Words behind the interview

What it means

The Foreign Office managed Germany’s diplomacy and relations with allied, neutral, and occupied states. Under Joachim von Ribbentrop it worked with the SS and police on anti-Jewish policy.

Its Jewish-affairs desk passed proposals, pressed other governments, handled citizenship and diplomatic issues, and helped arrange deportations. Franz Rademacher and later Eberhard von Thadden were key desk officers.

In this interview

The office appears throughout talks about emigration, the Madagascar Plan, passports, deportations, allied governments, Hungary, Romania, France, and property deals.

Read with care

Foreign Office usually means the German Auswärtiges Amt, but nearby words must be verified when another country’s ministry is under discussion.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00010 Eichmann mentions passport rules passed through the office.

   …governed by a passport regulation through administrative channels, which gave it a legal administrative basis. The rule was sent through the Foreign Office to the (unclear: typist) representatives of other countries accredited in Germany, with whom we had diplomatic relations. They therefore had to accept a regulation issued by the Reich, just as we had to accept other countries' passport regulations.

2. File 85, scan 00016 A Foreign Office delegate joins talks on the Madagascar Plan.

   The Foreign Office had a spokesman, the Fuehrer's Chancellery had a spokesman, the former through von Thadden, the latter through Reischauer. Every other office whose duties touched the project was involved too, because each agency guarded its powers closely. I believe my office held at least fifteen to twenty large meetings on the Madagascar project, with roughly twenty to twenty-five people at each one. I had lawyers draw…

3. File 88, scan 00162 The speakers discuss the office’s Jewish-affairs and Aryanization staff.

   Do you know that the Foreign Office had a Jewish affairs officer and an Aryanization adviser?

Related entries

• IV B 4
• Madagascar Plan
• Final Solution
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, German Foreign Office and the Holocaust
• German Foreign Office Political Archive

What it means

NS is the short adjective for National Socialist. It can describe a Nazi Party member, office, profession, idea, or body without naming the NSDAP as a noun.

National Socialism was the Nazi Party's racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic ideology. Hitler made it the ruling ideology of Germany after 1933.

In this interview

The reviewed English uses NS in the phrase NS lawyers when Eichmann discusses lawyers who sought exceptions for Jews in Vienna.

Read with care

Match uppercase NS only and don't silently turn it into NSDAP when the grammar makes it an adjective.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00097 Eichmann refers to NS lawyers who represented Jews before German offices in Vienna.

   In Vienna, for example, it was the NS lawyers who pushed forward to represent Jews legally before the authorities, to make exceptions accessible to them through their connections with German authorities, and naturally they charged very high fees. When admonitions bore no fruit, I had to keep admonishing, because I was getting a jumble of directives, and the RF's guidelines, which were meant to be the standard rule for all…

Related entries

• NSDAP

References

• USHMM, The Nazi Party

What it means

NSDAP is short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers' Party led by Adolf Hitler. It took power in 1933 and made Germany a one-party dictatorship.

The party had its own offices, ranks, and regional leaders alongside the German state. Its policy made racial persecution state policy and drove the murder of Europe's Jews.

In this interview

The speakers use NSDAP for the party as a whole, its local offices, and party membership or honors.

Read with care

Don't expand the shorter form NS as NSDAP without checking the phrase; NS often works only as the adjective National Socialist.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00040 Eichmann recalls an Upper Austrian meeting hall rented by the NSDAP and his attendance there as an SS man.

   …So only Bollek with twenty-five SS members got permission from the police to enter the hall, although the hall had been rented by the NSDAP. I belonged to it then as an SS man too, but I must say to that, we came

Related entries

• SA
• SS
• Gauleiter
• Reichsleiter

References

• USHMM, The Nazi Party

What it means

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW, was the Armed Forces High Command formed in 1938. It sat beneath Hitler and above much of Germany's military command system.

The army, navy, and air-force commands kept much of their power, so the OKW wasn't a simple unified headquarters. It helped plan and issue criminal war orders.

In this interview

A speaker asks whether a border barrier east of the General Government answered to the OKW or to a Berlin border-police office.

Read with care

OKW gives the armed-forces high command, not the Army High Command, which was the separate OKH.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00053 The speakers weigh whether an eastern border barrier came under the OKW or another central office.

   Now when people came out of the General Government and made off eastward, into the Russian-occupied territory, they slipped through a barrier. Who was the barrier under, the OKW or a central office for border-police matters in Berlin, or Poland-Frank?

Related entries

• OT
• Einsatzgruppe

References

• USHMM, German Armed Forces High Command

What it means

Organisation Todt, or OT, began in 1938 to build the Westwall fortifications. It grew into a huge wartime building body for roads, bunkers, factories, and military works.

Under Fritz Todt and then Albert Speer, OT relied increasingly on forced workers and prisoners of war. By late 1944 most of its workforce wasn't German.

In this interview

The speakers invoke OT workers while arguing that Jewish prisoners could have been used for labor instead of being murdered.

Read with care

The short form OT should link only as a whole uppercase token because ordinary letter pairs can appear inside other words.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00085 A speaker contrasts murder with forcing people into labor where OT personnel were employed.

   Yes, and that is why I come back to it now. Where was the benefit in killing these people? Surely another benefit would have been to put the people to work, there where our own people from the OT were put to work, instead of gassing them.

Related entries

• OKW

References

• German Historical Museum, Organisation Todt

What it means

The Nazi Party Chancellery handled central party business and links between Hitler, party offices, and the state. Martin Bormann became its head in 1941 after Rudolf Hess flew to Britain.

Bormann used the office to expand his access to Hitler and his power over domestic policy. Party Chancellery officials took part in anti-Jewish law and deportation drive.

In this interview

The speakers discuss Party Chancellery officials in Holland and Berlin and their part in proposed anti-Jewish measures.

Read with care

This is the Nazi Party office led by Bormann, not the Reich Chancellery of the German state.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00172 Eichmann links the words of a draft to Reischauer of the Party Chancellery.

   …would have put up with that. This sharpness of wording could come from Senior Government Counsellor (unclear: blot) Reischauer, from the Party Chancellery of the Führer. I would think him capable of it, I know him. But that was in no case his personal view, I don't mean to say that. It was his official assignment.

Related entries

• NSDAP
• Reichsleiter

References

• USHMM, Martin Bormann
• USHMM, Wannsee Conference

What it means

The Reich Interior Ministry oversaw internal government, citizenship law, the civil service, and much of the legal machinery used to exclude Jews and other targeted groups.

Its officials helped draft and apply the Nuremberg Laws and later decrees. The ministry worked with party and SS offices even as power shifted toward Himmler and the police.

In this interview

The ministry appears in talks about the Madagascar Plan, Jewish marking, citizenship, mixed marriages, and which office had power to issue a policy.

Read with care

The ministry’s legal role didn’t make SS and police action lawful. Nazi offices often used decrees and overlapping authority to turn persecution into routine state duties.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00016 The Interior Ministry joins talks about the Madagascar Plan.

   …because we could have transported them to Madagascar in large numbers. I asked the head of the Reich Office for Emigration Affairs in the Interior Ministry for figures on the climate and the island's capacity. That office had long advised Germans who wanted to emigrate. They weren't satisfactory; they were extraordinarily satisfactory.

2. File 85, scan 00030 The speakers discuss the ministry’s part in the Jewish star policy.

   It was a police ordinance of the Chief of the German Police in the Interior Ministry. Involved in this ordinance was of course State Secretary Stuckart. He was at that time the highest authority within the administrative struggle over an ordinance at all. The police were after all subordinated to the Interior Ministry. Naturally I was also involved in the marking of the Jews, because as the responsible desk officer for Jewish…

3. File 85, scan 00061 The ministry appears in a dispute over legal and police power.

   …for Jews from Budapest? On 21 August the Diplomatic Corps lodged a protest with (unclear: typist), and on the 25th it was decided that the Interior Ministry would again take control of the Jews in labor camps. On the 26th, your Einsatzgruppe…

Related entries

• Nuremberg Laws
• Jewish star
• Mischling
• Madagascar Plan
• RSHA

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nuremberg Race Laws
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Wannsee Conference

What it means

Hitler set up the ministry in July 1941 under Alfred Rosenberg. It oversaw the Reich Commissariats Ostland and Ukraine and sought German political, racial, and economic control in the occupied east.

Ministry staff worked amid overlapping power held by the SS, police, army, and occupation officials. Its officials knew about and took part in anti-Jewish persecution, forced labor, seizure, and mass murder.

In this interview

The ministry appears in discussion of the Wannsee Conference, Romanian deportation plans, gas killing proposals, and messages from occupation officials in Ostland.

Read with care

The ministry didn’t control all German action in the east. SS and police leaders, military commands, Reich commissioners, and local offices had overlapping powers.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00128 A ministry official is named in the Wannsee attendance list.

   So taking part were: Gauleiter Dr. Meier, and Reichsamtleiter Dr. Meibrandt, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories?

2. File 88, scan 00058 A ministry reply discusses the Jewish question and economic interests.

   Then a reply comes to that, on 18 December 41, from the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories:

3. File 88, scan 00059 The Reich Commissioner for Ostland writes to the ministry about Kube.

   The Reich Commissioner for the Ostland writes on 18 June 43 to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories: From General Commissioner Kube.

Related entries

• Reich Commissioner
• Higher SS and Police Leader
• Einsatzgruppe
• Final Solution

References

• German Federal Archives, Alfred Rosenberg
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Alfred Rosenberg

What it means

The Sturmabteilung, or SA, was the Nazi Party's mass paramilitary force. It used street violence and intimidation during the party's rise to power.

Hitler ordered the murder of leading SA men in the Röhm purge of 1934. The SA survived, but it lost much of its power and remained separate from the SS.

In this interview

The speakers mention the SA beside the SS and too use SA as part of officers' rank titles.

Read with care

An SA rank isn't an SS rank even when both bodies used the same German rank name.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00115 Eichmann recalls interpretation about members of the SA and SS during his early turn toward Nazism.

   Around that time I read how members of the SA and the SS were murdered, how they were carried to their graves with an enormous faith, how they were told that they were dying for something great. I read that even the funeral processions were attacked by the Commune. All of that outraged me beyond words. It shaped in me an inclination, a friendship toward these half-idiots who marched through the street along the Wend barracks…

Related entries

• NSDAP
• SS

References

• USHMM, The Nazi Party
• USHMM, Röhm Purge

What it means

The Wehrmacht comprised the army, navy, and air force. It waged Germany’s wars of aggression and occupied big parts of Europe.

Military units helped carry out the Holocaust through shootings, forced labor, starvation policy, prisoner abuse, and support for Einsatzgruppen and other killing units. The postwar idea of a clean Wehrmacht is false.

In this interview

The speakers distinguish military and SS lines of command but describe their agreements, shared transport needs, occupation duties, and action behind the front.

Read with care

Wehrmacht doesn’t mean only the army. It too must not be treated as separate from Nazi crimes merely because SS and police bodies led many killings.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00025 The speakers discuss the military line of command beside SS orders.

   …of a year. And in the anteroom of this carriage there was a senior SS leader who worked like a coolie in a circle of general staff majors in Wehrmacht uniform and of SS leaders. And he said to me, somebody said to me, whether it was the train commander or another commander, he said to me, there they are cramming for the new offensive that the RF will lead.

2. File 85, scan 00037 Military and police authority are compared.

   …that he did not lack vanity, and it even went so far that he, against the order of his immediate superior, in his capacity as a major of the Wehrmacht, obtained a Luftwaffe uniform and got into a fighter aircraft and shot down two or three Spitfires over the North Sea and won himself the Iron Cross First Class. And I still remember it today, when I was ordered to see him one day about some matter, he received me as a major…

3. File 85, scan 00063 The Wehrmacht appears in the Hungary and transport discussion.

   …had, for the moment, also been crowned by the fact that, on that occasion, although under orders, I was nevertheless able to withdraw a small Wehrmacht (unclear: faint) from the Russian grasp, since the Russians soon occupied that territory again.

Related entries

• OKW
• Commissar Order
• Einsatzgruppe
• Waffen-SS

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, German Military and the Holocaust

What it means

The Winterhilfswerk, or WHW, began in 1933 as a Nazi winter-relief drive. Street and house collections, badges, and public meals made it a visible part of daily life under the regime.

The WHW worked closely with Nazi welfare bodies and the Propaganda Ministry. Its wartime campaigns continued as the Kriegswinterhilfswerk.

In this interview

The interview reads a WHW letter from Posen about bloodstained clothing bearing Jewish stars that had been given to the charity.

Read with care

The letters name the Nazi winter-relief drive here, not a military or police office.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00196 A 1943 WHW letter protests the state of clothing sent to Posen and notes that Jewish stars remained on some garments.

   Now here is a letter from the WHW in Posen, winter 43, to the Chief Mayor of Litzmannstadt. A protest is made about the partly heavily stained items of clothing, soiled even with blood and dirt, that were put at the disposal of the WHW. It is also said that the returning settlers to be looked after by the WHW learn where the things came from, and that the WHW thereby falls into disrepute. So it emerges clearly here that items…

Related entries

• NSDAP

References

• German Historical Museum, Winterhilfswerk

What it means

Einsatzgruppen were mobile task forces of the Security Police and SD that followed German forces into seized territory. They carried out security duties, terror, and mass murder.

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, four main Einsatzgruppen organized mass shootings of Jews, Roma, Soviet officials, and others. Smaller Einsatzkommandos worked beneath them.

In this interview

The speakers press Eichmann about the Einsatzgruppen in the East and his knowledge of their mass shootings.

Read with care

Eichmann sometimes gives his Hungary staff a Sonderkommando and rejects the label Einsatzgruppe; keep those words separate.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00036 The discussion turns to Ohlendorf and the killings carried out by Einsatzgruppen in the East.

   …consistently working office chief, chief of Office III in the RSHA. I am not able to say anything more exact about the activity of the Einsatzgruppen in the East, because in an official capacity I never had anything to do with the matter. But perhaps what I just touched on with Hoess applies here to some extent as well, our readiness at that time to take on as much as possible in order to relieve others. I would like…

Related entries

• Sipo
• SD
• Einsatzkommando
• Sonderkommando

References

• USHMM, Einsatzgruppen
• USHMM, The Security Police

What it means

An Einsatzkommando was an operational detachment, often a smaller unit within an Einsatzgruppe. Its leader normally received orders through the Einsatzgruppe command line.

In the occupied Soviet lands, these units helped carry out mass shootings and other terror measures. The word could sometimes be used more broadly for a special detachment.

In this interview

The speakers discuss Einsatzkommando chiefs, their orders, and mass shootings in the East.

Read with care

The name alone doesn't fix the unit's size, commander, or duties; nearby place and command references are needed.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00141 Eichmann says Einsatzkommando leaders received orders from their Einsatzgruppe chief rather than his Berlin desk.

   Where there were commanders, I had nothing to command. The commanders, and the Einsatzkommando leaders, received their orders from the Einsatzgruppen chief. The Einsatzgruppen chief naturally had a desk officer on his staff, and they received their orders from the Einsatzgruppen chief, not from Berlin. This was passed down as part of a tight chain of command from above. Otherwise a triangle would have formed: the RF would…

Related entries

• Einsatzgruppe
• Sipo
• SD

References

• USHMM, Einsatzgruppen

What it means

Gestapa was short for Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt. It named the central Secret State Police Office in Berlin, rather than every Gestapo post.

After the RSHA was formed, the central Gestapo office became Office IV. Official papers still used Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt in set settings.

In this interview

Eichmann uses Gestapa when he means the central Berlin office and its sections. He sets it above the Stapo and Stapoleit offices.

Read with care

Gestapa isn't a misspelling of Gestapo. The transcript keeps the central-office name.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00156 Eichmann gives Gestapa as the central office led by Müller and places Stapo offices below it.

   …SS Abschnitte and SS Oberabschnitte came under this SD Hauptamt. Alongside it there was the Hauptamt SIPO. To the Hauptamt SIPO belonged the Gestapa office, the Gestapa, and the Reich Criminal Police Office. While the one was led by Mueller, the other was led by Nebe. To the Gestapa there belonged, as extended arms downward, the Stapo and the Stapoleit, the so-called Gestapo, but that is also not called Gestapo, it is…

2. File 86, scan 00157 He mentions Gestapa and its regional arms as state bodies.

   …them. That sector was quite clearly set apart from the Party and was a pure Party apparatus with nothing to do with the state side, while the Gestapa with the Stapo and Stapo commands, and the Reich Criminal Police with the Kripo and Kripo commands, were purely of a state nature, and they were also paid by the state.

Related entries

• Gestapo
• Stapo
• Office IV

References

• USHMM guide to the Gestapo

What it means

The Gestapo was Nazi Germany's Secret State Police. By 1936 Himmler had centralized the political police and joined it with the Kripo in the Security Police, or Sipo.

In 1939 the Gestapo became Office IV of the RSHA. Its officers arrested political and racial targets, sent people to concentration camps, and organized deportations of Jews.

In this interview

The speakers use Gestapo both for the political police as a whole and for the Berlin office in which Eichmann's section sat.

Read with care

Gestapa gives the central Secret State Police Office, while Stapo and Stapoleit usually name regional State Police offices.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00006 Eichmann mentions his transfer from the SD into the Gestapo Office and his duties there from 1940.

   …year 1934, in the autumn of 1934, when I was ordered from the troop to the SD. And for the third time when I was ordered from the SD to the Gestapo Office. I was (unclear: edge), always sworn to A.H., but the two later service oaths were oaths of secrecy and that I would follow the orders of my superiors (unclear: typist), here however with the addition of secrecy.

Related entries

• Sipo
• Gestapa
• Stapo
• RSHA
• Office IV

References

• USHMM, The Gestapo
• USHMM, The Security Police

What it means

Kripo is short for Kriminalpolizei, Nazi Germany's criminal detective police. In 1936 it joined the Gestapo in the Security Police, or Sipo.

The Kripo became Office V of the RSHA in 1939. It used preventive detention to send tens of thousands of people branded as criminal or socially dangerous to concentration camps.

In this interview

The speakers place the Kripo beside the Stapo when they discuss how the RSHA joined police and SD bodies.

Read with care

Kripo was the criminal-police branch, not another name for the Gestapo's political police.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00156 Eichmann mentions Kripo and Kripoleit as the regional arms of the Reich Criminal Police Office.

   …Gestapo, but that is also not called Gestapo, it is called Stapo. For the Reich Criminal Police Office the extended arm downward was the Kripo and the Kripoleit. The SD Hauptamt was made up of several offices,

Related entries

• Sipo
• Kripoleit
• RSHA
• Gestapo

References

• USHMM, The Nazi Kripo
• USHMM, The Security Police

What it means

LAH is short for Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. It began as Hitler's personal SS guard and grew into a major Waffen-SS formation.

The Waffen-SS fought as an armed branch of the SS and took part in the Holocaust and other war crimes. LAH must not be read as a police-office code.

In this interview

The speakers mention an LAH member who said his unit had been used in anti-Jewish actions in occupied Soviet lands.

Read with care

The transcript gives only one LAH passage, and its speaker's account should remain separate from the general glossary background.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00004 A speaker recalls an LAH member discussing his unit's use in anti-Jewish actions in the occupied Soviet territories.

   …and white. And if you ask an honest man of the Waffen SS today, he will be able to confirm it to you. I remember, there was a member of the LAH here once who openly admitted that his unit was deployed in such Jewish affairs by the LAH, in the occupied Russian territories.

Related entries

• Waffen-SS
• SS

References

• USHMM, Waffen-SS
• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

The Order Police, or Ordnungspolizei, joined Germany's uniformed police forces under one main office in 1936. It included urban police, rural gendarmes, and other uniformed services.

During the war, Order Police battalions guarded deportation trains, cleared ghettos, and took part in mass shootings. Kurt Daluege headed the main office for most of the war.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly gives Order Police guards assigned to deportation trains and to guard posts.

Read with care

Order Police were uniformed police and must not be merged with the plainclothes Security Police, or Sipo.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00099 Eichmann says German Order Police detachments of twenty-four to thirty men guarded transports from Slovakia.

   …to provide that personnel too. Slovak organs had to gather the Jews and carry out the loading. Once the transport train was loaded, German Order Police forces boarded it, normally 24 to 30 men strong, and escorted it to the destination station named to me by the WEHA or, at the beginning, by the Chief of the Sipo. But before such transports could be carried out, it was now necessary…

Related entries

• Sipo
• Higher SS and Police Leader
• SS and Police Leader

References

• USHMM, The Order Police
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

The Reich Criminal Police Office led Germany’s detective police. Arthur Nebe headed it for much of the Nazi period.

In 1939 the office became Office V of the RSHA. The Criminal Police helped enforce racial and social persecution, including detention and deportation of Roma, people branded habitual criminals, and others sent to camps.

In this interview

Eichmann places it beside the Gestapo and Order Police while explaining the police structure and Nebe’s post.

Read with care

The interview’s past sketch compresses several reorganizations. Before 1939 the office belonged to the Security Police main office; after 1939 it was RSHA Office V.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00133 Eichmann lists it in a sketch of the police offices under Himmler.

   …In those offices where executive powers were granted to the desk officer, he was only the head of his office machine, and that includes the Reich Criminal Police Office, that includes the office of the Order Police, the Gestapo office.

2. File 86, scan 00156 He contrasts Nebe’s criminal police office with Müller’s Gestapo office.

   …came under this SD Hauptamt. Alongside it there was the Hauptamt SIPO. To the Hauptamt SIPO belonged the Gestapa office, the Gestapa, and the Reich Criminal Police Office. While the one was led by Mueller, the other was led by Nebe. To the Gestapa there belonged, as extended arms downward, the Stapo and the Stapoleit, the so-called Gestapo, but that is also not called Gestapo, it is called Stapo. For the Reich Criminal…

Related entries

• Kripo
• Sipo
• RSHA
• Office IV

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, SS and Police
• German Federal Archives, Criminal Police

What it means

Himmler formed the RSHA on Sept 27, 1939. It brought the Security Police and SD into one headquarters led first by Reinhard Heydrich and later by Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

By 1941 it had seven numbered offices. Office IV was the Gestapo, Office V was the Kripo, and Offices III and VI held domestic and foreign SD intelligence.

In this interview

The speakers use both RSHA and Reich Security Main Office when discussing Eichmann’s unit, its chiefs, and the boundaries among offices.

Read with care

The RSHA didn’t include every SS or German police body. Order Police and the WVHA remained outside it.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00016 Eichmann locates IV B 4 in the Reich Security Main Office.

   …our own time, amid our shortage of land and the need to solve the problem, did the Madagascar idea return. As the IV B4 desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office, I put it to Heydrich after first presenting it to Mueller, and I received permission to set the useful steps in motion. France had been defeated, and Madagascar was a French possession. Representatives from the central agencies then attended a series of…

2. File 86, scan 00156 He mentions how the Security Police and SD main offices were brought together in the RSHA.

Related entries

• Sipo
• SD
• Office IV
• Office VI
• IV B 4

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, RSHA
• Yad Vashem study of Eichmann’s Jewish-affairs unit

What it means

The SD began in 1931 as the Nazi Party’s intelligence service within the SS. It gathered information about people and groups the Nazis treated as enemies.

The SD and Security Police entered the RSHA in 1939. Office III handled domestic intelligence and Office VI handled foreign intelligence.

In this interview

Eichmann speaks of his early SD duties, the Chief of the Sipo and SD, and the SD offices inside the RSHA.

Read with care

The SD wasn’t the Gestapo and had different legal roots. In occupied land their staff and duties often overlapped.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00008 Eichmann mentions his early place in the SD and its effort on Jewish affairs.

   …he spoke there of the solution of the Jewish question. Soon afterward, when I was given the Zionist association as my subject area in the SD Main Office, I had already begun to mark files “Re: Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” The Reichsführer's aim was to bring about a final solution. The term “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” has nothing to do with physical death or the death of a person. This file heading,…

2. File 86, scan 00156 He sets the party-based SD beside the state-based Security Police before their union in the RSHA.

   Originally, in 1934 or 35, there was an SD Hauptamt. That was the security service of the Reichsfuehrer SS. This security service of the Reichsfuehrer SS was gathered together in the SD Hauptamt, and the SS Abschnitte and SS Oberabschnitte came under this SD Hauptamt. Alongside it there was the Hauptamt SIPO. To the Hauptamt SIPO belonged the Gestapa office, the Gestapa, and the Reich Criminal Police Office. While the one was…

Related entries

• SS
• Sipo
• RSHA
• Office VI

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Sicherheitsdienst
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, RSHA

What it means

Himmler created the Security Police in 1936 by joining the political police, Gestapo, with the criminal police, Kripo. Reinhard Heydrich led it while too leading the SD.

In 1939 the Security Police and SD entered the RSHA. They still kept different legal and staffing roots even while working together.

In this interview

The phrase most often appears in the title Chief or Commander of the Sipo and SD. The reviewed English uses SIPO, Sipo, SiPo, and Security Police.

Read with care

Sipo didn’t mean all police. Order Police was a separate branch, and SD was joined with Sipo but wasn’t one of its two police arms.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00156 Eichmann gives Gestapa and the Reich Criminal Police Office as the two arms of the Security Police main office.

   …together in the SD Hauptamt, and the SS Abschnitte and SS Oberabschnitte came under this SD Hauptamt. Alongside it there was the Hauptamt SIPO. To the Hauptamt SIPO belonged the Gestapa office, the Gestapa, and the Reich Criminal Police Office. While the one was led by Mueller, the other was led by Nebe. To the Gestapa there belonged, as extended arms downward, the Stapo and the Stapoleit, the so-called Gestapo, but that…

2. File 86, scan 00157 He contrasts the state police bodies with the party-based SD.

   …at that time. Brandt, Oberg, Ohlendorf and so on. Their chief in that sector was Heydrich, exactly as he was chief of the Main Office of the Security Police, which consisted of the Stapo and the Reich Criminal Police. Above that stood Heydrich, and his chief was the Reichsfuehrer, who was then chief over various main offices. There was the Main Office of the Order Police, which again split up into various branches. The fire…

Related entries

• Gestapo
• Kripo
• SD
• RSHA
• BdS

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Security Police
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, RSHA

What it means

Sonderkommando means special detachment and was used for very different units. In Hungary, Sonderkommando Eichmann meant Eichmann's SS and police staff for deportation drive.

In killing centers, Sonderkommando too meant prisoner squads forced into labor at gas chambers and crematoria. Those prisoners mustn't be confused with Eichmann's staff or with German Einsatzgruppe detachments.

In this interview

The interview uses Sonderkommando for Eichmann's Hungary staff and later for the prisoner squad that revolted at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Read with care

Resolve the meaning from the place, people, and duties named on the page before linking related bodies.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00061 Eichmann rejects the label Einsatzgruppe for his Hungary staff and says it was called a Sonderkommando.

   I wasn't an Einsatzgruppe. I was a Sonderkommando. They called it Eichmann.

2. File 88, scan 00149 A read passage mentions the prisoner Sonderkommando revolt at the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria.

   In July 1944 the record figure of 22,000 cremations a day was reached. The Sonderkommando made up of prisoners revolted in the summer of 1944, because the prisoners concluded from various signs that now they too were to be sacrificed. They refused to leave their block and even set part of the gas chambers on fire, but the machine guns and submachine guns of the SS appeared from every direction and put the rising down in a…

Related entries

• Einsatzgruppe
• Einsatzkommando
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM, Sonderkommandos
• Library of Congress, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression volume V

What it means

Hitler founded the SS in 1925 as a small guard unit. Under Himmler it grew into a vast Nazi body with police, intelligence, armed, camp, racial, settlement, and economic branches.

The SS led the murder of Europe’s Jews and many other victims. It worked through bodies such as the RSHA, WVHA, Waffen-SS, camp guards, and regional SS and police leaders.

In this interview

SS appears in rank titles, office gives, force gives, and broad talk about the organization. Longer office and rank gives have their entries.

Read with care

SS doesn’t mean only Waffen-SS. Check the nearby office, rank, or unit before narrowing the meaning.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00008 The speakers discuss the joining of police duties and SS duties under Himmler.

   From your personal dealings with the Reichsführer, do you know whether he regarded the later combination of police and SS duties as fortunate or unfortunate? Police duties and Waffen SS duties.

2. File 86, scan 00048 The speakers place SS members beside Order Police in the handling of Jews in France.

   …the Jews they concentrated near Paris. I know only one thing, that the blind obedience of the German Order Police, and as a rule that of the SS members too, saw to it, apart from a few cases, that this matter was steered and directed into the channels that were wanted. In the whole General Government no risings of any kind occurred either. The transports that came from Greece, France, Hungary and so on, those the world…

Related entries

• Reichsführer-SS
• SD
• RSHA
• WVHA
• Waffen-SS

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, SS
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, SS and Police

What it means

Stapo is a short form of Staatspolizei, the State Police. In this setting it usually points to a regional political-police office rather than the whole Gestapo system.

These offices acted as the Gestapo's regional arms. They handled political-police duties, arrests, detention, and deportation drive in their areas.

In this interview

Eichmann contrasts Stapo offices below the Gestapa with Kripo offices below the Reich Criminal Police Office.

Read with care

The transcript sometimes uses Gestapo loosely where Eichmann insists on Stapo, so the page setting matters.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00156 Eichmann lays out the police structure and says the Gestapa's arms below Berlin were the Stapo and Stapoleit.

   …Police Office. While the one was led by Mueller, the other was led by Nebe. To the Gestapa there belonged, as extended arms downward, the Stapo and the Stapoleit, the so-called Gestapo, but that is also not called Gestapo, it is called Stapo. For the Reich Criminal Police Office the extended arm downward was the Kripo and the Kripoleit. The SD Hauptamt was made up of several offices,

Related entries

• Gestapo
• Gestapa
• Stapoleit
• Sipo

References

• USHMM, The Gestapo
• USHMM, The Security Police

What it means

The Waffen-SS was the armed branch of the SS. It grew from a small force into more than twenty divisions with about half a million men.

Its units fought in major campaigns and took part in mass shootings, camp guard duties, anti-partisan warfare, and other war crimes. It was separate from the Gestapo and SD, though all belonged to Himmler's SS system.

In this interview

The speakers distinguish Waffen-SS men such as Becher from Sipo officers and discuss Waffen-SS units at killing scenes.

Read with care

Waffen-SS membership doesn't make a person a Gestapo or SD officer, even when SS ranks look the same.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00087 Eichmann contrasts Becher's Waffen-SS membership with authority inside the Sipo.

   Yes, of course it was a secret Reich matter, and, secondly, it wasn’t Becher’s place, as a member of the Waffen-SS, to set himself up here as a chief, as a member of the Sipo. Since when could the Waffen-SS arrange for opponents to be gassed? I had always believed that the Waffen-SS had a “clean vest.”

Related entries

• SS
• LAH
• Sipo
• SD

References

• USHMM, Waffen-SS

What it means

The WVHA was formed in 1942 under Oswald Pohl. It joined SS economic, financial, supply, building, and camp activity in one main office.

The Concentration Camps Inspectorate entered the WVHA in Mar 1942. The office then controlled the camp system and the use of prisoners as forced labor.

In this interview

The reviewed English has WVHA as well as transposed or damaged forms VWHA, VW HA, and WEHA. The surrounding talk gives Pohl, camps, labor, and transport destinations.

Read with care

The glossary keeps damaged VWHA forms in their entry so the transcript page can see what the typescript says. VuWHA remains separate because it can point to a real pre-1942 office.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00009 Eichmann gives the WVHA beside the Chief of the Security Police and SD in a discussion of Himmler’s orders.

   …must without doubt have given it to the Reichsführer, who must have given it to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD. The Chief of the WVHA will have received the remaining directions personally from the Reichsführer.

2. File 86, scan 00063 He says WVHA doctors at Auschwitz selected who could labor.

   There were doctors posted to Auschwitz by the WVHA who gave their judgment on who among the people delivered there could work, because the bulk of them had to work, and whoever couldn't marched inevitably into the gas chambers. I knew that too.

Related entries

• VuWHA
• VWHA
• SS
• concentration camp
• labor camp

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Pohl Case
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Concentration Camp System

What it means

GRS abbreviates Geheime Reichssache, literally a secret Reich matter. It marked the highest German state-secrecy level and is often rendered in English as top secret.

The marking governed how a paper was handled and who could see it. It doesn't prove that the contents were true or name the office that wrote them.

In this interview

The speakers use GRS for highly restricted papers, including a request sent to IV B 4 about a skeleton collection.

Read with care

Keep GRS uppercase and read it as a secrecy marking only when it appears beside a paper, file, teletype, or access policy.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00167 A speaker says a 1942 request for aid building a skeleton collection reached IV B 4 as GRS.

   In 1942 a request was brought to office IV B 4 as GRS, to help in building up a collection of skeletons. June 1942.

Related entries

• RSHA
• IV B 4

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary
• Arolsen Archives, Wannsee Conference study material

What it means

IV B 4 was a unit inside Office IV, the Gestapo branch of the RSHA. Adolf Eichmann led it and its older forms as Nazi policy moved from forced emigration to continent-wide deportation and mass murder.

The letters and numbers show its place in the RSHA tree. IV meant Gestapo, B marked a division within it, and 4 marked the unit commonly called the Jewish desk.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly uses IV B 4 to define his staff, authority, files, and dealings with other offices. He uses Referat, section, Department, Office, and Amt before the code.

Read with care

The unit’s name and place changed before 1941. Link only the full guarded forms and don’t tag a bare IV as this unit.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00016 Eichmann says he was at IV B4 in the RSHA while discussing the Madagascar Plan.

   …obsolete. Only in our own time, amid our shortage of land and the need to solve the problem, did the Madagascar idea return. As the IV B4 desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office, I put it to Heydrich after first presenting it to Mueller, and I received permission to set the useful steps in motion. France had been defeated, and Madagascar was a French possession. Representatives from the central agencies then…

2. File 86, scan 00098 He divides his unit into IV B 4 a and IV B 4 b and gives their staff.

   The order in principle, which came out in writing, came out at the outbreak of war. Emigration is stopped from now on, no Jew may emigrate any more, and release from a concentration camp during wartime is forbidden. With that it fell to the officer for protective custody in our Office IV, which was section IV A (unclear: hand). IV B 4 was the subdivision of my section. I had the subdivisions IV B 4 a and IV B 4 b.

Related entries

• Office IV
• RSHA
• Gestapo
• Wi

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, RSHA
• Yad Vashem study of Eichmann’s Jewish-affairs unit

What it means

Kripoleit shortens Kriminalpolizeileitstelle, a leading regional Criminal Police office. It belonged to the Kripo side of the Security Police system.

These regional offices worked below the Reich Criminal Police Office, which became RSHA Office V in 1939. Their duties differed from the political-police duties of the Stapo.

In this interview

The word appears once when Eichmann gives the Kripo and Kripoleit as under arms of the Reich Criminal Police Office.

Read with care

Kripoleit gives an office type and must not be expanded into a personal title.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00156 Eichmann pairs Kripoleit with Kripo while setting out the criminal-police branch.

   …but that is also not called Gestapo, it is called Stapo. For the Reich Criminal Police Office the extended arm downward was the Kripo and the Kripoleit. The SD Hauptamt was made up of several offices,

Related entries

• Kripo
• Sipo
• RSHA

References

• USHMM, The Nazi Kripo
• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

Camp papers used MKL or M.K.L. for Männer-Konzentrations-Lager, men's concentration camp. MKL Birkenau, for example, meant the men's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The interview quotes a paper about prisoners held in an infirmary of the MKL Auschwitz. The questioner guesses mass camp or model camp, and Eichmann says he has never heard the abbreviation.

In this interview

MKL appears in the quoted Auschwitz paper and again when the speakers try and fail to expand it.

Read with care

The camp meaning is attested, but the speakers didn't know it. Their wrong guesses remain unchanged in the transcript.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00168 A quoted paper says male and female prisoners are housed in an infirmary of the MKL Auschwitz. Eichmann says he doesn't know the letters.

   …Jews, 2 Poles, 4 inner Asiatics and 30 Jewesses. These prisoners are housed in part separately, by men and women, each in an infirmary of the MKL Auschwitz. And they are in quarantine.

2. File 88, scan 00170 The questioner guesses mass camp or model camp, and Eichmann again says he has never heard the abbreviation.

   And the term MKL, is that perhaps mass concentration camp or model concentration camp?

Related entries

• KZ
• WVHA
• Auschwitz

References

• USHMM glossary of camp abbreviations
• Arolsen Archives Auschwitz holdings guide

What it means

Office IV was the Gestapo office within the RSHA. It used police powers against people the Nazi state treated as political or racial enemies.

Heinrich Müller led the office. Its many divisions covered political opponents, churches, occupied lands, Jewish affairs, protective custody, and other police duties.

In this interview

Eichmann uses Office IV, Department IV, and Amt IV for the wider Gestapo office above IV B 4.

Read with care

Office IV must not match inside a longer IV B 4 form. The longest-form policy assigns that longer code to the IV B 4 entry.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00039 Eichmann says Office IV had about thirty desk officers and then explains their rank ladder.

   …clear, because I was pressed into an office, and this office knew established posts, and no ghosts. We were about thirty desk officers in Office IV. A desk officer is a Regierungsrat or Oberregierungsrat, equivalent to Sturmbannfuehrer or Obersturmbannfuehrer. The next step up is department head, in the rank of an Oberregierungsrat or a criminal police director, or precisely of an Obersturmbannfuehrer or…

2. File 85, scan 00043 He contrasts the police officials of Office IV with the foreign intelligence staff of Office VI.

   …before we got to the bottom of it, because the people from Office VI thought themselves cleverer than the so-called stinking officials of Office IV, and believed they could read our tolerance and our accommodation as stupidity. They grew more presumptuous in their demands and I cut across their plans. My inner balance was not in the least (unclear: typist) when I let Jews of a Zionist persuasion emigrate, because first,…

Related entries

• IV B 4
• Gestapo
• RSHA
• Office VI
• Heinrich Müller

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, RSHA
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Gestapo

What it means

Office VI was the RSHA's SD foreign-intelligence office. It built intelligence networks outside Germany and worked through agents and informants.

Office VI belonged to the SD side of the RSHA, not to the Gestapo in Office IV. Walter Schellenberg led it for much of the war.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions Office VI asking that Jewish informants be exempted from anti-Jewish measures and moving some of them abroad.

Read with care

The office structure changed during the war, so a bare Roman numeral mustn't link without Office, Department, or Amt beside it.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00043 Eichmann says Office VI sought exemptions for Jewish informants and quarreled with officers in Office IV.

   No, the opposite was the case. Not a week went by without Office VI applying to have the Jew X, Y, Z exempted from all the measures the Reich government had decided on against the Jews, on the grounds that they were to be used as informants. At the start that was believed too. Later I began to have misgivings, I put them to Mueller as well and he shared them. My permanent deputy, Guenter, was angered green, black and blue,…

Related entries

• RSHA
• SD
• Office IV
• Office VII

References

• USHMM, Reich Security Main Office
• Library of Congress, Nuremberg trial volume I

What it means

Office VII was the RSHA office for ideological research and evaluation. It gathered books, archives, and information about groups the Nazi regime treated as enemies.

Office VII belonged to the SD side of the RSHA. It wasn't the Gestapo arrest branch, which was Office IV.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses Office VII's research duties and his previous role in seizing and packing Jewish libraries.

Read with care

The office structure changed during the war, so a bare VII mustn't link without Office, Department, or Amt beside it.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00094 Eichmann mentions Department VII as a research office that gathered knowledge and handled library material.

   Responsible for this theoretical, academically working Rosenberg institute was, in Sipo terms, not Department IV but Department VII, which had the lead. That was quite clear, since both worked on the (unclear: typist) opponent from the scholarly side. I myself came out of this later Department VII. The main task of Department VII lay in gathering knowledge, and that was done in peacetime. Around the time when this apparatus…

Related entries

• RSHA
• SD
• Office IV
• Office VI

References

• USHMM, Reich Security Main Office
• Library of Congress, Nuremberg trial volume I

What it means

Stapoleit shortens Staatspolizeileitstelle, a leading regional State Police office. It belonged to the Gestapo side of the Security Police system.

A Leitstelle directed political-police duties over a wider area than a smaller Stapo office. Both remained below the central Gestapa and, after 1939, RSHA Office IV.

In this interview

The word appears once while Eichmann sketches the Gestapa's regional arms.

Read with care

The shortened transcript form gives an office type, not a person or a separate police force.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00156 Eichmann pairs Stapoleit with Stapo below the Gestapa in his account of the police structure.

   …While the one was led by Mueller, the other was led by Nebe. To the Gestapa there belonged, as extended arms downward, the Stapo and the Stapoleit, the so-called Gestapo, but that is also not called Gestapo, it is called Stapo. For the Reich Criminal Police Office the extended arm downward was the Kripo and the Kripoleit. The SD Hauptamt was made up of several offices,

Related entries

• Stapo
• Gestapa
• Gestapo
• Office IV

References

• USHMM, The Security Police
• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

VuWHA points to the SS Administration and Economic Main Office, a previous office for SS budgets, construction, supply, and business affairs. A Nuremberg exhibit lists it as the SS-Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftshauptamt.

In 1942 its duties passed into the larger WVHA under Oswald Pohl. The later WVHA took control of the concentration-camp system.

In this interview

The single exact form appears when Eichmann gives Sturmbannführer Opperbeck of the VuWHA as leader of a postwar camp.

Read with care

The English line alone doesn't settle whether the typed form gives the pre-1942 office or preserves a damaged later usage.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00058 Eichmann mentions Opperbeck as a Sturmbannführer of the VuWHA while discussing his postwar false identity and camp stay.

   …nine or eleven officers in the camp, I naturally couldn't strike out on my own, so I asked the camp leader, Sturmbf. Opperbeck of the VuWHA, for an officers' conference.

Related entries

• WVHA
• VWHA

References

• Library of Congress, Nuremberg trial volume XXIX
• USHMM, The Pohl Trial

What it means

VWHA, VW HA, and WEHA are damaged or transposed transcript forms of WVHA. They don't name a separate office.

The WVHA was formed in 1942 under Oswald Pohl. It managed SS finances and businesses and took control of the concentration-camp system.

In this interview

The damaged forms occur in talk about Pohl, camp destinations, property taken from deportees, and duties assigned to the WVHA.

Read with care

Check the scan and nearby gives before normalizing a damaged form, especially where WEHA appears in a phrase about a destination station.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00035 Eichmann gives Pohl and writes VWHA while discussing Himmler's dealings with the SS economic office.

   …the RF never set down a single line about the physical destruction of the Jews in writing. I know that he only ever dealt with Pohl of the VWHA orally. I never received such an order, and still less can any of my Hstf of that time have been given knowledge of such an order.

2. File 85, scan 00099 The reviewed English preserves WEHA in Eichmann's account of who named destination stations for transports.

   …loaded, German Order Police forces boarded it, normally 24 to 30 men strong, and escorted it to the destination station named to me by the WEHA or, at the beginning, by the Chief of the Sipo. But before such transports could be carried out, it was now necessary…

Related entries

• WVHA
• VuWHA

References

• USHMM, The Pohl Trial
• USHMM, The Höcker Album

What it means

XY is a variable placeholder, like John Doe or so-and-so. The speakers use it when giving an example without a real name or number.

Its meaning shifts with the noun beside it. The transcript has Jew XY, envoy XY, office XY, Dr. Ing. XY, a works XY, and number XY.

In this interview

The code appears in examples about arrest, detention, office duties, travel, marriage papers, and unnamed officials.

Read with care

Never resolve XY to a person from another passage. Read the nearby noun and explain only that it is an unnamed example.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00022 Eichmann uses Jew XY while giving a generic example of concentration camp detention review.

   That office then asked the responsible commandant's office of the camp whether XY can be released. They answered, the Gestapo office answered me, and then I ordered again, the person concerned is to be released with effect from … Or the application is granted that the named man be left another half (unclear: typist) in the camp for improvement, and then the file was submitted to me again… (Viva, Anta (unclear: edge)

2. File 86, scan 00081 The phrase Jew XY appears again as a hypothetical person assigned to labor.

   …Jewish sources were carried over in a single combined transport. And if some Higher SS and Police Leader could then prescribe that Jew XY carries stones up and down, then it could just as easily be that some office head, whether in Holland or in the Reich, ordered the same way, these Jews are now put to this or that work. But that also means the denial of their own principle, that it's impossible for people to be…

Related entries

• IMD

What it means

BdS was short for Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD. The post commanded Security Police and SD staff across a big occupied area.

A BdS stood below the central RSHA and worked within the regional SS and police system. Local Stapo, Kripo, and SD units could fall within his reach.

In this interview

The reviewed English shows BDS. Eichmann uses it for regional headquarters in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, France, and elsewhere.

Read with care

BdS and Higher SS and Police Leader were different posts, even where their territorial duties overlapped.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00083 Eichmann speaks of the BDS in the Netherlands and its duties with Regierungsrat Zoepf.

   In conclusion I can state that the BDS always showed the greatest readiness to serve, that Regierungsrat Zoepf was in no way behind him, and that the man who controlled the center of Jewish life in Holland, namely Amsterdam, was in my eyes always the right man as well. But once Zoepf had, and this lay in his character, worked out the legal underpinning for Holland and forced it through the official channels with many…

2. File 88, scan 00084 He mentions a path from the BDS to Reich offices and the Higher SS and Police Leader.

   Now the game up there was played in such a way that Zoepf, after I sent reinforcements, had only to smooth the paths for settling the theoretical matters, by way of his BDS to the individual desk officers of the Reich Commissioner for the occupied Netherlands territories, and to the Higher SS and Police Leader in that territory, Rauter.

Related entries

• Sipo
• SD
• RSHA
• Higher SS and Police Leader

References

• USHMM guide to the SS and police
• USHMM guide to the Security Police

What it means

Brigadeführer was a high SS or SA officer rank. It stood above Oberführer and below Gruppenführer and is often placed at general-officer level.

The same rank name could appear with SS, SA, police, or Waffen-SS service. A person's office and command have to be read from more than the rank.

In this interview

The speakers apply the rank to Hans Huber, Richard Glücks, and other senior SS men.

Read with care

English general-rank guides are rough and can shift with date and service branch.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00107 Eichmann gives SS-Brigadeführer Hans Huber as head of the Vienna Leitstelle.

   He wasn't the commander; he was the permanent representative of the Vienna Leitstelle. Its head was SS Brigadeführer Hans Huber, and his deputy at the time was Dr. Rudolf Mildner.

Related entries

• Oberführer
• Gruppenführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

A Gauleiter headed a regional district of the Nazi Party. Hitler appointed each Gauleiter, and each answered directly to him inside the party's top-down system.

Many Gauleiter held state posts, and their power grew during the war. The party title didn't name one fixed government job.

In this interview

Eichmann gives several Gauleiter while recalling Austria, local Nazi politics, and dealings over wartime measures.

Read with care

Gauleiter is a party title; a holder's state or occupation powers must be verified separately.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00040 Eichmann recalls Gauleiter Bolleck speaking in Linz during the early Nazi movement in Upper Austria.

   …me too. Kaltenbrunner and I knew each other as children already. Old Kaltenbrunner and my father were business friends. When in 1931 the Gauleiter for Upper Austria gave one of his fighting speeches in the Maerzenkeller in Linz, Gauleiter Bolleck, I was there too. Bolleck was an old first lieutenant from the imperial and royal army, then married in Linz and became an official of the Linz electricity company.

Related entries

• NSDAP
• Reichsleiter

References

• USHMM, The Nazi Party
• USHMM, Heinrich Himmler

What it means

Gruppenführer was a high SS or SA rank above Brigadeführer and below Obergruppenführer. It is often placed at lieutenant-general level.

Senior police officials could hold this SS rank along with a police grade and a separate office. The rank alone doesn't define their command.

In this interview

Eichmann often refers to his superior Heinrich Müller as Gruppenführer or by the short form Grf.

Read with care

Grf is safe only where the surrounding words clearly show an SS rank, usually beside Müller or another named officer.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00030 Eichmann mentions Gruppenführer Müller as his immediate superior while discussing Müller's disappearance.

   And when every one of them now talks his way out onto me like that, then a legend forms, and the journalists and the like pick it up, and then the thing gets blown up. Now my superiors are unfortunately all dead, or they are missing, that is, they were hanged, or killed themselves, or are missing. Missing is really only one of them, and that is my immediate superior, Gruppenführer Müller.

Related entries

• Brigadeführer
• Obergruppenführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

Hauptsturmführer was an SS officer rank above Obersturmführer and below Sturmbannführer. It is often translated at captain level.

The rank could be written in full or shortened to Hstf or Hstuf. It tells the transcript page a man's grade, not his office or duties.

In this interview

Eichmann uses the rank for his previous career and for subordinates such as Dieter Wisliceny and Franz Novak.

Read with care

Hstf and Hstuf should link only with exact capitalization and punctuation-aware matching.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00020 Eichmann corrects his memory and says he was a Hauptsturmführer when he spoke with Himmler about emigration.

   …It was a very civilian affair. Himmler sat while I made my formal announcement and remained standing. I was either an Obersturmfuehrer or Hauptsturmfuehrer, a minor rank. He asked how many Jews had emigrated. No, that isn't right. I was already in Austria and Bohemia. It was before my posting to Berlin, while I was a Hauptsturmfuehrer. I must revise that: it was probably before the crisis with Russia, because I had…

Related entries

• Obersturmführer
• Sturmbannführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

Himmler created the Higher SS and Police Leader post in 1937. Each holder represented his SS and police interests across a big region.

These leaders could oversee Security Police, SD, Order Police, Waffen-SS, and other units. During the war many directed deportations and mass shootings.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions reporting daily to Higher SS and Police Leader Otto Winkelmann while in Budapest.

Read with care

A Higher SS and Police Leader stood above an SS and Police Leader; the two English titles must not be merged.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00067 Eichmann says he appeared daily before Higher SS and Police Leader Winkelmann to give his account of the duties.

   I established that. I received it through the Higher SS and Police Leader, to whom I appeared daily to report while I was in Budapest. I did not ask for the corresponding responses; that would have been presumptuous, since I was too low in rank for that. I received Winkelmann's response in a fatherly, benevolent way. It may also be that Fesemeier told me these things. I know one thing: Fesemeier was an extraordinarily fearful…

Related entries

• SS and Police Leader
• Order Police
• Sipo
• Reichsführer-SS

References

• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

Oberführer was a senior SS or SA rank between Standartenführer and Brigadeführer. It had no neat one-rank match in the German army.

The rank marked grade, not a fixed job. An Oberführer could lead a police office, serve in the General SS, or hold another SS post.

In this interview

Eichmann recalls confronting an Oberführer in Vienna and later discusses whether Schellenberg then held this rank or Standartenführer.

Read with care

Osf in the transcript is rank shorthand and needs nearby SS gives or titles before it is expanded.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00010 Eichmann says he was a Hauptsturmführer when he confronted an Oberführer at the Vienna Jewish community building.

   I was outraged and confronted the Oberführer, which led to a quarrel. I was a Hauptsturmführer at the time and had taken on an Oberführer. The affair came to nothing, like the shooting at Hornberg, except that I got these men out of the religious community building and stationed several criminal police officers there until the commotion ended. The extensive card index at least remained intact. It listed emigration…

Related entries

• Standartenführer
• Brigadeführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

Obergruppenführer was one of the highest SS or SA ranks, above Gruppenführer. It is often placed at full-general level.

Many Higher SS and Police Leaders held this SS rank together with the police grade General der Polizei. Rank and regional post still need separate interpretation.

In this interview

The speakers apply the rank to senior men such as Winkelmann and Pohl and sometimes use the short forms Ogrf or Ogruppf.

Read with care

A speaker can misremember a man's grade, so the glossary explains the rank without confirming every spoken attribution.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00067 A question gives an SS-Obergruppenführer while discussing supervision of the Hungarian marches.

   Is it known to you that SS Ogrf. Hüttner, together with Hoest, had the assignment of supervising the march and reporting their observations?

Related entries

• Gruppenführer
• Higher SS and Police Leader
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

Oberregierungsrat stood above Regierungsrat in the higher civil service. The title marked grade and standing, while the holder's actual duties depended on the office.

Police officials could hold this state title beside an SS rank. That dual standing was common in the system Himmler built between the SS and the police.

In this interview

Eichmann places Oberregierungsrat one step above Regierungsrat among Office IV desk officers and later speaks of police officials who too gained SS rank.

Read with care

The plural Oberregierungsraete is an ae spelling kept from the reviewed English. Don't read the title alone as proof of a person's exact SS rank.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00039 Eichmann sets out the civil-service and SS rank pairings used for Office IV desk officers.

   …and this office knew established posts, and no ghosts. We were about thirty desk officers in Office IV. A desk officer is a Regierungsrat or Oberregierungsrat, equivalent to Sturmbannfuehrer or Obersturmbannfuehrer. The next step up is department head, in the rank of an Oberregierungsrat or a criminal police director, or precisely of an Obersturmbannfuehrer or Standartenfuehrer. So if I had somehow been proposed by Mueller…

2. File 88, scan 00044 He says Stapo and Kripo officials could receive an SS rank because they were senior civil servants.

   …and the Kripo. They were police officials. Today they were nothing, tomorrow they had a rank, perhaps Obersturmfuehrer, because they were Oberregierungsraete. But all of that lies in the ambition within the sphere of power. Take the SS court, the SS jurisdiction, in order to kick them right in the (unclear: typist). But properly speaking these people don't belong to the SS at all.

Related entries

• Regierungsrat
• Obersturmbannführer
• Office IV

References

• Nuremberg document using Oberregierungsrat
• Bundesarchiv study with paired state and SS ranks

What it means

Obersturmbannführer was an SS officer rank above Sturmbannführer and below Standartenführer. It is often translated at lieutenant-colonel level.

Adolf Eichmann held this rank during the main years of mass deportation. The grade didn't make him head of the Gestapo or the RSHA.

In this interview

The speakers repeatedly call Eichmann an Obersturmbannführer and discuss how he reached that grade inside Office IV.

Read with care

Short forms such as Obstbaf and Ostbaf need exact matching and can be damaged in the typescript.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00039 The speakers ask how Eichmann reached Obersturmbannführer and compare his SS grade with office posts.

   And now the question, how did you reach the rank of Obersturmbannfuehrer?

Related entries

• Sturmbannführer
• Standartenführer
• IV B 4
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary
• USHMM, Adolf Eichmann key dates

What it means

Obersturmführer was an SS officer rank above Untersturmführer and below Hauptsturmführer. It is often translated at first-lieutenant level.

The short forms Ostf and Ostuf appear often in typed German material. The rank marks grade and doesn't tell the transcript page which SS or police body the officer belonged to.

In this interview

Eichmann uses the rank for his early career, for aides, and for the false status of men after the war.

Read with care

Ostf and Ostuf need exact-token matching because damaged typing can resemble personal initials.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00020 Eichmann first wonders whether he was an Obersturmführer or Hauptsturmführer, then settles on the higher rank for that meeting.

   …my highest superior. It was a very civilian affair. Himmler sat while I made my formal announcement and remained standing. I was either an Obersturmfuehrer or Hauptsturmfuehrer, a minor rank. He asked how many Jews had emigrated. No, that isn't right. I was already in Austria and Bohemia. It was before my posting to Berlin, while I was a Hauptsturmfuehrer. I must revise that: it was probably before the crisis with Russia,…

Related entries

• Untersturmführer
• Hauptsturmführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

Regierungsrat was a career rank in the higher German civil service, not a job description. A holder could hold a post in a ministry, police office, or another state body.

Nazi police officials often held a state rank and an SS rank at the same time. The pairing reflected personnel standing within that office and didn't turn the civil-service title into a military rank.

In this interview

Eichmann uses the rank for trained desk officers and gives Hunsche, Surr, Zoepf, and other staff by it.

Read with care

Use the SS pairing only as the interview explains it. Don't treat Regierungsrat as a fixed military equiv in every German office.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00039 Eichmann explains the desk-officer ladder in Office IV and pairs the two civil-service ranks with two SS ranks.

   …into an office, and this office knew established posts, and no ghosts. We were about thirty desk officers in Office IV. A desk officer is a Regierungsrat or Oberregierungsrat, equivalent to Sturmbannfuehrer or Obersturmbannfuehrer. The next step up is department head, in the rank of an Oberregierungsrat or a criminal police director, or precisely of an Obersturmbannfuehrer or Standartenfuehrer. So if I had somehow been…

2. File 86, scan 00098 He gives Regierungsrat Surr and later Wuensche while describing the two branches of IV B 4.

   The one, IV B 4 a, was Regierungsrat Surr, and after he left Regierungsrat Wuensche. IV B 4 b was Guenther, in personal union with his position as my permanent deputy.

Related entries

• Oberregierungsrat
• Sturmbannführer
• Office IV

References

• Nuremberg proceedings, January 2, 1946
• Bundesarchiv study with paired state and SS ranks

What it means

Reich Commissioner was a broad title for an appointee given special power by the German Reich. The job and reach changed with the territory or duties.

In the occupied Netherlands, Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart headed the German civil policy. In other places the title covered annexation, settlement, occupation, or regional government.

In this interview

The speakers mention offices tied to the Reich Commissioner for Austria's union with Germany and the Reich Commissioner for German settlement.

Read with care

The title doesn't point to one fixed office; keep the territory or full job name in view.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00136 Eichmann says Stahlecker obtained power for the Vienna emigration office from the Reich Commissioner for Austria's union with Germany.

   …on my own proposal, to create a central office for Jewish emigration. Stahlecker had obtained the authorization for it beforehand from the Reich commissioner for the reunification of Austria with the German Reich. He had a decree of authorization, although the State Police headquarters in Vienna would by rights have been the competent office.

2. File 85, scan 00109 Eichmann mentions Gromeier's previous office under the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood.

   …I had known Gromeier for years before he was appointed my permanent deputy in Budapest, in his capacity as the head of an office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood in Lippmannstadt.

Related entries

• Reich Protector
• General Government
• Warthegau

References

• USHMM, The Netherlands
• USHMM, Alfred Rosenberg

What it means

The Reich Protector was Hitler's senior ruler in the German-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The office oversaw the Czech government under German occupation.

Konstantin von Neurath, Reinhard Heydrich, Kurt Daluege, and Wilhelm Frick held or acted in the post. Under them German policy brought terror, forced labor, and the deportation of Czech Jews.

In this interview

The speakers discuss the Reich Protector or deputy as the final German office for measures in Bohemia and Moravia.

Read with care

The title belongs to Bohemia and Moravia here and isn't interchangeable with the many kinds of Reich Commissioner.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00145 Eichmann places the Reich Protector or Deputy Reich Protector at the top of the approval line in Bohemia and Moravia.

   …the last authority was the French Prime Minister, Laval. He had to give his blessing, and he gave it. In Bohemia and Moravia it was the Reich Protector, or the Deputy Reich Protector. In Greece it was the Military Commander. In Croatia it was the Croatian Head of State; we had a government there. In Slovakia it was the Slovak government.

Related entries

• Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
• Reich Commissioner

References

• USHMM, Czechoslovakia
• USHMM, Reinhard Heydrich

What it means

Reichsführer-SS was the title of the head of the SS. Heinrich Himmler held it from 1929 until the last weeks of the war.

Hitler made Himmler Chief of German Police in 1936. The combined posts placed the SS, Gestapo, Kripo, and uniformed police within his power.

In this interview

Reichsführer and Reichsfuehrer almost always mean Himmler when the speakers trace orders, meetings, and office lines.

Read with care

The title isn't a general word for any senior SS officer, and Führer without Reichs may instead mean Hitler.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00007 Eichmann places the Reichsführer at the top of the line of superiors with whom he had direct contact.

   The Führer? No. My office was far too junior for that. At the top of the chain of superiors I dealt with was the Reichsführer. I was summoned to him three or four times. Apart from one occasion when he was based on Prinz Albrecht Strasse, I was always called to his field command post. Otherwise it was Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, then his successor Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and then my immediate…

Related entries

• RF
• H.H.
• SS
• Higher SS and Police Leader

References

• USHMM, Heinrich Himmler
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

Reichsleiter was one of the highest Nazi Party leadership grades. Holders led major party fields or offices and stood above Gauleiter in the party rank order.

The title wasn't a cabinet job or ministry. Some Reichsleiter held state posts, so rank and government power have to be read separately.

In this interview

The speakers use Reichsleiter for senior party men such as Martin Bormann and distinguish the title from a ministerial post.

Read with care

Don't translate Reichsleiter as Reich leader without keeping its specific Nazi Party rank meaning.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00070 A speaker stresses that the man under discussion was a Reichsleiter but wasn't a minister.

   He was a Reichsleiter, but not a minister. He was also a State Secretary, but that means nothing at all in such matters, you could just as well have fetched Stuckart, because he had even been the RF's superior, he was First State Secretary.

Related entries

• NSDAP
• Gauleiter
• Party Chancellery

References

• USHMM, Alfred Rosenberg
• USHMM, The Nazi Party

What it means

RF is transcript shorthand for Reichsführer-SS, the title held by Heinrich Himmler from 1929 to 1945. It points to Himmler in the interview's SS and police passages.

As Reichsführer-SS and, from 1936, Chief of German Police, Himmler directed the SS and centralized Germany's police bodies under his power.

In this interview

The speakers repeatedly use RF when assigning an order, decision, meeting, or office hierarchy to Himmler.

Read with care

RF is only safe when capitalization and nearby gives, ranks, orders, or SS offices make Himmler clear.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00025 Eichmann uses RF while recounting a direct conversation with Himmler about concentration camps.

   The RF said, I was never so optimistic, never yet. We will get a better peace, and so on. And one thing I tell you, Eichmann, if I have it to do again, then I would set the concentration camps up on the English model. There I made a big mistake, I must set them up on the English model. I could make nothing of it, because I never ran a concentration camp, I could picture nothing by it. At the time I thought of the Boer…

Related entries

• Reichsführer-SS
• H.H.
• SS

References

• USHMM, Heinrich Himmler
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

An SS and Police Leader was Himmler's regional commander for SS and police forces in a defined area. Many worked below a Higher SS and Police Leader.

The post could bring several police and SS bodies under one leader for occupation, deportation, and killings. Its reach varied by place and date.

In this interview

The speakers use the title for regional commanders such as Odilo Globocnik in Lublin.

Read with care

Don't let the shorter phrase match inside Higher SS and Police Leader, which gives the senior post.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00146 Eichmann reconstructs a letter addressed to the SS and Police Leader in the Lublin District.

   "To the SS and Police Leader, District Lublin… Glo.

Related entries

• Higher SS and Police Leader
• Order Police
• Sipo
• Reichsführer-SS

References

• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

Standartenführer was a senior SS or SA officer rank. It stood above Obersturmbannführer and below Oberführer and is often translated at colonel level.

Police and state officials could sometimes receive SS ranks. The rank alone doesn't tell the transcript page which office a man led or what job he held.

In this interview

The speakers use the rank for men such as Geschke and Huber and place it in Eichmann's account of the office promotion ladder.

Read with care

The English colonel guide helps show level but doesn't turn an SS rank into an army command.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00039 Eichmann places Standartenführer above the desk-officer grades while explaining promotion inside Office IV.

   …step up is department head, in the rank of an Oberregierungsrat or a criminal police director, or precisely of an Obersturmbannfuehrer or Standartenfuehrer. So if I had somehow been proposed by Mueller for promotion while I was a desk officer, there would have been a row among the twenty-nine others.

Related entries

• Obersturmbannführer
• Oberführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary
• USHMM, SS and Police

What it means

Sturmbannführer was an SS officer rank above Hauptsturmführer and below Obersturmbannführer. It is often translated at major level.

The rank could be paired with a police or state post, but the two weren't the same job. A rank line alone doesn't state what powers the officer held.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses Sturmbannführer as his grade and places it beside government-counsellor grades in Office IV.

Read with care

Short forms such as Stbaf and Stbf need exact matching and must not be confused with a person's initials.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00038 Eichmann directly explains Sturmbannführer as major and says the officer stood at the same level as his superior.

   Sturmbannfuehrer, that is to say major, and of equal rank as my superior.

Related entries

• Hauptsturmführer
• Obersturmbannführer
• SS

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

What it means

Untersturmführer was the lowest commissioned SS officer rank. It stood below Obersturmführer and is often translated at second-lieutenant level.

The transcript uses short forms such as Ustf and Untstf. Rank alone doesn't show whether the man worked in the SD, police, Waffen-SS, or another branch.

In this interview

The speakers use the rank for officers such as Mildenstein and Martin and for Eichmann's postwar false rank.

Read with care

Ustf and Untstf should link only as exact rank forms, not as loose letter sequences.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00058 Eichmann says he used the false rank Untstf while living under a false identity after the war.

   …Americans called for the so-called labor companies, and I volunteered for one. I left as a platoon leader, having passed myself off as an Untstf., and came to Camp Oberlagstetten in Franconia. My Ostf. Jenisch went with his unit to a labor camp in Beckendorf on the Danube. I entered Camp Oberlagstetten as Lieutenant Eckmann around August 1945 and remained there until early January 1946.

Related entries

• Obersturmführer
• SS
• SD

References

• USHMM archival abbreviation glossary

About Adolf Hitler

What it means

Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party and became German chancellor in 1933. After President Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler joined the presidency and chancellorship under the title Führer.

The Nazi state required soldiers and many public workers to swear personal loyalty to Hitler. The initials A.H. in these exchanges name him.

In this interview

The speakers use A.H. or AH while discussing Hitler’s orders, speeches, personal authority, and oaths sworn to him.

Read with care

A.H. and AH are short and aren’t linked automatically. The glossary treats them as Hitler only where the nearby words settle the name.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00006 Eichmann discusses the oath he swore to A.H. and compares it with later service oaths.

   Here we were loaded onto trains on the day Hindenburg died, and we were sent to Munich, and there we swore the new oath to A.H. The oath was of course voluntary. The second oath to the SD, in the year 1934, in the autumn of 1934, when I was ordered from the troop to the SD. And for the third time when I was ordered from the SD to the Gestapo Office. I was (unclear: edge), always sworn to A.H., but the two later service oaths…

2. File 85, scan 00007 A questioner asks whether A.H. spoke about the Jewish question or gave orders.

   Did A.H. speak to you about the Jewish problem, or did he give you any instructions about it?

3. File 85, scan 00026 A questioner asks about Kaltenbrunner after an affair between AH and the Reichsführer became known.

   After April 25, 1945, once the affair between AH and the RF was known, did you still have contact with Kaltenbrunner?

Related entries

• H.H.
• NSDAP

References

• USHMM Adolf Hitler article

About Ernst Kaltenbrunner

What it means

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was a senior Austrian Nazi and SS officer. In Jan 1943 he became head of the RSHA, which controlled the Gestapo, Criminal Police, and SD.

The International Military Tribunal found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was executed at Nuremberg on Oct 16, 1946.

In this interview

Eichmann presents Kaltenbrunner as Heydrich’s successor and one of his senior chiefs. He too recounts meetings with him at Alt Aussee during the last weeks of the war.

Read with care

Kaltenbrunner headed the RSHA, but Müller remained Eichmann’s direct superior in Office IV. Statements that treat Kaltenbrunner as Eichmann’s day-to-day chief flatten that distinction.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00007 Eichmann gives Kaltenbrunner as Heydrich’s successor.

   …I was always called to his field command post. Otherwise it was Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, then his successor Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and then my immediate superior, Heinrich Mueller, whom I dealt with several times a week.

2. File 85, scan 00024 Eichmann recounts speaking with Kaltenbrunner at Alt Aussee about resistance after Germany’s defeat.

   …use the 100 prominent Jews in his plan. I believed he summoned me to harden me and secure my loyalty once more. I based this on a remark Kaltenbrunner made at Altaussee. Kaltenbrunner said Himmler would welcome knowing that I was in the mountains and would not surrender while he negotiated with Eisenhower. I said Kaltenbrunner gave me those words verbatim. From them I inferred Himmler's reason for summoning me. I…

3. File 85, scan 00026 Eichmann says he traveled from Prague to Alt Aussee to brief Kaltenbrunner.

   After April 25, 1945, once the affair between AH and the RF was known, did you still have contact with Kaltenbrunner?

Related entries

• RSHA
• Sipo
• SD
• Heinrich Müller
• Reinhard Heydrich

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Ernst Kaltenbrunner
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, International Military Tribunal

About Odilo Globocnik

What it means

Odilo Globocnik was SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district and directed Operation Reinhard from 1941 to 1943. Under that program the SS and police murdered about 1.7 million Jews.

He later became Higher SS and Police Leader in the Adriatic coastal area around Trieste. His staff brought killing and deportation drive from occupied Poland into Italy.

In this interview

Glo is the frequent short form for Globocnik in passages about Lublin, anti-tank ditches, camps, deportations, and Operation Reinhard.

Read with care

Don't match Globel. The reviewed passage uses Globel for Paul Blobel, a different SS officer. Globocnizz is one damaged form whose setting plainly points to Globocnik.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00166 Eichmann uses Glo while describing Globocnik's special assignment in the General Government.

   In the General Government, but there Amt IV had not been the competent office, because Glo had the special assignment. Glo did that not only in his own district but in the remaining districts as well. That is how far Glo's arm reached, although he was only SS and Police Leader of the District of Lublin. That arm reached into the other areas of the SS and Police Leaders too, and they then had to support him. Not all the…

2. File 87, scan 00066 The full name Globocnik appears several times in the account of visits tied to anti-tank ditches and killings.

   Now the date: he was appointed in 41. When Heydrich told me that Globocnik was to draw on the anti-tank ditches on the Russian side for the physical destruction, that then means that we must have been in possession of the anti-tank ditches. From that I conclude that after the double battles, Minsk-Białystok, at least 8 weeks must have passed. More must still have passed, because I was sent there, after this report to…

Related entries

• Higher SS and Police Leader
• Einsatzgruppe
• Order Police

References

• USHMM guide to Operation Reinhard
• USHMM guide to the Holocaust in Italy

About Heinrich Himmler

What it means

Heinrich Himmler led the SS from 1929 and became chief of the German police in 1936.

He held central power over the SS, police, camp system, and mass murder of Europe’s Jews. H.H. is one set of initials used for him in the interview.

In this interview

Eichmann uses H.H. as a handwritten file mark and says papers bearing it were returned with orders to destroy them.

Read with care

HH can be ambiguous, but Part1/00113 writes Heinrich Himmler beside the initials. Other linked uses follow the same file-marking context.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00026 Eichmann says a paper marked H.H. was burned.

   …in Krakow, I believe. In any case I got it from above. It showed hard fighting. And the RF got it into his hands, because it came marked with HH. It was burned at my place later. With Bar (unclear) I had nothing to do, in Hungary not either, because in Hungary there was no anti-partisan fighting at all, there was none.

2. File 85, scan 00034 Eichmann mentions a paper returned with a destroy-file note and H.H.

   …that up and set it out and gave this report to the RF SS, that report which then came back with the notation taken note of, destroy the file, HH. And I then burned it myself.

3. File 85, scan 00113 Eichmann expands H.H. as Heinrich Himmler while describing a handwritten note on a secret file.

   …received the file back as a 'Secret Reich Matter', with the RF's handwritten blue-pencil note: 'The Führer has taken note; destroy the file.' H.H. (Heinrich Himmler). As ordered, I personally burned the file. I could have handed it over to the Reich's enemies at the time, but then I would have become like a scoundrel. Today I can, without coming into conflicts of conscience, try to reproduce a statistic here. It can't claim…

Related entries

• SS
• Reichsführer-SS
• A.H.

References

• USHMM Heinrich Himmler article

About Heinrich Müller

What it means

Heinrich Müller led the Gestapo from 1939. Within the RSHA he headed Office IV, while Eichmann led section IV B 4 beneath him.

Müller helped direct political policing, deportation, and mass murder across German-held Europe. He disappeared in Berlin in May 1945, and his death or later whereabouts haven’t been decided.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions Müller as his permanent and immediate superior. He recalls frequent meetings, desk-officer conferences, travel orders, transport duties, and the flow of orders through Office IV.

Read with care

The transcript alternates between Mueller and Müller. These are the same man. Don’t merge him with other people named Müller unless the surrounding office and rank point to Heinrich Müller.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00007 Eichmann gives Heinrich Müller as the superior he dealt with several times each week.

   …it was Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, then his successor Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and then my immediate superior, Heinrich Mueller, whom I dealt with several times a week.

2. File 85, scan 00011 Eichmann mentions Müller chairing weekly desk-officer conferences.

   Yes. We held one, sometimes two, so-called desk officers' meetings each week under Müller. About twenty desk officers attended. Müller raised matters of general interest, and the officers often brought up matters they couldn't discuss with their chiefs. One naturally heard a great deal. Likewise, an officer could give the head of Department IV a talk of general interest at these meetings if it mattered to everyone. We…

3. File 85, scan 00143 The discussion places transport duties within Müller’s Gestapo command structure.

Related entries

• Gestapo
• Office IV
• IV B 4
• RSHA
• Reinhard Heydrich
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Gestapo
• German Federal Archives, Memorial Book

About Joel Brand

What it means

Joel Brand was a Hungarian Jewish rescue activist and a member of Budapest’s Relief and Rescue Committee.

In 1944 he negotiated with Eichmann’s staff and traveled to Turkey with the proposal later called “blood for goods,” an exchange of Jews for trucks and other goods.

In this interview

The speakers discuss Brand’s mission, his later account, and whether the goods-for-blood proposal began with German or Jewish negotiators.

Read with care

JB appears in titles and shorthand. These entries follow the reviewed English, which uses the letters for Joel Brand.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00084 A questioner asks whether Joel Brand’s goods-for-blood proposal came from the German or Jewish side.

   No, but what matters to me is whether there could be any indication that the German deal as such, 'goods against blood,' as JB calls it, did not come from your own minds or from any of the SS leadership, but perhaps corresponded to a Jewish suggestion…

2. File 86, scan 00060 Eichmann says a book about Joel Brand combines fiction and truth.

   My comment on the book The Story of the JB, written by Alex Weisberg, I'd like to divide into two chapters. a) fundamentals b) particulars. It's a mixture of fiction and truth, and in fairness I have to admit that the percentage of truth predominates. On the cardinal points, though, the author has spoken against the truth, because first, I wasn't responsible for the liquidation, and neither was Office IV of the Gestapo.…

3. File 86, scan 00061 Eichmann continues judging Joel Brand and other Jewish political workers.

   …of truth and so on, and toward his own Israelite racial comrades, I have only this to say. Either it's ignorance in the judgment of the JB, or it already fits the author's presentation in a way that compels his proof. The Jewish political functionaries of all people must have known it, and do know it, from hundreds of discussions. They had a hundred opportunities to admire the so-called Turks fastened to the wall in…

Related entries

• WRB
• L.E.

References

• USHMM Rezső Kasztner article
• Yad Vashem Adolf Eichmann profile

About Kurt Becher

What it means

Kurt Becher was an SS officer sent to Hungary in 1944. He dealt with major businesses and property and took part in talks with Jewish negotiators, including Kasztner and Saly Mayer.

After the war, Kasztner spoke on Becher’s behalf. Becher wasn’t tried as a major war criminal and later became a wealthy businessman in West Germany.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses Becher as a rival participant in the Hungary negotiations and says Becher attended one of his meetings with Himmler. The speakers return often to who controlled each offer and transport.

Read with care

Eichmann’s hostility toward Becher shapes many passages. His statements about Becher’s motives and private access to Himmler need outside checking.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00021 Eichmann says Becher attended his third meeting with Himmler.

   Himmler never had anyone present, except Müller at the second conversation. No, I must correct myself again: Becher attended the third, and I was alone with Himmler at the last. I was formally summoned four times. At a separate conference in Breslau, Himmler greeted me with, "Ah, Eichmann." That pleased me greatly because I lived for the Reich. I respected, honored, and revered Himmler, and I still do today.

2. File 85, scan 00023 The speakers discuss offers of Jews in exchange for goods and Becher’s part in the talks.

   About these things with the RF? No, not a word… at one of the few briefings, yes… and that was already the next briefing and the one after next… that was the briefing when I was ordered to the RF with Becher, but by then I had already been in Hungary.

3. File 85, scan 00024 Eichmann distinguishes Becher’s access to Himmler from his.

   Not at the last briefing, as far as I knew. I placed it at the next-to-last briefing in Hungary, with Becher present. I recalled Himmler saying he could not tell Hitler about the trade. I guessed Hitler would have chopped off Himmler's fingers because Hitler had ordered the killing and Himmler had lifted it. I said Himmler couldn't tell Hitler he was bargaining Jews for 10,000 trucks.

Related entries

• Rezső Kasztner
• H.H.
• Budapest
• WVHA
• JB

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Rezső Kasztner
• Yad Vashem, Kasztner and the negotiations

About László Endre

What it means

László Endre was a Hungarian Interior Ministry state secretary in 1944 and a leading organizer of ghettoization and deportation.

He worked with Adolf Eichmann’s team after the German occupation of Hungary. Hungarian offices and gendarmes carried out the roundups and transports.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions Endre as an eager Hungarian partner and says he often passed matters through him at the Interior Ministry.

Read with care

The reviewed English expands L.E. as Endre where Hungary, the Interior Ministry, or deportation drive fixes the id.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00075 Eichmann gives Dr. L.E. in the Hungarian Interior Ministry as a force pushing deportation drive.

   Jews, although Dr. LE, or Dr. Jenen (unclear) in the Hungarian Interior Ministry, was always pushing with the greatest impatience for the so-called forcing of the solution of the Jewish question in Hungary and never let me rest. I don't mean that in a hostile sense, but in a friendly one, because he was one of the best friends I ever had. Essentially, it was about telling our enemies at the time: it does you no good to bomb…

2. File 85, scan 00093 A quoted passage says Eichmann promised L.E. that no deported Jew would return alive.

   …But understand me for once: I can't justify it to the (unclear) government. I can't play the Jew-rescuer here. I have promised L.E. that no Jew will return alive to this country.'

3. File 85, scan 00095 Eichmann says he smoothed matters with Hungarian officials through State Secretary L.E.

   …mistrust on the part of the head of the Hungarian state police toward us, and after I repeatedly smoothed things over through State Secretary LE, the conduct of the head of the Hungarian Gestapo and his closest associates became somewhat friendlier again, once the Hungarian Gestapo had also tapped Kastner financially. I know that K made his deliveries to the Hungarian Gestapo as well.

Related entries

• Hungarian Gendarmerie
• JB

References

• USHMM history of Sighet under Hungarian and German rule
• USHMM Holocaust in Hungary article

About Reinhard Heydrich

What it means

Reinhard Heydrich led the SD and helped Heinrich Himmler bring Germany’s political police forces under SS control. He became chief of the Security Police and SD and, in 1939, the first head of the RSHA.

Heydrich directed central parts of Nazi persecution and mass murder. He chaired the Wannsee Conference in Jan 1942. Czechoslovak agents attacked him in Prague in May 1942, and he died on June 4.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly gives Heydrich as his senior chief and says Heydrich passed on Hitler’s order to kill Europe’s Jews. The speakers discuss Heydrich’s character, authority, death, and place in the RSHA.

Read with care

Eichmann’s account shifts blame upward and often presents spoken orders that can’t be verified from the interview alone. His descriptions of Heydrich’s private reactions are personal assertions.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00006 Eichmann gives Heydrich as the chief who gave him room to study Jewish and Zionist affairs.

   …it delighted me enormously, it gripped me, that I was allowed to work on these things, because you must not forget that I had a chief, Heydrich (unclear: typist), that under him I was given every opportunity to occupy myself with matters of religious scholarship, that I studied religious scholarship for two years, and that he also sent me to the Near East, which served me very well in perfecting my knowledge.

2. File 85, scan 00007 Eichmann says Heydrich told him that Hitler had ordered the killing of the Jews.

   No. That was a Führer order. Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, told me that the Führer had now ordered the liquidation of the Jews. At that time this was law. You know that the Führer’s words had the force of law, and that applied to all German members of the Nazi national community.

3. File 85, scan 00037 The speakers begin a long discussion of Heydrich’s career and personality.

   Please tell us something more about the life and career of Heydrich, and also about your personal relationship to one another.

Related entries

• RSHA
• SD
• Sipo
• H.H.
• Heinrich Müller
• IV B 4

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Reinhard Heydrich
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Wannsee Conference

About Rezső Kasztner

What it means

Rezső Kasztner helped lead Budapest’s Relief and Rescue Committee. After Germany occupied Hungary, he negotiated with Eichmann’s staff and later with Kurt Becher.

A train carrying 1,686 Jews left Budapest in June 1944. Its passengers were held at Bergen-Belsen before reaching Switzerland in two groups. Kasztner’s wartime choices and his postwar testimony for Becher later became the center of a bitter court dispute in Israel.

In this interview

The speakers repeatedly read or answer Kasztner’s account of the Hungary talks, marches, transports, and dealings with Eichmann’s staff. Eichmann too recalls speaking directly with him.

Read with care

The reviewed English uses Kastner throughout, while modern English writing often uses Kasztner. The interview mixes Eichmann’s memories with passages attributed to Kasztner, so the speaker or quoted passage must be verified page by page.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00006 Eichmann says he made the same ideological remark to Kasztner and Richard Löwenherz.

   Yes, I said that to Dr. Josef Loewenherz in Vienna, with whom I had countless conferences, and to Dr. Kastner as well. I said to both of them that I could not imagine anything else, given my whole disposition toward the national idea. Namely, that if I were not a German but a Jew, I would be the most committed Zionist they could imagine.

2. File 85, scan 00048 Eichmann discusses Kasztner’s view of his role in Hungary.

   …have had no small influence, we will send the master down, he is to do the thing himself. They sent me down, and the end of it 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 capacity to push things through, to transport away half a million within so short a time despite the difficult…

3. File 85, scan 00093 The speakers read a passage in which Kasztner mentions tense talks with Eichmann and his staff.

   …and Novak were nervous and impatient and Gromeid and Wi had neutral faces. Several times, it seemed to me that Eichmann wanted to give in, Kastner says. Then he was seized by a new fit of rage, struck the table, and wanted to hear nothing more. After an hour he made an entirely unexpected proposal: 'You know what? I will send 100 to 200 Jews from Clausenburg to Theresienstadt.

Related entries

• JB
• Kurt Becher
• Budapest
• Hungarian Gendarmerie
• Arrow Cross

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Rezső Kasztner
• Yad Vashem, Kasztner and the rescue talks

What it means

Robert H. Jackson was a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

He negotiated the Nuremberg Charter and led the U.S. prosecution at the International Military Tribunal.

In this interview

A typed heading on Part1/00005 says “Judge Jackson in Nuremberg” above Eichmann’s recollection of a words about an unnamed man.

Read with care

The heading does not say which Jackson words or witness passage the typist had in mind.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00005 A typed heading gives Judge Jackson in Nuremberg.

Related entries

• Nuremberg Trial

References

• USHMM International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

About Rolf Günther

What it means

Rolf Günther worked in Eichmann’s RSHA section and became his standing deputy. His duties covered anti-Jewish policy, deportation, and contact with IV B 4 staff outside Berlin.

He remained in the section while Eichmann traveled or worked in Hungary. He died in U.S. custody in Aug 1945, apparently by suicide.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly mentions Günther as his deputy. He says Günther received Müller’s orders, argued with Office VI, dealt with advisers, and stepped into transport talks.

Read with care

The transcript’s Guenter and Günther forms often name Rolf Günther, but Hans Günther led the Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The surrounding office must settle the person.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00026 Eichmann says Günther met him in Salzburg after receiving an order from Müller.

   …Hofer, who no longer received me, but where I came on strongly. It was about the places at the Brenner. I then came back to Salzburg and met Guenter at the State Police in Salzburg. He reported to me that during my absence he had received an order from Mueller to take himself off to Salzburg with the founding files and to deposit them somewhere there in the mountains.

2. File 85, scan 00043 Eichmann mentions Günther as his permanent deputy and recounts his dispute with Office VI.

   …At the start that was believed too. Later I began to have misgivings, I put them to Mueller as well and he shared them. My permanent deputy, Guenter, was angered green, black and blue, and quarreled constantly with the people from Office VI, so that the responsible desk officers of Office VI grew sharp-eared and grew cautious.

3. File 88, scan 00055 Günther and Novak are named in talks with the Reich Transport Ministry.

   Yes, Hauptsturmführer Novak can testify to how that little man was pressed by me, he was to procure transport trains, because I was being pressed from above as well, and Novak was met with a flat no from the Reich Transport Ministry. I often had to step in myself, Günther too, so that we got somewhere

Related entries

• IV B 4
• Heinrich Müller
• Office VI
• Theodor Dannecker

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Adolf Eichmann
• German Federal Archives, Memorial Book

About Rudolf Höss

What it means

Rudolf Höss was commandant of Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943 and returned for a major role in 1944. Under his command, Auschwitz grew into the largest Nazi concentration and killing camp complex.

Höss testified after the war and wrote about the camp while held by Polish authorities. Poland tried and executed him at Auschwitz in Apr 1947.

In this interview

The speakers discuss Höss’s Nuremberg testimony, his relationship with Eichmann, camp command, and the number murdered at Auschwitz. Eichmann praises him personally while disputing parts of his testimony.

Read with care

Hoess and Höss are spelling forms for Rudolf Höss. Don’t confuse him with Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s former deputy. Eichmann’s praise and his attack on Auschwitz totals are self-serving and need clear framing.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00035 The speakers introduce Höss’s testimony about deaths at Auschwitz.

   About the testimony of Hoess at Nuremberg concerning the 2 1/2 million Jews who are supposed to have been liquidated in his camp?

2. File 85, scan 00036 Eichmann praises Höss and rejects the total attributed to his testimony.

   Yes, there are two possibilities. I knew Hoess because I valued him very highly as a very decent comrade, he did his duty as any other would have done it too, he was a model family man, he was a bearer of the Iron Cross from the 1st World War, he sat several years in the penitentiary for National Socialist activities. It was Hoess who once told me that the RF had looked over the whole destruction operation and had declared…

3. File 85, scan 00132 A longer personal and career sketch of Höss begins.

   Personal impressions of Höss?

Related entries

• WVHA
• Obersturmbannführer
• H.H.

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Rudolf Höss
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Rudolf Höss

About Theodor Dannecker

What it means

Theodor Dannecker worked in Eichmann’s section and became its adviser in occupied France. He pressed French and German offices to carry out arrests and deportations.

He later worked in Bulgaria, Italy, and Hungary. U.S. forces captured him in Dec 1945, and he died by suicide in custody.

In this interview

Eichmann gives Dannecker as his man in Paris and uses him to explain how IV B 4 advisers worked with German envoys, police chiefs, and local governments.

Read with care

One reviewed note says the typed page spells the name Danecker with one n. Keep that exact form for matching, but use Dannecker as the label.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00048 Eichmann lists Dannecker in Paris beside advisers in Bratislava and Athens.

   In Bucharest I had Hauptsturmführer Richter sitting there. He was the same as (unclear: typist) in Pressburg, as Dannecker in Paris, as Burger in Athens. What the men I sent achieved there with the local governments, for instance with the Romanian government, I no longer know today. In any case it is certain that every one of the officers under me at that time was given the most precise guidelines to take with him.

2. File 85, scan 00049 Eichmann says he visited Dannecker or ordered him to Berlin.

   …With Richter that happened about every (unclear: typist) months, twice, once. With Wi (unclear: typist) once every two months. To Paris, to Dannecker, I went myself, or I ordered him to come to me. In short, I ordered these men, who were under me and for whose practical effectiveness I was responsible, to report at whatever intervals seemed opportune to me.

3. File 85, scan 00052 The speakers examine whether Dannecker had direct police power in France.

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

Related entries

• IV B 4
• BdS
• Rolf Günther

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, France
• Yad Vashem entry on Theodor Dannecker

What it means

Theodor Herzl was a Jewish lawyer and journalist from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He founded the modern Zionist movement and convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

In this interview

Part1/00005 has a damaged typed name that appears as “hersel.” The nearby words describe a Zionist leader, so the reviewed English gives Herzl but keeps the damaged spelling visible in the German and literal layers.

Read with care

The interpretation is clear from context, but the typed name on this sheet is damaged.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00005 A damaged name in a passage about Zionism is identified as Herzl.

   …the driving factor was not the German. Here the driving factor was the Jew himself, the Zionist, for the first time under (unclear: typist) Herzl, the pioneer of territorial separation altogether.

Related entries

• Zionism

References

• USHMM Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress

About Dieter Wisliceny

What it means

Dieter Wisliceny worked in Eichmann's Jewish-affairs unit and held posts in Slovakia, Greece, and Hungary. He took part in deportation policy and in talks with Jewish rescue groups.

After the war Wisliceny testified about Eichmann at Nuremberg. A Czechoslovak court sentenced him to death, and he was hanged in Bratislava in 1948.

In this interview

Wi is the interview's normal short form for Wisliceny. Eichmann spends many pages attacking his testimony and recalling their shared duties.

Read with care

Match capital Wi only as a whole token. Never fold it to lowercase, and don't confuse it with the beginning of an English or German word.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00029 Eichmann gives Hauptsturmführer Wi as a Nuremberg witness against him.

   …that much is clear. In the first Nuremberg trial, the way our highest leaders were treated, that Judge Jackson summoned my Hauptsturmführer Wi., whom I had had in Czechoslovakia, as a witness, and that he told the fairy tale there about the alleged five million Jews I am supposed to have done in, and then Jackson said

2. File 86, scan 00084 The full name Wisliceny appears in talk about negotiations during the last phase of the war.

   No, in practice too, apart of course from individual cases. They had my own negotiating partners killed on me, but the cause of that wasn't a Wisliceny or a Gromeid, it was my own Guenter who took them from me. And in Vienna it's Ebner who's responsible for the death of Steffen. Because Ebner couldn't forgive me for the fact that Steffen had passed me things touching on the concerns of the Vienna State Police, and while I was…

Related entries

• IV B 4
• JB
• L.E.

References

• Yad Vashem entry on Dieter Wisliceny
• USHMM biography of Rezső Kasztner and the Wisliceny talks

What it means

Berlin was Germany’s capital and its largest Jewish community before the war. Nazi policy brought exclusion, the Nov 1938 pogrom, forced emigration, seizure of property, and deportation.

The city held the central offices that planned and coordinated persecution across Europe. More than 60,000 Jews were deported from Berlin, and almost all were murdered.

In this interview

Berlin is both Eichmann’s office base and a shorthand for central orders. The speakers mention meetings, rail talks, staff conferences, prison sites, and people summoned to the capital.

Read with care

A phrase such as Berlin ordered it may hide the office or person who acted. Check the nearby ministry, RSHA office, or named chief.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00007 Eichmann locates his duties and superiors in Berlin.

   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 came out of a meeting. These were more or less my last days in office. Taking my leave formally, 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 these words…

2. File 85, scan 00013 The speakers discuss orders and office moves centered on Berlin.

   From then on my direct superior in Vienna was Dr. Stahlecker. Later, while still based in Vienna, I set up the Central Office in Prague. For a short time there I answered to the chief of the Security Police and the SD in Prague. It lasted only a few months. Then I was ordered to Berlin in the autumn of 1940, where Mueller became my immediate superior.

3. File 85, scan 00014 Berlin appears in discussion of central planning and Wannsee.

   …me there, along with a certain Mr. Genz, the local German News Bureau representative. Through Dr. Reichardt, my former Jewish guest from Berlin came from Cairo too. We met one evening at Mena House. Various proposals were made, including a German airline. The matter wasn't very fruitful.

Related entries

• RSHA
• IV B 4
• Office IV
• Foreign Office
• Reich Association of Jews in Germany

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Berlin

What it means

German forces occupied Hungary on Mar 19, 1944. Eichmann and his staff set up in Budapest while Hungarian officials and gendarmes concentrated and deported Jews from the provinces.

Most Budapest Jews weren’t deported during the first wave. After the Arrow Cross took power in Oct, Jews in the city faced shootings, forced marches, ghetto confinement, and further deportation plans.

In this interview

Budapest is the main setting for the long Hungary sections. The speakers discuss Eichmann’s office, Kasztner and Brand, foreign protests, Hungarian ministries, the Arrow Cross, forced marches, and Soviet entry into the city.

Read with care

A reference to Hungary doesn’t always mean Budapest. Separate events in the capital from deportations organized in provincial zones.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00011 Eichmann says he was in Budapest when he heard about the July 20 attempt on Hitler.

   I was in Hungary, sitting in Budapest, when I heard about the attack on the Führer. We made no defensive preparations. We were fortunate to have such good and influential friends in the (unclear: typist) and the government that not the slightest danger threatened us from that quarter. Nor did we have to worry about German military offices. As I later heard, members were arrested in other countries, but we had good contacts…

2. File 85, scan 00061 The speakers discuss foreign protests and control over Budapest Jews.

   …at (unclear: typist) mean anything to you? Was it supposed to be operating again as a reception site, a collection point for Jews from Budapest? On 21 August the Diplomatic Corps lodged a protest with (unclear: typist), and on the 25th it was decided that the Interior Ministry would again take control of the Jews in labor camps. On the 26th, your Einsatzgruppe…

3. File 85, scan 00063 They discuss Soviet entry and the Nov 1944 expulsion Mar.

   On 2 November 1944, did Soviet troops enter Budapest?

Related entries

• Rezső Kasztner
• JB
• Arrow Cross
• Hungarian Gendarmerie
• L.E.

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Hungary after German Occupation
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Budapest

What it means

Nazi Germany set up the General Government on Oct 26, 1939, in occupied Polish land that it hadn’t annexed directly.

Hans Frank headed it from Kraków. German policy there brought forced labor, ghettoization, deportation, and mass murder.

In this interview

The speakers repeatedly compare deportation drive in the General Government with the Reich, Hungary, and the Warthegau. Eichmann too denies responsibility for deportations inside it.

Read with care

The General Government was a German occupation zone, not the prewar Polish government.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00076 Eichmann compares events in Hungary with what had happened in the General Government.

   …knife, let alone a firearm. That was the reason the RF sent me personally to Hungary, so that the kind of thing that happened to us in the General Government could not arise there. By December 24 at 3 p. m., nothing was left except the small units that had to shut themselves in under the RF's order; there were no police offices left. The Hungarian Gestapo was gone, the Hungarian government was gone, and it had been gone…

2. File 85, scan 00115 Eichmann lists illegal migration from western Europe and the General Government.

   Illegal migration was naturally substantial from France, Holland, Belgium, the so-called General Government, and also from the occupied Russian territories, Slovakia, Hungary, and for a short time Romania. According to Allied statements, in 1945, 2,100,000 Jews were found alive in Germany's former sphere of power, naturally including the so-called Greater German Reich itself and Bohemia and Moravia. Therefore, a residual…

3. File 85, scan 00140 Eichmann says he wasn’t responsible for deportation within the General Government.

   …I wasn't allowed to; I wasn't responsible for that. I was responsible for deportation, but I wasn't responsible for deportation within the General Government. I wasn't responsible for the movement of the masses onto Russian soil, … not responsible for the movement of the masses down in the Serbian area. I did have a man sitting in Belgrade, or did I not? … No, then I'm mistaken. I'm confusing it with Athens.

Related entries

• Warthegau

References

• USHMM German administration of Poland article

What it means

German troops occupied Łódź in Sept 1939, annexed it to the Warthegau, and renamed it Litzmannstadt.

The Germans forced about 160,000 Jews into the Łódź ghetto in 1940. Deportations from the ghetto went to Chełmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions traveling through Litzmannstadt toward a killing site and later mentions an office there in a passage with a damaged place name.

Read with care

Lippmannstadt on Part1/00109 is a damaged or mistaken form of Litzmannstadt. The page doesn’t prove every nearby office detail.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00031 Eichmann places a Warthegau trip near Litzmannstadt and discusses the gassing of Jews.

   …ditches thrown up by the Russians, he sent me to the Warthegau. Where that was I no longer know, in any case it was not very far from Litzmannstadt. There, according to Müller, Jews were supposed to have been gassed or were to be gassed. I always say in advance, Müller did not give such orders, he had nothing to do with it.

2. File 85, scan 00032 Eichmann says he drove to Litzmannstadt and then continued to a named killing site.

   …precise official, and if he did not get it all presented to him at once, concentrated and in detail (unclear), he grew impatient. I drove to Litzmannstadt. Where I went I don't know, probably it was the Stapo headquarters there, and whether Gromeid was already in Litzmannstadt at that time I also cannot say at the moment. I then drove out to the place they named to me, and some fellows or other had been at work there, and…

3. File 85, scan 00109 Eichmann mentions an office in “Lippmannstadt,” a damaged or mistaken form of the city’s German name.

   …deputy in Budapest, in his capacity as the head of an office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood in Lippmannstadt.

Related entries

• Warthegau
• Jewish Council

References

• USHMM Łódź article
• USHMM Chełmno article

What it means

Lublin became the seat of a German occupation district in the General Government. The city and surrounding district held ghettos, forced-labor sites, the Majdanek concentration camp, and SS and police offices.

Odilo Globocnik directed Operation Reinhard from Lublin. The district became a center for the seizure, deportation, forced labor, and murder of Jews.

In this interview

Lublin appears as a proposed Jewish reservation, a district under Globocnik, a camp and labor center, and a destination or stage in deportation plans.

Read with care

Lublin may name the city, district, reservation idea, Majdanek camp area, or Globocnik’s command. Read the surrounding place and office gives.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00015 Lublin appears among early territorial and deportation plans.

   …stalled, I began thinking about it. We will discuss why it stalled later. Various attempts came to mind, including Theresienstadt and the Lublin district. Herzl writes in The Jewish State that he tried everything. He approached the Sultan and wanted to negotiate with Kaiser Wilhelm. Herzl stirred up heaven and earth for the Jews, and in his distress Madagascar came up too. Herzl fell out with the especially right-wing…

2. File 85, scan 00143 The speakers connect Lublin with transports and police duties.

   …timetables entirely on their own. Berlin cared little whether a freight train loaded with Jews or other goods traveled from Krakow, say, to Lublin, or the other way around. They made their own timetable. It mattered only when a train traveled through Reich territory, within the Reich, or through other territories where particular areas of authority were needed for transport purposes.

3. File 85, scan 00146 Lublin returns in discussion of destinations and authority.

   "To the SS and Police Leader, District Lublin… Glo.

Related entries

• Nisko Plan
• Majdanek
• Glo
• General Government
• labor camp

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Majdanek
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nisko and Lublin Plan

What it means

Altreich, translated here as Old Reich, meant Germany inside its previous borders before the Nazi annexations of Austria and Czech land.

Nazi officials used the distinction to separate the older German area from additions such as the Ostmark and Protectorate. It wasn’t a new state or government.

In this interview

The speakers contrast the Old Reich with annexed Austria and the Protectorate while tracing Eichmann’s jobs, population counts, and policy.

Read with care

The boundary implied by Altreich can vary with date. In these pages it contrasts with Austria and the Protectorate.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00019 Eichmann quotes an article that moves from the Altreich to the Ostmark and then Bohemia and Moravia.

   I had handled Jewish affairs since 1935. From 1935 to 1945, I dealt with them in the Altreich, the Ostmark, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and many areas where Germany exerted influence. I had a thousand meetings with Jewish and non-Jewish bodies. I was known everywhere and dealt with every detail and basic question. Foreign newspapers placed on my desk taught Jewish organizations that, apart from Streicher stories…

2. File 85, scan 00097 Eichmann compares the Old Reich with the Protectorate.

   That was how it was in nearly 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 areas of Europe controlled and influenced by us. Everywhere there was a struggle against intervention. Even the Reichsmarschall and Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, H. Goering, repeatedly intervened personally for Jews and obtained exceptions,…

3. File 85, scan 00114 An unsettled speaker lists population totals for the Old Reich, Austria, and the Protectorate.

   At the seizure of power, the figures were: 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, based on former Jewish statistics from the Jewish Community Vienna: approximately 300,000 from the Old Reich, 202,000 from Austria, and 200,000 from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia legally; approximately…

Related entries

• Ostmark
• Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

References

• German Historical Museum account of exclusion under Nazi rule

What it means

Nazi Germany annexed Austria in Mar 1938 and first renamed it Ostmark.

The new name erased Austria’s separate state identity. In 1942 the regime replaced it with gives for the Alpine and Danubian districts.

In this interview

The speakers use Ostmark for annexed Austria while discussing Jewish offices, foreign currency, and the areas in which Eichmann worked.

Read with care

Ostmark had older meanings, but these exchanges use it for annexed Austria.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00010 Eichmann discusses foreign-currency duties and Jewish functionaries in Austria, which he gives the Ostmark.

   No. Preliminary work such as obtaining foreign currency and corresponding with foreign missions in Austria, the Ostmark, or abroad was done entirely by the Jewish functionaries. That was why I had assigned them. They were decent people, largely Zionists who wanted to emigrate anyway. I only handled the official side, meaning official clearance for each person's departure by the agencies that had an interest in it: the…

2. File 85, scan 00019 Eichmann lists the Reich, Ostmark, and Protectorate as successive areas of duty.

   I had handled Jewish affairs since 1935. From 1935 to 1945, I dealt with them in the Altreich, the Ostmark, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and many areas where Germany exerted influence. I had a thousand meetings with Jewish and non-Jewish bodies. I was known everywhere and dealt with every detail and basic question. Foreign newspapers placed on my desk taught Jewish organizations that, apart from Streicher stories…

3. File 85, scan 00117 Eichmann mentions the Vienna Israelite Religious Community as an umbrella group in the Ostmark.

   …the director of the Israelite Religious Community in Vienna, which was the umbrella organization for all Jewish organizations working in the Ostmark at that time, Dr. Kastner of Budapest, Dr. Eppstein of Berlin, and many others often had more than just an open exchange with me. I told them more than once that I knew nothing of racial hatred and rejected so-called Stürmer methods.

Related entries

• Old Reich
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration

References

• USHMM Anschluss article

What it means

During the years covered by most of the interview, Palestine was under British policy. Jewish communities already lived there, and Zionist movements sought increased immigration and national self-determination.

British policy sharply limited Jewish entry as persecution in Europe grew. About 60,000 Jews from Germany and annexed lands reached Palestine between 1933 and 1939, while many more were unable to secure entry.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses Palestine as an emigration destination, a center of Zionist activity, and part of talks over money, training, visas, and British restrictions.

Read with care

The State of Israel did not exist during the prewar and wartime events being discussed. Use the date to distinguish Mandatory Palestine from later Israel.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00013 Eichmann discusses Jewish emigration and Palestine.

   Keyword Palestine. When and why did you travel to Palestine? It is said that you gave the order to make contact with the Grand Mufti. Is that true? Is that why you went to Palestine?

2. File 85, scan 00014 The speakers discuss British policy and possible destinations.

   I came to Haifa. The German News Bureau representative had meanwhile been injured in a car crash. Dr. Reichardt received me in Haifa. Since Palestine wasn't favorable ground, I obtained permission to go ashore only with the greatest difficulty, and then for just one day. Landscape descriptions.

3. File 85, scan 00016 Palestine appears beside other territorial proposals.

   The First World War gave them a homeland in Palestine, which made the other ideas, including Madagascar, obsolete. Only in our own time, amid our shortage of land and the need to solve the problem, did the Madagascar idea return. As the IV B4 desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office, I put it to Heydrich after first presenting it to Mueller, and I received permission to set the useful steps in motion. France had been…

Related entries

• Zionism
• emigration
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• JB

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Refugees
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, German Jewish Refugees

What it means

German forces occupied Prague in Mar 1939 as the capital of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi authorities imposed anti-Jewish laws, seizure, forced emigration, and deportation.

Prague held the Reich Protector’s offices and a Central Office for Jewish Emigration. Reinhard Heydrich was acting Reich Protector there when resistance agents attacked him in 1942.

In this interview

The speakers connect Prague with Eichmann’s field offices, Hans Günther, Theresienstadt, Heydrich, and late-war travel to Kaltenbrunner.

Read with care

Prague can mean the city, the Protectorate government, or a police office located there. The surrounding job title must settle the meaning.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00013 Eichmann discusses the Prague emigration office.

   From then on my direct superior in Vienna was Dr. Stahlecker. Later, while still based in Vienna, I set up the Central Office in Prague. For a short time there I answered to the chief of the Security Police and the SD in Prague. It lasted only a few months. Then I was ordered to Berlin in the autumn of 1940, where Mueller became my immediate superior.

2. File 85, scan 00026 He mentions travel from Prague near the war’s end.

   …a Dr. Bifrater, was killed. He was Inspector of the SIPO for Upper Danube. On the way there I spoke with him once more. Then I drove on to Prague. There I visited Karl Frank, who told me you can't go any further here, in Berlin there is nothing left, Mueller, Kaltenbrunner is no longer in Berlin, the Russian has broken through there somehow.

3. File 85, scan 00055 Prague appears in the Theresienstadt discussion.

   …meddle in it at all. We sealed it off with Czech gendarmerie, but we couldn't seal it off completely, because the highway from Berlin to Prague ran right through Theresienstadt. We supplied them with truckloads of food every week or every fourteen days. We had a fight with the Gauleiter of Saxony, Mutschmann, and with the other local-group leaders, because the Jews were better supplied with food than the German…

Related entries

• Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
• Reich Protector
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• Theresienstadt
• Reinhard Heydrich

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Czechoslovakia

What it means

Nazi Germany created the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia after occupying the Czech lands in Mar 1939.

German rulers kept a limited Czech government under occupation. Reinhard Heydrich later held the post of acting Reich Protector and drove terror, forced labor, and deportation of Czech Jews.

In this interview

The speakers list the Protectorate with the Reich and Ostmark while tracing Eichmann’s areas of duty and comparing anti-Jewish policy across regions.

Read with care

Protectorate can be generic. Here it means the Nazi-occupied Czech lands because the passages pair it with Bohemia and Moravia, Prague, or other occupied regions.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00019 Eichmann lists the Reich, Ostmark, and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as stages in his career.

   I had handled Jewish affairs since 1935. From 1935 to 1945, I dealt with them in the Altreich, the Ostmark, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and many areas where Germany exerted influence. I had a thousand meetings with Jewish and non-Jewish bodies. I was known everywhere and dealt with every detail and basic question. Foreign newspapers placed on my desk taught Jewish organizations that, apart from Streicher stories…

2. File 85, scan 00084 Eichmann traces a line through the Reich, Austria, and the Protectorate.

   Everyone, everyone. That was not the first time in Hungary; the thread runs back into the Reich itself, into Austria, and into the Protectorate.

3. File 85, scan 00097 Eichmann compares interventions in the Old Reich and Protectorate.

   That was how it was in nearly 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 areas of Europe controlled and influenced by us. Everywhere there was a struggle against intervention. Even the Reichsmarschall and Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, H. Goering, repeatedly intervened personally for Jews and obtained exceptions,…

Related entries

• Old Reich
• Ostmark
• Reich Protector

References

• USHMM Reinhard Heydrich article

What it means

Vienna had one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities before Nazi Germany annexed Austria in Mar 1938. Nazi officials and local supporters quickly imposed violence, exclusion, and seizure of Jewish property.

Eichmann’s Central Office forced many agencies into one emigration process that combined police pressure, papers, taxes, and confiscation. Mass deportations later sent most Jews who remained to ghettos and killing sites.

In this interview

Vienna is central to Eichmann’s account of becoming an emigration specialist. He mentions Jewish community staff, card files, passport duties, money, and the office model later copied elsewhere.

Read with care

Eichmann mentions the Vienna office as efficient aid. Its speed rested on coercion, threats, detention, and the taking of property.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00006 Eichmann recalls his Vienna duties and contacts with Jewish leaders.

   Yes, I said that to Dr. Josef Loewenherz in Vienna, with whom I had countless conferences, and to Dr. Kastner as well. I said to both of them that I could not imagine anything else, given my whole disposition toward the national idea. Namely, that if I were not a German but a Jew, I would be the most committed Zionist they could imagine.

2. File 85, scan 00010 He mentions the Central Office process in detail.

   (unclear: typist) really no idea. Perhaps it came from Ley. I witnessed it in Vienna. My office was on Prinz Eugen Strasse, and I had the Central Office for Jewish Emigration there. That evening, when the affair seems to have begun, several Jewish functionaries came to me. They asked me to protect them, and I offered them the office. They spent the night there, while my guard stood outside the palace day and night. When I…

3. File 85, scan 00012 The speakers discuss how the Vienna model spread.

   …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.

Related entries

• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• emigration
• Nisko Plan
• Kristallnacht
• Wi

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Vienna

What it means

Warsaw was a major center of Jewish life before the war. German authorities sealed more than 350,000 Jews into the Warsaw ghetto, where hunger, crowding, disease, and violence killed tens of thousands.

German forces deported most ghetto residents to Treblinka in 1942. Jewish fighters rose in Apr 1943, and German forces crushed the uprising and destroyed the ghetto.

In this interview

Warsaw appears in talk about ghettos, deportation, resistance, German offices, and the killing process. The speakers sometimes use the city name as shorthand for the ghetto.

Read with care

Distinguish the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 from the wider Polish Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00026 Warsaw appears in a discussion of German travel and occupation duties.

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

2. File 85, scan 00047 The speakers discuss Warsaw in connection with ghettos and deportation.

   …at the time. That is also why in some the supply situation was better and in others worse. Where it was worse, local friction possibly arose. Warsaw is in itself an exception, because the Warsaw ghetto leadership was in the closest touch with the first Polish underground leadership, led by General (unclear).

3. File 85, scan 00064 Warsaw returns beside Budapest.

   …Jewish contingents were concerned, Hungary would not become a large partisan area. Evidently the RF had learned from the terrible events in Warsaw and recognized the frightfulness of an enemy resolved to do anything.

Related entries

• ghetto
• Treblinka
• deportation
• General Government

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Warsaw
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

What it means

The Warthegau, formally Reichsgau Wartheland, was annexed Polish land ruled as a Nazi German province after the 1939 invasion.

It included Poznań and Łódź, renamed Litzmannstadt. German rulers expelled Poles and Jews, built ghettos, and murdered Jews at Chełmno.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses a trip near Litzmannstadt, killing totals, and the removal of Poles for German settlement in the Warthegau.

Read with care

Warthegau and Wartheland name the same Nazi unit in these passages.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00031 Eichmann says Müller sent him to the Warthegau near Litzmannstadt, where Jews were being or were to be gassed.

   …Globocnik had been given the task of killing the Jews and burying them in the anti-tank ditches thrown up by the Russians, he sent me to the Warthegau. Where that was I no longer know, in any case it was not very far from Litzmannstadt. There, according to Müller, Jews were supposed to have been gassed or were to be gassed. I always say in advance, Müller did not give such orders, he had nothing to do with it.

2. File 85, scan 00115 Eichmann gives a killing estimate for the General Government and Warthegau.

   In the area of the so-called General Government and the Warthegau, killed: approximately 200,000.

3. File 86, scan 00077 Eichmann discusses the removal of Poles and German settlement in the Warthegau.

   …refugee party, all this although it was known that Gromeid was SS OSTPF, that he evacuated the Poles and carried out the settlement in the Warthegau, all this when it was known that he had been my permanent deputy in Hungary, this point could not have been suppressed." And when I put all of that together with the statement he gave to the Jew Brandt, and Brandt writes further that all that was still missing was for Gromeid…

Related entries

• Litzmannstadt
• General Government

References

• USHMM Chełmno article

What it means

German authorities built the Auschwitz camp complex in occupied Poland. It included Auschwitz I, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and killing center, Monowitz, and many subcamps tied to forced labor.

The SS murdered about one million Jews at Auschwitz, chiefly in gas chambers at Birkenau. It too murdered Roma, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and other prisoners, while hunger, disease, violence, and forced labor killed many more.

In this interview

Auschwitz appears in talk about destinations, gas chambers, transports, labor selection, Rudolf Höss, and death totals. Eichmann admits visits and contact with Höss while disputing figures and trying to separate transport from killing.

Read with care

The speakers often blur Auschwitz I, Birkenau, Monowitz, and the wider complex. Their denials, guesses, and totals must be verified against camp and transport material.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00036 Eichmann praises Höss while disputing the number murdered at Auschwitz.

   Yes, from Hoess. If you ask me about the 2 1/2 million Jews in Auschwitz who are supposed to have been physically liquidated there under Hoess, then I must answer that I consider this 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 at all.

2. File 85, scan 00128 He discusses Hungarian transports and whether they were sent to Auschwitz.

   …I put it in the files and reported it to my office, and I also told State Secretary E., asking that it be remedied. That was why I went to Auschwitz so often. Too often, the commandant of Auschwitz, Hoess, for a time represented by SS Osf. Liebehenschel, and the doctors of Dachau, in short, the staff of that camp, told me what deso… condition these transports from Hungary arrived in at their destination, Auschwitz railway…

3. File 87, scan 00145 The speakers discuss gas chambers and killing at Auschwitz.

   …and served at Dachau until 1938. Then as adjutant in Sachsenhausen from 38 until 1 May 1940, at which time I was appointed commandant at Auschwitz. I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943. I estimate that 2 1/2 million were exterminated there by execution and gassing.

Related entries

• Rudolf Höss
• concentration camp
• extermination
• deportation
• WVHA

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Auschwitz
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, History

What it means

The SS established Bergen-Belsen in 1943, first holding some Jewish prisoners whom German authorities considered possible exchange hostages. The camp later received prisoners evacuated from other camps.

Extreme overcrowding, lack of food and water, disease, and collapse killed tens of thousands. British forces liberated the camp on Apr 15, 1945.

In this interview

Bergen-Belsen appears in passages about exchange Jews, Kasztner’s train, foreign negotiations, and camp conditions. Eichmann stresses its exchange purpose while the later history shows how deadly the camp became.

Read with care

The camp’s function changed over time. Exchange detention and later mass death are both part of its history, but they describe different phases and prisoner groups.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00071 The speakers discuss Jews held for possible exchange.

   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 the freeing of 1,368 Jews from Bergen-Belsen had to be carried out?

2. File 86, scan 00014 Bergen-Belsen appears in a discussion of the Kasztner train.

   In Jewish circles, K. was later heavily reproached for spending too much energy on rescuing these 17,000, the so-called Bergen-Belsen transport. You can confirm, so to speak, that K. really kept getting on your nerves over the matter?

3. File 86, scan 00036 The speakers return to exchange and transport arrangements.

   Around December 10, 1944, the Bergen-Belsen transport arrived in Bregenz. That is the transport whose beginning …? And…

Related entries

• Rezső Kasztner
• concentration camp
• deportation
• WRB

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Bergen-Belsen
• Bergen-Belsen Memorial

What it means

The SS built Bełżec in occupied Poland as the first fixed killing center of Operation Reinhard. It began mass gassing in Mar 1942.

German and Trawniki-trained guards murdered about 434,500 Jews there, as well as an unknown number of Roma and Poles. Very few prisoners survived.

In this interview

The typescript uses Belzec and the damaged form Belschek. The speakers group it with other sites while arguing about gas killing, camp activity, and who knew what.

Read with care

Bełżec was a killing center, not simply a concentration camp. Belschek is a damaged transcript form, not another accepted place name.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00125 The speakers list Bełżec with other killing centers.

   …were shot. (unclear: edge) he explained to us: At this moment, August 17, 1942, we have three installations in operation, namely Belschek, on the Lublin to Bemberg railway line, D. line, maximum capacity per day 15,000 persons; Treblinka, east of Warsaw, maximum capacity 25,000 persons; Soviber, also in Poland, 20,000 persons maximum capacity. Meidaneck near Lublin is now in preparation. The first three

2. File 88, scan 00057 A camp passage uses the damaged Belschek form.

   That was on 20 March 1941. The gas chambers at Belzec, Majdanek, Auschwitz and elsewhere were not yet working. On 13 March 1943 the model ghetto was liquidated as well.

3. File 88, scan 00139 The site returns in a discussion of mass killing.

   …up the individual figures for the various extermination sites. That means adding together the total of those exterminated in the death camps, Belzec, Treblinka, So (unclear: typist) and Auschwitz, and adding to that the chaotic extermination operations in the open air that were carried out in the Soviet Union. After such very exact investigation the Polish commission for war crimes established in the years 45/46 the…

Related entries

• Treblinka
• Sobibór
• extermination
• deportation
• Glo

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Bełżec
• Bełżec Museum

What it means

The SS began building Auschwitz II-Birkenau at Brzezinka in Oct 1941. It became the largest prisoner camp within the Auschwitz complex.

Birkenau held the main gas chambers and crematoria used to murder Jews deported from across Europe. It held prisoners selected for forced labor.

In this interview

Birkenau appears when the speakers distinguish parts of Auschwitz, discuss gas chambers and crematoria, and describe arrivals and sorting.

Read with care

Auschwitz and Birkenau are related but not interchangeable in every phrase. Birkenau was Auschwitz II within the wider complex.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00156 Birkenau appears in discussion of the Auschwitz killing process.

   Page 132. This picture, Auschwitz 2, the entry to Birkenau?

2. File 88, scan 00003 The speakers describe Birkenau inside the wider camp complex.

   …for a transport, with variations down to 149 on the one side and up to 1,089 on the other. It is possible, with the help of a fragment of the Birkenau daily roll call for the men's camp, to trace the tragic end of the great raid.

3. File 88, scan 00004 They continue the discussion of camp sections and killing.

   The others were probably killed because they were not fit for labor deployment. I would like to put the weight on the word. Taking over or admission? Into the camp Birkenau, which belonged to Auschwitz, a number X was admitted, that is, admitted. But the transport, the handover of the transport, is not described at all.

Related entries

• Auschwitz
• Rudolf Höss
• extermination
• Sonderkommando

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Auschwitz
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, History

What it means

Nazi concentration camps formed a specific SS-run system. The regime first used them to imprison political opponents without trial, then widened imprisonment to Jews and many other targeted groups. Prisoners faced violence, hunger, disease, forced labor, and indefinite detention.

Concentration camps weren’t the same as all Nazi camps or killing centers. Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Chełmno were killing centers rather than concentration camps. Auschwitz combined a concentration-camp complex, forced labor, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly separates his section from the concentration-camp desk and the WVHA. He uses that division to limit his responsibility for people after transport. His description of Theresienstadt as outside German coercion is false and shows why his office distinctions must be verified against what the SS did.

Read with care

Use concentration camp for the SS camp system when that is the exact meaning. Don’t use it as a catch-all for ghettos, forced-labor camps, transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and killing centers.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00022 Eichmann distinguishes his section from the Gestapo concentration-camp desk and denies authority over camp commitments.

   I didn't have the number of Jews held in concentration camps. A separate section in Office IV handled camp matters, and I had nothing to do with that. But I then said my office decided requests from regional State Police headquarters to transfer a named Jew to a camp. The local office received an order invoking decrees, including the Decree for the Protection of People and State.

2. File 85, scan 00055 He falsely denies that Theresienstadt was under German force and says it wasn’t a concentration camp.

   No, I don't know the number. I 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 Beck to Murmelstein, Theresienstadt was exclusively under Jewish leadership; we didn't meddle in it at all. We sealed it off with Czech gendarmerie, but we couldn't seal it off completely, because the highway from Berlin to Prague ran right…

3. File 86, scan 00098 He links concentration-camp detention to the protective-custody officer and distinguishes that desk from IV B 4.

   The order in principle, which came out in writing, came out at the outbreak of war. Emigration is stopped from now on, no Jew may emigrate any more, and release from a concentration camp during wartime is forbidden. With that it fell to the officer for protective custody in our Office IV, which was section IV A (unclear: hand). IV B 4 was the subdivision of my section. I had the subdivisions IV B 4 a and IV B 4 b.

Related entries

• KZ
• Schutzhaft (protective custody)
• labor camp
• WVHA
• ghetto
• extermination

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nazi Camp System Language
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nazi Camps

What it means

Dachau became a model for the SS concentration camp system and a training site for camp guards. It held political opponents, Jews, clergy, resistance members, and many other prisoner groups.

More than 200,000 prisoners passed through Dachau and its ~ 140 subcamps. At least 40,000 died through abuse, forced labor, hunger, disease, and killing.

In this interview

Dachau appears in talk about early detention, camp organization, prisoners seized after the Nov 1938 pogrom, and postwar trials.

Read with care

Dachau was a concentration camp, not a purpose-built killing center, although the SS murdered prisoners there and sent others to killing sites.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00124 Dachau appears in a discussion of detention and camp authority.

   …in the morning and partly in the afternoon. We, the active troops, got food only 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.

2. File 85, scan 00128 The speakers compare camps and transport destinations.

   …to Auschwitz so often. Too often, the commandant of Auschwitz, Hoess, for a time represented by SS Osf. Liebehenschel, and the doctors of Dachau, in short, the staff of that camp, told me what deso… condition these transports from Hungary arrived in at their destination, Auschwitz railway station.

3. File 86, scan 00117 Dachau returns in a passage about camp prisoners.

   …Boleck was in residence as Gauleiter of Upper Austria. I was told that some military training wouldn't do me any harm, that I should go to Dachau. But for the time being I didn't get out of Passau, because the motor-detachment leader, the man who had once appointed me motor-storm leader, immediately commandeered me in Passau.

Related entries

• concentration camp
• Schutzhaft (protective custody)
• Kristallnacht
• Mauthausen

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Dachau

What it means

German authorities and their allies set up ghettos across occupied eastern Europe, especially in Poland. Ghettos isolated Jews, took their homes and freedom, and placed them under severe overcrowding, hunger, disease, forced labor, and police violence.

Ghettos varied in layout and purpose. Some were sealed, some were open but tightly controlled, and many became assembly points for deportation. Hundreds of thousands died inside ghettos. German forces later destroyed many ghetto communities through shootings and deportations to killing centers.

In this interview

The interview moves among medieval ghettos, Warsaw, Budapest, Łódź, Theresienstadt, and smaller provincial ghettos. Eichmann treats ghettos as population and transport units, but he tries to make some of them sound self-run or protective. His figures on people concentrated in ghettos sit beside admissions about killing, labor selection, and deportation.

Read with care

A ghetto wasn’t simply a neighborhood and wasn’t always a concentration camp. Check the place, date, degree of enclosure, governing authority, and link to deportation.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00034 Eichmann groups Jews held in ghettos with people handled in camps for labor or killing.

   …never handled such a figure. It is true that 4 1/2 to 5 million Jews were dealt with, but as emigration cases, as people concentrated in ghettos, and as people handled in the camps by the V and W main office, that is, either killed or brought to labor deployment, and the statistician Korherr did write that up and set it out and gave this report to the RF SS, that report which then came back with the notation taken note…

2. File 85, scan 00065 He discusses the size of the Budapest ghetto and plans to deport it.

   Now the time has come when people are talking about it, and I am increasingly pleased. The Jewish ghetto of Budapest: as you once told me, there were supposed to have been 70,000 there, and I laughed off that number and told you there must have been 200,000. The intention had of course been to deport this ghetto, but I had the order to get through from east to west. What was in the Budapest ghetto was, in light of the…

3. File 85, scan 00127 He portrays Theresienstadt as an old-age home rather than a place of German confinement and deportation.

   …kindergarten or other cultural facilities, because Theresienstadt wasn't supposed to be a concentration camp. It was supposed to be more of a ghetto, an old-age home, where the Jews were to be held and, for the first time, sustain themselves. A brutal spirit would never have granted this to people who had allowed war to be declared on his blood. Only a man of the stature of the RF could do that.

Related entries

• deportation
• Jewish Council
• Litzmannstadt
• concentration camp
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Ghettos
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Final Solution

What it means

KZ abbreviates Konzentrationslager, concentration camp. The SS used concentration camps for detention outside normal court review, terror, forced labor, abuse, and killing.

A concentration camp wasn't the same as every Nazi camp or killing center. Auschwitz combined a concentration-camp complex, forced labor, and a killing center, while Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Chełmno were killing centers outside the concentration-camp system.

In this interview

All five KZ matches occur on two pages. Eichmann first uses KZ while giving a false picture of good food and humane transport. He later says he was held at KZ Mauthausen like a prisoner, then mentions access to the officers' casino, camp leaders, his staff, and freedom to prepare a motorized unit.

Read with care

Keep KZ in transcript words, but don't use it for every camp. Eichmann's account of his stay at Mauthausen doesn't make him a concentration-camp prisoner.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00124 Eichmann says deportees sent to a KZ received proper food and humane treatment.

   They did not arrive at an empty destination station as the West Germans had then; they were delivered into a camp, even if it was called a KZ. In the KZ there was proper provisioning: morning coffee, midday meal, evening meal, and for those who worked, the so-called bread breaks in the morning and partly in the afternoon. We, the active troops, got food only three times a day. I know for certain that the prisoners in Dachau…

2. File 85, scan 00132 He compares his stay at KZ Mauthausen to imprisonment while describing officer privileges and effort on his Hungary unit.

   …did not know a few days before my departure for Budapest. Neither did he. I myself only knew fourteen days beforehand, and I was held in KZ Mauthausen, roughly like any other KZ prisoner. I was not allowed to leave the camp boundary, except that I could move about in the officers' casino, talk with the individual KZ leaders, and play chess. I had my personnel there.

Related entries

• MKL
• WVHA
• Schutzhaft (protective custody)

References

• USHMM guide to Nazi camp language
• USHMM guide to Nazi camps

What it means

Nazi Germany and its allies held millions of people in many kinds of forced-labor camps. SS, police, military, state, local, and private bodies ran different camps. Prisoners worked in mines, factories, construction, agriculture, workshops, and arms production.

A labor-camp label doesn’t show that prisoners were safe. forced labor could offer a temporary chance to survive, while hunger, disease, beatings, shootings, and deadly working conditions killed many prisoners. Some labor camps became concentration-camp subcamps, assembly points for deportation, or sites tied to mass murder.

In this interview

The speakers discuss Jewish labor camps in Croatia, Slovakia, occupied Poland, and elsewhere. Eichmann often uses visible labor as proof against killing. He reasons that a camp with a tailor shop couldn’t have been an extermination camp. That inference is unsound because forced labor and mass murder could operate within the same camp network or in successive phases.

Read with care

Don’t infer survival, jurisdiction, or camp type from the label alone. Check who ran the camp, the prisoners held there, the dates, the duties, living conditions, transfers, and killings.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00052 The speakers discuss Slovak labor camps that became assembly points for deportation.

   The negotiations led to the date being declared too early, and Jewish labor camps were created in Slovakia?

2. File 86, scan 00170 Eichmann uses the presence of a tailor shop to argue that a camp wasn’t an extermination camp.

   …to mind when I read the letter where Glo applies to the Reichsfuehrer for some Iron Crosses. That was a camp that had to be regarded as a labor camp. You can see it clearly enough from the fact that a tailor shop was working there, because the guard personnel themselves had their uniforms altered or newly made there. So this cannot have been an extermination camp, but a kind of concentration camp. This story may have…

3. File 88, scan 00096 He says peat-cutting labor camps were exempt from deportation measures.

   These peat-cutting camps were labor camps and were exempted from the deportation measures.

Related entries

• concentration camp
• extermination
• deportation
• resettlement
• WVHA

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nazi Camps
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Forced Labor

What it means

The SS established the Lublin concentration camp, commonly called Majdanek, on the edge of Lublin in 1941. It held Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and prisoners from many countries.

Prisoners died through forced labor, hunger, disease, shootings, and gas. Majdanek was tied to Operation Reinhard but wasn’t one of its three purpose-built killing centers.

In this interview

The transcript uses Majdanek and Meidaneck while the speakers sort labor camps, concentration camps, and killing sites. Their categories shift from passage to passage.

Read with care

Majdanek was both a concentration camp and a place of mass murder. It should not be presented as one of the three Operation Reinhard killing centers.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00170 Eichmann invokes camp workshops while arguing about a site’s purpose.

   …cannot have been an extermination camp, but a kind of concentration camp. This story may have been around the end of 1942 or 1943. So it was Majdanek.

2. File 87, scan 00125 Majdanek appears in a list of camp and killing sites.

   …per day 15,000 persons; Treblinka, east of Warsaw, maximum capacity 25,000 persons; Soviber, also in Poland, 20,000 persons maximum capacity. Meidaneck near Lublin is now in preparation. The first three

3. File 88, scan 00057 The speakers return to Majdanek in a camp discussion.

   That was on 20 March 1941. The gas chambers at Belzec, Majdanek, Auschwitz and elsewhere were not yet working. On 13 March 1943 the model ghetto was liquidated as well.

Related entries

• concentration camp
• labor camp
• extermination
• Glo

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Majdanek
• State Museum at Majdanek

What it means

The SS established Mauthausen near Linz in 1938 and built a big network of subcamps. Prisoners from across Europe were forced into labor in quarries, construction, and wartime industry.

At least 95,000 of about 197,000 prisoners died through killing, starvation, disease, violence, and forced labor. The camp too had a gas chamber and sent prisoners to the Hartheim killing center.

In this interview

Mauthausen appears in discussions of camp transfers, Austrian policing, late-war movements, gas killing, and Rudolf Höss’s career.

Read with care

Mauthausen gives both the main camp and a wider subcamp system. The date and nearby place name may point to one subcamp.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00132 Mauthausen appears in a discussion of camp careers and command.

   …did not know a few days before my departure for Budapest. Neither did he. I myself only knew fourteen days beforehand, and I was held in KZ Mauthausen, roughly like any other KZ prisoner. I was not allowed to leave the camp boundary, except that I could move about in the officers' casino, talk with the individual KZ leaders, and play chess. I had my personnel there.

2. File 86, scan 00037 The speakers discuss prisoner movement and camp authority.

   …and Müller. Becher drives from one camp to the next to carry out Himmler's order that they be handed over without a fight. He also goes to Mauthausen, where the commandant is preparing a mass killing, that is, he wants to load elderly Jews onto old Danube barges and then sink them.

3. File 86, scan 00080 Mauthausen returns in a list of camps and destinations.

   Did you visit Mauthausen?

Related entries

• concentration camp
• labor camp
• WVHA
• Dachau

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Mauthausen

What it means

The SS built Sobibór in occupied Poland as one of the three Operation Reinhard killing centers. Mass gassing began in spring 1942.

German and Trawniki-trained guards murdered at least 167,000 Jews there. Prisoners staged an uprising on Oct 14, 1943, after which the SS dismantled the camp.

In this interview

Sobibór appears once in reviewed English as the damaged form Soviber, in a list with Treblinka, Bełżec, and Majdanek.

Read with care

Soviber is a faulty interpretation of Sobibór in this passage. The entry preserves the transcript form for matching but uses the correct place name for display.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00125 The damaged form Soviber appears in a list of camp and killing sites.

   …Lublin to Bemberg railway line, D. line, maximum capacity per day 15,000 persons; Treblinka, east of Warsaw, maximum capacity 25,000 persons; Soviber, also in Poland, 20,000 persons maximum capacity. Meidaneck near Lublin is now in preparation. The first three

Related entries

• Treblinka
• Bełżec
• extermination
• deportation
• Glo

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Sobibór
• Sobibór Museum

What it means

The SS set up the Theresienstadt ghetto in the Czech fortress town of Terezín in late 1941. German authorities sent many elderly and prominent Jews there, along with Jews from the Protectorate and other countries.

Tens of thousands died there from hunger, disease, and harsh conditions. German authorities deported many more from Theresienstadt to killing sites and camps farther east, chiefly Auschwitz.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses the planning, naming, guard arrangements, food, prominent prisoners, foreign visits, and deportations connected with Theresienstadt. He repeatedly uses softened gives such as old people’s home.

Read with care

The softened words in the interview reflect SS language and Eichmann’s defense. Theresienstadt was a ghetto and camp, not an ordinary retirement home or self-governing Jewish town.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00015 Eichmann lists Theresienstadt among territorial ideas discussed before mass deportation.

   …and dead. When emigration stalled, I began thinking about it. We will discuss why it stalled later. Various attempts came to mind, including Theresienstadt and the Lublin district. Herzl writes in The Jewish State that he tried everything. He approached the Sultan and wanted to negotiate with Kaiser Wilhelm. Herzl stirred up heaven and earth for the Jews, and in his distress Madagascar came up too. Herzl fell out with the…

2. File 85, scan 00024 The speakers discuss prominent Jews held there and possible releases.

   Yes, in Theresienstadt we had a whole number of very prominent Jews, and also in the camps a whole number of very prominent Jews, I believe Leon Blum was still there… it was a wealth of names, I had a few Austrian generals who were Jews, I had a whole lot of people who had also in part been former Reich ministers, (unclear: faint) were, it was a wealth, I could easily have brought the 100 together.

3. File 85, scan 00055 Eichmann mentions the road through the ghetto, guards, and food deliveries.

   …thousands. Naturally, there were some Gaue where the Gauleiters were especially radical. They ordered the transfer, and those people came to Theresienstadt only at the very end, and 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…

Related entries

• Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
• ghetto
• Jewish Council
• deportation

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Theresienstadt
• Terezín Memorial

What it means

The Treblinka site held two separate German camps. Treblinka I was a forced-labor camp. Treblinka II, opened in 1942 under Operation Reinhard, was built for mass murder.

German SS and police staff, assisted by guards trained at Trawniki, murdered about 925,000 Jews and an unknown number of Roma at Treblinka II, chiefly with engine exhaust in gas chambers.

In this interview

Treblinka appears in passages about killing centers, gas, Franz Stangl, and the speakers’ effort to sort camps by purpose. The interview sometimes uses the place name without stating which Treblinka camp it means.

Read with care

Distinguish Treblinka I from Treblinka II. A labor-camp passage and a killing-center passage may refer to different camps at the same site.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00169 The speakers place Treblinka in a discussion of camps and mass killing.

   …carried out exterminations, or they were carried out later, I don't remember any more. In the General Government, eastern district Lublin, Treblinka (unclear). An Obersturmfuehrer was the camp commander. It was a small camp. How they exterminated there I don't know, not with gas. There in this camp the Obersturmfuehrer had an armored scout car, but it ran on tracks, very low, and I then

2. File 87, scan 00125 Treblinka appears beside other killing centers.

   …three installations in operation, namely Belschek, on the Lublin to Bemberg railway line, D. line, maximum capacity per day 15,000 persons; Treblinka, east of Warsaw, maximum capacity 25,000 persons; Soviber, also in Poland, 20,000 persons maximum capacity. Meidaneck near Lublin is now in preparation. The first three

3. File 88, scan 00139 The speakers return to Treblinka while reviewing camp evidence.

   …figures for the various extermination sites. That means adding together the total of those exterminated in the death camps, Belzec, Treblinka, So (unclear: typist) and Auschwitz, and adding to that the chaotic extermination operations in the open air that were carried out in the Soviet Union. After such very exact investigation the Polish commission for war crimes established in the years 45/46 the following totals…

Related entries

• Bełżec
• Sobibór
• extermination
• labor camp
• deportation

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Treblinka
• Yad Vashem, Treblinka

What it means

The German armed forces sent the Commissar Order before the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It told troops to separate Soviet political commissars from other prisoners and kill them.

The order was part of a war planned around racial and political murder. Its words targeted commissars, while German forces and SS and police units too murdered Jews and other people on far wider grounds.

In this interview

The questioners connect the order to early mass shootings and argue that Eichmann used it as cover for killing Jews. Eichmann rejects that account while accepting parts of the timing.

Read with care

The order didn’t direct the murder of every Soviet Jew. The interview sometimes blends it with the wider mass shootings that followed the invasion.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00035 The questioner links the order to a plan to kill Jews, which Eichmann denies.

   The destruction of Russian Jewry was carried out by mass shootings, and the so-called Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police were charged with carrying them out. Ohlendorf's testimony in Nuremberg carries this out. In this Commissar Order Eichmann saw a chance to destroy the rest of Jewry as well.

2. File 87, scan 00036 The speakers place killings in Soviet land under the order.

   At this time no Jews are being destroyed outside Russian territory. They are being destroyed on Russian territory, on the basis of the Commissar Order.

3. File 87, scan 00038 They discuss it as a stage before later extermination policy.

   Second, until the deportations from Europe and the mass exterminations began in the summer of 1942, there were preliminary stages, which were set off by the commissar order.

Related entries

• Einsatzgruppe
• Einsatzkommando
• Order Police
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Commissar Order
• NS-Archiv, German text of the Commissar Order

What it means

Hitler put Hermann Göring in charge of the Four Year Plan in 1936. Its aim was to give Germany the raw materials, industrial capacity, and labor needed for war within four years.

The post gave Göring wide power across economic ministries and occupied industries. As Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, he too sent the July 31, 1941 order directing Heydrich to prepare a total solution of the so-called Jewish question in German-controlled Europe.

In this interview

The speakers use the Four Year Plan both for the economic program and for Göring's powerful office. Eichmann says Göring could intervene across state branches, protect favored Jews, and give Heydrich formal authority over the Final Solution. The words helps explain Göring's place in the order system even though the plan wasn't a Jewish-affairs body.

Read with care

Commissioner, Delegate, and Plenipotentiary are translation variants for Göring's title here. Don't turn the Four Year Plan into an SS office or treat every intervention as part of one fixed policy.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00045 Eichmann says Göring could enter every branch of government through his Four Year Plan post.

   …not only Heydrich's superior, but Himmler's as well. Heydrich also accepted Göring as his superior, because here, as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, he could put his oar into every branch. I wrote Göring a good dozen letters for Heydrich, where Heydrich gave me the key points and afterward signed the letter. He always chose the heading "Herr Reichsmarschall" and never "My dear so-and-so," which he otherwise liked to…

2. File 86, scan 00098 He says the Four Year Plan office helped some Jewish art and gem dealers obtain privileged status.

   Yes, I remember. I believe it was arranged through the office for handling the Four Year Plan, on the (unclear: blot) of the man whose attention had been drawn to it by his art buyers. In that connection it is indeed true that in Amsterdam a number of Jews were treated as so-called privileged Jews, after they had shown their gratitude in some desired form to the competent Reich offices, that is the Four Year Plan. Whether…

3. File 87, scan 00062 The questioner reads Göring's July 1941 order to Heydrich about a total solution of the Jewish question.

   The decree of the Delegate for the Four Year Plan to SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich concerning the total solution of the Jewish question, of July 1941, that is, at a time when you were already sitting as a section head in the Reich Security Main Office. With reference to the Führer's decree of 24 January 1939, Heydrich is charged by Göring with making all the necessary preparations of an organizational and material kind for a…

Related entries

• Final Solution
• RSHA
• OT

References

• USHMM guide to Hermann Göring

What it means

On Nov 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi leaders unleashed a state-backed anti-Jewish pogrom across Germany, annexed Austria, and the Sudetenland. Nazi Party, SA, SS, and Hitler Youth members burned synagogues, wrecked homes and businesses, stole property, assaulted Jews, and killed people.

Police arrested about 26,000 Jewish men and sent them to concentration camps. The regime then fined Jews for the violence against them, took insurance payments, sped up the seizure of Jewish property, and used terror to force more Jews to flee.

In this interview

Eichmann says he sheltered Jewish community workers in his Vienna office and portrays the pogrom as opposed to his emigration policy. He uses that story to cast his role as a protector and to distance the Security Police from the violence. Sassen's monologue on Part2/00177 minimizes the pogrom as excesses and attacks Jewish response abroad.

Read with care

Kristallnacht and Reichskristallnacht focus attention on broken glass and can hide the assault, arson, killing, mass arrest, and theft. Preserve the interview's words, but explain the event as the Nov pogrom.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00177 Sassen minimizes the pogrom while attacking Jewish warnings about later physical extermination.

   And from the Kristallnacht of 1938 a large-scale Jewish (unclear: hand) campaign is already under way abroad, which made a thunderclap out of every little noise, and which sought to make capital out of the excesses that actually took place against the Jews in the K-night, physical excesses as well, or rather to present these excesses as the forerunners of a systematic, also physical, combating of Jewry in the Third Reich.

2. File 87, scan 00057 Eichmann says he sheltered several Jews and insists the pogrom ran against his office's aim.

   No. I was involved in the whole affair, the Reichskristallnacht, only to the extent that I let a number of Jews camp and sleep in my office under the protection of the guards, and the next day they went home again. That was the only thing I had to do with it, and I tell it because this whole Reichskristallnacht ran contrary to our wish, to our aim. And the Jews must have recognized that, for how else would they have fled to…

3. File 87, scan 00071 The speakers compare the hidden origin of the Nov pogrom with the order for physical destruction.

   Then who ordered the Reichskristallnacht?

Related entries

• SA
• Gestapo
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration

References

• USHMM guide to Kristallnacht
• USHMM guide to pogroms

What it means

German officials revived older antisemitic proposals to remove Europe’s Jews to Madagascar after France fell in 1940. Foreign Office and SS planners imagined a vast forced deportation under German policy.

The plan depended on German control of sea routes and never became practical. It wasn’t free settlement or a rescue plan. It envisioned coercion, seizure of property, police control, and deadly living conditions.

In this interview

Eichmann presents Madagascar as an early political and territorial answer and uses it to argue that Final Solution once meant something other than killing. The speakers discuss offices, population figures, shipping, and the plan’s collapse.

Read with care

The plan changed across drafts and never reached implementation. Don’t treat it as proof of humane intent or as a voluntary migration proposal.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00015 Eichmann lists Madagascar among territorial proposals.

   Wi… says in his account that in Aug you were commissioned to draw up a Madagascar plan?

2. File 85, scan 00016 He mentions talks among the SS, Interior Ministry, and Foreign Office.

   …was involved too, because each agency guarded its powers closely. I believe my office held at least fifteen to twenty large meetings on the Madagascar project, with roughly twenty to twenty-five people at each one. I had lawyers draw up a bill for moving and settling Jews on Madagascar. It was to be called Jewish territory, where Jews would supposedly rule and live freely, though under the protectorate of the Greater…

3. File 85, scan 00018 The speakers discuss the proposal’s population and transport problems.

Related entries

• emigration
• Final Solution
• “Jewish Question”
• Nisko Plan
• Foreign Office

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Madagascar Plan
• Yad Vashem, Madagascar Plan

What it means

In Oct 1939, Eichmann’s office began deporting Jews from Vienna, Moravian Ostrava, and Katowice to the Nisko area by the San River. Deportees were forced to build a camp under harsh conditions.

The transports stopped after several months amid conflict among German offices and shifting occupation plans. Many deportees were driven across the German-Soviet boundary or left without shelter and food.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions selecting Nisko, planning a strongpoint, arranging transports, and blaming Hans Frank for ending the project.

Read with care

Nisko gives a town, a camp, and a wider deportation scheme. Eichmann’s account presents personal initiative and later obstruction, so it must be read against surviving orders and transport material.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00028 The questioner outlines Eichmann’s transit camp and deportations.

   Eichmann formed the plan of deporting the Jews from the Reich territory, from the Protectorate and from Austria to Poland, on the assumption that the Polish territories would sooner or later be an independent state again. So he quickly organized a transit camp in Nisko on the (unclear: typist) and wanted to deport the Jews from Vienna, Bruenn and Maehrisch Ostrau there. Is that all correct?

2. File 87, scan 00029 Eichmann mentions picking Nisko near the German-Soviet boundary.

   I came to the San (unclear). I saw a blown-up railway bridge, wide, endlessly wide country from horizon to horizon, lightly formed like a plateau, the San, that mighty carrier of water, in front of me. As a fallback for the first moment I had the village of Nisko, a larger village, right on the border between the Russian sphere of interest and the German sphere of interest.

3. File 87, scan 00033 He says Hans Frank stopped the project.

   …who then did the Final Solution for him. Whether that was any pleasanter, I don't know. The thing itself would have gone differently if Nisko on the San hadn't been torpedoed by Frank. Whether he torpedoed it himself, or whether it came from somewhere else, I don't know. For Frank it was a big fight at the time, against Heydrich, against Himmler and against me too.

Related entries

• General Government
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• Madagascar Plan
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nisko and Lublin Plan
• Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, Deportation to Nisko

What it means

The Nazi government announced the two Nuremberg Laws on Sept 15, 1935. Later decrees defined who counted as Jewish or of mixed ancestry through grandparents and descent.

The laws formed a base for exclusion from public life, jobs, marriage, and legal protection. German authorities extended related rules across annexed and occupied lands in different ways.

In this interview

The speakers invoke the laws when discussing who counted as Jewish, mixed marriages, exemptions, the Jewish star, and how Eichmann’s office processed policy.

Read with care

Nuremberg Laws can mean narrowly the two Sept 1935 laws or broadly their later decrees. Dates and the exact policy matter.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00007 The speakers distinguish the laws from a Führer order.

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

2. File 86, scan 00008 The laws are used to define a mixed-marriage exemption.

   …of Bohemia and Moravia, no one could be evacuated if one spouse belonged to a Christian religious community and was a non-Jew under the Nuremberg laws, meaning they lived in a privileged mixed marriage. The holder of a bravery decoration from the First World War couldn't be evacuated, nor could anyone wounded in the First World War. A number of other groups were also excluded, but I can't recall them offhand. For the…

3. File 86, scan 00124 A draft marking policy uses the laws to decide who must wear the star.

   …all Jews of German nationality living in Reich territory are to be marked. Now comes point 2: who in particular is to be covered. Now the Nuremberg Laws are brought in, who counts as a Jew subject to the marking requirement, then the borderline cases come up, and then it says, in case of non-compliance, punishment.

Related entries

• Mischling
• Jewish star
• Final Solution
• Aryan and Aryanization

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nuremberg Race Laws
• German Bundestag, text of the Nuremberg Laws

What it means

The United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France created the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

The trial opened on Nov 20, 1945, and the judges gave their decisions on Oct 1, 1946. Twenty-two leading Nazi officials stood trial.

In this interview

On Part1/00005, Eichmann says he read a small pamphlet called “The Nuremberg Trial” while in captivity.

Read with care

This phrase means the International Military Tribunal trial here, not the later U.S. trials held in Nuremberg.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00005 Eichmann says he read a pamphlet titled “The Nuremberg Trial” in captivity.

   He said this man was in truth the darkest figure of this century, and especially because he, as the witnesses probably said, had recognized the outcome of the war clearly a long time beforehand. That is given back word for word. I read the thing in captivity, in a small pamphlet, "The Nuremberg Trial".

Related entries

• Robert H. Jackson

References

• USHMM International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

What it means

Reinhard Heydrich convened fifteen senior SS, party, and state officials at a villa in Wannsee on Jan 20, 1942. He said RSHA control and sought the cooperation of ministries across German-ruled Europe.

The meeting didn’t begin the Holocaust or decide whether to kill Europe’s Jews. Mass shootings and killing at Chełmno were already underway. The meeting coordinated duties and discussed categories, deportation, labor, and exemptions.

In this interview

Eichmann mentions invitations, participants, notes, the revised minutes, Heydrich’s language, and his role as secretary. He uses gaps in memory and the meeting’s words to dispute what was said aloud.

Read with care

Don’t describe Wannsee as the moment the murder decision was first made. Its importance lies in coordination and in the surviving minutes Eichmann helped prepare.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00014 The speakers first place Wannsee in the development of policy.

2. File 85, scan 00139 Eichmann discusses the meeting and its words.

   Perhaps I can remind you by recalling the famous Wannsee meeting of 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.

3. File 86, scan 00091 The speakers review Eichmann’s part in the meeting and its minutes.

   But Heydrich was after all somehow charged with the Jewish question at the Wannsee Conference or at other conferences?

Related entries

• Reinhard Heydrich
• Heinrich Müller
• RSHA
• Final Solution
• Nuremberg Laws

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Wannsee Conference
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Wannsee Protocol

What it means

Nazi leaders described politics and war as a racial struggle in which one people must destroy another. When applied to European Jews, physical annihilation meant killing rather than expulsion or forced assimilation.

Nazi policy joined labor and destruction. Some prisoners were worked under conditions intended to cause illness, injury, and death. Still annihilation can sometimes appear as a broad metaphor or as propaganda about an alleged threat to Germans, so the object of the word always matters.

In this interview

The speakers use annihilation in sharply different ways. Eichmann opens with an antisemitic story about economic annihilation of the German middle class, later discusses the Führer order for annihilation of the Jews, and imagines the annihilation of the German people. His words that he handled evacuation rather than annihilation is a defense about office boundaries, not proof that transport was detached from killing.

Read with care

Name the target and speaker. Don’t merge a metaphor, a wartime threat, forced death through labor, and the organized murder of Jews into one use.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00002 Eichmann uses annihilation metaphorically in an antisemitic account of German economic life.

   …need only recall the mortgage stories and the expulsion stories of the farmers in the north of the country, which slowly but surely formed an annihilation campaign (unclear: overtyped) of the (handwritten) small and upper middle class, all of whom became victims of Jewish interest-rate policy. The reason the interest-rate question found such a wide response in the NSDAP program. Precisely in the postwar (unclear: edge)…

2. File 85, scan 00137 He contrasts his said transport role with annihilation.

   I could never have made such a proposal, because I was responsible for evacuation, not annihilation. As far as my department was concerned, Amt IV did not make such a proposal in a single case at that time. That was long after the double battle had been fought at… Weeks after those battles, I drove into the area and still saw the tank wrecks lying there. Around that time Heydrich summoned me and explained that, on the…

3. File 87, scan 00081 He says every enemy deserved annihilation and boasts that five million enemies of the Reich died with him.

   …been declared, and to me it made no difference at all who it was. Every enemy who declared war on me, who declared war on my people, deserved annihilation. That is why I also said, at the end, it makes no difference to me, I leap joyfully into the pit, in the awareness that five million enemies of the Reich have croaked along with me. That is how I said it, and not otherwise.

Related entries

• extermination
• evacuation
• Final Solution
• labor camp
• Sonderbehandlung (special treatment)

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Final Solution
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Forced Labor

What it means

Aryan began as a language-history label, not a biological race. Racial writers turned it into a false idea of a superior people. Nazis used Aryan and non-Aryan to divide those included in German society from Jews and other people they excluded.

Aryanization meant the coerced transfer or seizure of Jewish businesses, homes, property, and livelihoods for non-Jewish buyers or the state. It wasn’t an ordinary sale. Discriminatory laws, threats, forced departure, and state theft stripped Jewish owners of free choice and fair value.

In this interview

Most uses describe people as Aryan or non-Aryan, including Christians with Jewish ancestry, mixed marriages, ancestry certificates, and camp prisoners. Only a few use Aryanization, in questions about Foreign Office staff. The words shows how the speakers adopt Nazi racial categories as if they described real biology.

Read with care

Aryan isn’t a valid racial class. Keep quotation marks or add Nazi when the setting could make the label look factual. Don’t describe coerced property theft as a normal business transfer.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00085 Eichmann discusses so-called non-Aryan Christians and marriages to people classed as Aryan.

   …and said to me, but leave my Catholics alone. In all the other countries as well, in France too, in Germany. Those were the so-called non-Aryan Christians. They even had an association, and that whole lot was registered in it, and they were not touched at all. We would have burned all ten of our fingers.

2. File 87, scan 00048 He refers to an Aryan certificate used to prove ancestry.

   It was small. By the Aryan certificate a few more, admittedly. You can't fix any percentage there. In Austria there were probably more than in the Old Reich.

3. File 88, scan 00162 The questioner asks about Foreign Office Jewish-affairs officers and Aryanization advisers.

   Do you know that the Foreign Office had a Jewish affairs officer and an Aryanization adviser?

Related entries

• Mischling
• “Jewish Question”
• emigration
• Schutzhaft (protective custody)

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Aryan
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nazi Racism

What it means

The SS and police opened the Vienna Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Aug 1938. It brought police, finance, tax, currency, and Jewish community duties into one coercive assembly-line system that forced Jews to leave while taking much of their property.

The Vienna office used money taken from wealthier Jews to finance forced emigration and became a model for offices in Prague and Berlin. As escape routes closed, Nazi policy shifted from forced emigration toward deportation and mass murder.

In this interview

Eichmann says he proposed the Vienna office, directed it, stood over the Jewish community, and held unlimited authority in emigration matters. He mentions state and Jewish workers processing people on an assembly line while finance and currency offices handled their money. He casts this as orderly aid and separates it from Gestapo coercion, even though the offices worked together.

Read with care

Emigration here wasn't a free choice. Don't let the office's name or Eichmann's protection stories hide police pressure, property loss, and the threat that drove Jews to flee.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00010 Eichmann mentions the Vienna office during the Nov pogrom and stresses its Jewish card files.

   (unclear: typist) really no idea. Perhaps it came from Ley. I witnessed it in Vienna. My office was on Prinz Eugen Strasse, and I had the Central Office for Jewish Emigration there. That evening, when the affair seems to have begun, several Jewish functionaries came to me. They asked me to protect them, and I offered them the office. They spent the night there, while my guard stood outside the palace day and night. When I…

2. File 86, scan 00136 He says he directed the office, held unlimited authority in emigration matters, and placed state and Jewish workers on one assembly line.

   …my direction. As officer of the (unclear: blot) of the Security Police and the SD, I had received the order, on my own proposal, to create a central office for Jewish emigration. Stahlecker had obtained the authorization for it beforehand from the Reich commissioner for the reunification of Austria with the German Reich. He had a decree of authorization, although the State Police headquarters in Vienna would by rights have…

3. File 86, scan 00167 He says finance, economics, and currency offices handled the emigrants' monetary assets.

   Yes and no. Registration only in the form of, let's say, paperwork. Soon after the Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in Vienna, the Jews, once they were ready to emigrate, ordered their lift vans, and they packed their three or four room apartment into them. There wasn't much to register there apart from monetary assets, and those were settled by the Chief Finance President with the other offices that had an…

Related entries

• SD
• Gestapo
• Reich Association of Jews in Germany
• Kristallnacht

References

• USHMM guide to Adolf Eichmann
• USHMM guide to the SS and the Holocaust

What it means

Nazi Germany began big forced removals of Jews soon after the invasion of Poland. From Oct 1941, German authorities sent Jews from Germany and occupied Europe eastward. Police seized people, guarded assembly points, and escorted trains, while rail staff, diplomats, local authorities, and Eichmann’s office helped arrange the movement.

A deportation mentions forced removal, not one fixed destination or result. Some trains ended at ghettos, transit camps, or forced-labor sites. From 1942, many deportations sent Jews directly to killing centers. Other deportees died through shootings, hunger, disease, abuse, or forced labor.

In this interview

Deportation is one of the interview’s central words. Eichmann speaks about timetables, loading, escorts, national authorities, and the number of people moved. He often narrows his role to transport and tries to separate the journey from what happened after arrival. His phrase “my deportations” matters because it places the Hungarian transports inside his account of his duties.

Read with care

Don’t read deportation as a neutral journey. Don’t assume that every deportation ended at a killing center either. Check the date, route, destination, receiving authority, and later events.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00063 Eichmann says “my deportations” while describing the departure of Hungarian Jews and an Allied air attack on the rail line.

   During my deportations, that is, the departures I carried out of the Jews from Hungary whom the Hungarian (unclear) had placed under my authority, the Allied air force bombed the railway station at Guer, a railway junction, along with many other stations on the Budapest-Vienna line, so that for weeks no transport at all was possible along that route. I then, in order to show the Allies the hard fist this time and, so to…

2. File 85, scan 00065 He discusses plans to deport the Budapest ghetto and says worsening transport conditions made the operation unworkable.

   …to have been 70,000 there, and I laughed off that number and told you there must have been 200,000. The intention had of course been to deport this ghetto, but I had the order to get through from east to west. What was in the Budapest ghetto was, in light of the experience in Warsaw, placed under the strictest control and therefore could not endanger us as a partisan force. For even the first germ of a revolt would, as…

3. File 86, scan 00015 He puts the deportation of Hungarian Jews beside his estimate of how many were sent to physical extermination.

Related entries

• emigration
• evacuation
• resettlement
• ghetto
• concentration camp
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deportations
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deportations to Killing Centers

What it means

Between 1933 and 1941, Nazi leaders sought to drive Jews out of Germany and annexed Austria. They used exclusion, violence, detention, taxes, and seizure of property to make departure urgent while taking much of the emigrants’ wealth.

Foreign visa narrows and immigration barriers left many Jews with no safe destination. The word emigration can sound voluntary, but Nazi-controlled Jewish emigration often meant flight under threat. Nazi authorities stopped most Jewish emigration from Reich land in Oct 1941 as mass deportation and murder replaced the previous policy.

In this interview

Eichmann presents emigration as his early specialty and often mentions it as practical aid. He discusses the Vienna Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Jewish community workers, currency, passports, training, and overseas destinations. This account leaves out the coercion that drove Jews to flee and the loss of property built into the Vienna system.

Read with care

Don’t treat Nazi-run emigration as a free choice or as a rescue effort. Separate the refugees’ effort to escape from the police system that threatened them and took their property.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00002 Eichmann opens by describing emigration as Germany’s early answer to what he mentions as the Jewish problem.

   …great difficulties within Germany. Even Germany's efforts (unclear: edge) to solve the Jewish problem within Germany (unclear: edge) through emigration, by involving foreign countries, produced no tangible results. In hindsight (unclear: edge), it becomes very clear that foreign countries, which (unclear: edge) later became enemy countries, had from the outset kept this whole Jewish question (unclear: overtyped) as a weapon…

2. File 85, scan 00010 He mentions his Vienna office, its card files, Jewish workers, and the processing of passports and property.

   …and stationed several criminal police officers there until the commotion ended. The extensive card index at least remained intact. It listed emigration possibilities. We were dealing with a thousand people a day, and you can imagine that the card file wasn't small. Otherwise, I would probably have needed weeks or months to rebuild it.

3. File 85, scan 00020 He says Himmler wanted emigration figures and later forbade emigration by order.

   Himmler always wanted numbers, above all the emigration totals. He wanted to know whether the Reich offices or foreign countries were causing difficulties. That was generally everything he wanted from me until he prohibited Jewish emigration by order.

Related entries

• deportation
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• Zionism
• “Jewish Question”
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Emigration and the Evian Conference
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, German Jews during the Holocaust

What it means

Endlösung means final solution. Nazi offices used longer words about a final solution of the so-called Jewish question. Before systematic murder, officials could use solution language for forced emigration or distant territorial removal.

By 1941, Endlösung der Judenfrage meant the planned murder of Europe’s Jews. Police, SS, rail, state, diplomatic, occupation, and allied bodies helped carry out that policy through shootings, deportation, gas, starvation, and forced labor.

In this interview

The reviewed English turns translate the idea as Final Solution, so there are no literal Endlösung uses in that layer. Page notes preserve the German form. The most important cluster is Part3/00063 and Part3/00064, where Eichmann links Endlösung to the Madagascar plan and then denies a physical meaning while recounting Heydrich’s physical-destruction order.

Read with care

Keep early and later uses in date order. Don’t turn every 1930s use into a direct killing code, and don’t let an early territorial use blur the genocidal meaning fixed by 1941.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00082 A page note preserves the German heading “Erklaerung Endloesung.”

2. File 87, scan 00063 A page note preserves Endlösung while Eichmann says Göring’s authority concerned the Madagascar project.

3. File 87, scan 00064 Page notes preserve Endlösung where Eichmann denies a physical meaning beside Heydrich’s physical-destruction words.

Related entries

• Final Solution
• “Jewish Question”
• resettlement
• deportation

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Final Solution
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Final Solution in Depth

What it means

Evacuation normally means moving people away from danger. Nazi officials used that ordinary sound to hide the forced removal of Jews. Letters and speeches could describe deported Jews as evacuated even when police had seized them and sent them to ghettos, camps, or killing sites.

The word didn’t always mean killing. German officials too used it for military withdrawal, the movement of ethnic Germans, and other population transfers. Meaning depends on who was moved, where they went, and what happened there.

In this interview

Eichmann often prefers evacuation when describing op under his authority. He says he was responsible for evacuation, not annihilation. That verbal split backs his effort to make transport seem separate from mass murder. Elsewhere he places forced evacuations beside Himmler’s alleged order to stop physical extermination.

Read with care

Treat evacuation as a possible euphemism, not as an automatic synonym for murder. Read the people, route, destination, date, and surrounding verbs before assigning meaning.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00048 Eichmann mentions advisers pressing foreign governments to free Jews for evacuation and transport.

   …achieved everywhere, that a concentration was carried out everywhere. In many cases the governments at first resisted releasing the Jews for evacuation as well, because the laws of the country spoke against it and new laws first had to be forced through. That too was a task of the Jewish adviser concerned, to put such a matter to his local superiors until this goal was finally reached, namely the final release of the…

2. File 85, scan 00120 He places continued evacuations beside an alleged order to stop physical extermination.

   …he had fallen into captivity and was no longer master of his time or freedom. It is possible, however, that although the RF's order said the evacuations were to continue forcefully despite the negotiations already under way, with an addition not disclosed to the Jews, the RF had instructed Pohl to stop the physical extermination; deportations continued forcefully under the RF's orders. At that time, transports from Hungary…

3. File 85, scan 00137 He says his responsibility covered evacuation rather than annihilation.

   I could never have made such a proposal, because I was responsible for evacuation, not annihilation. As far as my department was concerned, Amt IV did not make such a proposal in a single case at that time. That was long after the double battle had been fought at… Weeks after those battles, I drove into the area and still saw the tank wrecks lying there. Around that time Heydrich summoned me and explained that, on the…

Related entries

• deportation
• resettlement
• Umsiedlung
• annihilation
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deceiving the Public
• U.S. National Archives, Himmler’s October 4, 1943 Speech Notes

What it means

Extermination entered English descriptions of the Holocaust as a translation of German words such as Vernichtung. The word reflects dehumanizing perpetrator language. New writing often uses mass murder or killing center unless it preserves past words or explains an older name.

The Nazis murdered Jews through mass shootings, poison gas, starvation, forced labor, and other violence. A killing center was built mainly for mass murder. A concentration camp could sometimes be deadly, but it had a different place in the SS camp system.

In this interview

The speakers use extermination with modifiers such as physical, mass, and machine. Sometimes the word plainly means the murder of Jews. At other points it refers to Soviet violence, imagined violence against Germans, or a broad political metaphor. Eichmann uses numerical guesses and office divisions to admit that killing occurred while arguing for a under death toll and a narrower personal role.

Read with care

Always name who was threatened or killed and who is speaking. Preserve extermination in transcript passage, but prefer mass murder in new explanation unless the older words is the subject.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00023 The questioner asks about gassing and other methods of physical extermination.

   Did this briefing include any discussion of gassing or other means of physical extermination?

2. File 85, scan 00024 Eichmann says Hitler had ordered extermination while discussing Himmler’s negotiations.

3. File 86, scan 00015 He estimates how many Hungarian Jews were evacuated and how many were sent to physical extermination.

   If Brandt says that a quarter of the Jews survived, that means 125,000 were sent to extermination and the rest are still alive. I reckon 500,000 Jews of Hungarian citizenship were evacuated. A quarter of that is 125,000. If we calculate very, very generously, it may be that 125,000 were sent to physical extermination and the remaining 375,000 are still alive today. And that is the truth.

Related entries

• annihilation
• Final Solution
• Sonderbehandlung (special treatment)
• concentration camp
• labor camp

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nazi Camp System Language
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Final Solution

What it means

Nazi officials discussed several proposed answers to the so-called Jewish question before systematic mass murder. These included forced emigration, a reservation near Lublin, deportation to Madagascar, and forced relocation into conquered Soviet land.

By 1941, Final Solution meant the planned murder of Europe’s Jews. German and allied authorities carried it out through mass shootings, deportation, poison gas, starvation, forced labor, and other violence. The Wannsee meeting in Jan 1942 helped coordinate efforts already underway.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly pushes the phrase backward into the 1930s and says it first meant a territorial political answer. That previous usage matters, but he uses Final Solution in passages about transports sent to killing, an alleged order covering another 250,000 Jews, and the Führer’s physical-destruction order. The interview shows both a change in meaning and Eichmann’s attempt to use that change as a defense.

Read with care

Date and setting matter. Don’t read every pre-1941 use as a direct code for killing. Don’t use the previous meaning to weaken the decided later meaning of Nazi genocide policy.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00008 Eichmann says he used the phrase in early SD files and denies that it first meant physical killing.

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

2. File 85, scan 00128 He says his office didn’t know which Hungarian transports were sent to the Final Solution.

   …the sick bay, because that would have exposed us, the Sipo, to the WVHA. We didn't know which of the individual transports were sent to the Final Solution. We did know that most were registered for labor deployment. That was done, and that is why there are still many who were supposed to have been gassed and are still alive today. None of this was to be seen in the transports from Hungary, apart from exceptions, naturally;…

3. File 87, scan 00064 He denies a physical meaning while recounting Heydrich’s words that Hitler had ordered physical destruction.

   Of course. After the whole Madagascar project had been submitted, Göring appointed Heydrich, that is the chief of the Sipo, for the overall implementation, that is the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe. But by final solution a physical solution was never intended. Never. Because if Heydrich had really planned that, then he would not have said to me one day: "The Führer has ordered the physical

Related entries

• Endlösung
• “Jewish Question”
• deportation
• resettlement
• Sonderbehandlung (special treatment)

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Final Solution
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Final Solution in Depth

What it means

Nazi Germany required Jews aged six and older in the Reich to wear a yellow Star of David from Sept 1941. German occupation authorities had already imposed badges in parts of occupied Poland.

Marking made Jews easier to isolate, harass, arrest, and deport. Rules differed across occupied Europe, but the badge was part of a wider system of exclusion and police control.

In this interview

Eichmann and his questioners argue over who proposed the measure, which offices drafted it, its design rules, and its use in Germany and Hungary.

Read with care

Yellow star and Jewish star refer to related badge rules, not one identical policy applied everywhere. Dates, design, age narrows, and exemptions varied by place.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00030 The questioner asks who initiated the yellow star.

   On whose initiative was the yellow star then introduced?

2. File 86, scan 00124 The speakers review detailed rules for wearing and displaying it.

   Now come the implementing provisions: where the Jewish star is to be worn, how big it is, what it has to look like, what color, on which side it is to be worn, at what height it is to be worn, whether it is to be worn only on the street or in the house as well, and how the authorities are to behave when a Jew is encountered without the marking on the street, and so on.

3. File 86, scan 00155 Eichmann disputes an account of a meeting about wider introduction.

   On 4 March 1942 a (unclear: blot) meeting of the Jewish desk officers from the various ministries took place in Eichmann's office. And there Eichmann is said to have proposed that the Jewish star should now be introduced in all the parts occupied by Germany.

Related entries

• Nuremberg Laws
• Office IV
• Gestapo
• Hungarian Gendarmerie

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Jewish Badge
• Yad Vashem, The Yellow Star

What it means

Mischling was a Nazi legal label for people classed as having both Jewish and non-Jewish ancestry. Under the Nuremberg Laws, one Jewish grandparent normally meant second degree and two normally meant first degree, though religion and marriage could move a person into the legal class of Jew.

The label turned ancestry into state control over citizenship, marriage, duties, schooling, and family life. Officials later debated forced divorce, compulsory sterilization, deportation, and how people in each degree would be treated within the Final Solution.

In this interview

The questioner reads policy papers that divide Mischlinge into first and second degrees and weigh deportation against sterilization. Later pages discuss forced divorce and Party Chancellery pressure. Eichmann says the topic was too complex for him, then repeats Nazi blood ideas when speaking about a cousin.

Read with care

Mischling is a Nazi racial and legal label, not a valid biological group or a neutral way to describe a person today. Preserve it in transcript passage and explain who assigned it and what harm followed.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00133 The questioner reads rules for first- and second-degree Mischlinge and a proposal pairing evacuation with compulsory sterilization.

   SS Gruppenfuehrer Hoffmann intends to send along a case officer of the Race and Settlement Office to Hungary for general orientation. However, even if the matter is taken in hand there by the Chief of the Sipo. For the carrying out of the Final Solution plan the Nuremberg Laws are to form the basis, whereby a precondition for clearing up the problem is also the solution of the mixed-marriage and Mischling questions.

2. File 88, scan 00172 The speakers discuss forced divorce, Security Police ancestry findings, and Party Chancellery pressure.

   …of a forced divorce. The pronouncement of divorce then depends only on the finding that one spouse is fully Jewish or a first-degree Mischling. This finding, whether one spouse is fully Jewish or a first-degree Mischling, is made by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, and the public prosecutors' offices are bound by that finding.

3. File 88, scan 00181 Eichmann applies the label to his cousin and repeats Nazi ideas about blood across generations.

   Well, I thought to myself, thank God, she's a Mischling. My personal attitude toward the Mischling had always been very positive, because I told myself a Mischling gets better with every generation of blood. Of course, if he went abroad, then in the negative sense, under the Nuremberg laws, he could become a full Jew again. But then it was abroad, and I wasn't responsible for it. And because I was thinking so positively about…

Related entries

• Final Solution
• Party Chancellery
• NS

References

• USHMM guide to the Nuremberg Race Laws
• USHMM Nuremberg Laws overview

What it means

Hermann Göring ordered the office formed in Jan 1939 after the Vienna model. Reinhard Heydrich led it through the Security Police and SD.

It joined police pressure, tax and currency controls, travel papers, and Jewish communal bodies into a coercive process. As emigration closed during the war, the same staff and methods fed into deportation policy.

In this interview

The office appears in a quoted account of the centralized drive to force Jews from Reich land.

Read with care

Don’t confuse this Reich office with the prior Central Offices for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00130 A quoted passage dates its founding and gives the Security Police and SD chief as its head.

   Reich territory was taken in hand in a strengthened and systematic way. By order of the Reich Marshal, a Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in January 1939, and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with its direction.

Related entries

• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• RSHA
• Sipo
• Foreign Office

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Adolf Eichmann
• Yad Vashem, Jewish Emigration Offices

What it means

Resettlement can describe a real move from one home to another. Nazi officials exploited that ordinary meaning when they presented forced deportation as planned settlement in the East. Victims were often told they would receive land or jobs.

By 1942, resettlement to the East frequently hid transport to killing centers and mass murder. The word still had literal uses for ethnic Germans, Poles, Czechs, and early territorial proposals, so no single meaning fits every passage.

In this interview

The interview displays the ambiguity directly. One passage uses resettlement for the Madagascar proposal. Another uses it for moving the Czech population out of Theresienstadt. Later passages say the murderous change was hidden from the public as resettlement to Poland and test whether a mass resettlement number means the Jews were killed.

Read with care

Don’t decode every use as murder and don’t accept the word at face value. Check the people moved, the date, the destination, and whether the words concealed killing.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00023 Eichmann says evacuation was later paraphrased as resettlement.

   …Theresienstadt either, people deported. Only with the ethnic Germans did one speak of an evacuation, and later that was given the paraphrase "resettlement".

2. File 87, scan 00038 The questioner says the murderous change was hidden from the public as resettlement to Poland.

   Third, the radical change was not recognizable until the summer of 1942. It was carefully camouflaged and explained to the public as resettlement to Poland, and at the same time as intensified antisemitic propaganda.

3. File 88, scan 00113 The questioner asks whether a passage saying 434,329 Jews were resettled means they were killed.

   …individually are given special treatment by the Order Police or by the gendarmerie deployed. By 27 June 43 a total of 434,329 Jews had been resettled. Does that mean finished off?

Related entries

• Umsiedlung
• deportation
• evacuation
• Final Solution
• labor camp

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deportations to Killing Centers
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deceiving the Public

What it means

Schutzhaft sounded as though the police were protecting someone. In practice, it let the Gestapo imprison people without a warrant, charge, trial, or meaningful appeal. The supposed protection was protection of the Nazi state from people it treated as enemies.

A Schutzhaft order often sent a detainee to a concentration camp for an indefinite period. The Gestapo used it against political opponents, Jews, religious dissenters, gay men, resistance members, and many other targeted people.

In this interview

The English transcript uses protective custody but not the German word. Eichmann mentions it as a threat against lawyers who helped Jews, as a Gestapo section, and as a paperwork route to the camp system. He uses office divisions to argue that his Jewish-affairs section didn’t control the detention decision, though the same police system linked arrest, camp confinement, labor, and deportation.

Read with care

Don’t explain Schutzhaft as custody for the prisoner’s safety. Preserve protective custody in transcript words while making its coercive meaning plain.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00097 Eichmann says lawyers who intervened for Jews were threatened with immediate protective custody.

   …I told him that from then on, on Berlin's instructions, any lawyer caught intervening on behalf of Jews was to be taken immediately into protective custody. That stopped it abruptly.

2. File 86, scan 00043 He mentions the protective-custody section inside Office IV and its link to transfers from camps.

   …released. A detention order, which was laid before the desk officer every quarter year, no longer took place. But in Office IV we did have a protective custody section, and this protective custody desk was headed by a criminal and government councillor.

3. File 86, scan 00130 He mentions a protective-custody order with a six-month review date.

   Reply letter. Under the inquiry of such a date, and in accordance with the circular decree of such a date, (unclear: blot) is to be taken into protective custody, with a (unclear: blot) or review date of half a year.

Related entries

• Gestapo
• concentration camp
• Office IV
• IV B 4

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Concentration Camp System
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Gestapo

What it means

Nazi police and SS offices often used Sonderbehandlung in place of a direct word for killing. The mild words helped hide violence from victims, outsiders, and people interpretation official papers without inside knowledge.

Setting still matters. The phrase could occasionally describe an unusual privilege or separate detention for a prominent prisoner. Codes such as Sonderbehandlung 14f13, however, named organized killings against camp prisoners judged unable to labor.

In this interview

Eichmann gives the clearest explanation in Part3. He says, “Special treatment was killing,” then explains that the words replaced shoot, hang, or kill. In the same exchange he gives a different example involving prominent prisoners housed in better quarters. The passage confirms the deadly code while warning against a mechanical interpretation of every use.

Read with care

In anti-Jewish police and deportation settings, killing is often the right interpretation. Still check the office, date, target, accompanying order, and result before decoding an isolated phrase.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00131 The speakers discuss an approval path through which a Jewish detainee could be handed over for special treatment.

   …was delivered, because he was found in a race-defiling (unclear: blot) act. Under decree such-and-such, the question is put whether a special treatment is to be carried out.

2. File 87, scan 00023 Eichmann directly says special treatment meant killing, then shows a rarer privileged-detention use.

   Special treatment was killing.

3. File 88, scan 00113 The questioner reads a police passage joining special treatment with the mass removal of Jews.

   …free of Jews, apart from the Jews who are under the control of the SS (unclear: blot) The Jews still picked up individually are given special treatment by the Order Police or by the gendarmerie deployed. By 27 June 43 a total of 434,329 Jews had been resettled. Does that mean finished off?

Related entries

• Sonderkommando
• extermination
• annihilation
• Final Solution
• Schutzhaft (protective custody)

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia Glossary
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Bernburg T4 Facility

What it means

Umsiedlung has an ordinary meaning of resettlement or relocation. Nazi population policy used it for many forced moves, including transfers of Poles, Czechs, ethnic Germans, and Jews.

In anti-Jewish writing, especially “resettlement to the East,” the word often hid deportation and mass murder. The apparent promise of labor or a new home helped deceive victims and obscure the purpose of the transports.

In this interview

The literal German word doesn’t appear in the reviewed English. The English word resettlement appears repeatedly and includes both literal population moves and euphemistic uses. The key passages say evacuation was later paraphrased as resettlement and describe resettlement to Poland as public camouflage for mass murder.

Read with care

Don’t tag an English resettlement passage as a literal German Umsiedlung use unless the German typescript backs that interpretation. Keep the language match separate from the past explanation.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00023 The English turn says evacuation later received the paraphrase resettlement.

2. File 87, scan 00038 The questioner says mass murder was hidden from the public as resettlement to Poland.

3. File 88, scan 00113 The questioner tests whether a mass resettlement passage means the Jews were killed.

Related entries

• resettlement
• deportation
• evacuation
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deceiving the Public
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Deportations to Killing Centers

What it means

European writers used the phrase before Nazism while debating Jewish civil rights, equality, conversion, and assimilation. Antisemites framed the presence of Jews as a social or racial problem instead of asking whether states upheld equal rights.

The Nazis made this framing central to their program. Their proposed answers moved through exclusion, forced emigration, expulsion, ghettoization, forced relocation, and mass murder. “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” became the name for the planned murder of Europe’s Jews.

In this interview

The phrase runs through the interview as the speakers’ basic frame. Eichmann discusses receiving the Jewish desk, solving the Jewish question through emigration, sending advisers abroad, and attaching “final solution” to office files. That language makes Nazi action sound like an answer to a policy problem. This words was part of the antisemitic idea that turned Jewish people into an alleged danger.

Read with care

Keep quotation marks in new explanation unless discussing the words as past language. Don’t adopt the phrase as a neutral description of Jewish history.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00005 The questioner asks for Eichmann’s basic attitude and his preferred political answer.

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

2. File 85, scan 00008 Eichmann links the phrase to his SD files and his account of early territorial plans.

   …Mueller. I can't even say that. When I read The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, written by A. Boehm, he spoke there of the solution of the Jewish question. Soon afterward, when I was given the Zionist association as my subject area in the SD Main Office, I had already begun to mark files “Re: Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” The Reichsführer's aim was to bring about a final solution. The term “Final Solution of the…

3. File 87, scan 00064 He denies that Endlösung meant physical killing while recounting Heydrich’s words that Hitler had ordered physical destruction.

   Do you not think it was a trick by Heydrich and by the RF as well, to lay such a humane project before Göring, knowing that Göring is somewhat soft on the Jewish question, so as to derive a general authorization out of an answer?

Related entries

• Final Solution
• Endlösung
• emigration
• Zionism
• IV B 4

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Jewish Question
• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Final Solution

What it means

The Arrow Cross was a Hungarian fascist and violently antisemitic movement led by Ferenc Szálasi.

After a German-backed coup in Oct 1944, its government ruled Hungary and its militias terrorized, robbed, deported, and murdered Jews in Budapest.

In this interview

Eichmann discusses Arrow Cross formations and camps, and he sometimes mixes the movement with Hungarian officials who held different posts.

Read with care

Part1/00065 wrongly places László Endre at the head of the Arrow Cross. Ferenc Szálasi led the party; keep the page as Eichmann’s words, not as known point gave by the glossary.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00061 Eichmann gives the Hungarian Gendarmerie and Arrow Cross formations as Hungarian executive forces.

   …it was not German police offices that were in charge, but the Hungarian executive authorities, made up chiefly of the Hungarian Gendarmerie, Arrow Cross formations, and so on. What they carried out locally, in Hungary, was outside my knowledge, although I was informed after the fact of one event or another.

2. File 85, scan 00062 Eichmann discusses camps that he says Arrow Cross groups established.

   …Higher SS and Police Leader, or even me, everything it carried out or intended to carry out in the sphere of domestic policy. Which camps the Arrow Cross organizations set up, which camps the Hungarian police established in the individual counties, and which camps the Hungarian Gendarmerie established in the individual counties, occupied or dissolved, I do not know; it was none of my concern. What mattered to me was that the…

3. File 85, scan 00065 Eichmann wrongly places László Endre at the head of the Arrow Cross while discussing a planned Budapest ghetto massacre.

   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 did not authorize this because it would have taken place under the eyes of such a broad public that it would have been outright harmful to Reich interests, quite apart from the fact that no one would have been helped, neither the Jewish nor the…

Related entries

• Hungarian Gendarmerie
• L.E.

References

• USHMM Holocaust in Hungary article
• USHMM Arrow Cross topic page

What it means

The Counter Intelligence Corps was the U.S. Army’s wartime counterintelligence branch. Its agents worked with Army units and investigated espionage, sabotage, and security threats.

After Germany’s defeat, CIC officers screened and questioned prisoners and people of intelligence interest in the U.S. occupation zone. In these passages, CIC is the American body that questioned Eichmann while he lived under a false name.

In this interview

Eichmann uses CIC for American interrogators in Ansbach and elsewhere. He speaks of them with contempt and says he tried to stay ahead of their questions.

Read with care

CIC here means the U.S. Army body, not a German office.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00035 Eichmann says a sick CIC Jew could have invented an alleged written extermination order.

   …like this: My dear Eichmann, the Fuehrer has ordered the physical destruction of all Jews. That can only have arisen in the brain of a sick CIC Jew. The truth is in any case that the RF never set down a single line about the physical destruction of the Jews in writing. I know that he only ever dealt with Pohl of the VWHA orally. I never received such an order, and still less can any of my Hstf of that time have been given…

2. File 85, scan 00037 Eichmann says he thought he was cleverer than the CIC officer questioning him.

   I always had the luck to be just a nuance cleverer than the CIC officer questioning me, but if they had caught me back then, I would probably have taken a great deal on myself that did not belong to my account at all. In the expectation that a) my life is confused anyway, which would not have been so bad, because I would have given it for Germany, but because b) I might have been able to dampen the hatred and vengeful…

3. File 85, scan 00058 Eichmann recalls CIC questioning in Ansbach and his effort to secure discharge before suspicion returned.

   In the meantime, the CIC interrogated us in Ansbach, where we had been taken. When I could roughly calculate that the administrative process, if any suspicion at all had been raised about me, might come back to Ansbach or Oberstetten for further processing, I decided to have myself discharged. Since there were, I believe, nine or eleven officers in the camp, I naturally couldn't strike out on my own, so I asked the camp…

Related entries

• Interpol

References

• U.S. Army history of the Counter Intelligence Corps

What it means

The GPU was the Soviet State Political Directorate. It took over the former Cheka’s functions in 1922.

The name properly belongs to the early Soviet political police. Later speakers sometimes used GPU as a broad label for Soviet security officers.

In this interview

Eichmann says a GPU commissar met his party during a wartime journey through Soviet-held land and arranged an escort through a corridor.

Read with care

The 1957 speaker uses GPU for a wartime Soviet officer, years after the formal GPU name had changed. Read it as his label, not a precise agency date.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00029 Eichmann says a GPU commissar received his party and arranged its guarded passage through Soviet-held land.

   …and Stahlecker got into the car. We drove off together, we looked at everything, and then we drove to the (unclear: typist) line. A GPU commissar received us, and after we had talked very pleasantly for a while, we then got a Siberian rifle (unclear: hand) orders to escort us through the Russian corridor so that we would be spared any possible unpleasantness, because we were driving in full uniform. And so we came…

Related entries

• CIC

References

• Library of Congress Russian Archives exhibit

What it means

Hungarian gendarmes helped confine Jews in transit ghettos and force them onto deportation trains in 1944.

From May 15 to July 9, 1944, gendarmes working with German SS deportation staff sent about 440,000 Jews from Hungary, most to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In this interview

Eichmann repeatedly gives the Hungarian Gendarmerie while discussing roundups, camps, deportation trains, and forced marches.

Read with care

Eichmann often shifts blame to Hungarian forces. The passages show what he said; they don’t erase the German SS role in planning and directing the deportations.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00061 Eichmann says the Gendarmerie and Arrow Cross were the main Hungarian executive forces.

   …you that in Hungary it was not German police offices that were in charge, but the Hungarian executive authorities, made up chiefly of the Hungarian Gendarmerie, Arrow Cross formations, and so on. What they carried out locally, in Hungary, was outside my knowledge, although I was informed after the fact of one event or another.

2. File 85, scan 00062 Eichmann discusses camps that the Hungarian Gendarmerie established.

   …camps the Arrow Cross organizations set up, which camps the Hungarian police established in the individual counties, and which camps the Hungarian Gendarmerie established in the individual counties, occupied or dissolved, I do not know; it was none of my concern. What mattered to me was that the Hungarian area be cleansed of those elements which, according to the Reich leaders above me, could become a first-order…

3. File 85, scan 00064 Eichmann says he discussed a forced-Mar plan with senior Hungarian Gendarmerie officers.

   …from Vienna to the Burgenland border, not Austria but Burgenland, that comes to about 180 km. I discussed this plan with the commander of the Hungarian Gendarmerie, who passed the details to his responsible desk officer, the lieutenant colonel of the Hungarian Gendarmerie, Faerenzie. The daily marches were divided up; at first they covered more kilometers each day, then they were reduced, and I believe the head of the column…

Related entries

• Arrow Cross
• L.E.

References

• USHMM deportation of Hungarian Jews timeline
• USHMM Holocaust in Hungary article

What it means

The International Criminal Police Commission was founded in Vienna in 1923. It later adopted the name International Criminal Police Organization, commonly Interpol.

Nazi police chiefs Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner held its presidency during the war, after German control of the Vienna-based body.

In this interview

Eichmann twice mentions the German Security Police chief’s Interpol presidency while discussing addresses, police lists, and concentration-camp activity.

Read with care

The wartime commission operated under Nazi control. It shouldn’t be confused with the postwar Interpol rebuilt after 1945.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00037 Eichmann says the Security Police chief, as Interpol president, had him prepare addresses.

   …that followed I naturally had a great deal of contact with him, I had to give him presentations on my area of work, and as President of Interpol he repeatedly had me prepare papers, because they were addresses that he had to deliver. I had to (unclear: typist).

2. File 86, scan 00089 Eichmann links the German Security Police chief’s Interpol presidency with police lists and concentration-camp activity.

   …It is not really a task for the police anyway, when I think how, not long ago, the chief of the German Security Police was president of Interpol. The police could not allow themselves that, and they did not allow themselves that, which is why the Reichsführer left them out of it. The police are there for the registration work, and also for the concentration work

Related entries

• Sipo
• CIC

References

• Interpol history
• Interpol former presidents

What it means

German rulers imposed Jewish councils in ghettos and required them to carry out German orders.

Council members too tried to keep food, housing, health care, and other community services going. Their choices were made under coercion and threat.

In this interview

The speakers refer to councils in several cities while discussing ghetto leadership, local notices, flight from Budapest, and dealings with German offices.

Read with care

Jewish Council wasn’t one Europe-wide body. Each city or ghetto had its own council, name, leaders, and room to act.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00047 Eichmann says ghetto conditions depended on the Jewish Council of Elders, local leaders, and German guards.

   In the individual ghettos it may have looked partly worse, partly better. It depended, first, on the intelligence of the so-called Jewish Council of Elders or of the Jewish ghetto leadership, and second, on the intelligence and the means of the man in charge of guarding it at the time. That is also why in some the supply situation was better and in others worse. Where it was worse, local friction possibly arose. Warsaw is in…

2. File 85, scan 00094 Eichmann says the Budapest Council of Elders told him that members had fled.

   …Hungary; I did the opposite: Jews from Hungary to Romania for illegal emigration. Some people had also bolted, including some members of the Council of Elders from Budapest. I then said, why investigate? They're gone. The Jewish Council of Elders came to me with long faces and reported that they had bolted and expected their punishment.

3. File 86, scan 00022 A questioner mentions a Jewish Council warning the Horthy cabinet and later being summoned by Eichmann.

   …had long been forbidden by the Hungarian authorities, he tried with B. to smuggle 15,000 Jews from an internment camp out of the country. The Jewish Council immediately notified Horthy's Cabinet Chancellery, and the train was brought back. It was only a sham success. A few days later, Eichmann had the members of the Jewish Council summoned to his headquarters and kept them there until late evening.

Related entries

• Reich Association of Jews in Germany
• Litzmannstadt

References

• USHMM Jewish Councils article

What it means

The Reich Association of Jews in Germany was a compulsory umbrella body for Jewish communal life under Nazi policy.

It ran schools, welfare, and emigration duties while operating under Gestapo orders. As persecution deepened, it had to operate under ever tighter German control.

In this interview

The speakers discuss Paul Eppstein, Vienna’s Josef Löwenherz, Jewish statistics, and the Reich Association’s dealings with Eichmann’s office.

Read with care

The interview sometimes says Reichsvereinigung or shortens the English name. These forms point to the same body here.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00140 Eichmann discusses Paul Eppstein, head of the Reich Association, and their interrogations and talks.

   …inspector Krugmann, to the interrogations that he had to carry out on the basis of his section, together with Eppstein, the head of the Reich Association for Jews in Germany. I also came together with other offices, and I found this thing very convenient, not only because I could serve the Gestapo Office through theoretical knowledge, but I had expected a great deal for myself personally from these discussions, in…

2. File 86, scan 00150 Eichmann contrasts a French Jewish council with the Reich Association and Vienna community.

   …as for instance the Jewish council in the Eastern European district was. The French Jewish council held a middle position between our Reichsvereinigung in Germany and the Jewish religious community in Vienna. I would almost put it on a level with Prague. Because those people of the Reichsvereinigung in Germany, this Dr. Eppstein, the man who negotiated with you, he was not a man who simply took orders, and neither…

3. File 86, scan 00212 Eichmann says he commissioned the Reich Association to prepare a statistic.

   …of its office chief, Dr. R. Löwenherz. So you'll grant me that these figures are correct, since they are Jewish figures. I commissioned the Reich Association to work on this statistic.

Related entries

• Jewish Council
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration

References

• USHMM German Jews during the Holocaust article

What it means

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board by Executive Order 9417 on Jan 22, 1944.

The board, led by the secretaries of State, War, and Treasury, planned rescue and temporary refuge for people threatened by the Axis powers.

In this interview

A questioner asks about Kurt Becher’s attempt in Zurich to speak with American WRB representatives and obtain a pledge tied to 20 million Swiss francs.

Read with care

The question mentions an approach to WRB representatives. It doesn’t show that the board accepted the proposed financial pledge.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00063 A questioner links Becher’s Zurich talks with the American WRB to a proposed financial pledge.

   …other, in connection with an attempt Becher made on those same days in Zurich, Switzerland, to speak with certain authorities of the American WRB and obtain a pledge from the American foreign minister concerning the payment of 20 million Swiss francs. To put the matter in the right time sequence, does this agree with it?

Related entries

• JB

References

• National Archives War Refugee Board files
• National Archives Executive Order 9417 listing

What it means

Modern political Zionism arose in late nineteenth-century Europe amid antisemitism, unequal rights, and debate about Jewish national life. It sought a secure Jewish homeland in the historic land of Israel, then under Ottoman and later British policy.

Zionism included competing political, religious, socialist, liberal, and revisionist currents. It wasn’t a synonym for Judaism, all Jews, one party, or every policy of the later State of Israel. During the Nazi years, Zionist groups organized training, emigration, rescue, underground activity, and resistance.

In this interview

Eichmann says Zionist groups were his SD specialty and mentions studying their organizations, leaders, writing, and emigration duties. He presents his contact with Zionist workers as proof of political understanding and benevolent intent, while the police relationship operated under persecution and coercion. Sassen’s longer speeches later turn Zionism into a conspiratorial force and merge it with “world Jewry.” Those passages express antisemitic ideology, not a dependable account of the movement.

Read with care

Distinguish actual Zionist groups and leaders from the speakers’ sweeping conspiracy stories. Don’t use Zionist as a substitute for Jew, Israeli, supporter of every Israeli government, or participant in one unified organization.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00006 Eichmann says that if he were Jewish he would have been a committed Zionist.

   You once said that if you had been a Jew you would then have been a fanatical Zionist.

2. File 85, scan 00076 He says emigration was the main reason for his close study of Zionism.

   …back then; it was why Heydrich had me accept the invitation I received to the Near East; it was why I became more closely involved with Zionism as a whole, not the main reason, a secondary one.

3. File 86, scan 00177 Sassen begins a long antisemitic argument that treats Zionism and “world Jewry” as one conspiratorial actor.

   …Jewish question. The Jewish question was launched into it, first of all of course by the Jews themselves, and within Jewry first of all by Zionism.

Related entries

• emigration
• Central Office for Jewish Emigration
• “Jewish Question”
• Final Solution

References

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, Adolf Eichmann
• Yad Vashem, Biltmore Resolution

What it means

AEG was a German electrical company active in power systems, transport, and household equipment.

Its name expands to Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft. The interview ties it to Eichmann’s father’s jobs in Solingen and Linz.

In this interview

Eichmann says his father worked for AEG in Solingen and later moved to Linz as a trusted AEG man connected with the tramway and electricity company.

Read with care

The passages concern Eichmann family history. They don’t connect AEG to his SS duties.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00105 Eichmann recalls visiting his father’s AEG office in Solingen as a child.

   …remember from my earliest childhood that one morning my father took me along to his office. It was the office of an electricity company, the AEG in Solingen, and the tram stop was called "am Schlagbaum." The conductors always greeted my old gentleman very warmly. He always went dressed in black, with a stand-up collar and a walking stick with a gold knob. And that day must have been New Year, because at "Am Schlagbaum" they…

2. File 88, scan 00124 Eichmann says AEG financed the Linz tramway and electricity company and sent his father there.

   So far it is all correct. Put briefly, we originally came from western Germany. As far as I know, the AEG at that time gave a fairly large sum as a loan to the Linz tramway and electricity company, and with this loan my old man came to Linz, in a manner of speaking as the trusted man of the AEG Union. My old man had already been active at a senior level in the electricity companies in western Germany at that time, and so he…

References

• AEG company site

What it means

DIN sent its paper-size standard DIN 476 in Aug 1922. It set the A-series sizes, including A4 and A5.

The sizes keep the same proportions as a sheet is halved. In this interview, “DIN format” mentions a standard paper format, not an office code.

In this interview

A questioner mentions white sheets with blue lettering in DIN format and a red secret-file heading.

Read with care

The page doesn’t name a specific DIN paper size.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00139 A questioner mentions circulated sheets in DIN format with blue type and a red Geheime Reichssache heading.

   in blue lettering, in DIN format. At the top, in red script, was "Geheime Reichssache", and then the explanation why (unclear: typist) and at the same time the penalty to be expected if it were misused.

Related entries

• T.U.

References

• DIN history of the A-series paper standard

What it means

The Deutsche Mark replaced the Reichsmark in the western occupation zones in June 1948.

It became the money of West Germany and remained until the euro changeover. The interview was held in 1957, so DM points to postwar West German money.

In this interview

Eichmann uses DM in an antisemitic passage about West German wealth and money sent abroad.

Read with care

The speaker’s hostile words about the DM purse is antisemitic rhetoric, not an economic evidence.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00016 Eichmann refers to a West German DM purse and billions of Deutschmarks in an antisemitic passage.

   …little because the country cannot live. So this man, too, was undoubtedly influenced to play on the tear ducts, to tear open the West German DM purse still further and get more billions of Deutschmarks, because they can calculate, purely mathematically, the end of their days.

Related entries

• RM

References

• Deutsche Bundesbank history of the 1948 currency reform

What it means

The Iron Cross was a German military decoration sent in more than one war and class.

EK I means Eisernes Kreuz I. Klasse, or Iron Cross First Class. The page is about a First World War veteran, so it points to the 1914 form, not the 1939 Nazi-era form.

In this interview

Eichmann says a man was a First World War soldier and earned the Iron Cross First Class.

Read with care

The same short form was used for later versions. The First World War context fixes the 1914 award here.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00132 Eichmann says a First World War soldier had earned EK I, the Iron Cross First Class.

   …or twelve years in prison for nationalist activity, though I no longer remember which. He was a soldier in the First World War and earned the EK I. With the seizure of power, he was, so to speak, washed back into freedom from prison walls.

References

• German Historical Museum order catalog

What it means

Fabrique Nationale began in Herstal, Belgium, in 1889 and became a major firearms maker.

FN is the maker’s short name and appears on its weapons. The interview passage is about a pistol selected from an armory.

In this interview

Eichmann says another man picked out an FN pistol and inspected it during an armory visit.

Read with care

FN gives the maker here. The page doesn’t give a pistol model.

Scan passages

1. File 87, scan 00098 Eichmann says another man selected an FN pistol from an armory and inspected it.

   …me into the armory, that is, armory, it had only been a corner, only a quarter of a room, and I was very surprised when he picked out an FN and, with an enormously shrewd and skilled expert eye, established something I had not seen at all. Here I must remark that I had not looked over the armory very thoroughly, and I must further remark that I am no expert in weapons either.

References

• FN Herstal 125th anniversary history

What it means

The Reichsmark became Germany’s currency in Oct 1924 and remained in use through the Nazi period and the first postwar years.

The 1948 western-zone currency reform replaced it with the Deutsche Mark. Conversion rates varied by the kind of payment or holding.

In this interview

A questioner uses 12,000 RM in an example about a reward, an intermediary, and the much smaller sum paid to a Polish man.

Read with care

RM gives a currency, not a modern value. The page doesn’t supply a safe present-day conversion.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00163 A questioner gives a reward example involving 12,000 RM, 4,000 RM due, and 400 paid to a Polish man.

   …who therefore never economizes, then suddenly takes a fancy to economizing for the German Reich. He says, for instance, this Jew has 12,000 RM, so I would have to hand over 4,000 RM to the Pole who reported him. No, I'll save that for Germany, the Pole gets only 400. So along comes a little man and breaks the word given by a whole organization. Those are things that must be impossible.

Related entries

• DM

References

• Deutsche Bundesbank historical money comparison guide

What it means

The V-1 was a German pilotless flying bomb guided by preset controls.

Germany began V-1 attacks on London on June 13, 1944. More than 10,000 were launched against Britain during the war.

In this interview

A questioner asks when the first V-1 was fired while fixing the date of a wartime event.

Read with care

The interview asks when the first V-1 was fired but gives no answer on this page.

Scan passages

1. File 86, scan 00022 A questioner asks when the first V-1 was fired.

   When was the first V-1 fired?

References

• Imperial War Museums V-1 flying bomb guide

What it means

IMD appears once in the reviewed English, in the damaged sequence “IMD 7 S.” No expanded name appears on that scan.

The surrounding exchange treats it as a number or file-like mark. The letters aren’t enough to tie it to a known office.

In this interview

Part4/00005 contains the only use, where an unsettled speaker reads “IMD 7 S” and reads the rest as unclear.

Read with care

Keep IMD unresolved. The scan is damaged and the nearby words don’t settle the letters or their full name.

Scan passages

1. File 88, scan 00005 An unsettled speaker reads a damaged sequence as “IMD 7 S” and reads the following words as unclear.

   Here again a number, IMD 7 S (unclear: typist) (?)

Related entries

• T.U.

What it means

The reviewed English mentions T.U. as short sheets containing several telegram-style items.

It says the sheets circulated through Amt IV, with desk codes written beside items. The interview never gives the initials’ full name.

In this interview

Eichmann and the questioner describe T.U. sheets that circulated among Amt IV desks with IV B 4 and other desk codes written in the margins.

Read with care

Don’t expand T.U. The three passages explain how the sheets moved but don’t settle the initials.

Scan passages

1. File 85, scan 00012 Eichmann mentions T.U. sheets with telegram-style items, circulated among departments and marked IV B 4.

   All the saboteurs, all that rabble, as we saw on July 20. I gathered it from so many things: the Rote Kapelle, the press review, T.U., and whatever else there was. Some of these T.U. sheets were also sent to me. They set out a conversation in telegraphic wording. One T.U. might contain three, four, or five matters. Anything that concerned me was marked under IV B 4. The folder then passed through the different sections, and…

2. File 87, scan 00139 Eichmann mentions T.U. sheets in a white folder circulating through Amt IV with desk codes in the margin.

   These T.U. sheets were collected and put together and then circulated in a white folder. They circulated within the desk officers of Amt IV, and the business office of Amt IV then had to mark the desk designations in the margin against the individual matters that were up for discussion. And at the front of the white folder all the desks that were recorded on the brown sheets were then listed one after another, and these brown…

Related entries

• Office IV
• IV B 4
• IMD