Sassen transcript, O.65 file 86

Eichmann

… and asked for guidance in cases of uncertainty. Naturally, my section issued this guidance, either approving it or rejecting it, depending on the circumstances. The standard for a positive or negative answer was read from the applicable basic laws, decrees, police ordinances, or orders and directives from the RF or the Chief of the Sipo and SD that lay before the individual officers handling each matter. Only on the basis of such laws and orders could a subject officer work and decide at all. I believe there is no government official, no Police Chief Inspector, no Government Assessor, and no Government Councillor who ever worked out a decision at a central authority and submitted it to his desk officer for signature, or to his desk officer for initialling with a request to pass it through official channels, that is, for the Chief of Office to initial it, or, if it was more fundamental, for the Chief of Office to send it to the Chief of the Sipo and SD, or, if it concerned top-level matters, for the Chief of the Sipo and SD to send it to the RF for signature. Such a matter within a German central authority would first have to be born. That was the official route to subordinate offices. It goes without saying that, when a section had jurisdiction, the desk officer in charge of the section was responsible for obtaining basic guidance, since he had to supply his subject officers with the necessary working material. He took such basic directives from collections of laws, decrees, police ordinances, and existing directives from his superiors. These orders arose either from legislative bodies or from direct orders by my superiors, who had been approached by outside offices remote from the Sipo and, in turn, sent such orders through official channels to the responsible desk officer, with directions for compliance. They also arose because the officer himself wrote to his superiors through official channels, explained the situation in a memorandum, and, under another Roman-numeral item, put forward a memorandum asking them to take note and give guidance. Here, then, the responsible desk officer had in a sense prompted his superiors to take a position on a particular subject and decide how the officer should proceed in future.

Speaker not established

Letters bearing file number IV B 4 also went to offices that said they had no orders to issue to them

Eichmann

Yes, that goes without saying. If I take the subject officer of a Commander of the Sipo and SD, except for the Einsatzgruppen, they had nothing to write; there was no correspondence there. It was a short process in that area, a general order without any query. There were no guidelines to observe, no provision for old and infirm people, no guidelines for bearers of medals and decorations from the First World War, and no guidelines about so-called kinship by marriage with members of the two confessions. There were no guidelines at all; they followed a summa-summarium order, and no written word was needed. Otherwise, of course, it was, and all these inquiries were written clearly in the right-hand corner beneath the heading under the proper file reference, insofar as it was my

Eichmann

jurisdiction was concerned, it was IV B 4, then came the file number with a dash and the year's last two digits. These outgoing documents weren't always initialled by the desk officer. Often his permanent deputy initialled them. When the matter fell outside the section's jurisdiction, the Chief of Office IV, my immediate superior, signed them out. When his authority wasn't enough, the Chief of the Sipo and so on signed them and sent them upward. This was the usual Schema F process in every central government office, no matter which Reich Ministry it belonged to, and no one could break through such a process. It was nearly the same process found in almost all civilized countries, with small organizational differences.

Questioner

Apart from a fundamental directive to Glo…, signed by Heydrich but bearing your section mark, do you recall any similar fundamental directives, or similar or matching directives issued by an office chief that also bore the reference mark of your desk…?

Eichmann

In any event, something of such scope and of such a kind, not… There was once a time when the Chief of the Sipo and SD ordered that a letter not be sent to Glo… through official channels, but that someone should travel there personally and urgently and hand it to him, with the direction that he burn it after the task was completed. Glo kept the letter in his small wall safe. Apart from that, letters of this kind and scope didn't pass through my section. I had nearly 200,000 files in my open registry and perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 in my secret registry. The small difference between the secret and open registries was because existing orders treated all measures tied to the deportation of Jews as secret Reich matters, so the enemy wouldn't be told about those measures in advance. The approximate number of files was given to me once by my registrar, Ustf. Martin, in Berlin, when he wanted to show me how necessary it was to strengthen the registry staff.

Questioner

In other words, so long as your file reference or the section's is cited, but the order or directive bears your signature or that of your permanent deputy, one needn't assume that the initiative or issuing of the order came directly from your section, from your desk?

Questioner

If documents went to subordinate offices without my signature or that of my permanent deputy, … would one then assume that the order didn't come directly from you or your permanent deputy, but instead from a higher office referring to your desk, at least…?

Eichmann

That is usually assumed, but it needn't be so, because the document's content comes from basic directives, from the

Eichmann

form of a law right up to an order or directive. In Office IV, the word “order” itself was avoided, and “directive” was used instead, because much of the office consisted of civil servants, and such people can't be ordered; they are directed. In principle it's the same, but it is tied to the whole criminal-law position of a civil servant, for example in contrast with a military person. A military person can be governed by orders; a civil servant can't be ordered, but receives his directives. I can't give a civil servant a directive unless he has the needed written basis in his applicable collection. Such material can also be given to him by me when he is [unclear], if the matter is small and doesn't exceed the section's scope… Not always. If, for example, the matter was entirely clear, say the Nuremberg Laws were before me, I simply drew on an implementing rule for a paragraph and decided and signed on that basis. But as a rule it always said: “It is communicated, it is ordered, it is requested, in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws, that such-and-such be done.” As a rule, that was no longer done; the law was cited and they were told. That gave the State Police headquarters written backing from my central authority and left it, in a sense, covered. Just as I was covered with my superiors because I always had to keep my collection up to date, which lay with my subject officers partly as a working collection, but was also kept in the registry and could be pulled out for consultation at any time. There were subject officers who had to keep these matters in their heads. So a matter like this could bear my signature if the understanding I passed on was already present in a collection ranging from a law to a police ordinance. But only then could it bear my signature, or the signature of a desk officer and his permanent deputy, if its content didn't exceed the scope. There had been an exhibition in Berlin, [unclear] Paradise… Sabotage acts had occurred. The Criminal Police assigned to investigate, or the Sabotage section of Office IV led by a Criminal Councillor, found that Jews had been mentioned in some connection. I received the order to summon the head of the Israelite Religious Community in Vienna, Dr. R. L., the two heads of the Religious Community in Prague, Dr. Weizmann and Dr. Edelstein, to Berlin, and Dr. Eppstein in Berlin. There were probably a few more. I was to receive them on a certain day at my office. When they were there, I told Müller. He came to my office, and I stood a little apart from the row of Jewish officials. A few steps from me, Müller took up position and read a declaration, in substance: “Since it was found that Jews were also involved in the sabotage of the exhibition at [handwriting], I have summoned you here on the RF's order to inform you that four or six officials of the Jewish Religious Community of Berlin have been sentenced to death. The Berlin State Police Headquarters had by then found these Jews and taken them into custody. As far as I remember, they were Jews who had already come to the State Police's attention, and whom, for some reason, the State Police Headquarters, under the existing regulations, in any case

Eichmann

and these Jews were then taken to Oranienburg concentration camp and killed there on orders of the RF.

Eichmann

It would have gone beyond the scope of my desk. It wasn't my place, in my own authority as desk officer, to tell the Jews about an RF order to carry out a death sentence. It would have been the same as if I had signed the letter I was ordered by the Chief of the Sipo to write to Glo. That wasn't my place; I couldn't do that. In that situation I was a letter writer or letter carrier. The desk officer generally occupied a buffer position between those above and those below.

Eichmann

For it is now also clear that the writings that appeared in 1945 portray me, the former desk officer of Office IV b 4, as the murderer, as the mass murderer, and I have never killed a single Jew. No one from my desk, from the criminal-assistant trainee up to the government councillor, or from an SS man up to the Standartenführer, has ever killed a Jew, killed anyone at all. No one in that circle, myself included, has ever issued an order to other offices to kill Jews. The section reference mark may have appeared at the top, but I received the order to draft and work out the letter. It was signed by the Chief of the Sipo or the RF, depending on the circumstances.

Questioner

Leaving aside your personal relationships, knowledge of, and acquaintance with Heydrich, do you believe, when we consider the hostile image of Heydrich, that utterly cunning, cold… Do you believe Heydrich could have had a particular intention in this order, for example, to include your section reference mark?

Eichmann

No, I don't believe that. Where would the Chief of the Sipo and the SD have ended up if he had had to write all the letters himself? I had to draft many letters to all the Reich ministers and to all people of equal rank to him, when it concerned my area of responsibility. I was summoned; he threw the outline at me in clipped words. I made little notes at lightning speed. At first I needed them; later I didn't, because after years of working with a chief, you know the whole milieu, even how he addresses each minister. You picked all that up through the milieu and routine, so an outline was enough to draft a letter. The longer the collaboration lasted, the fewer changes were needed, whether for stylistic reasons, because the factual argument wasn't worked out firmly and precisely enough, or because it went too far in the other direction, too exact and precise…

Eichmann

Those were all changes that occurred at the beginning, later hardly any, and much depended on the man's mood. Müller was an unassuming spirit. Müller's letters had to be official, correct, and factual, without any personal touch.

Eichmann

After the declaration of independence, the actions against the Jews in Croatia were carried out by the Ustasha…

Questioner

Did we have a Jewish affairs desk officer in A?

Eichmann

Yes, Adolmeid [not typed]. A was Hstf. A came to me to report. A's position in Croatia was almost the same as that of my Hstf Richter in Budapest. From Croatia, I believe, I had nothing to transport.

Questioner

Or, it was said that initially the actions against the Jews were undertaken by the U…

Questioner

were handled; three labor camps were set up in Croatia. In 1942, with the approval of the Croatian government, the clearing of these camps began.

Questioner

And was A sent to Croatia for this purpose?

Questioner

And for transporting the Jews to the Reich territory or to Poland, and so on? That's what's being alleged?

Eichmann

I wouldn't deny that. If I had the adviser there, it was the position of a judge in Bucharest, although I don't remember ever sending a transport of Jews out of Romania. So I wouldn't deny it so categorically in regard to Croatia. I know precisely what A described to me: that the Ustasha, acting on its own authority, carried out the extermination of the Jews in the Croatian area. He told me how repulsively they did it. I would almost say that in Croatia we arrived at a double solution: the Ustasha handled it on its own, and we also transported the Jews from the Croatian area to the Reich. Could that be right? Yes.

Eichmann

If we transported them, these Jews from the Croatian area certainly went to Auschwitz, because Auschwitz was the collection camp for all transports, with few exceptions. I believe no transports were sent to the General Government. The camps under Glo were supplied from what was found in the General Government, I believe…

Questioner

Is it known to you that Croatia had a so-called Military Zone No. 2 under the Italian military administration? There was, in name only, an Italian prince-king of Croatia, who was never actually installed.

Questioner

And are you aware that both the Ba… of the Croatian head of state and the Italian military government in Military Zone 2 put up strong opposition to deportation?

Eichmann

It isn't known to me, but it would be possible. In almost all countries, apart from a few exceptions, one could find an oppositional attitude at certain times, Hungary for example. But this opposition usually lasted only a short time; through changes and exchanges of personnel it was soon put back into normal channels. But one thing I know, and that is certain: the deportation effort, as they used to say at the time, had not met with much success. He did not succeed in leading significant numbers of Croatian Jews out of Croatia. That fits the remark that the opposition was great. Now the opposition in Croatia wasn't about protecting the Jews there; they wanted to preserve sovereignty over Croatian affairs, so they preferred to give the order to their own Ustasha rather than hand Croatian Jews over to the Germans for transport out of Croatia. A told me repeatedly how radically the Ustasha solved the Jewish question.

Questioner

Is it known to you that, within the Italian military administration in Military Zone 2, the Italians demanded that Jews born and settled in Zone 2 be protected against deportation in every case?

Eichmann

Yes. I know that A had difficulties with the Italians…

Questioner

Was anything ever mentioned to you at the time in this connection about whether Frau Ba… or someone like that was supposed to be Jewish?

Eichmann

No. A was a clever fellow. I believe A was from Danzig and knew how to get into circles from which he could obtain and receive genuine intelligence material. He always described the matter to me very well, which is why I remember that he spoke about the difficulties he had with the Italians. But the Italians caused difficulties not only for the Germans but also for the Croats.

Questioner

Are you aware that the Italians had all the Jews in their zone registered in order to delay matters?

Eichmann

I don't know that, but that would be quite in keeping with the treaties…

Questioner

Did you also deal with the political attaché in Agram, Helm, in the deportation of the Jews?

Eichmann

No, I hardly think so, unless A had some substantive dealings with Helm. A was left to decide with whom he discussed his official difficulties.

Questioner

It was said that after Helm's involvement, from March to May 1943, deportations were carried out in smaller groups.

Eichmann

That is possible. The task of the officer for Jewish affairs was to copy as closely as possible all the applicable decrees, directives, and laws he received into the area for which he was responsible. That was his task. To achieve it, he had to make contact with every possible office, German as well as Croatian, always with the permission of his immediate German superior in his work area.

Questioner

You know nothing of Helm's involvement in the deportations?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

Is it known to you that the attitude of Ba… changed fundamentally from 1944 onward and that, among other things, he gave the International Red Cross permission to inspect the Jewish labor camps?

Eichmann

As for mid-1944, I don't know that, but why should Ba… have acted differently in his area than the RF did in his territory? The RF did the same thing when he had the Bernadotte negotiations conducted and, so to speak, had Jews from the concentration camps loaded into the white Swedish buses and handed over to the Swedes. Why should the Ba… of the Croatian state have acted differently? In the end, it wasn't about the RF putting himself in a milder light. I assume that Ba… couldn't have intended to move himself into a more favorable light through mitigating measures or actions. These concessions were nothing more than a business transaction to open talks with the enemy, much like the deal that unfortunately fell through: 10,000 winterized trucks for 1 million Jews, with the promise that the trucks wouldn't be used on the Western Front.

Questioner

Now, regarding the Jews protected by the Italians, are you aware that they were concentrated on the island of Arbeth?

Eichmann

I have a dim recollection that A once wrote in his reports that the Italians were concentrating Jews on an island.

Eichmann

that after the collapse, when we of course occupied the entire territory, these Jews either fled to the Yugoslav partisans, to southern Italy, to Bar… [not typed] and so on, and only some were seized and destroyed by us. That was after the collapse, after we had occupied all the territories the Italians had held. In July 1943, when the collapse came, I was in France, and I also drove through the Riviera. I received an order to go to Paris, but I then drove to Paris over the Alps and down to the Riviera, where I approached several outposts of the commander of the Sipo and SD, including a Kommandeur. I still can't say what assignment I had, but I know that along the way I found several large camps where disarmed Italian troops were concentrated.

Eichmann

Perhaps the assignment was to take charge of the Jews previously protected by the Italians, so that I was to clarify that German units would take these Jews over as quickly as possible into the Croatian area. Perhaps. I don't know. It can't be right: Croatia and the Riviera are worlds apart. Then the assignment was a different one. The order is dated June 1, 1942, so this can't be right.

Eichmann

The guidelines developed over the years. They began with the RF's demand that we allow the Jews nothing beyond what German nationals from the German western provinces were allowed at the time through France: 50 kilos of baggage, and so on. Before that, during emigration, they could take away entire four-room and five-room apartments, and so on. When outright deportation began, the personal element was carried over at first from these guidelines; the material element naturally fell away, and it took roughly the following form. The deportation guidelines were about one and a half typewritten pages long. I can't reproduce them fully today after so long, but I think I can give the main points by saying this.

Eichmann

In territory where partisan activity wasn't expected, an age limit was set. But it wasn't set by years; it was based on fitness for transport. Only people fit for transport could be loaded. In the Reich and in the Protectorate 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 transport, it was ordered that loading take place in a humane manner

Eichmann

and that any avoidable hardships were to be avoided. The transport trains had to be equipped with the necessary food and drinking-water supplies. The transports had to be fitted with the necessary sanitary receptacles, and each wagon had to have a Jewish transport orderly, marked by an armband. At junction points where a longer stop was planned anyway, orders were given to replenish the drinking-water supplies and empty the sanitary containers. People with infectious diseases of any kind could not be evacuated.

Questioner

How many people were normally allowed into such a wagon?

Eichmann

What was prescribed, what was written on the doors of the covered R wagons, was about 48 men. If 50 or 60 came in, that didn't matter, because the 48 men were counted with full baggage. This 48-man rule was written on the basis of a very old law, from a time when each soldier had a great deal of baggage, including a knapsack and other things that took up a lot of room. During the last World War, for example, a soldier's marching pack was much smaller, so more than 48 soldiers could have fit, and as a rule did. Other factors also had to be considered: the length of the transport, the climate, the time of year, and whether it involved only men or women with small children. All that was to be taken into account, and it was taken into account in the Reich territory as well. What wasn't taken into account caused a great deal of friction between German and Hungarian offices and led to complaints from the receiving offices through the Hungarian Gendarmerie.

Questioner

Were the wagons, once loaded, sealed?

Eichmann

That actually wasn't done. No, it wasn't done at all. Perhaps one cautious escort officer or another had the wagons sealed, but I know nothing about it. It wasn't part of the regulations, because a guard of about 30 men with one officer was enough. Above all, orders had been given that at the larger stopping points the water supplies were replenished and the sanitary containers emptied. The Jewish transport orderlies, who had to be marked by an armband, were allowed to step outside the wagon to tell the transport leader about any incidents and complaints.

Questioner

Can you tell me what the food supply for such a transport train looked like, or what the norm was?

Eichmann

I can't say what was handed out in each instance. It was put into the wagons wagon by wagon; in any event, it couldn't be cooked. There was bread, for example, and probably sausage, cheese, or margarine. The transports weren't under way for weeks; at most they were on the road for three days. Don't forget that all these transports were arranged on the basis of a timetable conference at the Reich Transport Ministry. The trains had to keep a normal timetable; they couldn't simply travel however they pleased.

Questioner

After Brandt flew out on May 15, did he first try to obtain from you a temporary suspension of all deportation measures? In vain?

Eichmann

Naturally, because I had the RF's order to continue the deportations forcibly. But the deportees were put to work and were no longer sent to physical extermination, because the RF had given the corresponding orders to the chief of the responsible main office.

Questioner

After he was gone, about twelve days later, on May 27, 1944, the deportations were carried out in a more intense way. It seems the German deportation command was under Wi?

Eichmann

Generally, it doesn't matter which counties these deportations took place in. But it is quite possible that, if the Hungarian Gendarmerie carried out intensified roundups in a county under the direction of the Hungarian Interior Ministry, I would send Wi, my best horse in the stable, to support the local man I had there, and then put that local man under Wi. Wi had always been senior in rank…

Questioner

In the last week of May and then at the start of June, were one or two trains sent out daily? Did a train consist of 45 wagons and carry about 3,000 people on average? So, 80 men to a wagon, I told you. Twenty-one square meters, four people per square meter?

Eichmann

In June, we certainly never put 80 people in a wagon. The loading did not take place under the authority of German offices in the Hungarian area; the Hungarian Gendarmerie under Lt. Col. Ferenczy was solely responsible. We had absolutely no right to object. Can you imagine a Hungarian lieutenant colonel who had a regular regiment above him taking orders from a German captain?

Questioner

After one or two trains had been sent out daily, and that pace wasn't fast enough for E., did he seek six trains a day, so that they agreed on four trains?

Eichmann

That is possible.

Questioner

At that time Kastner came to you accompanied by Hansi Brandt, Joel B.'s wife, and demanded an immediate halt to the deportations, which you rejected bluntly. Do you remember ever seeing Frau Brandt?

Eichmann

I don't remember seeing Frau Brandt, but I certainly won't deny it. Everyone and anyone came to me, and I can't remember. I wouldn't remember Frau Kastner either if she hadn't come to me so often with her husband and if I hadn't had the unusual episode of having to have her sought out. The word "brusque" may fit the author's sentence nicely, but I never treated Kastner brusquely. We can all testify that the negotiations with the Jewish political functionary took place in a conciliatory way.

Questioner

Kastner himself writes about this. We will come back to it later; he denies it.

Eichmann

If I negotiated brusquely, I wouldn't ask a visitor to take a seat before an official body, and the visitor wouldn't be allowed to smoke. That makes it clear enough that the negotiations were never conducted in a brusque tone; I had negotiating partners before me. If I were summoned today before a [handwriting] central authority, I wouldn't allow myself to smoke.

Eichmann

I would even regard it as a special act of courtesy if the [not typed] official representative with whom I had to deal asked me to take a seat and did not leave me standing before his desk.

Questioner

On May 27, the Hungarians arrested Kastner, Frau Brandt, Schulungoffenbach, and his wife? Through your intervention with the Hungarian police, they were placed under the Gestapo and immediately freed? Is it known to you that Kastner was arrested too?

Eichmann

It has completely slipped my mind.

Questioner

Now, for these people's freedom, did the German envoy in Budapest intervene at your instigation or at your request?

Eichmann

We had no German envoy in Budapest, nor a chargé d'affaires. We had a Reich Plenipotentiary.

Questioner

The envoy Veesenmayer then gave Sztójay, the Hungarian prime minister, and Peter Hein, chief of the Hungarian Gestapo, the order to hand the people over to the Germans immediately. Is that right?

Eichmann

That may be right, because [not typed]. As I told you before, I moved heaven and earth to get my wife back. That's right.

Questioner

Yes, but this also applies to Kastner himself. These Jews had been caught by the Hungarian Gestapo because of forged documents and so on.

Eichmann

It was a [handwriting]. In truth, the Hungarian colleagues wanted to find out what the Jews paid the German offices, in other words, to get at the financial transaction. That was the reason; LE himself told me that.

Questioner

On June 3, a telegram from Brandt arrived from Istanbul, and Brandt also demanded that the deportations stop? Eichmann refused, on the grounds that Brandt had to return. The agreement with the Jewish organization said that they would accept your offer. On that occasion, Kastner brought up about 800 certificate holders who were to travel through Germany to go abroad. These 800 people were listed, and an order was then given to bring the requested people from the provincial ghettos to Budapest. But without Kastner's knowledge, they later withdrew that order.

Eichmann

No. All the provincial ghettos were cleared; only Clausenburg remained untouched as a large community. Kastner then made his point to them, and they said to him, "I can't bring any Jews to Budapest now. I have to go to the Hungarian minister [not typed]; he will raise the Braun-Weiss matter with me in some unpleasant way, and I can't do anything." Kastner then told them, "You have always said that you keep your word. In keeping with our agreement, you telegraphed to Clausenburg, didn't you?" They replied, "Yesterday I took back the order by telegram. Is that clear? I have no time for you." To that I have to say it is fabricated. First, it wasn't 800 Jews but 700. Second, the 700 Jews were placed under the guard of members of the Florian Geyer Division, which was subordinate to Becher, to protect them from any attempt to seize them. The 700 Jews listed by K. did not go through Germany; no transport ever went that way. I wouldn't have been allowed to do that, because the German Gauleiters themselves would have raised a storm…

Eichmann

They went via Romania to Palestine. 2. I never spoke with a Hungarian minister named [not typed]. I never spoke with any Hungarian minister at all. I spoke only with the two state secretaries as the highest authority, except once, briefly, at a luncheon, with the Hungarian prime minister, Sztójay. K never told me that I hadn't kept my word. There was no reason for that, because the Jewish side never made any kind of [not typed] declaration that the deal, the agreed deal, was complete and that I could now send the promised 100,000 Jews away.

Questioner

That isn't the point. The point is that you had promised him 700 or 800 Jews from the ghettos…

Eichmann

Where he got the 700 was of no importance to me. He described them as 700 young people. However Kastner got those 700 young people, he could take them from anywhere in the Hungarian area. He could even have taken them from the German area. He could take them from wherever he wanted.

Questioner

The point is that they had promised to give him these people, wherever they came from, but left only the Clausenburg ghetto untouched. They later withdrew the order for the 700, whereupon Kastner appeared before them, in the presence of Groneid, Will, Hunsche, and Novak, and, according to Kastner's account, had a very stormy argument with them. They then told him, "I have withdrawn the order; there is nothing more to be done." Kastner understood that if he couldn't make them relent, he would appear to the Jews as the loser in this game, as a traitor.

Questioner

Kastner then said, "Will you bring these people from the provinces to Budapest?"

Eichmann

No. I said no, and it remains no.

Eichmann

On these questions, which are dealt with in the book's account of J. B., I have the following to say. 1. In principle, it is a mixture of truth and fiction. 2. In detail: I had the [unclear] of the RF throughout the negotiations with the Jews. Their aims were: a) to clear the Hungarian area of Jews; and b) the RF's possible material interests in the motorization of the 8th and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions. I had no need to haggle over this; it would have been too much trouble. I always favored brief negotiations. The negotiations with the Jewish officials lasted, depending on the scale, five minutes or half an hour, perhaps a little more, but never two hours. Looking at the matter today, while I am not in a position to give an exact account of the course of the discussion, I am surprised that the other side is able to do so…

Questioner

You wrote it down right away…

Eichmann

I have this to say: whenever Kastner approached me about a contingent of Jews to be taken abroad, which he did often, I approved it, so to speak, off the cuff, and let him settle the details with Gromeid. I said it was a mixture of truth and fiction, and that is true insofar as one sentence still comes to me today, namely… then I would have to guard the camp… I had little personnel, and a few men from the Florian Geier group, under Becher's command, actually guarded these 700 Jews. Becher had assigned them to the duty. That is correct. What seems clear to me is that the author wants to conjure up a suspenseful moment here, and bring the finesse of the Jewish negotiators to the surface like a grease spot on water. In reality, all these negotiations were much more sober and much shorter. Dr. Kastner would never have made remarks like the ones you just mentioned to me, not out of fear, but because his personal decency would have forbidden it. Kastner was what people call a well-brought-up man. If that is still not enough explanation from me, I must set the author straight. Almost anything said here is conceivable, but one thing is inconceivable: that one of my Hauptsturmführer officers, in a conference with opponents, would have said to me, "But look, Adolf…" 1. The phrase "But look" comes from a J. B. raised in [not typed]; it also belongs to my way of speaking, but never to the way of speaking of someone raised in northern Germany. 2. None of my subordinates would ever have dared, even if I was on familiar terms with him, to call me by my first name during a negotiation.

Questioner

But he doesn't say "But look…" He says, "I believe, Adolf…"

Eichmann

Then that one word falls away, but the word Adolf alone… It is inconceivable that a subordinate in a conference… I have nothing more to explain.

Eichmann

In Klausenburg I never maintained a concentration camp…

Questioner

This isn't about the concentration camp; it's about a ghetto…

Eichmann

I don't know about that. Those are all matters handled chiefly by the Hungarian gendarmerie, which registered and concentrated the Jews of their country and…

Questioner

This isn't about the Hungarians; it's about the 700 people you promised would be taken out of Klausenburg, out of the ghetto.

Eichmann

Where he got them from didn't interest me. He could have taken them out of the camp as well; it didn't matter where he wanted to get them from. Among those 700 he could have had, God knows, any kind of people, perhaps some who had killed German Wehrmacht personnel in Poland. I never checked them. Where they came from was entirely secondary. He could have taken them from anywhere, is that clear?

Questioner

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?

Eichmann

Yes, that's right.

Questioner

Were you already aware then that all of K.'s relatives and friends had found shelter in this transport?

Eichmann

I didn't know that. He could put anyone he wanted into the transport; he decided that himself.

Questioner

But why was it immaterial to your office whether influential Jews, dangerous to the Reich or otherwise, got out?

Eichmann

The extent to which these [not typed], dangerous Jews could really have become dangerous to us in the relatively short time before their full striking power took effect, and the extent to which the 10,000 trucks we hoped for would actually be allowed to enter, was for the RF to weigh. The first would have taken a long time; the second we would certainly have had. The trucks would have rolled; everything else had to be subordinated to that.

Questioner

I mean, with this mass of Jews who were present, it would have been a small matter for the German officials themselves to select those considered harmless, so as to reach the number of [blotted] Jews to be released while still taking precautions.

Eichmann

The really influential or dangerous Jew also had enough connections and relationships. In the general chaos in Hungary, he crossed the green border anyway. On the Hungarian side there was, after all, a legion of Magyars who took pleasure in getting one over on the Germans by letting their opponents slip across the green border. There was also a legion of Magyars who had no idea and who, for money and kind words, opened up these possibilities. The country had been too open in every direction throughout the war, giving an agile Jew the chance to flee across the green border. Should I then, of all people, check the 700 people K. named to me? In reality there were certainly more than 1,000 who had gone off to Palestine. Should I still check them and thereby bring trouble on myself with the Hungarian gendarmerie? These were things that happened, so to speak, at night. It was, so to speak, a gentlemen's agreement between K. and me.

Questioner

Do you know what became of this K. transport?

Eichmann

I think K. took his people to Palestine via Romania.

Questioner

They are supposed to have arrived in Switzerland in April 1945, that is, [too faint] months later…

Questioner

… and specifically at the time when Becher was in Switzerland?

Eichmann

You say one transport? All 1,800 arrived in Switzerland, and they arrived there only in April.

Questioner

You lost sight of them?

Eichmann

Yes. What did a transport of 700 or 7,000 Jews matter to me by comparison? I had orders to comb Hungary from east to west, and I didn't need to exert much effort. On the contrary, Dr. L. E. kept pressing me to take more from him each day than Pohl took from me. Once I had the people, they were a burden to me between the departure signal at the loading station and the arrival signal at the terminal. I was responsible for that interval. What happened before or after was beyond any influence of mine; I no longer had official responsibility for it. My duty was to take the Jews from the Hungarians and deliver them. If L. E. demanded more from me, speed was what mattered to him; for me, what mattered was the number of wagons and transport trains I received from the Reich Transport Ministry…

Questioner

Brandt says that about a quarter of the Jews survived the war?

Eichmann

One quarter is probably too low, when we see how many supposedly gassed Jews are still walking around the world today. It is thrown in one's face like sarcasm: "That one is gassed too? That one ought to be gassed too…" You see only gassed Jews walking around today, enjoying better health than the rest of us… 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.

Questioner

But how could they have been sent to physical extermination if the RF's order had already arrived in April?

Eichmann

Exactly. The RF did not rescind that order until the end of the war, no, no. I won't commit myself to any number; I only want to make a comparison, and it may well be that Brandt means the reverse. Very few Jews of Hungarian citizenship were sent to physical extermination; no one knows how many. One would have to ask the people at the concentration camps.

Questioner

But the RF's order to stop physical extermination dates from April 1944? From the time the 10,000 trucks were running…

Questioner

So this stop order was never rescinded before the end of the war?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

You arrived in Budapest in March? So there was only one month for physical extermination?

Eichmann

If you calculate the lead time each authority needs, including negotiations with the Hungarian authorities, you would have to be a bureaucratic magician to have settled such difficult negotiations within fourteen days, something practice has never yet confirmed. So I say that if you claim that at most this quarter was sent to physical extermination, then that physical extermi…

Eichmann

… must have been carried out under Hungarian direction? It could not have happened on the German side, because the Reichsführer order to stop it was already in place.

Questioner

You know that April 25 has always seemed very early to me…

Eichmann

No, it may well be right. Brandt flew to Istanbul on May 15, and he had already been negotiating with you for weeks beforehand…

Questioner

Yes, that's right. On April 25 you had your last meeting with him. That means you had previously received the RF's instruction about the 10,000 trucks. So it was probably ready for decision around April 20. In other words, weeks had passed before the whole matter had progressed that far.

Questioner

So if you had already begun deporting in April, if the operation could already be running in April, it follows that these people could not have been sent to physical extermination.

Eichmann

Arithmetically impossible, yes…

Questioner

How else could it be, if it is arithmetically impossible?

Eichmann

I tell you, Hungarian Jews, don't fixate on one quarter or three-quarters, which I just assumed. I only wanted to prove to you that it is unthinkable that Jews of Hungarian citizenship are actually alive.

Questioner

Before you went to Budapest, no Jewish transports had departed?

Eichmann

No, no.

Questioner

The Hungarians also handed no Jews over to the Germans?

Eichmann

No, no.

Questioner

So the Hungarian Jewish population was untouched, unless the Hungarians themselves carried out some physical extermination?

Eichmann

That is beyond my knowledge…

Questioner

There are also some [not typed] accounts from the Hungarian side, from 1941, 1942, and 1943, saying that 1,000 Jews perished at one point and 2,000 at another. But you only heard about that, too?

Eichmann

Why should the Jew Brandt, as the author of his book, lie any less than Jewish mentality calls for? For more than 2,000 years, it has always played the eternally persecuted. It is always innocent, always the injured party, and the blame always belongs to someone else. In shifting blame onto a third person, the Jew has gone so far over 2,000 years that he not only assigns to that person what he had to do for reasons of self-preservation, but also lays on him what he never intended and never carried out. Why should Brandt be different? He is the son of a half-rabbi. The more he plays on pity, the more he joins the chorus of all Jews who, represented by Goldmann, demanded from Germany, now rich again, and received around 13 or 18 billion marks. The Jews' tendency, will, and aim, represented by Goldmann, is to keep pushing the number higher and higher. The economic fiasco Israel continually experiences, and the adventures it has undertaken, cost an unbelievable amount of money. According to their own Jewish accounts, they scrape together 50 million dollars a year from the world. Germany gives this state 250 or 270 million dollars a year, five times what international Jewry can raise in a calendar year, and that is still too 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.

Eichmann

It still annoys me today, time and again, whenever I have to read such banal lies, or when third parties tell me these lies and believe them as well…

Eichmann

I can only say again that what the author says here about a quarter has turned everything upside down. As I already said, don't mix me up with that quarter … the quarter is the other way around. It is, so to speak, thanks to the whole history of the negotiations, thanks to the delays, and to the genuinely low brutality of an RF, that all the Jews with Hungarian citizenship are still alive. Ask any Hungarian; he will confirm it. Ask the Hungarians who came after the last uprising in Hungary. You mustn't ask the first refugees, because they were the Jews. Those who came last were the proper ones, and Jews were mixed in among them. What does the Hungarian [handwriting] consist of today? Of Jews. What was the uprising in Hungary? An uprising against its own Marxist Jews, who occupy positions of influence in enormous numbers. Look at the last Hungarian uprising and compare it, proportionally, with our deportations of Jews… Call as witnesses to this statistic the Hungarians who fought, but who fought as Hungarian patriots.

Questioner

Do you remember the name of the small holding camp where K. kept the people he had selected? Columbusgasse?

Eichmann

No, he had a place of his own where he housed these fellows. I mentioned earlier that I also posted guards so that they could escape any possible intervention from the Hungarian side, since we were, after all, dealing with a sovereign Hungarian government.

Questioner

When Brandt stayed away longer than expected, did you say to K.: “If Brandt doesn't return in three days, I'll start the mills in Auschwitz again?”

Eichmann

The word “mills” I heard from K. for the first time. I wanted to stop the death mills in Auschwitz? No, the extermination machinery… The word “mills” doesn't come easily to my tongue. What kind of fool do they take me for, when I spent weeks negotiating with a man I sent off, believing he would return from far-off Constantinople within three days? That would be an insult to my intelligence. Besides, it wasn't up to me whether any extermination machinery should be started or stopped; that was solely the RF's authority.

Questioner

Kastner then asked you in mid-June 1944, when there was no word from Brandt, to hold back 100,000 of the people in Hungary designated for transport, to keep them ready in case the Brandt operation succeeded. The Javada would immediately provide 5 million Swiss francs as an advance. You accepted this proposal from Kastner, but you said that 100,000 couldn't be the number. You could send a dozen deportation trains with about 30,000 Jews to Austria and put them on ice there. But we can't take those 30,000 from the Ka… or Transylvania, because the Jews there are more valuable and more fertile. “I have no interest in keeping them alive.” The 30,000 … from the Hungarian heartland.

Questioner

But the money, the 5 million francs, you had to put on the table. Then 18,000 people were sent in six trains to Strashof. But the 5 million francs were never paid to the Germans, never paid at all. In the end it was handed to SS-Ostf. Becher, and Becher had no idea it was for the people at Strashof. He assumed it was for those at Bergen-Belsen, who then traveled to Switzerland… Do you remember such a proposal from Kastner involving 100,000 Jews?

Eichmann

No, that's out of the question. But you did then send six trains with about 30,000 Jews to Strashof; they weren't supposed to consist of people of reproductive age.

Eichmann

In other words, was I supposed to send nothing but old sacks to Strashof? No, not like that. They were valuable Jews who weren't of reproductive age. I combed Hungary from east to west and didn't give a damn where they went, because they were put on ice, yes indeed.

Eichmann

What Brandt either doesn't want to remember or can't remember is that a man who handled intelligence matters at the BDS may have told him what the Hungarian Gestapo may have told him, so that they could get their foreign currency. Why didn't he bring up these negotiations? Because these people perhaps owned nothing or perhaps lacked influence. And I am supposed to have said all that, I, the representative of the German Gestapo… He throws everything together in one sauerkraut pot.

Eichmann

There was talk only of 100,000; that's what I said. As soon as the telegram came, the matter was settled. Then there was no more talk of over 100,000. Whatever else came of it, a few million in foreign currency of every kind, I don't know. Surely the people who squeezed the foreign currency out of him had boasted about it themselves and threatened to tell the wicked Eichmann, and so on.

Eichmann

I already told you that when Becher had difficulties with Kastner, he brought in some business officer to bring the matter to a successful end. He behaved like a jumping jack and shouted in a way utterly unbecoming an SS officer: “If you can't fulfil this, I'll ask SS-Ostf. E. to have another 10,000 Jews gassed.” After Kastner left, I took Becher aside, reprimanded him, and told him he wasn't a member of the Gestapo and had no business meddling in this. I'd report it. Perhaps Müller wanted him for that reason…

Eichmann

You see, Becher was a cool businessman. Later I began to have doubts and asked myself: Was he trying to secure an alibi for himself with Kastner through this whole affair? Or was he trying to lull me into a sense of security with this performance, having first agreed the whole act with Kastner? The latter seemed likely to me; I told Müller that as well.

Questioner

But that's a big one, for an SS officer to…

Eichmann

Yes, that's a big dog, and that Wau-Wau was running around free in Germany after 1945, barking that he had helped so-and-so many Jews.

Questioner

Kastner personally got him out of the clutches of the SS pursuers at the time. Do you still remember those 18,000 who came to Strashof?

Eichmann

No. Strashof is familiar to me; quite a few must have ended up there.

Questioner

There is a fairly general version that says you basically found this deal, Jews for trucks, repugnant, that it disgusted you, and that you acted only because you'd received an order to do it. You took the corresponding measures, but at bottom the whole action was repugnant to you, and you wanted to carry out this entire policy toward the Jews with iron consistency. In that sense you had the direct support of your superiors, but you both also had to submit to the RF's order, and you did so, even though your heart was never in it…

Eichmann

So, in other words, we would have preferred to kill them? This is what I have to say: at heart I was with no enemy at all. If I had followed my heart, I would have preferred every enemy of the Reich dead rather than alive, because only a dead enemy of the Reich is good. In particular, when I received an order, I always carried that order out, by the hangman, and I'm still proud of that today because I fulfilled my oath. I have nothing more to say.

Questioner

Do you remember any conversations or remarks from which one could conclude that this deal was repugnant to you?

Eichmann

No. Why should it have been repugnant to me? In that era, every person had a best friend, and mine was in the SS Cavalry Division. I knew how he struggled and did his best to defend his few square kilometres. I told you how I got him grenades, how I celebrated his birthday with him, and how we got to know each other as young commanders. Wherever I could help him, I did. His division had been treated like a stepchild, probably because it lacked material resources. Do you believe that if I had received an order from the RF to motorize the 22nd and 8th [not typed] with 10,000 trucks, I would have let the million Jews go where the pepper grows, as long as I could give 5,000 trucks to my friend's division? I never asked my heart, and I had no right to ask it. I had to ask Germany, not my heart, which amounted to the same thing…

Questioner

Can you tell me what Müller's attitude toward this deal was?

Eichmann

Just as cold as mine: if we could exchange a number x of enemies of the Reich for military advantages, any deal was worth carrying out. And I'm convinced that, if necessary, we would have given them 2 million for those 10,000 trucks. I would have bargained out whatever could be bargained. That is another proof that the Jews had not been burned up; they were there. You have no idea what either side could have gained from this, Jew or non-Jew.

Questioner

Did Kaltenbrunner, in the course of that friendship, ever open his heart about this deal?

Eichmann

Yes. What benefits the people is right; that was our feeling. Kaltenbrunner was also an order-receiver…

Eichmann

…and carried out his orders in the same way, only from a higher level. Müller was an order-receiver and carried out his orders from a middle-high level, and I carried out my orders from a subordinate level, viewed only as a matter of office and group structure. If we had asked ourselves each time whether something was right or wrong, we could just as well have pulled a sleeping cap over our heads and gone to sleep (good night). Unfortunately, others did that, and that is why we did not lose the war.

Questioner

When Brandt was in Constantinople and was supposed to return, but was arrested, the Davada had made plans to send Bader to Budapest. They are said to have obtained a visa for him, which the German Embassy in Constantinople handed to Bader, but when he was supposed to leave, he made excuses and did not go. Brandt attributes this to the fact that even Mosch… and Ben… forbade Bader, as a Palestinian citizen, to make the journey. They wanted the negotiations moved from Budapest to a neutral place. That took time and was put off, and finally they were sent to Budapest by the diplomatic post of a neutral country. Brandt says this tragic delay, for which the Jewish agencies alone were responsible, cost several hundred thousand people their lives…

Eichmann

Not their lives. They were probably transported to Auschwitz, but kept alive there.

Questioner

Do you remember this version, that you could support us in our interests, truthfully, of course? Do you remember whether you took any steps to obtain a visa for an emissary who was supposed to return to Budapest in Brandt's place? Do you remember anything else about this Bader?

Eichmann

It's possible that I spoke with Kastner about it; we were talking about it all the time. Anyone who came, anyone who came in connection with the matter, would have received free entry and safe conduct… On July 7, the interim agreement arrived in Budapest, and Kastner and Mrs. Brandt immediately told Becher about it. Becher said, “Himmler will accept it; I'm going to Berlin to push it through.” Eichmann then said to Kastner, “Send a telegram to Constantinople at once. We are ready to negotiate. Name a delegate.”

Questioner

Do you remember anything about this story, this agreement? Had Becher already become so actively involved then? Did he, so to speak, take the lead in the matter out of your hands?

Eichmann

Did he want to? He couldn't, but sometimes, because of his own incompetence, he overstepped the limits of his authority.

Questioner

Do you remember that, in the next negotiations, Becher, accompanied by Kastner in Lisbon, was to represent the SS?

Eichmann

I don't remember that.

Questioner

Were the deportations stopped immediately after this agreement?

Eichmann

No. They continued until the Hungarian province was free of Jews.

Questioner

Do you remember when it was decided that Becher would travel to Portugal to meet the Jewish delegates, accompanied by Kastner? Do you remember whether you approved it or rejected it?

Eichmann

No, that would have exceeded the limits of my authority anyway.

Questioner

Wouldn't it have been possible for Becher to receive permission directly from the RF…?

Eichmann

No. Then I would at least have heard something about it. After all, he was never an official.

Questioner

But he did travel to Switzerland on the RF's orders, to negotiate with the Jews…

Eichmann

But that was much later, when the RF was negotiating with Bernadotte. Becher was brought into the Bernadotte negotiations only at the margins.

Questioner

Around that time, or shortly afterward, it became known that Brandt had been arrested by the Allies. Becher is said to have become frightened about entering Allied territory?

Eichmann

I believe the following. All these detailed matters were handled by Ostf. Grom on my instructions. He knows much more about them because he only had to keep his head free for these things, whereas I was interested only in the fundamentals. The small details at the margins didn't interest me at all, not in Hungary either. Perhaps I signed off on some things and so took note of them; that's how it happens that I know some things. But for everything subordinate, one has a permanent deputy. My task in Hungary had been to make sure that we weren't the ones taking the Jews away from the Hungarians, but that the Magyars asked us to take them. My task was to see that the listing, the rounding-up, and the loading were done by the Hungarian gendarmerie, not by us. In that respect my mission was a Jesuitical one, and getting to that point naturally required many conferences. The details beneath that horizon were the job of my permanent deputy. So when you ask me about one matter or another, they still seem inconsequential to me, and I can't give you a full answer.

Questioner

Do you remember whether Hauptsturmführer Klages had an adjutant named Kraus?

Eichmann

Hauptsturmführer Klages was a desk officer with the commander of the Sipo and SD in Hungary. Desk officers with a commander had no adjutants, anywhere.

Questioner

Do you remember the Hungarian lieutenant colonel Garseli?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

Is it true that Klages was shot by Hungarian officers? Around August or September 1944.

Eichmann

No. During my time in Hungary, no important man of the Sipo was shot.

Questioner

And you know nothing about the Israeli paratroopers Klages negotiated with? About a parachutist who posed as a negotiator in the Brandt affair?

Eichmann

You mean the dropping of enemy agents? Yes, that also happened in Hungary. Klages was responsible for it; it was his department…

Questioner

But you know nothing about it?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

Now it seems that after the Allied landing in Normandy, after the fall of Paris, and after July 20, the Hungarians began to waver, and the Jews immediately took advantage of this.

Questioner

… and, among others, ecclesiastical dignitaries protested sharply against the deportations, including Rotha, the then Apostolic Nuncio… Now it appears that on July 26, 1944, Roosevelt also took a step with Horthy. Horthy convened a Crown Council that same day, and The prime minister was instructed to put an immediate end to the deportations…

Eichmann

Nonsense…

Questioner

That happened on the same day that Eichmann, the opponent, summoned the head of the Hungarian Gendarmerie, Faerenzie, and State Secretary L.E. to a meeting to work out a plan for evacuating about 200,000 Budapest Jews. You came to it immediately and decided that between June 5 and 12, within a single week, they would somehow all be sent to Auschwitz. The Jews were to be moved into houses marked with the yellow star as preparation for the next stage of the evacuation. The Hungarian prime minister didn't dare openly oppose Eichmann in order to carry out the Crown Council's formal decision. Eichmann then told Kastner, 'I am clearing out the Budapest Jews. About 30,000 Jews will remain, not very valuable human material.' He continued, 'If you wish, I can take them all to Austria. They will be held ready for the transaction you promise will take place in Istanbul, though I don't believe it.' Meanwhile, resistance in Hungary grew sharper. Even the leaders of the Hungarian Gendarmerie refused to provide troops for the deportations. Horthy couldn't give direct orders, but powerful groups were forming inside the Hungarian government. Under Horthy and his son's influence, they were breaking with the Axis and working against Eichmann's Jewish commando. Eichmann was forced to carry out partial deportations illegally. Even on July 14, after deportations 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. In the meantime, the whole camp was transported away, and another camp was also liquidated. The prime minister feared Eichmann more than the Reich Administrator. But Eichmann now felt Hungarian resistance everywhere and became more yielding. He demanded the surrender of Jews employed in Hungarian labor service. That demand met a wall, but the Hungarian minister wouldn't negotiate. When he heard of Eichmann's plans to begin deporting Budapest on July 15, he promptly called up all the men of Budapest for labor service to keep them out of German hands.

Questioner

What do you have to say now? I have two questions to ask. When did Horthy leave the country?

Eichmann

In October.

Questioner

When was the first V-1 fired?

Eichmann

On June 7.

Questioner

And when does Brandt say that Hungarian resistance had eased because of me?

Eichmann

At the beginning of July. When the first V-1 was fired at London, I came to Dr. L.E. in the morning. He showed me a Hungarian morning paper saying that the retaliation had begun, and he reveled in the words, 'Victory is ours…'

Eichmann

It wasn't only that the senior Hungarian government officials in question showed signs of wavering. The opposite was true: E. and B. now believed in final victory with even greater force. I was careful not to tell E. even an iota of what I knew from my pessimistic outlook. In any event, work went on with increased zeal, and I would have had to be superhuman to carry out technically what the State Secretary in the Hungarian Interior Ministry wanted and demanded of me. I know that I once wanted to move against the Jewish ghetto in Budapest. After the Hungarian Gendarmerie had combed through eastern Hungary, I naturally moved westward and wanted the western Hungarian counties cleansed as well, in accordance with my orders. I don't believe the Hungarian prime minister feared me more than his Crown Council. As I already said, he once invited me to lunch with Winkelmann and Fesemeier, but the invitation wasn't sent directly to me; General Winkelmann took me along, so to speak. I received no official state invitation. I spoke with the Hungarian prime minister before and after lunch, and I remember clearly that, figuratively speaking, he laid Hungary's guilt at my feet for my efforts. That lunch must have been around this time. In Hungary, apart from protecting my night's rest, for which Winkelmann had about eight Schutzpolizei officers seal off the house where I was privately staying, nothing was done for my personal protection. If circles of the Hungarian Gendarmerie or the Hungarian Army had already taken an opposing position at that time, I ask myself, given the centuries-old famous Hungarian bravado, why didn't they simply kill me?

Questioner

At that time, the Reich Police Office in Berlin had very few people who could be spared. The author mentions that the Hungarian commander of the Hungarian Gendarmerie, Faerenzie, had also begun to waver…

Questioner

No, no. He only mentions that you had called a meeting with him and with E…

Eichmann

I have only a marginal point to add: the author is inaccurate here. Faerenzie wasn't the commander of the Hungarian Gendarmerie. He was a desk officer in the office of the commander in chief of the Hungarian Gendarmerie. I already said at the beginning of this volume that I wanted to move against the Budapest Ghetto, and that I discussed it with Faerenzie and E. I could never have done anything that B. and E. hadn't ordered. It also would have been technically possible to include those 12,000 houses marked with the yellow star, though I can't remember it. These are details again.

Questioner

But this meeting took place after the Reich Administrator had already banned deportations?

Eichmann

That's impossible. B. and E. were State Secretaries, officials who could never have acted, and never would have acted, against their government. What good would my wishes, even against their government's intentions, have done if I hadn't received troop contingents from the Gendarmerie? In other words, it wasn't me, but them.

Questioner

But what do you say about the deportation transport on July 14, said to have taken place with B's agreement, involving 15,000 Jews from an internment camp and followed by Horthy's order to bring these people back? Surely that is something you still remember?

Questioner

Were they brought back?

Eichmann

Yes, yes.

Eichmann

To my knowledge, Horthy never intervened. I never did anything against the Hungarian government; otherwise I would have had a second brake on my leg, Fesemeier. Before I took up new matters with E., I always obtained a no-objection certificate from the senior SS and Police Leader, as well as approval from his superior, the Reich Plenipotentiary, Dr. Fesemeier. Once I had that approval, it didn't have to be in writing; a verbal assurance was enough. I knew that the action would cause the Reich no harm in foreign policy, and I agreed to Dr. L.E.'s wishes. After consulting B., the Hungarian Gendarmerie set the matter in motion, but only after I had coordinated it, that is, obtained the no-objection certificate for myself. I would never have obtained such approval from Winkelmann or Fesemeier if Horthy had opposed it forcefully. Unthinkable. The Foreign Office would have hit the RF over the head…

Questioner

It doesn't say 'forcefully' here. It says that the Reich Administrator issued the order, but then wavered in carrying it out because even his prime minister wasn't really willing to go along with it…

Eichmann

Then it wasn't a ban on deportation…

Questioner

Wait a moment. It is quite possible that the Reich Administrator wanted it, that the prime minister wanted it too, and that they had even reached a decision, but then said to themselves: In the end, the Wehrmacht is here. We must proceed carefully there and, above all, watch out for this Eichmann, because he can cause us trouble, just as Fesemeier reasoned from the Foreign Office's point of view. The Hungarians could reason in exactly the same way from the actual balance of power and say: If we impose an absolute ban with harsh measures, the Reich, which still has far greater means than we do, could simply crush us.

Eichmann

It does me great honor that a Hungarian prime minister is said to have been afraid of me. It does me great honor that Horthy may have been cautious in his wording because of the evil Eichmann. Even so, I must say that my office did not go beyond the position of a desk officer, and I was never in a position to give orders to Müller or the RF. I couldn't even sway my kind-hearted friend Kaltenbrunner, with whom I had a personal friendship. I couldn't do that. That's Jewish nonsense. I have nothing more to say about it.

Questioner

It's not about what you could or couldn't do. It's about how perfectly logical it is that Horthy and the prime minister were afraid not of you, but of your office… They told themselves: That's the Reich leadership of the SS; that's the commander of the replacement army… Watch out, children.

Eichmann

What official position did I have in Hungary? None at all. Aha, so you see… Do you know to whom I was subordinate in Hungary? To the Commander of the Sipo and SD. And to whom was he subordinate in turn?

Eichmann

The higher SS and police leader, who in turn had to answer to the Reich Special Plenipotentiary, Fesemeier. As confirmation, I will give you the following. The commander of the Security Police and Security Service, to whom I was organizationally superior as a desk officer of the Gestapo Office, and to whom I could issue instructions in my sector once my department chief had signed them, called me once. Now I had a personal, cordial relationship with Dr. Geschke. He called me and said, 'Come over, put on your steel helmet. I have an official order to give you.' He said it partly as a joke and partly as my superior in the office. In Hungary I held two roles at once: on one hand as a desk officer in the Reich Security Main Office, who issued himself his own detail orders, and on the other as a desk officer of the Sipo and SD in Hungary, as leader of the Sonderkommando Eichmann, as it was called. This was, admittedly, a weaker version of what Heydrich was at a higher level as Deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia. From a security-police standpoint, he issued his own orders for Bohemia and Moravia. Geschke ordered me to come to him. I came from the army, and for as long as I was in Hungary I had taken this subordination upon myself in every respect. I actually strapped on my steel helmet because I had an official order to receive. Geschke slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Man, that's not what I meant…' I said, 'Duty is duty and schnapps is schnapps.' An order from the Reichsführer: 'You are to go immediately to an [handwriting] area, and there remove 10,000 ethnic Germans and others from the Russians' reach. Understood?' I have told you this so you can understand my official position as Sonderkommando Eichmann. No Hungarian office had even the faintest idea of the personal connection I had with the commander of the Sipo and the SD. Since the Sonderkommando was large, it required its own large building, while the ordinary Sipo and SD desk officers, with five, six, or eight underlings, could naturally be housed in a few small halls or rooms inside the BDS building where he was based. That is why I think the author used that name out of ignorance or malice, or because at that time the name Eichmann suited him as an eye-catcher, with a ban on naming anyone else. A B. or an E. would never have taken orders from me. Faerenzie, an excellent Hungarian officer from crown to sole, would never have let me order him around. Faerenzie treated me as an equal comrade, but nothing more.

Questioner

But the issue is whether it was Horthy rather than E.

Eichmann

No, no, my deportations continued to my satisfaction. With that, I had carried out the Reichsführer order; everything else did not interest me.

Questioner

Is it known to you that in those days, during the first week of July, the gendarmerie barracks were partly occupied by troops transferred from the interior to Budapest, Hungarian troops, and that the Hungarian gendarmerie moved out?

Eichmann

But I know that Jews from the Budapest ghetto up to age 45 were conscripted for labor service. I know that; that is known to me.

Eichmann

I fought against it, but I wasn't the originator of that resistance, because B. had already done so hours earlier. I came to E., half questioning and half astonished: 'Tell me, what are you doing? Are you making difficulties for us? Don't you want to continue?' E. was beside himself, possessed by fanaticism, and I had to bring him to his senses over the Jewish labor-service men. For weeks afterward he could do nothing but shoot, shoot, and shoot. I believe Horthy fell soon afterward, and then the labor-service obligation was abolished. Only then did E. … And it may be that, among the many stumbling blocks facing the Hungarian government, this too played a part in hastening Horthy's end, because E. and B. had such influence in the Hungarian Interior Ministry that I can't tell you now, any more than I could then in good conscience, what the interior minister's name may have been. I can't tell you what he looked like, especially since I don't know whether I ever saw him. He must have been very inactive if he agreed to such rapid action by B., and especially to the bold drive of a man like Dr. L. E.

Questioner

Of this deportation story that you've brought up again, do you know nothing?

Eichmann

I didn't bring anyone back in Hungary. I brought people back only once in my life, and that was in Denmark. Perhaps a few dozen or a few hundred were brought back quietly; that's quite possible, but these are matters of absolutely no fundamental significance.

Questioner

It appears that you carried out the sweep of eastern Hungary on 1 July and caused corresponding unemployment?

Eichmann

That is quite possible.

Questioner

Then on 1 July you began clearing western Hungary, about 30,000 Jews?

Eichmann

Correct.

Questioner

Then you tried to enter the capital, entered the suburbs and took these Jews to the brickworks?

Eichmann

Yes, they were concentrated.

Questioner

On that same 8 July, when the Hungarian gendarmerie had received orders to leave Budapest, the text of an [not typed] agreement arrived in Budapest. The Jewish side's offers in the agreement were then used by Becher to arrange a visit to Himmler and press for a temporary suspension of the gassing of Jews. Wouldn't this mean that the Reichsführer order to halt physical extermination had somehow been lifted again?

Eichmann

No. It would instead mean that my memory hasn't entirely deserted me, and that I may have been right when I told you the deal involving 10,000 trucks came later than April. If that isn't so, then the other thing you told me is a lie. One of the two is a lie. It is beyond doubt that Brandt arrived in Constantinople on 15 May 1944. On 19 July 1944, 'The Times' in London carried the whole story of Brandt and the trucks.

Eichmann

The Gestapo had nothing to do with this agreement. I tell you, it was an agreement Becher made with the Jews, not us, not me. I know about it, not in detail but in broad outline. We didn't make it; Becher did, doubtless with the RF's approval, but only in his capacity as Reichsführer SS. I didn't negotiate this agreement or draft it.

Questioner

No, that isn't being said either. The agreement wasn't signed by the Germans. It was simply an agreement proposed by the Jews, to which the Jews were to state their position. Becher then immediately proposed going to Berlin to press Himmler to bring about the temporary halt to the gassing.

Eichmann

That's nonsense.

Questioner

Now, can it be true that the last official deportation train left the country on 8 July?

Eichmann

Yes, that may be correct. It was high summer. I was in an [not typed] place that E. had already left. I had a liter of milk given to me there, and I paid the manager for it. E. laughed at me afterward. The whole estate had been at my disposal, he said, so why had I paid for a liter of milk while in the forward area? I came to a second courtyard under Becher's control, formerly probably a stud farm. He had a Hauptsturmführer there as a horse expert, and a servant wearing white thread gloves brought him his lunch. I had my people quartered there too. When I objected to being given lunch during the war by a servant in white gloves, he took off his gloves and slammed the food down with his bare fists. It was summer, and then I moved on to the Romanian border.

Eichmann

I moved on into the Neuarat area and came back in early autumn… I then returned to Hungary. It may be that the transports no longer took place in July, because afterward there was nothing more.

Questioner

So it appears that you deported 434,000 Hungarian Jews from 15 May to 8 July in 53 days?

Eichmann

That is improbable. I would have had to transport 10,000 Jews every day, Saturdays and Sundays alike. I would have said 300,000; the number was high.

Questioner

They all went to Auschwitz.

Eichmann

They went to Auschwitz, but some also went to Burgenland and some to Strashofer. Only a very small first portion was sent to physical extermination, insofar as it wasn't fit for labor service; everything else was held back for the trucks. Compared with the Jews from the General Government, although I wasn't responsible for that, the Hungarian Jews fared best of all Jews in all countries.

Questioner

After the shock of 20 July, it seems you tried again to begin deportations in the capital.

Eichmann

Yes, I was always at it, always trying to carry out deportations from the capital, but office and technical difficulties had to be taken into account. It is hard enough to load a train, even with oxen or sacks of flour, because you have to get the needed loading staff together, and they have to be willing to work. How much harder it is to load people, especially when difficulties are expected. I was always trying to get at the Budapest ghetto, and L.E. was too, but the difficulties were too great. You must not forget that as time went on, whenever the chance perhaps became favorable, I couldn't get transport trains, either because there were no trains available, because they were needed elsewhere, or because the line wasn't in order.

Questioner

On 21 August, on the Rhine… bridge at Sant Marg., Himmler met the Jewish delegate Sani Meier, long before the Bernadotte story. On 25 August, after the Hungarian government had sent the German government a note a week earlier demanding the withdrawal of a Jewish commando, shortly before Horthy's fall, do you still remember that?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

On the evening of 25 August, Wi summoned Kastner and told him, 'You've won, Kastner. The state is withdrawing.' The RF wanted to avoid Hungary's defection, so he ordered the Jewish commando to withdraw but left the Gestapo in Budapest. The Jewish commando withdrew, and Eichmann went back to a country estate in the province.

Eichmann

Well, in summer 1944 I moved to E.'s estate, then Neuarat, 10,000 ethnic Germans, and back to Budapest, where I took up my post again. … I never cleared the post; Gromeid ran it while I was away.

Questioner

So Kastner won.

Eichmann

All nonsense, poetic license.

Questioner

Did you give Kastner permission on 1 September to travel to Switzerland?

Eichmann

That's quite possible. I always gave my Jewish negotiating partners the opportunity to travel abroad whenever they thought it useful for achieving their aims; it was in my interest too.

Questioner

Do you remember that he was to travel to Switzerland with Hstf. Gruesse?

Eichmann

No, but I enabled so many Jewish functionaries to travel abroad that I can't remember each one individually.

Questioner

When the Slovak partisan uprising broke out at the end of August 1944, the Jews also took up arms, whereupon you immediately asked Berlin for permission to liquidate, deport, and transport the entire Jewish population from Slovakia…

Eichmann

By that time nothing more was being transported, neither from Hungary nor from Slovakia…

Questioner

Do you know nothing at all about a Slovak partisan uprising?

Eichmann

No, never.

Questioner

Shortly before Horthy's fall, a General La… was appointed; he replaced Stau… as prime minister. Weren't E. and B. dismissed at that time?

Eichmann

No, never. E. was State Secretary until 24 December 1944. I heard, but have no confirmation, that he was later even supposed to have become foreign minister in the government-in-exile, but I don't know exactly.

Questioner

What was the name of the Hungarian commander with the embrace scene and so on? Fa…

Eichmann

Fa…, yes, that's what he was called, Field Marshal Fa…

Questioner

Now during all this time the position of the Hungarian Jews was changing. They were more or less in the Hungarian ministries because the Hungarian government was using them to make contact with the Allies about capitulation, and Kastner was even asked to go to the Russians for negotiations, accompanied by a Hungarian Communist who spoke Russian. Kastner refused. During this period the Regent Horthy received the Jewish community president, Court Councillor S. Stern, in an audience at the Castle at the end of August 1944.

Questioner

Does the name Stern mean anything to you? Stern was probably in Hungary what Dr. R.L. was in Vienna.

Eichmann

I had dealings with him a few times too; he was insignificant.

Questioner

Then, on 15 October, the Hungarian capitulation was read out.

Questioner

So during all that time, July was the Volksdeutsche matter, and in August, September, and October you lived there on your country estate?

Eichmann

Country estate, well, at the stud farm that was under Becher's authority…

Questioner

Then you must have felt that your trade, so to speak, had been shut down…

Eichmann

I had largely evacuated Hungary, and then I received a specific assignment concerning the 10,000 Germans…

Questioner

But how could you, as head of a section, simply sit around in Hungary for weeks without a task to carry out?

Eichmann

As I already said, I went to Berlin every month. I went then too, left the command at the estate, and went to Berlin. I stayed in Berlin for eight to fourteen days and then came back down when the time was right; the journey took only a day and a half…

Questioner

Now, on 15 October, the Hungarian proclamation to lay down arms was issued. At one o'clock the counterattack came, and the Regent was taken prisoner. After that the Arrow Cross carried on Jewish policy in their own way and dealt harshly with the Jews in the capital. Two days later, on 17 October, Eichmann returned to the capital and immediately summoned Kastner. You then said to Kastner: Now you see, here I am again… You must surely have thought that the story of Romania and Bulgaria would be repeated.

Questioner

They apparently forgot that Hungary lies in the shadow of the Reich's ruins and that our hands are long enough to seize the Budapest Jews too. Now pay attention: this government works according to our orders. I will immediately make contact with Minister Ko… The Budapest Jews will be transported away, this time on foot. We now need our transport means for other purposes. Does that not suit you? Are you afraid? Don't come to me again with your American fairy tales. Work is being done here, quickly and briskly.

Questioner

Kastner turned to Becher in panic. Becher refused to oppose the new course and said, 'I can do nothing. Your friends weren't even able to get me a Swiss entry visa.'

Questioner

So you were somehow back again?

Eichmann

Yes, I came back. As far as I know, I couldn't accomplish anything more productive.

Questioner

Yet on 8 November the deportations resumed from the Budapest Ghetto: 10,000 people, mostly women. Those who stayed behind were shot. They spent the night under the open sky.

Questioner

When was the foot march?

Eichmann

In December…

Questioner

When did the Allies destroy the western railway line, so that we could no longer travel?

Eichmann

In September or October.

Questioner

Could it have been in November?

Eichmann

No, because that was what caused the foot marches…

Eichmann

That's it. After the Allies destroyed the Budapest to Vienna railway line, rail transport was no longer possible.

Questioner

E. wanted the accelerated withdrawal to continue and opposed every interruption. Somehow this led to the foot march. And they let the Allies know: Your own allies will pay for it if you destroy the railway stations for us.

Questioner

You set the first foot march in motion on 9 November. On 17 November, Juettner is said to have issued an order, and those who were on the road were sent back. People say the end of this foot march was the first success of the Swiss negotiations between Becher and S. Meier…

Eichmann

The foot march? Yes, because they were against it too, and then that came together with Juettner's matter, and the RF said: Enough with the foot march.

Eichmann

No, no, no. The Jews went from Budapest to Vienna, but they didn't get very far because the Lower Austrian Gau authorities received them, and they had to dig anti-tank trenches… [not typed]

Questioner

Then the protest came from Juettner and from the Jewish negotiator in Switzerland who was negotiating with Becher. The order is said to have come to stop this foot march, or to send various groups back. Is that right?

Eichmann

That must be the same matter about which Winkelmann once told me he could do nothing. On that I have the following to say…

Eichmann

When the Budapest to Vienna route became impassable because Allied bombers had smashed it to pieces, someone came up with the idea: all right, the Jews can march. So we drew up the plan together and made the same number of Jews march each day as we otherwise would have loaded onto trains. The Hungarian gendarmerie rounded up the Jews and escorted them across Hungarian territory. At the border, the German gendarmerie took them over. Each such transport was accompanied only by one of my officers, assigned to the respective Hungarian gendarmerie officer. Under a kind of General Staff plan, the marches covered longer stretches at first, but the daily distances grew shorter as the marches continued. Supply depots and drinking-water depots were set up accordingly, and they moved along the Budapest to Vienna road. If you tell me that many Jews were said to have been left as corpses along the way, I would have heard about it often enough at the time. I heard nothing of it. Naturally, one Jew or another fell out on such a march; that is entirely understandable, because on what march does nobody fall out? Once they reached the Austrian border, they couldn't be taken onward at first. The Lower Austrian Gauleiter received them, clearly not on his own authority but on the order of some defense commander, and they had to dig anti-tank trenches…

Questioner

But then you somehow stopped this foot march and, on 25 November, started another one again, with renewed energy. On 25 November Becher, whom Kastner had bypassed because of this foot march, went to the Reichsführer. Although he had nothing concrete to show from Switzerland or from his negotiations in the Near East, he nevertheless persuaded the RF to issue the decisive order: to stop the extermination of the Jews at once, blow up the gas chambers, and make the concentration-camp commanders personally responsible for respecting Jewish life from then on. In other words, the Himmler order we have dated to April took effect only then. So Brandt must have been presenting a concrete result from one of his negotiations to world public opinion and Jewish world opinion. It is quite possible that Kastner, Brandt, or whoever it was therefore tried, through their willing instrument Becher, to get the RF's consent to stop the physical extermination.

Eichmann

I was there. Becher wasn't alone with the RF. On 25 November? I no longer remember the dates. I went with Becher to see the RF two or three times. The RF said: I will give Pohl the order to stop…

Questioner

When? That's the question. When?

Eichmann

The author is lying. Think about it: that was the very last impact we made at all [unclear]. In October, the Russians were already blasting the neighboring house to pieces. By then everything had already stopped, which is why the impact is still so vivid in my memory. From that moment it stopped. Apart from a few weeks, the Russians hammered the suburbs. By the time the first shells hit Budapest, all evacuation had stopped. The 8 November foot march was the last remnant. Around that time, the RF had not issued a stop order.

Eichmann

If he had not given one by then, they would all have been [unclear]. But since many Jews of Hungarian nationality who were supposed to have been gassed are still alive today, we have circumstantial evidence that the date I gave you roughly coincides with the author's departure. That is when the RF gave Pohl the order to stop. Six months lie between those dates, from April through October. During those six months there were evacuations, sometimes forced, and sometimes with no evacuation at all for several weeks. The author himself writes that I had disappeared for a while. These Jews are therefore all still alive, and Jewish cunning now consists in moving the RF order, by a simple change of dates, not to the first date but to the very last date there was, and that brings us to this devastating number of evacuated Jews. So where were we supposed to get one million Jews? We would naturally have had one million Jews, but what mattered to Kastner was that it was biologically valuable Jewish blood.

Questioner

So the one thing you definitely remember is that the Budapest to Vienna foot march took place in two phases: it began and was carried out, then stopped for a time, and later resumed?

Eichmann

That is possible. I don't know. I can't determine the intervals now, but we discussed the way it happened before. I can't say how many days lay between them, but I know one thing: at one point there were around 10,000, 12,000, or 14,000 people on the trek.

Questioner

Brandt says the following about the attitude and success of the Jewish organizations in Budapest: "We had neither followed the path of the Polish Jewish councils, who, for the sake of minor concessions, lost sight of the great goal and were finally forced to betray their brothers to the enemy. We did not imitate the heroic uprising of Warsaw. We had set ourselves a more modest task. We wanted to keep the last remnants of our people alive." Can you tell me what sense he meant this in? It would matter greatly to us. How could he mean that the Polish Jewish councils, for the sake of minor concessions, lost sight of the great goal? What can he mean by that?

Eichmann

I can only speculate. I had no responsibility at all in the General Government. I didn't arrange any transports, and I didn't take part in any of this. But I think I remember that, over time, it went on for years, certainly one or two years. The local offices made personal promises to each Jewish council. By promising freedom to them and their families, they got them to work. Then they kept the village communities, which had been put into ghettos in the General Government, calm and in line, so the agencies that rounded them up could list them and carry them away. They kept them calm. There were never any uprisings. That was the work of the Jewish elders' councils in the General Government.

Questioner

Why, then, does he draw a contrast between the work of the elders' councils in Poland and those in Hungary?

Eichmann

In principle, it was the same. But I can only speculate here too. In Hungary, as in the General Government, German units rounded people up and carried them away. Lithuanian and Estonian units also carried out roundups and transports. As far as Glo is concerned, he mainly had some companies of Latvians with whom he operated in the Lublin district. These men had been hardened, and the Reichsführer must have known that too, because they had gone through a terrible school. I once spoke with one of these SS men. One bitterly cold winter, I was driving across the country with Glo when we met some Latvians, or perhaps Lithuanians. 'Well,' I said. Glo told me, 'He has no relatives left, no family left. They were all murdered.' The man spoke German. He said he was alone and had sworn revenge. They had murdered his wife, his parents, and his brothers. He was the only one left after the great murder of the Jews up there. They had been Bolsheviks. You can imagine that the German police units that used these companies had some real daredevil material on hand.

Eichmann

And they probably also prevented any resistance from arising because of the whole operation. But be that as it may, apart from Warsaw there wasn't the slightest resistance. Now, in Hungary the German authorities didn't carry out the roundups at all. The Hungarian gendarmerie did. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that L.E., who was no fool and had copied these methods from the Reich, was a very active man. They rarely found him behind a desk. He spent whole days on the move, not only in Hungary but also in Germany and Austria. He copied the methods and adapted them to Hungarian law. I am probably right that L.E. told me the Hungarian gendarmerie, for its own convenience, made all sorts of promises to the elders. I don't know whether it kept those promises. Glo did, I know that.

Questioner

In what way?

Eichmann

He had the elders gathered into so-called labor camps. He once showed me one. He was very proud of it. The Reichsführer had ordered him to design so-called police settlements, and in Lublin he was to build a model. Glo had a guesthouse there, a large, two-story building, long and spread out, with technical staff working there. He had whole labor camps like that, Glo did. The whole place was laid out rather like a monastery, enclosed by barriers and guard posts. He had a whole series of such designs ready. They hung on the wall when the Reichsführer visited, so he could decide which plan to approve. The SS stations in the East were to be arranged that way. That was one of Glo's tasks. It was a very large task. The German population in the East was to do its shopping there. There was a hospital and a doctor. Everything was included. The post kept in constant contact with smaller outposts, which also kept in constant contact. A network was planned across the East so the police would have secure quarters, could be moved quickly around the country, and the population, wherever it was, could find shelter there at once. Glo was given this work, and it kept him very busy. He had many workshops operating in Lublin, and he put Jews to work there. I saw at least a few thousand working there. Not only Jewish council members, all sorts of people. There weren't so many Jewish councils in the General Government, let alone in the Lublin district. That was how he kept his promises. I don't know how much the Hungarian gendarmerie did. Perhaps it gave these Jewish councils free passage into the Budapest ghetto. It must have done something, because there wasn't the slightest difficulty in rounding people up in Hungary, just as there hadn't been in the General Government. As Brandt says, the Polish Jewish councils, for the sake of minor concessions… So I have to say that in Hungary, in my view, it was done the same way. Otherwise, how could the Hungarian gendarmerie have worked so effortlessly?

Eichmann

Of course the Hungarian gendarmerie worked more hurriedly. I was once sent to Pohl in Berlin. Actually, I wasn't ordered there: Pohl asked Mueller to have me come in, and Mueller told me to go to Pohl because he had some factual questions to discuss. Höss had complained about the condition in which Jews were arriving in Auschwitz. If Höss had simply sent them into the gas chambers, why would he have complained to his superior about the condition of the transports, with a few corpses lying in some wagons because they had been given too little water or too little food? That would not have concerned him if they had simply marched into the gas chambers. And why would Pohl have wanted me to come to him, to tell me about these complaints in rather blunt words and say that this had to stop at once? I told him then that I wasn't responsible. It was the affair of the Hungarian authorities and the Hungarian government. I can say that we didn't take over the transports. I told E. that too: we would no longer accept the transports. I told the advisers for the individual counties that the escort unit wasn't to leave until the transports were equipped to the WVHA's requirements.

Questioner

Do you remember Höss expressing to you, or to Pohl, his superior, that he wasn't at all in agreement with the way these foot marches were carried out?

Eichmann

Höss had nothing to do with that.

Questioner

But he saw it?

Eichmann

It is possible. At the beginning, some people were gathered for anti-tank ditch construction, but that only became clear later. He may not have agreed with it. I wouldn't have agreed either, but it wasn't our task. The Hungarians could do what they wanted in their own country. If E. had had a reason and wanted, for example, to have 10,000 Jews on the march shot in the street by his gendarmerie, no one could have stopped him. The Hungarian government was sovereign. We had to restrain ourselves and be very careful because Hungarian national feeling had turned hostile. They were anxious that the so-called ally would not go too far. How often I had to hear E. say, "Yes, you know, this will be very difficult for me, because they guard their sovereignty jealously."

Questioner

So you don't remember Höss saying to you, "I saw the foot march and I wasn't at all in agreement with it"?

Eichmann

It's possible. Höss always grumbled on principle. In that case I would have done the same, because whenever I received a transport or had a camp, I always found something to complain about. If I had nothing to complain about, I would look for something, so I could get an excess of this material into the camp, because I never had enough of [handwriting]. He never had enough. He never had enough medication or other things. He had to grumble constantly. He was obliged to. But you can see from that, if they were all

Eichmann

thrown into the oven, it could have been all the same to him.

Questioner

Was it possible to work out from the statistics how many Jews of Hungarian citizenship were still alive? Is a number known?

Eichmann

No, 220,000 were announced, but the number was doctored much further downward.

Eichmann

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

Questioner

Where were they kept all that time?

Eichmann

They moved from camp to camp. They were waiting.

Questioner

Wait, was this the group of prominent Jews Weinberg had gathered around himself?

Speaker not established

No.

Speaker not established

Those were the 700 young people Kastner had picked out, young people. Some others were included too, such as his entire family, including his wife's father and mother… and so on. Kastner was then with Becher on the trip to Switzerland. The agreement was that 20 million Swiss francs would be deposited, and then they would cross the border. The whole group had already arrived, but the 20 million still hadn't been deposited. The transport went to Gromeid… Krell, Becher's adjutant, had received an express order to hold the transport back if the promises about the 20 million weren't kept. Even so, although nothing had been deposited, the Jews were allowed into Switzerland, and Kastner was allowed to see the 136 Jews who had left Budapest months earlier. There he met his friends, his wife, and his father-in-law, and found that the Brandt family wasn't among them. On Eichmann's orders, Gromeid had held back the three sisters and the old mother shortly before the train left.

Eichmann

I know nothing about that.

Questioner

Could it be that, in the course of the statement you made to Brandt, you told him, "Well, my dear fellow, you aren't going with your family. Your family isn't going with you. I won't take it out on your family, but it isn't going with you"?

Eichmann

No, I most certainly didn't order that. I couldn't have stopped it anyway if they had crossed the green border somewhere else. The Hungarian borders weren't guarded by us. On one side there was the front; on the other, the non-front side. Anyone who wanted to cross the green border could get across at any time. Jews were crossing in a steady stream. I couldn't have stopped Frau Brandt or anyone else unless I had locked them up. No one could say that even one family member was under guard while Brandt was away. No family member had been placed under a police reporting requirement. That's a common way of restricting people, so you can bring them back under control every few hours. We never did that. Those would have been the most basic conditions for any security. A hundred percent guarantee would have meant taking them into custody, perhaps special custody for prominent people. Even that wasn't done. Why, then, would I have arranged to remove these people from the transport?

Eichmann

I can imagine that it was fairly indifferent to me. It was completely indifferent to me whom Kastner included in there, and it was just as indifferent to me whether he had also included his own relatives.

Questioner

While Kastner is negotiating at the eleventh hour in Switzerland [not typed] Kastner can stay in Switzerland, but he does not want to. He wants to go back, because he wants to help the last remnants of his people out of the gravest danger. It is further established that at that moment he could already count entirely on Becher's support, and that he therefore wanted to persuade Becher to preserve the Jews still remaining in Reich territory from destruction. Becher and his people got themselves ever deeper into this operation, human lives against goods. Becher made it his own affair. Although the SS economic council had to give up hope of obtaining any serious return from the Allied side, Becher carried on. The moment came when Becher was no longer concerned with any return at all for the Jews. He wanted to link his name with the scattered remnants of this people. In the last months he manages to push everything through with Himmler, and Himmler transfers to him control of all the concentration camps. Becher mentions an order of Himmler's to all commandants of the concentration camps to hand the camps over to the Allies without a fight. There are rumors that the whole camps are to be blown up. One part of the SS is charged with this task, and at its head stand Eichmann's immediate superiors, Kaltenbrunner 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. An agitated scene takes place between him and Becher. The commandant declares that Kaltenbrunner has taken over the southern sector and that Himmler has nothing more to order him. Becher gets his way with Kaltenbrunner, so that the Jews were spared. He sends Kastner with Gromeid to Theresienstadt and the other camps to secure the handover to the Russians without a fight. In Theresienstadt a fight could never have taken place. Now tell me, what do you have to say about these various findings?

Eichmann

Well now, I did not know the details, but it was clear to me that Becher had received special assignments from the Reichsführer, and do you know why Becher may have received these assignments? My guess was that Becher shared with the Reichsführer and exploited that accordingly. Becher once told me on a drive to the Reichsführer [not typed]

Eichmann

Once an SS man has been let in on the personal and most delicate matters of a chief, it follows that such a man speaks to his chief in an entirely different tone of negotiation than someone who dealt with his chief only officially or on the business itself. And I would say that Becher's negotiations with the Reichsführer were of two kinds, one when a third person was present, the other when he was alone with the Reichsführer. How else could he have obtained command over all the concentration camps? I don't know, because I had nothing to do with the camp economy. But it is entirely possible, because I was myself an ear and eye witness that Becher had a very easy way of speaking with the Reichsführer and could in any case influence him.

Questioner

Do you still remember that from your side, or from Müller's, any

Questioner

suggestions were made about what would have to happen if the Allies advanced and a concentration camp lay nearby

Eichmann

No, I know nothing about that at all. It is quite possible that Müller settled these matters with the responsible offices. On the other hand I know that around that time the roads were clogged with camp inmates, because the camps under pressure from the enemy were being moved further and further back, partly into the camps that still lay in safety, where overcrowding was then added on top. On my journeys I saw some of these huge treks creeping wearily along. I don't know whether the guards were wearier than the rest, but they crept along so wearily that not even the last man was capable of thinking about resistance. But of the blowing up, or of the Danube barges, I know nothing. Müller would have had to tell me that if I had been responsible for it. I was only responsible as far as the railway station to which I had to bring the Jews. What happened to them after that was no longer any concern of Department IV B 4. We were not informed either, nothing.

Questioner

So in other words, and it is even said here that Becher handed the Bergen-Belsen camp over to the English, even against the will of the military command posts. These are all things that you neither deny nor confirm?

Eichmann

No, I can't. It is also entirely human that at the end, and not everyone is made that way, they should want to buy themselves a life insurance policy, and buy it from the enemy side, because the Jews were the enemy side. I have said that repeatedly and I believed it. It was a guiding thread for me as well, because Chaim Weizmann had declared war on the German people.

Questioner

One gets the impression that at the end, in the last months, in Hungary too, Becher carried off your area of authority at a run?

Eichmann

He did too.

Questioner

In what sense?

Eichmann

He had been trying from the beginning to get these matters out of my hands somehow. He couldn't. He could not issue a state police instruction, because he would have run into granite everywhere, at every police office. No official would ever have accepted an order from him, and even if he had been an Obergruppenführer, the little official would have stood to attention and said yes, but he would have done nothing, because he would not have dared. The little official had no cover from above. He may only accept an instruction that is to take effect in his own area of authority if he knows that the man is his superior. But nobody accepts even the smallest order from an outsider. You have the example of the SS Brigadeführer in Vienna having the synagogue set on fire in front of me, and how I come upon it just as a typewriter is being smashed to the floor. I called the Brigadeführer to account, and he had to put up with it, although I was only a Hauptsturmführer. Normally he would have had to have me [not typed]. In that case I stood before him as the man charged with the official negotiation. Becher, on the other hand, never received an office. But if you tell me that at the end the Reichsführer placed the whole camp system under him, then of course the camp commandants' offices will have had to follow his instructions, and they could then have put the corresponding note in their files.

Eichmann

But Becher was fiddling about everywhere. He conducted negotiations with the Jews, so that I asked Müller whether he was entitled to, and he had been entitled to. The blame here lay with the Reichsführer himself. He was often rather flighty in his decisions, and it could happen to you that you were with him in the morning, drove off, and the next day or a few days later someone else came and told him the same matter in a different way, and then he ordered the opposite of what he had told you. The Reichsführer also often decided individual cases personally, and by deciding an individual case he would flatly overturn some general order he had issued. It was extraordinarily difficult, precisely because of the Reichsführer's varying decisions, and so Becher knew how to get first one concession and then another out of him. The negotiation with Becher alone already meant a decentralization. I had no control whatsoever over what Becher was negotiating with these people, with Kastner and the rest. Conversely, Becher had no control over what I negotiated with those people, because I was not bound by any decree to submit all my measures and all my talks to Becher in copy for the record and for his information. He was not bound either, so it was a matter of feeling each other out. Kastner in fact had an easy game, because he could have played the two of us off against one another. But it was so that I had a very proper relationship with Becher and the two of us did not make life difficult for each other. I had nothing to object to in Becher, and if I hear today that he had the Reichsführer's order, then I must even say that in the end he cannot be blamed for it, if I formed my judgment of Becher differently, since I could read about his conduct only in the enemy press [not typed] and drew my conclusion from that. As I said, he worked together with the enemy. If what Brandt writes here is correct, then Becher was in the right. Some cases are correct, I know that for certain. Economic advantages, we negotiated those with the Jews, that is correct.

Questioner

But in what way did it show itself that he was trying to take various areas of authority away from you, or took them away?

Eichmann

In his quarters he had gathered Kastner and Kastner's staff around him, and we had arranged to meet at a set time in his conference building. Sometimes he came to me, sometimes I went to him, to discuss various matters, possibly even with Kastner, and I told you that a piece of theater was staged for us at that time. [not typed] A face flushed deep red. Gassing ten thousand more Jews. [not typed]

Eichmann

That went against the grain with me, because I was annoyed, first, that he was telling the enemy something here that did not fall within my area of authority at all, and second, that he was allowing himself a measure, that he was anticipating a certain state police requirement for me, because I too would never have told the enemy such a thing. He was interfering here in state police authority. He even overstepped it, in that in his incapacity he attributed to the Gestapo office measures that absolutely do not fall within that office's field of work. And that may well have been the real reason why Müller wanted him in Berlin at all costs. Müller's intention was to arrest Becher and lock him up.

Questioner

Did no incidents with Becher occur then?

Eichmann

No. I did say to him, don't you know that this is not our job, how could you say such a thing. In that form I must have said it to him.

Eichmann

The tone between Becher and me was exceedingly comradely and polite.

Questioner

Can you sum up briefly once more. It seems that in December 1944 things in Budapest went up and down quite a lot, and that you practically lost control over Jewish affairs. What can you still say about that in summary?

Eichmann

I'll tell you frankly, I lost control. I lost more than that. I was bound to lose control at the moment when nothing could be evacuated any more, and had not been for a long time, and with that my authority for everything else lapsed, because I possessed no authority whatever for measures in Hungary. Nothing was being registered or loaded any more, nothing could be sent off any more, there was no timetable left either, the trains ran irregularly, the Russian was shelling into Budapest. At one point he pushed quite far forward as far as Csepel, was thrown back again for a short time, then came in again and drew the ring around Budapest ever tighter. I remember only one more thing, that around that time in Budapest Becher was taking a great deal of valuable material out of Hungary, silver and so on. Where he took it I don't know. He handed it over to the Jew Mosche Schweiger.

Questioner

Do you remember that on the second or third of December that special camp that existed there, where Kastner put his emigrants, in the Columbusgasse, was surrounded by the Arrow Cross men, and that shots were fired at these Arrow Cross men from inside the camp, whereupon a considerable reprisal was carried out, and Kastner then hurried to you and the Jewish leaders came to you and asked why all this was being done, and you answered them, yes, that is a real mess, weapons were found among you, men fit to fight, what are they doing there, the front is close by?

Eichmann

No, nothing known to me. I had nothing to do with it. I was waiting daily for my order of recall.

Questioner

On what day did you leave Budapest?

Eichmann

On 24 December 1944 at three in the afternoon.

Questioner

Is this picture authentic?

Eichmann

That is a portrait of me as a young man. The head might almost be right, although I don't recall ever having rolled my eyes like that. The collar, in any case, and those enormous buttons, I did not have made for myself in my youth. Nor do I recall ever having worn such a dreadful tie, because as far back as I can think I never favored the loud checked pattern. In any case the lower part is all bluff, and the upper part I don't know. It may be from some youthful portrait they found and then photographed.

Questioner

Here you have the report of 22 June 1944 about this Brandt matter.

Questioner

With that we have brought the Hungary chapter to a close.

Questioner

The first measure against the Jews resident in Greece is said to have been the order for forced labor of the male Jews. Are you aware of that?

Eichmann

No. Did we have a military commander in Greece?

Questioner

Yes.

Eichmann

And did we have a supreme office that represented the civil interests of the Reich?

Questioner

Yes, it was a Greek government.

Eichmann

Roughly the same relationship we had with Slovakia, or

Questioner

Was it freer?

Eichmann

No, it was not freer. Slovakia was a protectorate, whereas Greece was occupied territory.

Eichmann

Can you tell me whom I had down there?

Questioner

We will come to that later. Perhaps you remember the conscription of the Jews for labor, if I tell you that it was lifted in return for a [blotted] payment of a contribution, against 200 million from [not typed]

Eichmann

Paid to whom?

Questioner

To the occupation authorities?

Eichmann

I know nothing of that. So that was 1942.

Questioner

It is possible that your office was not involved at that time, and was only brought in during 1943, when you sent Wulf to Greece for the deportations. Wulf as an emissary of the Eichmann office.

Eichmann

I never had a man by the name of Wulf.

Questioner

Your people never worked under cover names?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

This Wulf had the task of preparing the Jews for the measures, after which Eichmann himself came on a visit.

Eichmann

Never was there. And I was in Greece the first and last time in 1937. Never again did I set foot on [blotted] soil.

Questioner

What you say here is very interesting, because it bears on the truthfulness of the book in several respects.

Eichmann

I must reject it flatly, because I never set foot in Greece. I also never had an adviser by the name of Wulf, and I had no SS leader by the name of Wulf. I cannot always recall offhand whom I had in one place or another, but when a name is given to me, then I know at once, and the person is present to me.

Questioner

What is claimed is this. After Wulf's preparations you came to Greece, and Wi stayed there to carry out the measures.

Eichmann

It is possible that Wi was in Greece. Did we have a state police office down there, or something of the kind? There was a commander of the security police down there. It is possible that this Wulf was a desk officer in the commander's office, who of course was not under me, but who perhaps obtained his instructions from the Reich Security Main Office through his own superior office in the security service. What the individual desk officers were called in the various other offices is naturally beyond my knowledge, because as a rule I had nothing personal to do with these people. Personally it was no concern of mine, because they drafted such a letter for their chief, and it was the commander who wrote to the Reich Security Main Office, not the desk officer.

Questioner

But it is expressly claimed that Wulf was in the Eichmann office.

Eichmann

That is exactly as accurate as the claim that I was in Greece. You must dismiss it as an invention.

Questioner

Are you familiar with the [off the sheet] ghetto in Greece?

Eichmann

No

Questioner

It is claimed that this ghetto was filled and emptied by turns through transports in and out, and that 42,835 people, the figure is given exactly, were carried away in 16 trains to be killed.

Eichmann

Where to?

Questioner

To Auschwitz, to Poland.

Eichmann

To Poland as well, into the General Government?

Eichmann

That Jewish transports were carried out from Greece, that I know, and that was when Wi was down there. Though I am of the opinion that Burger or Brunner was down there. I would almost say that Burger was down there first in Greece and that I then sent support to him.

Questioner

Yes, Brunner was down there, Anton Brunner, yes.

Eichmann

Now I recall it too, and then I sent Wi down to him as reinforcement. But who carried out the transports down there, that is, who did the registration and the loading, that I do not know. In any case I had, apart from the [not typed]

Questioner

The man was called L. Brunner, Anton Brunner.

Eichmann

Anton Brunner?

Questioner

In the book he is named as Anton Brunner.

Eichmann

But his name was Alois Brunner, Hauptsturmfuehrer.

Questioner

In the book he is only called Anton Brunner.

Eichmann

I did have an Anton Brunner, but at the end he sat in the administration and realization office in Prague. He was a civilian.

Questioner

This will be Alois Brunner, of course.

Eichmann

They took nothing down with them but their personal kit. They had no orderly, no men, they had nothing at all. So who carried out the registration down there, that I no longer know. Perhaps the Wehrmacht did it, or the order police. Did we have a commander of the order police there?

Questioner

Yes, I believe so. The last one from the order police was Schiemana.

Eichmann

Schiemana? I do not know him.

Questioner

He was a higher SS and police leader. The [not typed] and the freight cars were made available by the Wehrmacht. Does the name of the chief rabbi Kroetts mean anything to you, who was chairman of the Jewish council?

Eichmann

The name is dimly familiar.

Questioner

He played a large part for the Eichmann office in the deportations, in that he positively canvassed among the Jews to get them to agree to be resettled to Poland, telling them that land would be allotted to the Jews in Poland and that they would have advantages, and so on. It would have been in the year 43.

Eichmann

Perhaps it was an invention of the offices that carried out the registration and the loading, or else there could have been a kernel of truth in it, because there was a time when I actually wanted to create a Jewish territory here in the General Government. In the Lublin district, and it began with the settlement of 2,000 Jews from Moravian Ostrava. We wanted to build a Jewish reservoir then, and I had difficulties with Frank of Poland, the General Government, who objected to Jews being brought into the General Government. But it seems to me the time is somewhat too far advanced, 43, my efforts lay a good deal earlier, so that this probably was an invention on the part of the registering authorities.

Questioner

There is confusion about Koretts. He was held in Vienna for some months, and it is claimed that during that time he was prepared for this task.

Eichmann

[too faint] possibly the subordinate offices did it. I know nothing about it. I would not want to deny having heard the name Koretts. Koretts is not an unusual name, and it is possible that I am confusing the sound of it with something else.

Questioner

These Jews, who were promised that they would be taken to Poland and allotted land there, came to Auschwitz and were killed there.

Eichmann

But then where does it come from that we had so many Jews of Greek citizenship afterwards?

Questioner

Those are the claims the book makes. Among other things it is also claimed that the neutral representative of the International Red Cross was prevented from bringing food to the train.

Eichmann

As I said, Greece was far away. I no longer know, I never set foot in it. I had one adviser down there and no other staff. How, with whom and where he got his way, that was his own business. I know that some transports rolled out of Greece.

Questioner

Did they travel overland? Yes. By way of Yugoslavia?

Eichmann

That does not appear from it.

Questioner

Do you know anything about negotiations in December 1943 between Herr von Datten of the Foreign Office and a Spanish diplomat, to the effect that the Spanish government would be prepared to take in Spanish Jews from all the occupied territories?

Eichmann

No, that is unknown to me.

Questioner

Perhaps you remember if I tell you that in February 1944, 367 Spanish Jews were released from Bergen-Belsen by way of Spain. They then went to North Africa and received the right of transit from the Spanish government. That was the result between von Datten and the Spanish diplomat Dias.

Eichmann

The following is possible here. When you tell me they were released from the concentration camp, that is not necessarily proof that I must have known of it as the desk officer of IV B 4, because at that time there was a standing order from the Reichsfuehrer that a Jew who was in a concentration camp could no longer be 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. So it would be entirely conceivable that Legation Councillor von Datten approached the Reichsfuehrer through the Foreign Office. That the Reichsfuehrer instructed the chief of the security police that the Jews of Spanish citizenship should be released from the camps, and gave Pohl an instruction, and that the chief of the security police passed word on through official channels to the head of Office IV, and the head of Office IV gave his protective custody officer instructions for the Economic and Administrative Main Office, that such and such Jews were to be handed over on such and such a date to such and such a person. Because we must draw a distinction. In the camps, with persons of that kind, whether Jews or not Jews, who were delivered through the state police offices on the ground of some offense, under some existing article, there was a proper detention review date, and there it was decided whether he stays in or whether his corrective measure has come far enough that he can be released. And on the other hand the Jews committed later, the Jews committed by wholesale procedure on the order of the Reichsfuehrer, where no index card was made out for the individual any more, because it was left to the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office to deal with these groups at its own discretion. That is, to put them into aircraft plants, into the rest of industry, or also to bring them to physical destruction. So that no longer concerned the protective custody section, and it no longer concerned the other desk officers either. So I must

Eichmann

explain this to you, so that it can be understood that I as the desk officer of IV B 4 need not necessarily have known of this measure. Perhaps I was informed of it for my information, but for me the matter lay so far on the margin that I can no longer remember it, because I was not the responsible authority for it. Years earlier I had been the responsible authority for it, namely while emigration was still permitted. Then I did have the order from the Reichsfuehrer to arrange emigration possibilities for all Jews committed to the camps, and for that we set up a separate section of our own in Vienna. But with the start of the war that was forbidden by the Reichsfuehrer, and from that time on I had nothing more to do with persons who had once been in a camp. So that was a question that concerned only the Foreign Office and the Reichsfuehrer himself. Of course the offices for carrying it out as well, such as the SS Administrative Main Office and the Reich Security Main Office. The Spanish ambassador will have approached the Reichsfuehrer away from the office. Those are the sorts of things that were done with a handshake, or following some reception. Everyone was looking for a suitable occasion to get something done.

Questioner

But it is an example of his deciding differently in individual cases, although he had himself given the order that nothing was to be done. And if anyone had acted against the order, it would have been called punishable.

Questioner

Does it appear from your material that these 300 Spanish Jews came into the German sphere of power from Spain?

Eichmann

No, that does not appear.

Questioner

It says here expressly that Spain had declared itself willing to take in all Jews of Spanish citizenship from the occupied territories. So are these Jews who were picked up in the course of the registration?

Eichmann

Apparently, yes.

Questioner

Or are they Jews who emigrated decades ago?

Eichmann

When the registrations were carried out, our guidelines read that Jews of foreign citizenship are to be exempted from them. In France, for example, I could not have Jews of neutral or in any way allied countries loaded up en bloc under the wholesale procedure if they did not agree. That would not do. I could never have a Jew of English citizenship taken to Auschwitz. They were treated separately.

Questioner

Then how did these Spanish Jews come to be in the camp?

Eichmann

Perhaps by mistake. Because you see, those were guidelines, but depending on where it was, mistakes were made as well. I am convinced, for instance, that in the General Government no distinction was made whether the Jew was of Polish citizenship or was stateless or held Swiss citizenship. I would guess that it was fairly immaterial to the responsible offices in the General Government. That will have been the case here too, because it is not Germany alone that is spoken of, but the whole occupied territory.

Questioner

In what year is this conversation about these Spanish Jews supposed to have taken place?

Questioner

The conversation between von Datten and the Spanish diplomat was on 22 December 1943. On 7 February 1944, 367 Jews were released from Bergen-Belsen and received the Spanish transit visa.

Eichmann

This date is one more reason why I cannot remember it, because from January 1944 to about March 1944 I was sitting about 100 kilometers from Berlin in a forest, and had the task of building a village in which the [blotted]

Eichmann

was to be, and from there, when Mueller took over the matter. It was a small barracks town that I had built up there, a barracks for the office chief IV, barracks for the individual sections and so on. There he carried the order of the RF out to me in the forest, that I was to prepare myself for Hungary with immediate effect, and he imposed the duty of silence on me. I was not even able to say anything about it to my deputy. I then soon marched off to [handwriting], and in [blotted] itself I was cut off from the world, I was not allowed to leave the camp, because Hungary was being prepared in secret.

Questioner

Was your section brought in at all on this matter of the Spanish Jews?

Eichmann

I never heard anything about it. Perhaps, perhaps not. It is also a fairly incidental case. Even if I had been in Berlin, my permanent deputy would have carried it out automatically, because it was an isolated case. I dealt only with cases that had fundamental significance.

Questioner

Do you know that as the last transport out of Greece, in August 44, the entire Jewish population of the island of Rhodes, about 1,240 people, was transported away?

Eichmann

I cannot tell you that either, because I was not in Berlin the whole of 44. When I was in Berlin, I concerned myself with the Hungarian matters that had to be pushed through there, because I was in Hungary from March 44 until Christmas Eve 44. That was when I pulled out. I should have pulled out on 22 December, because that was when the office of the Higher Police Leader and of the Security Police marched out of Budapest. I still had things to do, and I wanted to spend a few more hours with my friend Zehender. I had nothing to do in any case, whether I now settled myself in Oedenberg and waited there idly for the order that came from Berlin, or whether I stayed in Budapest with my friend Zehender, who commanded the 22nd SS Cavalry Division.

Eichmann

I have already told you what worries and what fear the police went through, because for a time I was counted as missing. I really did come out of Budapest as the last man of the Sipo, with my driver, and the road we passed along afterward, the stretch from Budapest to Rat, was already under Russian fire. The great column of trek traffic, which for days on end had streamed without a break out of Budapest in the direction of Vienna and blocked the road down to the last square meter, was no longer there. The road was as if dead, deserted.

Eichmann

So if you ask me now whether a transport left Rhodes in August 44, I cannot tell you at all, because I was in Hungary in unbroken succession from March 44 until Christmas Eve 44, and I came to Berlin only to put my Hungarian business in order. I did not involve myself in the affairs of the section, nor could I have involved myself, because then I would have had to work my way in again. Even if I am the desk officer and have been posted away, I cannot, when I am in Berlin for a few hours or a few days, sit down at my desk and start governing there again. I had no idea at all about the background to things. For that I would first have had to work through the files, and I had no time for that. My permanent deputy Guenter certainly gave me an outline in broad strokes of the events of the past weeks. I believe that in any case, because my interest in the matter was too great, and his interest was too great to spoil things with me here, to play the high-handed prince here. I was not entitled to any [blotted] authority, because I could too easily have decided against it, when one is away so long from a central authority.

Eichmann

That is also why I know so little about Greece.

Questioner

But the involvement of the Eichmann office in this transporting away of the Jews from Rhodes, that really the entire Jewish population was transported away.

Eichmann

Yes, that is possible. It is clear, Greece was to be cleansed, and now they make it easy for themselves and say Eichmann office, yes.

Questioner

It is claimed that 2 men from the Eichmann office, Anton Brunner and Wi, paid a visit to the commander of Rhodes, to Lieutenant General Clemens, who then took over the practical side of carrying it out.

Eichmann

Well, I can only congratulate my Hauptsturmfuehrer on that, they had success there. Of course it is clear that they describe themselves as the Eichmann office. In Greece they are not going to say Section IV B 4, that was perhaps simpler. I had already been sitting in the section for a long time, that was Mueller's strength, to keep his people so long that they were ready for a pension or no longer fit for duty, because as an old criminal investigator he told himself that the longer a man is in the service, the better a specialist he is in that field. Once a man has been in a section that long, and before that section had to run the work in the individual central authorities, then through the press alone the name Eichmann had detached itself into a symbol, provided with the usual epithets. In any case the name Jew, in the territories in which a German [not typed] moved in, was hopelessly bound up with the name Eichmann. So it comes about that although I was not serving in Berlin, the name Eichmann office clung to my section, and my Hauptsturmfuehrer and my people operated as such too, because it is quite clear that these people had no reason at all to say to the military commander of Rhodes, for instance, yes, our previous chief and his permanent deputy Guenter has now [blotted]. To make the matter short, they said the well known word Eichmann and told the military commander, our chief Eichmann has the instruction to transport the Jews away. Although I know nothing exact about any of it, because I was not serving in Berlin myself.

Questioner

And with that we want to close the chapter on Greece.

Questioner

As you know, no deportations at all were carried out from Altengarten. The deportations were carried out only from Bulgaria, out of the occupied Greek and Yugoslav territories.

Eichmann

Dannecker was down there.

Questioner

In which year, on 22 February 43.

Eichmann

That cannot be right, he was in Paris then. I cannot quite recall it, but it will probably have been 44, because in 43 Dannecker was in Paris, since I was in Paris myself.

Questioner

Is there not the possibility that he was posted away with a special commando for only a short time?

Eichmann

No. Perhaps I can help you. Did we still have much to say in France in 44? I do not think so. That is why Dannecker would have been superfluous. And Dannecker was a very hard nut. Once he had received an order, he kept boring away until the order had been carried out. A report saying an order has not been carried out I never heard from Dannecker in all my life. I always put Dannecker where it was delicate and where somebody had to push things through, and I take it that if I had Dannecker down there, this matter in Bulgaria was in the year 44.

Questioner

On 20 May 1943 a meeting took place in Berlin to drive the Jews out of Sofia within [not typed].

Eichmann

Where is the meeting supposed to have taken place?

Questioner

In Berlin. The commander of the Sipo was Otto Hofmann, and the whole affair became a failure, because 2,000 exemption certificates were issued by the government for 6,000 Jews, demonstrations by the population in favor of the Jews took place, and Hofmann had to content himself with a failure.

Eichmann

If a meeting is supposed to have taken place in Berlin, that the Jews were to be resettled into the flat country, then I have to object here that this perhaps happened, but dressed up dramatically, such a meeting will never have taken place in Berlin. It is just as untrue as when the author claims I was personally in Greece, or that I had a case officer named Wulf, for instance. This is a matter that does not touch the slightest Reich interest, whether the Jews are now sitting in the flat country or not. The responsible office holder down there decides that at his own discretion and does not first ask the central offices in Berlin.

Questioner

But Bulgaria was a friendly country at that time.

Eichmann

Then the commander there could have negotiated with the Bulgarian government all the more.

Questioner

Do you know that Bulgaria had a commissioner for Jewish affairs, named Belle?

Eichmann

No. Bulgaria played no part at all where I was concerned, and I take it that all of this happened in the year 44.

Questioner

Out of Bulgaria, out of the Greek and Yugoslav parts occupied by Bulgaria, 11,000 Jews were taken. They came to Auschwitz and were killed there, in Treblinka and Auschwitz.

Questioner

So these deportations are unknown to you?

Eichmann

It is no longer familiar to me today.

Eichmann

With the authors it is always only, they came to Auschwitz and were killed there. I ask myself, how does it come about then that these Jews were found afterward?

Questioner

So beyond that you know nothing further about Bulgaria?

Eichmann

Not at the moment.

Questioner

It is claimed that Dannecker helped in the arrest of 20,000 Jews. Besides that it is claimed that the German envoy exerted great pressure on the Bulgarian government in the matter of the Jewish question.

Eichmann

Yes, that is right. Yes, I had sent Dannecker down, but Dannecker had nothing to do with the BDS. Instead he was to keep close to the German envoy, and if one says that Bulgaria had a commissioner for Jewish affairs, then either Dannecker, with the clearance certificate of the German envoy, will himself have stood at this commissioner's side with advice, or on the basis of Dannecker's paperwork the German envoy will have stood at the side of the responsible Bulgarian office in the Interior Ministry. Roughly the guidelines were given that we had approved in other countries and handed over with a recommendation, so to speak for kind observance, because it was an approved procedure, in the keeping of which one meets the least resistance and by which one will achieve the smallest possible number of [not typed]. It was the task of the Jewish adviser that a) the foreign offices should force the Jews on the German Reich, and that before the eyes of the world face should be preserved. Face preserved means here that the Jews were not beaten into the wagons like cattle, but that all of it goes on in a humane manner, according to the principle avoidable hardships are to be avoided.

Questioner

Do you believe, looking back, that that succeeded?

Eichmann

As regards Hungary I know it, otherwise Hoess and Pohl would not have shouted. And they would not have branded me the scapegoat, when I could do nothing about it. Naturally [unclear] gave back this reprimand aimed at me, and I also arranged with the Hungarian government to approach my superior of the Fesemeier office here, Fesemeier, and to say that I had nothing to do with it, but that they had now, the other way around, been made aware of it and would step in energetically, because in the end it was Fesemeier who had the unpleasantness.

Eichmann

Naturally I am otherwise not convinced that the French police, for instance, always went about it very humanely with 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 public saw, and there one had to keep face.

Questioner

Were you informed that difficulties were made on the part of the Bulgarian king?

Eichmann

No, that is unknown to me. I suspect that all of that took place in the year 44, when I was not in Berlin.

Questioner

When was the first transport out of Slovakia to Auschwitz carried out? Would it have been possible at all for transports of Jews to be carried out from Slovakia before Slovakia was independent?

Eichmann

No, impossible.

Questioner

When was the film ball in Vienna that ran under the patronage of Hin?

Eichmann

On that same night the preparations were made for making Slovakia independent.

Eichmann

That same night I drove away from the film ball with Slovaks who then became members of the government.

Eichmann

In the autumn of 1939, we were wearing the dress cords on the uniform for the first time.

Questioner

When was the march into Prague?

Eichmann

In March 39. The declaration of Slovak independence came immediately after.

Eichmann

Good, so it went there, Wi; the envoy Ludin was there [not typed]

Questioner

Don't you remember that the Slovaks made a transport available voluntarily?

Eichmann

Either 42 or 43.

Questioner

But hadn't Ludin long been envoy by then?

Eichmann

41, yes. In Slovakia we had no adviser at a German office or at a Sipo office; there had never been one there either.

Eichmann

We had an adviser for the Jewish question at the German legation. Wi was not subordinate to the Sipo, he was directly subordinate to the German envoy. I visited Ludin myself 2 or 3 times and I had to set out the guidelines in person, in the most exact detail, the guidelines we were ordered to follow by the RF. Ludin then certainly prepared the ground with the Slovak government here without much difficulty.

Eichmann

In September 42 I was at the Slovak Interior Ministry with Mach for the 2nd time and had to pay him a courtesy visit. I knew Mach from the time when he was not yet a minister, and it was not difficult for me to speak with him about the practical problems either, especially since there was no need whatever to keep to any compulsory order of negotiation fixed beforehand by both sides. On this 2nd visit, in the evening, the [blotted] orderly had brought him the report from his Prague representative that an assassination attempt had been carried out on Heydrich. I left for Prague in the early hours of the morning. Before this 2nd visit I had, on the occasion of my 1st visit to Mach, a discussion with Disso, with the clergyman, with the state secretary. When I spoke with Disse, that may have been some months before September 1942, transport trains were already rolling. It was not that I initiated the discussion with Disso; rather Disse wished to speak to me, and Ludin told me so. Disso wanted a binding assurance from me that Jews living in mixed marriages, so far as they were Catholic, or baptized Jews, would remain untouched. The rest he offered me with the greatest willingness, which in itself surprised me very much at the time, since he was there in his priest's cassock.

Eichmann

That is why I still remember this discussion very exactly. That was at the beginning of 42.

Questioner

And the first transports rolled after that?

Eichmann

Yes. Wi had no trouble, and it suited Wi, who as a man had a tendency to phlegm because of his corpulence, although he was an excellent negotiator and his strength lay in negotiation. It suited him that he found in Slovakia a field that consumed so little labor, where he had Ludin, to whom he only had to drop a few hints, and Ludin, whenever some small stoppage arose, dashed off at once to the Slovak office. They then ironed out the difficulties immediately, and the Slovaks hurried to set up the transports on an assembly line, and I remember that we had difficulties with the Reich Transport Ministry, because we with the timetable

Eichmann

could not manage at all in places. The whole removal out of Slovakia was not run consecutively one after another, as it was in Hungary for example. In Slovakia we had stoppages to record and these often ran to a good many weeks, and I also still remember that [blotted] was the only one of the Slovak government who made no direct large difficulties, but who kept raising formal difficulties again and again.

Questioner

Have you read anything similar?

Eichmann

Yes, but very much that contradicts it. Their statements go much further than what the Jewish literature brings out.

Questioner

It is claimed that after the first transports the [not typed] came, that volunteers were made available by the Slovak government, and that already in July 1942 a revolt of the Slovak government against these deportations took place. The only driving force in this matter is said to have been Mach.

Eichmann

Yes, yes, at the beginning everything was fine. They would have been glad if we had taken all the Jews away in a single night. Then, once Schantzki was caught up in his ministerial routine, and what a difference there is between a so-called time of struggle and a time behind a desk in complete calm, he naturally developed misgivings, because he heard the many voices working on him, and perhaps also feared disadvantages of an economic kind for Slovakia. Schantzki was among the people who made difficulties for me on the part of the government. Mach was always the one who then got the thing rolling again.

Questioner

How did Disse here, for example, lodge such a sharp veto or make difficulties, as may have been very easy in Hungary (Horthy)?

Eichmann

Disse never made difficulties, and that may also be the reason why his interior minister had no cause to put the brakes on a problem of his own accord, one that, seen from his ideological and political standpoint, he would rather have had solved yesterday than today.

Questioner

Are you not mistaken when you speak of transports running continuously?

Eichmann

By continuously I mean transports out of Hungary, where I don't know how many marched off daily.

Questioner

You may also be wrong when you speak of interruptions lasting weeks. After the revolt of the Slovak government in July 42, an interruption of over 2 years took place, and the transports only rolled again in September and October 44.

Eichmann

One moment, how many were transported out of Slovakia at the beginning then? Slovakia was combed through from east to west as well.

Questioner

It is generally said that about 90,000 Slovak Jews came out of the territory earlier, and that after the war 28 to 35,000 were still there, so one estimates 60,000 Slovak Jews.

Eichmann

A mistake was made in Slovakia, and the Slovak government made it. The first thing done was that the city of Pressburg was cleared of Jews.

Questioner

Do you know of the particular event that the Jewish quarter of the city was destroyed in August 1941?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

Do you know that a Jewish statute was issued by Mach on 10 September 1941, that all Jews were to be treated alike?

Eichmann

No, but it is quite clear that every government where we had the Jewish advisers first had to bring about a legislative regulation of its own accord. That was in fact the precondition

Eichmann

for such a country to be able to hand over Jews of its own nationality to a foreign country, seen in terms of international law and constitutional law.

Questioner

You spoke of interruptions lasting weeks, but the Jewish literature speaks of an interruption of over 2 years, from July 42 to September 44, and indeed on the ground of the revolt of the Slovak government against the transports, after it was learned what was happening to the Jews. At first only the first voluntary transport for Auschwitz is spoken of, then the revolt of the Slovak government, and after that an interruption of the deportation until September 44, which then rolled on an intensified scale.

Eichmann

In September 44 Wi had not been in Pressburg at all. One moment. Wi went back to Pressburg when the evacuations in Hungary stopped, in order to set them going there again. On the [too faint] of July, yes, Wi became unemployed in Hungary and went back to Slovakia, and there he then finished off the Jews in Slovakia, and there they were combed more out of the east, because partisan groups had already formed there.

Eichmann

Here they had done it the other way around at first, combed through from west to east, but we were not the ones responsible for determining that; the Slovak government was responsible for that. They wanted to have their capital free of Jews first of all, because these authorities that were to be housed there, the Slovaks from Prague who sat in the government posts and were now being pushed out by the Czechs, needed living space, and this living space had to be provided by the Jews cleared out of Pressburg. Hence also the first transport, which they served up to us like sour beer. That was the reason.

Eichmann

And Wi finished off the last remainder, when the partisan groups were already at work in eastern Slovakia, groups that were made up to a relatively large percentage of Jews as well. And then the Wehrmacht pricked up its ears too, and all the offices pricked up their ears that had allowed a little hesitation to prevail in the meantime, and they now gave the offices a free hand. But here too the seizure was not carried out by the German personnel, but by the central Jewish office of Slovakia.

Questioner

Do you know that Wi was assigned to the central Slovak Jewish office as an adviser

Eichmann

No, that cannot be right, because Wi was adviser to the German envoy, adviser for Jewish questions at the German legation in Pressburg. And if I am not mistaken, Wi thought a great deal of himself for having managed, as an attaché of a sort, which is the official position he held, to obtain a diplomatic passport. I mention that last point only so as to be able to prove credibly that Wi really was active as an adviser at the German legation. My official channel in Slovakia, when I was there, was to approach Ludin at once and first, as the chief of this man who served under him as attaché.

Eichmann

It is of course quite clear that the good interior minister Mach, who was a formal counterpart to L.E. in Hungary, except that in Hungary it was a matter of 2 state secretaries while here the interior minister concerned himself with these matters personally, that given the extraordinarily good relationship Wi had with Mach, Mach made extensive use of Wi's advice. But it is equally clear that the Slovak offices, whose leading posts were made up of old Linkgardists, kept a very jealous watch here too over the inviolability of Slovak concerns. But to dispose of your question, it is of course unthinkable that Wi and Mach on the one hand, Wi and the Mach apparatus, did not have the closest connections and relations, which worked out in practical terms, even though Wi in his official mission was never attached to a Slovak authority but to a German authority. That I would like to put on record as a matter of principle.

Questioner

Year 41. In order to begin with the measures against the Jews, did Eichmann turn to the Foreign Office, namely to Rademacher, in order to arrange through him that the German diplomatic representation should make representations regarding deportations of Jews in Slovakia? Is that correct?

Eichmann

Yes

Questioner

The negotiations led to the date being declared too early, and Jewish labor camps were created in Slovakia?

Eichmann

Yes, correct.

Questioner

These labor camps were then later used as assembly camps for the deportations.

Eichmann

Yes correct.

Questioner

On 10 March 1942 several thousand Jews were deported.

Eichmann

That was the very first transport. The labor camps were set up beforehand, and the first to fill the labor camps were the Jews who came from Pressburg; they had to make living space.

Eichmann

The other reason was that the Slovak government wanted to have the Jews work for itself, and so it was urged that the labor camps be left in Slovak territory instead of deporting them. Probably also, certainly, the status was not yet settled that authorized Slovakia, or rather the Slovak government, to place its own nationals under a foreign state. For such legislative work always devoured an immense amount of time before it was finally passed by all the central authorities that came into question, whether they were in charge of it or involved at the edges.

Questioner

Do you further know that on a request from Himmler the Foreign Office asked for 20,000 Slovak Jews to be deported, and that Disso agreed to that

Eichmann

I cannot really recall it, but that lies entirely within the framework of what was wanted and aimed at

Questioner

Do you know that Slovak bishops raised a protest against it?

Eichmann

No, I know nothing about that.

Questioner

And that Disso agreed to it anyway.

Eichmann

I already told you, the impression I had of Disso made me stop and think, how it is possible that a clergyman is so interested in getting rid of people, and I said to myself, he is simply a politician and not a clergyman.

Questioner

On the basis of these negotiations about the 20,000 Jews, about 17,000 Jewish workers, that is, Jews fit for work, were then transported away from the Serett camp to Auschwitz and Lublin. Do you know about that?

Eichmann

Yes, not [blotted] the 17,000 specifically. I know that transports went out of Slovakia continuously. It may be that the destination station was called Auschwitz, but I do not know that the destination station was called the General Government. I cannot say at the moment. I do not want to deny it, because it was a matter I had no say in, one that was determined by Pohl alone, or rather by his inspector of the concentration camp system, Brigadefuehrer Gluecks. And here in Slovakia too I got the loading times from Wi, the times the trains would be ready, and after that my Hauptsturmfuehrer Novak drew up the timetable with Reichsbahnrat Stange. The trains were then routed the way the SS WVHA wanted them, not the way we wanted them, because we had no capacity to receive anyone. Pohl alone had that.

Questioner

So the 17,000 apparently went to Auschwitz. Now it says further that 11 family transports followed, about 10,000 people, to smaller places in the Lublin district, and that among them there were 7,000 children alone.

Eichmann

That is unfamiliar to me.

Questioner

Burger is supposed to have carried out the family transports with women and children.

Eichmann

The Secret State Police Office was not responsible for which groups of people were driven out of Slovakia. That was a matter for the Slovak authorities. The German Reich government declared it would take over all Slovak Jews, just as it declared itself ready in principle to take over all Jews in the other countries. Which groups were then brought to the evacuations, and by what guidelines the registration was carried out, was left to the individual countries, so far as we did not carry out the registration ourselves. It was also left entirely to the Hungarian government which groups they evacuated.

Questioner

So there is the possibility that 10,000 children?

Eichmann

Yes, that possibility certainly exists and I would not rule it out, because this matter was left to the discretion of the Slovak government.

Questioner

You will remember that the great ghetto uprising was in February and March 1943? We have established, on the other hand, that the high point of the extermination operation was probably in the year 1943. There are in fact indications that the ghetto uprising in Warsaw worked like a spur to the extermination operation. What I need from you now is a denial or a confirmation of this thesis. I would like to learn from you whether any suggestions were made from your section on the basis of this uprising, or else whether you know, from discussions with Mueller or other leading people, that you can reconstruct how in the state of mind of that time a sharpened act

Questioner

was an answer to physical extermination, to this event in the Warsaw ghetto, where after all the Jewish readiness to fight against the Third Reich had taken on a dangerous form. Now tell what else you know about the reaction this uprising set off, so that we can then conclude from it how far this uprising set off sharpened measures.

Eichmann

I can confine myself to one thing, something the Reichsfuehrer-SS is supposed to have said. I must say first that one day I received a photograph album through official channels with my section, and that before I had it, the Reichsfuehrer-SS had already seen it, and that he had even initialed with his own hand the covering letter attached to this photograph album. This photograph album had been produced by the Gardefuehrer [not typed], and this photograph album consisted of many dozens of pictures, in the manner of war correspondents, and the phases of the fighting were depicted there. I still know today that the units that had to put down the uprising were surprised by the toughness and by the good weaponry that faced them, and I still know today that we, the Schutzstaffel, and other units of the Wehrmacht as well, had to record a disproportionate casualty figure. And I still know that the Reichsfuehrer-SS is supposed to have said, I do not remember exactly whether it was Mueller or Kaltenbrunner, that if we had intervened in time and sharply and comprehensively, this valuable blood would have been spared. I cannot say today any more, perhaps you can help me with the number of the losses.

Questioner

Several thousand men.

Eichmann

So that I said to myself, I could not imagine at all that ghettoized Jews could fight like that. And when this uprising, [blotted] Strop, as the last authority, had to be put down, only then, after the losses in blood were so high, were they forced into this ruthless action, which probably every unit in any other country would have put on the agenda as well.

Questioner

The harshness of this measure can quite well be compared today with the French offending in [not typed]

Eichmann

Perhaps not so sharply down there, because down there one is not dealing with such great masses of people in a relatively narrow space.

Questioner

The [not typed] are direct ghettos, Arab ghettos, exclusively workers' quarters with their little back alleys.

Eichmann

Now I recall that in the course of these great losses in blood that the German Wehrmacht had, an order went out to the office of the General Government to comb through to the last corner ruthlessly. And that, I believe, was also done, so that in the General Government the Jewish question was in fact no longer to be recorded after some time following the Warsaw fighting. There was no Jewish question there any more for want of people. And one of the most important measures had also been that Gle, perhaps out of caution and out of worry that something similar could happen to him with his numerous factory-like concentrations, where a thousand and many thousands of Jews were working, carried out the liquidation on the basis of this sharpened order, so that Gle too, for a time after the uprising, had no more Jews to record in his area for labor purposes, who would otherwise have survived the war just as the Jews did who were employed at the Heinkel works or at Auschwitz, and as many others did in the concentration camps, who admittedly more

Eichmann

because they did not live in the ghetto either and were also uncontrollable here as regards what they did, but rather because what they did was regulated by the hour and they were under supervision. The Jewish labor squads at Gle, for example, were not, because he had the mass of the guard personnel, and here the Jews were gathered more in a kind of ghetto style, but not in the concentration camp style we had in the home territory. That was the first measure. Certainly and without doubt the Reichsfuehrer-SS let himself be guided by these lines of thought, and it was not for nothing that he set the whole weight he had in this sector, the handling of Jewish affairs, in march toward Hungary with me at the head, because he wanted to comb through Hungary with tremendous speed before the Jews could properly come to their senses and organize resistance. That is also why the instruction was to comb through Hungary from east to west, so that the dangerous eastern sector stayed shut off. As regards the Budapest ghetto one must say again that something similar could have happened, but now it must be established that the Budapest ghetto was itself under the leadership of the Arrow Cross, whose mentality was quite a different one from the mentality of, say, the German supervisory bodies in the Warsaw ghetto. The Arrow Cross man still had something of the revolutionary go-getting spirit, the airs of a go-getter, that we had gradually shed after 1933. And that is why we did not have to have these worries about the Budapest ghetto, because if these people had noticed the slightest thing, they would certainly have intervened with a consistency, out of worry, naturally, in view of the events in Warsaw. That alone also explains the speed with which the Hungarian gendarmerie proceeded, because it was after all a factor of order in Hungary. The state secretaries L.E. and B. feared nothing more than that Hungary might become a playground of wild uprisings here. That was in fact the consequence of the Warsaw ghetto. If this beacon had not hung like [not typed] not only over the German security authorities but also over the Hungarian security authorities, the one thing or the other would certainly have died down along slower paths. I need not add what a sacrifice it was for Germany to place the rolling stock at its disposal, because there was no wagon that was allowed to stand empty. But evidently it had been more important to the state leadership of both countries first of all to get factors of unrest out of the world. Admittedly we had large starting points in Hungary, but the measures were only too justified, and had such a measure been taken in Poland, it would certainly not have come to this bloody uprising. To the advantage of the German Wehrmacht units concerned, and admittedly to the advantage of the Jews themselves as well.

Questioner

Do you remember whether the leading German officials who were responsible for the Warsaw ghetto had to bear any consequences after the uprising, that is, were punished or even [not typed]?

Eichmann

I know nothing about that. This matter would have been the General Government's own, insofar as it was a question of officials. If it had been a question of SS members, I would certainly remember something. Whether local punishments followed I do not know. It is quite possible that one or another was called to account, as a matter of course, by the security authority for slack conduct of duty, because that was the usual thing.

Questioner

Do you remember any proposals that went out from your section in this period and that referred in some way to the Warsaw uprising, to drive any measures forward with more energy?

Eichmann

I had only one single occasion after that, through the large-scale operation in Hungary. I was sent to Warsaw on official business to look at Warsaw, to put it in Mueller's language for once. My dear Eichmann, go up there, look at how far it can go. So I was sent to Warsaw on official business and had myself shown around there. They showed me the nests of resistance that they could only clear out with concentrated charges, they showed me all the main battle positions, so hard had the fighting been. I have seldom seen a part of a city as destroyed as Warsaw. I never forgot that while I was in Hungary. Budapest was always a great worry to me too. I did not keep that to myself, I told my subordinates as well, and I pointed out to them what could happen to us in Hungary. But I was covered by Warsaw insofar as I knew that in the east, and that would have been still more terrible than an uprising in Budapest, behind the back of our [not typed] front there was a partisan area of thousands of square kilometers, who would not have had to pick off the individual Wehrmacht member, but who would have blown up our lines of communication. A large part of the rolling stock for our troops went through Hungary, and that would have been affected. I do not know, they would have had to shoot me if, although I had been sent to Warsaw, I had fallen prey to a criminal carelessness and had not had eastern Hungary combed through with that speed and had not worked on the Hungarian offices with that speed. It was easy for me, because I had people there who came three-quarters of the way to meet me. It could also have been the other way round, and then I would have had to work like a berserker. And had there been an uprising, it could have led to a collapse of a large part, because we see how exactly these Jewish uprising movements in fact worked.

Questioner

But what I want to come to specifically is whether you do not remember from that time that you planned any operations, for example in France, or Denmark or Holland or in the southeast as well?

Eichmann

The advisers for Jewish questions were instructed, instructed in the sharpest measure, to set everything in motion to get the remaining stocks of the Jews still resident there handed over. That was arranged, because only so is it explicable that so much time had to pass for the fear to grow so great, on the Slovak side as well. The beacon of Warsaw, the partisan area of eastern Slovakia, until they then declared themselves ready to transport away the remaining Jews by an accelerated procedure, so far as they could still be registered. From Warsaw a chain stretched to the last thing possible, that is, until it was no longer possible to operate at all. It went with the sharpened registration of the contingents in order to avoid a second Warsaw.

Questioner

So is it exaggerated, or does it correspond to reality, if one were to say that at least in the execution, not in the concept, of the protective measures for the Reich, or of the hostile measures against the Jews, Warsaw worked like a [not typed]lyst, which there where there was still doubt or lukewarmness

Eichmann

No, he even had circles that pestered us constantly with representations, because perhaps consciously or unconsciously they wanted to obtain exemptions from deportation by way of the clause, we need the workers, we can't meet our armaments quota. They intervened forever and always, and they suddenly went quiet, because these offices too couldn't and wouldn't afford any longer, through forced interventions, through matters important to the war and matters not important to the war, to take on the danger that one day it would be proved against them, if you hadn't intervened back then and declared your quota unreachable, then this or that uprising wouldn't have happened. That then stopped completely.

Questioner

Could you list these offices briefly? The ones that went quiet with their efforts after the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto

Eichmann

Inside the country it was the whole armaments industry, mainly the directors of these big works. From the Speer Office these interventions came in continually. But these interventions also came from the Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, from Goering himself. All of that then stopped. If we merely said the word, yes, will you take on the responsibility that there won't be another Warsaw uprising, the appetite for intervention was gone and faded away. And it didn't work that way only in the Reich, it worked that way in the other countries too. My advisers had a leading entree in all the countries where they were working. I can't say it offhand. With Warsaw we could operate, and it was operated with, like a traveling salesman selling an article who has a special advertising attraction to show and then sells more easily. That's how we could make our own office apparatus understand great difficulties or a great deal of idling. I had to do it as well, I was required to point to it, because I myself didn't want to and wasn't allowed to and couldn't take on the responsibility, on security grounds, because after all it's the Security Office that's responsible for that.

Questioner

Do you think Stroop had this photo album made to shine with his heroic deeds

Eichmann

The photo album was certainly made by Stroop to prove to the Reich leadership, in black and white, the consequence of handling the Jewish question too loosely. And this photo album didn't set out along the official channel and wasn't laid before the responsible desk officer and case officer to give them a nice picture book here. No, that was quite clearly intended by the Reichsfuehrer, to say to his masters, look, there you have it. That was the reason this album circulated.

Questioner

Do you have any idea from whom, in the earliest years of your section and later too, when the occupation of Poland made it necessary to work toward some practical solutions, from whom the idea of forming ghettos came at all?

Eichmann

Yes, that comes from me. But you know, the ghetto idea is an old one.

Questioner

Do you know who your great adversary was in the forming of ghettos?

Eichmann

No.

Questioner

Heydrich

Eichmann

That surprises me very much. It's like this, I don't want to say I was the originator of the ghetto idea, that would be too much honor. In the General Government we did have ghettos, we took those over, they were already there, and they were then tightened. We found that the ghettoization by the Jews themselves

Eichmann

was an extremely fortunate one in terms of surveillance, that we only needed to take this state of affairs over and save personnel. Of course you mustn't fall into the mistake here of laying out large ghettos as in Warsaw. I certainly didn't think of such things, because in practice such ghettos never existed either. There were Jewish ghettos with 30, 40, 50,000 Jews, but not more. For the first time a large ghetto was then drawn together in Litzmannstadt. It was a third of a city district of Litzmannstadt, and around 200,000 Jews lived there. You say the great adversary was Heydrich. I've never heard anything of that. The Jewish old people's home Theresienstadt was in fact called the Jewish ghetto Theresienstadt at first, and the deputy Reich Protector put it that way too. Only later the Reichsfuehrer no longer wanted the word Jewish ghetto Theresienstadt, and called it the old people's home Theresienstadt.

Questioner

When did you first propose taking up the forming of ghettos again in complete form?

Eichmann

Theresienstadt was the beginning

Questioner

Theresienstadt goes back to your suggestion?

Eichmann

Yes, it came about like this. The word ghetto hadn't come up yet. Heydrich ordered me to him in the presence of his State Secretary Frank. I've promised that in a few weeks the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia will be free of Jews, the press people put that in the paper. Now Heydrich began to get uneasy, because he saw what he had brought about, so he had me come and told me all this. Something has to happen, Eichmann, a proposal. I came unprepared, because I hadn't been told beforehand what it was about. Now I sat there and was supposed to make a proposal to my highest chief, and so I made the proposal, the only one I knew how to make. Ogfr., give me a [blotted] with the necessary land, then I'll take all the Jews of the Protectorate in there, in a kind of ghetto. Then Heydrich said to Frank, which town comes into question, what do you propose? And old Frank said Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt consisted of Wehrmacht, several thousand Czech [blotted], all kinds of craftsmen, as it is in a small garrison town. Heydrich then said the Wehrmacht there will be marched out. The other residents living there were fully compensated, and there was never a complaint about it either. Then Theresienstadt was, my people whom I sent there took over the things from the [handwriting] of the Wehrmacht, which still had its offices there. With that Theresienstadt was free, and with that the ghettoization began. That's 1940, the first time a ghettoization arose on Reich soil. In '39 we marched into Poland, Heydrich wasn't yet chief and Reich Protector then, and we already had ghettos in Poland too, but there the idea didn't need to be born, because it was already there. Found among the Jews themselves and kept on, they were then concentrated still further, that is, more Jews were moved in with the Jews, and the thing was now sealed off for guarding, partly with barbed wire, with walls, and partly the houses were pasted over, that is, closed up with masonry. In the small towns in Poland it was often the case that the percentage share consisted of the Jewish population. In the hinterland sat the Poles, the farmers and so on, but in the small towns, that's where the Jews sat. And these Jews were then assigned into these ghettos from all regions.

Questioner

Say, from your knowledge of Jewish physiology, would it be right to say that the protest against the idea of the ghetto, and against the restriction that follows from it, basically the social restriction, self-restriction, came mainly from assimilated Jewry, and that on the other side believing Zionist Jewry had nothing at all to object to in the idea of the ghetto itself, or even welcomed the idea, because it protected Jewry, so to speak.

Eichmann

The father of ghettoization was the orthodox Jew, and it had to be the orthodox Jew, because in the East, where in earlier times the main pogroms took place, it was orthodoxy. In German lands, where there were ghettos in the Middle Ages too, it was orthodoxy, because Zionism didn't exist at all around that time. There were a few assimilated money changers who came and went among the princes, and at that time the individual territorial princes gave themselves over to the same convenience, this ghettoization set in motion by the Jews themselves, because it also seemed quite practical, because here they were among themselves, they wanted to stay among themselves too, and the non-Jewish part had its peace, because at nine in the evening the Jews closed their ghettos. It came out of the Jews' need for security. The assimilated-minded Jew, if he had any preference for living in a Jewish ghetto at all, if he had the choice he didn't live in a ghetto, that matched his whole outlook. So if he was forced by us to live there too, then he was very unhappy. The one who was happy about it was the orthodox Jew and the Zionist, because the Zionist felt it not on the ground of protection, but because the Zionist leadership recognized it as a wonderful training for getting used to communal life. That's why these two groups were in favor of it, and not one little word of complaint or grievance was ever heard from the Jewish side about it. Dr. Eppstein from Berlin told me once that Jewry would be grateful to me for having given it the chance in Theresienstadt to get to know communal life, and that this was a wonderful school with a view to the future life of these people in Israel.

Questioner

It matters insofar as, toward the non-Jewish public, it's partly made out by the Jews as if the first measure, or of the various measures taken on the German side that led to ghettoization, shut the Jewish community out, so to speak, from the community of the host country, and so led to a

Eichmann

Of course the assimilated Jews felt it that way, nobody else, unless it was the non-Jew, who couldn't feel his way into this Jewish mentality at all. The non-Jew may have seen a very unpleasant coercive measure in this. The Jew didn't, because since medieval times he had felt comfortable and happy in his ghetto. And I believe the closed unity of Jewry could never have been bred so high if orthodoxy, which after all provided the leadership, hadn't pressed for ghettoization since the earliest Middle Ages. We do have the parallel if you look at [not typed] today, or look at the settlements.

Eichmann

The Story of J. B is the first book on the subject that I've read. It gives, first, in general terms, after I'm supposed to have said the thing about the 5 million Jews, and since otherwise not a single witness could be dug up out of the former German Reich association, which housed 70 million, perhaps they didn't want to dig them up, and I'm now the only German to whom this statement has been falsely attributed, international Jewry now naturally has to present me in whatever way is just possible, so that the credibility toward the public and toward history is all the greater. That's why there comes, not only in this book but also in other tomes on the subject, this [blotted], on the one side the bloc of the Reichsfuehrer, which here more or less fights with the other bloc, Kaltenbrunner, Mueller, Eichmann. So although these fights never took place, these fights have to be screwed back into the realm of fantasy, into the opponent's waves, but these so-called power struggles between the SS groups, as the opponents call them, likewise prove that with all force, after my superiors were either hanged or have gone missing, and I'm the only one still there, they want to single me out, even above the Reichsfuehrer as my highest chief, only to keep up this 5 million thesis, a thesis that has already been overdrawn today by 60 percent. And from that comes the everlasting hammering in, the everlasting pounding in, that I not only deported, as was mine to do by virtue of office, but that I also killed, because that belongs to the opponent's case.

Eichmann

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. Second, I only had deportations to carry out, and the Gestapo Office wasn't concerned with anything else. Third, for the concentration and registration for the transports in Hungary, for example, it wasn't I who was responsible but the Hungarian Interior Minister. Fourth, there was no bloc formation of an SS, that is H.H. and Kaltenbrunner. Fifth, the 5 million killed Jews is a lie. This book isn't a factual account that could claim to be correct. I miss some label on one of the first pages saying novel with a historical background, that would fit, but not as a factual account. The author has left this way out open for himself in his preliminary remark, where he expressly states, the objection arises that it's impossible to reconstruct a conversation correctly after a decade has passed, the objection is justified, but it applies just as much to conversations that took place 10 years ago, direct speech makes no claim to reproduce word for word what was spoken, it's nothing but a form of presentation, the shortest one I could choose. It's a Jewish refinement, so to speak, because behind this declaration in the foreword the author can take every argument that might be flung at him, everything that's uncomfortable for him, and reduce it to absurdity by pointing back to his preliminary remark.

Eichmann

From this it follows that the subjective standpoint dominates, that the wish is often the father of the thought, and that in the postwar years it seems very understandable to read things heard and read afterwards back into the time when it all happened. Brandt hasn't the intellectual stature of an Alex Weisberg, who had nothing whatever to do with the matter, to tell things here that he supposedly saw coming at the time in prophetic foresight. No, he read that after the war, carried it back, and then foisted it on me as though it had been settled in the negotiations and conferences. Take the 5 million, which Brandt mentions several times in his own way, a figure whose true sense was twisted in my mouth, a figure that at that time wasn't up for discussion at all, a figure he heard about afterwards and then, trailing along behind, put in my mouth. It's sheer nonsense, it is a propaganda statement.

Eichmann

And not with that alone. Others raised this figure as high as 8 million.

Eichmann

What made me uncanny to the Jewish functionaries in Budapest consisted mainly, I suppose, in my incorruptibility. If that's the reason I was uncanny to the Jewish political functionaries, then I can only be sorry that more Germans weren't uncanny to the enemy, because incorruptible I was and am, always, toward my enemies.

Eichmann

When it's imputed to me that I was a believer in the fairy tale of the Wise Men of Zion, which Brandt points to here several times, with an eye to the Englishmen who bring forward proofs 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 the office of my permanent deputy. A not inconsiderable part of them was even produced on my commission, to their own free design, by the technical department of the Israelite Religious Community in Vienna. The Turk of the organizational structure of international Jewry hung next to the Turk of the Israelite Religious Community, which handled the emigration of the Jews out of Austria. It was made in the years 1935/36 by the graduate engineer Mildenstein, who around that time was briefly my superior officer on the desk. I worked then on the specialist field of Zionism, produced [handwriting].

Eichmann

Technical and practical help with the making of it was given by informants out of Palestine, Jewish literature, results of negotiations with Jewish political functionaries and so on. I took over this body of thought as a study, which lasted a good three years, in its full content. It shows not only a far-reaching decentralization and the Jewish party tendencies running off in all directions, but also the ideological quarrel of the individual Jewish groups and large groups among themselves. Out of interest I set out this Turk, or rather my own view of these things, in pictorial form. I come here to the sketch I made, as an answer to Brandt, that I am supposed to be a believer in the idea of the Wise Men of Zion. From this also follows my factual difference with Streicher, who held the opposite view and stuck to it.

Eichmann

The author judges just as wrongly when he says, against better knowledge, that I was the one commissioned by the Reichsführer with the liquidation. His own comrade-in-arms Dr. Kastner knew better, because he said to me during the early summer of 1944, shut down the extermination machinery at Auschwitz. Since I knew that he was fully in the picture through his own apparatus, and was informed by Becher besides, I officially told him, as a further courtesy, my

Eichmann

area of responsibility, and that of the WVHA. He then said I could raise it with the Reichsführer. But I wasn't competent for that, and my competence would have got nowhere in any case.

Eichmann

A word about [off the sheet]. It astonished me to find that even in circles where I didn't expect it there is evidently confusion about who was competent for what. [off the sheet]

Eichmann

On this I state as a matter of principle. First, until 1941 measures could be taken in the concentration camps only when the Chief of the Security Police, or his desk officers, passed on the Reichsführer's basic decrees under the underlying laws, or the implementing provisions belonging to them, from the Chief of the Security Police and the SD to the SS WVHA. Only then could anything be undertaken by the commandant's office of the camp, apart from exceptions, which were regulated.

Eichmann

Second, at the end of 1941 the Chief of the SS WVHA received directives on the treatment of Jews from the Reichsführer directly. Or I expressly leave the case open, since only a single instance was known to me, from the Chief of the Security Police and the SD personally, standing in for the Reichsführer. It was the case [not typed]. These directives ranged from extermination through labor deployment to the partial release of Jews, as for example that whole Kastner contingent and so on.

Eichmann

Third, the order of desk IV B 4, as I understood it, read "deport", with the exception of the General Government, occupied Russian territory, the Baltic countries and Romania. As for Romania, I have to admit truthfully that I wasn't competent for it. I had forgotten that over the years.

Eichmann

Where the concentration and registration was carried out by men not in German uniform, IV B 4 was competent only for taking over the transport trains and running them as far as the handover at the destination stations named by Office IV. Hungary is finished now.

Questioner

The desk reference number was brought in without anyone being consulted. What matters is knowing how much insight you and your subordinates had into areas of competence that ran under another reference number, and how it was the other way around. Insight into your own area of responsibility?

Questioner

For instance, when you had to put a transport together, when a deportation was to go ahead, how far did you have to reckon with Höss's extermination capacity in order to run your transport efficiently.

Questioner

In what way were there points of contact there?

Eichmann

First, I had to keep up a continuous connection with Höss, that is [handwriting] with the 1A of the Inspectorate of the concentration camps who was competent for it, with Liebehenschel. Third, through the continuing discussions with Pohl.

Eichmann

In the same way my subordinates had to deal with Höss's case officers or with Liebehenschel's department. In the same way the chief of Office [blotted] and Müller kept contact with the Inspectorate of the concentration camps, Glücks, and likewise the Chief of the Security Police and the SD with the Chief of the WVHA, Pohl.

Eichmann

Discussions went on there continuously, because before I could begin with the practical side the timetable had first to be drawn up with the Reich Transport Ministry, and the reception capacity of the Auschwitz camp had to be secured. The people there had to be able to plan roughly what they could take in over the coming months, and had to know accordingly how much human material I intended to send them.

Eichmann

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.

Questioner

So the doctors were quite clear about it, that anyone who wasn't taken for labor automatically marched into the oven?

Eichmann

Yes, quite clear. Everyone in Auschwitz knew that. It had been no secret.

Eichmann

On the account of the Night and Fog decree I have to say that the Jew Brandt is a man who is without doubt better informed than I am myself, because a Night and Fog decree concerning the treatment of Jews didn't exist. The Night and Fog decree that I do know of was the responsibility of an entirely different desk. In any case it had nothing to do with the Jews. We rode roughshod over those brothers in broad daylight.

Eichmann

Holders of protective passes were exempt from the deportation. These holders were quickly made citizens of other states and so became holders of these passes. The country of San Salvador, for example. 12,000 Jews.

Eichmann

A Baron Dieter von Wi [not typed], who is supposed to have been the commander for Czechoslovakia, is wrong. Isi von Fleischmann, raising everyone to the nobility. Wi was quite simply the adviser on Jewish questions at the German legation in Pressburg, nothing more than that.

Eichmann

An SS Obersturmbannführer Brunner never existed. There was an Obersturmführer. Hauptsturmführer Wunsche is mentioned too, that's right, he had been a government councillor with me in Hungary.

Eichmann

Page 86. Frau Kastner or Frau Brandt, which of the two got the bastinado? He always writes only about his own wife, never about Frau Kastner.

Eichmann

Now I've become confused. Could it after all have been Frau Brandt who was with me, the one I took to be Frau Kastner, since she came constantly with Kastner?

Questioner

After Brandt flew off, Kastner appeared at your place repeatedly with Frau Brandt, and neither Brandt nor Kastner mentions even once that Kastner appeared at your place with his own wife.

Eichmann

So if it was Frau Brandt who got the bastinado, then I have to correct myself.

Questioner

What matters is the characterization you gave of this woman, and now it matters whom it applies to, whether Frau Kastner or Frau Brandt. But it agrees to a large extent with these accounts, because Frau Brandt came to your place with Kastner after her husband's departure on 15 May.

Eichmann

It turns the stomach of anyone who knows the matter to read here over and over that they marched and were gassed, that everything that marched out of Hungary marched inevitably into the gas ovens. That is of course nonsense of a rare kind, it is a deliberate untruth, because the Jew Brandt knows even better than I do how many of the so-called gassed enjoy the best of health today and file the largest restitution claims in every country on earth.

Eichmann

But that is a general refutation, and it is so high in percentage terms that out of the general refutation a question of competence gets picked out as a special case. Because there exist more Jews of Hungarian nationality who are supposed to have been gassed than there are such as were in truth killed.

Eichmann

I believe we could get approximate figures through a refugee from after the last Hungarian revolution, one who doesn't belong to the first wave of refugees, because the first wave were Jews. The present Hungarian Gestapo is after all almost exclusively in the hands of Jews, and only in subordinate positions has a Magyar been put in. That's where the hatred of the Magyars in the last uprising against the Hungarian Gestapo comes from too, because it was surrounded from top to bottom by the sweet smell of garlic, because these Jews have been cooling their temper on the Magyar people for twelve years now, from 45 to today.

Eichmann

So I ask myself, where do all these Jews in Hungary suddenly come from, where have they come from? A real Hungarian freedom fighter ought to be able to give exhaustive information on that, better than I can.

Eichmann

Compare a little Upper Bavarian village. Formerly 20 Jews, today 40 Jews. Well now, where does that come from then, they just weren't gassed after all.

Eichmann

Page 89. Philipp von Freudiger, president of the Orthodox Jewish community. Summoned before me? A red-haired Jew with a stubble beard. A few days after he had been summoned before me he made off across the Romanian border with others of like mind. I made no further inquiries either, let them run.

Eichmann

Further, the Weiss and Becher business with the aeroplane to Lisbon is right too.

Eichmann

Page 90, not entirely clear. Gold and jewelry had to be handed over. But to whom?

Eichmann

Here it says under point 2 that the Jewish bank accounts were blocked, assets were [not typed], the Jews had to submit an inventory of their entire property, gold and pieces of jewelry had to be handed over at once. That is supposed to have been in the negotiations between Wi and Philipp von Freudiger.

Eichmann

But quite apart from the fact that my Hauptsturmführer Wi had no authority at all to make such direct agreements with Jews of Hungarian nationality, and that this must have been the business of the Hungarian authorities, I have to remark, when it says here that gold and pieces of jewelry had to be handed over at once, then to whom?

Eichmann

The [handwriting] affair was taken as the ground for an atonement payment of one and a quarter billion Reichsmark, and further the handing over of all art objects was ordered, of precious metal, precious stone, art objects. The handing over of electrical appliances, furs, woolen clothing so far as it could be spared, and so on.

Eichmann

But that applied to Jews of German nationality, whereas I am speaking about Jews in Hungary. In any case it is not my Hauptsturmführer's business to meddle in internal Hungarian affairs. There was no such thing.

Questioner

But how, in your opinion, did it happen then?

Eichmann

I can't explain it to myself. Those are points that touch on what happened in Reich territory. Perhaps he copied them out to fill pages. Wi has no right at all to speak here for the Hungarian horizon. Wi had the job, 48 hours before I was in Budapest, of smoothing my way, that is to say the

Eichmann

[not typed] to establish, to summon the sheikhs, the question of quarters and so on. But after that Wi no longer had any yardstick that could be described as the Hungarian horizon. All he had left was the county horizon.

Eichmann

On page 100. Why does Brandt reproach us Germans, when they had it as easy as no country had until then under the gag-cup of the hated Germans, why did other countries not take the million off their hands. Were we supposed to take them all off their hands. Fifty families a month is what England took off their hands. If a people is already so wretched that no country on earth wants them, then they must not assume that we Germans will simply swallow them. We did the utmost possible and we advertised a million Jews like sour beer, but nobody took them. We did the utmost possible up to 1939 and we even put our own mark at risk to get the Jews abroad.

Eichmann

On page 102, that is correct. I had the Jewish point in Budapest, so far as they negotiated with my office or with me, issue protective passes, which they had to show to all German and all Hungarian authorities and with the help of which they could escape any harassment and obstruction. I had to do it because of the Hungarian Gestapo, because of the gendarmerie in the individual counties, and because of the various German authorities.

Eichmann

On page 104. It is untrue when Brandt says that I was the head of a main department in IV B 4 in the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin [not typed]

Eichmann

One, I was not the head of a main department. IV B 4 was a section. Two, I was not Himmler's plenipotentiary for this area. I was the plenipotentiary of the [blotted] SD. The Gestapo office was not competent for the extermination. The Night and Fog operation is completely wide of the mark. Nothing was carried out in the greatest secrecy, we had nothing to shy away from. How else would the deal of ten thousand trucks for a million Jews have been possible? How could I say to Kastner that the Gestapo is not competent to shut down the extermination machinery? The Reichsführer is competent for that, and they were carried out by Pohl as head of the WVHA. I could say something like that to Kastner with a clear conscience. Kastner was also informed from other quarters. How often I asked Kastner and Brandt too, what are you interested in, do you want this or do you want that? Which valuable human material? Besides, the whole world knew it, so to speak.

Eichmann

On page 114. When Brandt says I had said, I cannot sell you all the Jews of Europe even if you raise ever so much money, not yet now, perhaps that will come one day, but I can let a million Jews go. The man contradicts himself. I told him that I cannot give him all of them yet, not yet now. He should have spared himself that sentence, then his gassing stories would have been far more credible.

Eichmann

On page 122. Himmler is said to represent a far more humane position than Hitler. Reference to the bloc-forming between the SS Reichsführer, Becher and consorts on one side, and Kaltenbrunner, Müller, Eichmann and consorts on the other side.

Eichmann

On page 125. Further deals and a possible additional handing over of the Jews, and so on, again a proof that not all of them were gassed.

Eichmann

On page 131. And so on and so forth. SS Obersturmbannführer Klages, it had been an SS Hauptsturmführer Klages

Eichmann

On page 142. Correct, the evacuations had to be forced, but of these forced evacuations, once the negotiations had been set in motion, none were gassed.

Eichmann

When the author claims to the English on his journey, as the reason why, after five million Jews had already been killed, a further million would be released, he says, one, the people foresee the approaching catastrophe, they seek to obtain a pardon for their crimes, they have loaded countless crimes upon themselves against all the peoples of Europe, but no guilt weighs on them like that against the Jews. On top of that they must know one thing, they ascribe an enormous power to us [not typed]

Eichmann

On this I have the following to declare. One, those responsible did not foresee any enormous catastrophe from which they would have had to hide, at least not at that time, in order to beg for fair weather from the opponents. That was far from us. Nor did we load any crimes upon ourselves. We did nothing other, even after the armistice, than what other nations have done to German blood in a far more hideous way.

Eichmann

The fairy tale of the Elders of Zion does not count either, that is a trick the author trades with. Peddler. No, the truth is quite sober and ice cold, as follows. In the whole deal the only thing that mattered to the Reichsführer was the ten thousand trucks for his two SS divisions. In principle what did the million Jews matter to him, it was his divisions he was after, that was the whole focal point of this deal.

Eichmann

On page 216. Lord Moin, question mark, who had said to JB, how do you imagine that, where am I supposed to put the million. A short time later he was shot, exactly like Bernadotte, once again a [blotted], and Kastner, by the zealots of Zion, as a special correspondent from a newspaper in Tel Aviv once called them.

Eichmann

So presumably Frau Brandt, in which case Brandt must be grateful to the German authorities that he still has his wife alive at all.

Eichmann

On page 153. Regarding my work. That I would have withdrawn an order that had been given, by telegraph. One, I do not recall having withdrawn a single order during my whole practice. I preferred to let it be carried out even if I realized afterwards that it was wrong. Two, I neither issued an order by telegraph nor withdrew one by telegraph. Three, I never bellowed.

Eichmann

On page 256. That Kastner had wasted too much time on the 1,700 Jews. Kastner did not waste too much time, rather Brandt had difficulties with his speeches with the English. In the period between 15 May and [too faint] July 1944.

Eichmann

On page 2 [too faint]. What he writes there is the [blotted] of lying. It may be that 434,000 Jews of Hungarian citizenship were deported to Auschwitz, but that they were murdered there, that is a flat lie. The question remains, how many were killed and how many are living today, cheerful and lively

Eichmann

On page 285. Becher is credited with having said, I will propose to the Reichsführer that the gassings be stopped. We have shown our good will by letting a group of 31 Jews from Bergen-Belsen travel to Switzerland.

Eichmann

The following. There is a contradiction here. Pages earlier the author states, in the negotiations with the English, that Eichmann was in a position to stop the gassings, that I was competent for the gassings and for the deportation, that a word from me would suffice. Now it is the Reichsführer who is in a position to do it if it were proposed to him.

Eichmann

On page 289. Becher had to admit that Eichmann was right, that it had only been a Jewish bluff. There he spoke the truth. After the first fourteen days or three weeks in which this business got going, I told Kastner frankly and freely that Brandt was a crook who had got himself to safety and that the business would never come off. I told Kastner plainly that the deportations were being carried out under forced pace automatically. For the [blotted] it had been a [blotted] bait. The first truck did not matter to us at all, we only wanted the promise. Brandt had imagined that I, Eichmann, would have given away even one Jew on this bluff. It may well be that this was very unpleasant for Becher. Between Becher and me there was a proper comradeship, but we did not cross each other's path on duty.

Eichmann

On page 292. Regarding the foot march. This foot march was not made because Eichmann in Budapest began to rage, but because the Allies, on Brandt's advice, destroyed the roads and railway stations on the Budapest to Vienna stretch with their bombs. All his racial comrades should still be thanking Brandt today for this foot march, for betraying them abroad as a spy, so to speak, and instigating these bombing raids.

Eichmann

What is more obvious than that he now has to answer for this to Jewish Hungarian blood.

Eichmann

On page 293. [not typed] or does that not suit you, just do not come to me with your American fairy tales. This "Gell" is a Jewish operetta "gell", it does not suit me at all, made up and [not typed]

Eichmann

I would now like to end the whole matter. The picture that is being hung on me here I have put to various people who have known me for a very, very long time, and they say that I can never be that. Rolling of the eyes of the 175 [not typed] no, I reject this picture. One could do a photograph of the ears, but only a criminologist could do that, these fine points are too exact. Let us close this unpleasant chapter.

Questioner

Heydrich's visit, on 10 April 1942, a visit to Pressburg, discussions with the State President Dr. Tuka?

Eichmann

No, that is not known to me, it is possible but I was not brought in.

Questioner

Among other things it was also about the Jewish deportations? Following this discussion with the Slovak government, the Slovak government addresses a request to the German government, that the relatives of the 17,000 Jews deported earlier, who were deported to Auschwitz and Mei [not typed], should also be sent there in order to reunite them with their family members? It must be known to you. It is claimed there that you first refused, but then travelled to Pressburg yourself, conducted negotiations there with old Tuka, and that you then agreed with him to raise the family members, together with those already there, in the district of Lublin, to 35,000, in the year 1942?

Eichmann

With Mach I spoke repeatedly, I can no longer remember the individual details.

Questioner

I must remind you that it was a matter of 1 [not typed] 000 Jews?

Eichmann

For me a political horizon was decisive, but not a paltry [too faint]. With Tuka I never spoke and never saw him in person either, only in pictures. With Mach I negotiated repeatedly, with Mach I also wanted to work in terms of numbers, and did work, as reinforcement for my adviser whom I had in Pressburg, Wi, who worked with the envoy, and where the envoy could no longer step in with Wi, there I stepped in.

Questioner

At the beginning you refused to take these people in at Lublin. Only after these negotiations, in May 1942, after Heydrich's visit on 10 April had been conducted, were you in agreement to take the remaining family members in with the others at Lublin.

Eichmann

So I would have shown myself a very hard head against a matter that my chief had already approved anyway? Fine, after this repetition of the whole state of affairs, if the Slovak government asked me, I will probably have done the thing. Only I can no longer say today whether they were taken over or not.

Questioner

The important thing is the following. You remember the deportation of the 1 [too faint]? It is now about the family members.

Eichmann

My fundamental declaration. If the Slovak government asked the German government

Eichmann

… to take on the Jewish relatives of already evacuated Jews as well, then I can't imagine that even a single office of the Reich government would have vetoed it. And I would have been the last man who wouldn't have received them with open arms. There would have been no difficulty in taking them in either. I already had ways of accommodating them.

Eichmann

The matter then went through in order. Between 15 May and 30 June a further 52,000 were sent off, and with that the total number reached [blotted] thousand. They all went to Lublin, and then came the Stapo about the deportation of the Jews.

Questioner

Of these 52,000, 284 were left after the end of the war.

Eichmann

That isn't really possible. Certainly the number may have been small, because Glo was careful after the Warsaw business and did what he could to get himself breathing room. He was right, I'd have done it the same way.

Questioner

After that Dr. Tuka asked Wi to have an official Slovak inspection of the Jews in Poland carried out, and to that Eichmann, questioned about it by Wi, at first gave evasive answers. Do you know about that?

Eichmann

Yes, vaguely, because in those years Kunz and Kinz wanted to travel to the places the Jews had been sent to, and here it wasn't only the interest of the individual governments that mattered. Even the International Red Cross asked for a permit. So I know exactly that I constantly had the hardest work on my hands, reporting upward to get clarity about what I now had to set in motion officially. It wasn't only Slovakia. France and the other states were the ones who all at once felt concern for the Jews they had offered to the Reich government like sour beer, and now wanted to make sure of considerate treatment.

Questioner

When did these concerns of the governments come out especially strongly?

Eichmann

They always came up when the transports were going flat out at a forced rate, because the evacuation actions were a matter of curves. I have the curve charts in front of me, and every evacuation had its own curve, steep at first and then falling off. But as soon as that curve had been passed, the various countries approached the German Reich government to inquire after the well-being of the people they had handed over to us, and they proposed commissions.

Eichmann

It's quite clear, through naming the various receiving stations, through drawing up the timetables, it had all been so varied that it was simply impossible to chase after a few thousand Jews in some district or other, especially as these transports were loaded by the various countries without any personal papers being sent along. In general 50 kilos of luggage.

Eichmann

But I could finally manage to put a stop to this rampant petitioning by the various governments for commissions to be sent, by proposing to the RF that a commission of the International Red Cross be set in march to Theresienstadt, and that Mueller and I would receive this commission and, once they had crossed the border between Saxony and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, would give them a free hand to negotiate and speak with all the Jewish offices of this camp, wherever they pleased, without our being present.

Questioner

Did the thought occur to you then, because the camp Theresienstadt gave little occasion for criticism, would you also have been ready to invite a commission to Auschwitz?

Eichmann

I was only responsible for the camp Theresienstadt, because the countries made a mistake and the RF was a Jesuit. The country governments appealed to the RF SS

Eichmann

… appealed to the RF SS, and the RF passed this business on to his police, to the Gestapo, and that office was responsible only for the camp Theresienstadt. Had the RF passed this whole file complex on to the WVHA less jesuitically, then a visit to Auschwitz and so on would probably have been unavoidable, because nobody abroad could have guessed that an office or main department outside the police had anything to do with this reception or classification. So they more or less fell for it, and the International Red Cross alone sent a commission to Theresienstadt three times. On the first visit my chief received this commission and passed it on to the Jewish [handwriting]. On the 2nd and 3rd time I had to receive them myself on orders and then handed them on to the Jews after greeting them, and there they could talk and negotiate with them for hours without my being there, however they liked.

Questioner

Is there any documentation that members of the Red Cross visited Theresienstadt at the time, or that they tried to have an exonerating effect?

Eichmann

Yes, I read it later in the papers. Dr. Dinar was the name of one of the commission leaders, I think. The last one still asked me whether the Jews were allowed to smoke. I told him no, it's officially forbidden but they smoke anyway. But the Swiss exoneration, which they gave after a very clear report on what they had found there, was robbed of its force by the fact that people said from the start, yes, yes, Theresienstadt was only a showpiece, it was only propaganda.

Eichmann

However that may always be declared, it's of no interest to the German police. We had no other camp like Theresienstadt, that was the camp of the German police. The RF was a very proper Jesuit, to his credit. You don't always have to tell the enemy the truth either. I always kept my promises to the opponent, even when it went against the grain. That's why I can't stand it when people say I had withdrawn my order by telegraph. I never did that, but by telegraph, I wasn't a post office clerk after all.

Questioner

Do you know of a case where you entered into such a promise where it also went against the grain for you?

Eichmann

I have no example, I didn't keep records of them deliberately. I can only give you one example that should characterize the whole conduct of my department, that I didn't shrink from apologizing in uniform in front of my officers to Dr. R. Lowenherz for having given him a slap in the face. The slap had been wrong, I apologized. It was at a time when we still had long years to go until the end of the war.

Questioner

But I don't quite understand that you apologize for a slap in the face given in error, and yet speak of the 15, 20, 30,000 Jews here as a trifle.

Eichmann

We had no personal hatred against the opponent, the whole thing was a political matter. If I had staged something on my own judgment, that would have been wrong, it wasn't my place. I was neither a reckoner nor a judge. The orders I received on the basis of ideological understanding in a global sense were carried out as the order stated and as the law stated. It wasn't my place as a private person to work off my spite in any way on a single object, on a single individual, that didn't

Eichmann

The enemy was global and was treated globally. I had no right to give this prisoner a slap in the face. No personal act against our opponents was anybody's place. (Examples already given.) The order stated that avoidable harshness is to be avoided, and quite apart from that, to deal out a slap in the face to a prisoner while wearing a uniform is not very honorable.

Eichmann

And so all personal acts in this field are not honorable, but that they have to march off into the wagons globally, are carried off, are taken toward a fate that we don't know, that nobody knows, that even the receiving station doesn't know, that is something quite different, that is ordered, that lies within the meaning of the legislation.

Questioner

But reports have come down that you were present at loadings, for example at the one where you

Eichmann

I was present at not a single one. My time didn't allow me that. At no transport, neither at the departure nor at the arrival. Witnesses for this would be my accompanying staff, or the people I had on the spot who were charged with the business.

Questioner

So you never kicked a Jew in the [not typed] or shouted at him or shoved him. Never?

Eichmann

The only one was Dr. R.L. with the slap in the face.

Questioner

Regarding the commission, the [not typed] of Pressburg paid a visit to the head of state Tiso and informed him that the Slovak Jews were being killed in the Lublin district. Wi told you about this visit on the occasion of his visit to Berlin, whereupon you declared that an inspection was completely out of the question, the Jews are being killed there, there is a secret order of the Fuehrer to exterminate the Jews slowly. To that [blotted] Wi declared the following to you: God grant that the enemies do not repay like with like. And thereupon you answered: Don't be sentimental, the Fuehrer's order has to be carried out.

Eichmann

The whole thing stinks of a statement got by torture. Second, that I'm supposed to have said such a thing to Wi, and that Wi was supposed to have said this thing to me, that is improbable. A camel through the eye of a needle.

Eichmann

If I had said that at all, then I certainly would not have said the Jews are being killed there slowly, then I would quite certainly have said the Jews are being killed there as fast as possible. But the Fuehrer's order spoke of a massive forcing.

Eichmann

On top of that, the Nu or Luzius may have intervened, Wi perhaps told me that, possible. But such a statement is impossible in service terms, because I would have jumped clean out of my tracks and would have asserted official untruths. It really does surprise me very much if this Luzius approached in Pressburg in that way, that on the whole complex the Hungarian bishop's representative [not typed] the then Bishop Muench, who after all at least twice a month promised, never raised such a question.

Eichmann

That wasn't his job at all at the time either, it was the job of this Luzius. He was the representative of the Vatican, who had the assignment from the Vatican to draw the Slovak head of state's attention to

Questioner

that Jews handed over by Tiso to the Germans were being destroyed there.

Eichmann

You may be right, but here's the thing, I in no way took up any massive representations from the Roman Catholic Church, at any rate not such that they occupied me. So why should such a measure by the papal Nu or Luzius in Pressburg have drawn such a long tail of declarations behind it? Especially as I tell you that it's impossible that these sentences alone don't fit ordinary usage.

Eichmann

I hardly believe that it would have burst the bounds of service: Don't be sentimental [off the sheet] confusion.

Eichmann

Wi would never have dared to say such a thing to me. No, made up, lied, nonsense.

Questioner

But one thing is certain, following on from that, from 1942 to 1944 no more deportations took place out of Slovakia. Reason?

Eichmann

Slovak resistance.

Questioner

What was it based on?

Eichmann

That is beyond my knowledge today.

Questioner

Was it based perhaps on the knowing killing of Jews, the refusal of the commission?

Eichmann

Possible. So, and now the following. After Stalingrad the brothers spoke differently. What began then was not a reconsideration on grounds of humanity, but on grounds of reinsurance. After Stalingrad I had the greatest difficulties in all the districts there were to work on. I want to put that on record expressly. People couldn't do enough, they could invite me, a small desk officer, to ministerial discussions, invite me to discussions outside the service, to private dinners and the like.

Eichmann

After Stalingrad these gentlemen considered, not all of them, how they could now turn it to their advantage, since the scales of winning this war were tipping heavily against the Axis powers. It was clear that the handling of the Jewish question was a welcome occasion for them to throw their resistance into the scales here. They did exactly the same thing much earlier, which the Jew JB doesn't reproach Becher and company with directly, but insinuates, that in order to have a good exit so to speak, at the last minute he threw the whole weight of his personality into the scales here to save what could be saved of the Jews here, so as to be able to lay them out as a trump card after the 8th of May 45.

Eichmann

Those people did the same much earlier, because if I, the little man, was already saying in 1940 that we'd lose the war if we carried on like this, then those people, who had provided themselves with ministerial agents at the individual governments, certainly had just as wide a horizon as I had. Their horizon probably went much, much further.

Eichmann

It surprises me at all that they let it come so far, but that isn't my business.

Questioner

There's also another explanation, Kastner with Wi from this period, namely Wi had promised to stop the deportations of Jews out of Slovakia if 50,000 dollars were paid in this case.

Eichmann

The following. Wi is the one who first said anything about my alleged remark about the death of 5 million. (Comment already given on JB's book.)

Eichmann

It is quite clear that if they place me over so high a sphere of official power, then the man who was my adjutant in Slovakia, and out of whose mouth these things were beyond doubt extorted, has to be raised up as high as possible too, so that his worth can be made credible not only to the public but also to history.

Questioner

This is about the 55,000 dollars and about the stoppage, Wi and Kastner.

Eichmann

Do you really believe that the Reichsfuehrer-SS, the chief of the Sipo and the SD, the office chief of the Gestapo on the one side, and the chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office on the other side, would have halted an evacuation out of Slovakia over a lousy 55,000 dollars? A sum that we raised to a power a little while later, to a value of say ten or twenty times, in our own banknote forgery workshops. Over a lousy 55,000 dollars. We would have had to be ashamed into the ground in front of our Slovak brothers in arms.

Questioner

But toward the end of 1942 a further offer followed, worth about 2 million dollars, to obtain the stoppage of all of them, except out of Poland.

Questioner

But for 55,000 dollars only for Slovakia, and for 2 million all territories except Poland?

Eichmann

No, no, no, unknown. It was extorted.

Questioner

Wi gives Dr. Kastner as his source?

Eichmann

I give torture as the source.

Questioner

But we have already talked about this matter before, about the offers that were made to Wi, and about the sums of money he is supposed to have put in his own pocket.

Eichmann

The following. You must not pin me down on this statement of mine, if. First, and I do not believe it, if Wi was already a scoundrel before the 8th of May 1945, then it could fit, but I do not believe it. Second, there would be the possibility that some obscure, or less obscure, intelligence post of an intelligence office needed foreign currency somehow and that Wi made some concessions here, so as to serve a goal important to the Reich in his own way. But you have to bear in mind that such sums, whether 50,000 dollars or 2 million dollars, are an absolute nothing measured against the Reich's horizon, especially since we later produced a far higher power of banknotes ourselves.

Questioner

Still, there are two points to note. First, was it, or did it belong to, Wi's competence to conduct such a negotiation at all? Second, was it possible that Wi had a direct line, either through Becher, who at that time had not yet appeared, or through some other people, to the Reichsfuehrer-SS, so that you were not informed at all?

Eichmann

That did not exist. Wi was in Slovakia as adviser on Jewish questions, attached to the German envoy. He could decide nothing, he had to let everything run through Berlin.

Questioner

Could he have had negotiations with the Jews there at all?

Eichmann

Yes, if I had ordered it. No, no, no.

Questioner

2 million dollars is for the Jews in Slovakia as well as for the other countries.

Eichmann

million are not even a beggar's penny. Not for all the money, not for all the currency treasures would I have called the thing off, unless the Reichsfuehrer-SS had ordered it, and no such order existed. There was only one single material order: motorize the 8th and the 22nd Division for me.

Questioner

Kastner said that the negotiations ran with Wi, with Jews in Slovakia.

Eichmann

What did Kastner have to do in Slovakia?

Questioner

Pardon. Kastner traveled to Slovakia quite often.

Eichmann

But he did not pay, he was not competent for that.

Questioner

Yes he was. The Fleischmann woman came out of Slovakia to the Hungarians, and she went around together with Kastner and with Brandt and Freudenberg to get the money together, and the 55,000 dollars were paid to Wi from there as well.

Eichmann

Where did he put it?

Questioner

He put it in his pocket. But apart from that, when you say it is impossible that Wi started such a negotiation without my knowledge and without my instructions, and second, that it is now impossible that Wi had a direct line to the Reichsfuehrer-SS, then how do you account for it? Two possibilities. Counterintelligence or the intelligence service. But how is it then possible that without your knowledge and without that direct line to the Reichsfuehrer-SS, he had a direct connection to some espionage bureau or organization?

Eichmann

It would really be inconceivable, but it would be one of the last and only possibilities. Yet if a man wants to be a scoundrel, then I cannot [blotted] in the line of duty [off the sheet]. If he gave it to an intelligence organization, then he did it against and without the knowledge of his own office, and made himself liable to prosecution by doing so. It is also possible that it went through the line of the envoy there.

Questioner

And Kastner's theory is not so easy to dismiss, because if the prospect existed of raising 2 million and that no more deportations would be carried out. And in fact none were carried out for two years. One more thing, these 2 million dollars that were agreed with Wi. For that the Slovak Jews mobilized themselves somehow with the help of the Hungarian Jews and tried to get funds out of Switzerland, and they only managed to scrape together about 1 million francs, or 500,000. Thereupon the Fleischmann woman handed this money over to Wi. But Wi said the whole amount had to be laid down with him, and the whole amount could not be raised, and after a real struggle by the Slovak Jews for this money, when they did not succeed, Wi reversed the deal and paid back the amount already advanced. That is Kastner's statement and it is Fleischmann's statement, and you could read it in this book too.

Questioner

Should there be something true after all in what Gromeid said: tell your friends not all SS men are like Eichmann and Wi? Or rather, besides Eichmann there are also SS men like Gromeid and Wi.

Eichmann

You are making me waver here in my loyalty to the service and in [off the sheet] subordinate to me.

Eichmann

But I cannot believe it.

Questioner

The assertion as such, that the money paid over was given back again and the deportations started up again.

Questioner

The question is whether such a business proposal was possible or not.

Eichmann

At most it could have led to a partial concession, as in Pressburg with Becher.

Eichmann

It would not have been possible to liquidate a general line for money's sake. That was not possible.

Questioner

But how do you explain a stop of two years, from a state like Slovakia, which stood completely under our power?

Eichmann

Could it not have political backgrounds, since the Slovak government turned stubborn through various interventions from Slovak circles standing outside?

Questioner

How do you explain this two-year stop to yourself?

Eichmann

I would almost like to say it could have been a fal[not typed] reporting by Wi.

Questioner

Why did they hang Wi?

Questioner

1945, Slovakia and the Russians?

Eichmann

I cannot say anything here, that one of my people

Speaker not established

Lousy sums.

Speaker not established

It was only about the Jews out of Slovakia.

Speaker not established

The 2 million were global.

Speaker not established

They were not paid.

Eichmann

Delaying reporting by Wi. Wi could allow himself that, because I trusted him blindly. In 1937, when I traveled to the Near East, Wi was my department head, my superior. We have known each other since 1936. He belongs to the few who built up the SD. When one serves from the bottom up, and I came from the troops, Wi came from Danzig from the General SS somewhere, and when one then always sticks together, when one has a common master, a university professor from Kiel, then one does not mistrust the other. When Wi reported something to me, I believed it, I took it at face value. Everything that stands in the book about Wi and me, that speaks against me, has stuck in my throat. I take it as a lie, but if the cases pile up, then it could be that there is a dog buried somewhere after all. So if the proof is now produced that Wi, behind the back of the Gestapo office in Pressburg. He was a man who knew how to live, who had no womanizing [blotted], against which spoke his corpulence and his impotence in the physical respect. He was a man who thought nothing at all of exertion. So if I am to pass a negative judgment on him, it comes hard to me, then the second in league with him is Gromeid, because he spoke out what the other did. Then the trial in Frankfurt against Gromeid could also be a fixed and staged trial, in order to raise for the Jew an increase of the payments granted to him, of 13 milliard marks. That too I put forward on the strength of this knowledge.

Eichmann

So it would be possible that Gromeid and Wi had been in close contact for years already

Eichmann

If it should be as you have just described it to me, and if the combination were correct, then I must establish the following. Theoretically there should be a connection between Wi and Gromeid at that time, who against their service orders sought their salvation in some possible collaboration with the Jews. And if so, then the second question arises, and if the trial now taking place against my permanent deputy in Frankfurt am Main should be a put-up game, in order not only to hold up the thesis of the 5 million Jews but to raise the already existing 5 million thesis further, to [too faint] million perhaps, so as to extract still more milliards in compensation. As an indication it could count in itself, if one took it into account as a factor of truth at all, that Gromeid said to the departing J.P.: besides Eichmann there is also Wi and Gromeid. If that is not a lie, then Gromeid and Wi have made themselves guilty of crimes against German blood. Then Wi reported falsely against his better knowledge, then Gromeid fell on my arms from behind, figuratively speaking, then I could indeed not, on account of his ruthless fanaticism, achieve a halfway respectable deportation figure, but not the end, namely the clearing of Hungary of all Jews. Then Wi and Gromeid would ultimately have to carry the guilt for this too, that the Hungarian people today is terrorized by Jewish secret policemen.

Questioner

Do you hold it possible, always on the theoretical assumption, that Wi and Gromeid passed you false deportation figures?

Eichmann

Yes, now yes.

Questioner

Do you hold it possible that when Wi says to you, today the transport went off with 12,000 men, that in reality only 6,000 traveled?

Eichmann

Yes, now yes.

Questioner

Was there no check for you, so that the final destination told you, yes, 12,000 have arrived?

Eichmann

They were not counted.

Questioner

Now let us look at this quite soberly. You have goods to deliver, in this case they were enemies of the Reich, Jews.

Eichmann

The arrival was not confirmed to me, only the handover, and it was passed to me by the escort commando, and in this case that was the copy of the police official of the country being evacuated, from Wi or from somebody, by numbers. But confirmed only by Wi. I never received these figures confirmed from Auschwitz, I believe they never counted.

Questioner

In the two years in which the transport stop was in force in Slovakia, were you possibly being stalled by Wi?

Eichmann

That is just what I want to say here. It is not about the small figures of one transport, something else is at stake here, it is about the difficulties in general. Until now I have never weighed such a ground for suspicion. And now I go further and have a third man under suspicion, and that is Ademeid, who had Croatia. All three of them were the opposite of me, peaceable good citizens, all three were proud, cheerful wearers of the uniform, all three did not much like being put out, they all gladly did their duty as long as it did not run to overtime, and all three turned a blind eye if they were left their personal [unclear] quiet

Eichmann

All three also had one thing in common, they had a clever little head. That is why I sent them out to those outposts. When I now read things in the Jewish literature today that I absolutely cannot make sense of, and when my attention is now drawn to individual incidents that I cannot explain to myself, then I have to answer when asked that a ground for suspicion is already rising in me now, and it seems to me, going by the mass of matters that come into question, that it leads to the negative of the men concerned.

Eichmann

What worries me at the moment is that Gromeid has to see his trial through in this way, so to speak, and now I ask myself further, how was he sentenced in the first summary proceeding as a lesser offender, when he had given his true name and rank, so the newspaper writes, "He founded a drugstore, he became a Reichstag deputy of the 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 not to click his heels together to take his official leave of me.

Eichmann

If we can find a consistent parallel here with these grounds, a great deal would certainly be cleared up at one stroke. Then the exceedingly quick death that the chief witness Wi had to meet would also be cleared up. It is not clear to me that a man who once, at a trial of such dimensions as the Nuremberg trial was, put forward the assertion that his chief spoke of the destruction of 5 million, a matter that was raised into a cardinal point by the opposing side, that such a man is allowed to [off the sheet] a few weeks later.

Eichmann

Apart from that, this question is far too important, how many million actually perished, for it not to be possible that Wi enjoys exactly the same life as many of the Jews you gassed.

Questioner

From this point of view, where and in which years is there any handhold for a ground of suspicion to arise in you? Or where do you think back to the years in which these people were posted at important points, what do you remember, that suddenly something went wrong, which ground of suspicion do you refer to when you say, a suspicion arises in me

Eichmann

A latent lack of hardness came out in everything. I had [not typed] groups, Brunner, Burger, Novak, the two Guenters, those were a few fellows to whom I read out an order that had been given to me, and the thing was already carried out.

Eichmann

Wi, Gromeid, Adoleid, Richter were people I first had to convince, or tried to convince, who did not accept everything as it was ordered, who always still had an if or a but, which annoyed to the point of weariness not only me but also my permanent deputy Guenter in Berlin. Guenter himself, whom I must call as a witness in this case, will confirm it to me, he himself in individual implementation matters, with which he was after all entrusted, that he had great difficulties with this circle of people, and when I now think it over, I have to tell you that Wi never had any sympathy for him, the sufferer and endurer.

Eichmann

For Guenter personified hardness. And a weakling like Wi, and also Gromeid, [blotted] Guenter not. Guenter was once beaten half to death by the [not typed] state police during the seizure of power, and then lived more in prisons than in freedom. He naturally had to keep his distance from these people.

Eichmann

I used to have a very stimulating and interesting exchange of ideas with Wi, for Wi was endowed with gifted mental powers and he was devoted to history. I loved history myself too, like a historian who does not do it for a living. We once had a longer dispute, what will become of the German people, what will become of the German Reich after the death of its present Fuehrer. I told him that the German Reich would then fall apart and the struggles of the vassals would then take place. He denied that. That was 1937, shortly before my departure for the Near East. We talked with one another in that manner.

Eichmann

Wi was sent by Heydrich to the Zionist congress in Bern as an observer, 1936, as his only privilege. And meanwhile Dr. Sicks arrived as the new office chief. Dr. Sicks brought with him, among others, SS Oschf. Hagen from the press department. It is clear that new chiefs put their own people in the posts they thought right, and so Sicks put the then Oschf. Hagen into the post of the then SS Ustf. Wi. Wi was in a sense demoted. But even before Hagen took Wi's post, Hagen was sent with me to the Near East. Wi, though, had already dreamed of it for weeks and counted on it.

Eichmann

I also know that Wi let fall very bitter and very hard words here, not only against Sicks but also against Hagen, to whom bonds of comradeship had tied him until then, but whom he hated from that point on. That was a human weakness. Hagen then came later, I believe, through Sicks into the institute for foreign studies.

Questioner

But you remember that Adoleid above all, and Gromeid, and Wi too, showed a certain [not typed] complex toward you?

Eichmann

Yes, above all Wi, he tried it again and again. Adoleid not at all. Gromeid tried it in Hungary, out of an attitude I could understand, as a man who had led his own office for years. Gromeid had to put up with a few reprimands, for he had after all only been my deputy and in police matters had only to be my extended arm. As someone who was not a police organ, he was not allowed to have actions of his own carried out unless they had my approval.

Eichmann

I had to reprimand him several times over that. I told him, you may not do that, those are matters for the Gestapo and you are not authorized to do it. I also know that this stuck in the craw, to put it plainly, of Gromeid, with whom I personally stood on cordial terms.

Questioner

Do you also remember that you once shouted at him over a matter concerning junior ranks, so that he got his own back and complained to you that you could have given him this dressing down on his own?

Eichmann

It would be possible, I am not certain.

Questioner

Do you remember that Wi said to you, give me 3 weeks after the war, and he said it to the Allied authorities, give me 3 weeks and I will bring you Eichmann dead or alive.

Eichmann

Yes, I have read that.

Questioner

Does it go so far that in 1944 Wi told Kastner that you showed him the plans for the gas chambers in March 1942?

Eichmann

I never had anything to do with gas chambers, I never saw a gas chamber. I am a technician by profession, I would have had to see some kind of drawing. The Gestapo office had nothing to do with it.

Questioner

But there are [not typed] witnesses for it, Wi and Kastner.

Eichmann

No, nothing, I had nothing to do with it. I already said once, the first time, that I was personally upset when Heydrich sent me to Lublin and the local Hauptmann Haeuser showed me the [off the sheet] that he intended to seal hermetically. But to this day I do not know how it was done in Auschwitz.

Eichmann

It went only so far that Mueller sent me into the Warthegau to report to him how vehicles working there killed the occupants with exhaust gases. The driver had a peephole and the doctor could establish whether any were still alive. I was to report to Mueller how long it takes until these exhaust gases had finished it completely. It was about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes. The doctor also called on me to look through the peephole, but I could not, I refused.

Eichmann

None of this belonged to my field of duty. I stuck rigidly to my regulations and also carried out stubbornly what was ordered of me, but this other thing was the task of others and I did not concern myself with it. Had I seen it, I would tell you so, exactly as I told you that I stood with Hoess at the Jewish trench where the bodies were burned. But I never saw this whole destruction process from the beginning, I was not the man for that. Apart from that, would it burden me less today if I had not stood there, or would it burden me more if I had stood there.

Questioner

Did Wi, Adoleid or Gromeid ever follow such a process from the beginning?

Speaker not established

No.

Eichmann

If we of the Gestapo had tasted such a process through from the beginning, or had had to taste it through, and we were wisely never ordered to do so, we would probably no longer have been able to work with that drive. That was a very shrewd measure by the RF. Only after the war did I come to know the true course of it, for even a Hoess described things to me only in the finest colors. The only doctor in the Warthegau wanted to bring me the naked truth. All the others who kept me away, those were the men who had been warned.

Eichmann

And I already told them, my knees shook when on an official trip I once saw in some little hole how Jews are shot together into a pit, and how a woman still holds up an infant. And when you have small children yourself, as I did then, I then made a report to Mueller in my indignation at such a proceeding, saying that the Jewish question could not be solved in that way. And that beyond this we would be raising our own men into sadists. That I said in writing and by word of mouth, and after that, at least soon afterwards, no more mass shootings were carried out.

Questioner

But mass gassings

Speaker not established

That is humane. [not typed]

Speaker not established

A division into two was certainly carried out from a higher quarter, for one man alone could not possibly have done both.

Questioner

Granted, you never received an order to look at the matter from A to Z, but would it not be possible that a kind of curiosity would arise, what is being done with them now?

Eichmann

If it had been curiosity, then I could have looked through that peephole back in 1942. I refused without letting the slightest scruple weigh with me, not that I would have been in the least ashamed, so that people would say, aha, this fine gentleman from Berlin.

Eichmann

Yes, if these men in the truck had been under my command, or the others responsible for the work, then of course I would have looked through that peephole, then I would also have been there from the beginning at the processes, if only to set my subordinates an example by this whole attitude of mine.

Eichmann

But since they were not men under my orders, I had no interest at all. I did my duty and did what my responsibilities were.

Questioner

But you visited concentration camps quite often?

Eichmann

Concentration camps is an exaggeration, the concentration camp Auschwitz.

Questioner

Did you visit Mauthausen?

Eichmann

Visited. I was interned there myself before I marched to Hungary, and for 8 days I was not allowed out.

Questioner

But you were shown some things there?

Eichmann

Nothing. There was a hostility between the concentration camp garrison and the [blotted] SIPO during the 8 days of living together in Mauthausen, for the garrison of the camp had meanwhile become SS salon officers, who competed here in their officers' mess with the airs of the guards officers of the Prussian army, and between us, the people's officers of the SIPO, at whom we hurled a kiss my arse. For we did not only have SD men in Mauthausen, we also had criminal secretaries, criminal councillors, police inspectors, senior police inspectors, all of them in ranks from Ustf. upward, and these men looked down on these clowns, on these salon officers in the camp at Mauthausen, exactly as those men looked down on us. I got on more or less well with only a single Hstf in Mauthausen, otherwise we were shunned like the plague. I have to tell you that although I was not the highest in rank, [off the sheet] was Geschke and one other.

Questioner

Were there Dutch Jews in Mauthausen in your time?

Eichmann

That I do not know, we were not in the camp area.

Questioner

Nor do you know to whom the fate of these Dutch Jews in Mauthausen [blotted] had been assigned?

Eichmann

I myself had other things to do in Mauthausen than to go and look at the camp area. I was glad when I got through my quota of the organizational work, for I had to put a column of 7 km on its feet. I sent Gromeid with Wi and 40 vehicles ahead as an advance party with a 24 hour start, then I followed on with the main body with 2 tanker wagons. I was the march commander not only for the SIPO but also for the Ord Pol. I had enough to do and I had no chance to get in closer touch with the concentration camp Mauthausen.

Eichmann

I never saw a single prisoner accommodation barrack. The Jews I deported didn't even interest me in Auschwitz, let alone in Mauthausen.

Questioner

What about the Dutch Jews?

Eichmann

They had the hardest labor there, namely carrying the stone [off the sheet]

Questioner

But please, they didn't have… that's wrong…

Eichmann

No, I saw that myself.

Eichmann

The work assignment was up to the commandant's office of the camps, nobody else had any influence there. In Auschwitz that was Hoess and in Mauthausen Zierach.

Questioner

But surely you're not going to claim that Herr Hoess decided on his own authority that the Jews delivered there had to be exterminated.

Eichmann

There was no order at all that Belgian, Dutch or Hungarian Jews had to be e x t e r m i n a t e d. No such thing exists. There is an order from the Reichsführer which reads, and this was naturally altered again and again over time. Jews fit for labor are to be handed over to labor deployment, Jews unfit for labor are to be handed over to the Final Solution. There was nothing else. Neither a Pohl nor a Zierach nor a Hoess could determine that. Only the medical commission could determine that in the individual camps.

Questioner

Against that I have to make a claim. That there were quite different labor categories in the different camps.

Eichmann

Yes, that's right, that existed. There was for instance an archduke in Mauthausen who always had to push a very large block of stone up, and when he got to the top he had to let it crash down, then he had to run down and had to push the stone up again, and so on, and that's how he worked himself to death. And do you know who the order came from? From G o e r i n g, by way of the Reichsführer, to Pohl, and from Pohl to Mauthausen.

Eichmann

I have to defend myself against that, although it doesn't fall within the competence of the Gestapo. All the same.

Speaker not established

Intellectual Jews were to be exterminated.

Eichmann

The Jews in the Amsterdam ghetto once killed a number of German soldiers and a number of Dutch formations, and after that a very careful sorting was done. The ones taken from far-left 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 assigned by nationality. Then it's simply one such transport from Amsterdam, where such a case was proven. Then one has to say that it's this particular transport, because they shot Dutch soldiers to death. Then that had a reason [off the sheet]

Eichmann

Then the Reichsführer ordered it and it was proposed to the Reichsführer again, when it was a matter of Dutch Jews here, who [off the sheet]

Eichmann

It didn't go by nations. Name me one nation that was exterminated without remainder. Not a single one, not even the General Government, although there was an order there. Not even there, although anyone could do as he liked, since the Gestapo office wasn't responsible for it either. Not in the Baltic countries either, not in the occupied Russian territories either, not even there, let alone in the places where the Gestapo had a finger in the business.

Eichmann

I had other things to do in Mauthausen. It didn't interest me.

Eichmann

There's a Habsburg castle in the neighborhood. The Hohenbergs lived there, we paid a visit there. Later I had a connection in Austria with the legitimists, and a distant Hohenberg was with us as well. Around that time I had business in Vienna. An Untersturmführer Pfeiffer was handling the legitimists in Vienna, and with this Pfeiffer I took a trip to a childhood friend of mine, the Baroness [not typed], at castle [not typed] near Strengberg. I'd known her for a long time. As a boy I'd had a motorcycle accident near Strengberg, was left lying with concussion, and a tenant farmer's inn belonging to this castle took me in. When the Baroness heard of it she had a carriage harnessed, came, nursed me for a few days, and then I was taken over into the castle. She was a relative of the Hohenbergs. With this Pfeiffer I made a tour through Austria in Rothschild's black limousine. I had to visit all the SD sectors in Austria and supply them with injections for the solution of the Jewish question, and we also drove from Vienna to Linz, and Strengberg lies on the way as you know. We stayed the night there. I was received very ungraciously because I wore the black uniform of an SS Untersturmführer. I then gave Marianne my explanation. Her old lady, nearly 80, needn't have done it. She didn't listen to me at all, she already despised me that much. And Marianne then asked me to release her uncle or nephew, or were there two brothers. I said that I can't do and I won't do it. Pfeiffer was astonished at my hardness, seeing that I was lodging here as a guest of a childhood friend, although he was the case officer for the matter. But I did then take an interest in the fate of these people who'd been asked about, and I heard that on the orders of the Higher SS and Police Leader these relatives of the castle [not typed]. In short, the principle was, the two of them have to die, but even so they mustn't be killed.

Questioner

Question about the sentence: Then they were fed into the Final Solution? That says clearly and plainly that they were exterminated.

Eichmann

Yes, when I said it that way, then that's also what I meant.

Questioner

But our thesis has been from the very beginning that it was Final Solution from the moment they were seized, deported, away. We've always said that Final Solution always, not the way the Jewish side claimed.

Speaker not established

At first it was called [blotted]

Eichmann

The solution of the Jewish question crystallized in the course of time, namely from the moment Germany reached over into Austria, into the word Final Solution. Already in Austria and in the Sudeten region it was called the Final Solution of the Jewish question. Under this term, which stood on all the file memoranda and so on, physical extermination was of course not what was meant, but only the final solution. That's the word that was suggested to me, more or less, following Herzl in his book "Der Judenstaat". This book was what first gave me the intellectual impulse that I must help for my own people, and that the opponent can help to find the solution. People were looking for the solution, they were looking for the position of power, and in this position of power I took a point and threw it into the scales, to meet Herzl by way of Adolf Boehm. Through his solution of the Jewish question we came to the final solution for both parties. Then later, from the end of 41, when physical extermination was ordered, this in itself harmless designation, Final Solution of the Jewish question, in the sense of a mutual [blotted] final satisfaction through emigration, elimination, departure from the nation, was used for reasons of camouflage, and the physical extermination was then disguised by it.

Questioner

In other words, the thesis is that the Final Solution is only a camouflage for the extermination of Jews.

Eichmann

In itself yes. For example, a document, a letter within Germany is plain and simple, but as soon as the word Final Solution is added, then it means extermination. But all emigration, everything that went through Kastner as well, all the files had the same term, F i n a l S o l u t i o n. Everything had the same term, everything that emigrated and so on, which has nothing to do with extermination. So Final Solution is an umbrella term. A piece of bureaucratic jargon, it has to be [blotted]

Questioner

November 1942. Proposal of the SS Main Office by Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, forwarded through Gruppenführer Mueller to the Reichsführer, to raise the necessary means to set up an SS division in Hungary. Emigration permits to be sold to Slovak Jews living in Hungary.

Eichmann

I can't remember, but I don't want to deny it.

Questioner

In November 1942 an order is issued on the basis of a report from IV B 4 a.

Eichmann

One moment. Family support for those living in [not typed], for the dependents of the 8th and 22nd Divisions. Yes indeed.

Eichmann

The family dependents of the SS men from the farms and from [not typed] were now to be paid, and this family support was now to be raised in the country itself, in fact by the Jews. But who gave the impulse for it, and when, I don't know. But the thing is correct.

Questioner

Occupied by the German Reich after partisan activity had fallen off. In eastern Slovakia. The first Wehrmacht commander was Berger, but he was soon replaced by Hermann Hoefler. Himmler also paid a visit to Pressburg a short time later and demanded the complete deportation of the Jews from Slovakia, on the grounds that the greater part of the partisans were Jews. Are you aware of that?

Eichmann

Yes, so far as that goes. Not Himmler's visit, but that Slovakia was then combed out completely in a final sweep. The deportations followed at once from that, in September and October 1944, to Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen, and for that reason a great part of these Jews survived the war. The Jews from Slovakia survived the war because the Reichsführer stopped all exterminations in the summer of 1944, and then Auschwitz had no room left and all the evacuated Jews then had to be distributed according to where there was space, which in turn was announced by the SS Main Office. So the Jews from Slovakia were divided up among the individual camps, and each one had to take in as many as there was room for, because there was no longer any physical extermination.

Questioner

Theoretically?

Eichmann

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 in Hungary the very peaceable Dr. Ebner had Steffen arrested on the pretext that he'd prepared an escape attempt, which he never prepared, and had him delivered to Auschwitz. Hoess came to me, what am I to do with him, he worked with you before. Let it be, I've given him the broom, he's to sweep the yard, just let him go on sweeping quietly. When I came again, Guenter had given the order to do away with Steffen. It was only a story told as proof that individual cases still occurred after the general order to stop the exterminations.

Questioner

And now it's claimed that there were 2 parties. On the one side Becher, Wisliceny, who negotiated under the counter, and on the other side Berger, Kaltenbrunner. Because Becher and Wisliceny wanted to negotiate with the Jews and carry out no more deportations, while the other side, Berger, Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann, pressed for unconditional deportation on the grounds that it was important for reasons of the war effort to get the Jews still on hand deported, since it was proven that the Jews made up a large percentage of the partisans. And Eichmann put in one of his most capable men, Anton Brunner. But Brandt says the Reichsführer, Becher and company, and on the other side Eichmann, Mueller, Kaltenbrunner and company. We have Berger, Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann against Wisliceny and Becher.

Questioner

Why do you bring Berger into the intransigent group? He's precisely the man who wants family support for his volunteers, and exemption, so that he gets the money in. There's a contradiction there.

Eichmann

That is no contradiction at all, beyond the fact that when Slovakia was occupied Berger became Wehrmacht commander in Slovakia. Then Hoefler was put in. Berger declared the unconditional deportation to be important for the war effort, because [not typed] was made up of partisans, and specifically out of the purely Slovak Jewish labor camps, which were handled very loosely, so the Jews bolted and went into the [too faint] and played at being partisans.

Eichmann

So the group Berger, Kaltenbrunner and E. [handwriting], and the deportations went on in September and October. Later George Dunant of the International Red Cross stepped in, who came to Pressburg. At first it was hopeless for him. He could not even prevent baptized children from being sent to Auschwitz.

Eichmann

That is regrettable, but that was never done. Jews who had converted to a Christian religion were excluded from deportation, and not only in [blotted] Slovakia, where a priest was president, and the priest approached me personally 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.

Questioner

One moment. What then stood in a Jew's way if he wanted to go to some parson?

Eichmann

Nothing at all stood in their way. Do you know what the Jews did? They married. They took an Aryan as a way out. Then they went abroad and had themselves divorced. There was nothing we could do about it with that legislation, nothing at all. All we could do was watch.

Eichmann

They did it that way everywhere. It runs into the ten thousands, and we could do nothing against it. The Nuremberg legislation stood against us, and so did all the Jewish legislation on the part of the Jewish groups in the various other countries. They all adopted this statute of union with Aryan Christians. That is exactly why Bishop Muench, the permanent representative [not typed], kept coming to me, because, and this is quite clear, local excesses happened on the part of the state police and the regional headquarters, which either cleared them up or did not. That is why Muench came shuffling in with long slips of paper, and I had all these matters put right by telex.

Questioner

Did that not strike you in any way?

Eichmann

Of course it struck me, all these marriages.

Questioner

But could you not intervene somehow? Did the Jew not have to have been baptized for at least so and so many years?

Eichmann

An example. If I, a non-Jewish German national, at the time when this legal mesh of the Nuremberg legislation was recognized, had married a Jewess before the registry office, and the Jewess had perhaps offered 2 0 000 Reichsmark, or had offered nothing at all, so a love match, if I had married this Jewess, then in later years the German-blooded party was taken into protective custody, nothing more.

Eichmann

But if now the Jewess or the Jew got hold of a Jew of foreign nationality, and he married her, there was nothing to be done. The Nuremberg legislation provided no solution, and we had to abide by that until May 8, 1945.

Questioner

You have no idea how high the figure is of Jews who went under in this way?

Eichmann

Quite impossible to say. There must be tens of thousands.

Questioner

Very well then. The end of Slovakia in 1945 is said to have been that George Dunant, who had been staying there, with Kastner's help again from Budapest helped many Jews to flee and to hide until the Russians came.

Eichmann

In this whole area there is one man who is the most mobile of them all and had every possibility open to him, and that was the Jewish confidential agent of Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann. His name was Dr. Kastner.

Eichmann

Kastner darted back and forth, to Switzerland, back to Hungary.

Eichmann

But he did a thorough job. He handed over to me all the Jews without a single shot being fired, without my noticing even the slightest demonstrations, without anything beyond the [blotted], the amount of which I do not know, and without my having to give even one single man apart from my Jewish adviser. He handed them over to me. I cannot give the exact number.

Eichmann

Was I now to be ungrateful toward this man, who made the months in Budapest so agreeable for me and kept me supplied with relatively little trouble? Should I be ungrateful toward such a man? Kastner of course had every right of movement. If Kastner manages to drive Pohl into fits of rage, and here what Brandt ascribes to me is correct, if Kastner brought it about that Hoess drove from Auschwitz to Hungary again and again and begged, wringing his hands, to transport fewer people here and to equip the transports better, if a Kastner managed to serve me up the residence on the Schwabenberg with more or less pleasant desk work, if I had such good Jewish confidential men, then this Jewish confidential man could also lay claim to some thanks, and I could only repay him with personal freedom of movement.

Eichmann

And the border crossing points had been instructed by me to let Kastner through. Those were the borders adjoining Hungary. Only in the case of Austria did I have to be asked, but the borders with Slovakia, Romania and Poland were free for him.

Questioner

The commander of the SIPO in Slovakia, Witiska?

Eichmann

I cannot say anything definite about that. I do not know. I had my adviser attached to Ludin. The commander in Slovakia for the SIPO was no business of mine. It may well be that because he occupied a second rank in my work I no longer have him in my memory, because the concentration and registration in Slovakia were carried out by Slovak agencies.

Eichmann

As the highest authority I had to take account of in Slovakia, I dealt with Mach and Ludin. I visited nobody else, with the exception of a single occasion, when Disse wanted me, and then I came. Those three people, I had official business in Slovakia with nobody else.

Questioner

One moment. The following police agencies were in the police that were subordinate in some way to the Reich Security Main Office. First the police attaché, second [not typed], third Anton Brunner.

Eichmann

Brunner was the reinforcement for Wi. He was not subordinate to the commander in Slovakia either. There were other arrangements. There the final solution of the Jews took place through the Foreign Office, hence the adviser for Jewish questions at the German legation. So Wi was the adviser on the Jewish question. Then there was the commander of the SIPO and the SD, and he had the desk officer of Office IV, the Gestapo, and he had the Jewish specialist

Speaker not established

That is none of my business.

Eichmann

No. Wi, as the man commanded by the Reich Security Main Office, and commanded specifically as attaché, was the only person here who was to solve the Jewish question in Slovakia in agreement with his envoy. What the commander may have done with his desk officer does not concern me. He could do nothing other than what the attaché sent by the Reich Security Main Office to the envoy had ordered him to do.

Questioner

No.

Questioner

I am speaking now of autumn 1944, of the moment when a commander of the SIPO of ours sat there and a Wehrmacht commander. Slovakia was no longer autonomous then. I am speaking of the time when the last deportations were still being carried out. There was a commander of the SIPO, and he had a desk officer of Office IV, the Gestapo, and that man had the Jewish business to deal with.

Questioner

And the man is sitting in [not typed] and we want to question him.

Eichmann

If a desk officer of Office IV has business in a country where I have a man of my Main Office sitting down there, then you can believe that the commander's or the commandant's man has nothing to say, unless my man grants him the authority. Wi gave him his orders, that is quite clear. Because Wi represented the central authority in Pressburg, while the commander's desk officer represented the subordinate authority.

Questioner

You are contradicting yourself here. You declared the other day that you had not the slightest influence on the commanders of the SIPO, that they went by orders from the Reichsfuehrer. So it is just as possible in Slovakia that they got their orders from a higher office.

Eichmann

But I said that those are individual cases, when the commanders received orders from the Reichsfuehrer, because the Reichsfuehrer loved to intervene personally, very often in the most subordinate matters, so far even that he overturned his own general decisions and carried them to absurdity, which brought us great difficulties.

Questioner

No, you wanted to wash yourself clean with: what the commanders did did not concern me at all, I had my individual agents, but the commanders held sway in their own sphere of power as they pleased, on the strength of what they received from another, higher quarter.

Eichmann

That is rubbish, because Dannecker was commander in Paris, so how can I have contradicted myself? When my Dannecker was my detached man with the commander, he was in Paris exactly what Wi was in Pressburg with the envoy. If the commander had now said to Dannecker, shut your mouth, then Dannecker would have had to shut his mouth. He would have gone off to Berlin, and the moment he entered the Reich Security Main Office he would have been the desk officer for France, and in his capacity as desk officer he would then have instructed the commander in Paris through official channels to do it, then he would have traveled to Paris and would have said to the commander, what am I to do now. In the meantime Knochen would have had a letter from the Reich Security Main Office, namely IV B 4, file reference from Dannecker. He would have said, Hauptsturmfuehrer, I have received a letter from Berlin in the meantime, we do have to do it the way you said. That I myself

Eichmann

The finer points that were usual in the Gestapo office, those you do not know.

Questioner

Yes, but you made an exception of France the last time.

Eichmann

Now, Comrade Sassen, you claimed the last time that the higher SS and police leaders, the commanders and so on, could of course do as they pleased, just as it suited them, and that I had nothing to do with it. You also said that in France, through the fortunate combination, your desk officer was at the same time desk officer of the commander there, and that he could be very effective.

Eichmann

No, I will give you another example, Holland.

Eichmann

How was it in Holland, where my Regierungsrat Zoepf was, where did he work, with the commander of the SIPO and the SD in The Hague. And if this good commander in The Hague had not from the outset shown a great deal of generosity, and if Zoepf had not been on the most intimate terms of friendship with him, and if things had therefore been otherwise and there had been differences, Zoepf would have traveled to Berlin and would have done exactly as I have just described with Dannecker. There are more examples.

Questioner

The central point is this. Yes or no, within the area of a [not typed] commander of the security police, could a man of yours from the section independently make suggestions to that commander which had any executive force, or do you regard your man and thereby your section as in principle not involved in everything the commander set in motion.

Eichmann

So-called advisers, and there where commanders sat, who were in no way subordinate. Yes, and so on, but I had nothing to do with that. They drew their orders directly from the Reichsfuehrer.

Eichmann

That is quite right. The commander of the SIPO and the SD had to come to make his report and to receive his orders. Where did he come? Not to me, never. Although the commander was of equal rank with a desk officer of the Gestapo office, because the commanders came out of those desk officer posts and were transferred back and forth. No, to receive orders he went first to the chief of the SIPO and second to the office chiefs, not only to the chief of Office IV alone. He also went to Ohlendorf, because in his commander's area he had to represent all seven offices of the Reich Security Main Office for his country. That is what he was chief of the security police for, namely the delegate, the man attached, of Heydrich for France, Holland and so on. Never to the desk officer. Now out of this receiving of orders and out of this reporting in person a practice developed, that both the chief of the SIPO and the office chief or the office chiefs, and in particular matters the commander was also ordered to the Reichsfuehrer, drew his orders there in general terms, and the implementing provisions for them were left to the individual sections. That is to say, he was instructed to turn to the section desk officers about them. Hence the duplication of possibilities from that vantage point, exactly as I had it downward, so from there upward and from me downward. So it was, if I think it through exactly, a diabolical possibility of the [not typed], to justify itself somehow in administrative legal terms before the foreign governments as need or opportunity arose, or to keep itself clean. So that was a possibility that Heydrich must have wanted.

Eichmann

Those are Jesuitical cardinal questions, and they all come down on one person, and that is Heydrich, because you see how it all meshes together like little cogwheels, and how adjustable it was, according to whim and mood. I could work downward just as carefully as they worked upward. Whether it was a Commander of the Security Police, whether a diplomatic envoy, whether it was the economic office, that was completely immaterial. They could work upward, and the economic office could even work through the envoy if it wanted to [off the sheet]

Eichmann

I could not give orders to the Commander either. He came to Berlin, he went to the Chief of the Security Police, to the office chiefs, and in special cases to the Reichsführer. These people were told through the higher official channel from us, through official channel, what had to be told to them. There was no desk officer who, apart from the Commander of the Security Police, had any other office holder in the country, other than me of all people. There was nobody else, so I could play as I liked. For example, I could go to Müller and say, now this fellow Knochen is coming, tell him he m u s t handle the matter in such and such a way. Such things happened. Then Müller, without my needing to open my mouth at all, would say, here you are, Knochen, travel here and there, settle this matter. So relief was given to my wish, a relief which then flowed to Dannecker, and came to me through Dannecker's reporting. It was exactly the same in Slovakia, and it will have been the same everywhere.

Eichmann

[not typed] because I had no authority, I had to use back channels. But the back channel was my own office chief. I could not deliver or demand any [unclear] to Knochen. The office chief had to push that through with Knochen in his personal report, the one he held about Knochen with the office chief. That is, he had to work on Knochen so that Knochen would push it through. I could not shout at Knochen about it [off the sheet] Please let us take another example. Why was I sent again and again into the various countries? Because there were difficulties. I could not give instructions. I could push through the wish and the will of the Reichsführer, the wish and the will of Kaltenbrunner and Heydrich, the wish and the will of the chief of Office IV, who was feared most of all by the commanders. Müller was feared even more than the Reichsführer. So if I threatened a Commander of the Security Police with the chief of Office IV, then he gave in and promised to do what he could, whereupon I probably said, then I ask that you do the utmost possible. That arose directly in the form of direct missions, never derived from any authority to issue instructions. That did not exist. I could not instruct any commanders. The [not typed] side was handled quite differently from the intelligence side.

Eichmann

The Reichsführer did it very cleverly. He kept his whole police out of the annihilation of the Jews, with a single exception [not typed] Otherwise he left the Security Police and the whole police out of it altogether, and transferred it to bodies remote from the police. That was very clever. 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

Eichmann

It was also there for the loading, for the transport, for the escort. It is the maid of all work. But the Reichsführer kept his police out of the physical annihilation work, and with this measure used a body that was after all remote, one that did not have to respect tradition, that did not have to respect decrees, ordinances, laws and so on.

Questioner

What is meant by the English system?

Eichmann

I don't know. Bumping someone off without anyone hearing it.

Questioner

Operation Reinhardt?

Eichmann

An economic operation, an operation to take over and secure the property of the Jewish organizations in all countries. There was an administration and realization office in Prague and in the Czech lands too, in the General Government the Governor General certainly, and in the remaining countries the various governments. I cannot say more than that. We were never concerned with the purely economic side.

Questioner

We have already spoken about the claim from a certain quarter that the whole Jewish question, under that heading, had Goebbels and Heydrich as its real driving force, while Himmler carried out Hitler's categorical order only after long reluctance. What do you think of that?

Eichmann

Regarding my position on the forming of blocs, one has to make a very fine distinction here. We cannot simply say that the Reichsführer carried out Hitler's order very hesitantly. Now, the Reichsführer did not carry the order out exactly. We see that in Hungary with the Jews, that he had negotiations conducted. By rights, once a Führer order has been given there is no negotiating afterwards, because then it is in principle all the same whether in this case I negotiate with the one giving the order or with the one I am supposed to work with. The Reichsführer had these negotiations carried out, let us say, under the pressure of circumstances, and I certainly believe that the original thought for him was the motorization of his two SS divisions. And when the other offices learned of the variety of people involved, whether it was the Abwehr, whether it was [not typed] they scented opportunities here. Whether it was that they wanted to fill their thin money bags with foreign currency, whether it was that one or another was personally corruptible, whether it was that they wanted to secure themselves a so-called lenient exit, recognizing how the war would end. That all came then like a long pent-up storm, which had already begun to flash here and there beforehand, for example in Holland or in the West generally, when the Reich Marshal had works of art requisitioned, not only from Jews, and the requisitioners were in part great art experts, and they could offer the buyer an [off the sheet] which as a rule consisted of all the permits, regarding emigration and so on. So here there were already the so-called economic hyenas, who lay in wait everywhere there was something to be squeezed out of the Jews. They were always people who wanted to insure themselves on both sides. But that existed everywhere then

Eichmann

Now we have to look at this matter from the Reichsführer's angle. Now it is possible, if we pick the thing apart, that the opponent himself knew nothing of the Reichsführer's original wish to motorize the two divisions. The opponent was bound to think that two blocs had formed. He knew nothing, he only knew that the Reichsführer let himself be bargained with and that other offices did not let themselves be bargained with. It is, however, incomprehensible to me why of all things the forming of blocs is then supposed to have been such that the Reichsführer on the one side and people of his own immediate command area on the other side are supposed to have played against him. You know, in the best case that would have ended with the concentration camp, if the Reichsführer had found out about it. Or can you imagine anything else? No, neither can I. And I believed I understood, when I have to acknowledge the efforts of Jewry here, to do everything here to make the high number of allegedly annihilated Jews credible, not for the present but also for the future.

Questioner

Do you know whether, several years before the war, a plan drawn up by Heydrich down to the smallest details was circulated and was ready for the so-called solution of the Jewish question in every respect?

Eichmann

No, I would have had to know about that. But if what is meant by it is the current efforts towards the solution of the Jewish question, which have to be divided into individual complexes, if that is what is meant by it, then I must indeed say yes. Because that includes emigration, and the second part, once again a frantic attempt to form a Jewish territory, Madagascar and later in the Lublin district, all of which failed, and then the other concentrations, which ended with the great deportations to the concentration camps. But there was never a general staff plan fixed, by which the marching was then done. The moment dictated these things.

Questioner

So that could also have been the case up to 41/42, under the name final solution of the Jewish question, that this plan existed?

Eichmann

No, in no way whatsoever.

Questioner

Did Heydrich have a plan at all?

Eichmann

No, that never existed. There was never a general staff plan by which the marching was then done, so to speak. Nobody demanded one, nobody worked one out, nothing.

Questioner

But Heydrich was after all somehow charged with the Jewish question at the Wannsee Conference or at other conferences?

Eichmann

Yes, Heydrich had the formal confirmation given to him by the Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and indeed he was authorized to set the final solution of the Jewish question in motion, to take it over. Yes, that had happened. I was already in Berlin then, because I had to help work this whole thing out. It was thrown back again and again, it ran around in other hands the whole time and so on. That was about 1940, when the appointment came, signed by Göring, for Heydrich.

Questioner

And then he also had no far-reaching plan?

Eichmann

No, that is not right.

Questioner

Does it help you at all with Operation Reinhardt if I tell you that this operation began after Heydrich's death and was named Reinhardt, so to speak, in his honor?

Eichmann

No, I don't know that.

Questioner

Before the march into the West, was a plan worked out at your office, on some initiative from higher offices, or shall we say

Questioner

Or were directives gathered in order to secure certain Jewish and Freemason documentation, property and so on in good time?

Eichmann

Regarding Freemasonry I believe nothing was initiated there, because Freemasonry became uninteresting, in the Reich too, everywhere. No, but otherwise you are right, an attempt was made to secure the necessary archive material, and I still remember, the Jewish Alliance [not typed] They had brought out a newspaper, and this newspaper had met with quite considerable response in Germany, and we thought to ourselves that this was a quite significant matter. And then the whole Jewish Alliance came [not typed] to Paris, and the people who moved into Paris from the Commander of the Security Police and the SD, they now set about searching this place here. And I still remember today that a report came, and Dannecker gave me this report orally as well, that our people were utterly astonished at this small, unimposing apparatus of this organization, which looked like nothing at all. That was a back-alley outfit of the first order. It was nothing, nothing at all. And with that I can answer your question myself, in that I can give you the confirmation that the Jewish political organizations in the West were indeed searched through, without doubt with the agreement of the French authorities concerned, in contrast to Holland, where I believe we did that on our own authority.

Questioner

Do you know from that time, or did you receive any indications from which it might emerge, that in France the registration of Jewish property, or documentation and so on, in general that the Jewish question could be solved so quickly there, because some preparatory work had been done from the French police side, so that the Germans could set about it at once in cooperation with the French?

Eichmann

That is very probable, because we had no material at all to find in France. That is, the material was as meager as I have just told you. Our intelligence service and our confidential agents had worked so poorly that we imagined this organization to be something quite different. I also believe that this organization was blown up so particularly from one side. So if we had gone at it in France with our relatively meager records, it would probably have come to a fiasco, and only through the French police, which cooperated a full hundred percent here, could this success be achieved. We had a big prison near Paris, and the French police delivered the Jews there, and from there they were evacuated. And there sat a French commissioner who was responsible for the whole matter. He was also [blotted] to me, so that we spoke a few words of courtesy, because the French police needed no instructions. They would probably also have declined such instructions, because the French police were far more anxious about their sovereignty than was the case with the gendarmerie in Hungary, for example. Here the government watched considerably more strictly over everything.

Questioner

But my question refers mainly to this. On the strength of what evidence can you make it plausible that on the French side, long before the German march in, a working area of Jewish affairs was already under way, so that after the Germans marched in things could be proceeded with quickly and at speed

Eichmann

I tell you, the indications are these. Without much pushing on our part, and without long negotiations, we were handed a so-called completely filled prison camp, with a commissar at its head.

Questioner

But I mean, what indications are there that the French police, for instance, had a kind of special section where the Jewish data were brought together, or rather, what indications are there that the French were prepared. How is one to imagine that before the war the French police had a section for Russian nationals, or even for the Germans, that had a quite particular specialty.

Questioner

Do you believe now that something similar existed for the Jews?

Eichmann

Without doubt, since after all the [not typed] was the bureau for the Wehrmacht, and the [not typed] was of interest to us, the Sipo, and we worked together with them. But I cannot give you exact descriptions. I can only tell you this one thing, that Dannecker stepped into a fully feathered nest there, and did not need to press any great advice on anyone. He had quiet work there, and as far as I can still recall he was received everywhere with open arms, and he also had his French opposite numbers with whom he ran the whole business. That is, they ran it, but since Dannecker was in Paris he had to keep in constant contact and touch. But beyond that I can tell you nothing. It was also too subordinate, too far down the line for me. What interested me was that everything worked.

Questioner

But it is entirely conceivable that the lively espionage activity by Jews in favor of the Third Reich, before the German troops marched in, somehow led the French police to register the Jews in particular, or at any rate to do preparatory work of that kind, so that afterwards everything could go so smoothly.

Questioner

Is there any literature on it?

Eichmann

No, not directly.

Questioner

But it would still be interesting to know, if one could establish for instance that the Third Republic, that is to say democratic France, had in the Jewish matter, whether for police reasons or for other reasons, all the same done exactly the same preparatory work, so that the registration afterwards became easier.

Eichmann

I can only give the example that we had the prison camp with the commissar

Questioner

Yes, but that was after the invasion. What interests me is what may have happened before the invasion. That is what matters.

Eichmann

[not typed] Dutch police, immigrant Jews were registered fairly precisely and were also watched fairly closely.

Questioner

Those would be the important indications that I am missing for France, how it was done there. Question. At your office, did you hear of the Jewish documentation found in France, a very large documentation, above all from the [not typed], that this formed the basis for the college in Frankfurt am Main, the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question, which was opened on 26 March 1941 by Rotenberg?

Eichmann

With which the Sipo had nothing to do. Neither did it get anything from us, nor we from them

Questioner

Question. The Institute for the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main, 1940 and 1941. Were you surprised that we, Department IV, had nothing whatever to do with it?

Eichmann

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 [not typed] 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 in the later Department VII, earlier it was called Department I, that is how it began, under Str. Brandt, and when the problem grew ever larger and the man could no longer take it all in, then Professor Sicks came in as well, then this apparatus ran at full speed, because the [not typed] apparatus was floating on a peacetime, political footing. Only with the outbreak of war, and even the emigration apparatus was always balancing between the [not typed] and scholarly knowledge research. But with the outbreak of war the activity of the scholarly sector, Department VII, sank to a low point, because first, this department had already registered the essentials so far as Jews were concerned, and had recognized the opponent in his forms of appearance. From then on this material was taken over in full by the [not typed] sector as equipment, and [not typed] was done with it, so that now the [not typed] ran at full speed. That is why the [not typed] apparatus of the Sipo and the SD that handled these matters had, naturally, at that period, the period of the war, neither time nor opportunity, neither inclination nor cause to spend time here on the Rosenberg office for research on the Jewish question in Frankfurt. The connection with the lead was of course held by Department VII. So if we had come up against anything unclear, we would automatically have turned in that respect to Department VII, and if they could not have dealt with it exhaustively, then they would have turned either to their other connections, or would also have brought in the office for research on the Jewish question. That is why I, who was pulled out of the circle of this scholarship in 1940 and transferred in 1940 into the [not typed] body, no longer had any connection with it either.

Questioner

Alliance Israel [not typed]

Questioner

That would have been a small shop?

Eichmann

Yes, a quite small, meager shop.

Questioner

Impossible. [not typed] They had a library of 400,000 volumes, only [not typed]

Eichmann

That is possible.

Questioner

Far larger than the rabbinical school [not typed], far larger than the Liebschuetz collections, than the Rothschild collections.

Eichmann

That side did not interest me. That side too I looked at only from the standpoint of the [not typed] organ, not from the standpoint of a member of Department VII. When I moved into Vienna, for instance, there too was a relatively small matter with an enormous library, where my assistants carried off some 80 to 120 crates of books, but they were large books. Back then, when I was still in Department VII, we had among the first measures the confiscation of the libraries. Those were brought to Berlin, and they were put in the cellar of the part of Department VII where the museum was

Eichmann

[not typed] in that the archive was situated, lying near the [handwriting] Platz [not typed] In this office I worked for half a year. There in that cellar lay 100,000 of these volumes. We had a librarian there, I believe he came from the state library in Leipzig, who worked on this card indexing, but he probably never came to the end of it, because then the war came and the staff were pulled out of this work. From my standpoint, from the [not typed] work, this matter was a misdirection, because we did not get the material we had hoped for. That is not to say that this structure may not have been significant in ideological terms. I do not mean to say that. Had I been in Department VII, I would probably have told you the opposite of what I am telling you now.

Questioner

So you had to secure Jewish libraries even before the war? Your section.

Eichmann

Yes, of course, but not the section, because at that time I was not in the secret state police office. The libraries, the securing, the functional part, the sealing of the libraries at the doors, that was probably the task of the Gestapo of Department IV. A detective officer would be sent, that belonged to the overall registration, and he stuck the Gestapo mark, the [handwriting], on the door. This official seal was then broken open by members of Department VII, because for them it had after all been [blotted], and I belonged to Department VII at the time as well. I had to carry out the first securings of the libraries in Austria. I came from the Reich Security Main Office, SD, in the spring of 1938, seconded to Vienna. Until then I had been a desk officer for Zionism and neo-Zionism, under Sicks. My section head was Hagen, Sicks's colleague. My task, for which I had prepared in Berlin, was [blotted]. I only came 14 days later, after the German invasion troops, when the Sipo staff and so on had long been in Vienna and were already spreading out over Austria according to a plan. For we had worked up the Austrian operation on card indexes, without regard to rank or post, in round the clock work on three shifts, about four or six weeks before the invasion of Austria. Here my colleague, engineer von Mildenstein, had designed two enormous card index tables for the Reich Security Main Office. They were an enormous [handwriting] drum, and each of these tables held, I believe, 500,000 index cards, and by a particular punch system these people, who sat at these tables as at a piano, could make this huge drum turn by pressing keys, and it stopped, and through this punch system he then had that fellow identified. There they were divided up by Jewish functionaries, by Freemasons, generally by every ideological field you can imagine. Everything that the SD and the Gestapo regarded as yielding knowledge was captured in these enormous drums. By this punch card system we handled this Austrian matter in a rotation of three shifts, without regard to ranks, sitting in the benches like schoolboys. We had written the index cards, so far as the fellows from the SD could type, then the index cards came along by runner, they were given to the workers sitting on benches, they were arranged alphabetically [blotted], sorted letter by letter, things that still had time, things that were more urgent, and so on. So that was the preparation in Berlin.

Eichmann

With this card index material the first wave now swept into Austria. I myself then stayed another 14 days in Berlin, and then suddenly received the order to go to Vienna without delay and report to the commander of the Sipo and the SD, which at that time was Stahlecker. He was then relieved, went to Prague, and in his place came Dr. Dr. Rasch. Both were, I believe, SS Oberfuehrer. And so I now came to Vienna. Someone had evidently forgotten to set a desk officer for Jewish affairs in motion for this matter, and I now had to fill that role in Vienna. I found a completely shattered Jewish system there, and I now rebuilt the Jewish organization on my side, so far as they could be useful to us from a Sipo point of view, and at the same time also, since I did after all come out of Department VII, I had the archive material and library material that was of scholarly interest to us, which had in the meantime been sealed, secured and packed in crates under my supervision, so that nothing could go missing. I numbered the crates myself, had an index of contents drawn up, had the library packed very neatly by its subject areas, as they had been arranged, following the catalogue that I mostly found there, and so the whole thing went to Berlin by the wagonload. And there they arrived in enormous heaps in the cellars of the offices concerned. In Vienna I therefore took out the material of the Jewish organization completely, with the exception of the library of the Israelite religious community in Vienna, because these people needed the library in part for their work. That was a piece of work I could decide on myself. But after I had called the religious community back into life and appointed Dr. Loewenherz as its director, I did have to leave them their equipment. I had to give him everything that was necessary for an orderly running of the office. And to that extent I left the apparatus of the Israelite religious community largely untouched. And exactly according to scheme F, as in Vienna, it was done in the Sudetenland, although this area was smaller. From Austria too, though, SD sub-districts, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, Graz, Linz and so on, this material was likewise collected by the local SD offices, naturally on a far smaller scale than in Vienna, taken off to the Vienna center and dispatched from there. A Vienna haulage firm carried out these transports. The furniture packers had, after long work, made contact with the SD and asked one day to be taken into the SD. The one was two meters tall, the other small, very devout, and this small devout one later became caretaker of the office of Department VII, and asked Sicks for a confiscated harmonium, and every morning one heard the devout strains of the caretaker in the SD service building. Was nobody converted? That is how it was with us. Everyone could find salvation in his own way, even I, after two years in the service of the SD Main Office. Only after that time did I decide to leave the Protestant church, voluntarily, nobody forced me to it, and I was also promoted without regard to my church membership at the time. My wedding took place in the Protestant church at Passau. And from the Sudeten district it then came to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and here it was done in exactly the same way as I have just been telling you, Comrade Sassen.

Questioner

This organ player was there through the whole war, and nobody ever protested.

Questioner

Did you at that time work through the collection operation in the Rhineland, collection point [unclear], for the securing of Jewish book material? Do you know anything about it?

Eichmann

No. Inside the Reich I had no field-service work at all to direct or to carry out. Until 1937, apart from the card-index preparation I described, and interrupted by the trip to the Orient, I had to occupy myself exclusively with working my way into Zionism, neo-Zionism and Orthodoxy. I learned Hebrew for two years, and otherwise I had my SD work to do. I had to help with the SS Leithefte. Every week I had to give my lecture at the SD school at Bernau on the ideological [blotted] of the subject seen from the scholarly side, so that in those days I could not look up from my desk work at all.

Questioner

Were any operations carried out by your office, or by your subordinates, to secure the books of the Greek Jews?

Eichmann

I cannot recall that.

Questioner

Did your office have anything to do at all with the registration of Jewish property?

Eichmann

No. The Commander of the Security Police had under him not only the executive side; the forces of the SD were under him as well. Where such securings were carried out, so far as the material was of scholarly value, the competent SD office naturally arranged it, and the executive side was handled in agreement with the executive organ of the Gestapo at the office of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD, in concert with his French counterpart. But I cannot imagine that even a single book came out of France.

Questioner

But they came out of France by the crateful.

Eichmann

That is beyond my knowledge. I would have sworn to it.

Questioner

Out of France alone there came 400,000 books of the Alliance, 10,000 books of the Hy [not typed], 10,000 books of the Federation [not typed], the whole Ed. Rothschild collection, the whole Maurice Rothschild collection, all of it out, 746 crates.

Eichmann

About that I can say nothing.

Questioner

You said that neither your subordinates nor your office ever had anything to do with the registration of Jewish property?

Eichmann

No, with the exception of setting up the administration and realization office in Prague and in Vienna. But only the founding and the fitting out. Then, once it was running, that apparatus was split off from my office and placed under the Commander of the Security Police and the SD as the supervisory authority, and under the Reich Court of Audit for control purposes.

Questioner

But I have here a letter to Dannecker in which his attention is drawn to the fact that a Jew is about to clear out, that he has a great many valuables and works of art in his house and so on, and Dannecker is asked by a legation councillor of the German embassy to set SD officials onto the matter so that whatever can still be snatched away is snatched away. To the deputy of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, [not typed] Ostuf. Dannecker. The letter came from the German embassy.

Eichmann

That is ignorance of the situation. Anyone at all could write to Dannecker. [too faint] Dannecker was not responsible for securing material things. He will have passed it on accordingly, by way of his superior.

Questioner

The necessary evidence exists that as early as 1941 interned Jews were set free through ransom money? There are particulars here about Dutch Jews, and then this matter here. Those diamond cutters, or something of the sort?

Eichmann

Yes, I remember. I believe it was arranged through the office for handling the Four Year Plan, on the [blotted] 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 personal interest or general Reich interest lay behind it, I cannot say. For if the plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan had ordered something, then the Reichsfuehrer respected it.

Eichmann

But it was mostly various offices that meddled in this business of getting ransom money. The Dresdner Bank, for instance, wrote to the Reich Economics Ministry: he is being held in such and such a camp, such and such a Jew, 20,000 Swiss francs deposited with a Swiss bank, to be handed over to the Dresdner Bank when the prisoner presents himself at the Swiss consulate.

Questioner

So there were already pensions in the year 41.

Eichmann

Yes, it was like that too. It was like a polyp. Once the first case became known, Jewish offices tried to get everything they could out of their so-called proteges, matters of a personal kind and matters of importance to the Reich as well. Both may well have been the case. The Jew himself too, once he saw that a possibility had opened up here, would set all his connections going and have everything put in motion with the aim of becoming a state-recognized privileged Jew. And so it may well be that through some channel a thing of the kind you described to me reached the Dresdner Bank.

Questioner

And all this in spite of Himmler's express order that anyone once taken into custody

Eichmann

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 [handwriting]. IV B 4 was the subdivision of my section. I had the subdivisions IV B 4 a and IV B 4 b.

Questioner

Which was a?

Eichmann

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.

Eichmann

IV B 4 a was the determination of [too faint] nationality, the revocation of German citizenship, and confiscation of property. That is to say, State Police headquarters x applies to the Reich Security Main Office, under an implementing order of the [not typed] Reich President for the protection of people and state, for a finding of hostility to people and state against the Jew y, and not only against Jews, because the law covered a wider circle than that, a law later extended by supplements and supplementary decrees.

Eichmann

The finding of hostility to people and state, and the revocation of German citizenship, and after that, if everything was in order, confiscation of the property followed automatically. The person concerned might long since have left the concentration camp or the Reich frontier; he might also, being still inside the Reich, have just passed into police custody. Now the State Police set out in detail why they were submitting this application for a finding through official channels, with a full statement of grounds why this person had to fall under the law and so on. As a rule the record of interrogation was attached in copy, or the substance of the interrogation was reproduced almost in full in a letter. As for the case officer handling it, these matters were dealt with only by lawyers, with the supporting staff placed at the lawyers' disposal, that is always a Regierungsbeamter and an assessor. When Surr was Regierungsrat, Hunsch was assessor. When Hunsch became Regierungsrat, an assessor [blotted] came in, a Rhinelander. And they then had their own staff. It was routine work.

Eichmann

The work was then done by the responsible police chief inspector. The files were obtained and submitted to the assessor, or to the Regierungsrat. These findings were then collected, and every fortnight lists came out which passed over my desk. At the bottom was a disposal note through the desk officer of IV B 4 to the chief of Office IV, asking for his initials, and then on through official channels to the state printing office, where these matters appeared in the Reichsanzeiger, because by law they had to be published there. At the same time as the fortnightly round a letter went to the Reich Finance Minister asking that the [blotted] Finance President responsible should set in motion the taking over of the confiscated property. At the same time a letter went to the Foreign Office with the routine request. That was a thing written once and then copied out again and again, only the names changed, nothing more, asking that the passport-issuing authorities at home and abroad be informed that the person concerned had lost German citizenship with effect from such and such a date, so that no passport could be issued to him any more if he applied, nor any document showing his former German citizenship. That was the whole thing.

Questioner

But that means too that your office did after all concern itself with the registration of Jewish property?

Eichmann

No, that is not right. We concerned ourselves only with the legal registration, not with the material registration. The recognition that the material assets, now that the bearer of such an offence had made himself guilty

Eichmann

are from now on to be regarded as forfeit, within the meaning of the law. The competent Chief Finance President had the registration to deal with, but he could only register once the executive body had confiscated these things for the Reich. That was not a confiscation by furniture van, as with the books. In that sense it was only a declaratory confiscation. How the Chief Finance President then went about the matter was his own affair. It could however happen in doubtful cases that the local State Police office sealed some strong room or the like, and with that it was secured. It could be sealed with the knowledge that it was confiscated, and once it was confiscated the Security Police had nothing more to do with it, only the Finance Minister. The exception was scholarly material of importance to the work, or archive material. With the latter I had less to do, or nothing at all. The State Police were to take that over, since it had no material value, only value in principle with a view to the handling of cases.

Eichmann

That then was the one field of work. The other field of work, which was under me and which Guenther ran as its officer, later they were called Referenten, and through that I became head of a department. But that came so late, in 44, that the thing hardly showed itself in practice any more. Nothing was running as it had, the office routine no longer rode along as cheerfully as it had until then, and instead one trudged from one makeshift into the next, according to how badly the State Police headquarters had been hit. More and more sections and desks kept coming into my office. I was slowly becoming superfluous.

Eichmann

The second field of work became a section in 44, so Guenther is a desk officer, Surr a desk officer, and I was therefore head of the department. It was now divided up between Regierungsamtmann Weern, a police chief inspector [blotted], and I believe one more police chief inspector, and to that were added the remaining matters handled in the routine procedure by the criminal police officials and so on, down to the police employees and SD employees.

Eichmann

Guenther's section also included the timetable department, which Hauptsturmfuehrer Novak was in charge of. Directly under the head of department were the registry, the open and the closed [not typed], run by Untersturmfuehrer Martin with a small staff of criminal police and police employees and SD employees; the orderly room under Obersturmfuehrer Jenisch [blotted]; and the technical field of work under Untersturmfuehrer [handwriting], who had all the building matters under him, construction, air-raid shelter matters and so on. A [blotted] station was built, by which the individual outstations could write to Berlin. A rather enormous telephone exchange underground. In my free time I have a mania for drawing, and I drew this house. A hose at every meter in case of attack. A pool of water in the courtyard for incendiary attacks. All hands at the double. The only house in the area left standing. But in 44 it was declared [handwriting]. I had this whole house, which above and below and right and left was surrounded by rooms holding teleprinters, an armory, and a [not typed], which I had filled with sand

Eichmann

[not typed] had the walls braced, had the walls braced with sand, and for that purpose I had a Kommando of Jews for the whole war. I simply made them into privileged Jews, because they were living in mixed marriages anyway. In the evening they covered up their Jewish star and went home, and in the morning they came back. They did have to wear their Jewish star, but they had a pass from us saying they had permission to move about freely and that they were not to be snatched away from us. All through the war I had an old, rickety building foreman, the one man for whom we kept getting an exemption certificate, because otherwise this man would have ended up somewhere in the Organisation Todt. But I said to myself, in for a penny, in for a pound. He was a capable building foreman and had to manage with almost nothing. He and his Kommando had to fetch the necessary materials from the rubble districts of Berlin. He was a capable, good man. This building section was now under the direction of [handwriting].

Eichmann

I had to explain the technical department to you in this way so that the opponent does not get the idea that I had this department for designing or building gas chambers or anything of that sort. No, with me not a single stroke was drawn for the building of gas chambers or of concentration camp installations or the like. Instead the technical department had the task of defending the office, and of provision for the air war, which was generally usual in the building of air raid bunkers, an establishment. After all, I only came to this outfit in 1940, and a kind of night combat organization had formed against bomb fire, to defend the roof over our heads, our files so to speak, against bombs. But even when nothing was burning at our place we performed fire service in the neighborhood until the official fire brigade relieved us. We also had bunker installations so large that the whole neighborhood got permission to use these bunkers during an alarm. They only had to go past the guard and hand in a slip, which entitled them to take a particular route into the bunkers, and they had to hand that slip back in when they left, so that none of these people could stay behind in the building. But that bunker was far separated from the one the staff used, and this bunker was far better than the bunker for the office employees themselves. The general bunker for the civilian population was under the command of an Untersturmführer [not typed].

Eichmann

The work of the individuals now consisted in [not typed] it was the routine correspondence, and here all the applications of the State Police offices and the State Police regional headquarters were dealt with, approved or rejected. Here the entire correspondence with the representatives we had posted outside was handled, here the entire correspondence with the other central authorities was handled, always through the head of Amt IV by official channels. So this was the general writing room, which did not work to a set pattern, as normally happened in an important government office, but instead the hundreds and thousands of questions and points of the case work came in here.

Eichmann

There is a letter here from IV B 4 a to the Reichsführer, on the procurement of foreign currency for volunteers of the Waffen SS in Hungary and the granting of family support. Signature. By proxy: illegible.

Questioner

In this letter, which appears in "The Jews and the Reich" on page 33, and in which the Chief of the Security Police and of the SD addresses the Reichsführer in a matter concerning the procurement of foreign currency for recruiting volunteers of the Waffen SS in Hungary and the granting of family support. Signature illegible. Approval is requested. As the file mark at the head, IV B 4 aa, so my section. How can you explain that this letter can never have been signed by you yourself or by one of your subordinates?

Eichmann

Fundamentally the following is to be said. A section head was not permitted to sign a letter to the Reichsführer. That would have been a breach of the service regulations. A letter to the Reichsführer that went out from the Chief of the Security Police and of the SD had to be signed by Heydrich or Kaltenbrunner. Acting for him, however, the heads of the offices were entitled to sign such a letter, and nobody else. So Müller, Six and so on, all those who held the rank of office head, they could sign it, but only as deputy for the Chief of the Security Police and of the SD.

Questioner

And what have you to say about the content itself?

Eichmann

About the letter itself I must say the following. The head bears the file reference IV B 4 a, that is, a subject area of my office IV B 4. By its content it is the outpouring of a jurist, so it belongs in the legal section. Around that time it could have been Suhr.

Questioner

But around that time you were not yet a department head?

Eichmann

But it was a subject area at that time, and this "a" was also hardly ever written. The fussy jurists added it quite correctly. So they let it go out as a secret Reich matter with the number 1852 on 24 November. It refers back to an order of 19 August 1942, so somebody gave me an order to look into something. The order can only have been given to me by my office head or by the Chief of the Security Police, in both cases in person. And this order was given to me in August, according to this reference note, on the basis of a report that I made to my superior office on 13 August 1942, which came to me from some office, that is, from an outside quarter, and was brought to me. Now neither the head of Amt IV nor the Chief of the Security Police and of the SD wanted to decide in the matter himself, and now demanded of me that I should prepare a letter to the Reichsführer and have it worked out through official channels.

Eichmann

For the most exact examination of the facts, when I say I, I take that on myself because I was the section head, I had my case officers. I take it from the dates of the letter's reference compared with the letter's dispatch that in the period from 19 August to November 1942 the time was needed to have inquiries made about it. The result of these is what the letter now sets out. These are state police considerations, and I now put them up to the Chief of the Security Police and of the SD and to his superior, the Reichsführer, after SS-Gruppenführer Berger here [not typed]. And he writes at the end, and this shows, besides the letterhead itself, that the Chief of the Security Police and of the SD did not consider himself competent either, and he submits it and asks for approval. Whether the Reichsführer then approved it, or whether he rejected it, does not emerge from this. That is left open. The heading reads "Ransom money": the price is going up, and this remark of the author refers to the following paragraph. Since April of this year, on the basis of representations by the Reich Ministry of Economics to the Reichsbank in view of the strained foreign currency position of the Reich, from case to case ap

Eichmann

plications from elderly Jews for permission to emigrate are approved from case to case, if they place 100,000 francs (earlier I believe 50,000) at disposal while renouncing the counter value, and if no particular security police objections exist. That is the heart of the matter.

Eichmann

It is a practical textbook example. I handled the matter, it bears my section heading, I did not sign it, and I also did not hatch it out myself. Instead I made the inquiries, what more there is in this complex, collected it and made it ready for the files. That was what the work of Section IV B 4 consisted of.

Questioner

But you are now to take a position on the matter itself, that for Dutch Jews they see since 40 [not typed]

Eichmann

I said already that all sorts of offices tried, out of the most varied motives, to put it briefly, to practice goods for blood and blood for goods.

Questioner

So this thing was absolutely possible?

Eichmann

Yes, absolutely.

Questioner

So I would like to establish that the Reichsführer's order had scarcely been issued, that no Jews were to be released from the concentration camps [not typed] and that these ransom payments, there are about 115 cases known here, that this therefore involved important sums, where of course for these people who set this business going it was a favorable circumstance that the foreign currency position was strained.

Questioner

Now tell me, were these state police objections put forward by your section, or were they put forward by another?

Eichmann

The state police objections I could raise, but if I say I, my case officer could raise them just as well. I had either to reject the objections or I had to adopt them as my own. I was responsible for that. Or the local offices of the Security Police and of the SD in Holland, in France or anywhere, if it was a matter of a Jew [blotted] in Holland or France, then I could not judge at all from behind a desk whether objections of a state police nature existed here, because the individual case was not worth the trouble. I could examine on my own account whether fundamental orders or decrees stood against it, only so far. If there were no fundamental objections here, then the competent office of the Security Police and of the SD was asked whether objections existed at their end. If they had no objections, then they fell under the 28 Jews here. If I had any objections in the matter of decrees and so on, or if my subordinate offices had objections arising from individual cases, then they fell under the 79 applications here that were refused on Security Police objections.

Questioner

What would interest me, if you could give some examples, is what kind these Security Police objections could have been?

Eichmann

Among these objections I could imagine that this man had already in year such and such taken a leading part in the agitation against the Third Reich, and that it was not to be expected that the same man would not take up his old earlier activity again once abroad. Those would be state police objections, for example. Another objection would have been that the person concerned had at some point served a longer period in a concentration camp for some offense, or had received an economic penalty of such and such an amount, so that he had a previous conviction within the meaning of the ordinary criminal code. But here I must say, conditionally, that there were convictions which

Eichmann

did not interest us as Security Police, if we were given a Security Police share, or if the matter appeared important enough to the Reich for the superior office to let an exception through, then we let our objections [handwriting]. The objections were always a fundamental worry and question: what will the man do once he has got abroad, will he work actively against the Third Reich, or will he settle abroad as a private gentleman in peace in the enjoyment of his assets, or how will he behave at all? If it was a matter of a trade union official, for example, who had taken a leading stand against the National Socialist state, one could never have granted such a man a concession.

Questioner

For example, but now if a man was known as a keen Zionist?

Eichmann

That was no obstacle.

Questioner

But if for example he was a very strongly international big industrialist or big merchant [blotted]

Eichmann

There too there were absolutely no objections.

Eichmann

The objections lay more or less solely in the political sector, or in a sector of such criminal competence that Amt V, for example, would have had fundamental objections and would have entered a veto.

Questioner

Six had the Foreign Scientific Institute. Did that work somehow on the orders of the Gestapo, or for the Gestapo, or how was that undertaking, presented outwardly as a scientific one, brought in directly, politically or for information, as a gatherer of intelligence or as a registering organization?

Eichmann

Our task had been, when I still belonged to Amt VII, the task was always the same.

Questioner

But what was the apparent aim or the real aim of the Foreign Scientific Institute, of which Six was dean?

Eichmann

This matter had nothing to do with the Reich Security Main Office, it was a normal affair. Six was able here to make his own the findings, the long standing findings of Amt VII, and in his institute, over which he presided as dean, he was able to build this material in in great abundance. Here he could be given such a compact set of tools, so watertight, that it meant an enormous theoretical and practical advantage.