dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We will deal with the article you mention in 1943 in one moment; but just before we do that, just see if you believe your own staff. Turn, will you, to 38-A, M-139. Now, on the 6th of May it so happens just after those last three extracts from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt we have looked at, within 2 or 3 months, 1 or 2 months afterwards your newspaper is publishing this article. It is headed "Children of the Devil." " Der Stuermer paid a visit to the ghettos in the East. Der Stuermer sent its photographic reporter to various ghettos in the East; a member of Der Stuermer 's staff is well acquainted with the Jews. Nothing can surprise him easily. But what our contributor saw in these ghettos was a unique experience for him. He wrote, 'What my eyes and my Leica camera saw here convinced me that the Jews are not human beings but children of the devil and the spawn of crime.... It is hard to see how it was possible that this scum of humanity was for centuries looked upon as God's chosen people by the non-Jews.... This satanic race really has no right to exist.' " Now, you have heard of what was happening in the ghettos in the East during 1942 and 1943? Are you really telling this Tribunal that your photographer went with his camera to those ghettos and found out nothing about the mass murder of Jews?
STREICHER: Yes, otherwise he would have reported to us about it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Warsaw ghetto, you remember, exterminated, wiped out in April 1943. Your photographer must have been around just about that time, if you were writing this on the 6th of May, if he had just returned. Did you think he could have been there looking at ghettos for Der Stuermer , for Julius Streicher, the Jew-baiter, and have discovered nothing of what was happening in the ghetto in Warsaw and elsewhere?
STREICHER: I can only remember that immediately after the end of the Polish campaign a Viennese reporter went over there, made films and made reports, in 1942. I would like to ask-is there a name, a signature there, to show by whom it was written? One thing I know is that the ghetto was destroyed; I read it in a summary, an illustrated report which I think originated in the Ministry Of Propaganda. But as to the destruction of the ghetto during an uprising-well, I consider that legal; from my point of view it was right. But mass murders in the ghetto in Warsaw are something I never heard of.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, just let's look at the article to which you referred a moment ago. Will you look at 44-A of the document book? My Lord, this is the same as was included at Page 53 in the original document book; it was Document Number 1965-PS, Exhibit Number GB-176, but there is slightly more of the extract quoted at Page 44-A. [Turning to the defendant.] Now, I just want you to examine for the last time whether or not you are speaking the truth in telling the Tribunal that you did not know what was happening. You quote in that article from the Swiss newspaper, the Israelitisches Wochenblatt , of the 27th August 1943-you will see that date, My Lord, in the middle of the first paragraph-I start now from that, line in the middle: "The Swiss Jewish newspaper goes on to say, 'The Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and of insignificant Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have disappeared, so to speak. The Jewish reservoir of the East that was able to counterbalance the force of assimilation in the West no longer exists."' That is the end of your quotation from the newspaper, and you go on to say: "This is not a Jewish lie; it is really true that the Jews have, 'so to speak,' disappeared from Europe and that the 'Jewish reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish pestilence spread for centuries among the European nations has ceased to exist. If the Swiss newspaper wishes to affirm that the Jews did not expect this kind of development when they plunged the nations into the second World War, this is to be believed; but already at the beginning of the war the Fuehrer of the German Nation prophesied the events that have taken place. He said that the second World War would swallow those who had conjured it." Now, are you really saying that when that article was written you did not know how to interpret the word "disappearance," the disappearance of the Jews from the East? Are you really telling the Tribunal that?
STREICHER: Yes, the word "disappear" after all does not mean extermination en masse. This deals with a quotation from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt and is a repeated quotation of what the Fuehrer had prophesied.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well, now, would you look at the article from which you quote there, which you will find at Page 36-B; and I would like you to follow it, and we will read the two together. Now, the particular paragraph which I want to read in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt is that quotation which I have just read to you and you will find the same quotation. My Lord, it starts at the end of the eighth but last line, "The Jews were" or rather "The Jews of Europe..." Have you got them in front of you, Defendant?
STREICHER: I shall listen to you.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It would be better, I think, if you followed it. I want to help you as much as possible. Page 44-A and 36-B. I will read slowly first of all from your Stuermer again: "The Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and of insignificant Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have, so to speak, disappeared..." and you will see that you then go on in the quotation and say: ". . . the Jewish reservoir of the East which was able to counterbalance the force of assimilation in the West no longer exists." Now, would you look at the original article: "The Jews of Europe"-this is 36-B-"the Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and of insignificant Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have, so to speak, disappeared." Now-there you go on, "The Jewish reservoir of the East"-the original goes on-"three million dead, the same number outlawed; many thousands, all over the world, mentally and physically broken." Are you telling this Tribunal now that on the 27th of August, or when you read that article of the 27th of August, you didn't know that Jews were being murdered in the East and that you had not read of those things in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt ?
STREICHER: Whether I had read it or not, I would not have believed it, that 3 million Jews had been killed. That is something I would not have believed, and that is why I left it out, at any rate. Anyhow, the German censorship would not have allowed the spreading of something which is not credible.
THE PRESIDENT: You didn't read the last part of the line, did you?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: [Repeating.] ". . . were mentally and physically broken. That is the result of the new order." I am very much obliged to you. [Turning to the defendant.] "That is the result," you say, "of the 'new order' in Europe..." You say you didn't believe it. Is that what you say now, that you must have read it-must you not?
STREICHER: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But you just didn't believe it; is that right?
STREICHER: No, I did not believe it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Even if you didn't believe it, when you were reading this newspaper more or less regularly, when your cameraman had been to the ghettos in the East, did you think it right to go on, week after week, in your newspaper crying for the extermination, murder, of the Jews?
STREICHER: That is not correct. It is not true that murder was demanded week after week. And I repeat again, the sharpening of our tone was the answer to the voice from America that called for our mass murder in Germany-eye for eye, tooth for tooth. If a Jew, Erich Kauffmann, demands mass murders in Germany, then perhaps I, as an author, can say that the Jews too should be exterminated. That is a literary matter. But the mass murders had taken place a long time before without our having known about them; and I state here that if I had known what had in fact happened in the East, then I would not have used these quotations at all.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: But, Defendant, you must have known then, must you not, after reading that article, after sending your cameraman, after the United Nations published their declaration, after Hitler's prophecies had been made again and again in his proclamations, after you said his prophecy had been fulfilled? You really say you didn't know?
STREICHER: The cameraman is at your disposal. He is in Vienna, and I ask to have him brought here. And I state that this cameraman reported nothing, and could not have reported anything, about mass murders.
THE PRESIDENT: I think we might adjourn now. [A recess was taken.]
DR. MARX: Mr. President, with the permission of the Tribunal, and in the interest of clarification of the facts, I should like to point out the following: The Prosecutor, Sir Griffith-Jones, has mentioned a document, Page 38-A from Der Stuermer of 6 May 1943. That seems to be an error, because we are dealing here with Der Stuermer of 6 March 1943. That date is of the greatest importance because if the photographer of Der Stuermer published a report of 6 March in Der Stuermer , then he must have been at the ghetto in Warsaw before 6 March 1943. Presumably... THE PRESIDENT Why do you say 6 March? The document I have before me has 6 May.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: There has been a mistake, I am afraid, in the German that Dr. Marx has. I have the original before me, which is 6 May 1943.
DR. MARX: Excuse me. At the present moment I cannot recall when the destruction of the ghetto of Warsaw took place. That was Document 1061-PS.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I cannot remember for the moment the number of the document, but the date was, I think from memory, from the 1st to the 23rd of April.
DR. MARX: Then, of course, my remark is without foundation. Please excuse me.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now we had just dealt with the Israelititsches Wochenblatt issue for 27 August, the copy that you quoted from. I just refer you to one more copy of that newspaper. Would you look at Page 37-B, which is an issue of 10 September 1943: "Statistics presented by the Convening Committee showed that 5 millions out of the 8.5 million Jews of Europe had died or been deported... About 3 million Jews had lost their lives through forced labor and deportation." Did you read that one?
STREICHER: I do not know, and again I would not have believed it. To this day I do not believe that 5 million were killed. I consider it technically impossible that that could have happened. I do not believe it. I have not received proof of that up until now.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It is quite clear that there were plenty of figures for you, quoted in this Israelitisches Wochenblatt over the period that we are discussing. Plenty of figures, it now turns out, doesn't it?
STREICHER: Pardon?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: We will go on. Now, I just want to put one or two further articles of your own to you. You remember what I am suggesting, that you are inciting the German people to murder. We know now that at least you had read one article in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt where murder is mentioned. I just want to see what you go on to publish in your own paper after that date. Would you look at Page 47-A. This is an article by yourself on 6 January 1944. This is after you had been living on your estate for some time. "After the National Socialist uprising in Germany, a development began in Europe, too, from which one can expect that it will free this continent for all time of the Jewish disintegrator and exploiter of nations; and, over and above this, that the German example will, after a victorious termination of the second World War, bring about the destruction of the Jewish world tormentor on the other continents as well." What example was the German nation setting to the other nations of the world? What example do you mean there?
STREICHER: This article corroborates what I have been saying all along. I spoke of an international solution of the Jewish question. I was convinced that if Germany had won this war or had been victorious over Bolshevism, then the world would have agreed that an understanding should be reached with the other nations for an international solution of the Jewish question. If I wrote here about destruction, it is not to be understood as destruction by mass killing; as I have said, that is an expression; I have to point out that I do not believe that Erich Kauffmann really wanted to kill the German people by sterilization, but he wrote it, and we sometimes wrote in the same manner, echoing the sounds that we heard in the other camp.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You have not yet told us what is this international solution that you are advocating by talking about extermination; if it is not murder, what is it? What is the solution?
STREICHER: I have already said that I founded the Anti-Semitic Union, and through this Anti-Semitic Union we wanted to create movements among the nations which should, above and beyond governments, act in such a way that an international possibility would be created, such as has been represented today here in this Trial-thus I conceived it, to form an international congress center which would solve the Jewish question by the creation of a Jewish state and thereby destroy the power of the Jews within the nations.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: That is your answer-that you were advocating a Jewish state? Is that all that this comes to? Is it simply that you were advocating a Jewish national home? Is that what you have been talking about in all these extracts that we have read? Is that the solution which you are advocating?
STREICHER: Well, I do not know what you want with that question. Of course, that is the solution.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Let us just go on now. Turn to Page 48-A now, will you? This is 24 January 1944, "Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal, and he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the same fate- annihilation, death." Are you still advocating a national Jewish home?
STREICHER: Yes, that has nothing to do with the big political plan. If you take every statement by a writer, every statement from a daily newspaper, as an example, and want to prove a political aim by it, then you miss the point. You have to distinguish between a newspaper article and a great political aim.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well, let us just turn now to the next page, 2 March 1944, "Eternal night must come over the born criminal race of Jews so that eternal day may bless awakening non-Jewish mankind." Were they going to have eternal night in their national Jewish state? Is that what you wanted?
STREICHER: That is an anti-Semitic play of words. Again it has nothing to do with the great political aim.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It may be an anti-Semitic play of words, but the only meaning it can have is murder. Is that not true?
STREICHER: No.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Will you turn to the next page, 25 May 1944; and I remind you that these are all after you must have read of the murder in Israelitisches Wochenblatt . I quote the second paragraph: "How can we overcome this danger and restore humanity to health? Just as the individual human being is able to defend himself against contagious diseases only if he proclaims war against the cause of the disease, the germ, so the world can be restored to health only when the most terrible germ of all times, the Jew, has been removed. It is of no avail to battle against the outward symptoms of the world disease without rendering the morbific agents innocuous. The disease will break out again sooner or later. The cause and the carrier of the disease, the germ, will see to that. But if the nations are to be restored to health and are to remain healthy in the future, then the germ of the Jewish world plague must be destroyed, root and branch." Is that what you mean? Are you saying there when you say "must be destroyed root and branch"-did you mean to say "ought to be given a Jewish national state"?
STREICHER: Yes, it is a far cry from such a statement in an article to the act, or to the will, to commit mass murder.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Turn over to the 10th of August. "When it loses this struggle, Judaism will be ruined, then the Jew will be extinguished. Then will Judaism be annihilated down to the last man." Are we to read from these words: Provide the Jews with a Jewish national state?
STREICHER: That is a vision of the future. I would like to call it an expression of a prophetic vision. But it is not incitement to kill 5 million Jews. That is an opinion, a matter of belief, of conviction.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: It is the prophetic vision of what you wanted, is it not-of what you have been advocating now for the last 4 years-the beginning of the war? Isn't that what it is?
STREICHER: Mr. Prosecutor, I cannot tell you today what I may have been thinking years ago at a certain moment when writing an article. But still I admit that when I saw lying before me on the table declarations from the Jewish front, many declarations saying, "the German nation has to be destroyed; bomb the cities, do not spare women, children, or old men"-if one has declarations like these in front of one, it is possible that things will come from one's pen such as I have often written.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You know, do you not, now, even if you do not believe the full figures, that millions of Jews have been murdered since the beginning of the war? Do you know that? You have heard the evidence, have you not?
STREICHER: I believe it...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I only wanted to know whether you had heard that evidence. You can answer "yes" or "no," and I presume it will be "yes."
STREICHER: Yes, I have to say, evidence for me is only the testament of the Fuehrer. There he states that the mass executions took place upon his orders. That I believe. Now I believe it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Do you think that it would have been possible to carry out the extermination of 6 million Jews in 1921? Do you think the German people would have stood for it? Do you think it would have been possible under any regime in 1921 to have carried out the murder of 6 million men, women, and children of the Jewish race?
STREICHER: Whether that would have been possible with the knowledge of the people-no, it would not have been possible. The prosecutor himself has said here that since 1937 the Party had full control over the people. Now even if the people had known this, according to the opinion of the Prosecution, they could not have done anything against that dictatorship because of that control. But the people did not know it. That is my belief, my conviction, and my knowledge.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Was it possible to exterminate people in that way only after some 20 years of incitement and propaganda by you and other Nazis? Is that what made that possible?
STREICHER: I deny that the population was incited. It was enlightened, and sometimes a harsh word may have been directed against the other side as an answer. It was enlightenment, not incitement. And if we want to keep our place before history I have to state again and again that the German people did not want any killings, whether individually or en masse .
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am not going to let you go into another history about the German people. I am going to remind you of what you have said...
STREICHER: Adolf Hitler ..
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I am going to remind you of what you said yesterday. I read from the transcript: You speak of a Jewish question at the time-that is 1923-"I would like to say that the public distinguished Jews only by their religion; to speak about a Jewish problem then would have been nonsense." Was that because there was no Jewish problem then, and that the Jewish problem had only been created by you and the Nazi regime?
STREICHER: It was my aim, and I reached that goal in part: If the laws which in the future should make impossible sexual intercourse between different races, that is to say if that should become law-then it would make the public realize that to be a Jew is not a point of religion but of people and race. I helped to create that basis. But mass killings were not the result of the enlightenment, or as the Prosecution say, incitement. Mass killings were the last acts of will of a great man of history who was probably desperate because he saw that he would not win.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I have no further questions. Perhaps I might be allowed to just sort out the exhibits and then mention to the Tribunal their numbers. If the Tribunal would agree, those that I have put in evidence, which are the other parts of the bundle other than I have actually quoted from-perhaps I could put them all in as one number and hand the exhibits in to the clerk, if that would be the convenient course.
THE PRESIDENT: I think so, yes. If they are in one bundle and you are going to give one number to a number of documents, it had better be in one bundle, had it not?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx, do you want to re-examine?
DR. MARX: I do not consider it necessary any more.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the defendant can return to the dock. Dr. Marx, will you continue the defendant's case?
DR. MARX: I call now, with the permission of the Court, the witness Fritz Herrwerth. [The witness Herrwerth took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name?
FRITZ HERRWERTH (Witness): Fritz Herrwerth.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: "I swear by God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I will speak the pure truth-and will withhold and add nothing." [The witness repeated the oath in German.] You may sit down.
DR. MARX: How long have you known the Defendant Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Since the Party Rally in 1934.
DR. MARX: When did you enter his service and in what capacity?
HERRWERTH: I was employed on 15 October 1934, in Nuremberg, not in the personal service of Herr Streicher himself, but in the municipal motor pool. However, I worked for the then Gauleiter Streicher.
DR. MARX: When did you leave that service?
HERRWERTH: In August 1943.
DR. MARX: For what reason?
HERRWERTH: It was a personal dispute, and mainly due to my fault.
DR. MARX: Did you have any other tasks to carry out for Herr Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: And which?
HERRWERTH: Well, whatever came up. I also did agricultural work at the end.
DR. MARX: Thus you were very often with Streicher?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: And therefore you knew about the most important incidents during that period?
HERRWERTH: Yes. I do not know, however, what you call important incidents. There were things that I do not know about, that is, at least I assume that.
DR. MARX: I will ask you later in detail.
HERRWERTH: Yes, if you please.
DR. MARX: The Defendant Streicher is accused of having caused acts of violence against the Jews and of having participated in these acts. Do you know of any such case?
HERRWERTH: Not a single one.
DR. MARX: Will you please wait until the end of my question, and then I shall say "end of question." On 9 November 1938, did you drive Streicher back to Nuremberg from Munich, and when? End of question.
HERRWERTH: It was on 9 November, yes. I do not know the time exactly. At that time Streicher left Munich a bit earlier, and it may have been about-I do not know for sure-9 o'clock perhaps.
DR. MARX: Did Streicher know already during that ride back that something was to be done that night against the Jewish population?
HERRWERTH: No, he knew nothing about that.
DR. MARX: Then, during the night of 9 November, did you witness a conversation between Streicher and the SA Leader, Von Obernitz?
HERRWERTH: Yes.
DR. MARX: Where did that conversation take place?