dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
LT. COL. BALDWIN: There were, of course, other grounds for uneasiness in occupied Poland which the Defendant Frank did not mention in his report to Hitler. He does not mention the concentration camps, perhaps because as a representative jurist of National Socialism, the Defendant Frank had himself defended the system in Germany. As Governor General the Defendant Frank, we feel, must be held responsible for all concentration camps within the boundaries of the Government General. These include, among others, the notorious camp at Maidanek and the one at Lublin and at Treblinka outside of Warsaw. As indicated previously, the Defendant Frank knew and approved that Poles were taken to concentration camps in connection with resettlement projects. He had certain jurisdiction as well in relation to the extermination camp Auschwitz, to which Poles from the Government General were committed by his administration. In February 1944 Embassy Counsellor Dr. Schumberg suggested a possible amnesty of Poles who had been taken to Auschwitz for trivial offenses and kept there for several months. This conference, if the Court please, is reported in the Frank diary and is contained in our Document 2233(bb)-PS, at Page 60 in the document book. It is the third quote on that page. I offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-295.
THE PRESIDENT: You go too fast. Did you say Page 70?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Page 60, Sir. The German text appears in the loose-leaf volume covering the period 1 January 1944 to 28 February 1944, at the conference on 8 February 1944, on Page 7. I quote: "The Governor General will take under consideration an amnesty probably for 1 May of this year. Nevertheless, one must not lose sight of the fact that the German leadership of the Government General must not now show any sign of weakness." This, then, was and is the conspirator Hans Frank. The evidence is by no means exhausted, but it is our belief that sufficient proof has been given to this Tribunal to establish his liability under Count One of the Indictment. As legal adviser of Hitler and the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, Defendant Frank promoted the conspirators' rise to power. In his various juridical capacities, both in the NSDAP and in the German Government, Defendant Frank certainly advocated and promoted the political monopoly of the NSDAP, the racial program of the conspirators, and the terror system of the concentration camps and of arrest without warrant. His role, early in the Common Plan, was to realize "the National Socialist program in the realm of the law" and to give the outward form of legality to this program of terror, persecution, and oppression which had as its ultimate purpose mobilization for aggressive war. As a loyal adherent of Hitler, and the NSDAP, Defendant Frank was appointed Governor General in 1939 of that area of Poland known as the Government General. Defendant Frank had defined justice as that which benefited the German nation. His 5 years' administration of the Government General illustrates the most extreme extension of that principle.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: It has been shown that Defendant Frank took the office of Governor General under a program which constituted in itself a criminal plan or conspiracy, as Defendant Frank well knew and approved, to exploit the territory ruthlessly for the benefit of Nazi Germany, to conscript its nationals for labor in Germany, to close its schools and colleges, to prevent the rise of a Polish intelligentsia, and to administer the territory as a colonial possession of the Third Reich in total disregard of the duties of an occupying power towards the inhabitants of occupied territory. Under Defendant Frank's administration this criminal plan was consummated, but the execution went even beyond the plan. Food contributions to Germany increased to the point where the bare subsistence reserved for the Government General under the plan was reduced to a level of mass starvation. The savage program of exterminating Jews was relentlessly executed. Resettlement projects were carried out with reckless disregard of the rights of the local population and the terror of the concentration camp followed in the wake of the Nazi invaders. This statement of evidence has been compiled in large part from statements by the Defendant Frank himself, from the admission found in his diary, official reports, reports of conferences with his colleagues and subordinates, and his speeches. It is therefore appropriate that a passage from his diary should be quoted in conclusion. It is our Document 2233 (aa)-PS. It appears at Page 59 in the document book. I offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-613. The German text appears in the 1943 volume of labor conference meetings at the 25 January 1943 entry on Page 53. In his address Defendant Frank, prophetically enough, told his colleagues in the Government General that their task would grow more difficult. "Hitler", he said, "could help them only as a kind of 'administrative pill box."' They must depend on themselves.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: "We are now duty bound to hold together" and I quote Frank "We must remember that we who are gathered together here figure on Mr. Roosevelt's list of war criminals. I have the honor of being Number One. We have, so to speak, become accomplices in the world historic sense." This concludes the presentation on the Defendant Frank. May it please the Tribunal, Lieutenant Colonel Griffith-Jones of the British Delegation will now deal with the individual responsibility of the Defendant Streicher.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): If the Tribunal please, it is my duty to present the case against the Defendant Julius Streicher. Appendix A of the Indictment, that paragraph of the Appendix relating to Streicher, sets out the positions which he held and which I shall prove. It then goes on to allege that he used those positions and his personal influence and his close connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany, as set forth in Count One of the Indictment; that he authorized, directed, and participated in the Crimes against Humanity, set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the incitement of the persecution of the Jews, set forth in Count One and Count Four of the Indictment. My Lord, the case against this defendant can be, perhaps, described by the unofficial title that he assumed for himself as "Jew-baiter Number One." It is the Prosecution's case that for the course of some 25 years this man educated the whole of the German people in hatred and that he incited them to the persecution and to the extermination of the Jewish race. He was an accessory to murder, perhaps on a scale never attained before. With the Tribunal's permission I propose to prove quite shortly the position and influence that he held and then to refer the Tribunal to several short extracts from his newspapers and from his speeches and then to outline the part that he played in the particular persecutions that occurred against the Jews between the years 1933 and 1945. My Lord, perhaps before I start, I might say that the document book before the members of the Tribunal is arranged in the order in which I intend to refer to the documents. They are paged and there is an index at the beginning of the book and if the Tribunal have got what is called the trial brief, it is in effect a note of the evidence to which I shall refer and again in the order in which I shall refer to it, which may be of some assistance. My Lord, this defendant was born in 1885.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): He became a school teacher in Nuremberg and formed a party of his own, which he called the German Socialist Party. The chief policy of that party, again, was anti-Semitism. In 1922 he handed over his party to Hitler; and there is a glowing account of his generosity which appears in Hitler's Mein Kampf, which I do not think it worth occupying the time of the Tribunal in reading. It appears as Document M-3, and is the first document in the Tribunal's document book. The copy of Mein Kampf is already before the Tribunal as Exhibit GB-128. The appointments that he held in the Party and State were few. From 1921 until 1945 he was a member of the Nazi Party. In 1925 he was appointed Gauleiter of Franconia, and he remained as such until about February of 1940; and from the time that the Nazi Government came into power in 1933 until 1945, he was a member of the Reichstag. In addition to that he held the title of Obergruppenfuehrer in the SA. All that information appears in Document 2975PS, which is already exhibited as Exhibit Number USA-9, and is the affidavit that he made himself. The propaganda that he carried out throughout those years was chiefly done through the medium of his newspapers. He was the editor and publisher of the paper called Der Sturmer, which was a weekly journal, from 1922 until 1933; and thereafter the publisher and owner of the paper. In 1933 he also founded and thereafter, I think, published certainly was responsible for - the daily newspaper called the Frankische Tageszeitung. There were, in addition to that and particularly later, several others, mostly local journals, that he published from Nuremberg. Those are the positions that he held; and now if I may, I shall quite briefly trace the course of his incitement and propaganda more or less in chronological order by referring the Tribunal to the short extracts. I would say this: These extracts are really selected at random.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): They are selected with a view to showing the Tribunal the various methods that he employed to incite the people against the Jewish race; but his newspapers are crowded with them, week after week, day after day. It is impossible to pick up any copy without finding the same kind of stuff in the headlines and in the articles. If I might quote from four speeches and articles showing his early activities from 1922 until 1933 - at Page 3 of the Tribunal's document book, Document M-11 - that is an extract from a speech that he made in 1922 in Nuremberg, and - after abusing the Jews in the first paragraph - I refer only to the last two lines: "We know that Germany will be free when the Jew has been excluded from the life of the German people." I pass to the next document, which is M-12, on Page 4. The first document was Exhibit GB-165. That is the book, I understand, that is being given that number, so that the next document, which is taken from the same book, will be the same. Perhaps I might be allowed to read that short extract. It is an extract from a speech: "I beg you and particularly those of you who carry the cross throughout the land, to become somewhat more serious when I speak of the enemy of the German people, namely, the Jew. Not out of irresponsibility or for fun do I fight against the Jewish enemy, but because I bear within me the knowledge that the whole misfortune was brought to Germany by the Jews alone. ". . . I ask you once more, what is at stake today? The Jew seeks domination not only among the German people but among all peoples. The Communists pave the way for Do you not know that the God of the Old Testament ordered the Jews to devour and enslave the peoples of the earth? ... "The Government allows the Jew to do as he pleases. The people expect action to be taken....You may think about Adolf Hitler as you please, but one thing you must admit. He possessed the courage to attempt to free the German people from the Jew by a national revolution.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): That was a great deed." The next short extract appearing on the next page is taken' from a speech in April of 1925: "You must realize that the Jew wants our people to perish .... That is why you must join us and leave those who have brought you nothing but war and inflation and discord. For thousands of years the Jew has been destroying the nations." I ask the Tribunal to note now these last few words: "Let us start today, so that we can annihilate the Jews." My Lord, so far as I have been able to find, that is the earliest expression of annihilation of the Jewish race. Perhaps it gave birth to what was 14 years later to become the official policy of the Nazi Government. And one further passage from this period. This is in April 1932, Document M-14, taken from the same book. He starts by saying, "For 13 years I have fought against Jewry." I quote the last paragraph only: "We know that the Jew, whether he is baptized as a Protestant or as a Catholic, remains a Jew. Why can you not realize this, you Protestant clergymen, you Catholic priests! You are blinded and serve the God of the Jews who is not the God of love but the God of hate. Why do you not listen to Christ, who said to the Jews, 'You are the children of the Devil."' That, then, was the kind of performance he was putting up during those early years. When the Nazi Party came to power, they officially started their campaign against the Jews by the boycott of 1 April 1933. Now, of that boycott the Tribunal have already had evidence; and I would do no more now than to remind the Tribunal in a word what happened. The boycott was agreed on and approved of by the whole Government, as was shown in a document which is already before you, Document 2409- PS, Exhibit Number USA-262, which was Goebbels' diary. Streicher was appointed the chairman of the central committee for the organization of that boycott, which appears in Document 2156-PS, Exhibit Number USA-263. It was then said that he started his work on Wednesday, the 29th.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): On that same day the central committee issued a proclamation in which they said that the boycott would start on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. sharp. "Jewry will realize whom it has challenged." That short quotation appears in Document 3389-PS, which is USA-566, which is a volume - in actual fact, it is a copy of Der Sturmer which is already before the Court. I would refer the Tribunal to one short passage from an article in the Nationalsozialistische Partei Korrespondenz which the defendant wrote on the 30th of March, before the boycott was due to start. It is Document 2153- PS and appears on Page 12 of the Tribunal's book, which becomes Exhibit GB-166. There he writes, under the title, "Defeat the enemy of the world! by Julius Streicher, official leader of the central committee to combat the Jewish atrocity and boycott campaign.": "Jewry wanted this battle. It shall have it until it realizes that the Germany of the brown battalions is not a country of cowardice and surrender. Jewry will have to fight until we have won victory. "National Socialists! Defeat the enemy of the world. Even if the world is full of devils, we shall succeed in the end." As head of the central committee for that boycott, Streicher outlined in detail the organization of the boycott in orders which the committee published on the 31st of March 1933, which is the next document in the book, Document 2865-PS Exhibit GB-167. I can summarize those. The committee stressed that no violence is to be employed against the Jews on the occasion of that boycott, but not perhaps for humane reasons; it is because, if there is no violence employed, then Jewish employers will have no grounds for discharging their employees without notice; and they will have no ground for refusing to pay them any wages. The Jews were also reported apparently to be transferring businesses to German figureheads in order to alleviate the results of this persecution, and the committee laid it down that any property to be transferred was to be considered as Jewish for the purpose of the boycott.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): I do not think I need go into that any further. It does show that at that date he was taking a leading part, and a leading part as appointed by the Government, in the persecution of the Jews. I would now refer the Court again to a few further extracts to show the form that this propaganda developed as the years went on. At Page 18 of the document book, Document M-20, we have an article in the New Year's issue of a new paper that he had just founded. It was a semi-medical paper called German People's Health Through Blood and Soil, edited by himself; and it is an example of the really remarkable lengths to which he went in putting over this propaganda against the Jews. I quote: "For the initiated it is established for all time: 'alien albumen' is the sperm of a man of alien race. The male sperm in cohabitation is partially or completely absorbed by the female, and thus enters her bloodstream. One single cohabitation of a Jew with an Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever. Together with the 'alien albumen' she has absorbed the alien soul. Never again will she be able to bear purely Aryan children, even when married to an Aryan. They will all be bastards, with a dual soul and a body of a mixed breed. Their children, too, will be crossbreeds; that means, ugly people of unsteady character and with a tendency to illnesses.... "Now we know why the Jew uses every artifice of seduction in order to ravish German girls at as early an age as possible; why the Jewish doctor rapes his female patients while they are under anaesthesia.... He wants the German girl and the German woman to absorb the alien sperm of the Jew. She is never again to bear German children! "But the blood products of all animal organisms right down to bacteria, thus serum, lymph, extracts from internal organs, et cetera, are also 'alien albumen.' They have a poisonous effect if directly introduced into the blood stream either by vaccination or by injection. "The worst is that by these products of sick animals the blood is defiled, the Aryan is impregnated with an alien species.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): "The author and abettor of such action is the Jew. He has been aware of the secrets of the race question for centuries, and therefore plans systematically the annihilation of the nations which are superior to him. Science and 'authorities' are his instruments for the enforcing of pseudoscience and the concealment of truth." That becomes, My Lord, Exhibit GB-168. The next document, also at the beginning of 1935, an extract from his own paper Der Sturmer, is entitled "The Chosen People of the Criminals": "And all the same, or let us say, just because of this, the history book of the Jews, which is usually called the Holy Scriptures, impresses us as a horrible criminal romance, which makes the 150 shilling-shockers of the British Jew, Edgar Wallace, grow pale with envy. This 'holy' book abounds in murder, incest, fraud, theft, and indecency." On the 4th of October 1935 - and the Tribunal will remember that that was the month after the Nuremberg Decrees had been made - he made a speech which is reported in the Volkischer Beobachter and is entitled in that newspaper, "Safeguard of German Blood and German Honor." I read the report in that article: "Gauleiter Streicher speaks at a German Labor Front mass demonstration for the Nuremberg laws." Then the first line of the actual article says that he spoke for the second time within a few weeks. I quote only the last two lines of that first large paragraph: "...we have therefore to unmask the Jew, and that is what I have been doing for the past 15 years." That remark apparently was met with tempestuous applause. That document, M-34, becomes Exhibit GB-169. And, My Lord, I think it unnecessary to quote from the next document in the Tribunal's book. It is very much the same type of thing. On Page 22 of the document book, Document M-6, there is a leading article by Streicher in his Der Sturmer of which I would refer only to the last half of the last paragraph where again he emphasizes the part that he himself has taken in this campaign.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): "The Sturmer's 15 years of work of enlightenment has already led an army of initiated - millions strong to National Socialism. The continued work of Der Sturmer will help to ensure that every German down to the last man will, with heart and hand) joi n the ranks of those whose aim it is to crush the head of the serpent Pan-Juda beneath their heels. He who helps to bring this about helps to eliminate the devil, and this devil is the Jew." That document becomes Exhibit GB-170. The next document - I include it in the document book again only to show the extraordinary length to which he went in his propaganda; and it consists of a photograph of the burning hull of the airship Hindenburg when it went on fire in June 1937 in America. Underneath it the caption includes the comment: "The first radio picture from the United States of America shows quite clearly that a Jew stands behind the explosion of 96 our airship Hindenburg. Nature has depicted quite clearly and quite correctly that devil in human guise." And although it is not at all clear from that photograph, I think the meaning of that comment is that the cloud of smoke in the air is in the shape of a Jewish face. On the next page Document M-4 is a speech he made in September 1937 at the opening of a bridge in Nuremberg. I will quote only the last paragraph on Page 24. The bridge in question is called the Wilhelm Gustloff bridge, and he says: "The man who murdered Wilhelm Gustloff must have come from the Jewish people, because the Jewish text books teach that every Jew has the right to kill a non-Jew; and indeed, that it is pleasing to the Jewish God to kill as many non -Jews as possible. "Look at the road the Jewish people have been following for thousands of years past; everywhere murder, everywhere mass murder! Neither must we forget that behind present-day wars there stands the Jewish financier who pursues his aims and interests. The Jew always lives on the blood of other nations; he needs such murder and such victims.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): For us who know, the murder of Wilhelm Gustloff is the same as ritual murder." And then on the next page: "It is our duty to tell the children at school and the bigger ones what this memorial means...." I go to the next paragraph: "The Jew no longer shows himself among us openly as he used to. But it would be wrong to say that victory is ours. Full and final victory will have been achieved only when the whole world is rid of Jews." That becomes Exhibit GB-171. Now the next two documents in your document books are simply extracts from the correspondence columns of his Der Sturmer, showing again one of the methods he employed in this propaganda. I do not need to read them. The correspondence columns of all his issues are full of letters coming in from Germans saying that some German has been buying her shoes from a Jewish shop and so on, and in that way assisting in the general boycott-of the Jews. In other words, they really are a weekly column of libels against the Jews all over Germany. I pass then to another and particular form of propaganda that he employed and which he called "ritual murder." The Tribunal may well remember that some years ago - I think it started in 1934 this Der Sturmer began publishing accounts of Jewish ritual murder which horrified the whole world to such an extent that even the Archbishop of Canterbury eventually wrote to the Times protesting, as indeed did people from every country in the world, protesting that any Government should allow matter like this to be published in their national newspapers. He takes his ritual murder, I understand, from a medieval belief that during their Eastertide celebrations the Jews were in the habit of murdering Christian children; and he enlarges upon this and misrepresents this belief, this medieval belief, to show that not only did they do it in the Middle Ages, but that they are still doing it and still want to do it.