After a lengthy argument between Attorney General Gideon Hausner for the prosecution, and Dr. Robert Servatius for the defense in the Adolf Eichmann trial this morning, the three-man court today-rejected, by a vote of 2-1, the admissibility of all but certain parts of Eichmann’s tape-recorded memoirs.
The ruling came at the afternoon session, when the prosecution–instead of closing its case as previously expected–continued presenting further testimony, including records showing details of Nazi confiscation of valuables from Jewish victims.
Attorney General Gideon Hausner submitted to the court a Nazi directive, marked “secret,” which instructed German authorities to regard Jewish property as “stolen goods.” One report, by a Nazi district commander, Odilo Globotchnik, mentioned the figure of 100, 000, 000 reichsmarks as the estimate of the valuables taken by him from the Jewish victims in Poland. Mr. Hausner told the court that the figure was “nominal.”
The Globotchnik report stated that the liquidation of Jewish valuables had been “completed as planned, except for some damage in Warsaw resulting from a mistake in tactics.” That “mistake” referred to the revolt by the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.
Mr. Hausner told the court that, when Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, visited Warsaw, he was asked about how to dispose of 33, 000 women’s watches taken from Jewish victims. During that visit Mr. Hausner said, Globotchnik boasted that about 100, 000 men’s watches taken from the Jews had been distributed to Nazi fighting units and concentration camp personnel.
The prosecution showed that millions of items of Jewish wearing apparel had been distributed by the Germans who had received 823 train loads of “assorted effects” taken from Jews. He showed the eyeglasses were given to the German army medical corps, while foreign currency was given to the Government Bank.
PROSECUTION’S CLOSING OF ITS CASE AGAINST EICHMANN DEFERRED
The argument between Mr. Hausner and Defense Counsel Robert Servatius, about the tape recordings of Eichmann’s memoirs, took up much of the morning session. Dr. Servatius complained bitterly that the recordings amounted to “forgeries,” saying that Willem Sassen, the Dutch Nazi journalist who had interviewed Eichmann in a Buenos Aires tavern, had plied Eichmann with wine, and had violated an agreement whereby Eichmann was to have initialed each page of the transcript. Sassen subsequently sold part of this material for two articles in the American Life Magazine.
When the afternoon session opened, Presiding Justice Moshe Landau and Justice Itzhak Raveh ruled that only those parts of the transcript are admissible which were annotated by Eichmann. Justice Binyamin Halevy held that the entire transcript, including the portions carrying Eichmann’s corrections, were admissible. However, the majority ruling prevailed.
Because the prosecution must go over the transcript and omit those portions ruled inadmissible by the court’s majority, Mr. Hausner could not close the prosecution’s case today.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hausner put on the witness stand Shalom Cholawsky, a leader of Jewish partisans who for years roamed the forests in White Russia; and Attorney Hotter-Ishai, former military prosecutor serving under Marshal Montgomery in the latter’s Eighth (British) Army.
Mr. Cholawsky had escaped to White Russia from the Niewsz ghetto in Poland. He estimated that 15, 000 Jewish partisans lived and fought the Germans in the forests extending from Lithuania eastward to Galicia. In addition, he said, there were thousands of Jewish refugees consisting of aged women and of children living in “family camps” in the woods under the protection of partisans.
Mr. Hotter-Ishai told of the liberation of Jewish victims who had survived in concentration camps when trucks driven by members of the Jewish Brigade entered the camps. He said that, when they entered the Bergen-Belsen camp, there were 42,000 “living skeletons,” but within a few weeks, 27, 000 died despite the efforts of Allied doctors.
He told of Jewish refugees flocking to DP camps. In one instance, in a country he did not name, he said that four of 15 Jews who returned to a town were murdered by local inhabitants who suspected they would have to return property previously stolen from the survivors.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
