Berlin Jewish Leaders Testify on Eichmann Barbarities at Trial

The barbaric role which Adolf Eichmann, former Gestapo leader now on trial here, played in directing the annihilation of 6,000,000 Jews in Nazi Europe was described in court here today by three prosecution witnesses, two of whom met Eichmann before World War II when he was already in charge of the Gestapo’s Jewish Bureau.

The two witnesses who faced Eichmann then were Dr. Benno Cohen, a leader of the Berlin Jewish community during the rise of the Nazis and now a lawyer in Tel Aviv, and Aharon Lindenstrauss, a German Zionist leader. Dr. Cohen described the development of Nazi anti-Jewish legislation, confiscation of Jewish property and the mass expulsion of Jews from Germany. He recalled the Nazi book-burning and other savage acts perpetrated by the Nazis.

Mr. Lindenstrauss described the Berlin pogrom of 1938. He reported on a meeting with Eichmann at which Eichmann, using the crudest threatening language, demanded that the departure of Jews from Germany be speeded up and warned if the Jewish leadership did not comply, “you know what your fate will be.”

Dr. Cohen said in his testimony that the notification most Jewish women received from the Gestapo after their husbands had been arrested and taken to concentration camps was a message: “Your husband died of a heart attack. We are sending you an urn of ashes. Pay a remittance of three and a half marks.” The one-time Berlin Jewish leader said that such arrests, usually of rabbis, Jewish leaders and businessmen, began as far back as 1933, the year Hitler came to power.

Describing his meetings in Berlin with Eichmann, Dr. Cohen said at some of the meetings, Eichmann threatened to send Jewish leaders to “concert lager,” a term used by Eichmann and other Gestapo officials “jokingly” as a reference to concentration lager or camps. He added that Eichmann used language he was not prepared to repeat in court.

Dr. Cohen outlined the picture of persecution, joblessness and despair which engulfed German Jewry as World War II approached and with it a steady drop in chances to emigrate. He said that initially, British authorities provided a “fairly large” number of certificates for migration to Palestine but that following the Arab disturbances, the number of such certificates dwindled.

Dr. Robert Servatius, Eichmann’s defense counsel, briefly cross-examined Mr. Cohen, trying to establish that Eichmann never actually implemented the threats he voiced against Jewish leaders.

WITNESS DESCRIBES NIGHT EXPULSION OF 12,000 JEWS

A surprise witness at today’s proceedings was Zindel Grynszpan, 75-year-old father of Hershel Grynszpan who assassinated Ernst von Rath, Nazi counsellor of the German Embassy in Paris in 1938. The assassination gave the Nazi Government the excuse to organize pogroms on Jews during the night of November 10, 1938, including the carrying out of the notorious “Crystal Night” in which hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany were set afire. A fine of one billion marks–almost 400,000,000 dollars–was imposed on German Jewry.

Testifying in Yiddish, the elder Mr. Grynszpan, a thin, frail little-man, recounted the Nazi nightmare of October 27, 1938, when he was one of 12,000 Polish-Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and driven out from Germany to a point at the Polish frontier. “They were whipping us,” he said, “there was blood on the road. It was the first time I ever saw the wild barbarism of the Germans.”

The witness outlined his life in Hanover, from his arrival from Poland in 1911 to October 1938 when the Polish-born Jews were driven from Germany. He described the sudden midnight arrests and detention and later the evacuation through streets thickly lined with Germans shouting “Jews to Palestine.”

After being searched and stripped of any money over 10 marks, they were transported to the Polish frontier where surprised guards called their superiors to check the human avalanche. When the officers found that the Jews had documents testifying to their Polish nationality, they were allowed to enter, the witness said. The 12,000 hungry, desolate Jews overwhelmed the frontier town of 40,000 and they were herded into barracks, stables and even latrines for lodging.

Eichmann was described at his trial today as “cold as ice in his attitude toward Jews, never showing any human feeling on the subject.” This description of the former Gestapo colonel by his assistant, Dieter Wisliceny, also included a Judgment that Eichmann was “cowardly and extremely cautious.”

The statement by Wisliceny was made before the Nuremberg trials to an investigating officer, Smith W. Brockhart of the United States Army. Wisliceny was executed by Czechoslovakia as a war criminal. Mr. Hausner quoted from the Wisliceny statement as follows:

“Eichmann is very cynical in his attitude toward the Jewish question and once told me: “I’ll go laughing to my grave in the knowledge I’ve sent 5,000,000 Jews to death; this gives me a feeling of immense satisfaction.'”

In describing Eichmann’s caution, Wisliceny was quoted as saying that “every action of his in these matters” was submitted to Gen. Reinhardt Heydrich, head of the Nazi security police, and later to Ernst Kantenbrunner, head of the German Main Security Office.