The Trial of Adolf Eichmann

Attorney General: Now, Professor Gilbert, you say that you took Judge Musmanno to Goering and acted as translator. What was said in that conversation?

Witness Gilbert: Well, Goering said more or less the same things that he had said to me, namely that he was sure that Hitler was dead and that his political testament was genuine. This was the political testament, I’m sure you all know, in which Adolf Hitler accused the Jews of starting a war and admitted ordering their extermination as punishment.

There is psychology behind that, but we need not go into it. Then Goering, of course, was asked what he thought about this crime of extermination and he immediately said: “Well, this, of course, was not any business of mine, it was not in my jurisdiction, it was under the jurisdiction of Himmler and his boys, Heydrich, Eichmann and so on.”

Q. Did you introduce Judge Musmanno to other accused persons?

A. Yes, there were some others, but frankly I don’t remember the details at this point. There were other interpreters available, enlisted men, and some of the other accused did speak English.

Q. Did Judge Musmanno also see other accused men, such as Ribbentrop, Frank, von Schirach, von Papen and Kaltenbrunner?

A. I believe so, but frankly, I don’t remember all the rest of the details.

Q. Did you talk to Judge Musmanno about Eichmann?

A. No, we didn’t. There was really no occasion to speak about Eichmann at the time. Frankly, he wasn’t thought of very much by the major Nazi war criminals, and anyway, I had reason to believe that he was dead, at that time.

Q. What led you to the conclusion that Eichmann was dead?

A. Well, his own boss, Kaltenbrunner, told me he was dead. I remember this conversation very vividly, because it was the one day on which, I’m afraid, I lost a little of my professional aloofness. This was a day on which a survivor of Auschwitz testified how the children born in concentration camps were taken from their mothers and never seen again, and then, in the rush season of 1944, children were thrown alive into the furnaces of Auschwitz.

This was too much, even for a psychologist, and I went to Kaltenbrunner at lunch that day, and I said: “Herr Kaltenbrunner, now do you really mean to tell me that you know nothing about these things?” And he said, “No, no, really. I didn’t have anything to do with the extermination programme as such. This was done by Heydrich and Eichmann and the people in that context – Heydrich, Eichmann and the others involved in this chain of command, from Himmler on down. And,” he added, “they’re all dead.”

Q. Is that to be found on page 163 of your book?

A. Yes, this is a correct recording of the conversation I had with Kaltenbrunner, right out of my diary.

Q. Eichmann’s name is mentioned here on a further occasion, after Wisliceny’s evidence – I think on page 102. This is Goering’s response when already in gaol, after Wisliceny’s evidence.

A. Yes, I remember that conversation.

Q. What did Goering say then?

A. Well, his comment on Wisliceny’s testimony was that Wisliceny looks like a big Schweinehund only because Eichmann isn’t here – or to make it exact, that “Wisliceny is a little Schweinehund who looks like a big one, because Eichmann isn’t here.”

Q. Does this appear in your book?

A. Yes, this can be found in the original diary – all of these notes that are in the public version can be found in the original diary which I kept at the time.

Q. Did anyone else in the Nuremberg gaol talk to you about Eichmann when you were on your official mission?

A. Yes, the name came more and more into discussion, not so much amongst the main Nazi war criminals, but among the SS men of whom we had practically the entire military and police power in gaol in Nuremberg. There were many higher SS police officials, and I frequently ran across Eichmann’s name there – at first, somewhat to my surprise, but more and more a clear picture emerged.

Q. Did you speak to Oswald Pohl about Eichmann?

A. Yes. Oswald Pohl – I believe his title was Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, the Chief of the WVHA – was also in Nuremberg, and I, of course, discussed the atrocities with him.

Q. What did he say to you?

A. Well, he tried to get into a jurisdictional dispute about who had charge of the extermination programme. He, of course, disclaimed responsibility for himself, insisting that this was under Kaltenbrunner’s jurisdiction, but he made it quite clear that Eichmann was involved.

In other words, both Kaltenbrunner and Pohl tried to shove on to the other the responsibility for being in charge of the bureaucracy, but both agreed, automatically, that Eichmann was the one involved, at least one of those involved.

Q. Pohl was kept in the witness wing in the Nuremberg gaol – is that correct?

A. Yes, in the witness wing there was the rest of the top hierarchy of Nazi Germany, and they were interrogated at times, called at times as witnesses by the defendants, sometimes by the prosecution; I had access to all of those – just as free access as I had to the top Nazis themselves.

Q. Is that where you also met Ohlendorf and Rudolf Hoess?

A. Yes.

Q. Was there any contact between the witnesses detained in the witness wing and the principal accused who were imprisoned in their cells?

A. No, that’s why they were kept in a separate wing. They could only be called to discuss particular cases, if they were needed as witnesses, and then the attorney might call the witness to discuss something with the defendant. Otherwise they were kept quite separate.

Q. You said that other people spoke to you about Eichmann. Who were they?

A. Well, the main one was Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz.

Q. What did Hoess say about Eichmann?

A. Well, he seemed to be unable to discuss the extermination programme without referring to Eichmann, and at first I hardly noticed this, but when I started to get written statements from him for psychological purposes, the name came in more and more, and it gradually dawned on me that this man must be a key figure in the whole extermination programme.

Q. What do you mean by “it dawned on me”?

A. Well, I was starting to investigate something else. What I was really interested in was what makes these Nazis tick. So I was trying to find out what made Colonel Hoess tick, how could he do things like this? And in the orderly procedure of getting a case history on a subject, I asked Colonel Hoess to write an autobiography telling his entire history from childhood up to the present time.

Q. Are you referring to that autobiography which was published under the title “Commandant of Auschwitz”?

A. Oh, no – I am speaking of the original autobiography which Colonel Hoess wrote for me in Nuremberg, for purely psychological purposes, in his own handwriting.

Q. You have kept it in your possession until now, and it has not been published so far?

A. That’s right – that is one of the original written documents I had to confirm my conversations, and it hasn’t been published except for excerpts which I used in analysing the case of Rudolf Hoess in my second book, The Psychology of Dictatorship.

Q. Did Hoess write it before he wrote his autobiography in Poland?

A. Oh, yes – definitely; he had not yet been brought to Poland to stand trial, and I was the first one, I believe, to ask him for his case history.

Q. I notice there is a date at the top – 10 April 1946. And Hoess ended it on 12 April. It took him two days to write – would that be correct?

A. Yes, that would be about right.

Q. And it has not yet been published?

A. Not as such, no – as I said – except for brief excerpts.

Q. Is this the original handwriting of Hoess?

A. This is the original.

Q. Signed by him?

A. Yes, this is Rudolf Hoess’ signature, and this is exactly the document which he wrote for me.

Presiding Judge: Did the witness receive this from the hands of Hoess?

Witness Gilbert: I received this from Hoess himself and have kept it in my possession ever since, except that I showed it to Mr. Hausner when I came here.

Attorney General: I submit this document. To my regret we have not managed to make copies. We shall make copies for the Court. We shall ask for the document to be returned to us so that we may print it. The handwriting of Hoess is quite legible.

Presiding Judge: This will be exhibit T/1169.

You will receive it back after the session, in order to make copies of it. Has Dr. Servatius seen the document?

Attorney General: Dr. Servatius has received from us a copy of the English translation, since Dr. Gilbert made an English translation for himself. And I gave him the complete translation.

Presiding Judge: Please also give him the German original.

Attorney General: Certainly.

Dr. Servatius: May I request a photocopy of the handwritten document, in order to show it to the Accused?

Attorney General: I have no objection to Defence Counsel receiving the document and showing it to the Accused.

Presiding Judge: The document will be returned to you, and you can submit it to Defence Counsel.

Attorney General: I have a manuscript of Hoess which has also not yet been published. I shall let him have it immediately.

I understand that Eichmann is mentioned in the autobiography written by Hoess?

Witness Gilbert: Yes, I noticed that. That is how I began to get the impression that Colonel Hoess cannot describe the extermination programme without referring to Eichmann, even though he is only supposed to be writing a personal autobiography for psychological purposes.

Q. At a later stage we shall draw the Court’s attention to what it says there.

Tell me, Professor Gilbert, did Hoess testify in Court?

A. Yes. He was a witness for Kaltenbrunner.

Q. He gave evidence, or at any rate evidence was led, showing that 2,500,000 men, women and children had been exterminated in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

A. Yes.

Q. What was the effect of this evidence on the other accused in that trial, as far as you remember?

A. Well, this was one of the main psychological problems at the trial. The atrocity evidence of the extermination and the films of the atrocities and concentration camps sometimes had a very shocking effect on the defendants themselves, and I was very anxious to find out just how genuine this was, and what their guilt reactions were from a psychological point of view.

Q. Do you remember what Hans Frank said to you?

A. Yes. In connection with the testimony of Rudolf Hoess, he stopped me in the hall on the way to lunch or from lunch and said: “Captain Gilbert, this was the lowest point of the trial. Just imagine a man sitting there and saying out of his own mouth: I murdered two and a half million men, women, and children.” Oh yes, I remember the additional comment: “People will talk about this for a thousand years.”

Q. Do you recall the testimony of Keitel who, I believe, was the Chief of the German General Staff?

A. That’s right. I recall Keitel’s reaction to the atrocities particularly vividly in connection with the atrocities films. And when I saw him in the cell later, he said: “Those dirty SS swine! If I had known what they were up to, I would have told my son, I’ll shoot you rather than let you join the SS.” He was, of course, at the same time trying to indicate that it was not the army that had committed these horrible atrocities. But he did react emotionally and with great shock.

Q. Do you remember any unusual reaction on the part of anyone else?

A. Well, there were a number of them. We could, of course, go on and on, but I think we want to come back to the documents that form the picture that I gradually formed of the role of Adolf Eichmann.

Q. That is correct.

A. Well, in connection with getting these guilt reactions, I would have to present the reaction of Goering, which leads to the next document which I received from Colonel Hoess. Goering’s reaction was to try to brush it all aside, to tell everybody that this was all exaggerated propaganda. “Oh, they are a bunch of SS Schweinehunde doing some dirty things, but it is all exaggerated, it’s all propaganda.”

So, I would engage Goering in conversation in front of the others and say: “Well, now, you can’t just brush off the murder of two and a half million people. The German people themselves will demand to know how did this happen. The conscience of the world demands to know how did this happen. Do you want to go down in history as a man who just laughed it off?” …And we would argue along this line.

You see, the only way of appealing to Goering was not through conscience, but through his egotistical role in history. And I knew that he was trying to brush aside the crimes, so that he would not lose his chance to get his picture in the German history books, because he knew that even the German people would be horrified by it. Particularly because women and children had been murdered. The killing of the men would not damage his picture in the German history books, he told me.

Now then, realizing that he was determined to try to blot out the memory of this horrible crime from history, I felt that, psychologically, historically and humanly, it was absolutely necessary to see to it that this was properly documented – both from the historical and the psychological point of view.

Q. And then, what did you do?

A. I therefore told him…I’m sorry. No, the next step was his clinching argument, namely, that it was technically impossible to exterminate two and a half million people inside of the three or three and a half years that Colonel Hoess was Commandant of Auschwitz. This seemed to be very convincing to some of the other Nazi leaders.

Q. What did you do, then?

A. I then told him that, of course, I was no expert in mass production of extermination, but that there was an expert in the witness wing, and I could get the details from him. I was, of course, referring to Colonel Hoess.

Q. And then you took a sheet of paper and you wrote at the top certain words in German?

A. That’s right. I wrote a question in German.

Q. And you gave it to Hoess and got his written reply?

A. That’s right. I handed it to him, and he wrote the reply in his own handwriting.

Q. You gave it to him on 23 April 1946, and you received his reply on 24 April 1946?

A. Yes. I believe the dates are recorded on the document.

Q. Kindly read out to the Court the question and the answer (I already have a printed copy here – it is a short document).

A. The question which I wrote down in German was: Goering wants to know how it was at all possible, from a technical point of view, to destroy two and a half million people in the course of three and a half years.

Q. What was Hoess’ reply?

Presiding Judge: Mr. Hausner, this is going to take very long, with the translation.

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Session No. 55

14 Sivan 5721 (29 May 1961)

Presiding Judge: I hereby declare the fifty-fifth Session of  the trial open.

Attorney General: With the Court’s permission, we are obliged to interrupt, for a short time, the evidence about Hungary, and to request the Court to hear evidence of a general nature. I shall call Professor Gilbert. Professor Gilbert will testify in English.

Presiding Judge: Is he Jewish?

Attorney General: Yes.

[The witness is sworn.]

Presiding Judge: What is your full name?

Witness: Gustave M. Gilbert.

Attorney General: Professor Gilbert, what post do you occupy at present?

Witness Gilbert: I am chairman of the Psychology Department of Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York.

Q. What are your professional qualifications?

A. I am a qualified psychologist, having received the Doctorate at Columbia University in 1939. I also hold a diploma from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology.

Q. Were you in military service during the Second World War?

A. Yes, I was commissioned as a military psychologist with the rank of First Lieutenant, and after spending some time examining misfit soldiers, I was sent overseas as a military intelligence officer, because of my knowledge of German.

At the cessation of hostilities, I was assigned to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, where the major Nazi war criminals were about to be tried. That was the first trial of the major war criminals.

Q. What was your function at the Nuremberg prison?

A. It was, first of all, to make psychological examinations of all the defendants – Goering, Hoess, Ribbentrop and so on, in order to be informed of their mental state, in case any question of insanity arose, and also to keep watch over them – to be with them at all times, so that I would have my finger on the pulse of their morale and so on, and do everything that was possible to ensure the conduct of an orderly trial.

Q. Were you their doctor in the sense that what they said to you was a medical confidence between patient and doctor?

A. No; I am not a physician in the first place, but more important than that, their position there, and my position there was clearly not one of clinical confidences. In other words, I was there in the uniform of the American army – I was a military psychologist; it was my responsibility to watch over them, and I never at any time pretended that anything they said to me was in confidence. There was just one limitation on this, and that was that, as the Nazis ridiculed and cursed each other behind one another’s backs, they would sometimes ask me to please not say anything about it to the others until the trial was over. I kept that confidence.

Q. Professor, did they know that you were Jewish?

A. At first they did not. I wanted to see whether they could tell according to the Nazi ideology that you could always tell “these despicable Jews.” Not a single one could. However, Streicher did think that some of the judges were Jews. They were of course not – none of them. So I let it be known that I was Jewish and they, in turn, did not seem to react to this, beyond making it clear that they never had anything against Jews personally, that this was all silly ideological nonsense, and that some of their best friends had been Jews.

Q. Did the fact that you revealed to them that you were a Jew have any effect on your subsequent talks with them?

A. There was not really much, except in the case of Streicher and Rosenberg, who seemed to be a little nervous about it, but they reacted in rather a strange way: Streicher, for instance, decided that, since the Jews were fighting courageously to make a homeland in Palestine, he wanted to “lead” them, because he admired their courage.

Outside of such nonsense, there was really no appreciable effect. I behaved absolutely correctly – they appreciated it, and the study went on in a perfectly dignified professional manner. Perhaps I might add that there is ample evidence that I had the respect and cooperation of the defendants – perhaps Dr. Servatius himself can confirm this.

Q. Let us continue. Did you give any official evidence before the International Military Tribunal in relation to your task?

A. The only actual official testimony was in connection with the sanity hearing for Rudolf Hess. I testified – I gave the final testimony that Rudolf Hess was, in fact, sane; and this testimony appears in Volume I of the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal. Now, aside from that, of course, I had examined all of the defendants and was with them all through the trial.

Q. Did you subject them to psychological tests?

A. Yes. I administered intelligence tests and personality tests to all of them before the trial started, to be sure that these would be valid, because it was of supreme importance to get to understand the Nazi mentality.

Q. Did you keep in contact with the accused persons also after the trials had begun?

A. Oh yes, I was in intimate daily contact with all of theNazis on trial in Nuremberg; I was with them every day in the court, I spoke to them during the court intermissions and during the lunch hours, and had extensive conversations with them at night in their cells and over the long weekends and recesses from court. This went on from the beginning of the trial to the end of the trial, without losing a day.

Q. Did you keep notes of your conversations with these accused?

A. Yes, I made very extensive notes after every conversation – but not in their presence. I recorded the summary of our conversations with extensive verbatim quotations, and compiled this in my own diary; and the defendants were unaware of this until about the end of the trial.

I might add that I further substantiated these conversations with notes by getting additional documentary evidence – you would say (protocols – I would say) – to substantiate what we had talked about; first, for psychological evidence, and secondly, because some of it was so incredible that I felt I had to have a record of these people because my colleagues would never believe me.

Presiding Judge: What was the material that you recorded?

Witness Gilbert: There were essays written by the defendants in their own handwriting which further substantiated what we had talked about.

Attorney General: These essays are still in your possession to this day and have not yet been published – is that correct?

Witness Gilbert: That’s right. These essays are in my  possession, and most of it has not been published – hardly any of it, in fact.

Q. Your diary is here with you, as I can see – the one you kept at Nuremberg.

A. Yes, these are my original diary notes, in their original binding, just as I kept them in Nuremberg. In fact, it just so happens that I had them locked in a trunk for the last ten years, and they only arrived by diplomatic pouch last night, so they are substantially as they were in Nuremberg.

Q. Did you publish part of it in 1947, under the name Nuremberg Diary?

A. Yes, that is correct. The original edition of the Nuremberg Diary, which represents, I should say, about two-thirds of the material in my original diaries, was published in 1947.

Q. Has this now appeared in a new edition?

A. Yes, a new edition was published just this year, because of the renewed interest in Nazi war crimes, and it is an authentic reproduction of the original edition. In fact, it went to press before I even knew it, and it was printed from the original manuscript.

Q. Is this the book? [Shows the witness a book]

A. Yes, this is the book. This is the authentic copy of the original edition, which was edited by me from my own original diary notes.

Attorney General: I shall now submit this, for the Court’s convenience, if that should be desirable. I have another copy.

Presiding Judge: Perhaps you have two more?

Attorney General: I shall submit the second one as well, at the end of the session.

Witness Gilbert: I have a further copy.

Presiding Judge: Thank you very much. This will be marked T/1168.

Attorney General: We shall come back to this diary of yours, but meanwhile I wanted to ask you a number of questions. When you were in Nuremberg, did you see Judge Musmanno
there?

Witness Gilbert: Oh yes. He wasn’t Judge Musmanno then. He was Commander Musmanno of the Navy. I remember him very well.

Q. When was that?

A. It was somewhere around the early part of the trial. I don’t remember the exact date.

Q. What was Judge Musmanno doing there?

A. He was on two missions, as I recall. One was to investigate the death of Adolf Hitler. The other one pertained to naval military intelligence, and I don’t think I’m free to speak about that. It’s quite irrelevant to the trial.

Q. Did you introduce him, Judge Musmanno, to some of the accused?

A. Yes, I did. I particularly remember that because he was the only one outside of some psychiatrists who was allowed to come down into the cells. In other words, everybody was kept out of the gaol cells – except myself, chaplains and so on, and occasional psychiatrists for the psychiatric examinations – but Musmanno had special permission to come down, and I introduced him to several of the top Nazi defendants to satisfy his commissions.

Q. Did you take him to Goering?

A. Yes. Goering was one of them. Since Goering couldn’t speak English, I remained for that interview as his interpreter.

Attorney General: At this stage, I request the Court to rule, by virtue of its powers under Section 15 of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Act 5710-1950, that Professor Gilbert should be permitted to recount what he heard at Nuremberg from the following persons: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Frank, Oswald Pohl, Ohlendorf, Rudolf Hoess (the commandant of Auschwitz), and Kaltenbrunner.

All these conversations are relevant to the subject under discussion; some of them are also linked to the evidence of Judge Musmanno and to the matters on which he testified, others are linked directly to the Accused, to persons with whom he was in contact, and with remarks which they made about him, with their mentality, with the Nazi personnel structure…

Presiding Judge: With whose mentality?

Attorney General: Of the accused persons.

Presiding Judge: Of the persons who were accused there?

Attorney General: Of the persons who were accused there. We also showed Professor Gilbert the psychological tests which we conducted on the Accused here, and we shall ask him to make a particular comparison between the tests that he was shown here by the government psychologists and the tests he conducted there.

Presiding Judge: Were tests conducted here as well?

Attorney General: Tests were conducted here. We shall submit them in the proper way through the persons who conducted them. These are public officials of the Ministry of Health. Psychological tests were made. We shall submit them. Professor Gilbert has seen them.

Presiding Judge: Very well, that may be an additional question.

Attorney General: Yes, this is an additional question. But I am explaining why I am interested in evidence on the personality of an SS man engaged in exterminating Jews. Together with it a certain question of comparison will arise.

Presiding Judge: At the present moment this matter is not so clear to me.

Attorney General: Perhaps the Court will allow me to go over this stage by stage?

Presiding Judge: Perhaps we could separate the issues and leave this question of the psychological tests on one side for the time being.

Attorney General: As the Court pleases.

Presiding Judge: Yes, Dr. Servatius?

Witness Gilbert: Pardon me, may I receive a summary of what is being discussed?

Presiding Judge: No, this is a legal argument. If it would be more comfortable for you to be seated, you remain where you are; if not, you may leave the witness box. Perhaps some member of the Prosecution, Mr. Bach, the Assistant State Attorney, will explain to you briefly what is going on here, as we did in the case of Judge Musmanno. For that we have a precedent.

Dr. Servatius: If a psychological research is going to be presented here dealing with what the Nuremberg accused said and thought, I should have received, in the first place, the tests that were conducted here concerning the Accused himself.

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, pardon me. I have already said to the Attorney General that we shall deal separately with the question of the psychological tests. We now have here an application to hear evidence on what the witness heard from the Nuremberg accused whose names we have heard. This is the first question, irrespective of the psychological aspect of the matter. What is your reply to that?

Dr. Servatius: I believe that such a question has already arisen here once, and it was settled by the Court. I believe that this is hearsay evidence, and I want to voice an objection, something which I have already done previously.

Judge Raveh: Mr. Hausner, did you only mention persons who are no longer alive?

Attorney General: Only persons who are no longer living. I have here eight names.

Presiding Judge:

Decision No. 58

We shall permit evidence by this witness about matters which he heard from those persons whose names have been mentioned by the Attorney General, on the grounds we gave in our Decisions 7 and 29, by virtue of our powers under Section 15 of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 5710-1950.

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Q. Was it clear from what he said that he understood that he had no longer any hope of staying alive?

A. Yes. According to Law No. 81/45 and also under Regulation 1440/45 of the Prime Minister, both the instigator and the accomplice to a crime are punished in exactly the same way as the principal offender. Therefore he knew from what he heard from me – and he noted it and understood it – that he, being one of the major war criminals and liable to such punishment, could not in any way escape the penalty of hanging, and he took note of that and understood it.

He told me not only that he had been the Commissar for Jewish Affairs, but that he had also been State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, that is to say the holder of one of the highest offices in the land. From time to time, when for some technical reasons he had been unable to fulfil orders, the Accused rebuked him on account of these matters in the severest terms.

He complained about this also to his Minister, Andor Jaross and Andor Jaross replied: “We have been delivered up into the hands of the Germans and we have to do what they order us to do.” I don’t remember whether Baky met with the Accused or spoke with him. Possibly there had been no meeting between them. But on the other hand, I remember Endre always passed on the orders that he received from the Accused.

Q. Can you tell us, perhaps by way of summing up, what Endre said to you about his relationship with the Accused, what was, in fact, the administrative or operational connection between the Accused and him?

A. I did not doubt for a moment that the Accused gave the orders. He (the Accused) supplied him with the plans and he was but the one to carry them out, as a representative of the Hungarian Government.

Presiding Judge: Who is that speaking now?

Interpreter: The witness.

Presiding Judge: This is unimportant for us – what is important is what he heard from Endre.

State Attorney Bach: I understand that the question in Hungarian was not put in such a way that the witness could understand it in the sense it was asked. Perhaps I can ask him once again: What did Endre say to the witness about his operative and administrative relations with the Accused?

Witness Ferencz: He said not only to me but also in his interrogation that it was the Accused who gave the orders, and subsequently he reported to the Accused.

Q. Who decided, according to what Endre said, from which ghetto, and when, the Jews had to be evacuated and in what order?

A. I am not certain, I don’t remember exactly, that Doeme Sztojay, on his return from Germany, already brought with him the whole plan for the evacuation of the Jews. But I don’t know this with absolute certainty.

Q. Is this what Endre told you?

A. Not only Endre told me this, but it also came out in the trial of Doeme Sztojay who was hanged.

Presiding Judge: Please confine your remarks to what you heard from Endre, without drawing conclusions on the basis of something else you heard.

State Attorney Bach: The question is: What did Endre tell you – who in Hungary decided from which ghetto Jews had to be deported, when they had to be deported and to what place they had to be deported?

Witness Ferencz: It was the Accused, and he (Endre) also reported to the Accused.

Q. For how long did you converse with Baky?

A. Very briefly.

Q. Can you tell us only what he said to you about the Accused?

A. He said that the orders which Endre received from the Accused – were given to him to carry out. He reported the results to Endre. This was the procedure by which the events took place. I don’t remember whether Baky ever said that he had spoken face to face with the Accused.

Q. What were Baky’s duties in the Hungarian Government?

A. Baky was also State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior. He was in charge of the gendarmerie, he controlled the gendarmerie and he passed on orders for implementation to the commanders of the gendarmerie.

Q. By the way, were these matters, the contents of your conversation with Endre and the contents of your conversation with Baky, recorded by anyone?

A. We prepared a minute which was placed in the secret archives. First I showed the minute to the Minister and afterwards it was placed in the secret archives.

Q. Did you also speak to Peter Hain at a certain stage?

A. Yes, I also spoke to Peter Hain before he was put to death by hanging, not before he was hanged. This was a complicated affair, for he was hanged twice. On the first occasion, when he was being led to the gallows, he escaped from his guards and jumped from the third floor, and broke his spine, so that they had to take him to the prison hospital, where he lay for some time, and only after that was he hanged.

Q. At any rate, you spoke to him at a time when he believed that he was about to be executed?

A. I spoke to him, when his application for clemency had been rejected before the first so-called hanging, inside the death cell.

Q. I do not remember whether I have already asked you what were the duties of this Peter Hain?

A. Peter Hain was an Inspector of Police, who did everything, interfered in everything, in political matters. Officials in his department or his subordinates in his department seized high-ranking persons from the first day the Germans entered Hungary, on 19 March 1944; they seized Jews, mainly. When the Germans arrived, he transferred his office from the police headquarters to the Majestic Hotel.

When I questioned him before his execution, he told me for the record, that he was in the closest contact with the Accused and with the Accused’s Section, with his office. He received orders for implementation partly from the Accused and partly from the Accused’s Section and also, according to the reports which he delivered to the Accused, it was the Accused who gave instructions for the arrest of various people.

Q. Can you tell us who Gabor Vajna was?

A. I believe that it was on 16 October 1944, when members of the “Arrow Cross” took control of the regime in Hungary, after the Sztojay Government left and was replaced by the Szalasi Government. And then, after Andor Jaross, Gabor Vajna, a member of the “Arrow Cross,” was appointed to be Minister of the Interior in his stead.

Q. Was he also placed on trial, and if so, what happened to him?

A. Yes. He was sentenced to death and executed by hanging.

[EDITOR'S NOTE:  As leader of the Arrow Cross movement, Ferenc Szálasi led a Fascist government in Hungary during the last year of the war. He staged a coup against Admiral Miklós Horthy's government when it attempted to make peace with the Soviets in the fall of 1944. As a close ally of the Germans, Szálasi's government viciously persecuted Hungary's Jewish population. Szálasi was executed on March 12, 1946.]

Presiding Judge: Dr. Servatius, do you have any questions to the witness?

Dr. Servatius: Yes. Witness, you said that in the proceedings against them, both Endre and Baky pleaded in justification that they were acting under superior orders. In this way they wanted to exonerate themselves. Is that correct?

Witness Ferencz: When I questioned them in the death cell, they no longer pleaded in justification or used this as a defence, for their lives were about to end.

Presiding Judge: The question referred to their defence at the trial.

Witness Ferencz: Yes, in Court they defended themselves on the ground that they acted under orders. All of them
defended themselves in this way.

Q. On whose orders did they base this?

A. I can no longer remember exactly to whose orders they referred in the Court proceedings, since I came and went and also received reports from the Prosecution. These were long proceedings and hence today I can no longer remember exactly to whose orders they referred.

Q. Who was likely to have issued orders to them? Not the Minister? Not the authorities of their Hungarian Government?

A. It was common knowledge that both the Minister and the authorities during those times did what the Germans ordered.

Q. Wasn’t the German Ambassador Veesenmayer the man who maintained contact with the Ministers and issued orders to them on behalf of the Germans?

A. He, too, was in contact with the Ministers. But, for example, at the Royal Hotel on Arzibt Road there was a particular department of the Gestapo which also gave instructions independently.

Presiding Judge: In the Royal Hotel?

Witness Ferencz: This department in the Royal Hotel also gave instructions independently.

The Germans, for their part, had no need – not at government level or at a lower administrative level – for any seal or rubber stamp in order to issue instructions or in order to act.

Dr. Servatius: Witness, I presume that an official can receive orders from one authoritative source only, namely his superiors. If that is the case, the statement which Endre made later on that Eichmann gave him the orders, was a false one.

Witness Ferencz: This is nothing but the opinion of Defence Counsel. But I am a witness testifying under oath, and I am telling the truth.

Dr. Servatius: I have no more questions to the witness.

Presiding Judge: Mr. Bach, do you have any questions?

State Attorney Bach: I do not wish to re-examine, Your Honour.

Judge Raveh: I understand that in the trial of Endre and Baky, you did not know whether they mentioned Eichmann or not. Did I understand you correctly?

Witness Ferencz: As I have already said, I was the head of the General Prosecution, and in every important case I was in charge of its conduct. I was assisted by 112 lawyers and a huge staff, who conducted the proceedings. So that I would enter the court-room, sit down, listen, and leave and give instructions. I cannot testify – for I am on oath – whether Eichmann’s name was mentioned in the course of the proceedings in court, since I can only testify to the truth.

Q. What was your purpose in wanting to talk, after the trial, to them – to Endre and Baky?

A. It was the opinion of my Minister that it was necessary, prior to the death sentence on war criminals, to hear the views of these accused, not only of the war criminals I have spoken about, but of all the criminals in this category, to determine their views once again, finally.

Q. Does any kind of verbatim record exist of the case against Endre and Baky?

A. Certainly.

Q. Did you read this record after the case was over?

A. I surely read all these records, since my lawyers presented me with reports, particularly of the trials of the main war criminals, since I myself exercised control over them.

Q. Also from reading the record you do not recall whether Endre and Baky mentioned Eichmann in the course of the trial?

A. I don’t remember, since this prosecution was a kind of routine matter and since I myself didn’t conduct these trials. It didn’t seem all that important. The records are there. They are preserved in the Budapest Court, which succeeded the People’s Court, in a special place in the archives which are in the basement.

Judge Halevi: Does a record still exist of the conversations you conducted with Endre and Baky?

Witness Ferencz: These records were dealt with separately, and secretly. In the autumn of 1956 there was a revolution in Hungary. A substantial number of the war criminals, who were serving their sentences in various prisons, were freed, and many documents were then destroyed by them. Therefore, I don’t know now, for sure, whether this record is extant. For by then I had already, some time previously, terminated my duties in the People’s Prosecution office and I had no influence over affairs.

Judge Halevi: Did the Prosecution take any steps to obtain the record from the Hungarian Government?

State Attorney Bach: No, Your Honour. With regard to this record, I asked the witness and he said that he was unable to give me a reply as to where this record was kept. As far as the records of the trials are concerned…

Judge Halevi: I am not referring to the records of the trials, but only to the specific record of these conversations on which the witness has testified before us orally.

State Attorney Bach: No; we did not approach the Government in this matter for we could not even say where this record was being kept.

Judge Halevi: In general, did the Hungarian Government extend any help in this trial?

State Attorney Bach: We submitted a list of a large number of documents mentioning them specifically, various documents of whose existence we were aware from various books, and also asked for the records of the trials. We received some material, not precisely according to the list we submitted, and more than that we did not receive.

Judge Halevi: At any rate, the best proof of these conversations would surely be the verbatim report, to the extent that it is possible to secure it.

State Attorney Bach: This would certainly be more desirable. I was simply not especially optimistic in regard to this matter when the witness was not able to give us even some hint as to where it is being kept.

Judge Halevi: He told us something about its being placed in a secret archive. Perhaps he can tell us in which secret archive?

Witness Ferencz: This is a special archive, a secret one, in which items were kept which had been marked with a double ‘O’, and even if the record were to be found – they would not supply or even disclose any material from this archive. Only very few persons had authority to examine material in this archive.

State Attorney Bach: In view of Your Honour’s observation, I am prepared to ask our Ministry for Foreign Affairs again to request the Hungarian Government to make an effort to discover the material, and if we shall receive it up to the end of this trial, we shall submit it to the Court.

Judge Halevi: If the reply is in the negative, we shall have to be satisfied with the oral evidence. [To witness] Did Endre mention, in his conversation with you, only the name of Eichmann, or other names as well?

Witness Ferencz: He mentioned various other names of members of his Section. For instance, I recall the name of Krumey. He also mentioned other names, but I don’t remember them.

Q. Anyone else?

A. Yes, he also mentioned various names, but I don’t remember them.

Q. Did he mention the names of Hungarians?

A. He did not mention the names of any Hungarians who gave orders and to whom they had to report – with the exception, of course, of his Minister – Jaross – to whom he reported.

Q. Was Jaross the Minister of the Interior?

A. The Minister of the Interior.

Q. Was he a minister in the government of Sztojay or in which government?

A. Yes.

Q. You say that he told you that he was obliged to give a report to Jaross as well?

A. Whether he had to report to him or not – about this he did not speak clearly. But, amongst other things, he also said that he had turned to Jaross and had complained about the Accused because he had rebuked him, had been annoyed with him; after all he was a State Secretary – what was he to do? In reply to this Jaross had said that the Germans were the masters and they gave the orders.

Presiding Judge: Thank you, Mr. Ferencz, you have concluded your evidence.

We shall adjourn now. The next Session will be held next Monday, at 9 o’clock in the morning.

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