Dr. Hans Globke, West German State Secretary and principal aide to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, today gave his version of the part he played in writing the commentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws. Dr. Globke ascribed the “initiative” for the Nuremberg Laws to Rudolf Hess, former Deputy Fuehrer under Adolf Hitler, who is now serving a life sentence for war crimes at Spandau Prison in West Berlin.
In an interview with the Daily Mirror columnist “Cassandra, ” Dr. Globke said that Hess “wanted to go much further in legislation against the Jews” but asserted that he and other civil servants fought against incorporation of the worst Hess proposals into law.
“We were successful at least in this, but some of the objectionable material remained, ” he declared. Asserting that he was not “all powerful, ” Dr. Globke told the British correspondent that “perhaps I made a mistake but at the time and under those circumstances, I thought it would be better to persevere in my work rather than hand it over to somebody else.”
Referring to his part in the decision that German Jews should carry specially marked passports, Dr. Globke said that he was involved in the matter “by some sort of procedural mistake. ” He explained that the initiative came from the Swiss authorities, who were embarrassed by the number of Jews fleeing to Switzerland. He stated:
CONSULTED RABBI ON NAMES FOR JEWS; SAW EICHMANN OBEYING SUPERIORS
“I realized the danger behind the Swiss proposals and suggested unofficially that it might be possible to mark the passports of all Germans in some special way. This might prevent
Jewish citizens from going to Switzerland but would not hinder them from going to ether countries as Germans.” He added that his proposal was never accepted.
A suggestion of his that was adopted, the State Secretary said, was the substitution for the letter “J” in the passports of the name “Israel” for all Jewish males and the name “Sarah” for Jewish females. Dr. Globke said he “spoke to a rabbi to find out which Jewish names could be used in a decent way without giving offense” and declared “I can tell you in all honesty that I had a hard fight with my superiors to limit the matter to the first names ‘Sarah’ and ‘Israel.'”
Referring to Adolf Eichmann’s testimony at the trial in Jerusalem, in which he mentioned Dr. Globke’s efforts “toward the withdrawal of citizenship and the confiscation of Jewish property,” the State Secretary said that Eichmann had “a strong interest in shifting and reducing responsibility he exercised and in transferring the onus of responsibility to other people.”
Dr. Globke said that he first met Eichmann one morning in a hallway in the Berlin Interior Ministry. “Eichmann was certainly in charge of a Reich department of the Security office, ” Dr. Globke declared, adding: “He had a certain reputation–certainly not a savory one. I thought he was a person who carried cut his duties after instructions had been passed to him by his superiors.”
The State Secretary told the Mirror correspondent that “I never had any doubt that the anti-Semitic evils of Hitler should be rejected” and added “Right up to the end of the war, I did not know there was an order for the extermination of all Jews.”
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.
