Upper Danube. On the outward journey I had still spoken with him… I then drove on to Prague. There I visited Karl Frank, who said to me, 'You cannot go any farther here. There is nothing left in Berlin. Müller… Kaltenbrunner is no longer in Berlin. The Russians have broken through somewhere there…

In any event, Kaltenbrunner is no longer there.' So I could not pass on the Reichsführer-SS's order… I then telephoned Kaltenbrunner and arranged to come down to Alt Aussee and report to him there. From Prague I went back to Alt Aussee and made my report. I visited him again on the last day. His adjutant Scheidler announced me—as a formality. Kaltenbrunner was sitting in proper ski gear, playing patience… He said, 'It's all sh… It's all over…' Those were the last words with my dear old friend Kaltenbrunner…

No comment about the Reichsführer-SS's conduct, nothing, nothing at all? Apparently no one knew.

I only found out much later too.

[unintelligible on the recording]

Before that, the SS and the SA had bitten the dust. Their skulls were smashed in for us, and they went to the penitentiary for us. That is why I am an intolerant fanatic. In that I am incurable, and I will remain incurable when it comes to Germany.

[unintelligible on the recording]

Do you know what lies behind the police registration operations, everything that lies behind them?

The technical side, the difficulties within the police alone, let alone the difficulties with the other central authorities.

[unintelligible on the recording] [recording switched off]

…My wife also reads the Bible. I let her read it. Once I tore a Bible to shreds and threw it away, and my wife was unhappy afterward. Then she took a second Bible—we still had one—and at some point I tore that one through too, but only into two pieces… Now my wife reads it in the two pieces, and I have sworn to myself to let her read, so that she is happy. Perhaps it is much better that way. I wish my wife and my children everything much, much better than I have it. I do everything for my wife, just as I did everything for Germany, and my family is only a little piece of Germany.

Müller once said to me, 'If we had had fifty Eichmanns, we would have had to win the war.' And I was proud. That was on the same day, in my section, because it was one of the few sections that had not been bombed out. I had driven my subordinates like dogs after every incendiary bomb and bomb, and naturally I joined in too. We repaired the damage immediately, so that my office alone was still intact in Berlin. But I have already told you how the State Police headquarters later moved in and pushed me out.

Then I was told, 'It's all over.' There was a section officer whose name I have forgotten, and we had 100 of … and letterheads there. Where it doesn't work, you can have them made up again at any time. Each of the gentlemen can now say where he wishes to have worked in recent years. He gets certificates made out, he gets official assignments—in short, something to disguise himself with. You could see—there were perhaps thirty of us section heads—how the people crowded around the fellow who was noting it all down.

In that relatively small room, where I made music with my subordinates—my assessor had played the piano, I played second violin, my noncommissioned officer or sergeant Glaser played first violin; he could play much better than I—even though it was not a large room, so much space remained at the back that Müller and I stood there alone. Müller said to me, 'Well, Eichmann, what about you?' Since returning from Hungary I no longer carried the Walter, but the Steyr army pistol. I had obtained two pistols: I carried one in my bread bag or luggage, and the other on my belt, because it took the same ammunition as my submachine gun…

Namely, 9 mm, which made it simpler. So I said to Müller, 'Grf. (Gruppenführer), I don't need that. You see, this is my certificate. When I can see no way out anymore, this is my last medicine. I don't need anything else.' And that is the truth: of all the section officers of the Gestapa in Berlin, I was the only one who sh… on those false certificates of theirs. Müller will have thought, 'He was the right man after all,' and that he had certainly not been mistaken in me. I was proud of myself for that. That was meant to give you an insight into my inner self, because you don't know me—not from the inside—and that is important, not just what is on the outside.

[unintelligible on the recording]

And if you are such a fanatical nationalist, that you also a mysticism—there is mysticism, a doctrine of faith, a worldview in racial-national life völkisch, which also comes into play with you. Perhaps you don't express it that way.

[recording switched off]

I loved him dearly. He was old Professor Schwarz… from Kiev, exceedingly lovable, infinitely clever, who served with us as a Stbaf. (Sturmbannführer). He was a mystic. This man simply could not live any other way; he was mysticism personified, and nevertheless I revered him dearly. He was my superior and teacher in the Reich Security Main Office. But I also saw what a childishly inclined, uncontrolled absorption in mysticism a person can be reduced to. I think nothing at all of mysticism. I stick to the business of the day. We have to make sure that our descendants live decently, and that settles it. I must forge my weapons according to the strength of the resistance. And with that my Latin is 'to do'.

That is what my whole life is about, and what my whole way of thinking is about. If everyone thought that way, each would only need to think a hundredth as much, and we would be better off. Fitting into the whole, because the racial-national element (das Völkische) lies in the whole—one blood. For that we gave everything, everything: our youth, everything, and our freedom too. Others gave still more, even their lives. That is why I cannot stand being told, 'What could have been worse, still worse than National Socialism coming to power on January 30, 1933?' Then I go berserk. It was only because I controlled myself that I took my leave of the ladies in the conventional way.

[recording switched off] [unintelligible on the recording]

I have often told the Jewish-political officials that personally I have no hatred at all for a Jew. Personally, I have never had a bad experience with a Jew. When I changed from a militant to a political officer, I was obliged to carry out the orders given to me. I belonged to those people who carried out orders without reservation, in accordance with the oath to the flag. But I also belong to those people who think about things. Either I do a job rigidly, and it certainly will not please me…

Or I do a job when I can grasp its necessity or purpose, and I will do it gladly; the time will fly by for me. That was how it was with the Jews. When I received the order back then, infant-like and unprepared, to proceed against the guest of the host people, I thought it over. Once I recognized the necessity, I carried it out with the fanaticism one expected of oneself as an old National Socialist, and which my superiors undoubtedly also expected of the man appointed to do it. Certainly, on the basis of their experience, they saw in me the suitable man.

I say this today, in 1957, to my own detriment. I could make things easier for myself. I could say it was an order, that I had to carry it out in accordance with my oath to the flag, and that otherwise I wore blinkers. No—that is cheap humbug. It is a cheap excuse that I cannot reconcile with my inner morality. So I must state clearly that after carrying out the first orders rigidly, I then tried to get to grips with the subject. Fate had given me an intellectual horizon that evidently enabled me to do so.

[unintelligible on the recording] (question concerning the Nuremberg trial)

You know, every policeman has his methods of making inquiries. I know that in the first years after 1945 I was wanted by the police. I am not even talking about the Allied police—that goes without saying. No, I was also wanted afterward by the police of my homeland and by the police of the country where I lived for some time as a guest. I also know that after five years, if the wanted person has not been found, he is struck off the wanted list (?). I have long since ceased to be wanted now; that is clear. In the first Nuremberg trial, the way our highest leaders were treated, Judge Jakson summoned my Hstbaf. Wi., whom I had in Czechoslovakia, as a witness. He told the fairy tale there about the alleged five million Jews whom I am supposed to have killed, and then Jakson said…

[interruption]

No, no trial was held against me. They could not have done so either.

[overlapping talk]

In … I was convicted, because I—and I tell you this as someone with years of expertise, since I have spent roughly half my life as a policeman—because the points are evidently of such a difficult nature and the file weighs hundredweights, that my—a conviction in—cannot simply be carried through, especially since the other side expects material gain from it.

In the proceedings against the Gestapo and the SD (Security Service), was particular responsibility assigned to you? Or, because you were not present and only the two, Höttel and Wi., were you not mentioned further?

Yes, from what I know from the meager newspaper reports, when I am mentioned there it is only because all these people—and perhaps I would not have done otherwise, since I was not there—referred to me and talked their way out of it that way. And when that goes on for years—it was such a long time…

And when everyone talks his way out of it at my expense like that, a legend forms. Journalists and the like then pick it up, and the whole thing gets blown up. Unfortunately, all my superiors are now dead or missing—that is, they were hanged, killed themselves, or are missing. Actually, only one is missing: my immediate superior, Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller.

Was a reward actually offered for producing you?

Yes, as far as I know, Wi. said—provided what the newspapers reported is true—that Wi. said, if his life were spared, only on condition that he would bring me in dead or alive. Second, I read the following, which amused me very much: a man who today holds a high rank in the Israeli army, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, went to Alt Aussee with a commando unit. The newspaper says the following, word for word: 'We confronted him, and he was surrounded by several very fierce guard dogs.

After we had beaten him down with clubs and knocked him unconscious, we put him in a jeep and took him to a clearing in the forest. Meanwhile he regained consciousness, and we asked him, Are you Obersturmbannführer Eichmann? He replied, Yes, what do you want from me? Then we struck him down. He died remarkably decently.' That was the newspaper item. But I am still alive today. It appeared in the Upper Austrian newspaper, in those years—I no longer know when. It was the communist-socialist newspaper, but I have forgotten its name. I kept the clipping for a long time, but eventually burned it.

[overlapping talk] (about the newspaper)

At whose instigation was the yellow star introduced?

Yes, it is a pity I have no comrade from that time with whom I worked, because I have since realized, after avoiding all such thoughts for years, that I have forgotten a great deal. Regarding the yellow star, I can remember the following—but I will tell you only what I know. There was a prior history, and there were discussions in my section; I know that too. But where, who and how, I no longer know. I do not know whether Reischauer played a part either. In any event, a police ordinance was being prepared, and it dealt with marking Jews.

It was a police ordinance of the Chief of the German Police in the Interior Ministry. State Secretary Stukerth was naturally involved in this ordinance. At the time he was the highest authority in the administrative struggle over an ordinance at all. The police were subordinate to the Interior Ministry. Naturally I was involved in marking Jews too, because as the desk officer responsible for Jewish affairs within the Gestapa [Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, Secret State Police Office], within the Interior Ministry, I at least had to put my initials to it. Without my initialing it, the matter could not go through, for bureaucratic reasons.

Was it intended as moral pressure against the Jews, or for purely organizational reasons

No, it was about the German mentality, which always takes the side of someone under pressure when it sees him under pressure. To make him hold back here, as it were from the state's point of view, to make him feel embarrassed and afraid to go on sympathizing with Jews and associating with them, and so on… Yes, now I remember: it came from the Propaganda Ministry. When Streicher heard of it, he brayed with delight. I still remember Der Stürmer; I think an entire issue dealt with this subject.

But there is an account that this order for the yellow star originated with Canaris.

No, certainly not. I know the man personally. But be that as it may, the police ordinance had gone through, and that settled the administrative side. One day I received, from the Propaganda Ministry, which had ordered it from some firm X, by the meter…

[unintelligible on the recording] (very quiet) (almost as if the recording were switched off)

…And then I cheerfully handed out the bales, and they went off with them. The ordinance had fixed a date by which every Jew had to wear a Jewish star. I no longer remember what year that was. There was a Jewish lawyer in Vienna who said to me, 'Mr. Hstbaf., I wear this star with pride.' He impressed me. He was an idealist, and I soon let him emigrate. I said to Löwenherz, 'Should I be in a country where a German is ostracized and marked, I will be proud to wear something like that, saying “German.” You will certainly only be jeered at by fools. But see to it that you increase the emigration figures. Bring me foreign currency into the country, and then, once your people is settled, you will also be able to live as a people.' That was what I said to Löwenherz.

Now to the question of how far your authority extended and how far you were involved in physical extermination, or in shootings at which you were present.

It was like this: Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller, my immediate superior, sat forever and always on the second floor in Prinz Albrecht Strasse and never moved away from his desk. But he knew everything that happened within the German Reich itself and, step by step, in the territories we occupied and influenced. Müller sent me around. I was a traveling man, a traveling man, a state-police agent (?), just as I had previously been a traveling salesman for oil and gasoline for five years.

Shortly after Heydrich told me that Globocnik had been given the task of killing the Jews and burying them in the anti-tank trenches dug by the Russians, he sent me to the Warthegau. I no longer know where it was; in any event, it was not very far from Litzmannstadt. According to Müller, Jews were supposed to have been gassed there, or were to be gassed there. I always say this at the outset: Müller did not give such orders. He had nothing to do with it.

But he wanted to know everything, although he had nothing at all to do with it. Müller was a precise official, and if he did not have everything presented to him at once, concentrated and in detail [?], he grew impatient. I drove to Litzmannstadt. Where I went I do not know, probably to the State Police headquarters there, and I also cannot say at the moment whether Krumey was already in Litzmannstadt at that time. I then drove out to the place they named to me, and some fellows or other had been at work there. There were also a hundred, or perhaps even a thousand, Jews there, and they were made to get into buses. But that meant nothing at all: they were normal buses, only with high windows. They got in, the windows were closed, and I was told that during the drive the exhaust pipe is directed into the vehicle's interior and they die at once through a chemical process.

Carbon … oxide.

The doctor who was there told me to look through the peephole. There was a peephole by the driver's seat, perhaps five centimeters in diameter, and there was a light bulb inside. I saw that from outside because the little pane in the peephole was lit. I refused; I did not want to see that.

So they were hermetically sealed?

Yes.

And how many went into one bus?

About—

[unintelligible on the recording]

And I did not look inside, because I was seeing and hearing something like that for the first time. My knees went weak. It was around autumn 1941. Yes, so the buses drove off. I was told at the time that it would take three minutes; the doctor told me that. The buses drove for about fifteen minutes. When I returned, Müller told me I should have timed it, but I told him I could not look through. I said to Müller, this will not do; you cannot do it this way. But he did not answer me. He only looked at me in a fatherly, benevolent way. I never quite knew where I stood with Müller. He forgave me, so to speak, for not looking through the peephole, however strange “forgave” may sound. I drove out there and arrived, and for the first time hell opened up before me.

[recording switched off]

The vehicle maneuvered, backed up and came to a pit that was perhaps two meters deep. The doors opened, and some Poles who were there jumped in and threw the corpses into the pit. One Pole jumped in. It shook me badly at the time when I saw it: he jumped in with pliers in his hand, opened people's mouths, and whenever someone had a gold tooth, he pulled it out and put it in the sack he had tied around himself. After a long time I came back there, and the head of the State Police headquarters said to me—or was it at the office of the Inspector of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service)?—we will show you the place where you were many months ago. Good, we drive out. There I saw a plantation, a small pine plantation, everything nicely peaceful, like a small wood just beginning to grow.

Well, that had been my first experience in this field, and my knees were to shake a few more times. Certainly, I too had worked toward the solution of the Jewish question, but not like that… Certainly, up to then I had not yet seen burned Germans, Germans who had shriveled up like mummies. Up to then I had also not yet seen the big, pleading eyes of a German married couple whom I was supposed to shoot in an air-raid shelter in Berlin.

I could not shoot them, and I said to my sergeant, if you can do it, then you shoot the people. If I had seen all that at that time, it would have been much easier for me, because I am a very sensitive person. I cannot simply look at something like that; I get a nervous tremor. But nature gave me one good thing: I can switch off and forget very quickly, without intending to. Then Müller told me to go to Minsk: Jews were being shot there, and he wanted a report.

So I go there, and the head of the Einsatzkommando (operational detachment), I believe, was there. I told him what assignment I had, and he said to me, that works out well, because tomorrow five thousand are up. So I drove out the next morning, but they had started early, and I arrived only for the end. Now I will tell you how it happened. I come up; I was wearing a leather coat that reached down to my ankles. It had been very cold, and a group of Jews came; that was the last group. They had to undress down to their shirts and then walked the last hundred or two hundred meters.

They were not driven; there were men there as a detail from the Waffen-SS, and then they jumped into the pit. So I stood there. It was so striking how the people jumped into the pit without any resistance at all, and then the shooters standing around fired into it with 0890 rifles and submachine guns. And why has this scene stayed so firmly in my memory? I had children of my own at the time, and I saw a Jewish woman lift up a small child, perhaps one or two years old. At the very moment when I was about to say, do not shoot, hand over the child, at that same moment the child is shot, and that is the end.

I saw it from so close that afterward, in the house, I saw brain spatter sticking to my coat. My driver then helped me remove it. Then I drove to Berlin. You must know, my drivers did not like driving with me, because on a twelve-hour drive, from Berlin to Paris for example—I left at eight in the evening and arrived at three in the morning on the dot—on that long drive I spoke perhaps ten or twenty words. On this return drive too I did not speak to my driver. I was thinking—not that I now condemned National Socialism after all those unforeseen things. No, I was thinking about the meaning of life as a whole.

At the time, after everything I had seen, I said to Müller, word for word: Grf. (Gruppenführer), the solution is clear. It was supposed to be a political solution; only, the Führer has ordered a physical solution, so it must be a physical solution, fine. But the way it is being done in Minsk, and perhaps elsewhere too, will not do, because our people are inevitably being trained into sadism this way.

2. We cannot possibly put a bullet into the brain of a woman who cannot defend herself and holds a child out toward us. That is not how we solve the Jewish question. But once again Müller was like a sphinx (Phinx)… Then I was sent to Lemberg. I arrived and saw a piece of ground (Terraino),

[unintelligible on the recording] [recording switched off]

[overlapping talk about a book]

Which points, then, are lies in your view?

I have repeatedly read that my Hstf (Hauptsturmführer) Wi, as a witness at the first Nuremberg trial, testified against me, less against me as a person than about the enormity of it. He said that, first, I am supposed to have said before him and several other officers of my section that I would jump joyfully into the pit because I had killed five million Jews. Second, I read that Wi testified that I was supposed to have shown him a written order from the RF (Reichsführer-SS), stating that the Führer had ordered the physical destruction of the Jews. Third, Wi is supposed to have said that I was responsible for three factors, that is, that the whole Jewish business was divided into these three factors up to 1945: a) emigration, b) concentration, c) destruction.

In reply I said, regarding point one, that I cannot have used the word Jews, because the figure of five million bore no relation to the number known to me as physically destroyed. Rather, I declared, I will jump joyfully into the pit if I must, knowing that five million enemies of the Reich have jumped in along with me. All told, I had brought only so-and-so many to emigration, and my section had nothing at all to do with concentration, apart from Theresienstadt, and that was ten thousand.

A figure of five million would have been absurd; my section never, ever handled such a number. It is true that four and a half to five million Jews were handled, but in connection with emigration, concentrated in ghettos, and handled in the concentration camps by the V&W HA (Economic and Administrative Main Office), that is, either killed or put to work. The statistician Korherr wrote that up, compiled it, and gave the report to the RF SS (Reichsführer-SS). That report came back with the notation, “Taken note of; file to be destroyed. HH.” And I then burned it myself.

And if I really had said it that way before my subordinates, I would surely have said Jews to them, not enemies of the Reich, because we handled nothing but Jews. But in that case it was about enemies of the Reich. The Jews interested me only in terms of registration, not destruction. I did not even know who was killed. None of us in the Security Police knew that; they could just as well have gone to the Heinkel works to work. But my subordinates would probably have thought I was a megalomaniac, because they probably knew it much better than I did. My transport sheikh alone, Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Novak, who constantly had to negotiate the trains with Reich Railways Councillor Stange…

Now then, as to the claim about the signed order, that is a flat lie. Only a fool could even imagine that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) would issue a decree setting down in writing something like this: “My dear Eichmann, the Führer has ordered the physical destruction of all Jews.” That can only have arisen in the brain of a sick CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) Jew. The truth is, in any case, that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) never put a single line about the physical destruction of the Jews in writing. I know that he dealt with Pohl of the VWHA (Economic and Administrative Main Office) only orally. I never received such an order, and still less could any of my Hstf (Hauptsturmführer) at the time have learned of such an order.

Neither in writing nor orally?

No, neither in writing nor orally. Heydrich told me personally that the Führer had given the order and that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) had entrusted Globocnik with it, but that this matter would in future be handled not by the police but by another main office under the RF (Reichsführer-SS). The third point: Wi is supposed to have testified that his superior, SS Obstbaf. (Obersturmbannführer) Eichmann, had to carry out three phases in the treatment of the Jews: a) emigration, b) concentration, c) destruction. On that, it must be stated that I carried out emigration and police registration where large masses had to be transported to destination stations that the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service) made known to me and prescribed for me.

And that with c), destruction, not only I but the entire Security Police and SD (Security Service) had nothing to do, except through individual special orders of the RF (Reichsführer-SS) to the Einsatzgruppen (operational groups) in the East. They had to carry out the measures on their own responsibility, but the Gestapa (Secret State Police Office), particularly Section IV B4, had nothing to do with them and was not even kept informed. Consequently Wi, who belonged to Section IV B 4 in the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office), has…

[music]

Can you briefly repeat what became unclear to you during the interrogation of Grinspan… Did he act under orders, or did he act on his own at the time?

The final interrogation that I conducted with the Jew Grunspan showed, as its final result, that there were evidently no backers behind this young Jew, but that he carried out the act on his own initiative. How far such a statement can still be checked remains open, because this Jew lived for years in solitary confinement and, although no purely physical harm came to him, he could no longer be regarded as fully competent for proceedings. The matter was closed with that; it was already too far past the time limit.

What about Höss’s testimony at Nuremberg concerning the two and a half million Jews who are supposed to have been liquidated in his camp?

Yes, there are two possibilities. I knew Höss, for I esteemed him very highly as a very decent comrade. He did his duty as anyone else would have done. He was a model family man, a holder of the Iron Cross from the First World War. He spent several years in the penitentiary for National Socialist activities. It was Höss who once told me that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) had watched the entire extermination operation and had declared that these were battles our coming generations would no longer have to fight.

You heard that from Höss, not directly from the RF (Reichsführer-SS)?

Yes, from Höss. If you ask me about the two and a half million Jews at Auschwitz who are supposed to have been physically liquidated there under Höss, I must answer that I consider that figure highly implausible. a) Because the capacity alone speaks against it, the capacity of the camp. b) Because I never had that many Jews sent to Auschwitz. I was not the only one who had people sent to Auschwitz; other command offices of the Security Police sent people there too.

But if you add everything together, this figure of two and a half million cannot have been reached, because after 1945 the so-called Auschwitzers sprang up from Auschwitz like mushrooms from the forest floor after rain, and hundreds of thousands of Auschwitzers enjoy the best of health today, because they were put to work. There are two possibilities, one I consider very likely and one I consider very unlikely. The first is that Höss will have testified under pressure, just as my Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Wi must have done, because the circumstantial evidence speaks against it.

The second—though Höss’s whole upright bearing speaks against this—is that Ostbaf. (Obersturmbannführer) Höss, as was customary at the time, inflated the figure, so to speak. Now, one can certainly say that this was expedient at the time. But one can also say that after a complete collapse a man tries to put himself into the role of a martyr so he can physically endure his suffering better, and that he took things upon himself that others might have carried out, divided among them. But I do not believe that, because his correct and upright way of life and his character speak against it.

And what do you say about Ohlendorf’s statement that he liquidated ninety thousand Jews in the East with his Einsatzkommandos (operational detachments)?

Well, Ohlendorf was no windbag. He was a very quiet, orderly office chief who worked consistently, the head of Office III in the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office). I cannot say anything more precise about the activity of the Einsatzgruppen (operational groups) in the East, because I never had anything to do with that subject in an official capacity. But perhaps what I just touched on with Höss applies here to some extent too: our willingness at that time to take on as much as possible in order to relieve others. I would like to dispose of the matter with this: had they caught me at the time,

I was always lucky enough to be just a shade cleverer than the CIC [Counter Intelligence Corps] (Counter Intelligence Corps) officer questioning me. But had they caught me back then, I would probably have taken a great deal upon myself that was not chargeable to my account at all. In the expectation that a) my life is confused verwirrt anyway—which would not have been so bad, because I would have given it for Germany—but that b) I might have been able to dampen our opponents’ hatred and desire for revenge, to curb their resentment and their craving for further victims, and thereby bring other comrades into a kind of safety. That is the only way I can explain Höss’s statement, and Ohlendorf’s as well. It fits the character of the two of them exactly.

Please tell us something more about Heydrich’s life and career, and also about your personal relationship with each other.

Well, Heydrich as a person: curt, slightly nervous, personally not free of vanity, an excellent comrade also toward those—toward his colleagues’ subordinates—who helped to strengthen his position, so to speak. Yes, that is how I came to know him. I got to know him personally when he inspected me in 1939 at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna and approved of the organization I had built up. He called it a prime minister’s office in miniature.

After his visit he ordered me to Berlin through the head of Office IV, Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller. That was my first personal contact with the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service). Afterward I naturally had a great deal of contact with him. I had to give him presentations on my area of work, and repeatedly prepare papers for him in his capacity as President of Interpol, because these were addresses he had to deliver. I had to…

Wait, I had had contact with him even earlier, when I had to give a weekly lecture on ideological opponents at the SD (Security Service) school in Bernau, before district leaders, other Gau regional main office leaders, students of the military schools, general staff officers up to the rank of major, and so on. Courses were held continually in Bernau, and I had to give my lecture every week. There I repeatedly met the man who later became my immediate superior. Heydrich led a very orderly family life. When his wife was not in Berlin, she lived at the family seat on the island of Vehmarn. As I said, he did not lack vanity.

It went so far that, contrary to his immediate superior’s order, in his capacity as a major in the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) he obtained a Luftwaffe (air force) uniform, got into a fighter aircraft, shot down two or three Spitfires over the North Sea, and won himself the Iron Cross First Class. I still remember it today: when I was summoned to him one day about some matter, he received me as a major in the Luftwaffe, wearing the Iron Cross First Class, and I congratulated him. He then made the first and only joke of his life: he regarded me, so to speak, as his equal in rank, because at that time I was

Stbaf (Sturmbannführer), that is, a major, and of equal rank with my superior.

It is sometimes claimed that his dashing manner was a certain …, because he had Jewish blood in his veins.

Yes, I have heard that too, but it is all lies and slander. Heydrich comes from the navy. I believe he had been a lieutenant at sea, and he had already been assigned to intelligence work in the navy. He then kept to that direction, devoted himself to the intelligence service, and rose beyond those small beginnings to become Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service).

Do you know when he joined Hitler?

No, I do not know. But the very fact that he had a typically Nordic appearance and was married to a Frisian woman… No, it is impossible, although appearance is never decisive. But it would certainly have leaked out, just as word leaked out that the Führer’s diet cook was said to have a certain Jewish family connection. I could then establish afterward that she was only one thirty-second Jewish. In the same way, I would certainly have received an assignment through Müller to investigate Heydrich’s ancestry. Or he would have investigated it himself, and I would somehow have heard about it.

Can you tell us something more about Müller?

The word sphinx (Phinx) is right for Müller. Even I, who reported to Müller two or three times a week, who for a long time, like my other comrades, met every Thursday evening in Müller’s private apartment to talk over a little cognac and a game of chess about all the personal and official troubles for which there was no time during the working day—even I can say precious little about Müller. I know that he came from a middle-to-upper civil-service background and from the Bavarian political police. He was a very silent man. I always compared him with Moltke: his mouth was always closed, at most a slight twist of his lips into a smile of approval or mocking disbelief, depending on the situation.

He was an exceedingly cautious man, lived extremely modestly, and was always an orderly, correct, and benevolent superior. He had only one weakness: whatever happened had to be put into a file note and entered in the registry. He was a bureaucrat, and through him I was inevitably made to become a bureaucrat. I felt extraordinarily happy and comfortable under his direction. Ideologically, he was one hundred percent aligned with our idea; I never saw any difficulty. And when he once offered me the chance to transfer into the civil service, I told him it made no difference whether I did the work as a civil servant

or as an SS officer. I do it out of idealism, not materialism. When the war is over, you will certainly get me a position as police president, preferably in Linz or else in Graz, and I would like to finish out my life in that position. At that, his lips again twisted into a slight smile.

And now, how did you reach the rank of Obstbaf. (Obersturmbannführer)?

I have not thought about why I did not get beyond it, but rather about the question raised on this point in various books. Why I was not promoted beyond Stbaf (Sturmbannführer) is quite clear: I was squeezed into an office, and that office recognized established posts, not ghosts (Geister). There were about thirty section heads in Office IV. A section head is a Government Councillor or Senior Government Councillor, equivalent to Stbaf (Sturmbannführer) or Oberstbaf (Obersturmbannführer).

The next step is department head, with the rank of Senior Government Councillor or Criminal Police Director, or of Ostbaf (Obersturmbannführer) or Standartenf. (Standartenführer). So, had Müller proposed me for promotion while I was a section head, there would have been a row among the other twenty-nine. They were civil servants, some waiting for pensions and all those things. There would have been all kinds of dissension, obstructing the work.

In an authority, however hard a man is made to work, no one can be promoted as long as he holds that established post. When I returned from Hungary, my permanent deputy, Stbaf. (Sturmbannführer) Günther, congratulated me on my promotion to Standartenf. (Standartenführer), in April 1945. I never heard my superior Müller announce any such promotion, and therefore I did not acknowledge it. Unlike some other comrades after 1945, I have never made use of it, except at this moment. I never claimed honors that were not mine.

Did you not ask Müller about it?

No, I worked out of idealism, not for material gain. But even had I not seen it that way, it would have violated every rule of etiquette and decency to go to Müller and ask him about it. No, that was not possible. It simply was not done. You had to wait until the promotion was announced, or you would commit a faux pas (Faupas). But I did think about it because the other side alluded to it. With Jesuitism, for example, there is this: it makes its members appear as insignificant as possible when they have certain tasks to perform that go beyond a certain framework. It is also a way of covering things up, so to speak. Perhaps that is what the other side means… No, it has nothing to do with that. Had I held the established post, I would have been promoted.

I could not do more than I was authorized [?] to do as a section head in Office IV, and therefore I could not be promoted any higher. However sorry the other side may be about that—they would prefer to be able to point to a higher rank. In all the tomes on the subject, I have read that they made me a Gruppf. (Gruppenführer). The newspapers in Austria wrote only of General Eichmann. That sounds more like music.

Now that all my superiors had died, disappeared, or been hanged, they had to look for another victim to keep standing this edifice on which thirteen billion in restitution rested. And it is quite clear to me that the Jewish side, at least until now, had no interest in tracking me down. I did not live nearly as concealed as people imagine, because the longer I keep silent, the more smoothly the billions are paid for something for which they ought not to be paid.

When it comes out what a relatively low rank I held, when it comes out how the opposing propaganda fastened onto that rank, because this low-ranking man had to spend years in conferences and discussions with Jewish functionaries and, in contrast to physical destruction, had to concern himself only with emigration or Theresienstadt—then there are two possibilities: either they … they, or they revolt here and the Old Testament hatred I have been warned about breaks out. Despite the warning, I must tell the truth, because until now a historical lie has been peddled and no one has dared to confront it. For the sake of truth alone, I speak into this recording cylinder today…

And what can you say about Kaltenbrunner?

Well, Kaltenbrunner was Heydrich’s successor, although a very weak one. That should by no means detract from Kaltenbrunner as a person. I am bound to Kaltenbrunner by much warmer feelings and a much closer inner connection than to the cold, cool north German Heydrich, although I esteemed the latter very highly, and he esteemed me. Kaltenbrunner and I knew one another as children. Old Kaltenbrunner and my father were business friends. In 1931, when the Gauleiter for Upper Austria gave one of his fighting speeches in the Märzenkeller in Linz—Gauleiter Bolleck —I was there too. Bolleck was an old first lieutenant from the imperial-royal army. He then married in Linz and became an official of the Linz Electricity Company. After the speech, Kaltenbrunner, who was then an SS man working as a lawyer in his father’s office, said, “You belong with us.” And that is how I joined the SS.

[Typed fragment below “SS”: hall.]

We then had to take part in several fights in meeting halls, once in the Volksgarten, where Bolleck was to speak. There were two thousand … Bolsheviks in front of us, who had filled the hall since four in the afternoon. However, only Bollek and twenty-five SS members received police permission to enter the hall, although it had been rented by the NSDAB (National Socialist German Workers’ Party). As an SS man, I was among them too, but I must add that we got

no higher than a total of twenty-five SS men, because Linz was either red or black. So we went in, and Gauleiter Bollek’s speech was short and painless. It went, “My fellow Germans (Volksgenossen)…” and nothing more. Then such an uproar broke out that all I could still hear was Kaltenbrunner shouting, “At the …”—because the Bolsheviks pushed their women forward, whose breasts were just at the height of the podium, and behind them were the drunken, bellowing shipyard workers and so on. With our boots and our shoulder straps reinforced with lead knots, we had nothing else to do but protect our Gauleiter from the onslaughts.

We then had casualties: the later adjutant of the RF (Reichsführer-SS), then Scharf. (Scharführer) Braeuer, had his kidneys smashed and was taken to hospital by the volunteer fire brigade. We then withdrew, after the Volksgarten had been smashed to pieces down to the last glass and the last mirror. That was another encounter with Kaltenbrunner. Göring came to Linz and visited us there; Kaltenbrunner was still marching as an SS man. Later, when I had long been in Berlin, Kaltenbrunner had to lead the struggle in Austria under C, as head of the Austrian SS.

When the RF (Reichsführer-SS) appointed Kaltenbrunner as Heydrich’s successor and he greeted his officer corps, he came up to me and said, “Well, Eichmann, how are things? Everything in order?” As to the business itself, in the period that followed my immediate superior Müller readily got through whatever he wanted from Kaltenbrunner, owing to his forcefulness, although Kaltenbrunner favored only one office chief, Schellenbe. g. A man with whom Müller had no particular connection and about whom he held no particular personal opinion.

Now, your personal opinion of Kaltenbrunner’s relations with Schellenberg…

As I said, the only office chief Kaltenbrunner favored, to my own office chief’s chagrin, was Schellenberg. Once, when Müller was not there for a longer period—I no longer know whether he was on leave or something else was involved—the deputy office chief at that time was Standartenf. (Standartenführer) or Oberf. (Oberführer) Schellenberg. (During the war.) When we section officers needed consultations, which was two or three times a week, we had to come with our bundles of files and first clarify matters of principle in consultation before we could turn to the relevant regulations or decrees. Often you could invoke one law or another, or one decree or another, so there were many questions of principle to settle. I remember coming to Schellenberg one day to request a consultation on a matter, and his decision was such that I

told myself, Müller would not have decided it that way. I let the matter rest and took it all up again only when my chief, Müller, was back. Of course, some matters had to be decided immediately, and I decided those as though I had spoken with Müller, because I knew him and his decisions. After years of working together, you know how your superior decides certain matters. When Müller returned, I told him that I had stopped going to Schellenberg for consultation altogether: I had either put the files aside until his return or, where it was not a matter of principle, decided myself. He then agreed that I had been right.

Which matter was it that Schellenberg decided differently from the way Müller, for example, would have decided it?

Yes, I still remember. It was a matter that did not—so I presented the matters and named the decrees, regulations, or laws that should be applied, on the basis of the work prepared by my lawyers, my Senior Police Inspector, or my Government Administrative Officer. Schellenberg gave me a decision that was completely out of line, as though we were dealing not with opponents but with friends, where one ought simply to turn ten blind eyes, assuming one had that many. But since the decrees and so on existed and had been violated, the police naturally had to intervene.

You could not simply turn ten blind eyes, if you had them. I also heard complaints from other quarters. Müller’s rightful deputy would have been the department head then senior in rank, Criminal Police Director Hu… I do not know why Kaltenbrunner did not appoint him deputy, but on the subsequent occasions Hu… was indeed the deputy. He was a policeman, whereas Schellenberg had been placed over us in Office IV, the enforcement office, namely the Gestapo (Secret State Police), as acting office chief.

He was untroubled by any expert knowledge of police work, with all its decrees and regulations: just a political intelligence fellow (Nachrichtenonkel), who bribed agents with money or valuables to report occurrences abroad to him. Naturally, we could never take him seriously for our specialist work. We were glad later when, undoubtedly as a result of our representations to Müller and his intervention with Kaltenbrunner, the deputy was a specialist and not a professional dud like Schellenberg.

What incident was it, then, that outraged you so?

There were wrong decisions one after another. When I have someone who has broken the law, I cannot look at him through the eyes of an intelligence man who tells me, whatever the fellow has got up to, if he is useful to me,

then I pay him another hundred pounds on top, and I gain something too. That may work in intelligence, but never in enforcement work within the territory of the Reich.

And what you presented to him certainly concerned Jews?

Yes, nothing else. It was a matter that called for punishment, and Schellenberg evidently did not want those regulations or decrees applied. I opposed that; my duty to the state alone required me to…

Do you know whether Schellenberg’s temporary takeover of the office led to critical voices being raised about him?

Raised—no, they became implanted in our civil servants’ hearts. From then on we no longer took Schellenberg seriously; he had been reduced to absurdity. He was no longer respected as a person within the Security Police. He may have been good at gathering intelligence abroad, but he did not have five kreuzers’ worth of understanding of police administration. Whether he did it deliberately or merely out of personal ignorance, I cannot say.

Did Schellenberg or his intelligence apparatus help your section anywhere, whether in tracking someone down or…

No, quite the opposite. Not a week went by without Office VI asking to exempt Jew X, Y, Z… from all the measures the Reich government had decreed against the Jews, because they were to be used as informants. That was believed at first. Later I began to have misgivings. I put them to Müller, and he shared them. My permanent deputy, Günther, was beside himself with anger and constantly quarreled with the people from Office VI, until the responsible section heads there became alert and cautious. It took us a while to get to the bottom of it, because the people in Office VI thought themselves cleverer than the so-called stinking officials of Office IV and thought they could take our tolerance and accommodation for stupidity.

Their demands became more presumptuous, and I thwarted their plans. My inner balance did not get into … at all when I let, for example, Zionist-minded Jews emigrate, because a) I knew those Jews, and b) I knew my goal. I had my political goal, not the goal of protecting myself personally, as certain members of Office VI did by creating a pension for themselves, so to speak, in case the war ended badly. Yet as a constant pessimist I did have an inkling of how the war would end, and I often told my subordinates. That is why I could see through those people much better than if I had been an optimist.

That is also the reason for my dispute with Hu…: if we are not pessimists, we can never see through our people.

You surely also know that Schellenberg made use of very substantial intelligence services for the victory in the West, apart from organizing the …, in which the English intelligence captains West and Stevens were captured.

Yes, in our service Knochen received the Iron Cross First Class for that.

But that operation was largely planned by Schellenberg. Quite apart from that, even then, by way of rumor…

Yes, they were still good at that time. Later they played both sides. I can prove that to you, because, to Müller’s annoyance, to my annoyance, and to Günther’s annoyance, they were constantly trying on such a large scale to buy Jews free. It was demonstrated to them that the Jew in question brought them nothing, except money at most.

But you probably know that Schellenberg had somehow done an excellent job of spying in France, above all on aviation matters, on the French air force. Already in mid-June–July the rumor emerged that he had deployed a great many Jewish informants to prepare the western campaign through intelligence. Do you have any indications of that?

No. I have proof only that the closer the war came to its end, the more Jews Schellenberg’s office demanded from me.

But how could they still demand Jews, when after the beginning of 1943 there were hardly any Jews left?

Yes, there were still enough, and there were still quite a number of Jews living there because of interventions by the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan or other interventions. We had to ferret them out and comb them out through painstaking work. And that Schellebberg, Jews from France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, wherever he could get them—not he, his section heads or department heads…

Can you give me some names, in Holland for example?

Yes, Hoettl was one, though he was only an underling. The same Hoettl who behaved so crookedly in Alt Aussee that the peasants said the first man to be hanged, if they could hang people again, would be Hoettl. Hoettl joined in the same lie that W…hler testified to.

So, in other words, you have no more specific evidence, from your contact with his office, of the attitude toward the Reich that Schellenberg later revealed, roughly from Stalingrad onward?

Yes, only the increase in his demands to be given Jews, so that even the simplest employee in my section saw through it and interpreted it as insurance against possible unpleasantness. A certain security in case the war ended badly.

Can you give any figures for that?

Well, it may have been three hundred, four hundred, or even five hundred. What annoyed us most was that they sent those Jews abroad behind our backs and told us only afterward. Technically, they could do it: they gave the Jews passports, had him taken to the border by an official of Office VI, and then they were out. They did not even need to do it from Reich territory. They could do it from France, from Paris, or from Holland or the other occupied territories, and from there the Jews went into neutral countries.

I always said, trust everyone in Office IV, but watch out for the people in Office VI. Too many opportunists and adventurers had increasingly gathered around the section heads in Office VI, some of whom really were harmless. They outmaneuvered the actual section head, who in his way was genuinely upright and a proper member of the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office). He simply did not know it, because the other man was cleverer. They let themselves be outmaneuvered, and that is what I hold against them.

Apart from Hoettl, do you know no one by name?

No, not at the moment, but others will certainly come back to me.

Was Göring in any position of authority over Heydrich? And in what areas?

As the original head of the Gestapo (Secret State Police), Göring was not only Heydrich’s superior but Himmler’s as well. Heydrich also accepted Göring as his superior, because as Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan he could put his oar into every branch. I wrote Göring a good dozen letters for Heydrich: Heydrich gave me the key points and afterward signed the letter. He always chose the salutation “Mr Reichsmarschall,” never “My dear so-and-so,” as he otherwise so liked to do—for example, “My dear Ley.” To Goebbels he wrote “Mr Reich Minister.” That vain Heydrich never compromised his dignity in any way. He always thought very carefully about how best to approach someone. He was an ice-cold egoist, and no one was more meticulous about style. Beside him, Kaltenbrunner was a peasant who signed whatever was put in front of him. Not Heydrich: he sometimes corrected the text too.

And to Keitel he wrote, “My dear Keitel.” Also, “My dear Funk.” When he wrote “My dear,” that meant an agreement of purpose. When he was distant from someone, he wrote in a distant way too, to Goebbels as well. Perhaps their reserve came from both being ice-cold people, and nobody—neither let the other come closer than three paces. But Heydrich was like that with everyone, only not quite so with the people he worked with every day, and I think Goebbels was exactly the same. But people have rather lost sight of all that today…

[Belgrade ghetto?]

If you ask me today, I can't tell you at all how many ghettos there even were. What does ghetto mean anyway? We took the name over from the Jews. We crowded them together here into a space that may have looked something like a ghetto, to isolate them, to put a stop to partisan and gang activity, and, because we were always short of personnel, to keep masses under control with very few personnel. If we did not do it, then those governments we were acting in agreement with at that time did, for instance the Hungarian, Croatian and Slovak governments, and so on.

Conditions in the individual ghettos may have been worse in some and better in others. It depends, first, on the intelligence of the so-called Jewish Council of Elders or the Jewish ghetto leadership, and, second, on the intelligence and ability of the person in charge of guarding it. That is also why supplies were better in some and worse in others. Where they were worse, local friction may have arisen. Warsaw is an exception in itself, because the Warsaw ghetto leadership was in the closest contact with the first Polish underground leadership, led by General Borr.

A colleague of mine from the section worked on him and then brought him to Berlin, where he declared himself ready to work with the Germans. Here the Jewish Council of Elders of the Warsaw ghetto let itself be led astray. It believed the victory fanfares of the Polish underground army, struck too early and had to pay for it. It was war. Had the Jewish Council of Elders in Warsaw kept its nerve and waited, and struck at a strategically better time, it would have brought greater glory to the militant leadership of the ghetto than it did.

Have you the then head of the Jewish Council of Elders, who was the president of the Polish Reichsbank, a highly intelligent man …

[Typed as notes in the transcript: 1942. Rich Jews, Risdka, college, corpses onto the street, collected by the street sweeper, within 24 hours the clothes sold on the black market, …]

For me this is a kind of confirmation [?]. Jewry is split into dozens of views, intellectually and in party-political terms, like every other people, and from that recognition too I concluded early on that only a political solution can bring about a final solution of the Jewish question, nothing else. These are very small examples, but we have an abundance of examples. How could it be otherwise? It would be unnatural. It is a people like any other. It has only crystallized through the several thousand years of its existence into a crystal that unhappily weighs on and affects the respective host people.

The Jew himself could live in some distant countries, highly respected by us, only as far away from us as possible, not so near. That is the bad thing: that they once again annexed by force that very so-called homeland which they had to leave two thousand years ago because they rebelled against Roman authority. That runs contrary to history, because if I give up a country for two thousand years, then that country is given up …. That is quite clear. Then these gentlemen must look for other countries.

We did offer them Madagascar or similar territories.

But they will always come into conflict with the Arab peoples, because two thousand years cannot simply be brushed aside. In that time other peoples became settled and rooted in the soil, and whoever can look back over such a long period is the true owner.

Do you remember whether any suggestions went out from your office at a time when German interference in Romania was still limited? Either through the Foreign Office or directly, seeking somehow to bring about the establishment of a ghetto, for instance in Bucharest, or …?

In Bucharest I had Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Richter stationed there. He was the counterpart of Wi.. in Pressburg, Dannecker in Paris, and Burger in Athens. What my representatives achieved there with the local governments, for instance the Romanian government, I no longer know today. In any case, it is certain that every one of the officers subordinate to me at that time was given the most precise directives to take with him. They went out as advisers on Jewish questions to the respective legation or German embassy, or, as in Paris, as adviser on Jewish questions to the Commander of the SIPO (Security Police) and SD (Security Service).

They had to push through exactly what the RF (Reichsführer-SS) prescribed in general terms, the Chief of the SIPO (Security Police) and SD (Security Service) in particular, and what I, as the responsible section officer, worked out in detail. One man had difficulties with a government, that is, through the envoy; that is, the envoy had difficulties with the government experts concerned. With another it went smoothly and without any fuss. In principle, one thing was achieved everywhere: a concentration was carried out everywhere.

In many cases the governments initially resisted releasing the Jews for evacuation as well, because the laws of the country stood in the way and new laws first had to be forced through. That too was a task of the adviser on Jewish questions concerned: to present such a matter through his local superiors until this goal was finally achieved, namely the final release of the transports in accordance with the order which he had from me, and I from the Chief of the SIPO (Security Police), and he from the RF (Reichsführer-SS). That is the straight line.

The difficulties were very great. How else could it have been that only a fraction of the Jews in those countries where the so-called clearing of Jews had been ordered could actually have been evacuated to Reich territory? That is probably why the RF (Reichsführer-SS) finally said to himself: before we let a resistance movement in Hungary be strengthened as well by the half million Jews living there, who would certainly have had no small influence, let us send the master down; he is to do it himself. They sent me down, and the outcome was that Dr. Kastner said it was a misfortune for Hungarian Jewry that they had sent me of all people to Hungary, who had known how, thanks to my organizational ability and my ability to push things through, to transport away half a million in so short a time despite the difficult transport situation.

A question in between: do you know whether Schellenberg requested any Jews from your office in 1940 for the Syria and Iraq operation …?

No, never requested.

Now, did these representatives you had in the various countries, who were subordinate to the ambassador, have any direct connection that enabled them to overcome the possible resistance of an amba-

… to overcome an ambassador's resistance to an energetic approach to solving the Jewish question. In other words, could a representative of your office go over the ambassador's head? It is striking that all the actions launched in friendly foreign countries led to no success, so that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) said … now we want to send the master down so that it will be ruled out from the outset … That does suggest that the ambassadors themselves did not exactly give enthusiastic support. Did your men have any way of overcoming this resistance from the ambassador, or of exerting an influence that could be set against the ambassador's?

Yes. I gathered these men of mine around me at relatively short intervals. Richter in Bucharest received a teleprinter message telling him to report to me. With Richter that happened about every … months, twice, once. With Wi, once every two months. I went to Paris to see Dannecker myself, or I ordered him to come to me. In short, I ordered these men, who were subordinate to me and for whose practical effectiveness I was responsible, to report at whatever intervals seemed appropriate to me.

If I recognized difficulties whose cause lay in foreign policy, that is, in any resistance on the part of the German embassy or legation, conscious or unconscious, intended or not intended, then by questioning my subordinate representative I made a memorandum of the matter. I asked for the legation councillor (Legislationsrat) at the Foreign Office, von [? Thadden], and discussed the matter with von Detten. If it was a minor matter, von Thadden and I settled it in one form or another, so that a simple note from the Foreign Office in Berlin instructed envoy XY to do this or that and report its completion to the Foreign Office by …. Once that was done, the matter was filed away.

But if these were matters of principle, for example if the country concerned lacked the legal basis for giving a security authority an appropriate order for concentration and for handover to German authorities, then of course a quite different route had to be taken. That route was for Leg. Rat (legation councillor) von Thadden to send an appropriate report to his department head, through him to his group head, and through him to his state secretary, and for the state secretary, undoubtedly after consulting his minister, either to reject the matter or to accept it.

If there was a danger of rejection by the minister, then through my constant contact with the Foreign Office I had already grasped the situation very early. On my own initiative, through Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller, I had in some cases prepared the appropriate letters for the Chief of the SIPO (Security Police) and SD (Security Service) and, when the difficulties were very great, right up to the RF (Reichsführer-SS).

These letters were addressed, in this case, to Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, informing him in advance of the matter which his own officials would have put before him within a few days anyway. That left him no choice but to decide as the RF (Reichsführer-SS) wished, because in these cases the RF (Reichsführer-SS) relied on and invoked Führer orders, which even a von Ribbentrop could not evade. That is how I tried to torpedo this business, and so the Jews are indeed right, truthfully: they set a Jesuit on it who was tirel- …

… who was tireless, who always brought his fire to bear wherever he sensed even a little resistance … I was no ordinary order-taker, or I would have been a fool. I contributed my own thinking. I had been an idealist.

And if such a fundamental matter concerned legislation, those were probably the most difficult cases, it was then presented in this way. It was now the Foreign Office's task to exert the appropriate pressure. They could exert pressure, not politically but economically, and then they had to throw something into the scales to push through a Führer order. As a rule everything was pushed through. But then, in the individual countries, as in Romania for instance, these people were filled with a political softness, or perhaps also bound by a double hardening (Doppelhaertung), so that they put forward a thousand bureaucratic difficulties which they could actually have settled with a stroke of the pen.

The adviser's art and skill lay in keeping the envoy so hard at it that the envoy bombarded the appropriate protocol officials to get access to the foreign minister and put it to him as forcefully as possible. Killingen and Ludin were really very decent people for our ideas, there is no doubt about it: Ludin was forceful, more robust, more brutal. Killinger was the elegant one, and my man Richter very often had cause to complain about him, although Richter enjoyed Killinger's highest esteem. It is also generally apparent that the advisers on Jewish questions (Judenkrater) enjoyed the highest esteem in all countries, because they were really the extended arm of the RF (Reichsführer-SS). One word from the RF (Reichsführer-SS) and they might have been removed from their posts.

So you have the impression that the ambassadors and envoys all somehow thought as you did, because you were regarded as the dangerous people, behind whom …?

Yes, of course.

Do you know of any cases where these representatives of yours had a warm human relationship with the respective ambassador?

A human relationship, I hardly think so, but a very shrewd relationship, serving the needs of the moment and personally useful, yes. Some of my advisers on Jewish questions had not recognized that, but I recognized it very well, and Müller recognized it just as I did. But we left our worthy captains, whom we had there, since none was above the rank of Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer), we left them in that belief, because they were to carry out their mission. If there were difficulties of a fundamental kind, then I was sent there anyway. But I never went to Bucharest, and I do not know why.

Had Si… been down there instead of Antonescu, not a single Jew would have come to Germany. He would have refused to send a Jew to Germany. He would probably have treated them down there differently from the way they were treated by generous Germany. Quite differently, much faster.

In which countries was cooperation between your representatives and the local officials smooth and positive?

It was completely smooth in Slovakia, where Wi.. was, completely smooth. I myself spoke once with Tisso, the head of state, the Catholic clergyman. It was more of a courtesy visit that I paid to Tisso, after I had visited Macho …

… had visited Macho … I then had to pay this visit to Tiso at Mach's urging. Tiso was an antisemite. He was not a politician where the Jewish question was concerned; he simply had an aversion.

Unlike me. I am not an antisemite. I am opposed on political grounds, because they rob us of our breath of life.

It had also gone smoothly in Romania. That they released some tens of thousands to us for transport and then made difficulties again over further tens of thousands, that I call delaying resistance and hedging their bets, because one could never know what might come. It was also completely smooth in Athens. It was the opposite of smooth in Copenhagen. I can conclude by saying that it was actually smooth everywhere. In France it went splendidly and without any difficulty. So it was relatively smooth everywhere. One had to work everywhere, that is quite clear. The only difficulty was really Copenhagen.

You know of no concrete cases where the German envoy or ambassador directly or indirectly sabotaged your policy, the registration of the Jews?

No.

Have you any, for example, from Abetz …?

No, in no way at all. He did what Oberg demanded of him, and Oberg was Knochen's superior, and Knochen was my old comrade, with whom I grew up in the SD (Security Service).

But Knochen did not belong to IV B 4?

No, Knochen is really a Schellenberg man, but I personally had a very close connection with Knochen, and that helped overcome a great deal …

Regarding your representatives abroad, you know that already during the war and then after the war a great deal was said and written to the effect that a systematic robbery of valuables and so on belonging to the Jewish nationals concerned was said to have been carried out by the offices of your representatives, with or without the cooperation of other police offices or diplomatic offices. Did it ever happen during your term of office that representatives of your office had to be recalled because of any abuses?

No, not a single time. They had no opportunity at all. In the individual capitals, or in the cities where the respective governments sat, with which we were on neutral, friendly terms or lived as comrades in the war, I had a representative for Jewish questions. The man had three or four orderlies or one or two typists, at the very most. He had no more personnel than that.

Two. He had no executive powers. He could not issue any orders to his own police where an occupied country was concerned, and still less could he give any orders to the police of the friendly or pacified nation, as in France, for example … He had no authority at all to carry out house searches or the like; that falls under executive authority. So enriching himself in that way is entirely ruled out. What would remain is the possibility that one of my former captains had gone somewhere and simply appropriated something of monetary value, or had negotiated with some Jew to fleece him in a businesslike way and exempt him from certain measures if he were to transfer this payment to him …

I am still very glad and happy today that I sent such people from my department abroad, men for whom I would still vouch absolutely, every one of them. In my entire term of office I never heard even the slightest complaint, not once. And you can be sure, and this may be the best proof, that these men of mine stood so much in the public limelight that every wrong move they made was registered somehow and would sooner or later have become known through some channel either to me or to one of my 30 colleagues in Office IV. Whether through the resistance movement or through the other branches of the state police. Ex…, there was never even the slightest thing.

They were all, across the board, exceedingly modest, decent, unassuming people. Ideologically they were very orderly and correct minds. I believe that, apart from Wi, they were all married.

Here is an example. A Jew of German nationality has somehow managed to smuggle himself out of Germany and arrives in France. Did your representative Dannecker, for example, then have police power over him? Could he arrest him, or did he have to obtain the help of the Higher Police Leader or of a police office in the occupied territory?

Well, of course I do not know the exact dividing line between the commander of the Security Police and the Security Service and the French security authorities. But as far as I know from practice, every ex… measure by the commander of the Security Police and the Security Service required consultation and agreement on the part of the French security authorities. That is why the French security authority also maintained its liaison officer with the commander of the Security Police and the Security Service.

If I had been commander of the Security Police and the Security Service in Paris, and a Jew had escaped, a run-of-the-mill Jew is of no interest, of course, so a Jew of importance to the Reich, and had come to France, then as commander I would have had him arrested preventively by my own personnel. But I would have had no authority whatsoever over this person and would have had to comply with French law. In that case I would have had to inform the competent police prefect in Paris at once and ask him, after setting out this and that, and this and that, about the man for the record, to release him for lack of interest, so that he could be transported back to the Reich. That is how I would have done it.

But was it within the powers of your representative Dannecker to arrest such an escaped Jew of German nationality?

No. None of my people had the slightest ex… powers. That is precisely why they were called only advisers on the Jewish question, and an adviser has no ex… powers at all. Ex… authority belongs only to the man commissioned to exercise it. But if he is called an adviser, he has none. None of the advisers I sent abroad had ex… scope. Had he been with me in my department inside the Reich, he would of course have had full ex… powers. But once he was seconded as an adviser, the ex… mantle fell away.

So, by and large, in the occupied territories as in friendly foreign territories, cooperation with the diplomatic missions based there and so on

…went off without friction. But did you have missions to carry out in neutral foreign countries, even if only informational missions?

In neutral foreign countries, no. My area was the countries directly involved in the fighting.

And you also could not, for any operations, your own or enemy operations, would it not have been important for some cooperation, purely in exchanging information, to exist between Schellenberg and your office?

No, there was none.

For instance, was Schellenberg not obliged to inform your office that an operation was starting in Portugal, for example, intended to pick up Jews from the occupied territories and somehow ship them to Palestine (Palast), or induce them to emigrate to North America? None of that ever came to your ears?

No. What use could that have been to Office VII?

Could Office … not have been of use to you?

No, not to us. Every member of the office wore blinkers, and these leave a certain angle of vision. That angle is called my task, and this task-angle is then subdivided into sections. Even the responsibilities of the section next to mine did not interest me; I was not responsible for them. But if I happened to be consulted on some marginal aspect, the section head concerned, before the matter went to the office chief for signature, wrote down the countersignature of any other section head involved, that is, noted it: IV B 4, for example.

Then, if I agreed, I countersigned. If I did not agree, it had to go back to the section, and they had to revise it accordingly so that both interests were safeguarded. Of course there were many points that concerned both Office VI and Office IV. In that case, when submitting something to XY, the section head in Office IV also had to take Office VI’s interests into account, through the countersignature of the responsible section head. But as regards your question, nothing of the kind occurred.

We became mistrustful because of Office VI’s secretiveness and withdrew like a snail into its shell, contrary to our inherited tradition of openness between officials within an institution. And all that perhaps took us so far that we attributed negative intentions to them, although they wanted to do something positive but could not carry it out because they had not involved the other branches, and the other branches opposed them from the outset. Office IV and Office VI could have worked together much better than they did, thanks to Schellenberg.

Can you remember your office passing important information to Office VI?

I handed the information material over to Office VI in the form of a thinking body, namely the adviser. He was abroad, after all, and worked with him there. For it was not only the adviser on Jewish questions attached to the commander of the Security Police or to the German envoy who was there. The corresponding section head of Office VI was also there, and it was the task of these men within this office, in Athens, Bucharest (Buakrest), and so on, to work together. They had the file lying in front of them.

For among ourselves we made no secret of secret Reich matters when it came to combating opponents.

Do you perhaps remember any incidents where, from your office, you came upon connections of an international character, or connections leading through the occupied territories abroad, from Office VI?

No, that was Office VII’s task, not mine. My task was Ex…, not research. Just as Ohlendorf had to conduct research at home, so Six had to conduct research at home and abroad concerning ideological opponents. Office VII’s task was to communicate any cross-connections to Office VI as well as to Office IV.

But I mean, if, by apprehending a Jew named Goldenstein, you came upon the existence of an organization headquartered in Lisbon…?

Individual cases, yes. They were dealt with individually in the files, but not matters of principle.

In this connection, did you uncover any Jewish connections concerning the 20th of July?

No.

Which Jews were exempted from these special treatments (Sonderbehandlungen), and to what degree were they exempted? Which Jews were exempted from all the regulations altogether?

All the privileged Jews in mixed marriages, holders of decorations for bravery from the First World War, and all those wounded in the First World War who could prove it. There were Jews who had rendered service to the national cause. In very few cases there were also particular leading Jews in the economy who had, in any event, served the Reich.

What became known in your office, for example, about this strange situation: Dr. Hirschfeld remained in his post in Holland throughout the war as the great economist, and was even awarded the German Eagle in 193…?

I know nothing about these individual cases.

Do you know any other names besides Milch, not military men but civilians, who were exempted in some way for outstanding achievement?

All these people were gathered together in Theresienstadt in the end, because they had to be protected against any seizure. This gathering began soon after Theresienstadt was established. The RF (Reichsführer-SS) ordered a ghetto for prominent people. I can no longer give names today.

So there were no Jews who had distinguished themselves in the First World War, for example, or had been wounded, who were not rounded up and were allowed to remain in their homes? That did not happen? Until the end of the war?

Yes, that happened too. There were even Jews exempted from wearing the star.

Do you have any names?

No, these were collective categories. There were many of them, and they came under the police ordinance. A particular police ordinance stated which Jews were to be exempted from all

measures. There are thousands. Of course there were some party districts (Gaue) where the Gauleiter were particularly radical. They ordered the removal, and those people then came to Theresienstadt only at the very end, but only if the German-blooded partner had died. If the German-blooded partner was still alive, he had to remain in his apartment, because no German-blooded partner was sent to Theresienstadt. If the German-blooded partner had not died, the Jew was not regarded as a Jew but as a privileged partner in a mixed marriage.

Do you remember the contents of the police ordinance in which these measures were specified?

No, I do not know the number. I have already told you the exemption provisions. Theresienstadt was not a concentration camp. It was in no way under any German bayonet; rather, from Grand Rabbi Baeck to Murmelstein, Theresienstadt was exclusively under Jewish leadership. We did not interfere in it at all. We sealed it off through the Czech gendarmerie, but we could not seal it off completely, because the highway from Berlin to Prague ran right through Theresienstadt. Every week or every fourteen days we delivered truck convoys of food to them. We had a fight with the Gauleiter of Saxony, Mutschmann, and with the other local party-group leaders because, at times, the Jews were better off for food than the German population.

Did the Jews in Theresienstadt have no war work to perform?

Of course. They also worked for the armaments industry, and the armaments firms paid them for it. It even happened that Office VI misused the Jews privileged by the police ordinance: for every individual informant (V-Mann) they needed, they preferred to look among Jewish circles.

Do you know where Schellenberg deployed these Jewish informants?

The actual number of Jewish informants in service?

The number is very high. There may have been several hundred or even several thousand, only German Jews. They were also in the occupied territory, everywhere, they were smuggled out, most of them to Lisbon, because I had to certify that I had no objection so that they could then obtain a passport to Lisbon.

Do you believe they actually provided intelligence for Schellenberg?

By no means.

Do you not think it was possible that important espionage work abroad, or in neutral foreign countries, was carried out by these Jews? Do you know of suicides among a significant number of Jews who were to be transported?

I know of none beyond a normal number, which is minimal among Jews in particular; among Germans it would certainly be higher. But only suicides before the general roundup; their number was very small.

Höss testified, among other things, that the instructions for mass exterminations in Auschwitz

had for the most part been signed by you?

By me?

Yes.

Not a single letter. I cannot order another main office to do anything. That main office is subordinate to a different office chief, and I in turn am subordinate to another main-office chief, and both main-office chiefs are subordinate to the RF (Reichsführer-SS). I am a desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office. I cannot give orders or commands to a desk officer who belongs to another main office. At most, if I had done such a thing, it would have had to come down through the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, through Pohl, to Höss.

Such a thing is unthinkable, because it is administratively impossible. At most, the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service could have told the Chief of the VWHA (Administrative and Economic Main Office), ‘The RF (Reichsführer-SS) recently told me that these or those Jews are to be killed.’ The Chief of the VWHA would then have asked the RF (Reichsführer-SS) whether that was correct, and then he would have issued the instruction. How could I, as a section head in Office IV, have given an order to a section head in the SS VWHA?

So there is a certain intention behind this, to make you liable for the mass exterminations.

That is precisely what outrages me. It is a parallel to what they dictated to Wi for him to write down; there were three phases, and for all three it was the …

Could you explain more precisely how Huertel came to know your false name and so on?

Yes. After several camps I was taken to the large collection camp at Weiden in the Upper Palatinate. My Ostf. (Obersturmführer) Jaenisch was brought in with me. After some time there, the North Americans called for the so-called labor companies, and I volunteered for one. I went off as a platoon leader, having passed myself off as an Untstf. (Untersturmführer), and came to Camp Oberlagstetten in Franconia. My Ostf. (Obersturmführer) Jaenisch went with his unit to a labor camp at Beckendorf on the Danube. I entered this camp at Oberlagstetten as Lieutenant Eckmann around August 1945 and remained there until early January 1946.

In the meantime the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) interrogated us in Ansbach, where we were taken. When I could roughly work out at what time the administrative process, if any suspicion about me had arisen at all, might return to Ansbach or Oberlagstetten (as corrected) for further handling, I decided to discharge myself. Since there were, I believe, nine or eleven officers in this camp, I naturally could not go off on my own. I therefore asked the camp leader, Sturmbf. (Sturmbannführer) Opperbeck of the VuWHA (Administrative and Economic Main Office), for an officers’ conference.

Did he know you?

I should add that I did not reveal my identity to Opperbeck throughout those months, until around Christmas 1945. Around that time, when I began preparing my escape, I told Ostf. (Obersturmführer) Opperbeck my name, rank, and position. He said to me, ‘My dear comrade Eckmann, I have known that for a long time. Your Untstf. (Untersturmführer) Jaenisch told me in the strictest confidence. But since you had said nothing to me about it, I kept the matter locked in my heart.’

I explained to him why I needed to get away and asked him to convene the meeting so that I could obtain the permission of my fellow officers in this camp, such of them as Opperbeck considered necessary. There was an … code of honor that an officer could get away only when all his fellow officers agreed to such a departure, since there was reason to fear that the guards might have resorted to reprisals, or might do so. The officers’ conference took place. Without revealing my identity to the individual comrades, I explained to them why I needed to get away.

In what form did you describe it?

That I was being persecuted because I had been politically active. At that time not much was asked. Opperbeck, as camp leader, simply sought consent; it was just a formality. I could never imagine that in any SS camp, if one of the SS leaders saw a need to get away, such a request would have been refused. I then told both Stbf. (Sturmbannführer) Opperbeck and an Oberstf. (Obersturmführer) who was in his camp. I can freely give his name: it was Ostf. (Obersturmführer) Freiersleben, with whom I became personally quite close and friendly. I told both of them that

…who was staying in Egypt at the time, to reach. I believe I have described how I got away. I can skip all that and pick up in either the summer of 1946 or the summer of 1947. At that time I was in the wooded heathland of the district of Zelle, and there I was able to find a whole stack of old newspapers whose articles dealt, among other things, with me. The articles ran under headings such as ‘Mass murderer Eichmann,’ ‘Where is the mass murderer hiding?’ ‘Where is Eckmann hiding?’ and the like. That made me suspicious, and I said to myself…

That made me suspicious when I read the name Eckmann. I read there, word for word, that the notorious mass murderer Eichmann, who had last stayed under the name Eckmann, Lieutenant Eckmann, at Camp Oberlagstetten, had escaped from the camp. Somehow the date matched exactly too. And he was trying, they wrote it word for word, to make his way by hidden paths known to him to Gross…. Then I said to myself that it had evidently been high time for me to get away. I wondered where the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) could have got the name Eckmann. I see two possibilities. First, that my Ostf.

(Obersturmführer) Jaenisch, who absolutely could not be persuaded to change his rank or his name, for at that time it was prudent to play oneself down, not up, let alone remain what one was, that this Ostbf. (Obersturmbannführer) Jaenisch was, in human terms, a man of little resilience, however good and useful he was at administrative work, and that this Ostf. (Obersturmführer) Jaenisch had been questioned and heard accordingly at Camp Deggendorf, or wherever else he may have ended up. Especially since, I must say it today, he had the audacity to give SD (Security Service) as his unit.

The second possibility, which seems very unlikely to me, is that after my escape the CIC interrogated Ostbf. (Obersturmbannführer) Opperbeck, and Opperbeck may have said to himself: ‘The man has long since disappeared far away, beyond the seven mountains. I can tell the truth now. What use is all this talk if the CIC proves to me in a few weeks the opposite of what I now tell them in answer to their questions? I, and above all the camp I lead, would only suffer unpleasant consequences.’ I think it very likely that it was through Stf.

Jaenisch, whom, in his Lower Saxon thick-headedness, I could not persuade in any way to change his name or rank, and who, as I have just described, even entered SD (Security Service) as his service assignment on the questionnaires. That is how the CIC came to know quite clearly about me, and how it also knew the name Eckmann. But because I had regarded something like this as possible, I took precautions early: on leaving Camp Oberlagstetten, I immediately took up the documents I had prepared for myself as Otto Henninger. From 1946 to 1950 I was then able to live in the Lüneburg Heath as Otto Henninger without any difficulty. I believe the matter has been dealt with exhaustively.

I am coming back to this matter now. That is my account of it. You see, just as I became aware of it through a newspaper article, while I was, so to speak, living underground and dependent on what I could …, Dr. Hoettl, who was living freely and had daily access to all the outpourings of the daily press and literature, could naturally form a picture of me and of what happened much earlier than I could, since I always received these things late.

So it is quite possible that Hoettl, you told me he wrote it in 1952, used these reports in the German press in 1952, during a possible revision of his book or in an additional note, and connected them with the statements he had already treated exhaustively in the first edition of his book. Is that clear to you, Comrade S…? That is why I have described this background at greater length, so that you understand how this connection could have been made.

Did you know Rainer?

Rainer was… Was he not a higher-ranking SS officer? No, the one who was apparently picked up together with … south of Klagenfurt at the beginning of July 1945, and who later still in…

Who was Rainer? Was Rainer not a Gauleiter? A Gauleiter, I believe… You see, Rainer was a Gauleiter. Where was he Gauleiter? He cannot have been Gauleiter of Carinthia, of Styria, not of Tyrol, not of Upper Austria, not of Lower Austria… Yes, no, I would not rule out Lower Austria. Rainer must have been an Austrian Gauleiter, if I remember correctly… That he was, but he must somehow have traveled together with … and been picked up, or received an assignment, namely… I cannot think of it at the moment either. Tell me, what do you have to say about the possibility that Ogf. (Obergruppenführer) Müller is now in Russian service?

Well, you see, Comrade S…

Especially since, if I may interrupt you, Heydrich apparently noticed Müller because of his in-depth study of the Russian police system?

Well, you see, Comrade S… I could say that Bolshevik communism and National Socialism are in many respects, as we already put it back then, first cousins. I do not know whether you know that expression. We did indeed have various things in common. But I would not regard that as dominant in my former superior’s case. Rather, Müller was a criminal investigator and only a criminal investigator, more a policeman, and only then did everything else come in, however much he, in any event I never gained a different impression of him, however much he was, in my eyes at least, an idealistic National Socialist and could be addressed as such.

I once said to Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller, when questions of promotion or salary had become pressing on my side: ‘Grf. (Gruppenführer), look, I do not work here for the wages. I work for ideals, from idealistic motives. Nor do I have any, I said it word for word, any ambitious aspirations. I do not wish to be ambitious at all. I wish to fulfill my task and help us accomplish…’

…what we all wanted to accomplish…. If I may put it that way, I can still see it before me today: ‘smiled at,’ I cannot say; ‘looked at.’ And I had an inner connection, an inner contact with this man. I could speak with Müller as I could not with every close, so-called closest confidant, an equal in rank, a comrade known for many years. When you ask what I think about whether Müller might have gone over into Russian service, I must answer that, if the Eastern side had assigned my former chief an international criminal-police field of duties, I would stake both my hands on the belief that Müller could have accepted such an offer. It accords entirely with this man’s behavior, for he was an expert.

You must understand that there were only two Reich Criminal Directors, only two, who had worked their way up from the bottom, and in my eyes there was no … and more thorough criminal investigator than he and Nebe. When, moreover, after the events of recent times, I could learn through my friends that, for example, in the Soviet zone, all sorts of SD (Security Service) members whom I had long believed dead had attained relatively high specialist posts, whether from the SD or from other branches of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), then I must tell you that I cannot dismiss such a question out of hand. Does that explanation help you? Had you expected something similar, or…?

Can you tell me: on 1 August 1944, about ninety thousand Jews from Hungary were expected for the various German operations. The next day, 2 August 1944, you are said to have been summoned by Himmler. The brickworks in B…, does that mean anything to you?, is also said to have started operating again as a reception site, a collection point for Jews from Budapest. On 21 August the Diplomatic Corps, through the nuncio, lodged a protest with H…. On the 25th it was decided that the Ministry of the Interior would again take control of the Jews in labor camps. On the 26th your task force (Einsatzgruppe) would have…

I was not a task force (Einsatzgruppe). I was a special detachment (Sonderkommando). They called it Eichmann.

…would the task force have left Hungary? And you yourself are said to have parted from them on the 23rd in a state of deepest depression, and then probably to have gone to Romania? On the 29th, the head of government, Steue, was dismissed, and General L… became head of government… What can you say about these questions?

As I have already said, the entire library published from the ill-fated days of 1945 to today is a miscellany of fiction and truth. When you ask whether people were again being received at a brickworks, and so on, I must tell you that in Hungary it was not German police offices that were in charge. Rather, the Hungarian executive authorities, consisting chiefly of the Hungarian gendarmerie, Arrow Cross formations, and so on, solved the Jewish questions themselves. What they carried out locally, in Hungary, was, first, outside my knowledge, although I was informed of one event or another, informed after the fact…

…not heard through … offices. The Hungarian government was not obliged to tell the Higher SS and Police Leader, or even me, everything it carried out or intended to carry out in the way of internal political measures. Which camps these Arrow Cross organizations, which camps the Hungarian police in the individual counties, which camps the Hungarian gendarmerie in the individual counties established, had occupied, or dissolved, I do not know. It was none of my concern. What mattered to me was that Hungary should be cleansed of those elements whose continued presence, according to the Reichsleiter above me, could make it a partisan area of the first order.

And what mattered to me was that the Hungarian government should hand this group of people over to me. That was my order. With the few people I had, I could never have carried out even a single roundup operation. No, in my case it was an office procedure, a handover and takeover. This office procedure nevertheless had to be extended in that, first, I had the Reich Ministry of Transport send rolling stock into Hungary to receive this group of people for transport, and second, I assigned, I believe, thirty Order Police men to each train as guards and had the trains depart directly for the reception station designated in my orders.

What local arrangements and measures Hungarian internal circles, whether police, gendarmerie, or Arrow Cross, carried out to achieve this goal, namely filling the empty trains sent into Hungary by the Reich Ministry of Transport, was not supposed to concern me. It did not interest me, and I was not involved in it in any way. It was, after all, a sovereign Hungarian government, even though it had made certain agreements with the German Reich government; in any event, those agreements lay outside my field of work.

When you ask me, and tell me, that at the time you give I had, so to speak, liquidated my special detachment (Sonderkommanda), that is not correct either. I cannot remember the time. As I told you, it must have been around late summer or early autumn, when, for lack of any further deportable mass from Hungary, I was almost unemployed. I received orders to remove 10,000 or 12,000 ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in the Neuarat area, on the Romanian border, from the Russians’ reach and deport them into the Reich, whether they wanted to go or not. I believe I have already told you about this, and I do not know whether I should repeat it all. That, then, is my so-called withdrawal to Romania, as you call it.

I did not enter Romania itself. I was only at the Romanian border, because Neuarat is right on the border between Romania and Hungary. There I carried out the assignment: I set their removal in motion to secure the ethnic Germans, who were crying bloody murder at the time and later probably dedicated a candle of thanks to the Virgin Mary in their churches because I stood firm and took them out of the area. Today some of them probably receive Reich support, pensions such as all these people receive, regardless of whether they can prove ownership of property or cannot prove ownership, insofar as they are unfit for work, receive their support, which, with regard to the equalization of burdens and so on, …

from circles that were affected. Years later I once met a small group of those people, how grateful they were to the man who had forcibly taken them away at the time. I did not reveal my identity. I noted with inner joy and satisfaction that the work for which I had been sent to the Hungarian-Romanian border had not been fruitless. This work had already been crowned with success at the time in that, on that occasion, admittedly contrary to orders, but nevertheless, I was able to take a small military hospital out of the Russians’ reach, for the Russians soon occupied that area again.

May I ask you to answer the following questions as briefly and quickly as possible?

On 2 November 1944, did Soviet troops enter Budapest?

Yes, perhaps. Around that time, anyway.

Are you, can you picture that? On 8 November, six days later, did a complete expulsion of the Budapest Jews take place under your orders, with a march to Strasshof in Lower Austria, 180 kilometers away? On foot? Do you remember that march?

I will answer at once. Please continue asking.

This chapter is intended, and this is what makes it important, to provide clear evidence of the now open struggle between Himmler, Schellenberg, and Becher on the one side, and Kaltenbrunner, Müller, and Eichmann on the other. This is in connection with an attempt Becher made on those very days in Zurich, Switzerland, to enter into discussions with certain authorities of the American WRB [War Refugee Board] (War Refugee Board), specifically a pledge from … of the American foreign minister concerning payment of twenty million Swiss francs. So that we place things correctly in time, does that now fit with this …?

I have the following to say about it. First, I refer to what I said at the beginning: everyone crowds to the feeding trough and takes what now seems opportune to him. Second, what you have just told me is ridiculous, stupid drivel, fibbing by people who wanted to make themselves interesting for opportunistic reasons, or even to wring personal advantages out of the time after 1945 and claim them for themselves. A kernel of truth has been taken as a pretext for claiming as much exculpatory material as possible and sharing it out among what I see, with increasing horror, as an infinitely large circle of people.

During my deportation work, that is, the departures I carried out of Jews from Hungary handed over to me by the Hungarian executive authorities, the Allied air force bombed the station at Gyer, a railway junction, along with many, many other stations on the Budapest-Vienna line. For weeks no transport at all was possible on this line. To show the Allies a clenched fist this time, so to speak, and to tell them, ‘It is no use, even if you smash and bomb my routes to the Reich, we will march anyway,’ I had 10,000 Jews brought to Budapest from some eastern counties and, from there, I had them, since rail—

[Handwritten addition at the foot of the sheet: …]

transport could no longer be carried out by me from there, march on foot from Budapest to the Lower Austrian border. For that I had the order of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service. It is clear that I could never have issued such an order myself. I made the proposal, and I admit that. I had to admit that, because otherwise they would have smashed all my railway stations, and I was responsible to the RF (Reichsführer-SS) for ensuring that, as far as Jewish contingents were concerned, Hungary did not become a large partisan area. Evidently the RF (Reichsführer-SS) had learned from the terrible events in Warsaw and recognized the terrifying nature of an enemy determined to do anything.

So I had these Jews, about 10,000 in number, march the 240 kilometers, though that is the distance to Vienna. The stretch from Vienna to the Burgenland border would have to be subtracted, not Austria, Burgenland; that may come to about 180 kilometers. I discussed the plan with the commander of the Hungarian gendarmerie. He entrusted the details to his responsible desk officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ferenczy of the Hungarian gendarmerie. The daily marches were divided up. At first there were more kilometers each day; they were then reduced, and I believe the head of the column must have reached the Hungarian-Burgenland border in ten or twelve days.

The Hungarian gendarmerie had set up supply depots at the overnight stopping places. Provision was made in sanitary and hygienic respects for everything one could do in wartime. We were all just living on [?] lamain and no longer made great demands for a comfortable standard of living. Out of, or despite, this great hardship, made worse by the transport chaos caused at that time by the destruction of the most important transport arteries, everything even halfway possible was done to ensure the trek of these 10,000 to the Burgenland border.

Is there already talk of 14,000 women alone?

No, they cannot possibly say that. It is nonsense. Two thousand were sent marching each day, and they then formed a marching block. I personally drove along the route once. The commander of the Security Service in Budapest personally drove along it. The Higher Police Chief in Hungary, General of Police Winkelmann, personally drove along it. The Hungarian State Secretary B… personally drove along it. The State Secretary in the Hungarian Interior Ministry, Dr. L… Endre, personally drove along it.

Did SS Ogrf. (Obergruppenführer) Hans Huettner personally drive along the route?

Possibly as well. Certainly many others drove along the route. I can tell you today that I saw two corpses along the entire route. They were old Jews. It is clear: where wood is planed, shavings fall. Did no shavings fall when even larger contingents of Germans from the East set out on the march after 1945…? Were supply depots, sanitary facilities, and hygienic facilities thoughtfully provided for these Germans when they had completed their day’s march? Who did that? German thoroughness did it. With few exceptions, these Jew treks, as I called them, arrived. I do not want to commit myself to 10,000. It could also have been 15,000 or 1,000. In any event, I can state one thing here definitively: it was certainly not over 20,000. Too much time has passed.

… fourteen years ago …, and I am being asked for the first time…0,000, certainly not. It may have been under 15,000, but let us not argue over a few thousand more or less. These contingents then arrived there. They were not evacuated einvakuniert there as had originally been agreed with the WVHA (Economic and Administrative Main Office), as had been discussed with the entire timetable …

To take them to Auschwitz?

No. They were received there by the local district leaders and local party-group leaders and now had to help the German women, German children, and German old people, for only those people were still at home. They had already been working for some time, digging with spades into the Burgenland earth to excavate an enormous number of kilometers of anti-tank ditches, I do not know how many. That was where these Jew treks were put to work. The Gauleiter of Lower Austria provided their food.

This event, which was true in itself, has now been linked to something that suited these fortune hunters, as I would call them, in one way or another. Perhaps they also reckoned that those involved were dead, or that, because they had to eke out a life in hiding, they would keep silent. Now the time has come when people are talking about it, and I am increasingly glad. The Jewish ghetto of Budapest: as you once told me, there were supposed to have been 70,000 there. I laughed off that figure and told you there must have been about 200,000 there.

The intention would of course have been to deport this Jewish ghetto. But I had orders to comb through from east to west. What was in the Budapest ghetto was placed under the strictest control in light of the experience in Warsaw and could therefore not endanger us as a partisan force. Even the seed of an incipient revolt would, and I say this too, have been nipped in the bud with lightning speed. I also know that the Arrow Cross, with Dr. L. Enderee at its head, would have been ready sooner rather than later to liquidate this Budapest ghetto in an unparalleled bloodbath.

The RF (Reichsführer-SS) did not give his permission for this, because it would have taken place before the eyes of such a broad public that it would have been downright harmful to the Reich’s interests, apart from the fact that no one would have been helped, neither the Jewish nor the non-Jewish side. No, I was no longer considering deporting the Jewish ghettos of Budapest at that time, when the transport situation in Hungary became so catastrophic that deportation was technically no longer possible.

The statements by various offices which you have just named to me in telegraphic form, with their efforts, I gathered from your account that some had even made approaches abroad, seeking in some secret-service fashion to claim great laurels, are completely fabricated. Deporting the 200,000 Jews from Budapest was no longer intended. It was no longer possible to exploit the remaining presence of 200,000 Jews in Budapest for business, because Jewish circles would have told themselves that deportation could no longer be carried out. A march of 200,000, or even only 100,000, people over a distance

of almost 200 kilometers. I want to tell you something, dear Comrade S… I have dared many things, but a march at that time, under the most chaotic conditions, of such a vast quantity of human material would not merely have been madness. It would have been super-madness. They would all have croaked on me along the way. They would not have died; they would have croaked. At that time I could no longer set up any supply depots. I could make no provision at all at the time you have given me as the alleged date when someone, I think I, or someone, had entertained the idea of taking these masses away on foot.

It is sheer madness. It is technically impossible. Ask anyone who has had practical experience with masses of people under the most adverse circumstances. I think that, if you wrote to my colleague General Z… or spoke to him, he would agree with me not merely out of collegiality; he would have to agree with me on purely professional grounds. But you need not go to Z… at all. Ask Tito’s experts, ask the experts in the Czechoslovak region after 1945. They can all say the same.

Did … state, not in court but to Kastner, that 1,200 people, including eighty-year-old women, died during this seven-day march?

I tell you, that would have been about ten percent. The figure, the proportion of losses on the trek I had carried out, had carried out on orders I received, was a fraction of one percent. At that time such a foot march had to be prepared with the utmost care, and it was prepared with such care as you cannot imagine. It took me more work than if I had sent 100, no, 500 transport trains to Auschwitz. It was not only the Security Police or the Security Service ordered there that was present in Hungary. There was a European game (Spiel) in Hungary; there was a mirror of the neutral foreign countries in Hungary; there was a mirror of our former enemy powers in Hungary.

Before this setting one had to save face, and since we were described as thorough and comprehensive, we had an example to set here. ‘You have smashed our transport routes. We are carrying out this whole affair another way, in the most elegant form.’ That was the tenor. The 10,000 or 15,000 people were not what mattered. It was so incidental that I no longer even know the number today. What mattered was to demonstrate to the enemy that a bombing of the western route, that is, as seen from Hungary, that this bombing does not impair the will (Woll) and the undertaking, because they…

…these routes were bombed so that the transport of Jews might be prevented. That was the guiding motive throughout.

How do you know that?

I established that. I learned it through the Higher SS and Police Leader, to whom I reported daily for as long as I was in Budapest. I did not ask to be given the corresponding responses—that would have been too presumptuous; my rank was far too low in relation to the Higher Police Leader. Winkelmann communicated the response to me in a fatherly, benevolent manner. It may also be that Vesemeier told me these things. I know one thing: Veesenmayer was an extraordinarily anxious man whenever it came to matters that could have harmed us in any way, even in the slightest. Veesenmayer was a Reich plenipotentiary who walked on triple rubber soles. He foresaw trouble even before measures were set in motion that might possibly cause it. That was Veesenmayer.

Were there small children in this deportation too?

No, it was personnel fit to march—the order, the command, was to get personnel fit to march on their feet. What the Hungarian gendarmerie understood by fitness to march was no concern of the German authorities, because the German authorities were not involved in that, and we were not responsible for it either. It would have been interference in internal Hungarian affairs. I had my advisers in the counties, the Hungarian gendarmerie lieutenant Ferenczy at my disposal; that also includes ….

My advisers received from me the orders that Gruppenführer Müller and the chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service) gave me—and, supplementing them further and down to the details, the RF (Reichsführer-SS). I formulated those orders and passed them on. Those orders also said, in the Hungarian area too, that avoidable hardships were to be avoided. I remember precisely that, for this particular undertaking, I demanded that only personnel fit to march be put on their feet.

From what age are people considered fit to march?

Personnel from 16 to 50, 56, count as fit to march. Under some circumstances one can go up to 60, depending on whether they are physically fit or not. A 40-year-old may have an infirmity and be unfit to march.

Do you know that SS Ogrf. (Obergruppenführer) Jüttner (struck out in the typescript; handwritten replacement unclear, possibly Jüttner), together with Hoess, was assigned to supervise the march and report their observations?

Yes, I remember that too. I remember that Hoess drove along this trek route. It was not only Hoess who drove along this route; various other people involved did so too. I would like to call them desk officers, in a figurative sense, because I cannot recall the term used by the WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office)—desk officers who drove along this trek route. No doubt some did it out of interest, because the Jews were, after all, a pretext for a pleasant official journey to a country they had not known before. That was often a reason why people liked travelling, and, among other things, it was also a … into the—

…Originally it had been planned that this trek would remain on German soil and be placed at the disposal of the SS WVHA (Economic and Administrative Main Office). Its being taken over by the political leaders for anti-tank ditch construction had not actually been envisaged. That was improvised—one might say cunningly—by us Gauleiter, who supported the hard-toiling German blood at that border in digging anti-tank ditches with welcome shovellers…

Jüttner mentioned in his official report at the time…

Before the end of the war?

When did he submit this report?

Around that time…

Is that proved, or is it a lie?

I don’t know…

And I was. I had the order to do it. I own up to that…

I mean, what do you say to this report?

That I cannot understand it, because it makes a mockery of the truth. It would have torn my superior Müller’s a… open, as he used to say, if I had suffered a fiasco in that matter. I never heard even the slightest reproach from—very sensitive in such matters, I emphasize it once again, and I want that written down too—the very sensitive chief of the SD (Security Service), Dr. Kaltenbrunner. Nor did I ever hear the slightest reproach from Winkelmann, who was himself a very sensitive man. None of these people can say that they were put under pressure by Ostf.

Eichmann, because, in rank and official position, I had to click my heels before them. If they—and now I come to the word, and now I understand it all the better—if they wanted to turn me into a Galikula, then I must say that choosing the period before 1945 for saying this was very unfortunate. These gentlemen are punching themselves in the face with their own fists if they want to claim today that, before the end of 1945—I mean before the end of our war in 1945, not the end of the year—they let themselves be tyrannized in any way by an Ostf., by a special-detachment commander, Eichmann, by a desk officer.

Nothing else can follow when they tell me, ‘He could do nothing about it.’ I never in my life had a written special authorization from the RF (Reichsführer-SS). I never had a written special authorization from the chief of the Security Police. I had nothing special or extraordinary at all. I had … my rank, my official position. And I certainly did—this I do say—always work at 100 percent. Above all I thought the matter through, and in giving orders I was certainly not lukewarm.

…I say that too: that can … no bugger will believe me now; it would serve no purpose. But I own up to it: I carried out my duties exactly and correctly, so that Müller once said to me, ‘If we had had 50 Eichmanns, we would automatically have had to win the war.’ That is not meant to refer, and did not refer, to the loss of the enemy’s blood substance. No, it referred to forceful determination and unconditional fidelity in carrying out orders received. For that reason—understand me, Comrade S…—I cannot understand how there could have been German officers who twisted and interpreted the orders they received just as it suited them. That way we were bound to lose the war. You can also understand my defeatist and pessimistic attitude since Boks’s parade on the Champs de L… in Paris.

On 2 November, a few weeks later, you are said to have angrily expressed your indignation about certain gentlemen who cannot—who cannot judge whether people who have been on the road for seven or eight days should be considered fit for work or not, because various contingents could somehow go back to Budapest. Do you remember anything along those lines? It could indicate that a certain supervisory assignment involving Jüttner and Hoess had nevertheless somehow come to your notice at the time.

[Short repetition up to “days”.]

I can tell you this: I know perfectly well that at that time Kunz and Kinz? were obstructing things. That I know. Who it was, I no longer know today, and it does not interest me at all. Jüttner? That is possible too; I no longer know. There was interference from so many quarters that I simply do not know. You can include Jüttner too; it makes no difference any more. There were so many authorities; I had to deal with it for weeks. Only one thing: the RF (Reichsführer-SS) never called me to account, never reproached me. Neither did the chief of the Security Police. As I told you earlier, neither did my immediate superior, Gruppenführer Müller.

Nor did the people I dealt with in Hungary, namely Wolf. Winkelmann, who even congratulated me on carrying it out so elegantly. The Reich plenipotentiary, Dr. Feaemeier, congratulated me on carrying it out elegantly. Dr. Endre congratulated me on carrying it out elegantly. With Endre, I must say, I even had a drink to it with him. It was schnapps made from horse’s milk—mare’s milk. I drank it for the first time, and that is the only reason I still remember it. The great delight of the … representative of the Hungarian government for these matters, who on that day—whether it was his first time, I do not know.

At any rate, that day I drank a schnapps made from mare’s milk, and I still remembered the story… what those people called it? The word occurred to me then too, what they called this booze they drank made from mare’s milk. I thought this mare’s-milk schnapps, made on the farm of my friend I. Endre, was excellent, although I had never drunk it before. But I associate these thoughts with it now and can remember precisely. I also know that a whole legion was obstructing things, and I do also know—and that may be right—‘furious’ is not the right expression, but when I, with my sonorous voice, which I—

…could sometimes put on, I could, with the force of my conviction and my conviction that I was in the right, identify and denounce injustice. And regardless of whether the man was a Gruppf. (Gruppenführer) or an Ogruppf. (Obergruppenführer), in the heat of the fray, despite my otherwise very disciplined subordination—I would not even say that I let myself be carried away. No, I felt obliged, in the most emphatic and clearest terms, to offer proof that what was being asserted was wrong and is wrong, if that was the case. These people, who stood above me in rank and official position, would never—never—have tolerated such a tone from me, I emphasize it, a tone, if I had not been able to prove to them with state-police precision that what they presented as something they had heard—as a rule that was what it was—was false and incorrect. Have I expressed myself clearly?

Yes.

Good. I am now getting into exactly the same rage that I got into at that time, perhaps not so … today as then. Today a measure of indifference has entered my whole manner of expression, so that I can no longer demonstrate the persuasive force with which I probably will have spoken then. But you will be able to imagine it roughly. Why, then, did they bring no proceedings against this little Ostf., this little desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office and temporary commander of Special Detachment Eichmann (Sonderkommando Eichmann)?

Why did they not bring proceedings against this little man? At that time, the high and highest ranks could bring proceedings over the smallest trifle. It would have been easier for no one than, say, the Higher SS and Police Leader Winkelmann in Hungary to bring proceedings against me. Even the commander of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service), Stf. (Standartenführer) Geschke, could easily have brought proceedings against me. Why, I ask myself, did they not merely refrain from doing that, but congratulate me on the elegant solution of this problem? Why? Have I said enough about it?

Do you remember whether several groups—a certain number of sick people—from these transports on foot were taken back to Budapest?

That is quite possible. I said that I demanded of the Hungarian gendarmerie… I must say first that I demanded of the Hungarian gendarmerie’s advance detachment that it set the daily marching distance and arrange places to receive people at the end of each day’s march. Those were naturally not provided in the form of Pullman mattresses, that is clear, because at that time even an Eastern Front soldier, after all, camped for days without a warm sip in his stomach. And if you tell me that I took the position that these Jews, on reaching their destination and being taken over by local NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) officials in the territories of the Greater German Reich, were immediately put to work, you would naturally not imagine that a man who arrived at 10 o’clock already received his shovel at 10:15 and, at 10:20, had already made the first spade stroke—

… after all, … had to be obligated and was obligated, and then the work equipment was issued. Anyone familiar with practical work knows that a very long time passes before the first kilogram of earth is dug out. At any rate, more time passes than 100,000 Eastern Front soldiers—and Western Front soldiers too—had to catch their breath between arrival and immediate deployment in combat. At any rate, more time could pass than, for example, between the rounding up of German women, children and old people in the areas from which the Germans were rounded up and expelled after 1945 and their first being put to work. There it happened in no time at all. And who wants to tell me today that this was a crime against humanity?

I can say only one thing here: when it was already being heard at that time that our enemies—and the Jews counted among them, because war had been declared on us through the mouth of their supreme superior, Dr. Clain Weizmann —when we heard at that time that bodies of German women and girls had been found with only the bottoms of wine bottles protruding between their thighs, my dear Comrade S…, at that time there was no more fibbing. At that time we were no longer virgins working with kid gloves. At that time orders were given, calculations made and things carried out. I want that stated precisely in this connection, because we let ourselves be guided by the examples the enemy gave us. Those determined the harshness of our measures.

Do you remember whether—

[overlapping talk]

… had a larger number of sick people taken to Budapest, and you then threatened … with a summary court?

That is utter bullshit. First, … was not responsible for the transport. The man responsible and in charge was the Hungarian gendarmerie ‘uncle’, Ferenczy, with his adjutant, Captain Nagy. Furthermore, I have never in my life threatened anyone with the words ‘summary court’ or ‘court-martial’, or threatened anyone with proceedings at all. Certainly not my closest confidants, whom I am still inclined to call my bosom friends. I am tempted to say that I had proceedings brought against men only once—no, twice: the Obstf. … who beat Jews black and blue in the cellar, and my driver …, who stole a toilet lid from the office.

Can you remember receiving a telegram from Becher in Switzerland at the end of November, confirming that the first five million francs had been deposited, but that in return 1,368 Jews had to be released from Belsenbergen?

Becher never sent me a telegram from Switzerland. That would be news to me, because I would probably—certainly—have been seized by the longing to go to Switzerland again. I am an inveterate traveller. I could easily have done it; I was free to creep into any part of our corner of Europe, and I would certainly have found an official justification for doing so. No, it would have tempted me if I had known Becher was in Switzerland at that time. He may have done it without my knowledge; that is possible too, I do not know. But what is certain, at any rate, is that it may very well be possible that Jews from Bergenbelzen were released too.

I already told you: I released for Dr. Kastner every contingent of Jews that he named to me, because a thousand or ten thousand Jews made no difference to me.

[Visible fragment of the underlying sheet: … had to be obligated and was obligated, and then the work equipment was issued, and anyone concerned with practical ….]

[Concerning the march of 18,000 Jews.]

It was shortly afterward, when Allied bombs struck the Budapest–Vienna line, mainly the railway junctions, so that all railway traffic was impossible for a considerable time. That may serve to date it. On closer reflection about the matter, the impatience of State Secretary Dr. LE [László Endre], for whom everything concerning the solution of the Jewish question in Hungary moved far too slowly, was the factor that triggered this march on foot. It was prepared by the personnel of his gendarmerie units, in particular by State Secretary Ba and the official responsible, Ferenczy, with his gendarmes, and was accompanied by Hungarian gendarmes.

But despite the Hungarian government’s insistent determination, all these matters of fundamental importance also had to receive the approval of the German authorities responsible for them. A matter that was bound to attract the attention of the world had to receive the approval of the heads of the competent central authority in Berlin. I will therefore surely have submitted it to my immediate superior in the form of a written memorandum asking him to take note and issue instructions. A matter of such importance is inconceivable otherwise.

Throughout my assignment in Hungary, I travelled to Berlin to report for these purposes about every four weeks, at most every six, in the car provided for me, a 3.4 Mercedes also equipped for fast night driving. When fundamental orders were to be received during that period, I was summoned to Müller in Berlin by teletype several times. Now my immediate and direct superior, Heinrich Müller, was as cautious and pedantic a bureaucrat as I was. Neither he nor I ever failed to leave out of account the always convenient use of official channels for obtaining instructions.

That was called ‘covering oneself’. I mention this because I once heard, in connection with one of these questions, that I always covered myself. I believe some author meant that in a book. I want to explain the expression ‘covering oneself’ abdecken. It was not covering oneself against outsiders, such as the enemy or neutral agencies, but against one’s own superiors, against any possible so-called trouble (Stunk)—just as much a common expression as ‘covering oneself’.

That meant trouble with other German and non-German central authorities, which might have brought unpleasant consequences for the Reich. Hence the constant request for acknowledgment, a decision and instructions. Certainly—and I am entitled to say this—the ever-cautious Müller, and even his immediate superior, the often anxious and sometimes even indecisive Kaltenbrunner, did not decide this themselves. They in turn asked the RF (Reichsführer-SS) for a decision. That explains the expression ‘covering oneself’ in its true meaning.

Even today one can see that there was a decision at the highest level concerning the setting out on foot of the 10–…000 Jews from the fact that no authority was able to prevent or even stop this march. Once the ultimate Hungarian central authority, speaking through L.E., and a very high authority—a central authority in the German Reich—had issued their instructions, that also explains why even the Higher Police Chief in Hungary, Winkelmann, could do nothing. I can only say that in these matters it was less about the 10, 15, or 18,000—

Jews, although Dr. LE, or Dr. Jenen (?) in the Hungarian Interior Ministry, was always pushing with the greatest impatience for the so-called speeding-up of the solution of the Jewish question in Hungary and would not even let me have my night’s rest. I do not mean that in a hostile sense, but in a friendly one, because he was one of the best friends I ever had in my life. Rather, the essential point was to tell our enemy at the time: it does you no good to bomb or destroy our railway junctions on the way to the Eastern Front. Your own allies, the Jews, have to bear the inconvenience, because they are your allies.

Through the words of their general spokesman, Dr. Clain Weizmann, they did, after all, declare war on us. In other words: stop doing these things, and do nothing that benefits neither you nor us. As far as I can remember, the Hungarian gendarmerie never again had to organize a march on foot; apparently that example helped. To conclude this so-called foot-march matter, I must also say that I can no longer state with absolute certainty whether the Hungarian gendarmerie collected this contingent of Jews in some county in Hungary or took it from the Budapest ghetto.

I do believe I remember that nothing was transported out of the ghetto except those contingents that Dr. Kastner diverted from the age groups he considered useful to the interests of Erets-Israel. I cannot swear that some Hungarian authority did not nevertheless somehow obtain groups from the ghetto, without the knowledge of the German agencies, to fill up some transports. With that I would like to close the chapter on the march on foot.

[Bandi Grosz?]

Grosz must have been a man who worked together with Kastner and Brandt, a Jew who worked with Brandt, a man whom Kastner employed just as he employed Brandt. I even think Grosz was once at my office.

You seem to have obliged Brandt, or Kastner, to take Grosz along because Grosz was connected with your office and had to accompany Brandt as a kind of minder?

It is possible that Krumey or one of my other men played games with Grosz. By games I mean intelligence games, the game within the intelligence services. But I was the head of the office, I was the commander. I have no idea about the details that prompted my subordinate personnel to get more closely involved and then disengage again. I was brought into the game only when fundamental decisions were involved. None of my subordinates could make a decision of a fundamental nature; that was reserved for me. Of course, I could make such a decision only when it did not exceed the limits assigned to me. Otherwise I too first had to obtain instructions, to cover myself before my own superiors. That explains why I cannot tell you today whether one or another sourpuss, whom I have long since lost sight of and scarcely had in mind even then, played some part, because, after all, my men—

…I did not check them in their individual details. They were all case officers, and they were responsible for their own areas.

Does the name Schindler mean anything to you?

No. I once had a Latin teacher by that name, but he had nothing to do with this. He died long ago.

The head of the workshops in the Krakow ghetto?

I had nothing to do with people like that.

What do you know about parachute agents said to have dropped over Hungary, and during the uprising in Slovakia, and those of the Haganar?

I have nothing at all to say about that, except perhaps one thing. It is not confirmed, admittedly, but what… My constant warning… Roman Senate… Besides, I am of the opinion that the Hagana must be watched more closely than it is at present. That was also why I cultivated that man from Palestine at the time. It was why Heydrich allowed me to accept the invitation I received to the Near East. It was why I concerned myself more closely with Zionism as a whole—not the main reason, a secondary reason.

The main reason was emigration. I feared that some trouble might be stirred up down there at that time against the sword of Islam—Mussolini was our ally. Later, the very circles that interested us were those with whom we had a very close connection. It does not surprise me that the Hagana rushed to the aid of its Hungarian remnants here, with Allied help, at the last moment, when there was no longer anything to fear.

The name Mosche Krauss?

No, nothing.

The name Moscher Schweiger?

No.

The leader of the armed underground movement in Hungary?

There was no underground movement in Hungary until 24 December 1944, at 3 p. m. I was in Hungary myself until then, and no Jew dared to raise even a single knife, let alone a firearm. That was why the RF (Reichsführer-SS) sent me personally to Hungary: so that the kind of disaster that happened to us in the General Government could not arise there. By 24 December, at 3 p. m., there was nothing left except the small units that had to allow themselves to be encircled, in accordance with the RF’s order. There were no police offices left; the Hungarian Gestapo was gone, the Hungarian government was gone—it had been gone for days. I stayed until 3 p. m. and then withdrew with my driver. I had long since had my office in Ödenburg. Until then nothing had happened.

Kastner is said to have told you that he had to overcome the greatest difficulties and resistance from Mosche Krausz, secretary of the Palestine Office in Budapest?

First, I recognized the heads of the Palestine Office very early on. I have already told you about Dr. Rothenberg from Vienna; he was one such head of a Palestine Office. For the head of a Palestine Office—just read Adolf Boehm’s The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat) today. Yes, they are the ambassadors and envoys of today’s new State of Israel. I attached heightened political importance to them, and—

…and that worked out well for me. If Dr. K. had reported a difficulty like that to me, I would certainly have radioed immediately; that was my line of work. But suppose Dr. K. had encountered the slightest difficulty anywhere in Hungary, or in the area under our influence, when it was a matter of achieving the objective I had been ordered to achieve—that was what Dr. K. was useful to me for. I would have ironed out those difficulties for Dr. K., just as I snatched his wife from the clutches of the Hungarian gendarmerie. When a woman has been given such a bastinado, I can imagine that one is not very willing to let such an object go again. I fought for that woman then because I needed Dr. K. So if Dr. K. had come to me with difficulties involving some Mosche Krausz, I would simply have locked up that M.K.

Did K. ever speak about difficulties he had with Jewish agencies?

Yes, a great deal, but never about those agencies—that is, difficulties with agencies—that I could have rolled over like a tank. Rather, he once quite despaired when he told me of the loss of his wife: his hopelessness, his loneliness and abandonment, that he had no help or support from international Jewry or his friends abroad, Jews or non-Jews, and that, apart from a very few genuinely courageous people in Erets-Isreal, he had nothing here that could help him either.

Yes, I can say that K. never came—perhaps a few times at the beginning, until we warmed to each other—he never came as one comes to the feared Gestapo potentate. He came to me, talked things out, sat down, smoked, brought his wife along. If you could take that apart and put it in the proper psychological context, you would say to yourselves: when two opponents negotiate like that, neither is afraid. They negotiate and settle things; that is a political matter.

The name of the Abwehr (military intelligence) agent Dr. Rudi Sedlatschek?

Could he have been from Dr. Geschke’s office? He also had connections with Dr. Geschke, but perhaps I can help you: the Gestapo brought proceedings against the entire Abwehr station in Budapest—the military counterintelligence station?

Yes—I do not know that… But there was a major proceeding, conducted by Clages among others, and the entire Abwehr station in Budapest was exposed, or rather expelled from the country to Vienna and from there into the Reich.

Was that connected with links between these Abwehr stations and Katsner and his group?

Kastner and I had complete control of the situation in Hungary. Forgive me the word, but let it serve to clarify things. I played with many German and non-German agencies, and so did Kastner. When K. wanted to take 600, or 1,000, or several such contingents of Jews abroad, he could negotiate with whomever he wanted. But he got them out of the country only when he received the final decision from me. Conversely, I could negotiate with whomever I wanted in Hungary; everyone would have made me every possible promise. They undoubtedly made such promises to K. too. But the final assurance that I really would have peace in Budapest, that I really would have peace in the—

…individual counties, that I would not experience a Hungarian Warsaw—that was what Kastner offered me. Therefore… everyone [? played] with everyone. K. and I played with complete control in this small sector in Hungary. Today people give a thousand names. Those thousand names have fallen into oblivion, because they were all people who either took part in the fundamental matter or made use of such a fundamental struggle to reap some benefits for their own sector too: first, benefits in foreign exchange; second, benefits of an intelligence nature, in the form of information, clandestine passage out along the same routes being used there, through their own agents, or considerations of personal self-protection.

Brandt said that Wi made an agreement with the Jewish woman Fleischmann, the head of the international children’s …, at the end of 1942. He demanded 50,000 pounds to stop the deportations in Slovakia. The 50,000 were paid to him, but apparently, unlike his later financial negotiations, went into his own pocket. The only fact is that, during these negotiations, Wi is said to have kept his promise to stop the deportations. Is it possible that Wi obtained, by an indirect route, an order stopping deportation from Slovakia?

That is completely new to me. After a long interval had passed without any transports of Jews from Slovakia, Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller sent me to Pressburg, after I had reported to him that it seemed to me that difficulties of a fundamental nature were arising in Slovakia. I set off and spoke with the Slovak Interior Minister Mach. It was on the very day on whose evening the Slovak Interior Minister told me that he had just received word from his representative in Prague that there had been a bomb attack on Heydrich. I visited the German envoy in Pressburg that same day and put him under intense pressure, telling him that the RFSS (Reichsführer-SS) wanted immediate efforts, without delay, to deport the last Jews from Slovak territory.

I told the Slovak Interior Minister the same thing, as ordered, in quite blunt words and without any diplomatic courtesy. I told the German envoy that I would tell him this, in the discussion before my meeting with Mach. It was not our first meeting: I had known Mach long before he was Interior Minister, so I could speak to him quite differently from Ludin (?), the official German envoy. I may have discussed the matter with Mach even more briefly and plainly. If you tell me that Wi is supposed to have received 50,000 pounds, there are two possibilities: either the source you got it from is lying, or Wi had become disloyal, which I find hard to believe.

I have to ask myself what a man in our position at that time would do with the enormous sum of 50,000 pounds. It would be baffling to me… Third, I must say that I knew nothing of a receipt or an order to collect 50,000 pounds. I had nothing to do with producing counterfeit pound notes, but I did know about it. Later, millions and millions of pounds were printed by us in Germany. Nor can I assume that some other agency could have had an interest in collecting a paltry …000 pounds and selling a matter of principle for it. Something like that would have got around, and the Jewish question in the many European countries would have been [?] and would have been put onto a—

…track that was practically impossible to work on any further.

What do you say to this sentence?

Either the source you got this from is lying, or Wi must have bluffed to a degree that, given his intolerance, I would not even credit him with. I had no right, no authority to command even a single Jew into even a single gas chamber. Nor did I have any right to shoot down even a single Jew with a pistol, strike him down with a cudgel, hang him or anything of that kind. How much less right does a captain subordinate to me have?

It is also mentioned here that in 1943 Wi proposed halting deportations throughout Europe except Germany and Poland for two million dollars. The Jews then searched desperately for the money, but it was not raised…

Do not go on. The source is lying, shamelessly… Suppose one of my captains were to demand two million dollars in return for halting deportation from Europe, excluding Poland and Germany. If the commissioning authority, this whole connection, which would have brought a loss of face among our then allied states—let us grant all that. But never, never can you tell me that Jewry would not have been willing, or would not have been able, to raise those paltry two million dollars for so many people who would then allegedly have been saved from deportation, when later quite different sums were involved, for far less, and those sums were raised—see Becher in Hungary.

Yes, yes, but that is precisely his argument: in 1942/43 the two million could not be raised, and that was why there was Wi’s counterproposal to stop deportation for 200,000 dollars a month—

[overlapping talk]

Lies and trouble…

First, Wi never had any right to do that. When a matter was clearly settled for us ideologically, it was never sold for something like that… That it was sold later, I know. Becher obtained that from the RF (Reichsführer-SS), for foreign currency. With some agency or other, there were the 10,000 winterized trucks with trailers in exchange for a million Jews. That made sense to me too, because it concerned conserving German blood substance. I never got involved with dollars or foreign currency, because money meant nothing to me.

Winterized trucks for the East—fine, I agreed to that. It was worth fighting for, throwing one’s whole self into it. As I said once before, I have—Kast, with several suitcases of foreign currency, unloaded them with the responsible foreign-affairs fellows, at the Gestapo, not the Hungarian Gestapo. I mention it to emphasize how every agency in Hungary tried to squeeze everything possible out of the Jews, to pinch or wring it out of them under—

…the threat: ‘Here comes the wicked Eichmann.’ What you are saying now is… Wi had no right, no order, no assignment to do that. I have never heard anything about it. It would not have remained hidden from me, because things were arranged among us so that not just anyone could muddle about without word getting out. In other words, I checked my men, as far as I could and as far as I was required to, to see that they kept to the right path. I checked them… just as I know that Müller constantly had me watched and checked. That suited me very well, and I wanted it, because someone who does what is right can let himself be watched. I am only annoyed by this jumble of lies, which is so primitive, and I simply wonder how he can put something so primitive before the public.

That would have amounted to two dollars per Jewish head at the time. And he says here that Scheu… refused the money.

Wi was not a baron. He was not of noble birth. Nor was he commander of the Sipo (Security Police)—my representative—he was adviser on the Jewish question in Pressburg, attached to the German envoy. That was his official title.

Brandt keeps trying in his book to make it clear that he was the actual Jewish representative in the negotiations with the German agencies, and that Kastner took his place only after his flight. That is all the more remarkable since the book did not come out until 1956, when Kast was still alive. This false claim by Brandt—false in your view—that he was the real operator, the principal shareholder, surely could not have been refuted by Kastner. Or do you have other explanations for the fact that Brandt makes himself important at Kastner’s expense?

I have already said that Brandt was Kastner’s underling. If, in his …, he insists on claiming the opposite, I have this to say: Kastner and Brandt were the closest of friends, that is certain. For several years Brandt had to watch his friend pilloried by public opinion in the new State of Israel, literally fighting for his life, fighting as a member of the Knesset for the party he belonged to, Mapei?. The trial that Kastner requested against himself apparently did not achieve the result he sought.

Then his friend Brandt stepped in. Brandt, who … could prove that he had been active abroad throughout this time and had struggled there—struggled in the truest sense of the word—for a million Jews, struggled with Jewish and non-Jewish agencies, struggled with the English minister for the … East of the English Empire, struggled with all sorts of economic and … luminaries—the man, in other words, who could demonstrate an alibi—

…for the Jews living in Palestine. So the man stepped forward, protected his friend Kastner, who had become involved with members of the Gestapo in an intelligence service, turns the tables, and makes himself Kastner’s superior. Conveniently, this opened unforeseen avenues of evasion for Kastner: being a recipient of orders, or something of that sort.

That could be an explanation. But one must bear in mind that the gravest Jewish accusations against Kast concern precisely the period when Brandt was away. The gravest accusations come from the time when Brandt was away and when, according to Brandt’s version, Kastner became responsible…

Now we continually had contact between Kastner and Brandt. If I had sent the second-in-command abroad instead of the chief, that would have been all right. So if I had sent the second-in-command—in this case Brandt—abroad, your conclusion would not hold. If I send the chief abroad, he has a substitute. The substitute can only do what the chief previously gave him as guidance, or what the chief later gave him by correspondence—the technical means that the Jews had at their disposal at the time are unknown to me.

Another parallel, which did not apply with us… If, with us, the head of some department of a section of an office was detached elsewhere, his permanent deputy, whom he always had, was put in his place and authorized to take the measures necessary during his chief’s absence, without the permanent deputy having to consult or ask his chief. In an institution operating illegally, the ways and means are entirely different from those of a legal apparatus.

What can you tell me about your office’s involvement in carrying out the Night and Fog operations?

I know the Night and Fog decree, but I do not know offhand what it says… The Night and Fog decree has nothing to do with Jews. Is it a decree from the RF (Reichsführer-SS), or does it date from Heydrich’s time? I believe the Night and Fog decree concerns Communists, national opposition and things of that kind. There was no Night and Fog decree concerning Jews, nor was one needed, because the Führer had ordered the physical liquidation of this opponent. No Night and Fog decree was needed for that.

Brandt says you ordered him to your office on 25 April 1944, and that there, for the first time, he was told about the one million Jews in return for something from the Jewish side. You have already cast serious doubt on this date, 25 April 1944…

I rejected it…

The fact is that it was precisely [? B.]’s birthday, and for that reason he…

I have rejected that date and must reject it: 25 April 1944. That is one month and almost exactly one week after I first set foot on Hungarian soil. Just consider the amount of making contacts, negotiating and organizational work needed to obtain even the initial general authorization—indeed, even the Hungarian government’s wish—to take over the Jews. Only a specialist can—

…form an idea, for example, of bringing the Hungarian executive organs to the places where the first roundups of Jews are set in motion. Only a specialist can imagine how much work it meant at that time to get the transport trains to the right places. I had to release guard contingents from the German Order Police who, in a regular rotation, had to perform their duties from the loading station to the unloading station and then return.

When you speak with a specialist, a police specialist, whatever country he may come from, he will be able to tell you that a run-up to the first transports of a month and a scant week is already a devil of a job, and that it is possible only when different components come together: for example, when people seek each other out and find each other, as Dr. L. E. and I did. For example, the circumstances were fortunate for us and unfortunate for the enemy: the first state secretary had the executive under him, the second the legislative side, and no third person needed to be consulted.

In what country did that exist at all? Even if you relate that to …, a run-up of five weeks is so short that there is no need to say another word. But if you now tell me, for example, that I had already proposed such a deal after the first transport, that contradicts all reason. A matter first has to get moving before possibilities and modification [?; Mutifikation] can even be taken into account. In my official position I could not even have dared to consider a scheme involving 10,000 winterized trucks for one million Jews; the idea would never have occurred to me.

It could have occurred to me, it would have occurred to me, and perhaps it did occur to me—I no longer know today—on the basis of receiving orders from the Reichsführer; that was where they were negotiated. As further proof that the date cannot be right, I would point out that this deal fell in the period between the full ramping-up of what, to use Kats.'s words, was the extermination machine in Auschwitz running at full speed, and the Reichsführer's halt to physical extermination. That was when the negotiations took place: 10,000 trucks for k million Jews. So that was the summer of 1944. Brandt is wrong here; he is wrong.

He flew on 15 May 1944…

If he flew on 15 May, then I would have been wrong all along. Then I must… then there really is no other possibility than that I myself originated the whole thing. I must say that, astonishing as it sounds to me today, because I would not have thought it possible that I should have disregarded such a fundamental matter. But if he flew at that time, I had not yet been to see the Reichsführer then, so I offered him that on my own authority. Then I must take back everything I have said, however much, thirteen or fourteen years after the event, it goes against my understanding.

I do not know: did I originate the deal, or did it arise through the interplay of forces, or through an order from the Reichsführer, or somehow… Then I must of course tell you: I originated the deal. But then I must also stand by it; I state that quite clearly here too. Then I must also say that it no longer seems strange to me today that the Reichsführer received me so often afterward and continually expressed his goodwill toward me. It would, however, be the first time that I had here

… without asking beforehand, made such a far-reaching decision.

Today, after fourteen years, I sometimes find it terribly difficult to remember details, especially since I have no one at hand to back me up who could give me even a little help. You have put various things to me, most of which I had to acknowledge as true. At that time I ordered Cromeid and Wi to Hungary as an advance detachment. They, and Wi in particular, since he was the more skillful negotiator, had the task of bringing people to me from whom, on the basis of the negotiations, I could make a selection and build up the framework of the Jewish-political function, as I did. Naturally, one or another may have appeared before me even before Kastner—not merely possibly, but probably—and I negotiated with them.

The whole thing was still being built up in the first days after 20 March 1944. I do not want to insist that I entrusted Kastner with the standard treatments (Standardbehandlungen) from the very beginning. It is possible that, among others, a Jew named Brandt was brought before me, to whom I may have said what he now writes in his book. I will not endorse all of it as something I said to him, but a large part… That shows me that the Jew Brandt must in any case have been with me fairly often. But I always had the idea that he had, so to speak, been instructed by Kastner. I cannot abandon that idea, despite hearing opinions to the contrary.

Only one thing would be conceivable, and it might explain the matter to me: at the beginning of the events, when I held these discussions with Brandt, a Kastner might have appeared on the scene of negotiations with me as his replacement during his absence, as though offered by him. And I, who then had many negotiations with Kastner every week, for many weeks, in fact no longer knew any other negotiating partner than Kastner. Through him I also had all matters handled concerning Brandt, who was abroad at the time. That is the only way it may be possible; I cannot explain it otherwise.

You came into Budapest in March, on 20 March 1944.

These discussions are supposed to have taken place about a month later; he gives the exact date of his birthday…

I have this to add: that would mean that my thinking about the deal—I mean the … deal, 10,000 trucks for k million Jews—that I would then, and I must say this openly here, take responsibility for it in principle, that is, for its inception too. In other words, I must take responsibility, because at that time I had not yet been summoned to the Reichsführer.

…I said then that I had to take responsibility for this deal myself, since at that time I had not yet been summoned to the Reichsführer, but only much later.

It cannot have been much later, because you began this conversation on 25 April and returned from Berlin about five or six days later…

I may have originated the deal, yes… and then, although I had not yet spoken of it, I went to Berlin. I went to B. (Berlin) every four to six weeks and put this idea to my immediate superior, Müller, who then undoubtedly approached the Reichsführer through Zehe —that is, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service). Undoubtedly approved, because I then came back and demanded 10,000 trucks from them and offered one million Jews in return.

So, to sum up, it is possible that you had the idea of obtaining certain goods for a certain number of Jews, but the specific figure of 10,000 trucks came only after your visit to Berlin?

That even emerges from this book by the enemy.

Yes.

But I mean, the 10,000 trucks were surely intended to arm two divisions.

Now we come to the other matter… The Reichsführer said to me, ‘Motorize the 8th and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions for me…’ Now, however, the following is possible: that the Reichsführer had already known for weeks that such a deal was being worked out, and that when I came to him at the field command post he had me report on it and, with something like fatherly goodwill, said to me, ‘…and do not forget: motorize the 8th and the 22nd for me.’

It is quite possible that the gap in recollection was mine and that, until now, without this help, I believed the Reichsführer had told me all this in one breath. It is even more understandable psychologically now: the Reichsführer had known for weeks that a horse trade was going on in Hungary, and ‘it is possible that I can get vehicles there.’ Now he had this fellow driving the matter forward for him in Hungary, and at the end he said once more, ‘Do not forget, C … motorize the 8th and the 22nd for me.’

That is very probably how it was, and we can cross that out too, since it is essentially the same thing. We do not need to quarrel over calendar dates, because the fact itself is not being denied.

No, but what matters to me is whether there could be any indication that the German deal as such—

as JB [Joel Brand] calls it—did not originate in your mind, or in the mind of anyone in the SS leadership, but perhaps arose from a Jewish suggestion…

Yes, the incentive… that we should have had the idea at all of exchanging Jews for inanimate goods—that came from the Jews, because they made the offers…

Who?

All of them, everyone. Hungary was not the first time, no. It goes back into the Reich, back to Austria, into the Protectorate.

Would you give some details about that?

I could tell you details endlessly.

What matters to me is that here again it was the German Michel who, in his straightforwardness, would never have thought of exchanging human lives for goods.

You have chosen the wrong partner in me, because I am anything but a businessman.

But give me some details about the constant effort—some Jews, through…

I can supply you endlessly with the Compra…. It begins with obtaining money from abroad for Jews to show as proof of means so that they can emigrate. The receiving countries demanded money for the blood they admitted into the country; that is how it begins. And you know what enormous work I had to do to raise the many, many millions of dollars and so on, to enable the many hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate abroad. Each head was multiplied by about 250 dollars; for one million Jews that comes to a good 250,000,000 dollars.

But the Germans did not get that money, no. The Jews had to show it; the Jews received it in their hands and traveled across with it. It was probably the group leader who received it, not the individual Jew. Then the deal goes further: besides handing over this proof-of-means money, the receiving countries also demanded proof of vocational training, whether in a trade or in agriculture. That too was a business, namely for the receiving country.

So I had to establish retraining centers here in trades and agriculture, something already very close to Kerzerl's [?] heart, which I had read about, copied, and quickly put into practice here. Alongside the efforts of the Zionist organizations, which had already allowed a whole number of trade and agricultural retraining centers, especially for Eastern Jews, to languish on a very small scale, I now pushed things ahead, so that locksmiths, joiners, gardeners, farmers, millers, paper-factory workers, and so on were trained here on a wholesale scale. That too is a business.

What more shall I tell you—that Jews, that Jewish emigration was merely a shipment of slaves, well-trained slaves, for the receiving countries? They did not take them for nothing; they were taken advantage of. They did not take them out of charity or pity. No, as far as the foreign countries were concerned, they could have starved and croaked. They had to be useful to them. They had to prove that they could do something and that they would not be a burden to them in the first few months; hence the proof-of-means money. You probably did not expect such confirmation in answer to your question.

No, that is not confirmation in answer to my question either. But it is a point to which we must give the greatest attention later, when we come to discuss the treatment of Jews before the war began. An extremely important point we have never yet discussed. It does not answer my question, because my question only aims at this: whether that ugly stigma of a German initiative, involving the exchange of blood for goods in those dramatic circumstances—whether the idea of a German initiative can be reduced to absurdity, or rather made clear to have been impossible, because it originated in a Jewish initiative.

That is what matters to me. That is why this is no answer to my question: that was a Ver… policy, or the policy of the receiving countries. It was not as though the Jews had come to the Germans and said, ‘Look, you release 10,000 of our people, and in return you get 43 aircraft delivered.’ That occurred in Hungary for the first time.

It had already happened before in Slovakia, at the end of 1942, with Wi.

I deny that… I do not believe it.

[Lengthy back-and-forth]

Perhaps our military intelligence service originated the idea and negotiated foreign currency in this field, which the Security Police later also fished out for its own purposes, just as the Hungarian Gestapo did.

You know that, at the beginning in Hungary, the big industrialists, Weiss, in a separate aircraft, forty-four people in all… directly to Bor… —but in return their property and factories passed into SS ownership?

Yes, I know that. I happen to know this case very precisely. Stf. (Standartenführer) Becher made with Weiss—Weiss is the Hungarian Krupp—with the Weiss consortium, consisting of a whole number of relatives, a kind of gentlemen's agreement. He was allowed to clear out and take millions in foreign currency with him. He was taken by aircraft to a neutral foreign country, his holdings passed into SS administration, and Becher managed and directed the whole thing.

Would you please give your version of the beginning and implementation of this Weiss affair?

I was informed that the Reichsführer agreed to this proposal and that I was not to object to the departure of Weiss and the consortium, since the Reichsführer's order was in place.

Were you informed beforehand?

Certainly, yes. The negotiations themselves were very well known. Once I had received something about the matter in writing, could put it in my files, and could close my files on Weis and the consortium, there were naturally no further objections on my part, because the Reichsführer's order stood above any objections I might have. I was not involved beyond that, because economic transactions were not supposed to concern me. In Hungary there was only one thing that interested me, where I became involved at the outset, and that was the 10,000 trucks.

The economic implementation, the details, never interested me; I never handled them, and I no longer know them today. My permanent deputy, Krumey, will certainly have handled some of the details, just as Krumey handled the details of the Weiss consortium transaction. For, as Security Police, we were involved in the whole affair just as Becher was. But that was no longer my job; it was my case officers' job. I merely signed the final draft at the end, so the matter could go to the Reichsführer and be approved.

So, in other words, you do not believe that anything else was intended beyond this business transaction with the Weiss family?

On our side?

Yes.

Do you know whether this was the first time that Becher had drawn attention to himself in a transaction of this kind?

I first encountered this character Becher at the hotel in Hungary where I was lodged. As soon as I set foot on Hungarian soil, he pushed himself forward, and from then on there was no getting him off my back. I already told you that Müller wanted to have him sent to a concentration camp, but he—he did not get in his way —and so he could not seize him and catch him. I do not know what deals he may have entered into earlier. He undoubtedly had a special influence on the Reichsführer.

That this influence even extended into private and delicate matters: on a trip to the Reichsführer, Becher showed me a very beautiful golden necklace and said it was a necklace the Reichsführer would give to the woman who had borne him a child. It was an illegitimate child, and Becher had obtained the necklace in Hungary, or had had to obtain it. In any case he handed it over to the Reichsführer. It was on the same day that I was awarded the War Merit Cross with Swords by the Reichsführer.

I reason further: if an SS leader is privy to the most intimate bedroom secrets of his highest superior, then naturally such a confidant can speak and negotiate with his chief quite differently from me. I could only give my chief reports on strictly official matters and receive my orders. That also explains why Müller could do nothing against this man. And it explains how Becher could allow himself to say much of what he said.

I have already recounted that, in my presence, before Kastner and his associates—there may have been five or six—and before his own adjutant, formerly the owner of the Hotel Charlton [?] in Pressburg, who served under him as an SS Rottenführer, he said to Kastner in a feigned fit of anger, evidently arranged with Kastner beforehand: ‘…and if you do not get me that, then I will arrange here with Ostf. Eichmann for an additional 10,000 Jews to be gassed…’ I then considered whether to take Becher into protective custody immediately or first report it to Müller. I decided to report it to Müller first.

The word ‘gassing’ alone was enough to take him into protective custody?

Yes, of course. First, it was a secret Reich matter, and second, as a member of the Waffen-SS, Becher had no right to set himself up here, so to speak, as a chief, as a member of the Security Police. Since when could the Waffen-SS arrange for opponents to be gassed? I had always believed that the Waffen-SS had a ‘clean record.’

Do you think that the word ‘gassing’ was ever used in negotiations with Jews, with Jewish leaders, in the heat of the moment or to give an argument more force? By you or by your subordinates?

Yes, I speak only as far as I know. The first time was between Kastner and me. Kastner was the one who said to me, ‘I beg you, shut down the extermination machines in Auschwitz.’ I then said to Kastner—my secretary was present—‘Kastner, I will tell you something. You know as well as I do that neither I nor the Chief of the Security Police has responsibility for the extermination machine in Auschwitz. You know as well as I do that it is a matter for the SS VWHA (Economic and Administrative Main Office). Only the Reichsführer can shut down the extermination machine.

When the 10,000 trucks with trailers are here, the extermination machine in Auschwits will be shut down.’ But not because I want it or because I can set it in motion, but because the Reichsführer has ordered it that way. A million Jews will then be made available. But the Jews could not know that. The extermination machine had long since stopped by then, because when the Reichsführer knew about the deals, which also coincided in time with the whole Weiss consortium and so on, things in Auschwits were shut down altogether anyway.

But now, from the standpoint purely of discipline and Reich security,

you therefore admitted to the enemy what was in fact a secret Reich matter concerning the extermination machine in Auschwitz?

Yes, I admitted it. I had to admit it for the simple reason that I always fought with my Jewish negotiating partners with an open visor. Had I pretended to know nothing before a leading figure like Kastner, he would no longer have considered me a negotiating partner to be taken seriously, for lack of substance. Besides, by that time the entire outside world had already spent months talking, writing, and scribbling about the gassing of Jews in pamphlets, editorials, and other articles.

And in fact, if you drove past only five kilometers from Auschwitz—thousands of vehicles traveled that road every day—and the wind was favorable, you could smell the stench of nails, hair, and burnt flesh and see the smoke rising. Every little child within hundreds of square meters around Auschwitz knew that. It was no longer a secret by then. It was still classified as a secret Reich matter, but by then it was known. And the same was true in the other camps as in Auschwitz, so that at that time, in 1944, I could calmly tell my opponent that this did not depend on me but on the orders of our highest superior.

Do you consider the expression ‘open visor’ appropriate when the Jews stand on one side and the hungry extermination machine on the other? In practice, they were left with only the choice of going into the extermination machine or delivering the trucks, were they not?

‘Open visor’ is a familiar expression of mine. I first used it in 193… with Lowenherz and Rothenberg. By ‘open visor’ I mean the admonitions I gave my Jewish negotiating partners at the beginning of our work together: ‘I speak honestly with you. You can take my word as it is meant, without twisting its meaning or … And I do not want you to lie to me, cheat me, or swindle me. If we tell each other the truth, we accommodate each other best; we save time and manpower.

If we lie to one another, it is bad for you; if I lie to you, you will swindle and cheat me, so I demand the truth.’ That is what I call an open visor, and that is how I negotiated with my Jewish negotiating partners throughout all those years, and it served me well. You can even see circumstantial confirmation in the fact that Brandt, or rather his associates, still trusted my word of honor in 1944. When I allowed a Jew to go abroad and told him that his family would be under my protection, as I also told Brandt, I did not mean as hostages.

No: Jews were being seized, deported, and so on at that time. No, I meant under my protection in the truest sense of the words. While the man could not look after his family and was working abroad to bring in foreign currency for Jews who wanted to emigrate, or wanted to pursue other avenues, nothing was actually to happen to that family. No roundup detachment was to seize it for deportation; it was to be untouchable. When I gave a Jew that assurance, he relied on it, as practice in many cases shows, and not one was disappointed. Word of that got around.

But Mrs. Brandt? She was seized, she was beaten?

By the Hungarians. It is the same as with Mrs. Kastner. The Hungarian Gestapo got wind of the commercial side from the Germans, from their colleagues. Until they found out what the German side was doing—namely, intending to reap material advantages from the question of the Final Solution of the Jewish question—they naturally had to establish the details through interrogations. Take the bastinado of Mrs. Kastner and, as you just told me, Mrs. Brandt too, on the Hungarian side.

On the German side nothing was ever done. My sphere at that time did not extend to the wishes and intentions of the Hungarian Gestapo. You must not forget that Hungary was a sovereign state, and what the Hungarian Gestapo was doing was by no means necessarily known to the German Gestapo, and vice versa. Naturally, each tried to play the other off, outmaneuver it, and sound it out, but it did not necessarily have to obtain the other office's countersignature for its decisions.

Does the name Klaus Mietzer mean anything to you, a captain in Danube–A shipping, who apparently … and also helped Wi when he came to Budapest before him, and also Krumey…?

Would you comment on the general version Brandt gives?

Well, I have not read the book. I must say it is a mixture of fiction and truth, and a large part—I must admit this—may very well have been true. Much of it is in my memory, and much of it, once it is put to me, becomes at least faintly familiar; the matter also sounds psychologically very plausible to me. What remains in the end is the fiction, and that is not really to be held against an author who has not claimed to be giving evidence under oath.

Do you remember the parcel with money and letters from Switzerland?

I do not remember it directly. I remember that Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Clages kept, so to speak, pressing himself on me and always came to see me precisely when it was inconvenient. I often had him turned away, and it is quite possible that that was the case. But I do remember one occasion when Kastner appeared with those suitcases. He handed them over then to that man whose name I could no longer give you. I told you, though, that this was the man who handled intelligence for Geschke, the Wehrmacht's intelligence service. He delivered that foreign currency to him for his work. Clages was just such a beneficiary… For we worked with the Jews to solve the Jewish question; the others used the Jews as a means to an end, to milk them for their own purposes. Everyone milked wherever he could and wherever there was something to be had.

Do you remember any incident with a pistol on the desk and some sarcastic remark on your part?

I never let the weapon out of my possession. There is an old Germanic proverb that was drummed into us: ‘The Germanic man who kept his spear beyond arm's reach would be dishonorable.’ A man in our service has, besides a sense of honor, the instinct for defense and self-preservation. I took off my belt only when I was sitting behind my desk and had placed my pistol in a holder built under the desktop, within reach instead of in my holster; or else I hung my belt behind my chair and had in the built-in rack a second

or a third pistol within reach on the left or right; or in Berlin I kept it within reach in the right-hand drawer. If the former enemy Brandt claims that on such an occasion I said that I had a family of two children, or… that they would never fall victim… Brandt himself said, ‘You will never catch my children.’ Then I must say that this is poetic license, which I forgive the man, but I never said it. Unfortunately, I must admit, I had made no provision at all for my family. I had still made no provision for my family when I went to Alt Aussee; I had made so little provision that I myself did not know what my family was doing during the two years when I let them hear nothing from me.

Only afterward did I learn how my wife had to struggle with the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps). Had I suspected it, and had I not been living in an end-of-the-world mood, in shock, I would have made provision just as neatly as some of the gentlemen of Office V 1 did. And, damn it, I could have done even better: instead of wood and wood wool, I could have had my wife and children wrapped in foreign currency and gold. I would not even have needed to do it myself, and I could have had them sent to the most distant, most neutral of all neutral foreign countries.

This is not pretense or mere wishing; I could have done it. A Kastner, Brandt, Loewenherz, and whatever they are all called would have placed foreign currency and gold for me, with the greatest deference, in whatever country I named, if I had promised them a special favor in return. Everyone would believe that of me. But that was not how it was. As a last gift I gave my wife a briefcase full of groats and half a sack of flour… Then I gave her poison capsules, one for each child and one for my wife too, and told her, ‘When the Russians come, you must bite into them.

When the Americans and the English come, you do not need to.’ That was at the beginning of May or the end of April 1945. When the Americans came, my wife took the poison capsules and threw them into the lake at Alt Aussee. Now that they are no longer necessary, we do not need to take them; now we can go on living, though worse off. That was my only provision. In that respect the Jew Brandt was quite right. Today I must say, on the one hand, unfortunately, because I could have made things easier for my wife and children. On the other hand, I must say—and this is my wife's opinion too—thank God I did not become a swine.

Do you know of any assassination attempts on your life?

I know nothing of any, because I had no enemies among the Jews at that time.

From earlier?

No. I had no enemies among the Jews. I said I fought with an open visor with the brothers. They knew where they stood with me, and they would have gained nothing by going behind my back.

As a demonstration to the world?

The people I dealt with did not think of anything like that. They wanted something from me, just as I wanted something from them. The other people, the likes of Grinspan and the like [?]—these sheikhs, for one thing, had great difficulty getting near me, although I led a completely normal life. For years I ate in the same restaurant

Where was the restaurant?

It was a Bavarian restaurant near the Memorial Church.

You never heard anything about preparations for an assassination attempt?

Nothing, no. I received threatening letters in huge quantities, so in Prague the deputy Reich Protector gave me a special guard outside the house assigned to me as lodging. I also received dozens of threatening letters in Hungary, so Winkelmann stationed a guard of six Order Police men in the house, or even ten. Two sentries always had to patrol, one stood in the doorway, and the rest hung about inside in the hall. They took turns and were relieved every three hours.

What did those threatening letters contain?

I can no longer tell you that today either. The theme was that I was a murderous swine and had to be bumped off, that my days were numbered, that my children would be killed, my wife too, and that if I did not disappear immediately, and so on… And it was only because various things came to K. Frank and later to Winkelmann that they both gave me guards at the house.

Was there never a letter that … your particular attention…?

I never concerned myself with the threatening letters.

Did you have any contact with Ja…?

No.

Have you heard of him—I mean the son, Ja…?

No.

You did not know he was in Budapest at all?

No.

Then there is another matter: Dr. Ladislao Göttesmann?

No.

He was a leader of the … Jews in Hungary?

No.

Then he must have been in the … community?

Yes.

This threat:

?

That kind of expression is not in my vocabulary. I would have to have been born again before I could have used it toward others in negotiations.

But it is true that you would bring the 100,000 Jews to the Spanish border?

Yes, I said that: the Romanian or Spanish border. I was still considering how you could transport a million Jews at all.

Yes, how had you envisaged doing that?

It would have happened very quickly. I would have squeezed the necessary trains out of the Reich Transport Ministry—first the 10,000 trucks—then I would have squeezed the trains out of the Reich Transport Ministry and, without any fuss, taken some of the Jews directly from Hungary the few kilometers to the Romanian border, and sent some from the concentration camps in Reich territory across the Reich and through France. Had they not reached Spain, I would still have delivered them in France, where international Jewry could have taken them over. In that case, that would have been the ‘Spanish border’ as far as I was concerned.

Now I would like to raise another matter that happened in Constantinople: a conversation between Bandi Grosch, Prosch, and Brandt?

And Brandt was already on tenterhooks then, because he could not get anywhere with the Jews, while the Turks wanted somehow to arrest him and would not let him return to Germany? Now this Grosz says to Brandt:

What do you have to say to that, from your own knowledge?

People used in intelligence work—whether paid or unpaid is of secondary importance, although the paid branch is even more inclined to it—tend to overestimate themselves. That is an old piece of wisdom. They have no idea of the sober, bone-dry daily routine of intelligence-service employees. They are often adventurers who try to dress up their adventurism in idealistic motives, but also ruthless fellows who do it only for filthy lucre. These words come to mind when I picture Grosz. I imagine further that Grosz may have inspired Brandt in this, after ten years had passed and he would now see some things differently—and in fact could see them differently—because he had read too much about the Reichsführer's attempts to enter into talks.

In any case, at the time the man departed, which must have been in April or May—before the Reichsführer was Reich Interior Minister, before the assassination attempt on the Führer—at that time the Reichsführer had not yet thought of making a pact with the enemy to launch a separate initiative. These are things that only a subordinate mind like Brandt's or Grosz's could subsequently have made up to fill lines, or cobbled together from other tomes, to fill their book. It is bullshit.

Kastner speaks about a proposal of yours, on 3 June 1944:

You had spoken with him for hours.

[Eichmann]

Wait a moment, please—what was this whole matter about?

What do you say to that?

So these are Romanian Jews?

Yes.

The ones who were to come to Hungary, whom you did not want there?

Yes.

No, he had arranged it with Faerensie.

Everything you have read to me is a pack of stinking lies. For not only in Hungary, but in none of these cases—perhaps in Poland, where I was not in charge—in none of the Western cases do I know of anything even resembling a so-called conspiracy, including a Zionist one. Nor am I aware, nor am I aware, that such a course would have seemed expedient to me. Nor am I aware that, after I was in Hungary, my Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) could negotiate on his own authority with the people assigned to me as liaison officers. Nor am I aware that my subordinates could tell me whether, or to what extent, my dearly beloved friend Dr. L. E.—who opened his innermost self to me, just as I did to him—that I should have had to learn of such an impulse on my friend's part from one of my captains. Lies—stinking lies! To what end, I ask?

The point was that at this time, that is, on 13 July, Brandt is sitting in Constantinople and cannot get any further, so to speak, and Kastner says to him: ‘If you now start deporting the people from the provinces, shipping them to Auschwits, the Jewish delegates in Constantinople will no longer believe anything you say.’ And you then refuse to accept this point of view, though again not entirely, because he then demands 200 families. You

[Eichmann]

are willing to give him 200 people, and so on, and so on.

From Clausenburg? Yes, but Clausenburg is in Romania? They wanted somehow to keep those people in Budapest. We did do that: kept Hungarian Jews in Hungary, but never Romanian Jews in Hungary. Madness! I cannot bring all the Jews from Romania to Hungary when I did it the other way round: Jews from Hungary to Romania for illegal emigration. Some people also bolted, some members of the Council of Elders from Budapest, and I then said: ‘Why investigate? They are gone.’ The Jewish Council of Elders came to me with long faces, told me they had bolted, and expected their punishment.

They expected collective punishment?

It happened like this: one day a Jewish delegation appeared before me and told me that a few days earlier some prominent members of the Jewish Council of Elders of Budapest had bolted via Romania. There was also a man with red hair among them. They reported this fact to me in a depressed mood and evidently expected nothing other than—as a mission of honor (Ehrenmission)—the famous fit of rage, collective punishment, and so on. And I said: ‘Gentlemen, those who have bolted have bolted. They are gone; there is nothing to be done about it. One more or less makes no difference to me at all. If they are lucky and get across the border, let them keep going.’ And that was the end of the matter.

They were probably bewildered by my decision, as Brandt repeatedly says they were bewildered by some of the so-called decisions I had made and could not make sense of them. But such decisions were, in a way, diabolically devised, demanding in criminal-investigation terms [?], so that these people never knew where they stood with me at any given moment. The Jew never knew how to play me. Never. Kastner, Loewenherz, and Eppstein knew, because when people spoke with me in hundreds of negotiations, they knew me. The newcomer could not know me; he never knew where he stood. He accepted the truth and told the truth, and so I saw through this fellow faster than they ever suspected.

Do you remember when this incident with the Jewish Council of Elders took place?

It was around the time of the great deportations from Hungary; it may also have been around midsummer 1944.

Did you not fear that a few prominent Jews escaping without punishment might encourage many others to do the same?

No more than a few could escape me at all, because they were constantly under control. They had to cross the border away from the official crossing points, and only a few could get through there at a time.

Are you aware that, to obtain foreign currency for (probably voluntary) recruitment into the Waffen-SS in Hungary, exit permits for Slovak Jews were obtained for 30 million pengő?

No.

Specifically, the point was to obtain this foreign currency to pay family support for these Waffen-SS men, that is, so as not to burden the Reich.

I never heard anything about that. Perhaps these attempts to obtain the foreign currency also went through Stf. (Standartenführer) Becher, because what he did in detail is beyond my knowledge.

So you do not know about this matter; neither the Security Police nor the Security Service was ever brought in?

I know nothing at all about it. It may be that Stf. (Standartenführer) Becher undertook something in conjunction with Geschke. But, as I said, that may be so… I have already said in general that there was a certain milk cow there, which I presented through Kastner, and that over time every possible office tried to milk that cow, including the Hungarian secret state police.

Did the Hungarians have any agreements, then? Of a financial kind.

Not agreements. But I told you: after the head of the Hungarian state police had shown such great mistrust toward us, and I had kept smoothing it over through State Secretary L. E., the conduct of the head of the Hungarian Gestapo and his closest associates only became somewhat friendlier again after the Hungarian Gestapo had also tapped Kastner financially. For I know that K. (Kastner) also made his deliveries to the Hungarian Gestapo.

Do you think you would have been involved if an operation of that kind had been entrusted with such a …?

If Stf. (Standartenführer) Becher initiated it, I did not necessarily have to be involved, because Becher had special instructions and special powers from the Reichsführer-SS. I know that for certain, because I was with Becher at the Reichsführer's several times.

So you do not know about it, no—not even that Jews were called upon to equip the Hungarian SS, or rather ethnic Germans from Hungary who were taken into the SS?

I know that Becher initiated a great many economic or financial agreements with Dr. K. to provide goods of some kind for the 8th and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions in particular, and beyond that for the SS in general. What do I know? But what kinds of goods these were in detail, I do not know; I never concerned myself with that. Just as we established that he ran the Csepel affair more or less as a trustee: for a time he even called himself General Director of the Weiss Works.

Production continued, of course, and it is obvious that Becher had substantial quantities of things supplied to the SS, insofar as they could be diverted despite the state authorities' oversight. He certainly did not do it on his own initiative, for the power involved was far too great at those enormous discussions [?]—it is the Hungarian club. This also explains why Becher was so often summoned to the Reichsführer, and these economic matters were negotiated there. These economic

matters never interested me, and I had nothing to do with them either. It was enough for me to know: all right, Becher has an order from the Reichsführer-SS to pursue his economic aims at the Jews' expense. That made Becher untouchable from the state-police standpoint, because I knew he was acting on higher orders, and specifically on orders that I absolutely had to respect and acknowledge, because the man giving them was also almost my highest superior.

Did Dr. Kastner not speak to you about being tapped financially too much by other offices?

K. (Kastner) did not complain about it; he merely hinted at it to me. At first he reported everything to me out of fear, perhaps from fear that I might become jealous or suspicious if he negotiated with all sorts of people here and established contacts. He assumed that I had him watched at every step, which I did not do at all. I did not have him watched for a single hour. Then he reported to me—as I have already said—someone came with a suitcase and said: ‘Yes, I have to deliver this there now, because the gentlemen have their needs too and have said they now need this and that.’

Then I said to him: ‘Kastner, first and foremost this concerns the affairs of the Jews, the Jewish question in Hungary. If you can and want to do other things beyond that, it is all the same to me. Just do not pull any crooked tricks.’ I warned K. (Kastner) several times in that way, but he was far too cautious to do things here that were really crooked. So I really do not believe it, and I never once heard in Hungary that a single one had personally enriched himself from it, not a single one of our people.

I never heard anything about it, and one would have heard of such things where so many offices were so intricately interlocked and connected, where these offices also fought one another and tore one another apart in the end. But I never heard anything. Perhaps that was also why I did not: I was like an operations beet (Betriebsrübe) in Hungary. People attributed far more powers and suspicion to me in Hungary than I actually had. I had no time for it, and so everyone thought he was being watched. Perhaps it was also this fear that held them back.

Can you no longer remember any concrete financial demands that you knew about from Kastner, demands made on him from that side?

I know that he gave foreign currency to Clages, from the EDS office in Hungary; to Becher too, of course. I have already mentioned the Hungarian Gestapo. You ask me about the German Abwehr (military intelligence): I believe the German Abwehr also drew something from it in some way. I do not know that; it was quite possible. And why should they not have drawn something from it too, when they saw that this milk cow yielded foreign currency,

They would have been foolish not to take advantage of this situation and opportunity. Everyone who needed something lived off it, lived off the Jews' efforts here to be of service to the Hungarian and German offices, especially since everyone had probably promised them something in one way or another. I also knew, however, that the Germans had promised a great deal, so in a written or oral report I had once again trotted out my old refrain, which I had had to repeat over and over since '38: the intervention of third parties on behalf of Jews in the territory where, under the Reichsführer-SS's order, Jews were to be dealt with in accordance with the solution.

In Vienna, for example, the National Socialist legal professionals pushed their way forward to represent Jews legally before the authorities, somehow to make exemptions available to them through their connections and relations with German authorities, and of course they charged very high fees. When the warnings proved fruitless—I had to issue warnings, because I was getting such a jumble of directives that the Reichsführer-SS's directives, the standard rule for all cases, could scarcely be applied anymore.

Both the case officers at the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna and my case officers at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration no longer knew at all how to treat each individual Jew, or which directives they were to follow. So I summoned the head of the NS Legal Professionals' Association in Vienna. After I had discussed the matter with the former chief, Dr. Stahlecker, and he had surely obtained the appropriate instructions in Berlin, I informed him that henceforth, on Berlin's instructions, any legal professional caught intervening on behalf of Jews was to be taken immediately into protective custody. That stopped it abruptly.

I had, however, incurred the enmity of almost all Vienna's lawyers. My very good friend, who had also agreed to work at my office—and did so, working there for several years—Dr. Jakowich, who later rose to Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer), told me that the lawyers in Vienna had been scrutinizing and investigating my life story in the minutest detail, virtually from my birth to the day of this prohibition, hoping somehow to find a dark spot so that they could get me removed from Vienna. They did not succeed. I was very amused by it at the time; they did not succeed, however hard they undoubtedly tried. Things settled down again, too, because I had no personal enmity with any of the gentlemen.

That was how it was in virtually all territories where the Jewish question was to be brought to a solution, whether the Old Reich, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, or the various areas of Europe we controlled and influenced. Everywhere there was a struggle against intervention. Even the Rechtsmarschall and Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, H. Goering, repeatedly intervened personally for Jews and obtained exemptions, which then had to be granted because he always claimed them in his capacity as Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan. There was nothing to be done about that. The churches of both confessions, in particular

however, those of the Protestant confession also intervened continually for him. In particular, the present Provost in Berlin, Pastor Grüber, despite repeated State Police warnings—which I also gave him myself, in a friendly manner—did not desist and repeatedly intervened with the local offices on behalf of Jews. He was also praised after the war for his intervention; I read it myself once, either in a religious column or in a newspaper. I only want to answer your question: it was not just Hungary; it was everywhere. Why should it have been different in Hungary from the way it had already been everywhere else?

I did have to fight against it, but not because I was so anxious to make sure not a single Jew escaped. The Hungarian State Secretary Dr. LE, for example, had that anxiety. In his idealism he went so far as to fight over every individual Jew, and when he heard of intervention on the Hungarian side, Dr. LE acted with ruthless severity. The individual Jew was not the issue here; he could quite well have his obligations [?]. What mattered to me was the principle: the directives already established were so complicated and ramified, scarcely comprehensible to the case officers, that they should not be made still more complicated, making practical work even harder and finally impossible.

Do you remember any intervention in Hungary on the part of the Catholic Church?

The Catholic Church in Hungary did not intervene with the German offices. The Catholic Church in general intervened little on behalf of the Jews; those who intervened were the Protestants faithful to their confession. No… A cardinal has with Ferenczy… no.

No, I had official dealings with only one bishop. He is now the … of the diplomatic corps in Bonn, the then bishop and permanent managing director of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, Bishop Muench. He came to my office perhaps once or twice a month. His chancellery arranged the time with my anteroom, and I almost always, I believe, sent an Ustf. (Untersturmführer) to meet him at my guard post. The Untersturmführer then had to give him an escort of honor from the guard post to my office. There Bishop Muench presented his requests, noted on a small slip of paper. Either I could grant the requests, or I had to refuse them, or I promised to inquire whether and to what extent anything at all could be done. These questions were then deferred until the next meeting.

Catholic bishop?

No, that was in Berlin, not in Hungary. I said it was the only time I had dealings with a Catholic bishop who held such a high position within the Roman Catholic Church, namely as permanent managing director of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, which met, so to speak, in permanent session. It was the only body that intervened, but that is not well put. Bishop Muench did not actually intervene; he made inquiries, including inquiries on behalf of cardinals. He was

in a sense, commissioned as managing director of the … Bishops' Conference. When the various cardinals and German church leaders had points that required clarification, they turned to the Fulda Bishops' Conference and its managing director, whose task was then to deal with the matter appropriately with the Reich authorities.

Was there an offer from the Slovak government to deport the Jews from Slovakia?

Yes, of course. That was always the prerequisite for us to be able to work at all. I will briefly describe how something like this was set in motion. A country was occupied, or a protection treaty was made, as in this case with Slovakia.

[Typed as notes in the transcript: Slovakia not occupied, but on friendly terms, a protection treaty.]

It is claimed that you proceeded especially cautiously in this case?

Yes, that is true. We had to proceed just as cautiously in France. The Reich government also assigned German foreign-service personnel there—to Slovakia, for example, and to France as well. Only, in Pressburg, for example, we in the Security Police had placed an adviser for Jewish questions at the disposal of the foreign service, that is, the envoy; in this case, Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) …. They were therefore working within the German envoy's sphere in Pressburg.

In Paris we had two foreign-service posts; we also had a commander of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service) in Paris. But since my own organization came first, I did not, of course, appoint an adviser for Jewish questions in Paris, say to …—ab…—but instead had one of my officers, in this case Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Dannecker, installed as a desk officer in the office of the commander of the Security Police and the Security Service.

Now let us return to Slovakia.

The first task of such an adviser for Jewish questions, as we also had in Romania, for example—he was also called an adviser for Jewish questions—was to work through the envoy, who for his part…

Was the adviser subordinate to the political attaché?

No. He was directly and immediately subordinate to Berlin and to the envoy. Reports went to the envoy and Berlin, not—what he reported to me in Berlin, that is, to my office, the Secret State Police, had to have been stamped or countersigned by the envoy. That did not interest us at all. His first task was to secure, through the envoy, that in this case the Slovak government approached the German envoy with a request to take over Jews of Slovak citizenship and of other citizenships, insofar as they fell within the Reichsführer-SS's regulations.

Until such a request existed, nothing at all could be done on the German side. Moreover, we could not provide the personnel for registration; that country had to provide the personnel as well. In this case Slovak … agencies had to gather the Jews together and carry out the loading. Once the transport train was loaded, German Order Police personnel boarded it, normally 24 to 30 men, and escorted the transport to the destination station named to me by the WEHA or, at the beginning, by the Chief of the Security Police. But before such transports could be carried out, it was necessary that

the request from the respective government to the German government had been submitted. Naturally, the Foreign Office had to give it its blessing; naturally, the Reichsführer-SS had to give it his blessing. Before practical action began, that government also had to ensure that the relevant legislation was enacted in that country, following as closely as possible the legislation long approved [?] in the Reich. That applied to Hungary too, because without a legal basis the people in the individual countries could do nothing. The group of people concerned also had to be precisely defined: whom the Slovak side wanted to deport.

Certainly the government, like all governments except the Hungarian government, had its special cases [?] among the Jews—protégés [?], for one thing; for another, out of consideration for the churches… In Slovakia especially this was very difficult. The head of state, Tisso, to whom I had to pay a visit on one occasion, told me himself that in all cases where one party belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, no removal or handover was to be considered. He also gave his interior minister very strict instructions on this point. Tisso had himself been a clergyman, so it is understandable that he took particular care of this group of people, whereas the other groups were apparently rather a matter of indifference to him.

And you had to comply absolutely with such wishes of Tisso?

Yes, of course.

And there were no side measures either? It was also in keeping with the wishes of the Reichsführer-SS and …?

No, no. Why should we endanger the whole thing over a few small remaining groups? It was not at all in the interest of my leadership.

Did the Slovak offer to transport the Jews out of Slovakia come about only under pressure, or did the Slovaks offer it themselves?

I know nothing about the German envoy's efforts to obtain agreement here; that was the Foreign Office's business. But I can assert, not merely on feeling but on circumstantial evidence, that this request to take over Jews of Slovak citizenship certainly did not come about under pressure. I dealt twice with the Slovak interior minister, Mach [?], and both times I had the impression that Mach showed the greatest interest, the greatest readiness, and that readiness to proceed with the greatest speed and thoroughness—indeed, that he could scarcely wait for Slovakia to become free of Jews. Having seen those efforts by the responsible Slovak official, one cannot speak of pressure at all.

And there is also the fact that they transferred large contingents of Jews of Slovak citizenship to the Germans with astonishing speed. Only toward the end did they create some difficulties. Why, I know… perhaps some Reich-security matter [?] had occurred to one or another of them, or someone had become frightened of his own great boldness. In any case, I know that the Foreign Office—Wisliceny—had great difficulties with Slovakia for a time in obtaining further transports, not because the Slovak government had withdrawn its willingness (typescript garbled here), but because there were local difficulties or local difficulties were being created.

Can you give some numerical indication of the Jewish population in Slovakia, how large it may have been?

I cannot say exactly. I can give you a number, but I ask you to look it up in the relevant literature published after the war. I would say that … transported some 40,000 to 45,000 Jews out of Slovakia. That figure is running through my head.

The figures given are 60,000, and 30,000 of those disappeared, that is, were transported away.

The transportation of Jews out of Slovakia—was that roughly in October 1944?

I would say somewhat earlier. October 1944, possibly. In any case, the matter arose during the Hungarian affair… No, the difficulties arose somewhat earlier. Wisliceny left Slovakia for Hungary in March 1944. He did return to Pressburg a few times to settle various matters there, but these were not accompanied by any official success, and I do not know what he had to settle there. They were official matters in any case. No, the difficulties went back much further, because once I had to go to Pressburg to iron out such a difficulty and set the matter straight again with Mach. We already had difficulties in 1942. The negotiations mentioned here between Mach and me also took place in 1942.

On the very day the attempt on Heydrich was made, I had dealings with Mach. That is why I still remember the date so exactly, because Mach was the first to bring me the news. We were bowling after dinner when an orderly of the interior minister arrived with the news that an attempt had been made on Heydrich and that… He had instructed his representative in Prague to report to him every half hour, so every half hour I received word from Mach about how the affair with Heydrich was unfolding and how it was progressing. I then broke off my official trip and drove to Prague that same night.

Did you see Heydrich again at that time? After the attempt?

No, not anymore.

Is it true that, before or after October 1944, you pressed ahead with deporting Jews, although negotiations had been taking place between the Reichsführer-SS and the delegation …, as a result of which the Final Solution of the Jewish question was …?

In October 1944? That is rubbish. First, if the Reichsführer-SS had issued a stop order and I had dared to ignore it, then, if it came to it, the Reichsführer-SS would have dealt with me so terribly that little would have been left of me. Only an idiot could believe that an Ostf., snooping around somewhere out there or sitting behind a desk in the central authority, could dare to … an order of the Reichsführer-SS into its opposite.

Were Jews still deported from Slovakia in or after October 1944?

I would deny that most emphatically, because even from Hungary no more Jews were being transported at that time. At most, the local offices of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service) may have transported a few small groups of Jews on their own initiative, groups that could not remotely carry any numerical weight—unless it was in partisan-infested territory; Slovakia was indeed s…

partisan-infested, so that small groups had formed in the course of the partisan activity and they had still transported them away… But that is beyond my knowledge.

But there is said to have been a large Slovak partisan uprising in October or September 1944. Is that what is being referred to here?

That was perhaps in the course of suppressing this partisan uprising? Yes, that is possible… But that no longer has anything to do with deportation. That was already combating bands (Bandenbekämpfung); it was no longer a preventive measure. I was acting preventively, to prevent bands from forming, after the experiences in Warsaw. That was also the reason for the speed in Hungary: there was fear that we would lose control in the eastern counties. Our order was to comb Hungary from east to west. In Slovakia too—not at the beginning, but later—people were taken out for preventive reasons, to make it harder for such bands to form. But where it came to such things in Slovakia, I no longer had jurisdiction, because matters had already moved from prevention to active combat.

When army units captured large numbers of Jewish prisoners in an area where bands were being combated, were these prisoners eventually handed over to your office because they were Jews?

No. They were not treated that way because they were Jews, but because they were also partisans; they were treated alike, wholesale. That was no longer of any interest.

[prolonged overlapping talk]

Various publications expressly point out that within the SS and the persecution of the Jews there were two groups. One group was Himmler together with Schellenberg; the others were those who wanted some sort of compromise solution. Then there was the other group: you, Müller, and Kaltenbrunner…

That is utter nonsense. I must admit there were two groups within the SS; that is true—or, if you like, even three groups. Within the Security Police there was …, Müller, the Chief of the Security Police, Heydrich, later Kaltenbrunner, and the Reichsführer-SS. The second group really consisted only of Schellenberg. To what extent Schellenberg may have devised another solution was never said to me. I never heard anything about it, or to what extent he used Jews for his own intelligence work.

He used them extensively for intelligence work, and we put no difficulties in his way. The third group were the so-called salon officers of the SS, who, so to speak, put their hands into white … gloves and wanted to know nothing about the matter. Wolff, for example, was one of them. I once clashed with him myself, and so badly that the matter went up to the Reichsführer-SS, because I wanted to challenge Wolff to a duel, but permission was not granted.

Why did you want to challenge him?

Because he bawled me out on the telephone, although I was right. In an individual case I had acted exactly according to the Reichsführer-SS’s regulations, and he wanted an exemption for this Jew, but there was absolutely no way to make that exemption possible.

Because there was no provision readily available under which this case could qualify for an exemption. Of course, I would gladly have granted it on my own initiative, because with such a mass the individual no longer plays any role. But I could not do it in front of my lawyers, who had to monitor these provisions most scrupulously; I could not do it in front of the Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) I had in the field, who also had to observe them. If I, at the central authority, had casually and arbitrarily made an exception not provided for by the Reichsführer-SS's regulations, that decision would have spread like an avalanche.

Within a very short time, supported by the many German offices already lying in wait and trying to intervene, supported by the efforts of Jewry itself, I would have had an avalanche of difficulties. It would have become a pigsty, and no one would have been able to make sense of it anymore; no one would have known what was what. The result could even have been that Jews were deported who, under the general regulations, were not allowed to be deported at all.

Once they had been deported, such deportations could have led to further repercussions, to foreign-policy complications, to difficulties for the Reich leadership, as had happened a few times—but here on an overall scale. The whole thing would have blown up and been a disgrace of the greatest order, not for me but for the Reich's central authorities. So I had to oppose it in this case. When he said to me, “…,” I said, “Yes, I know that, Obergruppenführer, but I must point out that you are connected to the Secret State Police and are speaking to a desk officer of the Secret Police Office, Ostf. Eichmann.”

When was that?

That must have been around 1943.

Were Jews deported from Romania by the Germans?

Yes. In Romania too, with the envoy Killinger, SA-Obergruppenführer Killinger, I had my Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Richter. Here, unlike in other countries, it was Richter's—or Riter's —sole task, after the Romanian government… An adviser for Jewish questions was requested there, from below, or rather the Foreign Office asked the Security Police to dispatch an adviser for Jewish questions to its envoy Killinger in Bucharest. That was Richters. His task was to tell the envoy Killinger all this, to give him directives on how things were done in other countries under the Reichsführer-SS's order. No Jew was taken over from Romania on the German side. The treatment of the Jews in Romania was carried out exclusively in Romania or on Romanian sovereign territory by the Romanian side itself, without help, without support from German offices.

In the Romanian case, was only one adviser appointed on the German side?

Yes.

An adviser for the German envoy, not for the Romanian government?

That was at the German envoy's discretion, whether and to what extent he sent Richter himself to the Romanian offices. As far as I can still recall, Richter, who regularly came to Berlin to report, repeatedly told me that although he had an excellent relationship with his envoy, the envoy

Killinger would conduct virtually all negotiations with the Romanian offices himself. By contrast, Wi…, who held the same post as Richter in Bucharest, was sent by L… to all sorts of offices of the Slovak government, and negotiations were conducted personally only when they were of fundamental importance. Whereas, as I have just said, Killinger largely reserved all these matters to himself and conducted the negotiations with the Romanian offices himself.

So Germany's involvement in the Jewish question in Romania was practically limited to a single person?

The single person, the adviser for Jewish questions, was subordinate to the German envoy in Bucharest. Here too his task was less to advise the Romanian government than to advise the German envoy.

Is it true that from March to May 1943 you carried out deportations of Jews from Macedonia, despite reports from your staff of a typhus epidemic?

I cannot imagine that at all. Wi… Wi had nothing at all to do in Athens. In Athens I had Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) Brunner, or Burghardt, or Bei…. Originally, I believe, I had Burghardt down there, and they then sent Brunner to support him. Jews were deported from Greece into Reich territory, if I was told correctly [?]… On one occasion the following happened: an epidemic was faked, and they wanted to use the epidemic to prevent the deportation. This was reported to me. I had it investigated, and then deportation went ahead regardless of whether there was an alleged epidemic or not.

Had there been no deportation, I would suddenly have had epidemics of every kind in every country, and I would have received no more. So it is entirely possible that this case, which has now dimly come back to me from my subconscious, may have taken place in Greece. That is possible. But in any case, I did not learn that typhus broke out in the camps where the allegedly typhus-infected transports arrived. Nor can one counter that these Jews were immediately consigned to physical annihilation, because, as far as I can recall, there were repeatedly young [?] nationals in every corner, so that these people were kept alive and were affected neither by typhus nor by physical annihilation.

Who gave you the information that a typhus epidemic was occurring?

Whenever difficulties or dangers of any kind arose, that was the task of the man assigned by the Gestapo office to the individual districts. He received the information either from the Jews themselves, from the respective Jewish bodies, or from the German offices in the countries concerned.

Is it possible that Wi… told you that?

I cannot believe that. What did Wi… have to do in Greece?

What role did the Italians play with regard to the Jews in Greece?

Is it true that the Italians gave the Jews considerable protection?

Did that go so far that many Italian officers married Greek Jewish women in order to bring them to Italy?

Why should it have been different in Greece from the other countries?

Why should the Italians in Greece have given the Jews greater protection and intervened in greater numbers than other agencies and other forces did in other countries? It is in the nature of things that Italian interests again came to the fore at the Jews' expense and were exploited. All sorts of things took place at the Jews' expense: partly economic matters, intelligence activities of every conceivable kind, and many attempts at uprisings, that is, partisan activities. The Jew was a welcome object for all sorts of agencies to use to advance their own intentions. I cannot specifically recall whether the efforts on the Italian side in Greece may have been particularly strong. I would confine myself to saying: why should it not have been different there, as it was in the other countries?

It is claimed that the Italian army distinguished itself especially by protecting the Jews in its occupation areas, that is, in Greece and southern France?

As far as the Jews in southern France are concerned, I can say that is entirely untrue. It cannot be true, because I myself traveled through southern France and inspected the State Police outposts there, or rather visited the offices of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service). I could perceive no Italian influence there in any way, in no way whatsoever.

[overlapping talk]

Did you never hear that Italian officers entered sham marriages with Jewish women and took them abroad in large numbers?

In large numbers, no. It was common practice everywhere for Jewish women to seek to marry non-Jews too. Exorbitant sums were paid for such sham marriages, and as a rule they divorced again soon afterward, once one party was safe. That was known everywhere. Here too I must say that I do not remember cases in such large numbers that they acquired fundamental significance. It would not really have been practicable, either. If something took on very large proportions, it would have been stopped.

Do you know nothing about these actions?

Nothing. I have never seen a report complaining about them. I told you, there may always have been individual cases. They did not acquire fundamental significance; otherwise they would have been recorded.

How many individual cases would you estimate there were?

They can scarcely be estimated; they were constantly being found. But, as I said, what we understood by individual cases—and something is always called an individual case when it has no fundamental significance—was that these individual cases were not capable of interfering with the measures even slightly. That is what is called an individual case, so a numerical comparison is unnecessary. If the individual cases are so few that they cannot interfere with the measures, they really are not noteworthy and perhaps not even worth recording and registering.

You would certainly have been informed if…

Certainly. The individual advisers for Jewish questions and the other offices had instructions to press the solution forward with all their might. That was also the Reichsführer-SS's order. They tried to point out as many difficulties as possible, to make clear what enormous forces they had to struggle with and how difficult their work was in the area to which they had been sent, and thereby already to …. That is a human weakness we found everywhere.

Just as a troop officer submitted accounts of his battles in a form that particularly emphasized their harshness and difficulty, so too the members of the Security Police and the SD (Security Service), when they were, so to speak, put at the front, recorded all their difficulties in a similar form. They did so to provide cover for themselves, to avoid any danger of being suspected of colluding with some side whose aim was to torpedo these measures. They knew that all sorts of offices were working against their efforts and that there was a very great danger that the men stationed out there might be bribed or influenced in their thinking, and so on. Just to avoid this danger, these men reported all the difficulties as a precaution. Is that clear?

As for the groups that existed, there are said to have been hard-line and less hard-line ones.

Nonsense—to claim that the Reichsführer-SS stood in another camp, perhaps less hard-line or even more hard-line than the Chief of the Security Police or the head of Office IV, Müller, or in a different camp from me, the case officer. Or, to put it another way, that I stood in a different camp from my chief: my chief would hardly have taken his direction from me; I had to take mine from him. It was a united phalanx, from me, the little case officer who received his orders and faithfully carried them out, up to the Reichsführer-SS, my highest superior in this field.

Goebels belonged to that circle too, and then the Führer; one could go further and say that some Gauleiter also belonged to it. Apart from exceptions that I reserve, this B? phalanx was united. There were not very many people in it. Then came the second phalanx, which also wanted to do these things, but asserted its exceptions and wanted the exemption provisions expanded. The Reichsführer-SS did not expand them, and I could not act on them either, since the … were entirely opposed.

Those were our … opponents, beginning with the religious denominations. I would not, however, count the … among them wholesale and across the board, because I knew of positions taken by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church who would at least have tried to lodge their veto. Bishop Muench, for example, never even raised the question of whether the deportations could be stopped—never. With Muench it was generally a matter of individual cases, and usually mixed marriages between Jews and Catholics and the children of those marriages, and so on.

[Supplementary question to check accuracy.]

Brandt says that in May 1944 he was introduced by Ostf. Groseier to the SS commandant in Vienna, Adolf Ebert.

He was not the commandant; he was the permanent deputy of the—of the Vienna headquarters. The head was SS-Brigadeführer Hans Huber; his deputy at that time was Dr. Rudolf Mildner.

Oberstf. Ebner was sentenced to death for certain remarks a few months before the end of the war. That was postponed, and after the war he was sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude.

I must say the following about that. Ebner was a personal friend of mine. Ebner was an unbelievably good-natured, soft-hearted man. All harshness was repugnant to his soul, and he personally suffered under every harsh measure he had to order. Once, passing through Vienna, I visited my friend Ebner, as I always did, and he told me that the actor Hans Moser… And Ebner told me—I knew his … attitude—we had, in a sense, sought and found each other. For what I said to Ogf.

(Obergruppenführer) Müller in a private circle on the occasion of the parade on the Ch. d. L'E. (Champs-Élysées), namely that I feared we would lose the war, at the time when we had just defeated France, and brought on myself the logical [?] rebuke from… A matter that Ogf. (Obergruppenführer) Müller later settled privately in his apartment. I was thinking along virtually the same lines as Ebner. Only, when I expressed these thoughts, I expressed them to my superior, or to my equals, or to a few of the SS officers directly under me who were very devoted to me and whom I trusted.

It was not criticism here either; it was concern for the Reich. Good Ebner said exactly the same things as I did. The difference was that Ebner had a nice little circle that also included people who did not belong to the Security Police. I myself, while passing through Vienna, was once invited with Ebner to one such nice little evening, ladies and gentlemen. It was a sort of salon. I do not know who started this little salon; certainly not Ebner. A wholesale grocer? A very wealthy man? Politics was discussed there too, salon politics, and harmless politics at that.

Somehow it may have come out; the trial went ahead, and Ebner was sentenced to death. It was a few months before the end of the war. When I heard that, I ran in horror to Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller and said to him, “Is it possible? Is it true? Can it be true? Ebner is my best friend, after all, and so on. May I visit him?” I was not given permission. But Müller told me then, “Well, Eichmann, calm down. It will not be quite that bad.” I spoke up for Ebner with all my might and praised everything, and so on. I did not need to exaggerate, because E. (Ebner) was to me

praiseworthy. In any case, it was an insane mistake—a man like Ir. Ebner, who was a police officer… It was wrong to entrust him with combating ideological opponents.

Is it known who brought the complaint against him?

It was not the large circles; it was a very small circle, a doctor, said to be a friend of his, a truly tiny circle, and the remarks were really prompted by concern. Otherwise neither Dr. Mildner nor Huber would have interceded for him. They were the main ones who interceded for him. I said the same thing to the Grpf. (Gruppenführer), that in E.'s (Ebner's) case concern alone had been the motive… After the war, the death sentence hanging over him saved him. He is free today.

…what was your relationship in Hungary with your colleagues Krumey and Wi.?

I said that once before, when I was told, among other things, that both had had a strained relationship with me. There can be no question of a strained relationship. I was on familiar terms with both; both were friends whom I addressed with the familiar “you” du. Wi and I have known each other since the early days of service in the SD (Security Service), since 1934. We both had one teacher and master, Professor Schwarz. Wi had once been my superior for more than a year, in 1936/37. Later, when I took over the section in the Secret State Police, Wi asked me to have him transferred to me. I made the proposal to Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller, and he had him transferred.

Only friendship has ever bound me to Wi. There was never a word of mutual criticism, never even the slightest feeling of mutual distrust, so I was all the more astonished to be asked such a question at all. Exactly the same applies to my personal relationship with Krumey. I had known Krumey for years before he was appointed my permanent deputy in Budapest, through his position as office head for the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood in Lippmannstadt. Krumey himself asked to go with me to Hungary, and he himself wanted me to have him appointed my permanent deputy and obtain permission from the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service.

I did that. As an office head long capable of working independently and thinking independently, Krumey was naturally most welcome to me for practical reasons. Could I have found a better permanent deputy than a man who had been accustomed for years to lead and administer offices independently? My men like Wi, Burger, Brunner, Richter, and all the others could not do that. They were accustomed to receiving detailed orders and presenting those detailed orders in whatever form seemed suitable to them, helping to get them presented.

But not Wi. He worked independently too, did he not?

But through his many years as an adviser for Jewish questions, Wi had had to give up much of the practice of working independently, because he had too many superiors. One was me, as section head, and the other was his envoy. When a man has been accustomed for years to receive every order and then break it down into the smallest details, he has lost much of his independence, of his professional courage. One could say the same of all officials, or rather all section heads, in Office IV, and it is true. I could only administer a section independently, head my section independently, and even that only because, first, I had my orders individually in writing in the form of police decrees and laws, and I had to act accordingly. When doubtful cases or questions arose, the official channel was extraordinarily short, to my superior Müller

whom I approached either in writing or orally to request a consultation. He either decided the matter himself or obtained instructions from his superior at that time. Krumey was accustomed to operating much more independently than I had ever been. That was welcome to me there, because in Hungary I had to restrict myself to fundamental matters. My task was to bring the matter to an end at great speed. The order was that I was to make Hungary free of Jews with ruthless severity in the shortest possible time. Hence my efforts with the Hungarian Interior Ministry, which kept me tied up for weeks.

During that time Krumey had to organize everything accordingly. He had to assign his men and receive the people. Hundreds of people came to my office at Hotel M. on the Schwabenberg, in Budapest, during public office hours. Krumey had his case officer deal with them and usually took the more difficult cases himself to bring them to a conclusion. Only matters of fundamental importance, because they had to be decided on a Reich-wide scale, had to be submitted to me. I either decided them immediately, as far as I could, or deferred them until I had obtained the appropriate instruction through oral or written consultation with my Grf. (Gruppenführer) Müller.

So it cannot in any way be true that Krumey and Wi wanted to oppose your measures in Hungary?

In no way. Had they opposed them even once, I would have been compelled to report it. Of course, I would first have tried to settle the matter amicably with these long-standing friends and comrades of mine. I am saying this only theoretically: had that also failed to produce a solution, I would have had to make the report; my official duty required it. But it never came to that. It is possible, however, and I readily assume it, that today these men have to distance themselves from me in order to try to save for themselves whatever can still be saved.

It is naturally not impossible that Krumey, when saying goodbye to Brandt in Vienna, said he wanted to make clear that not all SS men were like Eichmann, but that there were Gromeiers and Wi's too. I said it was possible, but I do not believe it. It sounds very unlikely to me, because Groemeier was no phony, but a man, an open, honest comrade. I am convinced he would have had the courage to tell me straight to my face if he could not reconcile something with his conscience. He was not forced to come to me; he volunteered and was then assigned to it.

But was there ever a friendly discussion in which these different points of view, or points of view on their side that differed from yours, came up?

No. Of course I liked to philosophize with my men, not only about

religious studies, as I very often did with Wi, and with great pleasure, because Wi was actually intended to become a theologian… I remember expressing my fears to Wi at an early stage, in 1935 or 1936, at any rate long before I was sent to the Near East: that after Adolf Hitler's death the Reich would break up into little fragments. For that had always been the course of history: scarcely had a great empire been created when, after its founder's death, it was damaged by disputes among subordinate leaders …, and then the struggles among the successors began.

And I maintained that nothing was eternal, and a thousand years—for a thousand years a person could build nothing. Wi disputed that, which surprised me greatly, because he was at least as well versed in the history of antiquity as I was; he too had received a classical education. I was less able to discuss such questions with Krumey. With Krumey I discussed the more or less minor political events, just as I could discuss them in the section with my permanent deputy, Rolf Günther. I also remember Günther being horrified when Turkey declared war on us.

I do not know what year it was. As we stood in front of a large map, I said to Günther, “If you still have not got it into your head that we have lost the war, with bombs and grenades, then you took those beatings from the green police in your Thuringia for nothing. They did you no good.” Günther argued with me amicably about it and stuck to the position that we would win the war. His reasons did not convince me. For me it had been like a chain of pessimistic views, an outlook because of which I could become such close friends with Ebner.

I could also allow myself to discuss these things with my subordinates, my equals in rank, and my superiors, because they saw, on the other hand, how ruthlessly I stood in the thick of this struggle, committing my whole person to it. They could see that I was not expressing these concerns on defeatist grounds or to make myself safe, but that this concern was genuinely a heartfelt concern for the Reich. I trembled for the Reich, and I was never treated harshly for that, apart perhaps from mild comradely reminders from my superior. I had, of course, always refrained from making such statements in circles where they did not seem appropriate.

You do not remember whether, in carrying out any larger operations or detailed actions, differences arose between Krumey, Wi, and yourself over the criteria to be laid down or followed?

No, because I left the details to the men themselves to determine; they carried that out themselves. Wi, for example, agreed on and discussed all the dates for the measures with the individual counties, with Olt. (Oberleutnant) Ferenczy. It did not interest me at all; it was none of my concern. They were detailed measures that fell under Wi's sole responsibility. Krumey handled the general-staff work insofar as it was important to us—but “general-staff work” may be the wrong term, because the actual general-staff work was done by the Hungarian gendarmerie. Krumey nevertheless had to be informed, because he maintained the ongoing connection between the departure notification for transport train x and the receiving point in Auschwitz, and—and for the takeover

to take care of; he himself repeatedly traveled to Auschwits to discuss these detailed measures with … and the people of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. It would have been open to him to say, “I am ill, I cannot”; he could have become ill.

Did Krumey travel to—?

Yes, of course. Once or twice we even traveled together.

It is madness, these things … are—.

Perhaps—as I said, Krumey was a good-natured man, almost as kind-hearted as an Ebner. Perhaps Krumey once made some remark—possibly—which he did not mean that way at all, and which his opponent at the time took the wrong way. That is equally possible. Do you have any more questions?

Despite the Führer's order, the RF SS (Reichsführer-SS) would at once have been ready to send one million Jews abroad, and who knows how everything would have turned out afterwards if the discussion on this matter that I myself held with the leading Jewish functionaries, or that my representatives conducted, had produced a positive result. I am certain that the RF (Reichsführer-SS) would then have handled the entire Jewish matter quite differently, just as all Jews confined in concentration camps were immediately released when they could emigrate. But then, as now, there was no place on earth prepared to receive the Jews.

Not even this one million. As I said, as far as I remember, 350,000 Jews were transported into Reich territory; about 200,000 remained in the Budapest ghetto and were taken over by the Russians. In addition, there were several thousand Jews who, in a sense, emigrated illegally under supervision, as well as the Jews who escaped abroad entirely on their own initiative. I do not know their number, but naturally it will not have been small. Neither I personally, nor my deputy, SS Ostbf. (Obersturmbannführer) Krumez, nor anyone in my detachment killed a single Jew in Hungary either, or gave the order to do so. On that I swear an oath.

At the end of 1944, the RF SS (Reichsführer-SS) demanded an exact statistical account of all matters connected with the treatment of the Jews. This statistical account had been requested by the FuR (Führer and Reich Chancellor) of the German Reich. Like all direct reports to A.H. (Adolf Hitler), it too was typed on the only “Führer machine” available for this purpose in the Reich Security Main Office, a typewriter with oversized letters. The report was compiled by a statistician who had been unknown to me until then, and whose name I have long since forgotten.

He had permission from the RF (Reichsführer-SS) to inspect all the files of my office, and there he gathered all the material concerning “Emigration of the Jews.” He obtained the remaining documents, among other places, from the Reich Statistical Office, the commanders of the Security Police and the Security Service, the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, and so on. This statistical account was, I believe, sent to the RF (Reichsführer-SS) twice; twice it came back through official channels, that is, through the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, with requests for stylistic changes. Only on the third, or perhaps not until the fourth, attempt did it go through.

After several …, I received the file back as a “Secret Reich Matter,” with the RF's (Reichsführer-SS's) own handwritten blue-pencil note: “The Führer has taken note. Destroy the file.—H.H. [Heinrich Himmler] (Heinrich Himmler).” As ordered, I personally burned the file. I could also have handed it over to the Reich's enemies at the time, but then I would have become a scoundrel. Today I can try to reproduce a statistical account here without any conflict of conscience. It cannot claim the most painstaking accuracy, because I have no documentary material available, but I can set it down to the best of my knowledge, influenced by no one, especially since I had to revise the so-called Führer report three times.

The figures consist of some that I read soon after the end of the war, with Jewish or Allied sources cited, and some that remain in my memory. For the former, as a precaution, I would like to allow a margin of about 5–10 percent, plus or minus. For I believe it was in 1946 that I first tried to put my recollections into writing, using the figures that were then still quite fresh in my memory. I burned that written attempt at recollection; I carried only the figures around with me for many years, until one day I burned them as well.

Jews present when power was taken over (according to Jewish statistics):

Old Reich: 500,000.

Austria: 220,000.

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: 340,000.

Total: 1,060,000 (one million and sixty thousand).

Of these, the following emigrated (former Jewish statistics, Vienna Religious Community):

Legally:

Old Reich: approximately 300,000.

Austria: approximately 202,000.

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: approximately 200,000.

Illegally:

Old Reich: approximately 40,000.

Austria: approximately 10,000.

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: approximately 30,000.

Total: 782,000.

Therefore:

Population at the seizure of power: 1,060,000.

Reduction through emigration: 782,000.

Remainder: 278,000.

At the end of the war, according to public findings, 222,000 Jews were found in all these territories. Subtracting this sum from the remainder mentioned above gives a figure of 56,000. The natural decrease in the Jewish population of the Old Reich, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia must still be deducted from the figure of 56,000. Once replenishment in … substance from the large eastern ghettos had ceased, the severe restrictions imposed on the Jews in these areas, together with emigration itself, which generally affected the young, active part of the population, soon made the age structure resemble a pyramid standing on its point. This figure still to be deducted is therefore certainly considerable. I can no longer supply this figure today; a population statistician should still be able to reconstruct it approximately. The number then remaining would represent those Jews who died:

a) through imprisonment in the concentration camps;

b) through Allied air raids.

In those same concentration camps were the approximately 222,000 Jews who belonged to the Old Reich, the Austrian districts, and Bohemia and Moravia and who, according to public findings, survived the war. This figure also includes the Jews who lived in Theresienstadt, the so-called privileged Jews living with freedom of movement, and those who managed to remain hidden. These would be the statistics concerning the Jews in the Old Reich, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia.

The number of Jews present in Europe, excluding the USSR, in 1939 was put at approximately 5,000,000 (five million) in many assessments by Jewish and non-Jewish sources. The total number of Jews encountered from 1939 to 1944 within the German sphere of influence at the time was put at 4,500,000 (four million five hundred thousand) in all the reports then available to me. According to the findings at the time, approximately 1,500,000 of them emigrated, legally and illegally, beyond the national sphere of influence.

Illegal emigration was naturally substantial from France, Holland, Belgium, the so-called General Government, but also from the occupied Russian territories, Slovakia, Hungary, and, for a short time, Romania. According to Allied statements, 2,100,000 Jews were found alive in 1945 in Germany’s former sphere of power, naturally including the so-called Greater German Reich itself, as well as Bohemia and Moravia. That leaves a remainder of 900,000 Jews still to be accounted for. A large proportion of the Jews who were found had been concentrated in armaments industries within the concentration-camp areas and survived the war as laborers or in ghettos.

The 900,000 are distributed as follows:

Killed in the so-called General Government and the Warthegau: approximately 200,000.

Killed in the occupied Eastern territories: approximately 120,000.

Killed in Auschwitz concentration camp: approximately 250,000.

Crossed over from the General Government into Russian territory: approximately 100,000.

The natural decrease in the Jewish population in Germany’s European sphere of influence, including the Old Reich, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia themselves, together with losses through partisan fighting and air raids and the liquidation of Jews by the Baltic peoples—Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians—accounts for the remaining 230,000. This figure seems rather too low, while the number who crossed over from the General Government seems almost too high.

This figure of 230,000 also includes the relatively small proportion of Jews who died between 1933 and 1939 in the concentration camps of the former Greater German Reich. These, then, would be the overall statistics. Now, although I have not always supplied a historian or statistician with the most exact figures, I have given such textual pointers that he will undoubtedly have a wealth of material at his disposal; these pointers will make it easier to distinguish truth from untruth.

I have also shown that it would be absurd to claim that there had been no Führer order for the annihilation of the Jews; but also that five million or six million Jews cannot possibly have been killed, because, on the one hand, there were simply not that many Jews in the areas accessible to us and, on the other, the 2,100,000 living Jews found by the Allies and the large number who emigrated speak powerfully enough on their own.

In my view, without wishing to lapse into resentment, one might also ask: “And what about the number of German women, children, and old people killed from 1939 until long after the war?” And the number of male German civilians who had to lose their lives?

I am certainly convinced that considerably more Jews would have been killed in accordance with the Führer order if the constant shortage of labor had not led to their being used for work in the institutions subordinate to, or influenced by, the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. Without doubt, however, the Reichsführer was not in any great hurry to carry out the Führer order. At any rate, he still believed in a reasonably favorable outcome to the war well into the spring of 1945. In April 1945 I was ordered to report to the Reichsführer. When I reported at his field command post, he told me, tapping himself on the …, that he had never been as optimistic recently as he was now. We would have to take some losses, but in his opinion we would obtain a better peace than the “Hubertusburg” peace. I was pessimistic, as always, and kept silent, because it was too late.

He ordered me to send approximately 100 prominent Jews from Teresienstadt to the Brenner and … to discuss with the Gauleiter of Tyrol the possibility of accommodating them in “summer-resort villages,” which were empty anyway. He was negotiating over … and would now use them in an exchange. I drove to …. It was on 17 April 1945 that I reached …, just as a terrible enemy air raid descended on this small Tyrolean town. I endured the raid, which may have lasted about three-quarters of an hour, lying with my driver in a small park.

It made no difference whether I drove or lay there, because the bombs were striking everywhere. I finally reached Innsbruck and was given the names of two villages at the Brenner. But while I was on my way back to Berlin to report the result to SS Gruppenführer Müller, I learned on the way that there was no longer any means of reaching the Reich capital and that the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service was no longer in office there either.

The war was drawing to an end. In its final stages—almost, I would say, its final hours—I said to an officer subordinate to me: “… And if it has to be, I will leap joyfully into the pit, knowing that five million enemies of the Reich were killed along with us …” I made that statement, because a person’s thoughts and actions are determined by the events of the time in which he lives. So if our enemies were already smashing our Reich, I rejoice over every one of our enemies who has been killed; if we are to be smashed, then with the greatest possible number of enemy casualties. Our enemies at the time took the same position for themselves.

After the war, the words about five million enemies of the Reich were, consciously or unconsciously, but in any case falsely, changed to “five million Jews.” From my present vantage point, I cannot assess what part the former SS Hauptsturmführer … and the former SS Sturmbannführer Dr. … played in this distortion of the facts. The latter was not even present when I made the statement; he was not subordinate to me. In any event, the absurdity of this assertion of five (or even more) Jews killed is obvious. It is untrue.

In this account I have described the truth, soberly and objectively, just as things happened.

The relationship between the Jewish leaders and me could be described as businesslike and correct. Dr. Loewenherz, the director of the Israelite Religious Community in Vienna, the umbrella organization for all Jewish organizations working in the Ostmark at the time, Dr. Kastner of Budapest, Dr. Eppstein of Berlin, and many others often had discussions with me that were more than merely frank. I told them more than once that I knew no racial hatred and rejected so-called Stürmer methods.

I believe none of the Jewish political functionaries can complain that, in the countless conferences and discussions of those years, they encountered in me a raging, sadistic murderer. Indeed, looking back today, one could describe the negotiations as having been conducted openly, with nothing concealed. All this had my former superior’s permission. I stress that so as not to fall under suspicion of wanting to present myself today in a more favorable light than I deserve.

Dr. Kastner of Budapest, for example, implored me—it may have been in the summer of 1944—to stop the “extermination machine.” I told him, in the presence of my stenotypist, that I had nothing to do with these measures, and that they had nothing to do with the Reich Security Main Office in general or Department IV B4 in particular. Only the Reichsführer can stop this or revoke the order he gave for this purpose to the Main Office within his sphere. And that was the truth.

Dr. Eppstein of Berlin, Commercial Councillor Storfer of Vienna, and, I believe, also Dr. Weidmann and Edelstein of Prague were taken to a concentration camp in 1944, while I was absent from Reich territory, without my knowledge, and died or were killed there. These were Jewish functionaries with whom I had worked, some of them for years—officially, of course, and correctly on both sides. When I learned what had happened, I made no secret of my regret and incomprehension, either to the Jews or to my superior, Lieutenant General of Police H. Müller, or to my permanent deputy.

I had once promised Dr. Rothenberg, head of the Palestine Office in Vienna, that I would let him emigrate to Palestine when the opportunity arose. When he reminded me some time later, I kept my word. I had also made promises to Commercial Councillor Storfer that I could no longer keep.

I had Dr. Bach and Dr. Murmelstein brought into the leadership at Teresienstadt, and it would be untrue to claim that they, like the other inmates in that town, fared badly there, naturally because of the war. I once saw for myself the relatively decent apartment in which Dr. Murmelstein, for example, lived there with his wife.

The individual’s mind is shaped, and his actions determined, by the time in which he lives. For example, my mind was formed in the period of the shame of Versailles. Pressure creates counterpressure. Perhaps, under different circumstances, I would never have professed National Socialism. Had there been no shame of Versailles, that great injustice—or, as Charles Callan, professor of history at Georgetown University in Washington, calls it, the stupidity of Versailles—perhaps there would have been no National Socialism at all. Perhaps no Second World War either. But perhaps I was already committed to National Socialist thinking before I properly grasped and understood the shame of Versailles.

In any case, this much is certain: National Socialism meant a great deal to me, as it did to hundreds of thousands at the time, fighting and preaching as it did against that injustice. It shaped, as it were, into a super-nationalist (Supernat.)—service to the people—it demanded sacrifice and obedience. Right is what benefits the people. England: “Right or wrong, my country.”

Can you now briefly sum up how you saw measures such as the forced deportations at that time, in terms of your feelings, your mind, your resignation, and your conscience—not from today’s viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of that time?

I must say that my head and my feelings had nothing to do with it, but rather my conscience.

My work fell into … main sections. The first was emigration, and that is not up for discussion; it proceeded normally with the help and support of the Jewish organizations. The second task I performed was the concentration of the Jews, and the third was deportation. The Secret Police Office did not carry out all the concentrations, nor all the deportations: as the relevant literature shows, the Gestapo Office as such was not responsible for certain areas, such as the Eastern territories. Those operations were carried out under the Einsatzgruppen chiefs’ own authority on the direct instructions of the Reichsführer.

To answer your question specifically, the national Reich government proclaimed a national emergency, and total war was declared against the enemy. Every last German therefore had to understand that it was a question of victory or downfall, of the German people’s continued existence or annihilation. We believed that, and so did I. The confirmation of our belief—the point when we no longer needed to believe it, but already knew it—came when Morgenthau announced his plan, according to which we were to become a people of miserable goatherds and potato farmers: the small surviving part of us, that is.

Here I calculated that from 1618 to 1648 the enemy had succeeded in reducing German blood to five million. It was very easy to calculate how little of the German people would remain after a war if that Morgenthau Plan came into force. That is why we fought; that is why every means was justified. As I have already said, had my government ordered me to carry out physical annihilation, I would have carried that out too. I said that I am neither grateful nor ungrateful to fate that I had nothing to do with it.

Now you could argue that the government which gave those orders—concentration, deportation, and so on—was a criminally inclined government. My answer is this: I can give a few examples. I am no politician, but why did the whole civilized world maintain diplomatic relations with this lawless government? Why did envoys and ambassadors from almost all civilized peoples throng the Reich capital? Why did those governments receive our envoys and ambassadors and accept their credentials, although they knew that one or another was a high-ranking SS general, a high-ranking SA general, or a high-ranking Party leader, or at least had come from that career?

Why was my chief, Heydrich, appointed president of the International Police Commission in ’37, 3… to ’39? A commission to which the criminal police of almost all European countries sent their representatives. Why was the head of a police force—who not only the German criminal police …, to whom the criminal police were also subordinate, as were the Gestapo, the other offices of the Security Police Main Office, and the Security Service—appointed chairman of such a working group?

If I thus have to work under a man, have to receive the orders of a man who for a long time is, or was, chairman of such a European working group, then one could never get the idea that I, together with all my comrades, whether they were in the same Main Office or

in another office, could never get the idea that they were serving a criminal here. Lofty thoughts governed us; saving Europe governed us. It was not only a question of German blood; it was a question of the blood of Europe, for that was what the guiding principle of the SS said. I have nothing to say offhand or at the moment.

Is the name Ira Hirschmann familiar to you? Did Kastner not tell you about Brandt’s discussions with Roosevelt’s representative for Jewish affairs, Ira Hirschma…?

Too much time has passed for me to recall individual matters. I may remember a great deal once I have read the book “The Story of Joel Brandt.” While reading, some thoughts might come to me; I might then recover some things from memory and recount them together with my own arguments.

—another confirmation from Brandt that, after his departure in May 1944, Kastner conducted the negotiations with Wi and Eichmann.

Wi is incorrect. Wi was not authorized; he had never been authorized. Where matters of principle were concerned, the negotiations took place with me. Matters of information, once I had learned of them, went through Groemid, who, as my permanent deputy in Budapest, had to take the lead in handling all the details with Brandt (?). Wi had no details to handle, not even in a leading capacity. I have already touched on the concern about Brandt’s wife. Brandt exaggerates that, for I never—neither against Mrs. Brandt, nor against his family, nor against any other family members of Jewish functionaries—. There is not a single case that can be proved, because it cannot be proved that my office or my command ever took reprisals against family members in any way.

Is the name Swi Jetscheli, commander of the Jewish parachutists, familiar to you?

No.

One important matter seems to be this: the Jewish Agency (Sognut) in Cairo, Brandt said—when he protests that his imprisonment is lasting so long, the English want to release him, but the Jewish organization telegraphs the English that his release should be postponed a few more days. These few days become a few weeks, and they explain it as follows. Here is my question: can you confirm this or remember it? The Jewish Agency (Sognut), Brandt says, says that the latest telegrams from Budapest indicate that the Budapest Jews want Brandt’s return postponed. Do you remember Kastner once saying to you in the course of a conversation, for example, “Brandt does want to come back, but it would be better if he stayed there another few days or weeks”—

to finalize the matter, or some such maneuver…

Yes, I know that, and specifically this: I repeatedly said to Kastner, “What about Brandt? Where is he? Is he not coming at all?” I was already inclined to write him off. I also told Kastner that he would have to reckon with possible reprisals against his family. I had expressly told him that he could go, but his family would stay here. Or does he now know from experience that, as a matter of principle, I do not take reprisals against family members?

Kastner never told me why, how, or for what reason. He explained only this much: Brandt could come back, but he would not come back with a definitive answer; if he stayed down there longer, we might soon receive a positive reply. A non-definitive answer was no use to me. It was a matter of 10,000 trucks, and so I, too, had him kept waiting. I did not know, however, that he had been taken prisoner, that he was no longer master of his time, or rather of his freedom.

But the following is possible: although the Reichsführer’s order said that the evacuations were to continue at an accelerated pace despite the negotiations that had been initiated—with an addition that was not disclosed to the Jews—the Reichsführer had instructed Pohl to stop the physical extermination. The deportations, however, continued at an accelerated pace on the Reichsführer’s orders. At that time, there were hold-ups of various kinds; incoming transports from Hungary encountered many difficulties. Some Jews may therefore have thought that the rapid succession of transport trains had slackened. Perhaps they said to themselves that the longer Brandt did not come back with a negative reply, the better it was for the Jews in Hungary, because gaining time meant gaining everything.

Had he returned then with a negative reply, it would very probably have caused the Reichsführer to react accordingly and possibly give Pohl different instructions. That may be one reason. But perhaps someone else involved in these events let something slip here, so that the Jews must have learned that evacuations were continuing, but the extermination machine had been stopped. If Brandt came back with a negative reply, the extermination machine might start up again, so Brandt must stay here and not return to Hungary. It may have been a rigged game. In any event, it was a game of the intelligence services on both sides.

Does the name Denny Collet, personal secretary to …, mean anything to you?

No.

Can you remember, if you think hard, whether any news directly or indirectly from or connected with Ben-Gurion reached your desk during the war?

I probably had him. At our office, matters were divided by subject. Ben-Gurion only insofar as he was the fanatical leader of the Zionists active in Israel. The Zionists active in Israel.

Offhand, I am not actually aware that Ben. interfered in matters outside Palestine; rather, he was, so to speak, the master of the Jewish pioneers.

So you do not know from that period whether Beng. directly or indirectly had any directives or other connections or contacts with Zionist circles, particularly in Budapest or in Europe generally?

That, certainly; for if Beg. was the recognized leader, then he was also one of the creators of the A…

the Jewish militant formation, before the formation of a state. If he was already involved in these militant matters, which undoubtedly included intelligence work, one can conclude—even though I have no relevant file on the matter—that Beng. naturally had his intelligence feelers out not only in Hungary, but in all the countries of interest for the formation of a Jewish state.

But in your office you never came across any actions directly traceable to Beng., or anything…

No. Beng. was also second rank at that time. First rank was Dr. Clain Weizmann. All negotiations and everything of interest to us at a higher level, viewed from the so-called Reich perspective, concerned the political leadership of Zionism in general. Beng. was then only a leader of regional affairs, namely little Palestine, which was not even free, but still under British mandate. And Beng. had to follow all instructions from Clain Weizmann, or from his organizational committee, from the Zionist—.

At one point Brandt makes a statement to the British plenipotentiary for the Middle East in answer to his question about what would happen if Brandt returned to Budapest, how he imagined the whole procedure. Brandt replies:

[Question from the Englishman:]

I would have to divide my question: first, would you comment briefly on the statement, “A single order from Eichmann and the deportations will be stopped”; and second, how did you protect yourself against possible—and certainly conceivable—tricks on the Jewish side to exploit your offer cleverly without actually fulfilling it?

The first question: well, I had authority from the Reichsführer for that. We are making a very clear distinction at this moment between deportation and physical extermination. The deportations were to continue despite the deal of one million Jews for 10,000 trucks being set in motion. These Jews were, so to speak, put on ice, concentrated in camps, ready to be called up for transport at any time. Of course. Brandt is quite right here. Had Brandt returned and said to me, “Ostf. (Obersturmführer), the matter is settled; 5,000 or 10,000 trucks are rolling. Give me a million or half a million Jews. You gave me your word of honor that, if I bring you the Jewish Agency’s message that the matter is settled, you will, as an advance, so to speak, put 100,000 Jews at some neutral border”—. They had Spain in mind at that time, even by way of Romania.

I had authority for that, but I would also have sent off 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 Jews. Sending 20,000 Jews by way of Romania to Palestine, or by way of France to Spain, would have been very quick on our side. The delay would have occurred on the receiving side, that is, with the Jews themselves. I estimate that, at that time, the transport of 20,000 Jews could have been completed in two days as far as I was concerned, but at least fourteen days or three to four weeks would then have elapsed at the reception facilities—which international Jewry would have had to create—before a second stage of 30,000 or 40,000 could be set in motion.

Because the reception arrangements would only just have been starting up, the first contingent would have taken many times longer than the fourth, fifth, or sixth. By then, things might have gone more smoothly because the organization would already have been running. It would not have meant any very great difficulty for me at the time, once I had put pressure on the Reich Transport Ministry, to get the rolling stock for 20,000 units moving within two days.

[Second question:]

I had authority to pledge my word of honor to the Jews, and they could believe it; they could rightly believe it, because I have never broken a promise. This was the first time I gave a Jew my word of honor. It was quite an interesting matter for us if, at one stroke, I could thereby be put in a position to motorize two SS divisions on the Reichsführer’s orders. For that, it was worth pledging my word of honor for once. The position of the Jewish negotiators at the time was that, in the end, it would not matter to him whether anything came of the deal; the blame would then lie with the Englishman.

The main thing was that the Englishman should grant his approval in principle through the Jewish Agency and give Brandt a certificate from the Jewish Agency, so that, on the basis of this certificate, he could prove to me that the deal was settled. I would then, of course, have sent off 20,000, 30,000, up to 50,000 Jews, for that was what had been agreed. Had I not done it, I would have broken my word, but I did not need to, because I had the Reichsführer’s permission. So they would have been sent off; after fourteen days or three weeks at the latest, it would then have become clear—

[Typed as notes in the transcript: RF (Reichsführer-SS)—after me, the deluge.]

Do you know when and how Horthy intervened very forcefully around May 1944 to stop the deportations?

I do not know that the Regent, von Horthy, ever raised an objection. But even had he raised one, his objection would have counted for zero, because the deportations had been settled with the Hungarian Interior Ministry, which had designated the two State Secretaries, L.E. and B., as the officials responsible for this. This area of work was to be discussed with them alone. The executive side was carried out by the supreme commander of the Hungarian gendarmerie.

There are two different interventions by Horthy. The first is said to have been around March–April 1944, and was intended to prevent the physical annihilation of Hungarian Jews, which was technically carried out outside Hungarian territory.

How it is at all possible under international law for the Hungarian Regent to intervene in matters taking place on German Reich territory or in occupied Polish territory is a puzzle to me—in any case, extermination operations were never carried out directly on Hungarian soil. But this seems fairly well supported by the Dem… of the Swedish and Swiss governments, which urged him to undertake such an intervention.

The second intervention is said to have begun some three or four months later, in September 1944…

When was Horthy deposed? When did Sa… take his place?

November 1944. In the beginning I had dealt with the deputy county head (Vicegespan) of Budapest Land County, Dr. L.E. The Eu…, that is, the deputy to the county head, became the second State Secretary in the Hungarian Interior Ministry, responsible for legislative matters. His “second horse,” so to speak, was the first Hungarian State Secretary in the Interior Ministry, B., who had the Ex… under him, the gendarmerie and police.

When did the first transports leave Hungary?

In April 1944. When the first transports left Hungary, E. was already a State Secretary. What Horthy ordered was not to concern me. What was to concern me was that B. and E. wanted the accelerated removal of the Hungarian Jews. The Reich plenipotentiary, Dr. Veesenmayer, had to deal with Horthy. Dr. Veesenmayer would summon me, or I would go to see him myself when matters of principle were involved. That is, while I went in and out at Winkelmann’s almost every day, I was ordered to see Veesenmayer, or went to see him to discuss important questions. In all, I perhaps spoke with Veesenmayer eight to twelve times.

Veesenmayer could have given me the stop order, and would have given it to me if difficulties had really been apparent from the highest Hungarian authorities. Since neither Veesenmayer nor Winkelmann gave me such a stop order, and since the two Hungarian State Secretaries never asked me to slow down or use delaying tactics, but demanded the very opposite and implored me to send the transports off even faster and more rapidly than I was already prepared to do, I cannot assume that things were as you tell me. It is possible, however, that Horthy, in his capacity as Regent, wanted to secure a sort of alibi for himself before his personal circles, or perhaps before his whole worldview, and before history. In any case, it is very easy to take a stand against something, but not to carry that stand through with the force of one’s personality. That was essentially the whole matter.

And Tiso, the Slovak head of state, was not one hundred percent pleased and delighted that he had to hand over Jews with Slovak citizenship to the Reich. I gathered that from his words. But Tiso did not offer delaying resistance to the extent that Horthy is said to have done, or wanted to do. Tiso merely said something like: “It has to be so… Do it humanely… How are the transports?” and so on, and so on. In other words, Tiso was the prisoner of his Hlinka Guard, and Horth, one might say, a prisoner of the Arrow Cross.

It is a fact that, in his own account of his life too, Horthy repeatedly tried to intervene on behalf of the Jews, and to intervene more generally against German organizational measures for deportation—to sabotage them—.

I know nothing about that. Nothing would have been easier for the Hungarian head of state than to do it. It was not German units that carried out the roundups in Hungary, not German units that carried out the loading into wagons, nor the gathering into camps. His own Hungarian gendarmerie carried these out, with several thousand men in the individual counties, led by his own gendarmerie lieutenant colonel, Ferenczy, and his Hungarian gendarmerie captain, Notsch. He could easily have recalled the Hungarian gendarmerie officers whom he himself had appointed. Intervened for Jews—yes, that is true, he did that too, in individual cases. But Reich Marshal Göring did that as well. SS generals did it too. Everyone did it, whether for humane or financial reasons.

Do you know anything about the technique, about the Hungarian side’s carrying out the concentration of the Jews or similar measures? Were you ever present?

No, I did not watch a loading into wagons, because it was such a subordinate matter …, for which I had no time. I did, however, watch various loadings into wagons in different parts of the Reich, but never in Hungary. It was not my task, but that of the Hungarian gendarmerie. It would have been interference in the jurisdiction of Hungarian sovereign authorities. The transports were loaded and provisioned for so many days, as had been agreed with the State Secretaries. I had several hundred Order Police men under me for the transport escorts, and in my guidelines I ordered that every transport train must have a lieutenant and thirty men, an Oberfeldwebel with seventy men. Therefore, in Hungary I had—. I could at most have watched it privately, but never in an official capacity or on duty.

The two State Secretaries, Dr. L.E. and Dr. B., were both human beings, not animals. Both adopted in full the guidelines that we had had long before Hungary. When the first guidelines were being drawn up, the Reichsführer told me personally: “In drawing up the guidelines, let yourself be guided by this: take as your basis what France granted us Germans in deportation after the world war, and grant that to the Jews as well—fifty kilograms of baggage.” Accordingly, I initially allowed fifty kilograms of baggage and provisions for an unlimited period. The provisions and baggage were then reduced as the war years went on.

They were adjusted to the countries in which evacuation took place, and to the speed and duration of the transports. Unlike the West Germans at that time, they did not arrive at their destination with nothing awaiting them. They were delivered to a camp, even if it was called a concentration camp. But there was proper provisioning in the concentration camps too: morning coffee, lunch, supper, and, for those who worked, the so-called bread breaks in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. We, the troops doing drill, only got food three times a day. I know for certain that the prisoners in Dachau got food five times a day. These guidelines were humane and human; they said that all avoidable hardships were to be avoided.

These guidelines were adopted by the Hungarian Ministry. Perhaps they were modified somewhat to suit the Hungarian mentality; perhaps they were adopted one hundred percent. But none of that was to concern me, nor was I allowed to concern myself with it, because that would at the time have been interference in Hungarian sovereign administration.

Did you never have an observer at the loadings into freight cars?

Of course—not just one observer. In every county where roundups were conducted on an ex… basis, I naturally had my captains, who already had practical experience in other countries. Wi, Burger, Brunner belong here, and whatever they were all called. They assisted the local gendarmerie, to pass on something of their experience to the people there. The local commander was in every case visited by Ferenczy; in most cases Ferenczy was even present at the first transports. The adviser for Jewish affairs was also there, so Ferenczy could always turn to an officer of my special commando if any uncertainties arose. He either accepted the advice, or, if matters remained unclear to him—if, despite that advice about his ex… intervention, he was still unclear—he had to turn to his superior office, that is, L.E. or B.

During that period, did no report ever reach you at your office through official channels from one of your subordinates, pointing out particular cruelty or inhumanity by the Hungarian gendarmerie during loading into freight cars and so on?

Yes, Wi told me that, and another man too, whose name I no longer remember. Wi told me that such methods had not occurred in his previous experience.

What methods?

Rough treatment, the opposite of what my guidelines said: “Avoidable hardships are to be avoided.” Apparently, this was not taken into account at all in individual cases, so my people were shocked by the inhumanity with which the roundups, the consignment to camps, and the loading into freight cars had to take place. Wi thought it was bestial, probably also because of his innate goodness. I then issued the following instruction in that case—I had everything only in written memoranda; there were no oral matters with me—inform State Secretary Dr. L.E., and, secondly, place it on file.

The instruction to inform Dr. L.E. was necessary several times. I told the Hungarian authority several times that the point was not to punish the individual Jew, since we wanted to strive for a political solution. L.E. took note of that, and I know that he repeatedly drew Ferenczy’s attention to it. I myself also drew Ferenczy’s attention to it. I remember that Mrs. Kastner was given the bastinado by the Hungarian side, something that had not happened before then.

I did not want to believe it at all. In none of the European countries had I ever experienced harm being done to the relative or wife of one of my Jewish negotiating partners because they were negotiating with me, in order to extract from that person what they were negotiating with the German offices. That is the parallel: it begins with harshness and ends with the bastinado given to the wife of one of my Jewish negotiating partners.

Do you recall any details from your subordinates’ reports about particular Hungarian methods used in loading people into freight cars and so on?

I did say: Wi told me that they drove them in and loaded them into freight cars like cattle.

[Typed as notes in the transcript: Comparison—slaughterhouse.]

That was roughly how it was—not everywhere, but there were individual counties where such measures were carried out. Otherwise, I would not have received reports about it from my subordinates, and would not have intervened on that account with L.E., who was opposed to it, just as Faerensie and his adjutant were opposed to such measures. Despite the severity of the order, the procedure was such that avoidable hardships were avoided. Yet our own offices also acted differently here and there.

I once saw a man strike a Jew on the head with an old rubber truncheon, so that he staggered. I came around the corner and saw it. The Jew could not have done anything; he was old and frail. I called the man to account, reported him to his commander, and demanded his punishment and removal. I could not follow the matter further, but the commander will have dealt with it; he had to, because he could not know whether I had also made a report myself.

I have already told you that I came to a railway station in the East, which was no concern of mine in an official capacity, where a member of the Waffen-SS had set fire to an Orthodox man’s beard with a lighter. It was burning. I immediately had him reported to his commander and demanded punishment. I also reported the matter through official channels. I do not know what happened about it.

[Typed as notes in the transcript: Then another example involving the Hstf. (Hauptsturmführer) in the cellar, with the five or six Jews; punishment—expelled from the SS—later in the Wehrmacht at the front—dead—head-sh….]

The last incident was at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in 1939, autumn–winter 1939: Troestl, an SS Ostf. (Obersturmführer) from Vienna, a holder of the Blood Order and of an NSDAP decoration. That was why he could not be expelled from the Party. From the SS, yes, because the Reichsführer did not tolerate such people. That is sadism. If someone says today that the transports were carried out with the most brutal harshness, that is not true. Local shortcomings occurred everywhere, because human fallibility generally makes one hundred percent compliance with an order impossible from the outset. One can supervise the orders, but, being only human oneself, again only according to human will and ability. There is no such thing anywhere as the complete elimination of hardships.

My colleagues on the other side, the Russian, Slovak, Czech … police officers, wherever they may come from, will be able to confirm this from their experience. Although I must assume here that the deportations of Germans, or from other countries, after the war, which ran into the high millions, were certainly not planned and carried out with German-Prussian precision in provisioning and transport as they were in our time.

And despite our being at war with almost the whole world, and being able to assemble food for the transports only with the greatest difficulty, and to obtain covered wagons only with the greatest difficulty, Jews were never transported in open wagons. They were always covered R-wagons. The fastest routes and fastest trains were always used. Nevertheless, particularly in severe winters when the temperature changed suddenly, difficulties arose—indeed, difficulties resulting in deaths during transport.

During the war, these difficulties involving fatalities upset me less, insofar as they were unavoidable, because, after all, in the end I was not allowed to get upset about the bombing of German cities with the deaths of children and women either… That was perhaps, so to speak, the whole of my feelings, my attitude toward the orders I received…

These reports often mention that the loading into wagons was done in a bestial manner, and that the Hungarian gendarmerie put two buckets in each wagon: one bucket with drinking water, and the other bucket for the later drinking water—pee-pee. These wagons were not allowed to be opened at intermediate stations. It is pointed out that only on Reich territory was reasonably bearable provisioning provided. Do you know about that too?

On Hungarian soil we had no possibility of intervening in any way in this regard. Intervention was carried out by Hungarian ex… authorities. We could be present, but we could not directly arrange for anything to be done. That fits exactly: once Reich territory had been reached, the transport detachment was able to operate freely. The lieutenant of my transport detachment now had authority to give orders. He could order the stationmaster to move the train outside or inside a railway station.

He could order that the train be held until fresh water had been supplied, and that it could proceed only once the waste buckets had been emptied and cleaned, if only to prevent epidemics. This is clear proof: things changed on Reich territory. It proves that the guidelines I had given for carrying out an evacuation were followed most strictly wherever we had sovereign authority—always apart from the individual small exceptions that occur everywhere.

I even spoke about this with Kastner. I said, “Kastner, it is impossible and unthinkable that German agencies abducted your wife.” Avoidable harshness… was like organ music to me too, as an SS man and SS officer, and to the Reichsführer too, because he was fundamentally a kind-hearted man who granted every concession that was possible. Thus the Reichsführer was immediately willing when I told him that it was necessary to establish a theater of their own for the Jews in Theresienstadt, and to set up a kindergarten or other cultural facilities. Theresienstadt was not supposed to be a concentration camp; it was supposed to be more of a ghetto, an old-age home. The Jews were to be made, for the first time, to support themselves there. A brutal spirit would never have granted this to people who had had war declared on his blood. Only a man of the Reichsführer’s stature could have done that.

[Typed as notes in the transcript: Question more interesting if:]

you could reconstruct more details about official reports from your office, amounting to protests, on the manner and methods of the Hungarian gendarmerie during the deportation of Jews. For the point would then be that your office, in clearly carrying out the PF’s orders, even outside German sovereign territory, strove to carry out these questionable measures, such as forced deportations, as humanely as possible. That was first: the beatings. Jews who were dying in the camps were thrown into the wagons too; Jews were loaded who, under the evacuation regulations, no longer

It was indeed like that—not always, but it happened that too few waste buckets were put in for them, that they were given too little drinking water or none at all, that the provisions were poor or were stolen during loading or went missing. The wagons weren't loaded as prescribed, with such-and-such a number of men; they were overloaded so that the camp could be emptied as quickly as possible. Now you can roughly imagine what it is like when the gendarmerie has orders from its superiors: everything in, in, in; in 240 kilometers the Hungarian border is reached, and then comes German… Let the Germans see how they manage.

That is roughly what my captains reported to me. That is how I put it in the files and reported it to my office, and I also told State Secretary E., asking that it be remedied. For too often—and these were the reasons why I called at Auschwitz so often—too often the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Höss, who was also represented for a time by an SS Osf., Liebehenschel, and too often the doctors of Dachau concentration camp—in short, the staff of this camp—told me what a desolate condition these transports from Hungary were in when they arrived at their destination, Auschwitz railway station.

In other countries, the respective wagon orderly saw to food, water and the removal of excrement from the individual wagons during longer stops. Yes, on most of these transports there were wagon orderlies who had to be identified by armbands and who were in command in these wagons during the journey. They were the first to come out of the wagons when the escort surrounded the transport train at a stop, and they reported—and were required to report—any incidents to the police transport leader. The transport leader, usually a lieutenant, had to see that these deficiencies were remedied.

After all, it wasn't in our interest to deliver the material intended for labor deployment in the concentration camps as complete washouts needing the sick bay. That would have exposed us, the Security Police, to … protests from the WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office). We didn't know which of those on the individual transports were sent to the Final Solution. We did know that the greater part was registered for labor deployment. That was done, and that is why there are still a great many Jews today who were supposed to have been gassed and who are still enjoying life. None of this was to be found with the transports from Hungary, apart from exceptions, naturally; they simply didn't adhere to it.

It may perhaps be—I have no proof—that if L.E. was already impatient with me over a pace that to me was breakneck, he became even more restless and energetic with his colleague B., to whom the Hungarian executive authorities (Ex.) were subordinate, and that B. gave his gendarmerie the necessary orders to finish the deportation as quickly as possible, whatever the conditions. Since executive agencies (Ex.) in all countries are accustomed to carrying out orders stubbornly and punctually, it would be no wonder if the Hungarian gendarmerie said to itself: the German objections, the German complaints, how they arrive—none of that interests us. After us, the deluge.

As witnesses to this I name all those people in the administration of Auschwitz concentration camp, most of whom are still alive today. They can surely remember these transports, because they remained so deeply lodged in their memories. They were exceptions, as far as central and western European conditions were concerned. What things were like in the East, I don't know, because I wasn't responsible for that.

When you went to Hungary, according to the information available to you, the number of Jews in Hungary was…

It is said to have been half a million.

I don't want to commit myself to half a million. It was a rough, overall figure, because in Hungary in particular the Jewish population couldn't be precisely counted—that is, we couldn't count it—because the number of Jews inclined toward assimilation in Hungary was disproportionately large. People like to speak of Francophile and Anglophile peoples. I would say that in Hungary at that time one could even speak of Judaeophile Magyars. There had been a vassal class in Hungary. This vassal class consisted of large contingents of the former imperial and royal army.

There were poor devils among them who married as first lieutenants or even as lieutenants and, under army rules, had to provide a marriage bond if they were below the rank of captain. What did these people do? They married; they gilded their coats of arms. They married a rich woman who could provide the bond. There were many Jews—the Hungarian officer corps was Judaized. I often spoke with L.E. about this. He knew about it; he had written a book about it long before my arrival. Now these Jews, the entire clan acquired by marriage by a scion of a noble family or of an officer dynasty—this entire Jewish clan thereby automatically became Jews inclined toward assimilation.

And couldn't you obtain a completely clear picture of the number of Jews in Hungary?

I said that I transported roughly 350, perhaps 450,000 Jews out of Hungary. I no longer know exactly today.

The literature says 450,000—transported and gassed in Poland…

In Auschwitz. But they weren't all gassed. The greater part of the Hungarian Jews are still alive today, still alive today through the efforts of Brandt-Kastner and through the RF's (Reichsführer-SS's) order to Pohl to halt physical extermination.

[Typed topic cue: Number of Jews:]

In the Budapest ghetto there were around 150,000, a figure that then climbed to around 200,000, because those from the individual counties—whoever could go underground—made their way furtively to the Budapest ghetto and disappeared there, escaping the grasp of the Hungarian executive authorities (Ex.) in this way. Of the units I transported out of Hungary, the greater part were not physically exterminated, because I had set in motion the deal with the Kastner-Brandt group of 10,000 trucks for one million Jews, and because I was waiting for the outcome.

I told you that I, with Höss—or rather, I had once taken part in a discussion with Pohl in Berlin. Through the RF's (Reichsführer-SS's) order that, from a certain date onward, Jews of Hungarian nationality were no longer to be sent to physical extermination but had to be kept ready on call at all times, difficulties arose for Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp: these enormous masses

…of evacuated units—to accommodate them in his camp area as well, without the consequences for the camp being epidemics, an increased mortality rate, the risk of epidemics, and depression among the other inmates. After all, they had to be kept in good spirits because they had to work—the Heinkel works, the armaments industry, the mines. So there was no interest at all in harassing the imprisoned personnel; the aim was to gain their labor power. We were living in a time of total war… So it was very difficult for Höss. The transports came rolling in at a forced pace; everything continued at more than a forced pace with the Hungarian transports.

The staff of the quiet concentration camp was stirred up and had to work day and night. At times 10,000 units arrived every day. I had a very good, comradely friendship with Höss. He simply couldn't understand why I took no account of him at all. But how could I? I was just as small a case officer in my sector as he was in his. Pohl, too, was appalled by the pace. I didn't set the pace. I could do only one thing: let it run as smoothly as possible. And Höss was, of course, the one who received the transports and described their condition in the most florid colors. I don't know how much he exaggerated. But it did correspond to the reports of my captains.

Do you know that after the war the Russian side stated in Hungary that about 250,000 Jews were still found in Budapest? On the Jewish side, among the Hungarian Jews, people try to explain the relatively high figure by saying that since the uprising in Slovakia in October–November 1944, large numbers of Slovak Jews, and some Polish Jews too, were smuggled illegally into the Budapest ghetto. The figure thereby rose very rapidly, so that when the Russians arrived there were actually 250,000 or 260,000 there. What is your position on that?

When the Budapest ghetto was set up by the Arrow Cross—I emphasize that it wasn't German offices that created a Budapest ghetto; it was the Hungarian Arrow Cross—the number was 150,000. I told you that people from the individual counties were able to escape the grasp of the executive authorities ex.. They could go into hiding nowhere else but the Budapest ghetto. I estimate, and this is how I remember it, that there were so many Jews in the individual counties—I must point out that the number of Jews in the eastern counties was fairly precisely known, because there the Jew was predominantly Orthodox in outlook, or Zionist.

In the western counties and the capital, the Jews were predominantly inclined toward assimilation. So, since the number of Jews living in the eastern counties was fairly precisely established, a certain percentage was always missing when the area was combed through. They had gone underground and weren't found, so they had made their way to Budapest, where they were safe. That also explains the figure of around 200,000 that I gave in my final reports, which I got from L.E., that is, from the Hungarian side. I had no possibility of making a count. When I am told that Slovak and Polish Jews made their way into the Budapest ghetto, I cannot believe it.

By ‘ghetto’ we don't mean the final measure that the Arrow Cross took, and

…by which a certain number of houses and street blocks were actually sealed off and a proper ghetto was formed, but rather that they went underground in the Jewish community in Budapest.

That too, with a few exceptions. But then it would have been much easier and much better for them to slip into the eastern counties, which had already been combed through.

But they had proper cordons there, didn't they?

The Russians were there, after all. They would only have needed to go along with the advancing Russians.

But they were in German-occupied territory and were smuggling themselves out of Slovakia after the uprising in Slovakia had been suppressed…

I don't believe that. They couldn't have known when we would begin the evacuation in Budapest. They would have been much safer if they had gone from the German-occupied Slovak part into the partisan-[?], German-occupied part, and then later filtered through into the Slovak part conquered by the Russians.

Do not underestimate the sources of information available to the Jews. For example, about a week before you even came to Hungary, the Budapest counterintelligence office passed word to Brandt, Kastner, Koloni and von Freudenstein that you would be coming to Budapest. The Jewish leadership was equally clear about what your method in Hungary would be, because the Jews had studied that closely in Poland. They also knew that you had orders to proceed very quickly and at a furious pace, and they had already described the individual phases and warned against them in the greatest detail before the other phases took effect.

For example, they were perfectly clear that the seemingly harmless registration of Jews with the Jewish Council and so forth was the prerequisite for taking the Jew out of the national population, stripping him of anonymity and marking him as a Jew. Then came the evacuation measures, requiring the Jews to present themselves for evacuation, under threat of severe penalties if they failed to obey the order; then the evacuation itself, and then possibly physical extermination too. Don't imagine that the measures encountered here remained secret.

I don't believe that. I don't even need to go into the details. Every people had its peculiarities. We Germans are often called big-mouths—and that's true too. The people of the Ostmark are wrongly called limp-dicks

[?]

I don't know what people call the Dutch, the Esländers, the Swedes or the Flemings

[?]

Every country has its particular catchword. For the Jews, the catchword is arrogance in good times and servility in bad times. You have asked me several questions from literature written after the event. We can demonstrate the arrogance of the Jew, of the opponent, from remote antiquity, the Old Testament, right up to our own latest times. End with the small, insignificant incident in which a high-ranking military man of present-day Israel managed, even though I was guarded by a pack of the fiercest dogs, to abduct me cold-bloodedly in a jeep on a clearing through the woods and bump me off there, reporting to his office that I, with remarkable equanimity… That is a small example.

It is very easy for these Jewish Es…, after the event, to scribble and write whatever pleases them, whatever serves their purposes. If they had written that they had a phenomenal intelligence service which had told them weeks and months in advance what would happen, those fellows would surely have reacted very differently. Often, looking at it strictly from a police standpoint, we struck at a nest where the evidence showed that they had been surprised at their midday meal. That doesn't speak for a well-functioning intelligence service. It is easy to say afterward that they knew, but where is the proof? The wealthy sections of Hungarian Jewry would then have taken the opportunity to cross the border away from the official crossing points. That is what happened in France.

But, for example, there can be no doubt that the counterintelligence office… worked hand in hand…

Our own counterintelligence offices? That's a chapter in itself. That is quite clear, because Canaris and his associates, Canaris and Company, were the Jewish intelligence service. It wasn't a German intelligence—a Jewish intelligence service. When I went to Canaris…

[Typed as notes in the transcript: Remark: Müller… Fuchs…]

It is quite clear that Canaris was the chief

[? ejo ]

of the Jewish intelligence service. Even Canaris didn't know days before my departure for Budapest. He didn't either. I myself only knew fourteen days beforehand, and I was confined at Mauthausen concentration camp, roughly like any other concentration-camp prisoner. I wasn't allowed to leave the camp boundary, except that I could spend time in the officers' mess, talk to the individual camp leaders and play chess. I had my personnel there. I formed my detachment there and assembled it there; it was motorized.

Then I also received the 100 or 150 motor vehicles from the Order Police, to organize and prepare my march column, roughly seven kilometers long, in Mauthausen concentration camp. There I got Krumey as my deputy, with forty motorized units. In short, it was a march column seven kilometers long. So no one could have known. It is Jewish arrogance. But it changes nothing about the fact that the Wehrmacht intelligence service under Canaris had been, in itself, a Jewish intelligence service

[?]

[Typed prompt: Question: Personal impressions of Höss?]

About the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, Ostbf. (Obersturmbannführer) Höss, I have this to say: a) as a person, b) as a comrade, c) his attitude to the inherently burdensome order—my answer is this. Höss was a lovable comrade and friend to me. I came to know him as the war years advanced, and as we had more and more official dealings—he as the desk officer for the SS WVHA (Economic and Administrative Main Office), and I as the desk officer for the Gestapo office—he, who by nature was what one calls a reserved man, opened up more and more.

He told me that during the Weimar Republic he had been sentenced to ten or twelve years in a penitentiary for nationalist activity; I no longer remember what activity. He was a soldier in the First World War and earned the Iron Cross, First Class. With the seizure of power he was, so to speak, washed back out of the penitentiary walls into freedom.

After various SS assignments he finally came to the commandant's office of Auschwitz concentration camp. Höss led an exemplary family life. H. was modesty personified; H. was punctuality and accuracy personified. Höss was his own registrar as far as his meticulous bureaucratic work was concerned. Perhaps, in the end, Höss was too limited in outlook to administer the enormous Auschwitz camp area, although of course he had his large staff for that. I learned from his own mouth that Höss personally, as a human being, suffered under his work, which in part also included the work of physically exterminating opponents.

Once, when we were sitting in his apartment, he told me, as if for his own consolation, that a few days earlier the RF (Reichsführer-SS) had visited Auschwitz concentration camp and had seen everything, including the physical extermination of opponents, from gassing to burning. The RF had said to these men, with Höss also present: ‘These are battles that our coming generations will no longer have to fight.’ These words of the RF had given not only his men but also Höss himself the inner reassurance that this difficult, burdensome work was necessary for the blood from which he came and had to be carried out.

I took from this that Höss was not what people portray as a bulldog-like, uncomplicated, brutal camp commandant, but a man accustomed to sit in judgment on himself and account to himself for what he did. But we thought as Höss did, too. When Höss told me this sentence of the RF, which I can still repeat exactly today, the Reichsführer's sentence probably gave me, in my official work, although I wasn't present, just as much as it may have given Höss in his sector. After all, we were followers—voluntary followers—of our RF. Through our oath to the flag and our oath of service, we had committed ourselves to submit to our superiors' orders and carry out our orders for the welfare and benefit of our German blood.

Höss impressed me personally, even in his outward appearance, because, in my eyes at least, he stood out so pleasantly from the appearance of many an SS drawing-room officer. He went about in a casual field tunic… When I visited him, we would get into his Kfz (motor vehicle) 15 and drive to some area of the camp, or outside the camp as well. He showed me his new buildings, his administration and his difficulties. He employed prisoners of almost every nationality within his administration.

As for Höss's own house, he had his house inside the camp area, a spacious house of about five or six rooms where he lived with his family. He had three or four small children. The furniture was in the SS natural-wood style, clean and simple, but his home was cozy and pleasant. Höss himself was stocky, short and strong, extraordinarily quiet and taciturn. He was one of those people I would count among the coastal folk (Waterkantler); one often had to drag the words out of him. He had no passions. He hardly drank, only joining in out of courtesy, and he smoked more or less only for sociability.

What do you make of the widespread talk of Höss handing out whippings?

Utter nonsense. First, Höss didn't concern himself with individual fates at all, because he couldn't. His camp comprised several hundred thousand units; in any case it was over 100,000. A man who has to give orders concerning so many units has, first, no time at all even for a single

…lash to be delivered to a man. Second, given the scope of what he has to oversee, he is in no position to do anything like that at all, because he has to see to things, because within twenty-four hours he has to issue whatever orders are necessary. Höss had to work in his command center, and had virtually to steal from his daily routine the minutes or hours he unavoidably had to spend driving around the camp.

Third, a concentration-camp commandant who had even handed out slaps in the face, let alone whippings, would have been not only removed but punished by the RF (Reichsführer-SS) immediately, in the very hour he heard of it. But it wouldn't even have reached the RF. SS Ogf. (Obergruppenführer) Pohl, who was by nature extraordinarily soft-hearted, would have dealt with it himself as head of the WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office), to whom Höss was subordinate as a desk officer. There was only one man a degree more soft-hearted and solicitous than Höss—in comparison with him, Höss could even be called a hard man—and that was his successor.

Or rather, Höss was at some point detached for several months. His successor, Ostf. Liebehenschel, came from the main office, from the office of the concentration-camp inspectors, that of SS Ostf. Glücks. This Liebehenschel, who knew concentration-camp life only from the files, was now transferred for several months into harsh reality, and also had dealings with me. I remember as well today as I did then that he behaved almost like an enfant terrible in Auschwitz. In the end he let things slide and allowed his staff to do as they pleased, as they had been accustomed to in Höss's time under his admittedly strict command. That was how Liebehenschel got on best.

In other words, I know of no concentration-camp commandant who acted inhumanely, or who let himself be carried away even once into using a stick, a whip or a slap in the face. I know of only one case in which a concentration-camp commandant was removed by the RF and shot: SS Stf. (Standartenführer) Koch of Buchenwald concentration camp. I believe that man had gone astray and committed offenses in financial matters. His superior office discovered it. He was removed, tried and shot by firing squad, for financial gain—precious stones, gold or money and so on.

All I mean is that the RF and his main-office chief, Pohl, took the strictest care to ensure that the SS personnel of the concentration camps, who were in the spotlight of world public opinion, were in order. Where that could no longer be guaranteed, these people were removed and put on trial, without regard to any resulting propaganda. For this purpose the SS, in its strictness, had its own jurisdiction, whose provisions were far harsher than anything Roman criminal law had ever provided. All of us in the SS were treated, judged and assessed under this judicial procedure. So much for the question of whippings by gentlemen serving in the SS.

Someone did transgress here and there, but he was put on trial, even if he beat Jews. I want to state that expressly, because it can be proved and because it wasn't an exceptional case: action was taken wherever it happened. The opponent wasn't dealt with individually; the matter was resolved politically. To what extent it could be resolved politically, or to what extent political success was achieved, I can judge within my own departmental area, the office to which I belonged. But I cannot presume to form a judgment about the success in this field of the other offices and main offices, which weren't subordinate to my main office, the Security Police.

Did Höss ever take you through the camp?

Yes, of course. Not just once: he took me through the camp several times.

Could you say something about the first time?

That is very difficult. I no longer know how often I was there. I was there alone; I was there with Krumey. Höss showed me everything. At the end he also showed me a trench where the corpses of gassed Jews lay on very sturdy iron grates. They were doused with some kind of fuel, set alight and cooked, just as stewing meat cooks… On that occasion Höss told me the words of the RF (Reichsführer-SS), because I said at the time that I had seen something like that for the first time in my life. It may be that Höss, who had often watched it, saw an apprehension, a horror in me. In any case, it made such an impression on me that I can still see that mountain of corpses before me today, after twelve, thirteen, fourteen years.

There I stood, and he told me the RF's words. I answered him roughly to this effect: when I look at your corpses and at the charred remains in the air-raid bunkers, and when I think of that old Berlin couple across whose bellies iron girders had fallen, where the man begged me with bulging eyes to shoot him and his wife looked at me with the same eyes, and I couldn't do it—in a deep air-raid cellar in Berlin, where the house above was burning so fiercely that my men drenched me and themselves with buckets of water, so our coats would be wet and we could pass through the wall of fire—and I said to my sergeant Slawik, who was standing behind me, ‘Well then, put a bullet through his head so they can be put out of their misery.’ But he didn't do it in my presence either. I hadn't given him the order, after all. Whether he did it afterward, I don't know. I fear he didn't either…

Those were the thoughts I had there after I had seen all these things in Berlin. I mention only this one case; whole volumes could be filled with such things. These things produced a hardness in me, so that I didn't find that heap of corpses on the grate so frightening after all. Although, without being physically aware of it, I must have shown at least a slight gesture of alarm, because otherwise Höss wouldn't have, in a sense, supported me at that moment. Just as it would have looked bad if I had fainted: after all, a little train of subordinates was behind us, and such a thing would have been taken as a lapse and spread immediately like wildfire, and people would have revised their whole personal attitude. That mustn't happen.

From the tours Höss gave you, can you still remember any particular features of the camp? For example, were you also in these workshops?

No, I wasn't there. There was also a park with flowers. It was a spacious site, several square kilometers, more heavily fenced in some places and less heavily in others, with towers all around fitted with machine guns. Some of the guards patrolled the edges with bloodhounds—or rather police dogs. Female inmates were supervised by female personnel, and male inmates by male personnel.

Did you notice a brothel in Auschwitz?

No.

Have you ever heard of one in Buchenwald? A brothel for camp inmates?

Yes, yes. I didn't hear about it; I learned it from a file. Specifically, from the time when the concentration-camp inmates, for armaments work

…were assigned, these brothels were established for them in the camps. After their work, for which they were paid, the prisoners could enjoy their little amorous trysts. They got more out of life, were reassured and content, and worked all the better and more obediently the next day—or perhaps not—because they were already looking forward to the next little tryst. That was fairly early in the period of total war.

Was there no such establishment in Auschwitz?

I don't know. But if there was a general rule for all concentration camps, then presumably there was one there too. I can't imagine that, in its basic approach, the WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office) would have issued different orders from the Reich Security Main Office. So the order will have applied in all concentration camps, wherever armaments work was carried out. That was almost everywhere, even in my Theresienstadt, which wasn't a concentration camp. There they were given the lightest work, work for old people who, by oversight, hadn't yet died.

In the last days of the war, did Müller, Kaltenbrunner or any of your immediate superiors point out to you that around mid-April a proposal had been made to the RF (Reichsführer-SS) to put blood-group markings on roughly several hundred thousand concentration-camp inmates, thereby making the otherwise immediate identification of all SS personnel impossible?

I'm hearing that from you for the first time. But I wish the RF (Reichsführer-SS) had ever thought of that idea, because then they wouldn't have got me either or been able to catch me.

Do you know the RF's (Reichsführer-SS's) answer?

‘My SS is to be ready to die for its idea. Mixing with the enemies of the Reich would have been the greatest humiliation.’

You probably know that, after the annexation of the Bačka to Hungary, the government … carried out deportations of Jews from the Bačka across the Danube? The Bardo… government? 1941. They later came to the Belgrade ghetto.

That was, at any rate, a measure I know nothing about.

These Jews were interned in the Belgrade ghetto. About 25,000 Jews then gathered in the Belgrade ghetto. These 25,000 Jews were the basis of a report by Benzler, the German representative, to Ribbentrop, with the intention of deporting these Jews to Poland and Russia? What is reported is this: on the basis of this report, in response to Benzler's request to deport the Jews to Poland and Russia, Eichmann declared that there was no room in Poland and Russia at the moment; he could make only one suggestion—to shoot these Jews?

I cannot have made such a suggestion, because I was responsible for evacuation, not for extermination. Office IV made no such suggestion in a single case, at any rate as far as my desk was concerned. At that time… long after the double battle had been fought at … Weeks after those battles I drove into that area and still saw the tank wrecks lying there… Around that time Heydrich summoned me and explained that physical extermination had now begun on the Führer's orders, and that Glo had been instructed to use the Russian anti-tank ditches for it.

I had his instructions to go there to Glo and, on my return, report to him—to the Chief of the Security Police—on the progress of the preparatory work. That was, in a sense, the first time I had heard about such a thing in the Reich Security Main Office. I said it was several weeks after the double battle—Minsk and Bialystok. I arrived weeks later. The clearing parties had already cleared everything away. There were still Russian tanks to be seen, but no longer the vast numbers the WB had announced. I also said it was autumn; that was when I first heard of such things. At that time the Security Police, that is, Office IV, had nothing to do with liquidation, shooting or physical extermination.

At that time my liaison from the Foreign Office was Legation Councillor von Thadden. Whenever there were difficulties involving the Foreign Office's services abroad, Legation Councillor von Thadden would come straight to me with the notes he received from his office within the Foreign Office, to discuss the matter. I could never have said to a Legation Councillor von Thadden, a member of the Foreign Office: ‘My advice to you is to have them shot.’ At most I could have given such advice to a member of the Security Police or the Security Service… but I said ‘could’… At that time this large-scale liquidation was not a current matter.

The Einsatzgruppen (operational groups) in the East, yes, they had instructions and orders directly from the RF (Reichsführer-SS), perhaps also from the Chief of the Security Police. But Office IV itself was kept entirely out of this matter, and you can even see that the opposing literature says that the desk officer of Office IV B4 had nothing to do with these things—that corresponds to the facts. Nor could I have advised shooting the Jews: that would have exceeded the scope of my authority. At most Müller could have given such advice. But it would also have been conceivable in practice that I too might have passed such advice to the

…head of Office IV through official channels, so to speak. That too would be conceivable, if it had been conceivable at all that such advice could have been given at that time. But perhaps you have some further details in this connection; perhaps something will come… But as far as I can remember, it is impossible.

In the course of the negotiations between the Chief of the Security Police and the Foreign Office, the question also arose whether these Jews should be deported to Rum. (Romania), with the Foreign Office declaring that this was no longer possible? Have you heard of that?

No.

But surely you know that the person then sent jointly by Heydrich and Luther to Serbia to clarify this question was not even someone from the Security Police or Security Service, but Rademacher… That business about Legation Councillor von Thadden isn't right; it was Rademacher then too… Rademacher had been von Thadden's predecessor.

Evidently, at that time the Chief of the Security Police—perhaps the RF (Reichsführer-SS) too—had his reasons for keeping his office, the official Secret State Office in Berlin, entirely away from these matters. It was striking that the Einsatzgruppen operational-group chiefs received ordinary orders about the treatment of Jews and other opponents without the responsible desk officers of the Secret State Police Office being involved at all. This whole matter may be connected with that, and it is very likely that, after the negotiations conducted at State Secretary level had ended, I received the whole matter as the responsible desk, with instructions to incorporate it into the relevant files as a registry matter. I had nothing to do with the matter itself.

Did you have no conversation with Rademacher before his departure for Hungary?

It is possible, but I cannot remember ever giving an order about it. That contradicts what you have taken from the literature here. If a Main Office of the RF deals with a particular matter with a State Secretary of the Foreign Office, a matter that cannot even be regarded as fundamentally important on a Reich-wide scale—for you cannot say that this little matter here is fundamentally important on the scale of the Reich, within the Reich's horizon—if the matter was handled at that State Secretary level, then you can imagine that this State Secretary level—not by a small desk officer—and the distance between a desk officer and the State Secretary level is so great that a desk officer cannot burst in with a so-called piece of advice. Can you imagine Heydrich tolerating such advice from a desk officer? His vanity alone would have ruled it out. Apart from that, no one would have dared, because we respected Heydrich too much.

But as you know, it was customary, precisely for discussions, whether at State Secretary or Security Police level, to have full written submissions provided?

Yes. I was astonished when I heard what orders the Einsatzkommando operational-detachment chiefs received concerning the treatment of the Jews. I only learned that long after the shots had been fired up there, from the situation reports the Einsatzgruppen chiefs submitted to the Security Main Office. These then circulated through official channels and were marked for the individual desks according to their responsibilities, so that they could be entered in the files. That was when I heard for the very first time that people were being liquidated here and …

That had been entirely unfamiliar up to then; it was something new. It is quite possible that Heydrich may have asked me where to put the Jews. But it is equally possible, since it was a relatively small number, that he decided, as he often liked to do—that Heydrich simply decided: there, or there. For Heydrich, unlike Kaltenbrunner, did not always consult his desk officers beforehand. I recall the establishment of the Theresienstadt old-age home. He simply, blithely promised the press something he could not deliver, and afterwards brought me in and asked my advice on how he could best get out of this mess: ‘I've promised something now, and something must happen.’ I never had anything to do with the matter in Ba… In general, as the course of the whole affair shows, I can still remember the individual events to some extent.

Perhaps I can jog your memory by reminding you of the famous Wannsee meeting on 20 May 1942. At that meeting the question of the Jews deported from Hungary and Yugoslavia was also discussed, and it was decided there that these Jews were to be transported to eastern Poland.

So, a whole year later than the matter as we have discussed it so far, the whole matter was raised again at another conference, that is, at this Wannsee meeting. Why then the Jews—if I had already advised shooting them out of hand because otherwise there would be no room—the very phrase ‘no room’ in Poland and Russia is such far-fetched nonsense that I cannot describe it any other way. Around that time the transport question was also precarious, because I always received the transport reports; those were the actual arrangements between the RF (Reichsführer-SS) and the Reich Transport Ministry… And now it was decided that these Jews from Hungary and Yugoslavia were to be transported to eastern Poland…

Then Glo… will probably have received them… And then it is claimed that these Jews never reached eastern Poland but disappeared on the way; so it is assumed that they were liquidated on the way… Look, how can you make 25,000 Jews, or people, or let us say 25,000 cows—how can you simply make 25,000 animals disappear on the way? That is far too large a mass for you simply to lose them like a ten-pfennig piece without anyone knowing anything about it. That sprang from some fantasist who wants to shine with something new here, and it has no basis in reality, because, after all… Have you ever seen 25,000 people all together?

It is possible that it wasn't 25,000, but only a fraction…

Let's say 10,000. Have you ever seen 10,000 people all together? That is five transport trains. Even if you cram the transports full after the pattern of the Hungarian gendarmerie, with the best will in the world you cannot get more than 3,000 people into one transport train. All right, that makes three transport trains, but how do you intend to make three transports crammed full of people disappear without anyone somehow knowing about it, that

…would have to—the Jews would have recorded that very precisely, because they recorded far less significant individual cases of 20, 30 or 50 in the greatest detail. This scribbler has somehow made it up, and out of what may have been a harmless matter… They may have been deported; I don't know. I had nothing to do with it… Perhaps I did have something to do with it; that is also possible, but not in a directing capacity. Otherwise I would know of such a case, that I could have discussed this whole matter with Rademacher or someone else at the time. And you yourself say that the matter was discussed between Heydrich and a State Secretary of the Foreign Office. That alone gives the scribbler the lie, just as the notion that several thousand people simply vanished gives him the lie. Unthinkable, illogical.

Do you remember having a conversation with Rademacher after he returned from Belgrade?

It is possible that he reported to me, but I had nothing to do with it in a directing capacity.

Do you know anything more about the Zenum camp in Serbia?

Nothing at all. Never heard of it. Who was it subordinate to?

In this Zenum camp, were 60,000 women and children exterminated after the men had been sent to work or sent away?

The commanders of the Security Police, Fuchs and Schaefer?

Yes… Fuchs is right, but without the Secret State Police Office, acting within his own sphere of responsibility under some order from above, just like the Einsatztruppen operational-troop chiefs. That is why I could not have known anything about it either. It belonged to the same complex of matters as the Einsatzgruppen operational-group chiefs in the East. We had four of them, didn't we? Fuchs received his order—I can still see him—Fuchs, wasn't he replaced by Schaefer? And yes, Fuchs once came to me. Fuchs was a small, slight man; he was an Oberführer or Brigadeführer.

The man received his order from above, not from us. That would have been unthinkable, because at that time—Section IV B 4 had given no extermination order at all up to 8 May 1945, not in a single case. I wasn't allowed to. I wasn't responsible for it. I was responsible for deportation. I wasn't responsible for deportation within the General Government; I wasn't responsible for the movement of the masses onto Russian soil; I wasn't responsible for the movement of the masses down in the Serbian area. I did have a man stationed in Belgrade, though, didn't I? No, then I am mistaken—I'm confusing it with Athens.

It is emphasized that, because of the difficult ground, it was not a man from Eichmann's office but a man from the Foreign Office. That was Rademacher.

That is further proof. I am trying to remember whether I had an adviser in Belgrade, although there was nothing there for me to advise on, just as I had no adviser in Poland or in the individual districts. There was nothing to advise on there. The heads of those local offices received their instructions from a higher authority than the IV B 4 desk. I had no Jewish-affairs adviser to send into the whole Russian area. The heads of the offices received their instructions from a higher authority, and I read them afterwards in the general situation reports, which, in the various departments and desks

…each section here took out its notes to incorporate them into its registry. I had no advisers down in that area either.

But I would put it to you that surely, under the commander (Kommandeur) of the Security Police and Security Service, or the senior commander (Befehlshaber) of the Security Police and Security Service in Belgrade, you had a section head within the scope of your own section?

No, that was quite impossible, or rather, unnecessary.

But within Office IV there was certainly a Jewish-affairs officer?

Yes, that is possible. But in that case, just like the Jewish-affairs officers with the individual Einsatzgruppen operational-group chiefs in the East, he did not receive his orders from the responsible desk officer in Office IV, but from the Einsatzgruppen chief. Likewise, down in that area where I had no men, he received his orders directly from his commander, the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service. ‘Commander’—it is clear from the title itself. There was a commander in Belgrade—or was he a senior commander? There was a senior commander for Serbia, and under him a commander in Belgrade.

Where there were commanders, I had nothing to command. The commanders were like the Einsatzkommando operational-detachment leaders; they received their orders from the Einsatzgruppen chief, and the Einsatzgruppen chief naturally had a desk officer on his staff. They received their orders from the Einsatzgruppen chief and not from Berlin. It was passed down that way in a strict chain of command from above. Otherwise a triangle would have arisen: the RF (Reichsführer-SS) would have given orders directly, and then the individual desk officers in Office IV would have inserted their bureaucratic route.

That probably went too slowly for those gentlemen. They eliminated the bureaucracy entirely and could achieve their results more quickly by transmitting orders rapidly. From an administrative point of view, that is quite clear to me. And so I had no man stationed down in Belgrade, neither one directly subordinate to me, nor a man whom I—because he was an officer for ideological opponents in the office of the commander of the Security Police and Security Service for Ja… —stationed there, who approached me for instructions, to obtain my instructions—I couldn't; I couldn't intervene by issuing instructions within commanders' areas.

Instructions from a higher authority—what do you mean by that?

Either the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service personally, acting on the RF's personal instructions; as a rule, however, it was the RF. The Einsatzgruppen chiefs received their orders from the RF, or, deputizing for him, from the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service—never from an office chief.