Evidence of an agreement among the German High Command, the Army command and the Nazi Security Police for the extermination of Jews in Russia was offered today by Walter Schelleberg, former SS brigade leader, at the Nuremberg trial of the trop Nazi leaders.
The evidence followed testimony given late yesterday by a Gestapo official, Dieter Wisliceny, estimating that "at least 4,000,000 Jews" were exterminated by the Nazi security police in Eastern Europe with the full knowledge and cooperation of the German Army leaders.
Wisliceny described how thousands of Jews from Slovakia, Greece and other countries were transported to the death factory at Auschwitz, Poland. Most of this movement, he said, was ordered by his superior in Berlin, Adolf Eichmann. The witness said he personally went to Salonika and Macedonia on Eichmann’s orders and helped to arrange for 54,000 Jews to be transported to Auschwitz for extermination. They were shipped in requisitioned army railway trains, 2,500 at a time, he said.
After the Germans entered Hungary, Wisliceny said, Eichmann moved in with a huge staff. More than half a million Jews, he said, were involved in Eichmann’s activities in Hungary. The "final solution" at Auschwitz awaited most of these people also. Only 25 to 30 per cent of them escaped because they were allocated to labor camps.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
