Below are four examples where 'resettlement' was used as camouflage or euphemism for the killing of Jews by shooting units.
1) 7/12/41 NOKW 1628 Activity Report Ortskommandantur I/287 Kertsch, reported the execution of 2,500 Jews in Kertsch. In the Manstein trial, the document was forensically examined by Rudolf Mally, who established that "Exekutierung" had been crossed out and "Umsiedlung" substituted. See TR.4/14, pp.17-20, and DEJ 7, Dok. 126, pp.389-391, especially note 5. See also, on this action, Molotov's note here and HC articles by Roberto and myself here and here.
2) 14/12/41 Ortskommandantur Bakhchisarai, scan here. Longerich summary here:
1) 7/12/41 NOKW 1628 Activity Report Ortskommandantur I/287 Kertsch, reported the execution of 2,500 Jews in Kertsch. In the Manstein trial, the document was forensically examined by Rudolf Mally, who established that "Exekutierung" had been crossed out and "Umsiedlung" substituted. See TR.4/14, pp.17-20, and DEJ 7, Dok. 126, pp.389-391, especially note 5. See also, on this action, Molotov's note here and HC articles by Roberto and myself here and here.
2) 14/12/41 Ortskommandantur Bakhchisarai, scan here. Longerich summary here:
...the local military command of Bakhchisarai, a Wehrmacht headquarters in the occupied Soviet Union, reported on the killing of local Jews in its activity report of 14.12.41 as follows: "The Jews who lived here were not rich and led a relatively modest life. The S.D. completed the shooting of the Jews on 13.12.41".[5] In the report, the word "shooting" (Erschießung) has been deleted and has been replaced by the handwritten word "resettlement" (Aussiedlung).3) 21/12/41 NOKW 1727 Ortskommandantur Yewpatoria; "executed" crossed out, "resettled" substituted. See note in NMT High Command case p.311 here:
* The original typewritten word "exekutierten" (executed) was crossed out and substituted with "umgesiedelten" (resettled) in handwriting.4) 5.2.43 Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei Weissruthenien, Einsatzbefehl v. 5.2.43, gez. Strauch, SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer, RGVA 500-1-769, pp.113-116. See articles by Nick here and Roberto here.
Hi. Good idea to spot those uses. I don't think the following was ever mentionned on HC (not the original at least, but I may have missed it):
ReplyDeleteThis is one from 1944 concerning probably Auschwitz. On the 6 september 1944, the Kattowitz's Oberpräsidium has a meeting frow which a memo contains the following:
The "Judische Element" was "ausgesiedelt bzw. beseitigt worden"
(can't be bolder!)
Cited by Sybille Steinbacher, "Musterstadt" Auschwitz. Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Darstellungen und Quellen zur Geschichte von Auschwitz, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Band 2), K. G. Saur Verlag, Munich, 2000, p. 302. (That very clear statement was first spotted by Gerald Reitlinger -- I found it in a 1956 edition of his Endlösung: Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas, 1939-1945, Colloquium Verlag, 1956, p. 321)
English translation and primary sources in Sybille Steinbacher, «In the Shadow of Auschwitz. The Murder of the Jews of East Upper Silesia», in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Etermination Policy. Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, Bergham Books, 2000, p. 293 or p. 304 (2004 edition):
https://books.google.fr/books?id=AAx-Gfo163EC&pg=P304&lpg=P304
Gilles, many thanks. It is interesting to compare "ausgesiedelt bzw. beseitigt worden" with other documents in which "beseitigt" is used to mean "killed." Some can be found using our search engine.
ReplyDeleteI find it fascinating that the document the Judge Ad read before the "camo" document, orders on how to treat the Jews on the Eastern Front is based upon...hearsay and "doesn't help the court at all". Wow. Page 17. Hearsay admitted as evidence. Now, I wonder why the prosecution would do that?
ReplyDeleteDr. Laternser asks to see the "camo" document? Why? Was he not allowed to see the "camo" document prior to the trial? Was the defense present during the forensic analysis? Nope.
1. So no change of evidence for the document.
2. Defense apparently didn't view the document prior to the trial as he asks to see it.
3. Defense did not have representation during the forensic analysis.
There are according to the transcript, multiple copies, but only one presented as evidence. Can anyone obtain the original document for research or just the photostat? You realize it would be easily claimed the Prosecution manufactured the edit (replacement words in the margin instead of above the word???) , performed the forensic science, and then claim some official made the "rather clumsy precaution" with speculation as to the motivation. In a trial where Jewish "soap" was submitted as evidence and never tested of genocide which is clearly fake, one has to question the validity of the "camo" document and it's authenticity.
-In a trial where Jewish "soap" was submitted -
ReplyDeleteThat was in the IMT. The examples Hans pointed out explicitly refer to Manstein's Trial and the NMT,not the IMT. No soap there. Right off the bat, instant fail.
-You realize it would be easily claimed the Prosecution manufactured the edit (replacement words in the margin instead of above the word???) -
If the prosecution wanted to implicate the accused, why would they replace incriminating words with those that are not incriminating? No, the prosecutors didn't fake anything. Sorry, troll. The troll fails logic again.
"The examples Hans pointed out..."
ReplyDeleteYou mean Jon ;-)
The doc NOKW 1628 can be found here.
There's another example mentioned from digital-page 20 of your YV Manstein trial link: a report dated 05.09.41 had a word meaning shooting crossed out and replaced with a misspelling [!] of Aussiedlung.
ReplyDeleteThe transcript also mentions that Mally forensically examined this document as well as your example no. 3, which was also used at the trial—Mastein's prosecutor said the original word was "Exekutierung" on that one, whilst the NMT vol. you link claims it was "exekutierten".
The prosecutor says on page 21:
And there we have three instances, Sir, in which a word sounding somewhat innocuous replaces a word which without any doubt meant extermination. We can only speculate as to whether that was done by order, or whether somebody at last felt a sense of shame, or maybe fear. There are other documents where this rather clumsy precaution was not taken and where the words were just left as being "shooting" or "extermination."
> In a trial where Jewish "soap" was submitted as evidence
ReplyDeleteAt no trial was Jewish soap submitted as evidence, you dumb puppet.
The extermination of the Jews was not limited to the Einsatzgruppen. Indeed, the slaughter in the charnel houses of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, and Sobibor was on a vaster scale. These extermination camps were all located in Poland. After the invasion of Poland, all Jews were forced to register, live in ghettos and wear the yellow star. The "final solution" of the Jewish problem could be resolved therefore with almost assembly line precision. Train-loads of Jews were evacuated from the ghettos to such camps as Auschwitz where the test of life or death was physical ability to work. Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, described the screening process in the following language:
ReplyDelete"We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to Case IV -Court 2 to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process.
Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under their clothing, but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated."
From the 3rd of March 1942 until the end, Auschwitz was one of the many concentration comps under the jurisdiction of the WVHA. The great influx of Jews in 1942 apparently so overtaxed the facilities at Auschwitz that the defendant Pohl, in November of that year, wrote to the Reich Minister of Finance in an effort to have the camp enlarged.
Extermination centers similar to Auschwitz existed at Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, and Sobibor in the vicinity of Lublin. There the procedure was the same. The victims were stripped of their clothes, money and valuables. The hair of the women was cut off, later to be manufacture into mattresses. Then, herded like so many cattle, the naked men, women, and children were driven to their death in the gas chambers. Gold teeth were pulled from the mouths of the corpses. An attempt was even made to manufacture soap from the fatty parts of the bodies, while the ashes remaining after cremation were used for fertilizer. This was indeed a gruesomely commercial exploitation of death on a mass basis."
- Prosecution's Opening Statement [here read by Mr. McHaney], USA vs. Oswald Pohl et al., 10 March 1947, transcript pp.72-73.
Maybe the Bunny doesn't understand the obvious difference between introducing the Jewish soap (the actual substance amenable to forensic analysis) as evidence and mentioning it/accepting it as true?
ReplyDeleteNo soap, Jewish or otherwise, was submitted as evidence during the Pohl et al. trial, even if it was assumed as factual by some.
Comprehension problems, I gather.