Following a charge by U.S. Prosecutor Robert Jackson that the defense was seeking to use the International Military Tribunal as a “sounding board” for its anti-Semitism, the court decided today to appoint a special official to pass on the relevance of all material submitted for printing by defense attorneys.
Jackson’s ire was aroused by material printed by the court’s presses for Alfred Rosenberg, which contained what he described as “violently anti-Semitic and irrelevant rubbish.” He said that “the United States cannot print and disseminate this violent anti-Semitism. The defense believes we are here to try the issue of the causes of anti-Semitism, with this tribunal as the sounding board. The issue is not Rosenberg’s philosophy, but we are charging the murder of four to five million Jews.”
Hana Lammers, former chief of the German Chancellory, admitted yesterday that many thousands of German Government officials knew of the Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews. Called as a defense witness, Lammers testified that in 1942 Goering received orders from Hitler for the “final solution of the Jewish question,” and that the Reichsmarshal had passed these orders on to Heinrich Heydrich, at that time deputy chief of the Gestapo, for execution. Lammers insisted that he did not understand the meaning of the term “final solution.”
He was the first defense witness to confess that hundreds of Nazi leaders had been charged with the responsibility for executing the “final solution” and that they in turn passed these instructions on to hundreds and thousands of other lesser officials.
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.
