Eichmann on death tolls and numerical estimates

Five million: “enemies of the Reich” and Jews

Eichmann repeats his farewell boast, insists that its object was enemies of the Reich rather than Jews, and later calls Wisliceny’s reported version about five million Jews a fairy tale. These are successive passages, not independent numerical estimates.

Eichmann:

if it must now be so, I will gladly and joyfully jump into the pit with the awareness that 5 million enemies of the Reich have jumped in with me;

Part I, scan 007.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Are you certain that you used the word “enemies of the Reich” and not “J e w s”??...

No, I had no reason for that at all; I did not hate only the Jews, I hated everything in those days that was at the German people’s throat.

Not the word “P E O P L E” either??? [handwritten mark uncertain: A] No, “enemies of the Reich”.-

Part I, scan 007.

Eichmann:

At the 1st Nuremberg Trial, as our highest leaders were treated, that Judge Jakson summoned my Hstbaf. Wi., whom I had in Czechoslovakia, as a witness, and here he told the fairy tale about the alleged 5 million Jews I was supposed to have killed— and then Jakson said... (Interruption)

Part I, scan 029.

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Five million challenged; 4.5–5 million “dealt with”

Eichmann reports Wisliceny’s accusation, denies five million as his departmental number, gives 10,000 for Theresienstadt, and calls 4.5–5 million the total “dealt with,” encompassing ghettos and people killed OR put to work. The latter is explicitly not an unqualified death toll.

Eichmann:

I repeatedly read that my Hpt. Wi., as a witness at the first Nuremberg Trial, testified against me—not so much against me as a person, but about the enormity—that he said I supposedly told him and several other officers in my department that I would gladly jump into the pit because I had killed 5 million Jews.

Part I, scan 034.

Eichmann:

Regarding this, I said that on point one I could not have used the word “Jews,” because the figure of 5 million bore no relation to the number I knew had been physically exterminated. Rather, I explained: “I will gladly jump into the pit, if need be, in the awareness that 5 million enemies of the Reich have jumped in along with me.”

Part I, scan 034.

Eichmann:

In all, I had only brought so-and-so-many to emigration, and my department had nothing at all to do with concentration, except for Theresienstadt, and that was 10,000. A figure of 5 million would have been absurd; my department never, ever handled such a number.

It is true that 4.5 to 5 million Jews were dealt with, but [they were] concentrated in ghettos for emigration purposes and dealt with in the concentration camps by the WVHA, that is, either killed or put to work; and the statistician Korherr then wrote and compiled that, and gave this report to the RF SS, that report which then came back with the note, “Noted, matter to be destroyed”—and I then burned it myself.

Part I, scan 034.

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The supplementary calculation: five or six million explicitly denied

Unlabelled supplementary prose, scans 113–117, with no secure tape number. The speaker admits using remembered figures and postwar readings, allows ±5–10%, then alleges 5m European Jews excluding USSR; 4.5m within German reach; 1.5m emigrants; 2.1m survivors; 900,000 remaining. The itemized figures total 920,000, not 900,000, and include 100,000 migrants. The three explicit “killed” categories total 570,000; the mixed remainder of 250,000 is not an additional clean murder count. Source scan 115 was visually checked in this audit: key figures and five/six-million sentence are legible. His assumed population and survivor totals are unsupported here; the result does not establish an alternative historical death toll.

Eichmann’s supplementary first-person account:

Now I can try, without a crisis of conscience, to give a statistic here that cannot claim painful precision, since I have no documents available, but into which I insert, to the best of my knowledge, figures reported from memory. These figures combine numbers I read soon after the war with Jewish or Allied sources cited, and others still in my memory. To be safe, I would like to allow myself a margin of about five to ten percent, plus or minus. [Unclear phrase beginning “Zwei verletzte …”] I would like, as a precaution, to reserve a margin of about five to ten percent, plus or minus. For, I believe, in 1946 I made an initial attempt to put my memories down in writing and used the figures that were still quite fresh in my memory. I burned that attempt at recollection; only the figures stayed with me for many years, until one day …

Part I, scan 113.

Eichmann’s supplementary first-person account:

2) The number of Jews present in Europe (excluding the USSR) in 1939, Jewish and non-Jewish sources in many accounts, was given as about 5,000,000 (five million).
The total number of Jews found within the German sphere of influence at the time, from 1939 through 1944, was given in all reports then available to me as 4,500,000 (four million five hundred thousand).
According to the findings at the time, about 1,500,000 Jews emigrated beyond the national sphere of influence, legally and illegally. Illegal emigration was naturally extensive from France, Holland, Belgium, the so-called General Government, and also from the occupied Russian territories, Slovakia, Hungary, and briefly Romania. According to Allied figures, in 1945, 2,100,000 Jews were found alive in the former German sphere of power (including, of course, the so-called Greater German Reich itself, as well as Bohemia and Moravia). This leaves a balance of 900,000 Jews still to be accounted for.
A large portion of the Jews found had been gathered in armaments industries within the concentration-camp system and survived the war as workers or in ghettos. The figure of 900,000 is divided as follows:
Killed in the so-called General Government and in the Warthegau — about 200,000
Killed in the occupied eastern territories — about 120,000
Killed in Auschwitz concentration camp — about 250,000
Moved from the General Government into the Russian sphere — about 100,000
Natural decrease among Jews in Germany’s European sphere of influence (including the Old Reich, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia), including losses in partisan fighting, air raids, and the liquidation of Jews by Baltic peoples (Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians): remainder of 250,000 (although this figure seems somewhat low and the number attributed to the General Government almost too high).
This figure of 250,000 also includes the relatively small share of Jews who died in concentration camps in the former Greater German Reich between 1933 and 1939. This, however, would be the overall statistic.

Part I, scan 115.

Eichmann’s supplementary first-person account:

I have also clearly shown that it would be a fable to claim that no Führer’s order for the extermination of Jews existed; but also that five or six million Jews could not possibly have been killed, since there were not that many Jews in the areas accessible to us. The 2,100,000 Jews found alive by the Allies, along with the large number who emigrated, already speak for themselves.

Part I, scan 115.

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Old Reich, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia: a separate demographic subtraction

The same unlabelled supplement presents claimed starting population 1,060,000, emigrants 782,000, remainder 278,000 and survivors 222,000, leaving 56,000 before an unspecified natural-decrease deduction. The listed legal/illegal emigration items actually sum to 782,000. This is the speaker’s selective demographic argument, not a verified death count.

Eichmann:

1) Jews present when power was taken (according to Jewish statistics):
a) Old Reich — 500,000
b) Austria — 220,000
c) Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia — 340,000
Total — 1,060,000 (one million and sixty thousand)

Of these, emigrated (according to Jewish statistics, Vienna Jewish community):
a) Legal:
Old Reich — approx. 300,000
Austria — approx. 202,000
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia — approx. 200,000
b) Illegal:
Old Reich — approx. 40,000
Austria — approx. 10,000
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia — approx. 30,000
Total — 782,000

Therefore:
1) Population at the seizure of power — 1,060,000
2) Reduction through emigration — 782,000
Remainder — 278,000

At the end of the war, according to public findings, 222,000 Jews were found in these territories. Subtracting this sum from the stated remainder gives a difference of 56,000. The number of natural decrease among the Jews in the Old Reich, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia must also be deducted from the figure 56,000. Since the end of new arrivals from the large eastern ghettos, the severe restrictions imposed on Jews in these territories, and emigration—which generally involved the young and fit—meant that the age structure soon resembled a pyramid standing on its point, the further deduction must certainly be considerable. I can no longer supply this figure today; a population statistician might still be able to reconstruct it. The number left over would be those Jews who died:
a) through detention in concentration camps …
b) through Allied air raids …

Among the 222,000 Jews who belonged to the territory of the Old Reich, the Austrian Gau, and Bohemia and Moravia and who, according to public findings, survived the war, this figure also includes Jews who lived in mixed marriages, those living at liberty or with privileged status, and those who succeeded in remaining hidden. This was the statistic concerning Jews in the Old Reich, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia.

Part I, scan 114.

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Five million repeated in the supplementary prose

The speaker again says his farewell wording was five million “enemies of the Reich” and rejects the version about five million Jews, adding “five (or even more) million.” This is part of the unlabelled supplement, not a securely assigned tape.

Eichmann:

The war was drawing to a close. In its final days, almost I would say hours, I said to an officer under me: “... and if it must be, I will gladly jump into the grave, in the knowledge that I and five million enemies of the Reich will be killed ...”
I made that remark because a person’s thinking and actions are determined by the events of the time in which he lives. If our enemies had already trampled our Reich, then I was glad at every enemy of ours who was killed; for [uncertain: ...] under the highest number of enemy casualties. Our enemies at that time also took the same position [uncertain: for themselves?].
After the war, the phrase “five million enemies of the Reich” was consciously or unconsciously, but in any case falsely, changed into “five million Jews.” I cannot make out from my present perspective what role the former SS-Hauptsturmführer [illegible] and the former SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. [illegible] played in this distortion of the facts. The latter [uncertain: …] the remark, and he was not subordinate to me; I cannot see this clearly from my present perspective. In any case, the absurdity of the claim that five (or even more) million Jews were killed is plain. It is untrue.
In this account I have described the truth, soberly and objectively, as I am able to recount it.

Part I, scan 116.

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Five million, eight million, and the alleged 60 percent increase

In his comments on the Brandt/Weisberg book, Eichmann denies both the attribution of a five-million statement to him and the five-million killing figure itself. He alleges that other writers raised it to eight million; the 60 percent is his claimed increase from five to eight, not a measured mortality percentage.

Eichmann:

solely to uphold this five-million thesis, a thesis that has already been inflated by 60 percent. Hence the constant hammering and insistence that I not only deported people, as was my official duty, but also killed them, because that is part of the opposing side’s argument.

Part II, scan 060.

Eichmann:

(5) The five million Jews killed is a lie. – – –

Part II, scan 060.

Eichmann:

Thus the five million that Brandt repeatedly mentions in his own way is a number whose true meaning was twisted in my mouth; a number that was never even debated at that time, which he heard about later and then put into my mouth retroactively. It is pure nonsense, a propaganda statement.

Part II, scan 061.

Eichmann:

And not only that: other authors raised this number to eight million.

Part II, scan 061.

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Five million already killed and another million offered for release

Eichmann is reciting and attacking Brandt’s account of the offer to release one million Jews. The five million here belongs to the cited author’s explanation, not to an independent total endorsed by Eichmann.

Eichmann:

When the author claims to the English on his trip, as the reason why, after 5 million Jews had already been killed, another million were released … he says: “The people foresee the approaching catastrophe; they seek pardon for their crimes. They have loaded innumerable crimes against all the peoples of Europe upon themselves, but no guilt weighs on them as heavily as that against the Jews.”

Part II, scan 066.

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Wisliceny and the five-million statement

Eichmann calls the statement attributed to him alleged, and later discusses Wisliceny’s Nuremberg testimony that his chief had spoken of five million exterminated. His ensuing suspicion that Wisliceny might still be alive is conspiracy speculation, not evidence about deaths.

Eichmann:

The following: Wi is the person who first said something about my alleged statement concerning the death of five million ... (comment already made about the book by [illegible]).

Part II, scan 072.

Eichmann:

I do not understand how a person who once asserted at a trial with testimony like this—it was the Nuremberg trial—that his chief had spoken of the extermination of five million, a statement raised to a cardinal point of the opposing side, could be released a few weeks later ...

Part II, scan 077.

Eichmann:

Apart from that, this question is far too important—how many millions perished—for it not to be possible that Wi is enjoying the same life as many Jews you have forgotten ...

Part II, scan 077.

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Five million versus eight million in the Frankfurt-trial speculation

In an unlabeled passage continuous with Eichmann’s reflections, the speaker asks whether a trial was intended to raise five million to eight million for reparations. The speculative question is not an established event or a fresh casualty estimate.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Was the Frankfurt trial actually a rigged affair, intended not only to uphold the thesis of the so-called five million Jews, but to increase the already existing five-million thesis to eight million, perhaps, in order to extract and obtain further billions in reparations?

Part II, scan 076.

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Five million and Eichmann’s reputation: a translation correction

The original scan 141 reads “Ausspruch vom Wi mit den 5 Mill.” (the statement by Wi concerning the five million), referring to Wi in the source. The existing English incorrectly expands this to Himmler. The source number is a repeated allegation associated with Eichmann’s reputation. Do not quote “Himmler’s statement” as a reliable rendering.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 141.

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Six million out of twenty million: nearly one-third

Scan 179 repeats six million three times while paraphrasing an argument about United Nations debates and Israeli statehood. Tape 36 is an extended antisemitic monologue with no secure speaker label on these scans; it should not be presented as Eichmann personally endorsing a verified total. The twenty-million population and nearly one-third proportion are part of this polemical account.

Unlabeled speaker / paraphrase of an argument:

This Jewish people, with its 6 million out of a total population of 20 million, had suffered nearly one-third in blood sacrifices—this poor Jewish people, which had to sacrifice 6 million to National Socialism, had suffered the relatively highest blood losses of all Allied peoples and therefore had a right to its own state, to statehood.

Part II, scan 179.

Unlabeled speaker / paraphrase of an argument:

Well, the Jewish people made 6 million blood sacrifices, thereby paying the highest blood toll proportionally for the Allied victory; therefore the Jewish people has a right to its own state.

Part II, scan 179.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 177; Part II, scan 178; Part II, scan 180; Part II, scan 181; Part II, scan 182; Part II, scan 183; Part II, scan 184; Part II, scan 185.

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Six million: a dispute over Eichmann’s responsibility and knowledge

Eichmann argues that an author inflated his powers to make an attributed statement about six million deaths credible. His objection here is framed around what he could have known or personally caused; it is not a documented alternative total.

Eichmann:

I only say that this author, too, wants to cultivate such an account, so that the [uncertain: abbreviated word] explanation attributed to me about the death of six million Jews will gain credibility … For it is quite clear: if he traced my area of responsibility back to what I actually held, there would be many people who would say to themselves: the man could not have known that; and besides, he could not possibly have killed six million Jews. It is physically impossible if you calculate the time. But by attributing to me here a department and powers that are so vast, and which I never had …

Part III, scan 043.

Eichmann:

Yes, of course one can say that this man, with such tremendous influence, including that of the RF, yes, it is certainly quite believable that he killed the 6 million Jews.—The author may well have taken that as his basis.

Part III, scan 044.

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Six million, more than six million, about four million: the separate marginal remarks

The two pages headed “Remarks in the Margin” speak about Eichmann in the third person and have no named speaker. They present an explicitly polemical argument against the six-million total, attribute roughly four million to Reitlinger, cite a five-million “enemies” remark, and discuss Höss’s 2½ million. These are claims in the marginal commentary, not authenticated statements by Eichmann or a reliable explanation of the historical evidence.

Unattributed marginal commentary:

Thus, the basis of all these efforts and all these successes is ultimately the legend of the six million murdered Jews. For us, it is of the utmost importance to examine this thesis closely, both in its origins and in its meaning. There are naturally two Jewish theses, if one looks closely, in conflict with each other: the first is the familiar one by Ju......(?), who certainly speaks of more than over six million; the other is the far more serious work by Reitlinger, “The Final Solution.” This work advances the claim that these six million can never be correct, and that the figure must be around four million.

Part III, scan 050.

Unattributed marginal commentary:

Regarding the matter of the six million murdered people, one must observe that this thesis is derived from just one word of Eichmann’s, who is said to have stated: “If this is how it is … then I will jump into the grave laughing, because we still have five million enemies of the Reich …” But here they said “Jews” instead of “[uncertain: refugees]” … The chief witness for the explanation is W. …

Part III, scan 051.

Unattributed marginal commentary:

The further accounts, such as those given by Höss, who said that he had killed 2.5 million Jews in his camp, are even doubted by Jewish authors and described as gross exaggerations.

Part III, scan 051.

Unattributed marginal commentary:

Höss is no longer there, and yet his 2.5 million are still included in the six-million thesis. So one must conclude that something is wrong.

Part III, scan 051.

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Five million “enemies of the Reich”; six million versus eight million

Eichmann explicitly endorses his retrospective boast about five million dead “enemies of the Reich,” while insisting on that wording. Later in the same exchange he claims he could have sold his account by saying eight million Jews instead of six million. The latter is a hypothetical claim about selling a story, not a measured eight-million casualty estimate. The scan actually types “Gruppe” (“group”) in the boast; the translation preserves that awkward wording.

Eichmann:

Every enemy who declared war on me, who declared war on my people, deserved to be destroyed—and that is why I also said, in the end, I do not care; I joyfully leap into the group, in the knowledge that five million enemies of the Reich have croaked along with me... That is what I said, and no other way.

Part III, scan 081.

Eichmann:

I would have needed to say only eight million Jews instead of six million Jews, nothing more, and to say the necessary rest and details; it would not take nearly as long as Hitler—No, I am German first and foremost, and what serves my German people is right and sacred to me...

Part III, scan 081.

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Höttl’s account: four million in camps plus two million elsewhere

The interviewer reads Höttl’s attribution to Eichmann of about four million killed in extermination camps plus two million killed otherwise, principally by Einsatzkommandos. Eichmann disputes the two million, arguing over a prewar population of five million in European Russia. The interviewer also reads a claim that Himmler thought the total should exceed six million. All these attributions must remain distinct from Eichmann’s replies.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Now, from these circumstances—the mission to Neuarat, Romania’s withdrawal from the war—you are said [crossed out] to have answered Hoettl’s question whether you knew the exact number of Jews killed: “I cannot give an exact number, but on the basis of my information I arrive at the following result: about 4 million Jews were killed in the various extermination camps, while another 2 million met death in other ways, most of them by the Einsatzkommandos during the campaigns against Russia...”

Part III, scan 116.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

“Two million? That’s utter nonsense. Were there even two million Jews in the areas occupied by the Russians? They fled...”

“There were about 5 million Jews living in the areas occupied by the Russians before we arrived.”

“But only 5 million Jews were estimated in all of European Russia.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of that...”

“But we occupied most of European Russia...the most important part—”

“That could never, ever have been 2 million Jews.”

Part III, scan 116.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Himmler, it is said, was dissatisfied with the report at the time, since in his opinion the number of Jews killed had to be greater than 6 million.

Part III, scan 116.

Source and related passages: Part III, scan 117; Part III, scan 118.

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Three or four million in statistics; denial of “I killed five million Jews”

Eichmann claims that the statistician’s three- or four-million figure combined emigration, natural decrease and deportation rather than counting deaths alone. He separately denies the wording “I have killed 5 million Jews.” Compare his endorsement of five million dead “enemies of the Reich” on scan 81: the object of his denial is not phrased identically.

Eichmann:

People always confuse one thing—whether people even said it that way, Hoettl and so on ... They always forget one thing in all these stories about figures, when they throw around a figure, 3 or 4 million: that this whole figure, the [crossed out: illegible] statistician put forward, is composed of repeated additions of the individual categories—whether emigration, natural decrease, departure to the concentration camps; everything was included here. But one cannot say that all these Jews were killed. I opposed that from the very beginning because it is not true ... It is just as untrue that I supposedly said, “I gladly jump into the pit because I have killed 5 million Jews” ... I would have [crossed out: illegible] appeared to my people as a megalomaniacal Bar.

Part III, scan 120.

Source and related passages: Part III, scan 114; Part III, scan 117; Part III, scan 081.

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Six million and the chronology: half a million or three quarters of a million in 1944

While trying to date the statistician’s report, Eichmann invokes an opposing-side figure of half a million for Hungary and a provisional three quarters of a million for 1944. He questions how four million plus two million could refer to the end of 1943, then denies giving Höttl those figures and claims ignorance of the number killed. The half- and three-quarter-million numbers are components of this argument, not a final estimate.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So it cannot have been the end of 44; all the indications speak against it, and even if I do not want to believe anyone, including myself, I must say: if everything speaks against it, if Hoettl says so, and if one looks at the statistician, and if I see that it practically cannot have been in 1944, then I must say that it could only have been a partial story, for then the whole year 1944 falls away, with Hungary, with a figure, for example, stated by the opposing side, of 1/2 million ...

What else happened in 1944? ...

Well, if one wants to piece it together like that, it also comes to 3/4 million, and how much is said here?

4 million and 2 million in some other way.

So 6 million? And that would have been at the end of 43? 4 million killed and 2 million done away with in some other way?

Part III, scan 121.

Eichmann:

Impossible, in any case, is that I gave Hoettl these figures, because

Part III, scan 121.

Eichmann:

which had not even been under discussion yet, and I also did not know later how many Jews had been killed. I still do not know today, and I did not know it then either, when I had to give my lecture at the Prussian House and Müller told me, in response to my question whether I should give figures, that it is better to say nothing at all if one does not know everything exactly and with certainty.

Part III, scan 122.

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Three hundred and fifty trains, six million, and a fifty-percent guess

A participant claims 350 trains would prove six million murders impossible; the scan does not label this speaker. Eichmann then says not all whom he transported were killed and ventures 50%, qualified by “if I am not estimating too low.” The number is a tentative proportion within his own deportations, not a reliable overall Holocaust estimate. The inference from his claimed trains to all deaths is unsupported.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So a total of 350 trains were run; that would already give us proof that it is impossible that 6 million Jews were murdered.

And of all those I transported, not all were killed at all..... One would also have to ask the VWHA about that— I would like to assume, with great delicacy,—that it will come to a percentage of 50%, if I am not estimating too low,—.

Part III, scan 148.

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Five million, fewer than one million, and the limits of personal responsibility

An author’s claim about murders directly instigated by Eichmann is read aloud; Eichmann converts it into an argument about transport totals. The one million is an assumed figure in this exchange, not his admission to that number of killings. He allows roughly 300,000 transported from Hungary and derives 700,000 elsewhere. The interviewer also mentions 36 persons among five or six million without establishing a usable total.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

In any case it was an exaggeration, for the murders he directly instigated do not even amount to one million. To connect him directly with the mass murders in Poland and Russia seems rather far-fetched.

In itself it makes no difference whether I kill one million or five million; in truth I did not kill a single one. Now this Jew here has already gone from five million to one million; let us accept it theoretically for a moment — then that would mean that I had transported only one million Jews altogether, — if I myself admit that there may have been around 300,000 in Hungary, then there would have been only 700,000 in all the other territories combined.

But he does not say “transported” — he says “murders directly instigated” — that is, those do not even come to one million, including the cases where Eichmann said: kill them here — kill them there —

I never did that at all; that was not my job at all —
What do you make of this matter?

If he had said “transports directly instigated” —

That is what he means too ...

No, he probably means that apart from the transports, what happened or was instigated directly amounted to only one million —

But I only transported; I never had anything else to do.

So for us this is not a starting point. It is a starting point only insofar as we can say there are 36 persons among these five or six million —

But it could surely be proved that I did nothing else.

Part IV, scan 129.

Source and related passages: Part IV, scan 128.

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Six million from a European population of 9.5 million

The text read aloud gives 9.5 million Jews before the war and 3.5 million surviving; it subsequently states six million deaths, or 63%. The reply “That is correct so far” on scan 130 follows the initial population statement, but the exchange immediately turns to objections about particular national figures. It should not be isolated as an unequivocal endorsement of every figure in the ensuing table. The relative comparisons later in the reading are five times Yugoslav, six times Russian, nine times Polish, 90 times British, and 525 times American losses, together with an inconsistent “one quarter” for Yugoslav deaths. They are preserved as source comparisons, not endorsed calculations. The same discussion assigns more than 75% of deaths to Eastern or Central Europe; the response calculates the other 25% as 1.5 million. It also mentions more than 50,000 Warsaw ghetto deaths. Its comparisons are 22 times US losses (273,830), 17 times British losses (335,506). Scan-checked corrections in this excerpt restore 335,506 British deaths, 8.3% Polish losses, and “not yet” in the speaker’s claim about gas-chamber readiness.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

At the end of 1939, 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe; in 1945 only 3.5 million had survived.
That is correct so far

Part IV, scan 130.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

More than 75% of all those killed came from Eastern or Central Europe—

These 75% are naturally of interest to us, because the 25% who remained are only 1.5 million Jews killed according to the report from Austria, Holland, Germany, France, and Belgium—though there is nothing here yet from France and Belgium.—

It is now stated here that the mass deportations to the gas chambers at Maidanek and Auschwitz finally reached a peak in the summer of 1942. We saw earlier, in another explanation, that the gas chambers had not yet been made ready in the summer of 1942.

It is then pointed out here that, through the cramming of Jews into the Warsaw ghetto in the first period of the occupation, more than 50,000 Jews died in Warsaw.—

Six million Jews out of the total of 9.5 million Jews who lived in Europe at the end of 1939 died of deprivation and disease or were killed.

The number of Jews who had to lose their lives during the war was thus 22 times greater than that of the Americans, 273,830, who fell on the battlefields; 17 times greater than that of the English soldiers and civilians, 335,506, who lost their lives during the war.

The enormous dimensions of the Jewish catastrophe become all the more evident when one compares Jewish war losses with those of other peoples:

Jews of Europe 63% — 6 million out of 9.5 million
Russians 11.4% — 20 million out of 175 million
Yugoslavs 11% — 1 million 760 thousand out of 15 million
Germans, including Austrians and Sudeten Germans 9% — 7 million out of 78 million
Poles 8.3% — 2 million out of 24 million
England 0.7% — 335,506 out of 45 million
Americans 0.12% — 273,830 out of 140 million

The Jewish losses are those of European Jewry; Jews who fell as members of Allied armies appear in the figures for the respective countries.

For the above list, the peoples most severely hit and those who suffered the most were selected.

The Jewish people is certainly at the top in terms of its losses, for these are still five times greater than those of the Yugoslavs, of whom about one quarter died. Compared with the Russians, the Jews lost six times as many people and compared with the Poles nine times as many, although the Russians, Poles, and Yugoslavs were the peoples who had to shed the most blood in the last world war. Compared with the British, the Jews lost 90 times as many, and compared with the Americans 525 times as many.

The calculation uses the Jewish population as of 1939. If 1933 had been used as the basis for the calculation in Germany, and 1938 as the basis in Austria, the percentages would have been considerably lower

Part IV, scan 131.

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A country-by-country table leading to 5,978,000 losses

The discussion reads national population/loss pairs: Poland 3.3m/2.8m; occupied Soviet territories 3.1m with the loss number cropped or unclear on scan 132 (the continuation at scan 136 states 1.5m); Romania 850,000/425,000; Hungary 404,000/202,000; Czechoslovakia 315,000/250,000; France 300,000/90,000; Germany 210,000/170,000; Lithuania 150,000/135,000; Netherlands 150,000/90,000; Belgium 90,000/40,000; Greece 75,000/60,000; Yugoslavia 75,000/55,000; Austria 60,000/40,000; Italy 58,000/15,000; Bulgaria 50,000/7,000; other territories 80,000/6,000. These are historical source claims, with damaged or inconsistent readings. Scan-checked corrections to scan 134 are explicitly reflected below.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

For Poland we get: 3,300,000; Jewish losses 2,800,000.
Against this is the result of the General Government: 2 million.

Occupied Russian territories; Jewish population in 1939: 3,100,000 — losses [number cropped/unclear here; 1,500,000 in the continuation on scan 136]
Romania, September 1939: 850,000 — losses 425,000
Hungary, September 1939: 404,000 — 202,000 (survivors do not remain in their home countries)

This figure of 202,000 is reduced, however, by the number of survivors who did not return to their home country.

Czechoslovakia, September 1939: 315,000 — losses 250,000 (so there would have been only 50,000 emigrants)

I do not know that quite for certain; it could just as well be 80,000 or 90,000.

France, September 1939: 300,000 — 90,000 losses (The figures for France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy include immigrants.)

Germany, September 1939: 210,000 Jews — 170,000 losses.

Part IV, scan 132.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So that would give us Germany, and with that we come to Lithuania.

150,000 — 135,000 — Holland 150,000 — 90,000—

Are Holland's 150,000 and 90,000 Jewish losses?

But immigrants are included in these figures—but that is impossible to calculate—Among the 40,000 there were also survivors again......

Belgium: 90,000 Jewish population, September 1939 — 40,000 losses
Greece: 75,000, September 1939 — 60,000 losses
Yugoslavia: 75,000, September 1939 — 55,000 losses
Austria: 60,000, September 1939 — 40,000 losses

Part IV, scan 133.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Italy: 58,000 in September 1939 — 15,000 Jewish losses
Bulgaria: 50,000 in September 1939 — 7,000 Jewish losses
Various: Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Danzig, Estland [Estonia] — 80,000 in September 1939 — 6,000 losses

One must include the natural decrease and the losses due to the effects of the war.

Then one arrives, from a total of 9.5 million Jewish population, at 8,301,000 Jewish population in 1939—
Jewish losses 5,978,000 — 72% Jewish losses.

Part IV, scan 134.

Source and related passages: Part IV, scan 136.

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Eichmann’s proposed deductions from the national totals

These are his retrospective attempts to lower the losses inferred from population comparisons. He proposes 80,000 emigrants out of 210,000 German Jews, leaving 130,000, and mentions 5,000–7,000 processed in Berlin and 290,000 emigrants in an earlier period. For Austria he gives a starting figure of 220,000, repeated twice (the working translation misreads the repetition as 280,000), a residual 60,000, 160,000 emigrants by subtraction, and 100,000 in one year; he also invokes 10,000 sent to Theresienstadt. Such deductions do not themselves demonstrate survival, nor do they establish that an individual was excluded from the source’s original calculation.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

The outbreak of war alone accelerated emigration. Emigration from 1939 to mid-1941 had the same percentage ratio as the normal emigration of 290,000 spread over the years 1933 to 1939. It is hardly to be assumed that emigration stopped because war broke out, since it did not stop in Prague either; and how could I have established the Central Office f.j.A. in 1940 if not for very long?

I do not want to state the figure too high, but it is reasonable to assume that 5,000 to 7,000 Jews were processed in the short period of the Central Office in Berlin. I cannot recall any obstacle standing in the way up to 1941 that would have prevented the Jews from emigrating. So we can say with a clear conscience that we come off relatively well if we say that from September 1939 to the declaration of war on Russia we must subtract, from the 210,000, those who emigrated from 1933 to 1939 during the 1.5 years; say 80,000, leaving 130,000—and how many of these 130,000 fell victim to natural decrease? There was an extraordinary aging population; surely not only people of German blood died in the bombing raids, and since the Jews were concentrated in the large cities, and especially since the large cities were bombed, very many Jews there were affected.

Part IV, scan 132.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

One must subtract from the Old Reich and Austria the contingents who were sent to Theresienstadt—there were 10,000 Jews there—

The original number of Jews in Austria was 220,000—220,000; the difference down to 60,000 emigrated through the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. From these 60,000 one would have to subtract the natural decrease from September 1939 to the end of the war—but Austria, just like Germany, also has the enormous aging population. One must also subtract a percentage for those hit by bombing raids, and also account for the illegal emigration, which was very extensive—

It says here 40,000—have any more emigrated from Austria since September 1939?

Of course, when I was in Berlin in 1940, Brunner ran the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. From September 1939 to mid-1941 the Central Office for Jewish Emigration continued to operate.

Now we have to make an exception for Vienna; in Vienna you have to subtract the following, although it is to our disadvantage, we must do it anyway: You said that in Vienna, out of 220,000, the difference down to 60,000 had emigrated by September 1939; that is 160,000—but within a single calendar year I sent off 100,000; that pace was not maintained. If he writes that in spring 1938 I had been over there, and in September 1938 the Central Office for Jewish Emigration began work, and by summer 1939 it had been 100,000, it then went somewhat more slowly; then we must, about the matter

Part IV, scan 133.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

... to make it right, one... we did not need to [uncertain: prove it?]; that is what I am saying now, it corresponds to the truth; the delay may have been about 10%, but no more...... And since another 1.5 years remained from September 1939 to June 1941, about the same span of time we had earlier, (it is so disconnectedly spoken; the sentences keep changing into another form..........

If it had continued at such a pace, then by the end of 1940 everything would have been liquidated through emigration for lack of Jews. But it was not so; some transports did leave, but the bulk of Austria emigrated.

Do you recall how many transports departed?
Very few from Austria.

Part IV, scan 134.

Back to overall totals

Poland and the Soviet territories: shifting denominators and the Warsaw report

The conversation switches between all Poland, the General Government, and occupied Soviet territory. It mentions 3.5m, 2m, a problematic “X 2.5m,” 3.75m, 1.5m to subtract, 250,000 for Latvia/Lithuania, 2.1m for Russia, and 90,000 attributed to an Einsatzkommando commander. The Warsaw figures include 500,000 and 6,000 remaining; a report read aloud gives 66,068, about 7,000, 6,989, 13,929, and another 5,000–6,000. The component deaths as spoken do not reconcile exactly. This is an argument in the transcript, not a valid demographic calculation. The adjacent fertility/population discussion gives about 4m, 85% losses, a 100,000 subtraction, and 3.75m remaining; those last two numbers are new scan-checked readings of scan 134.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

In which countries?
Poland, Latvia, Lithuania.
And why not Czechoslovakia?
It had Jews with a higher degree of assimilation.

Elsewhere he writes 3.5 million Jews in the General Government.
But that was approximately half of the figures for the General Government.
So if there were 3.5 million Jews throughout Poland, a certain percentage X of them were in the General Government, while the other percentage, X 3, was in the Russian-occupied territory—so now we have to calculate with two-thirds of the 3.5 million; that gives us the exact figure for the General Government.

Part IV, scan 134.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

With Poland, the figure of 3.5 million is being tossed around—accordingly, 2 million may have been in the General Government, and X 2.5 million Jews in the Russian-occupied territory. We assume this figure is correct; how much does he now put down here for Latvia and Lithuania?
250,000

If we start from this figure, we have a point of reference; a figure of 2 million would then be in question for the General Government—and what happened to these 2 million? One would now have to make a profession of faith—they were certainly not all killed, for so many of them are still alive—many crossed over to the Russians...

Well, through partisans; Warsaw alone we have to count as partisan fighting—how many were there in Warsaw?
500,000
And 6,000 remained—so even there 6,000 remained. In other words—the 500,000 alone are already a partisan story, or were they hanged or killed? By patrol units?

He did state exactly what he killed—and these figures have not been questioned by anyone.

Of the 66,068 Jews recorded in total, about 7,000 were destroyed in the course of the large-scale operation in the Jewish residential sector itself—6,989 Jews were destroyed by transport to D 2, so that 13,929 Jews were destroyed in all. Of the 66,068 in total, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Jews were destroyed by explosions and fire.

All right, from the figure of 3,750,000 we can in any case subtract 1.5 million Jews; they were already in the occupied Russian territory, less the partisan fighting, less the Jews who illegally crossed over to the Russians, less the Jews who remained, 6,000 in Warsaw alone; then we arrive at a figure significantly lower than 2 million. Whereby the General Government is the decisive large figure, while everything else in the European countries is relatively small.

The two major items are basically Poland and Russia.

3 million and 2 million Jewish population. In Russia they state 2,100,000 and in the General Government 2 million. [handwritten insertion, partly illegible: ... 4.1 million???]

But no one can check that. In Nuremberg they cited Tschirnert, and it was also accepted that he had destroyed 90,000 Jews with the Einsatzkommandos, but here they state for Russia ...

Part IV, scan 135.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

1,500,000 were killed—no one can check that.

Part IV, scan 136.

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Six million and four million in a report citing Nuremberg testimony

An article attributed to an incompletely named author is read aloud. It describes six million total deaths and four million in camps, then cites Höttl and Wisliceny as the source of an alleged statement by Eichmann. The six-million formulation here belongs to that reading, not to a fresh admission by Eichmann. A handwritten “Insanity!!!!!” is visible, but the identity of its writer is not established.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Six million are statistically and documentarily confirmed—This article was written on the basis of a request from the Protestant Church in Germany, regarding the Jewish question in the Third Reich. The Church wanted reliable material so that the clergy would be equipped to address questions brought to them from the congregations. This is from 1951.—Signed by a rabbi........

Now [uncertain: Po...] says: How does one arrive at a figure of six million at all?

If we regard the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as the initiator of this figure, we would hardly be mistaken—for example, we find there that Adolf Eichmann, who had been charged by Hitler with the task, himself admitted to having brought about the deaths of six million Jews, of whom four million died in the concentration camps—this figure is not supported, one sees, however

[Handwritten beneath the text: “Wahnsinn!!!!!” (“Insanity!!!!!”); underlining and a handwritten mark are also visible.]

Part IV, scan 136.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

the court records, one must note, refer to two witness statements; the figure is thus obtained secondhand [handwritten above the line: “the SS people”], namely from the statements of Wilhelm Hoettl and Dieter Wi....

Both were good friends of Eichmann and [uncertain: as?] one of his closest associates. They state that they know this figure from Eichmann himself. From the standpoint of serious historical criticism, one could object here that such a vague source can only be regarded as an estimate. Yet the text “Eichmann himself admitted” ... is cautious enough.

Part IV, scan 137.

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The Korherr discussion: four million, 4.5 million, and five to seven million

A text read aloud interprets a statistical report as four million decline excluding emigration and 4.5 million including it, then uses subsequent killings to argue for five to seven million. It mentions Hungary at 750,000 versus 404,000, Romania at 300,000, and 430,000 Hungarian deportees treated in the reading as losses. Eichmann alleges local offices inflated their figures and says “dealt with” did not necessarily mean killed. The text’s contradictory dates, including “September 31,” are preserved. These interpretations and the equating of deportation with death are claims under discussion.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

2.—A document discovered in the archives of the Third Reich only after the verdict confirms the assumed figure, however, not only, but regards it even as a minimum figure. The document in question is a statistical report on the Final Solution of the Jewish question, prepared in early 1943 by the statistical office in the Third Reich on Himmler's orders. This balance sheet of the Final Solution is dated December 31, 1942. It is a thoroughly serious work by professional statisticians, who arrived at the following result: On the balance sheet of European Jewry, the decline in Europe must therefore already have amounted to 4 million. Larger communities exist only in Russia. In Hungary, about 750,000—(the Jewish population in September 1939 is given here as 404,000)—in Romania 300,000 and, without doubt, in France as well. If one takes into account Jewish emigration and the highest mortality rate, but also certain errors that may arise in the precise assessment from the movement of the Jewish population and are unavoidable, one can still establish the decline of Jews in Europe between 1937 and 1943 at 4.5 million. This figure includes Jewish deaths in the eastern territories only in part, while the decline in the rest of Russia and in the front area is not considered at all. If we read that, including emigration, the decline amounts to 4.5 million, this is just as clear as when the report says that, excluding emigration, the decline is 4 million. One must not forget that the statisticians occupied with these questions preferred to use a somewhat veiling form of expression. The stated figures refer to September 31, 1943 (but September has only 30 days........) and do not apply under any circumstances to the other deaths in Russia and at the front.

In those times, Hungarian Jewry was also still completely unimpeded,

Part IV, scan 137.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

According to German documents, from April to July 1944 alone 430,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. (So we are already looking here at 430,000 Jewish losses.) At that time there also still existed ghettos in occupied Poland that had not yet been liberated, and huge labor camps. — Then, however, in the following two years a hunt for the Jews was carried out throughout Europe. —

The credibility of this document should be beyond doubt, and therefore it provides a certain basis on which one may say with considerable certainty that the number of Jews exterminated amounts to 5 to 7 million. —

In addition, this statistician, who carried out these tasks for the most part at my office, himself established the figures with the local offices by telegram or visits, and it is an extraordinarily important indication when I tell you that every office at that time gladly adjusted the figure upward, namely the number of Jews in its territory and also the number of Jews dealt with in any way, without this meaning that they were perhaps Jews who had been dealt with, dead Jews ... no, Jews dealt with in any way ... but the figure was always adjusted upward.

Part IV, scan 138.

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Six million / 5,978,000, an uncertain six/eight-million reading, and a marginal 25 million

The reading attributes six million, specifically 5,978,000, to Jakob Leszczynski’s demographic comparison. Eichmann replies about survivors moving countries and emigrants included in the tables. A preceding sentence contains a disputed reading “[6 or 8?] million”; the handwritten “25 million?” is a marginal note, not a securely attributed spoken statement. The phrase rendered “40 working men” in the working translation actually reads “the strongest men”; the quotation corrects it from the scan. Uncertainty is retained rather than converting these into exact estimates by Eichmann.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Now eight paragraphs further on: —

Only the strongest men had any prospect of staying alive. If all this is also taken into consideration, it is absolutely logical that the actual Jewish losses in the period from 1933 to 1945 amounted to [uncertain: 6 or 8] million. Professional [uncertain: ...] also take this position.

(Comment mixed up......) [handwritten marginal note: [uncertain: ... 25 million?]]

... and he says about this report that the outstanding statistician Jakob Leszczynski, this statistician used another method: he compared the corresponding headcount of the Jewish population before the war with that after the war and then, on this basis, reached the same balance in his book “Balance of Extermination,” New York, 1946, namely six million losses. He gave the exact figure as 5,978,000.

But he does not say that Leszczynski himself says that survivors did not always remain in their home countries. In the figures for France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy, the emigrants are included, etc. ......

In addition, I could believe the figures given concerning Hungary, for example, only because they were figures that had in some way been established, at a point in time ...

Part IV, scan 138.

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Camp totals and a combined 5.3 million

The interviewer’s reading lists Belzec 600,000; “So…” 250,000; Treblinka 700,000; “Hel…” 300,000; subtotal 1.85m; Auschwitz 2.5m attributed to Höss; and an overall 5.3m after adding killings outside camps, excluding further ghetto and labor-camp deaths. The claim about excluding Majdanek is challenged in the conversation. Eichmann answers that he did not handle the matters; the ensuing exchange questions the reports. The abbreviated camp names are retained. The original German describes “chaotic” extermination actions; the quotations correct the working translation’s mistaken “Croatian.”

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Do you have no comment on these passages that were read aloud?

Yes, it is very difficult to say offhand; besides, I am not a statistician.

But perhaps this helps. If one wants to use another estimation method, one can add together the individual figures for the various extermination sites. So one must add the total of those killed in the death camps—Belzec, Treblinka, So... and Auschwitz—and add the chaotic extermination actions carried out in the open in the Soviet Union. After such a very precise investigation, the Polish Commission for War Crimes prepared the following totals in 1945/46 for the four camps first mentioned: Belzec, 600,000; So... 250,000; Treblinka, 700,000; Hel... 300,000; together 1,850,000. With regard to the terrible camp Auschwitz, its commandant Rudolf Hoess confirmed the number of gassed Jews as 2 1/2 million Jews. As for the chaotic exterminations

Part IV, scan 139.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

[Continuation from the previous page: As for the chaotic exterminations,] statistics are available only in fragments, and reports are to be found in the reports of the SS Einsatzgruppen, which had been assigned such tasks and had to send their reports to Berlin. Using the latter method, one arrives at a total of 5,300,000, without also taking into account deaths from hunger, illness, and so forth in the large ghettos or Poland and in the numerous labor camps spread throughout Europe. In our calculations we entirely left the Majdanek camp out of account because it was not an expressly designated extermination camp in the proper sense of the word.

(Majdanek is otherwise given everywhere as the great extermination camp.)

I cannot say anything about that; I did not handle these matters.

But you did send the reports to Berlin.

But they were certainly doctored...

Certainly, and Ko... will have demanded it, probably [handwritten marginal note: [partly legible: I received ... reports ...; remainder illegible]].

Part IV, scan 140.

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10.3 million: his closing counterfactual

Eichmann says he would have been satisfied if 10.3 million Jews had been killed, repeats the number, and says this did not happen. It is an explicit endorsement of total extermination, but not a claim that 10.3 million actually died. He attributes the figure to Korherr; that attribution is his claim, not verification of the report’s contents.

Eichmann:

No,— I must tell you quite honestly: if we had killed 10.3 million Jews, the number Korherr gave, as we now know—10.3 million Jews—then I would be satisfied and would say: good, we have destroyed an enemy.

Part IV, scan 188.

Eichmann:

Now, since by the perversity of fate a large part of these Jews remained alive, I tell myself that fate wanted it so; I must submit to fate and providence.

Part IV, scan 188.

Eichmann:

And it is for these reasons that I fight this opponent, and you must understand from these reasons when I say: if 10.3 million of this opponent had been killed, then we would have fulfilled our task;— but since that is not so, I will tell you,

Part IV, scan 188.

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Six million as the recurring accusation

The conversation explicitly names extermination of six million as the recurring accusation. The immediate passage has no speaker label, so it should not be presented as a securely identified fresh numerical assertion by Eichmann.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

It is always the only thing for which we are accused again and again: the extermination of 6 million Jews in this manner.... So we will not discuss the law; it has been completely overturned.

Part IV, scan 041.

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Gas vans: 100 or perhaps 1,000 Jews

Eichmann describes people loaded into buses near Litzmannstadt and then killed by exhaust gas. The number refers to the people present; the answer to how many entered each bus is unintelligible. It should not be presented as a measured vehicle capacity.

Eichmann:

I went to Litzmannstadt; where I went, I do not know, probably it was the Stapo Leit there, and whether Gromeid was already in Litzmannstadt at that time, I cannot say at the moment either. I then went out to the place they named for me, and some fellows had been working there, and there were also 100 or perhaps even 1000 Jews there, and they were made to get into buses; that in itself meant nothing, they were ordinary buses, only with high windows, and they got in too; the windows were closed, and I was told that during the journey the exhaust pipe was directed into the inside of the vehicle and they died immediately through a chemical process.

Part I, scan 032.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

And how many went into one bus?
So (unintelligible)— and I did not look inside, because I was seeing and hearing something like that for the first time. My knees went weak.

Part I, scan 032.

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Minsk: 5,000 expected for a shooting

Eichmann quotes the Einsatzkommando chief’s statement that 5,000 would come the next day, then describes arriving at the end of the shooting. The count is the commander’s statement relayed by Eichmann, not his personal enumeration.

Eichmann:

Then Mueller told me I should go to Minsk; Jews were being shot there, and he wanted a report.

I went there too, and the Einsatzkommando chief, I believe, was there. I told him what assignment I had, and he said to me, “That works out well, because 5,000 are coming tomorrow.” So I drove out the next morning, but they had started early and I arrived only at the end. Now I will tell you how it happened.

Part I, scan 033.

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Auschwitz: Höss’s 2.5 million and alleged survivors

The interviewer introduces 2.5 million killed in Höss’s testimony. Eichmann disputes it using assertions about capacity, transports and “hundreds of thousands” of survivors. He speculates that Höss testified under pressure or assumed responsibility for others. The passage neither establishes a measured camp capacity nor a verified survivor figure.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Regarding Hoess’s testimony in Nuremberg about the 2.5 million Jews said to have been liquidated in his camp?

Part I, scan 035.

Eichmann:

Yes, from Hoess. If you ask me about the 2.5 million Jews in Auschwitz who were supposedly physically liquidated there under Hoess, then I must answer that I consider this number highly implausible: (a) because the camp’s capacity alone argues against it; (b) because I never sent that many Jews to Auschwitz. I was not the only one sending people to Auschwitz; there were other Sipo offices that sent them there too. But if one adds everything together, this figure of 2.5 million cannot have been reached, because after ’45 the so-called Auschwitz survivors sprang up like mushrooms after rain from the forest floor, and hundreds of thousands of Auschwitz survivors today enjoy the best of health, since they were put to work.

Part I, scan 036.

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Ohlendorf: 90,000 killed

The figure is put by the interviewer as Ohlendorf’s testimony. Eichmann says he lacks precise knowledge of Einsatzgruppen work and speculates that Ohlendorf, like Höss, took responsibility to shield others; he does not supply a replacement count.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

And what do you say to Ohlendorf’s testimony that in the East he liquidated 90,000 Jews with his Einsatzkommandos?

Part I, scan 036.

Eichmann:

Well, Ohlendorf was no chatterbox; he was a very calm, decent, consistently working department head, chief of Amt III in the RSHA.

I cannot say anything more precise about the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the East, because I never had anything to do with that subject in my official work.

However, perhaps what I just touched on regarding Hoess applies here too: our willingness at that time to take on as much as possible in order to relieve others. I would like to dismiss the matter with this—if they had caught me back then,

Part I, scan 036.

Eichmann:

That is the only way I can explain Hoess’s statement, and Ohlendorf’s as well. It fits the character of both of them exactly.

Part I, scan 037.

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Hungarian forced march: 1,200 dead versus a fraction of one percent

The questioner reports 1,200 deaths. Eichmann calls that roughly 10%, claims actual mortality was a fraction of 1%, and acknowledges uncertainty over 10,000 or 15,000 marchers. His preceding counts vary: 10,000; possible 15,000 or 1,000; not above 20,000; possibly under 15,000. Questioner mentions 14,000 women. This audit checked scan64 visually: Eichmann says he saw TWO corpses, and the bottom count is 15,000. The existing working translation instead has [illegible] and 25,000; the quotation below makes these scan-based corrections in brackets.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Q: Are 14,000 women alone already being mentioned? …

A: No, that is nonsense; you can't say that. Two thousand were set marching each day;

Part I, scan 064.

Eichmann:

I can tell you today that I saw [two] corpses along the whole route; they had all been Jews. It is clear: when wood is planed, chips fly. Did no chips fly when much larger contingents of Germans from the East marched after 1945? Were food depots, sanitary facilities, and hygienic facilities considerately set up for those Germans after they had completed each day's march? Who did that? German thoroughness did it. With few exceptions, then, these Jewish treks, as I call them … I do not even want to commit myself to 10,000; it could have been [15,000] or 1,000. In any case, I can state one thing here definitively: it was certainly not more than 20,000 … [sentence breaks at the end of the page].

Part I, scan 064.

Eichmann:

[The sentence begins mid-word: “… it may have been under 15,000, but we do not want to argue over a few thousand more or less.”]

Part I, scan 065.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Did he not express to Kestner, though not in court, that 1,200 people, including 80-year-old women, died during this seven-day march? …
I tell you, that would have been about 10 percent. The figure—the percentage—actually on the trek that I had carried out, carried out on orders I received, amounted to a fraction of one percent.

Part I, scan 066.

Eichmann:

The 10,000 or 15,000 people did not matter; it was so incidental that I do not even remember the number today.

Part I, scan 066.

Source and related passages: Part I, scan 063; Part I, scan 074.

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Wisliceny and an alleged 3,000 sent to gas chambers

Interviewer reads an allegation that Wisliceny sent 3,000 to gas chambers after a payment deadline. Eichmann rejects the source or says Wisliceny bluffed, arguing that neither he nor his subordinate had authority to send even one Jew to a gas chamber. This is a denial of the episode and authority, not a competing toll.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

“What do you say about this sentence? So the negotiations in Cannes and certain difficulties the Jews were having meant that a deadline passed—a deadline set by Wi[?]—and then the following happened: Wi showed he would not be trifled with and sent 3,000 people to the gas chambers; two days later the Jewish woman had all the money …?”

Either the source from which you got this is wrong, or Wi had bluffed to an extent that I would not have thought possible in his position, for I had no right or authority to send even one Jew to even one gas chamber; I had no right to shoot even one Jew with a pistol, beat him with a club, hang him, or do anything of the sort. How much less right did an officer subordinate to me have?

Part I, scan 079.

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A threat to gas 10,000 additional Jews

Eichmann attributes this threat to Becher (spelled Fecher in the transcript), describing it as staged anger previously arranged with Kastner. It is a reported threat, not a stated completed death count.

Eichmann:

That also explains why Fecher could allow himself to say many things. I already related that, in my presence, before Kastner and his roughly five or six …, before his [uncertain: Att…]—the former owner of the Hotel [illegible] in Pressburg, where he served him as an SS-Rottenführer—he said to Kastner in a staged outburst of anger, arranged beforehand with Kastner: “… And if you do not bring this about for me, I will arrange for 10,000 additional Jews to be gassed here by the Ostf. Eichmann.”

Part I, scan 087.

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Hungary: 450,000 allegedly gassed, disputed by Eichmann

The exchange contrasts literature’s 450,000 transported and gassed with Eichmann’s assertion that most Hungarian Jews survived. His own deportation estimate is “350, perhaps 450,000”; the 350 means 350,000 in context but is left as written. Speaker changes are inferred, since the source does not label them consistently.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

When you went to Hungary, according to the information available to you, the number of Jews in Hungary was ...
It was supposed to be half a million.
I would not commit myself to half a million.

Part I, scan 129.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

And you could not get a clear overview of the number of Jews in Hungary? — I said that I deported roughly 350, perhaps 450,000 Jews from Hungary; I no longer know exactly.
The literature says 450,000 were transported and gassed in Poland—in Auschwitz. But they were not all gassed; most Hungarian Jews are still alive today, still alive because of the efforts of Brandt-Kastner and the RF’s order to Pohl to stop the physical annihilation.

Part I, scan 129.

Eichmann:

Of the groups I sent from Hungary, most were not physically annihilated, because I had set in motion the deal by the Kastner-Brandt group of 10,000 trucks in exchange for one million Jews, and because of the result ...

Part I, scan 129.

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Belgrade: 25,000 said to have disappeared in transport

The interviewer recounts 25,000 in Belgrade. Eichmann argues that a group of 25,000 could not vanish unnoticed; he runs the hypothetical down to 10,000 and gives no more than 3,000 per train. Later he invokes even 20, 30 or 50 registered cases, several thousand supposedly disappearing, and hypothetical groups of 3,000/5,000/10,000. These are arguments about transport/accounting, not confirmed killings.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

These Jews were interned in the Belgrade ghetto; about 25,000 Jews then gathered in the Belgrade ghetto. These 25,000 Jews formed the basis of a report by Benzler, the German representative, to Ribbentrop, with the intention of deporting these Jews to Poland and Russia.

Part I, scan 137.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Just consider: how can you make 25,000 Jews, or people, or let us say 25,000 cows — how can you make 25,000 animals simply disappear along the way? The number is much too large for you simply to lose them like a ten-pfennig coin without anyone knowing anything about it. That was dreamed up by some fantasist who wants to shine with something new, and it has no basis in reality, for ... Have you ever seen 25,000 people in one heap? —
It is possible that it was not 25,000, but only a fraction ...
Let us say 10,000: have you ever seen 10,000 people in one heap? That is 5 transport trains, and if you fill the transports following the Hungarian gendarmerie’s model, you cannot get more than 3,000 people into one transport train, however hard you try. All right, suppose there are three transport trains; how could you make three transports, packed full of people, disappear without anyone knowing at all that ...

Part I, scan 139.

Eichmann:

... would have had to [the source fragment is grammatically incomplete here], that the Jews [were?] registered very precisely; for they registered much less significant individual cases of 20, 30, or 50 with the greatest precision.

Part I, scan 140.

Eichmann:

likewise, the claim that a crowd of several thousand simply disappeared proves the writer a liar. Unthinkable, illogical.

Part I, scan 140.

Eichmann:

Now imagine this: once 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 Jews or cattle, whatever it may be, have been loaded and are rolling. They roll, depart, and do not arrive. What kind of uproar do you think that would cause within the timetable division of the Reich Transport Ministry? ... No, it is not as Max and Moritz imagine it.

Part I, scan 143.

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Zemun: 60,000 women and children

The interviewer states 60,000 exterminated at Zemun. Eichmann answers about Fuchs and whose authority applied; he does not offer a numerical correction. Do not turn the questioner’s number into Eichmann’s independently asserted total. Source scan140 visually confirms the questioner’s 60,000.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

In this Zemun camp, 60,000 women and children were exterminated after the men had been sent to work or deported? —
Sipo commanders, Fuchs and Schäfer? —
Yes ... Fuchs is right, but [he acted] without the Secret State Police Office, on his own authority, [without] any order from above, just like the Einsatzgruppen chiefs;

Part I, scan 140.

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Lemberg: 16,000 shot

Eichmann says the local commander showed him terrain and told him that 16,000 Jews had been shot there. The count is relayed testimony, distinct from Eichmann witnessing all 16,000 deaths.

Eichmann:

I had nothing to order that commander in Lemberg to do. He showed me a hilly terrain here, as it were, satisfied with the overall result, and told me that 16,000 Jews had been shot there ...

Part I, scan 142.

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Written orders: a further 52,000 and 250,000

Eichmann recalls Heydrich asking him to draft a letter confirming a further 52,000, then gives an example order for the “Final Solution” of a further 250,000. The next scan repeats 250,000 while denying that the office file reference means he personally authorized extermination. The 52,000/250,000 relationship is not clarified in the text. Scan 147 is labelled Tape 19 despite surrounding Tape 18. Source scan146 visually confirms both 52,000 and 250,000.

Eichmann:

But I already told you once: Heydrich summoned me and said, “Prepare a letter for me to Glo[?]; he wants confirmation for a further 52,000 ...” All right, I tried to imitate Heydrich; he always spoke briefly and in clipped phrases ...

Part I, scan 146.

Eichmann:

“To the SS and Police Leader, Lublin District ... Glo[?]. With reference to your report of [illegible], I order the Final Solution of a further 250,000 Jews.”

Part I, scan 146.

Eichmann:

For example, my file reference, Department IV B 4, appears on a letter in which it says that a further 250,000 Jews are to be subjected to the Final Solution. A Jew or non-Jew, ancestry aside, without legal training can of course read into this — if he cannot read ... can he read? — that the official in Department IV B 4 ordered the extermination.

Part I, scan 147.

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Hungary: 500,000 deported, a quarter, 125,000 dead, 375,000 alive

Eichmann disputes Brandt’s claim that a quarter survived and substitutes a speculative reverse calculation. He immediately disclaims commitment to any number and later tells the interviewer not to fix on one-quarter or three-quarters. These qualifications are essential; this is not a documented death count.

Eichmann:

If Brandt says that a quarter of the Jews survived, that is, that 125,000 were sent to destruction and the rest still live today, I reckon there were 500,000 Jews who were Hungarian nationals and were evacuated. A quarter of that is 125,000; then perhaps, if we reckon it very, very high, 125,000 were subjected to physical extermination and the remaining 375,000 are still alive today, and that is the truth.

Part II, scan 015.

Eichmann:

Now I am telling you, I do not want to commit myself to any number; I only want to compare one thing, not entirely ... It may well be that Brandt means the opposite. Of the Jews who were Hungarian nationals, only very few were subjected to physical extermination; how many, we do not know, one would have to ask the people at the concentration camps.

Part II, scan 015.

Eichmann:

I am telling you: the Hungarian Jews—do not fix on one quarter or three quarters, which I just assumed; I only wanted to show you that it is unthinkable that the Jews who were Hungarian nationals actually [illegible].

Part II, scan 016.

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Hungary: reports of 1,000 or 2,000 dead and a claim of hundreds of thousands

The exchange mentions reports of 1,000 and 2,000 deaths under Hungarian administration. Later the interviewer cites Brandt’s claim that negotiation delays cost several hundred thousand lives; Eichmann rejects the deaths and claims the deportees were kept alive at Auschwitz.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

There are some reports from the years 1941, 1942, and 1943, from the Hungarian side, saying that 1,000 here, 2,000 Jews there had gone kaput, aren't there?

Part II, scan 016.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Brandt states that this tragic delay, for which only the Jewish organizations were responsible, cost several hundred thousand people their lives.......

Part II, scan 020.

Eichmann:

Not their lives; they were indeed transported to Auschwitz, but kept alive there.

Part II, scan 020.

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Hungary: 434,000 versus 300,000 deported; denial of their murder

The interviewer supplies 434,000 deported in 53 days. Eichmann calls that unlikely, argues it would require 10,000 daily, and suggests 300,000. Later he allows that 434,000 may have been deported to Auschwitz while denying that they were murdered there. His arithmetic and denial are reported as his claims.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So it seems that from May 15 to July 9 you deported 434,000 Hungarian Jews in 53 days. That is unlikely; I would have had to transport 10,000 Jews every day, Saturdays and Sundays too. I would have said 300,000; the number was high.

Part II, scan 028.

Eichmann:

They went to Auschwitz, but some also went to Burgenland and some to Strasshof. Of them, only a very small initial portion was sent to physical extermination, insofar as they were unable to work; all the rest were held back for the delivery of the trucks.

Part II, scan 028.

Eichmann:

It may be that 434,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, but that they were murdered there is a flat lie.

Part II, scan 066.

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Hungarian survivors: 220,000, with a downward revision

An unlabeled exchange asks how many Hungarian Jewish citizens remained alive, then reports 220,000 but says that figure had been heavily revised downward. The answer is not securely speaker-labeled and supplies no revised number.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Could it not be determined from the statistics how many Jews who were Hungarian citizens were still alive? Is a figure known?

Part II, scan 036.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

No, 220,000 have been reported, but the figure has been heavily revised downward.

Part II, scan 036.

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Twenty before, forty afterward; more surviving than killed

Eichmann’s rebuttal uses an unnamed Bavarian village with twenty Jews before and forty afterward and claims there were more Hungarian Jews supposedly destined for gassing than actually exterminated. These rhetorical comparisons give neither an overall count nor a valid population reconciliation.

Eichmann:

This is a general rebuttal, but the percentage is so high that a specific jurisdictional issue is made out of the general rebuttal. There were more Hungarian Jews who, in principle, should have been gassed than were actually exterminated.

Part II, scan 064.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Compare the little Upper Bavarian village—20 Jews before, 40 Jews now—yes, no, how can that be; they must not have been gassed after all …

Part II, scan 064.

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Greece: 42,935 deported for extermination in sixteen trains

The interviewer supplies the precise figure as a claim about the Greek ghetto transports. Eichmann remembers deportations and discusses personnel but gives no independent numerical confirmation.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

It is again being claimed that this ghetto was alternately filled and emptied through removals and transports, and that 42,935—we are given the exact number—were transported away in 16 trains for extermination. Where to?

Part II, scan 042.

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Bulgarian-occupied territories: 11,000 deported and murdered

The interviewer states that 11,000 were deported from the Greek and Yugoslav regions occupied by Bulgaria and murdered at camps; the uncertain destination wording is retained. Eichmann says he no longer remembers the deportations and questions blanket assertions of murder.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

From Bulgaria—from the Greek and Yugoslav regions occupied by Bulgaria—11,000 Jews were [deported]; they came to Auschwitz and were murdered there, in Treblinka(?) and Auschwitz.

Part II, scan 047.

Eichmann:

I no longer remember it today …

Part II, scan 047.

Eichmann:

The authors always say: “They came to Auschwitz and were murdered there.” I ask myself, how is it that afterward one finds these Jews [illegible] …

Part II, scan 047.

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Slovakia: 90,000 before, 28,000–35,000 afterward, an estimated 60,000

The figure is supplied parenthetically by the other side of the discussion. It compares prewar and postwar populations in the context of deportations; the passage does not clearly distinguish a deportation total from deaths and should not be silently relabeled as an exact casualty figure.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

(Generally, people say that earlier about 90,000 Slovak Jews came from the territory, and after the war 28,000–35,000 were still present; that is, they estimate the number at 60,000 Slovak Jews.—)

Part II, scan 050.

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Slovakia/Lublin: 52,000 and 284 remaining after the war

The interviewer’s statement says only 284 of 52,000 remained. Eichmann calls this implausible but concedes the number may have been small and invokes Globocnik’s actions after Warsaw. The local transcription’s preceding sentence has 1,000 additional deportees and a total of 82,000, conflicting with 52,000. I inspected the scan: 52,000 and 284 are clear, but the first total and preceding additional-transport number are not securely readable at the available view. Quote those earlier quantities only as the local reading, with explicit uncertainty; do not use them for arithmetic or silently normalize them.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The matter then worked out. Between May 15 and June 30 another 1,000 were sent, bringing the total to 82,000. They all went to Lublin—and then the deportation of Jews was halted. Of those 52,000, 284 remained after the war.

Part II, scan 069.

Eichmann:

That is not very plausible—certainly the number may have been small … for Glo was cautious after the affair in Warsaw and did what he could to create some breathing room … He had been right; I would have done the same.

Part II, scan 069.

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Lublin liquidation: thousands and tens of thousands

Eichmann says that factory-like concentrations where thousands and tens of thousands of Jews worked were liquidated under a tightened order after the Warsaw uprising. This is an approximate group-size description, not an exact total of victims.

Eichmann:

And one of the most important measures was also that [uncertain: “Glo”], perhaps out of caution and concern that something similar might happen in his numerous factory-like concentration camps, where thousands and tens of thousands of Jews worked, carried out the liquidation on the basis of this tightened order. As a result, for a time after the uprising, there were no more Jews in [uncertain: “Glo”]’s area available for labor deployment, people who otherwise would have survived the war just like the Jews employed at the Heinkel works or at Auschwitz, like many others in the concentration camps, who, however, [uncertain: ...]

Part II, scan 054.

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Warthegau gassing site: a few hundred men

Eichmann describes a small camp with a few hundred men, says Jews were gassed there, and recounts being sent to establish the time and report to Müller. The number describes the camp’s size in the sentence, not a documented cumulative toll.

Eichmann:

Or I had an order— there was also a small concentration camp in the Warthegau— of a few hundred men; the Jews were gassed there.

Part II, scan 133.

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Two extermination letters: 250,000 plus a further 250,000, making 500,000

Eichmann recalls personally delivering extermination instructions to Globocnik. One letter concerns 250,000; a second says a further 250,000; he explicitly sums the number to 500,000. The recollection of signatures and chronology contains uncertainty, but the extermination wording and quantities are explicit.

Eichmann:

After some time I was ordered to Heydrich again; this time I was told that I was to deliver a letter to Glob stating that 250,000 Jews were to be delivered over for extermination, on the order of P[?], or simply by order.

Part II, scan 171.

Eichmann:

The two letters differed in two respects: first, in one little word, “further,” 250,000; and on the second letter, instead of Heydrich’s signature, was the signature of [uncertain: name, appears “Kaltenbrunner”], on behalf of the Chief of the Sipo; I believe Kaltenbrunner was already chief at that time ...

Part II, scan 172.

Eichmann:

[continuation] ... would make it considerably more interesting, because here the number rose rapidly from 250,000 to 500,000. –

Part II, scan 173.

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Globocnik: two to three million Jews kept away from the Reich

While discussing Globocnik, Eichmann praises him for keeping two to three million Jews away from the Reich with few German personnel. In the same sequence he estimates Lublin camp housed 10,000 people. Neither formulation alone is an explicit count of people killed.

Eichmann:

He was regarded as a great builder; his greatness was that he kept 2–3 million Jews away from the Reich ... with a small deployment of German personnel.

Part II, scan 174.

Eichmann:

It was the Lublin concentration camp, which had probably housed 10,000 people. –

Part II, scan 172.

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Threat to gas another 10,000

Eichmann recounts a threat attributed to Becher to seek the gassing of another 10,000 Jews if Kastner did not fulfill an undertaking; he says he reprimanded Becher. It is an alleged threat, not a count of completed killings. The same threat reappears in the Becher discussion on scan 39.

Eichmann:

“If you cannot fulfill this, I will ask SS Ostf. E. to have another 10,000 Jews gassed.” Thereupon I took Becher aside, after Kastner had left, reprimanded him, and told him he was not a member of the Gestapo and had no business meddling in this, and second, I would report it.

Part II, scan 018.

Eichmann:

A crimson face. 10,000 more Jews to be gassed …

Part II, scan 039.

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Four or six death sentences; denial of personally killing even one

Eichmann recalls a statement that four or six Berlin Jewish community officials had been sentenced to death, followed by their killing at Oranienburg. In the same discussion he denies that he or anyone in his department personally killed even one Jew or issued a killing order; this concerns claimed individual/direct responsibility, not a denial that Jews were killed.

Eichmann:

“Since it has been established that Jews were also involved in the sabotage at the exhibition [...], I have summoned you here on the authority of an order from the Reichsführer, to inform you that four or six officials of the Jewish community in Berlin have been sentenced to death for this. The Berlin State Police headquarters has meanwhile identified these Jews and taken them into custody”

Part II, scan 004.

Eichmann:

And these Jews were then brought to the Oranienburg concentration camp and killed there on the order of the RF.

Part II, scan 005.

Eichmann:

And I ... I never killed a single Jew; no one in my department—from the criminal police assistant candidate up to the government councilor, or from the SS man up to the Stf.—ever killed even one Jew, indeed no person at all. No one in this group, myself included, ever issued an order to other offices to kill Jews.

Part II, scan 005.

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Hypothetical retaliation: tenfold, a hundred-thousandfold, and ten thousand

In the discussion of removing gold from corpses, Eichmann says he would instead shoot ten times or a hundred thousand times as many. He then imagines an official vowing revenge against ten thousand after the death of his family. These are hypothetical/rhetorical quantities, not admissions of specific completed killings.

Eichmann:

Then I put ten times or a hundred thousand times as many against the wall, but I would not let anyone pull out the gold teeth because he had done that to a fallen German soldier.

Part II, scan 198.

Eichmann:

“You dogs had my wife and children suffocated; now ten thousand are next...”

Part II, scan 199.

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The General Government: two and a half or three million

Asked about registered Jews, Eichmann recalls a figure of 2½–3 million in reports from “Gl...” and describes it as approximately the population of Poland, including Russian territories. He says he does not know the actual number exterminated. The passage must not be presented as his affirmative death-toll estimate.

Eichmann:

I never heard the actual number of Jews exterminated and killed. I don’t know it.

Part III, scan 114.

Eichmann:

The number of registered Jews I could partly calculate myself, insofar as I transported them. As for those transported by the General Government, I took note of the final reports from Gl... to the RF. I remember one figure; I don’t know whether it was 2.5 million or 3 million in the General Government. That was probably the approximate number of Jews residing in Poland; that also includes the Russian territories, because Jews fled whenever they had the chance and were freely admitted if they gave the Russians a watch.—So I don’t know that number at all; only the WVHA knows it.

Part III, scan 114.

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Ohlendorf: more than ninety thousand

The interviewer introduces Ohlendorf’s Nuremberg figure of more than 90,000. Eichmann replies that an unnamed “opposing author” regarded the figure as very high, then links that author to criticism of Höss’s figure. This is a dispute over a cited figure, not an alternative count.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

At the Nuremberg Trial, Ohlendorf spoke of more than 90,000 ...

And I read in a book by an opposing author that this figure seemed very high to him ...

The figure given by Ohlendorf, of Jews killed by the Einsatzkommandos? No.

In the same book where the figure from Höß is also given as too high, by the same author ...

Part III, scan 119.

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Gerstein report: fifteen, twenty-five and twenty thousand a day; seven to eight hundred in a chamber

A report is read aloud giving claimed daily capacities of 15,000 at Belzec, 25,000 at Treblinka and 20,000 at Sobibor. The continuation claims 700–800 people in 25 square metres; Eichmann calls that impossible. These are the report’s figures, not Eichmann’s own measurements or verified capacities.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

At that moment, 17 Aug. 1942, we had three facilities in operation, namely Belzec, on the Lublin–Lemberg railway line, maximum capacity per day 15,000 people; Treblinka, east of Warsaw, maximum capacity 25,000 people; Sobibor, also in Poland, maximum capacity 20,000 people. Majdanek near Lublin is now being prepared.

Part III, scan 125.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Driven into the gas chambers with leather whips—700–800 people into these gas chambers on 25 sq. m. —

That is completely impossible ...

Part III, scan 126.

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Gerstein report: poison allegedly sufficient for sixteen million

The passage about Günter procuring poison says it would have been sufficient for about sixteen million people. This describes alleged potential capacity, not people actually killed. The source compresses reading and sarcastic comment into one paragraph; the exact transition between reader and respondent is not marked.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

He was sure Günter wanted to obtain the poison in order to kill millions of people with it. In terms of quantity, it would have been enough for about 16 million. That is finally a number that impresses me.... one must view that with a certain dark sarcasm.

Part III, scan 127.

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Höss affidavit: two and a half million exterminated at Auschwitz

The interviewer reads Höss’s estimate of 2½ million exterminated, with 20,000 Soviet POWs and roughly 100,000 German Jews mentioned in the subsequent discussion. Eichmann questions the total and says he did not transport 2½ million to Auschwitz. The affidavit is the source of the death figure; Eichmann’s answer contests it.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943; I estimate that 2.5 million were exterminated there by execution and gassing.

Part III, scan 145.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

2.5 million—so if that is what the commandant of Auschwitz says, it is presumptuous for me to dare challenge it, since I might be accused of having visited Auschwitz only three times, at most four, for a few hours.—

But you also stayed overnight there and had breakfast with Hoess the next morning?...

Possibly; I do not want to deny that. Perhaps I arrived late in the evening. But that makes no difference, and even if it had been twenty times, it is still presumptuous to challenge the statement of a concentration-camp commandant—2.5 million—where did he get that figure????

But we are used to dealing in large numbers now—2.5 million! They must all have been Jews, presumably?

No, 20,000 Russian prisoners of war were included—the majority were presumably Jews—about 100,000 German Jews—and a large proportion of the inhabitants, mostly Jews, from Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other countries.

Good, shall we stay with the Jews? How many were transported to Auschwitz altogether?—I can say straight off only that it was not 2.5 million.

Just how many transport trains would that have been??

Now calculate the transport train at 2,500 people.

Part III, scan 145.

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Auschwitz arithmetic: two and a half million, forty thousand daily, and a quarter-million capacity

The discussion repeats 2½ million, converts it to 1¼ million per year, then erroneously says 40,000 daily; the other speaker offers an equally erroneous “35,000 daily.” Eichmann estimates camp capacity at a quarter million, prompting a tenfold turnover and five-month argument. These figures are visibly in the original scan; the daily arithmetic is invalid and must not be repeated as a factual calculation.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

From May 1, 1940, through Dec. 1, 1943, he estimates that about 2,500,000 people were exterminated by gassing and execution—

1940? He probably means over the whole period, but 2½ million, that is 1¼ million a year; someone should show me how to do that technically..... That is 40,000 daily. I can only throw up my hands; I cannot say anything more about it.

Exactly calculated, 35,000 daily.

No one can believe that; it cannot be done—

What capacity did Auschwitz have?

At most, I would say —¼ million—judging by the entire area...

Then he would have had to renew his population 10 times. Do you consider it possible that this happened?—

No, at least not from my point of view; then I would have had one tenth of 4 years—that is, 5 months; then every 5 months I would have had......

Part III, scan 148.

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Three million dead, seventy to eighty percent, and 600,000–900,000 workers

Eichmann first proposes reducing the preceding figure by 50%, while admitting this is a judgment “purely by feeling.” Höss’s statement is then resumed: an additional half million dead from hunger and illness, about three million total, representing 70–80% of prisoners, with 20–30% selected for labour. The discussion computes 600,000–900,000 from three million and asserts a 350,000 capacity. This conflates the death-total base with the total-prisoner base and camp occupancy with cumulative admissions; it is not a valid disproof.

Eichmann:

Then we will arrive at the correct number. The figure is stated offhand, purely by feeling, but the feeling that comes from factual knowledge leads me to reduce it by 50%, and I further assert that this 50% is an exaggeration.

Part III, scan 151.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

……another half million died of hunger and illness, making a total of about 3 million dead.—
This figure represents about 70 or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners; the remaining 20 or 30% were selected and used as slave laborers in the industries of the concentration camp.

Part III, scan 151.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Thus 20 to 30% of 3 million comes to 600,000–900,000.—
Auschwitz never took that many in, including its surrounding mines.—
Of course, one must subtract natural attrition.
I recently read that there is an association of former Auschwitz prisoners in almost every country. I gathered from this that there are quite a number, including some who do not want to register or identify themselves.
But where are these 600,000–900,000 supposed to have gone? That is a large city. Auschwitz had a capacity of 350,000, [uncertain: in areal terms].
Including the mine nearby, the Heinkel aircraft works.—
But Auschwitz is a village, not a city.
Have you never heard anything about the 20,000 prisoners of war?

Part III, scan 151.

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Four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews killed: Eichmann’s three-hundred-thousand objection

Höss’s statement, read aloud, says approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews were executed in summer 1944. Eichmann denies the number on the ground that he transported only around 300,000 and asks how many remain alive. He next hypothesizes 30,000 deportees daily, 3,000 per train and ten trains daily, using escort-strength estimates to call the scenario impossible. His denial and logistical assumptions are not an established alternative death count.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews were executed by us in the summer of 1944.
No, that is not correct; I never transported more than around 300,000. And how many of them are still alive today???

Part III, scan 152.

Eichmann:

It is impossible—I would say, suppose 30,000 were transported, but imagine 30,000 every day—then how many regular police would I have needed? The rule was 25 to 30 men, that is, 30,000 men to load each day. But calculate only 3,000 per train: that is 10 trains daily. They needed two days from Hungary to Auschwitz, so 20 trains were en route; if it took two days to get there, it also took two days to return, so there were four more trains, and each train had 25 to 30 regular police, so 500 men were en route there and 500 on the return, 1,000 men total. I think the commander of the regular police in Hungary would have been happy to have 1,000 men available for such a thing—sheer madness.
I had about 250 men available, and I also cite my staff members as witnesses. Gromeid himself must know much better, since he did the detailed work. So according to that I would have needed 1,000 regular police for my directive, if everything had been so......
I would also have needed reserve trains, because while the trains were rolling, another 10 trains would be loaded—I would then have needed 1,500 regular police. I never had that.
And even if you count half as escort personnel, it would still have been about 800 regular police.

Part III, scan 152.

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Forty-two thousand daily; chambers for two thousand; twenty thousand in ten half-hours

The discussion gives an erroneous 42,000 daily average after changing the time span; Eichmann answers “Impossible.” A later reading gives 3–15 minutes for gassing, a half-hour wait and chambers for 2,000. The exchange returns to 40,000 daily, 20,000 in ten half-hours, and 20 trains daily or 600 monthly for three years. These are affidavit claims and the speakers’ calculations, not Eichmann’s independently observed operating rates; the daily death arithmetic is internally unsound.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

We thus arrive at a daily average execution figure of 42,000.
Impossible......

Part III, scan 152.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

It took 3–15 minutes to kill the people in the gas chamber, depending on climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead when their screaming stopped. We usually waited half an hour before opening the doors and finding the corpses. We built gas chambers that could hold 2,000 people—
Auschwitz must have achieved the highest output, as we have said: 40,000 daily. With 2,000 in half an hour, only one gas chamber needs to operate—then take 10 half-hours and you already have 20,000.
No, here one must work with the Reich Ministry of Transport.....
For three years, every day, there would have had to be 20 trains—that is 600 trains a month, to Auschwitz alone.—
No, no...

Part III, scan 155.

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Treblinka: eighty thousand in half a year

In the Höss text being read aloud, the Treblinka commandant is reported to have said he liquidated 80,000 in half a year, mainly Warsaw-ghetto Jews. Eichmann’s preceding objection concerns the account’s organizational attribution to the Sipo/SD; this numerical statement is not presented as his personal observation.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

...the camp commandant told me he had liquidated 80,000 in half a year; he was mainly concerned with liquidating all Jews from the Warsaw ghetto; he used ... (?) gas and in his opinion this method was very safe.

Part III, scan 154.

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Country mortality percentages and local survivor counts

These are figures read aloud and contested during the interview, not a table of present-day estimates. Eichmann invokes emigration, geographical differences, and mortality from other causes. Selected numbers below are corrected against the original scan: Poland reads 85%, Latvia 89%, and Leipzig 11,560. The local working translation gives 89%, 99%, and 21,560 respectively. The reading also says 90% of the Jewish dead were civilians. The Austrian alternatives 202,000/302,000 are retained as spoken/transcribed, together with 100,000 emigrants in one year, more than 200,000 from Germany, and the counterclaim of 24,000 Jews in the Old Reich.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Thus 90% of the Jews in Lithuania died
66% of the Jews in Austria

That is not right; in Austria almost all of them emigrated. There were probably only 202,000 or 302,000 there; 100,000 of them emigrated in one year.

60% of the Jews in Holland
85% of the Jews in Poland—that is, 3 million Jews in Poland were killed

Yes, but the responsible Gov. corrects himself and lowers the figure from 3.5 million to 2 million Jews—

82.5% in Czechoslovakia

Where is emigration accounted for here, and the natural decrease over 12 years?

89% of the Jews in Latvia
81% of the Jews in Germany

Where have the emigrants gone here? Well over 200,000 emigrated, and how many are still there today?

80% of the Jews in Greece
73.3% of the Jews in Yugoslavia

In 1939 there were 17,840 Jews in Little Poland; 243 survived.
And those who fled from there, those who moved away...?

352,559 Jews in Warsaw; 6,000 survived.
11,560 in Leipzig—15 survived.

Strange, and yet they arrive at 24,000 Jews in the Old Reich.

Part IV, scan 130.

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France and the Netherlands: alleged survival on arrival

The interviewer puts 70% arriving alive from France and 80% from Holland to Eichmann. He expresses surprise and then dismisses the claim. The same reading gives 8 trains, 13 transports, an average 1,000 passengers, numbers 149 and 1,089, and admission figures 475, 512–599, and 370. Its damaged “70/100?” passage and admission-number sequence cannot establish a reliable mortality calculation.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

But surely it must also have been noticeable to you in the central office that only 70 percent of the transports from France arrived alive at the destination?

70 percent?

80 percent of the transports from Holland arrived, but only 70 percent of those from France.

I am also hearing for the first time that it was 80 percent from Holland—only 80 percent?

After the roundup, the trains departed as quickly as if following a timetable. Between July 19 and 28 there were 8 trains; in August, 13 transports. The Gestapo statistics have been preserved; they show an average of 1,000 people per transport, with fluctuations of up to 149 in one direction and 1,089 in the other. It is possible, with the help of a fragment of the Birkenau daily report for the men’s camp, to trace the tragic end of the great roundup. [Further reading aloud, indistinct and fast.]

[unintelligible] no longer at all
According to which only [uncertain: 70/100?] from the transports from France came to the camp.

I must consign this matter too to the realm of atrocity tales …

One more piece of evidence: for the transport that arrived on July 20, the admission of 475, or 512–599 and 370 Jews from France into the Birkenau men’s camp was recorded.

Admission or takeover?

Admission.

Part IV, scan 003.

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France: 40,000, 50,000, 65,000, and 2,800 returning

Eichmann negotiates between his remembered 40,000 deportees and the author’s 65,000, proposing about 50,000. The interviewer later gives fewer than 65,000 and 2,800 returning. A separate population question gives 300,000, which Eichmann tentatively accepts. The figures refer to different populations and must not be added together.

Eichmann:

So, if 75 trains are said to have departed and the author concludes 65,000, that means there must have been trains carrying fewer than 1,000. And the idea that there could have been trains carrying fewer than 1,000 does not quite make sense to me. From the standpoint of railway scheduling, I would not readily subscribe to that. So he says 65,000, I say 40,000; let us say about 50,000.

Part IV, scan 012.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

How many Jews in France did you expect?

I can no longer remember exactly today, but a multiple of what was not only recorded but also calculably established. A multiple, in any case never, ever 40,000–50,000.

What do you say to the figure of 300,000?

Yes, I would be inclined to assume that. For however many Jews were transported away from France, at least in the years 1939 to 1940 ...

Part IV, scan 013.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So, once again, regarding the Jews who were transported away and murdered ...

So there were fewer than 65,000—of those, 2,800 returned after the war ...

The list found in Roettke's office, dated July 1, 1944, they say, indicates that there had been 75 deportation trains. A train consisting of 20 cars usually carried 1,000 Jews, but numerous later transports were much smaller. The figure given above is not conclusive, but should be revised downward rather than upward.

I told you that I have 40,000 in my memory, so I was not entirely wrong after all.

Part IV, scan 014.

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Baltic killing figures and related population counts

The interviewer’s material gives Latvia 93,000 before the war, 70,000 remaining, and 30,000 executed; Lithuania 153,000, then 40,000 killed and a further statement of 136,000 liquidated. It also mentions 33,000 Latvians and 40,000 Lithuanians deported by Soviet authorities. Eichmann responds with claims of local responsibility and lack of involvement. The same sequence gives more than 400,000 in a region and Minsk 218,000 population with an uncertain 100,000 Jews, followed by 20,000 transported to Riga and 2,000 to Minsk. These overlapping reports are not additive totals.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Did reports from the Baltic states actually reach you, or did you ever see summary activity reports?

As far as I can still remember today, it was said that the matter in the Baltic states had been settled locally.

I never had anything to do with it either.

It is said, for example, of Latvia that there were 93,000 Jews there in 1935. When the Germans invaded, 70,000 Jews still remained in Latvia; the rest had fled with the Bolsheviks. The Jewish Bolshevik regime had deported 33,000 Latvians, and by October 1941 the special detachments, consisting mainly of Latvians, had executed 30,000 Jews. Yes, they took care of their business up there themselves.

In Lithuania in 1923 there were 153,000 Jews; 40,000 Lithuanians were sent to Siberia, which was attributed to the Jews' preparatory work—and then 40,000 Jews were killed by the Lithuanians.

Revenge.

Further reading aloud concerning Lithuania—in individual actions, a total of 136,000 Jews were liquidated.

The leader of Einsatzgruppe A, SS Brigadeführer Stahlecker, mentions, among other things, that local anti-Bolshevik forces were set against the Jews in the first hours after the invasion.

On orders? ... Reading aloud ...

... had taken the first measures on their own—

Did Stahlecker never tell you about that?

No, I never met him—as he was, because of his work as an Einsatzgruppen chief ... I had last seen him. I had nothing more to do with him.

Then Stahlecker speaks about the region and says that at the time well over 400,000 Jews were counted; that figure is certainly too low—Minsk, with a population of 218,000, had [uncertain: 100,000] Jews—

In 1940, partisans and criminals, mostly Jews, were shot. Estimates from the Wehrmacht through December 1941.

Then, from December 1940 onward, Jewish transports from the Reich were sent to Riga at short intervals ...

Part IV, scan 028.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Yes, to Riga, that is correct.
20,000 to Riga and 2,000 to Minsk.
Minsk is new to me.

Part IV, scan 029.

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The Netherlands: deportation and survivor figures

The interviewer gives 110,000 deported out of 140,000; Eichmann acknowledges this as a “success.” Later readings give 38,600 deported by the stated year-end, 34,313 arriving at a death camp, and only 16 women and 3 men returning. The transcript abbreviates the destination as “So…” and preserves damaged surrounding words. Other numbers in this exchange concern exemptions and transport quotas, not deaths: 14,833, 13,000, 30,000 versus 17,000, quotas 12,000 reduced to 8,000 and 6,000, and weekly transports of 2,000.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

110,000 of a total of 140,000 Jews were deported from Holland.

But, so, 110,000 Jews—well, I said, I had to go to The Hague five or six times to keep things moving again and again. So there were successes after all

Part IV, scan 083.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

From the beginning, weekly transports of 2,000 Jews started rolling again.

They did not go to Auschwitz, but to [uncertain destination: “So…”].

Did you hear anything about this [uncertain fragment]?

It is not really in my memory any more.

Every [uncertain period] in Auschwitz, the crematoria were fully occupied by the shipments from Berlin and [uncertain].

[fragment: “807—”]

The inmates of this KL So... were almost all killed. There were no survivors... only 16 women and 3 men returned from there after the war.

[fragment: “30...”]

That was in Poland, and all these trains arrived from Westerburg.

So Westerburg was cleared out?

There is nothing here about evacuation; it only says that a train left Westerburg every Tuesday. And it arrived Friday at the outlying station in [uncertain place: “Lo…”], 110 km from Lublin.

[uncertain place/name], but I never...

On some Mondays 2 trains departed; in this way a total of 34,313 Jews from Holland reached the secret death camp in [uncertain fragment]...[handwritten mark/number: (9)]

How exactly...

Part IV, scan 098.

Source and related passages: Part IV, scan 096; Part IV, scan 097.

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Greiser’s “special treatment” of about 100,000

A letter read aloud calls for completing an operation involving around 100,000 Jews in two or three months. It separately gives 230,000 Polish tuberculosis patients and 35,000 Jewish cases. Eichmann connects the discussion with the gas vans he saw in the Warthegau, while disclaiming responsibility for the proposed operation involving sick Poles.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

He writes: On 1 May 1942, [he writes] that the operation for the “special treatment” of around 100,000 Jews in this area, approved by Heydrich, could be completed in the next two or three months. He asks for permission, with the special commando already assigned, to free the Gau from a danger that is taking increasingly catastrophic forms each week after the operation. Up to now there are 230,000 tuberculosis patients of Polish nationality in the Gau. The number of Jews being treated for open tuberculosis is estimated at 35,000. Germans who arrived in the Warthegau completely healthy are being infected. The danger of infection is especially present among German children. A whole series of well-known men, including police officers, have recently been infected and are unavailable for military service because the necessary treatment has become necessary. The ever-growing danger is also recognized by the Deputy Reich Health Leader, Prof. Dr. Bl[?], and by the leader of the X-ray storm unit, Standartenführer Dr. Prof. Hohlfelder. Although appropriate measures cannot be enforced against this epidemic among the population in the Old Reich, I believe I can take responsibility for proposing that cases of open tuberculosis among the Polish population in the Warthegau be eradicated. Naturally, only someone for whom not only open tuberculosis but also its incurability has been unequivocally certified and established should be subjected to such an operation.—

Given the urgency of this plan, I ask for your fundamental approval as quickly as possible...... (That went to the RF...)

I have the following to say about that: That was the Reichsgau Wartheland; that was the place, namely [uncertain: Kulmhof?]—Müller sent me down there, and when I got there, I saw something I had not seen before: those hermetically sealed trucks into which they put the Jews and killed them with the exhaust fumes; that was where I was supposed to look through the peephole

Part IV, scan 111.

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Selection reports: labor assignments and “special treatment”

The interviewer reads three arrival-and-selection breakdowns. Eichmann subsequently argues that “half remained alive.” The figures as preserved in this transcript are internally inconsistent: for example, the listed categories for the first 1,129-person transport total 768. The page records what was read in the interview; it does not silently reconstruct the underlying document. Assignment to labor is also not evidence of eventual survival.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Now, here is something from the WVHA, Office D II: dated 9 March 1943, Oranienburg, transport of Jewish armaments workers. On 5 and 7 March the following transports of Jewish prisoners arrived: transport from Berlin, arrival 5 March, 1,129 Jews; 329 men and 96 women were assigned to labor. “Special treatment”: 151 men and 192 women and children.— Transport from Breslau, 5 March—1,405 Jews—labor assignment: 406 men and 190 women—“special treatment”: 125 men and 694 women and children.— Transport from Berlin, 7 March—690, including 25 protective-custody prisoners—labor assignment: 153 men, 25 protective-custody prisoners, 65 women—“special treatment”: 30 men, 417 women and children—

Do you know that “special treatments” were also carried out in Oranienburg?

Yes, I am hearing that for the first time now—possible??—That was probably possible in every concentration camp. There were no gas chambers in Oranienburg, but perhaps they shot them; I do not know.—I do not know my way around the WVHA; it is not in the files, there is no reference, nothing. It is possible that in 1943 Office Group D had its headquarters in Oranienburg, because Glücks, the Inspector for the concentration camp system, was stationed with his office at the Oranienburg concentration camp. He was not in Berlin “under the oaks”—he was in Oranienburg.

One need not necessarily assume that these transports went to Oranienburg. It is quite possible that Office Group D had its headquarters there

Part IV, scan 112.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

But this is another example—not as the Jews so nicely write, that they were taken to Auschwitz and gassed—here one sees again how things were manipulated: half remained alive.

Part IV, scan 113.

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Auschwitz: one or two million arrivals and capacity of 250,000–300,000

The interviewer challenges Eichmann’s capacity argument by suggesting two million, or alternatively one million, arrivals. Eichmann disputes the two million and invokes transfers to other camps. Capacity at one moment, cumulative admissions, and cumulative deaths are distinct quantities; the exchange does not establish one from another.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So, so, now you have calculated that the intake was around 250,000 [uncertain number/unit]—but if 2 million arrived in all—

I dispute that......

Or only 1 million or only 1 million...... and if the capacity is only 250,000 or 300,000, then surely one must consider that the others....

Yes, but [uncertain words] that they remained in Auschwitz? The labor force was distributed among the concentration camps by Office Group D, Inspectorate for the concentration camp system. It is entirely possible that a transport that came to Auschwitz was then sent back from there; that came under the WVHA.—

Were you also responsible for these transports from one concentration camp to another?

No, that was the WVHA’s responsibility; they had to take care of it—they also had to look after provisions, etc.

Part IV, scan 113.

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Galicia: 434,329 “resettled”; Sobibor: 250,000 gassed

Katzmann’s report is read as 434,329 resettled. Eichmann characterizes this as movement to Globocnik’s camps and warns against double counting, rounding it to half a million. Asked about 250,000 gassed at Sobibor, he says he does not know and assigns it to Globocnik. His interpretation of “resettled” is not an independent demonstration that the people survived.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Here is a report by SS Gruppenführer and Police Lieutenant General Katzmann; with effect from 23 June 1943, the Jewish residential districts were to be dissolved. The district of Galicia has been cleared, except for Jews held in camps under SS control; it is free of Jews.— Any Jews still picked up individually are given “special treatment” by the Order Police or assigned gendarmes. By 27 June 1943, a total of 434,329 Jews had been resettled.—

Does that mean it is settled?

He took them to Globocnik, because in the General Government there was only one SS and Police Leader, and that was Globocnik.—They had their own timetable there for Globocnik’s camps. This here is not to be calculated separately; “resettled” means gone, off to the places of the SS and Police Leader. In Katzmann’s case, it does not mean killed; it really means resettled. Otherwise it would also have said “given special treatment.”— These people were resettled from his district. It is naturally very easy now for the enemy to add this total of half a million to what Globocnik says; in truth this is

Part IV, scan 113.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

And then it is said of the Sobibor extermination camp that 250,000 Jews were gassed there.

I do not know; that is on Globocnik’s account.

Part IV, scan 114.

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Deaths from other causes: the 100,000-inmate illustration

Eichmann invokes twelve years and 100,000 inmates while discussing deaths he labels natural. This is an illustration in his argument about camp mortality, not a quantified estimate of the number murdered at Bergen-Belsen or elsewhere.

Eichmann:

Bergen-Belsen? No—[unintelligible passage] people were killed in every concentration camp, and whoever was admitted to a camp and then died there, an ordinary death, was naturally regarded as a victim of the camp system. And if you calculate that the camps beyond the Iron Curtain lasted 12 years per 100,000 inmates—then quite a lot dies there, including entirely natural deaths. That is how they also had the high death toll at Bergen-Belsen—but that is why it was [uncertain fragment] an extermination camp. I know only of Auschwitz as the sole extermination camp in the West

Part IV, scan 115.

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Auschwitz readings: 4,000, 22,000 per day, 2.5 million, and four to five million

A report read aloud describes 4,000 Roma killed and 22,000 cremations in one day. The following discussion contrasts this with 4,000 in a night and proposes 100 days for 2.5m; that arithmetic is not exact (2.5m ÷ 22,000 is about 114 days). The transcript’s following line prints “22 0000.” The reading later gives four to five million victims at Birkenau in a damaged sentence, and 30–50 persons killed on arrival in particular episodes. These are source claims put to Eichmann, who questions their credibility and says he lacks first-hand knowledge for a calculation.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

The whole Gypsy camp, 4,000 men, women, and children, were dragged into the gas chamber on an August night. The method seemed perfect: a narrow rail track ran up to the gas chamber, and by this means the entire transport—which had been loaded in Dreimal (?) or Budapest—could be unloaded directly at the execution site. The deportees had to pass by an SS command post, and then the SS men made those condemned to death step forward a few paces, and they had already arrived where they were burned. Thanks to this system the bodies reached the ovens without loss of time. In July 1944 the record number of 22,000 cremations per day was reached

Part IV, scan 149.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

And at 22 0000 cremations per day, that would be 100 days for the 2 1/2 million whom, according to Hoess' figures, were killed in Auschwitz—

Now I calculate that these were only individual record numbers—he also writes once of 4,000 in one night, so they needed a night for that. One never knows how much one may believe people—and today I am glad I never saw such things and had nothing to do with them, because they would certainly weigh on me psychologically. But at this moment I regret that I did not see it after all, because then I could base a completely different calculation on it myself. I could speak from my own experience

Part IV, scan 150.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Then, at the time of the Warsaw Uprising, 30 to 50 people often arrived and were immediately shot and burned.

Part IV, scan 150.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

The unpaid labor force was exploited to exhaustion, and sooner or later complete extermination followed. Every crime was committed with inhuman speed. 4–5 million victims [uncertain: ...] Birkenau, the complete degradation of humanity.

Part IV, scan 150.

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Auschwitz: withdrawing 250,000 capacity, then a hypothetical 1.75 million

Eichmann withdraws his 250,000 camp-capacity estimate after hearing about a much larger complex. He temporarily assumes two million arrivals and subtracts 250,000 to obtain 1.75m deaths, then argues that a larger intake capacity would reduce that remainder. The interviewer argues the opposite. Crucially, the final reply says that two million were NEVER brought in. The local working translation omits “never”; the quotation below uses a new scan-checked translation of that sentence. The 1.75m is hypothetical arithmetic, not a settled admission.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So now I must set my stated quarter million even higher after all—

The writer speaks here of a million in Birkenau, so it must have been a large camp; but Auschwitz is also there, and I often still hear Holitz(?), and 26 external camps belonged to it—that was a huge area—

Then I must ask that my figure of 250,000 be regarded as withdrawn, because under these circumstances the number itself is much higher.

But that could also mean that far more could have been exterminated than the figure of 250,000 allocated to intake.—

No—let us say it is 2 million to Auschwitz, and if this was only the intake capacity, 250,000—then the remainder, 1 3/4 million, must have been exterminated. [uncertain: No?], the intake factor had been far greater. So the figure of 1 3/4 million, which I have now assumed just once, is thereby reduced further.

Yes, reduced, but raised from the other side, where people may have been exterminated—That means, if you have a camp with a capacity of 250,000, they have to kill 250,000 so they can take in new people again. But if you have camps with the capacity of a million, they have to exterminate a million before they can take in new people again.

But it depends only on how many were brought in at all, and two million were never brought in.

Part IV, scan 151.

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Hungary: a march of 10,000 and 4,000 reportedly rescued

The interviewer reads a claim about 10,000 on a death march and 4,000 rescued by Wallenberg. Eichmann assigns provisioning and equipment to the Hungarian gendarmerie. The reading does not supply a counted death toll of 10,000; it itself describes rescue and assistance to survivors.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

It seems that Wallenberg and other states did rather strange things, which Sa... allowed because he was interested in being recognized by the neutral states.—The Germans struck, however, although the Russian had already cut off the connection with Poland—Eichmann, the master of the gas chambers, proposed a death march; in bitter cold 10,000 men marched 240 km to their deaths, corpses lining their way. Wallenberg followed the doomed people and managed to free 4,000 of his [source fragment: „Schiffs...“]. For the other unfortunates, together with the RK and the other neutral nations, he arranged trucks with food, warm clothing, and medicines, which were distributed to those continuing the march. The Catholic Church also took part in this action.

I must say that all the provisions and equipment for the march, etc., were not the responsibility of my office, but were worked out by the Operations Department of the Hungarian Gendarmerie. Second: where and how the Hungarian Gendarmerie obtained its supplies.

Part IV, scan 186.

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Himmler’s illustration: 100, 500, or 1,000 bodies

A speech by Himmler is read aloud. These numbers illustrate witnessing mass killing; they are not Eichmann’s estimate of an operation’s total.

Interviewer reading Himmler:

The RF says: “Most of us will know what it means when 100 bodies lie there, or when 500 or 1,000 lie there. To have endured this, and apart from human weaknesses, to have remained decent, that has made us hard. This is a never-written and never-recorded page of glory in our history—”

Part IV, scan 117.

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Kyiv: three or four thousand reportedly killed

A participant recalls an official’s stories about Kyiv and Lemberg and says three or four thousand reportedly had been killed in Kyiv. The passage lacks secure speaker labels, and the speaker says he did not then know children were killed. It is a reported local figure, not a measured count or a total for all Kyiv victims.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

But what I still remember from back then, from Kiev and Lemberg, is that the senior official Sofner told such atrocity stories in Kiev about Lemberg, and I thought to myself, “Well, he’s really exaggerating.” In Kiev, I believe three or four thousand were said to have been killed, but at the time it all somehow came under the heading of fighting partisans. At the time I absolutely did not know that children were also killed. But it is to be assumed that most of these people knew nothing about these things.

Part IV, scan 044.

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Warsaw: 45 death sentences, eight carried out, 600 pending

The interlocutor reads about ghetto restrictions and executions: 45 death sentences, eight implemented, and 600 applications pending. The preceding page cites 2,405 reported typhus cases, explicitly a morbidity figure rather than deaths. Eichmann says he did not inspect ghettos and discusses Theresienstadt instead of independently verifying these figures.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

On September 9, 1941, Dr. Hummel, head of office in Warsaw, stated that the danger of typhus was growing for the Polish population as well, and that 2,405 cases of typhus had been reported in the ghetto, although the actual number was much higher, and so on ... Many Poles suffering from typhus had also been identified, and therefore it was important to enforce the complete isolation of the ghetto. Then an order was issued by [illegible], authorizing shooting Jews on the country road—and that amounts, basically, to imposing the death penalty for leaving the ghetto unlawfully.

Part IV, scan 049.

Eichmann:

I do not know, because I never inspected ghettos. The only place where a restricted zone was imposed on Jews in my area of responsibility was Theresienstadt. But the border gendarmerie there had no authorization to shoot. Theresienstadt was not so completely closed off anyway, since the main Dresden–Prague highway ran right through it.

Part IV, scan 050.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

But this shows that in Warsaw, even after the addition of [illegible], only 45 death sentences could be imposed. Of these, only 8 would have been carried out, because the Krakow clemency commission had to decide each individual case. Another 600 applications for convictions were pending.

Part IV, scan 050.

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Denmark: 1,500–2,000, corrected to 202; a few deaths

Eichmann recalls 1,500 or 2,000 sent away; the questioner corrects this to 202 aboard the ship, and he concedes “possibly.” Eichmann says some jumped overboard and a few died naturally, without a precise death total. The questioner gives Denmark’s total Jewish population as 6,500. These should remain separate measures: his recalled transport total, a particular ship, deaths, and national population.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Yes, under Best the RF or Heydrich demanded that the Jews of Danish nationality be brought to Reich territory. This went back and forth, with the result that through the office of the commander of the Sipo and SD, Dr. Rudolf Mildner—I visited him once in Copenhagen—I believe then 2,000 or 1,500 Danish Jews were sent away.
Now, during this crossing, I believe some Jews also jumped into the water and committed suicide. The ship arrived; where they went first, I do not know,
You are mistaken about the number; there were only 202 Jews on the ship—
Only 202? possibly—in any case, I then had to put these Jews in Theresienstadt on the RF's orders. And then they demanded the Jews back from Denmark—I went to Copenhagen once to arrange the matter there with the commander of the Sipo and SD, so that I could give Müller and Heydrich an appropriate oral report here, so that the further route could be determined; and when I returned, it had apparently been decided that these Jews had to be sent back again. A few people died of natural causes, and then there were the ones mentioned above who had jumped overboard into the water.

Part IV, scan 069.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

There were 6,500 Jews in Denmark in all

Part IV, scan 069.

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Norway: 725 in a roundup; only 43 survivors

The interviewer gives 1,700 Jews in Oslo, then 725 found in a roundup and 43 survivors among deportees. Eichmann says he no longer remembers and specifically distinguishes lack of memory from calling the account untrue. His aside contrasts remembering 20,000–30,000 with forgetting 1,000–2,000. Later he speculates that some—or perhaps all—Norwegian deportees did not survive, and shifts responsibility to Weizsäcker. The 30,000–40,000 is a hypothetical earlier Swedish admission, not Norwegian deaths.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

How many Jews were there?
In Oslo, 1,700; there were very few.....
One must excuse me if I can often remember only very vaguely 20,000 or 30,000 Jews, and then hardly remember 1,000 or 2,000 Jews at all....

Part IV, scan 073.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

In a general raid only 725 Jews were found at all [crossed out]
and this raid was carried out mainly by members of the Qu. [right edge clipped after “Parte”]. —
Yes, perhaps it was the statistician after all—
Yes, it can only have been the statistician.....
Do you remember a transport that took place on the steamer “Donau” of the North German Lloyd from Bergen to a German port, with Auschwitz as its destination?
No, I no longer remember it at all.
A second group was then deported in March 1943. Only 43 Jews deported from Norway survived the war.
I do not mean to say that if I do not remember, I consider it untrue; no, I simply no longer remember.

Part IV, scan 074.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So Weizsäcker was opposed....otherwise against our intention—well, one can put it that way... And it would have been all the same to us at that moment where they went; we had to clear Norway, and if they were deported to neutral Sweden, that would have suited us.—If they had left a few years earlier, we would have been glad, or if Sweden could have taken 30 or 40 thousand from us a few years earlier, we would have been glad; we would even have paid for it.

Part IV, scan 075.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So one could say here that Weizsäcker—if it is true that these Jews from Norway went to Auschwitz, I do not want to know merely from that, of course, then surely some of them did not survive the war; perhaps all of them;—but in any case Weizsäcker would then have played the murderer of the Jews. For we would have released them. You mean that?—That is right.

Part IV, scan 075.

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Italy: 600 deported, 196 surviving selection

The interviewer cites 10,000 documented transports to Auschwitz and then an individual transport of 600, some from Tripoli, with only 196 men and women surviving selections at Birkenau. “Surviving the selections” is not stated as survival to war’s end. Eichmann disputes organizing the transport personally and claims absence from Italy, without providing alternative counts.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Well, “trivial matter” may not be quite right, since transports went to Auschwitz; 10,000 alone have been documented.

Yes, that had been a trivial matter, after all; so it must be, because I cannot remember anything like that; Guenter took all the small matters off my hands.

Part IV, scan 081.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

It is claimed here that of 600 Jews, some of them from Tripoli, were deported on 28 February 1944, and of these only 196 men and women survived the selections in Birkenau; it is claimed of this transport that Eichmann may have organized it himself.

Yalta, February 1944, there I was in the forest 60 or 80 km east of Berlin.

Part IV, scan 081.

Back to regional and camp figures

The Netherlands: 110,000 missing versus 80,000 killed

Eichmann says most Dutch Jews remain alive and rejects equating 110,000 missing with 110,000 dead. The interlocutor states 140,000 initially, 110,000 disappeared, 35,000 still in Holland and 80,000 killed, adding that 5,000 German-citizen arrivals were not included in the 140,000. The differing figures and their contested interpretation are the point of the exchange, not a single agreed total.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Well, the strange thing is that most Dutch Jews are still alive.

Yes, but by no means all; there were 140,000, and 110,000 of them disappeared...

But they went somewhere else, surely; they were not all killed.

[Intervening conversation......]

Reitlinger is not a very precise gentleman......

He is speaking only of the Jews who remained here, who are still in Holland today: 35,000.

But one cannot say that 110,000 were killed—

80,000 were killed.

Who says that, the Jews?

No, that is the figure one can derive from what was present; among these 140,000, the 5,000 with German citizenship who came to Holland after 1936 were not even counted...

The figures do not even....

But then the number was taken from those who were still in Holland, who remained, those who returned to Holland, and those who were illegal, because it is all an illegal deportation.

Part IV, scan 095.

Back to regional and camp figures

British-born and exchange Jews: 298 listed, 96 reportedly gassed

The interviewer reads about a list of 298 born on British soil, 96 of whom had already been gassed; Eichmann denies receiving the information. Further figures are 400 in Holland with claims to British protection and 30,000 prospective exchange Jews from Allied countries. These later figures are potential exchange populations, not killings.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

That was Zoepf’s secretary—she made a list of 298 Jews born on British soil—they were supposed to go on the list of exchange Jews, but it was found that 96 of them had already been gassed; they are the only British citizens who were gassed.

British? Where were they born?

They had British citizenship and another citizenship as well.

They bought British citizenship....

In any case, they were put on this list here as British citizens and were supposed to count as exchange Jews.... Does none of this sound familiar to you?

I do not remember it; Zoepf did not report it to me at all, since she herself deported them—[handwritten: against the guidelines!!!]

Part IV, scan 107.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Then a new list was drawn up, with 400 Jews living in Holland who also had a claim to British protection.

I do not know about that either...

A large operation was then supposed to take place to gather Jews who were to be taken as exchange Jews.

Do you know anything about the fact that 30,000 exchange Jews were supposed to be found from the Allied countries, including the Soviet Union?

No... I cannot remember anything—it may be that the RF once represented the matter personally, but I have no official knowledge of it.

Part IV, scan 107.

Back to regional and camp figures

A reported October 1944 action costing thousands of lives

The interlocutor reads of a major action on 1 October 1944 costing “thousands” of lives. Eichmann responds that Himmler’s stop order was already in effect. Earlier on the scan he allows that Günther once had “a few” Jews hanged at Theresienstadt, then denies other killings there. These are unenumerated claims, with the main casualty allegation coming from a book being read.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Then he tells of a Jew who was said to have been an executioner in Theresienstadt and who told him about executions in Theresienstadt.

But that is a lie—I cannot remember there having been an executioner in Theresienstadt. After the great row we had with Guenter in Theresienstadt, when he had a few Jews hanged, no Jews were killed in Theresienstadt at all; that was not at all the purpose of the solution created for Theresienstadt

Part IV, scan 148.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Then he goes on to write about gassings and burnings in Birkenau, and further about a great action on 1 October 1944 that cost thousands their lives—

But by that time the RF stop order was already in force

Part IV, scan 148.

Back to regional and camp figures

Read-aloud reports: Warsaw 400,000; ten wounded survivors; 200 elderly to be killed

This sequence begins with a report of 400,000 in the Warsaw ghetto and a ration of 200 calories per day (calories are not people). It then switches to a child’s account from Ronodenka near the Romanian border, describing ten women/children escaping a shooting pit wounded, five men shot at a time, and on the next page a quota of 200 elderly people to be handed over for killing. Do not label all these episodes Warsaw or attribute the reported figures as Eichmann’s direct estimates.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Now there is a Jewish report about the Warsaw ghetto; it reports that in October 1940 there were 400,000 Jews there. —

This report is by a Professor Hirtfeld, who secretly wrote his book during the war, in an extermination camp.

He speaks of 200 calories a day being given to the people, and describes life in the ghetto; this is largely authentic.

Part IV, scan 154.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Then there is an incident about children in the ghetto — a child tells him about it, a child born in 1923 who lived in Ronodenka, 6 km from the Romanian border.

Part IV, scan 154.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The action began early in the morning on December 4 — supposedly they shot a group in a pit, but 10 children and women who were only wounded managed to crawl out of the pit at night — one of them reportedly told everything as it happened. They laid a plank over the pit, and five men at a time had to stand on it, undress naked, and then they shot them. One of the women who escaped was pregnant and gave birth to a child in a hospital two weeks later. (Quite unbelievable.) Many die of typhus.

Part IV, scan 154.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The Jewish Council had to hand over a quota of elderly people, [illegible crossed-out text] to be killed; there were 200 people.

Part IV, scan 155.

Back to regional and camp figures

Read-aloud family account: two deaths, thousands removed, 40 hidden and 400 transported

A child’s account begins by mentioning the death of his father and one sister, and describes mother, two older sisters and a brother remaining. It then refers to thousands of families taken away, 40 people hidden and 400 packed into large wagons. Eichmann interjects disbelief about the loading account. The thousands/40/400 are removal, hiding and transport figures; they are not stated as killed totals. Scan156’s preceding, different account says a father was reported dead but later returned, so that cannot be counted as an established death.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

But at that time my father and one sister died. — Mother, two older sisters, and a little brother remained with me. When they marched in, the Germans gave the Ukrainians a day off for the persecution of Jews. They were allowed to murder to their heart’s content, but at that time the Poles helped the Jews, which they did not do then. A neighbor, who later became an ethnic German, hid all of us. Later a Jewish Council and also a Jewish police force were formed. The Jewish Council had to gather the people for work [uncertain: together?]; they themselves knew very well that this was not work, since the council quickly hid their own families while the others had to report and thousands of families were taken away.

Part IV, scan 157.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

The third action lasted four weeks; they searched all the hiding places, and the Jewish police helped them. We were 40 people in a walled hiding place, but the Jewish police [illegible crossed-out text] betrayed us themselves. Anyone who had money could buy their way out. They crammed 400 of us into large wagons.

No, I do not believe that; that cannot be right. The Jews loaded them themselves.

Part IV, scan 157.

Source and related passages: Part IV, scan 156.

Back to regional and camp figures

French children: 4,051 separated; 25 bodies reportedly found in returning cars

The interviewer reads a claim that 4,051 children were taken to Drancy, with “3 to 500” children per transport (the existing translation preserves the source’s abbreviated range, evidently 300–500). A separate report says 25 children’s bodies were found in empty cars returning from Auschwitz. Eichmann says he first learned of it there and limits his responsibility to registration and transport. The 25 are reported transport deaths, while 4,051 and the per-train figure are deportation counts.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

So, by decision of the RSHA, which Eichmann passed on by telephone, were these 4,051 children taken from their parents and brought to the camp Dran... The camp Dran is known as the place from which transports to Auschwitz departed. The French now also agreed that 3 to 500 children could be added to each transport to Auschwitz.

Part IV, scan 002.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

In Roettke’s deportation files, a note dated 11 Nov. 1942 was found: Belgian railway workers had found 25 bodies of children aged 2 to 4 in empty cattle cars returning from Auschwitz, who had never reached the gas chamber.

Question: You or your office were responsible for the transports up to their handover at the destination stations. What do you have to say about these conditions?

That I am only learning this today, that I know nothing about it.

Part IV, scan 002.

Eichmann:

Well, then I am responsible, there is nothing one can do. You can see from this alone that I had Dannecker removed; that shows that his work was not satisfactory. I can do nothing about how the train was unloaded in Auschwitz..... whether the people died on the outward journey, I do not know; no one knows that. I was responsible only for the registration and the transport.

Part IV, scan 002.

Back to regional and camp figures

Emigration: 1,000 daily; 3,500 possibilities reduced to 500–600

Eichmann gives an operational emigration figure of 1,000 people per day in Vienna and elsewhere an example of 3,500 proposed US admissions actually amounting to 500–600. These are emigration throughput and opportunities, not casualty totals.

Eichmann:

after all, every day it involved 1,000 people, and you can imagine that the index we kept was not small; otherwise I would probably have needed weeks or months to rebuild such a thing.

Part I, scan 010.

Eichmann:

for example, Loewenherz had achieved 3,500 possibilities for Jews to be admitted in the USA, but it then turned out that in truth there were only 500 or 600, and these Jews still had to have money in foreign currency to show as proof of funds.

Part I, scan 021.

Back to related transport and population figures

Special releases: hundreds, thousands and 100 prominent Jews

Eichmann describes at least/about 100 prominent Jews for a late-war exchange, “thousands upon thousands” released to Bernadotte, 300/400/500 Jews sent abroad through another agency, and several hundred or several thousand protected German Jews. These are approximate rescue/exemption claims. The 100-person plan recurs on scans 23,24,26 and116.

Eichmann:

he wanted at least 100 of the most prominent [illegible] [who] were subject to [illegible]our control to be kept in very orderly fashion in a safe place [illegible]

Part I, scan 023.

Eichmann:

the RF had released thousands upon thousands of Jews to Bernadotte in the white-painted Swedish trucks that traveled from Auschwitz

Part I, scan 024.

Eichmann:

Well, it may have been 300, 400, or even 500.

Part I, scan 045.

Eichmann:

… are to be exempted from the measures. Those are thousands.

Part I, scan 055.

Eichmann:

A: The number was very high. There may have been several hundred or even several thousand, only German Jews. They were smuggled out everywhere in the occupied territory, most of them to Lisbon, because I had to certify that they were unobjectionable so that they could then get a passport to Lisbon.

Part I, scan 055.

Eichmann:

He ordered me to send about 100 prominent Jews from Theresienstadt to the Brenner Pass and to discuss reception possibilities with the Gauleiter of Tyrol in summer resorts that were empty anyway. He said he was entering negotiations and would now use them as an exchange.

Part I, scan 116.

Source and related passages: Part I, scan 026.

Back to related transport and population figures

Hungary and Romania: rounded deportation totals

On scan 48 Eichmann claims to have deported half a million from Hungary, a number he later refuses to endorse precisely. On scan 51 he describes tens of thousands released for transport from Romania, followed by difficulty over a further ten thousand. The source phrase “tens of thousands of us” is awkward; do not silently repair it.

Eichmann:

The difficulties were very great. How could it have been otherwise, when only a fraction of the Jews in those countries for which so-called “Jew-freeing” had been ordered could actually have been evacuated to Reich territory. So in the end the RF probably said: Before a resistance movement in Hungary is further strengthened by the half-million Jews living there, who certainly would have had considerable influence, let us send the master down; he should do it himself. They sent me down, and that was what Dr. Kastner said: that it would be a misfortune for Hungarian Jewry that they had sent me to Hungary of all people, since I had managed, through my organizational activity and ability to get things done, to deport half a million within the shortest time despite the difficult transport situation.

Part I, scan 048.

Eichmann:

It had also been smooth in Romania. That the people released some tens of thousands of us for transport and then made difficulties over a further ten thousand, I call delaying resistance and hedging, because one could never know what might come.

Part I, scan 051.

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Hungary: 90,000 expected and further forced-march counts

Interviewer introduces approximately 90,000 expected at German agencies. In the march discussion Eichmann starts with 10,000, then later the page introduces 18,000 and his response again says 10,000, with an elliptical “10, 15, or 19,000.” These are march/deportation counts, not death counts.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Q: Can you tell me: on 1 August 1944, about ninety thousand Jews from Hungary were expected at the various German agencies; the next day, 2 August 1944, you were supposedly summoned to Himmler.

Part I, scan 061.

Eichmann:

I gathered 10,000 Jews from some eastern counties and brought them to Budapest, and from there, since I could no longer carry out rail transport, I had them march on foot from Budapest to the Lower Austrian border … [sentence continues on scan 064].

Part I, scan 063.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

[Concerning the march of 18,000 Jews …]

Part I, scan 074.

Eichmann:

That the highest decision had been made concerning the foot march of 10,000 Jews is apparent even today from the fact that no office was able to stop or halt the march.

Part I, scan 074.

Eichmann:

I can only say that in these matters it was less about 10, 15, or 19,000 … [continues on the next page].

Part I, scan 074.

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Budapest: 70,000, 150,000, 200,000 and 250,000–260,000

Eichmann contrasts an interlocutor’s 70,000 with his own 200,000, then says 150,000 rose to 200,000 and claims this was the figure in his final reports. The interviewer later cites a postwar Soviet figure of 250,000–260,000. He also says a hypothetical forced march of 100,000–200,000 would have ended in everyone perishing; this is conditional, not a report of actual deaths.

Eichmann:

The Budapest Jewish ghetto, which you once told me was supposed to have held 70,000, and I laughed at that figure and told you that there must have been 200,000: the intention had certainly been to deport this ghetto.

Part I, scan 065.

Eichmann:

Deportation of 200,000 Jews from Budapest was no longer intended; using the presence of 200,000 Jews in Budapest for business purposes was no longer possible, because Jewish circles would have said that deportation could no longer be carried out. A march of 200,000, or even only 100,000, people along a route … [sentence continues on page 066].

Part I, scan 065.

Eichmann:

[Continuation:] along almost 200 km. Let me tell you something, dear comrade S. … I have dared many things, but a march in those most chaotic conditions by such an enormous mass of human material would not merely have been madness; it would have been super-madness, because they would all have perished on the way.

Part I, scan 066.

Eichmann:

Number of Jews: In the Budapest ghetto there were about 150,000, a number that rose to about 200,000 because people from the individual counties who could somehow travel “by submarine” made their way to the Budapest ghetto, disappeared there, and in that way escaped the Hungarian executive authorities.

Part I, scan 129.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Do you know that after the war the Soviet side stated that about 250,000 Jews were found in Budapest, Hungary? On the Jewish side, an attempt is made to explain the relatively high figure by saying that since the uprising in Slovakia in October–November 1944, Slovak and Polish Jews had been smuggled illegally into the Budapest ghetto in large numbers. This supposedly caused the figure to rise rapidly, so that when the Russians arrived there were in fact 250,000–260,000. What is your position on that?

Part I, scan 130.

Eichmann:

That explains the figure of about 200,000 that I gave in my final reports, which I had received from L.E. on the Hungarian side. I had no way to conduct a count.

Part I, scan 130.

Source and related passages: Part I, scan 113.

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Releases: 1,368, 1,000–10,000 and 600–1,000

Interviewer refers to release of 1,368 Bergen-Belsen Jews. Eichmann denies receiving the stated telegram but allows releases occurred. Elsewhere he says 1,000 or 10,000 made no difference to him and speaks of Kastner requesting 600, 1,000 or multiple contingents.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Do you remember receiving a telegram from Becher in Switzerland at the end of November confirming that the first 5.1 million francs had been deposited, concerning the … release of 1,368 Jews from Bergen-Belsen that was to be carried out?

Part I, scan 071.

Eichmann:

I already told you: I released to Dr. Kastner every contingent of Jews that he asked me to release, because 1,000 or 10,000 Jews did not matter to me.

Part I, scan 072.

Eichmann:

Kastner did too: if he wanted to take 600, 1,000, or several such contingents of Jews abroad, he could negotiate with whomever he wanted,

Part I, scan 077.

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The proposed exchange of one million Jews

One million is repeatedly the proposed number to be released in the trucks-for-Jews negotiations, not a casualty total. It occurs on scans79,81–84,91–92,113 and129. Scan91’s question says 100,000 before Eichmann returns to one million. These figures must not be conflated with deaths.

Eichmann:

At some point there were 10,000 trucks with trailers, winterized for a million Jews; that seemed clear to me,

Part I, scan 079.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Brandt says that on April 25, 1944, you ordered him to your office, where, for the first time, one million Jews in exchange for compensation from the Jewish side was discussed with him.

Part I, scan 081.

Eichmann:

That was when the negotiation took place: 10,000 trucks for one million Jews. That was summer 1944.

Part I, scan 082.

Eichmann:

I have this further thing to say: this would mean that I take responsibility for my reflections on the deal—I mean the deal of 10,000 trucks for one million Jews—and,

Part I, scan 083.

Eichmann:

then I did not return and now demanded 10,000 trucks from you and offered one million Jews in exchange.

Part I, scan 084.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

But it is true that you would take the 100,000 Jews to the Spanish border?
Yes, I said that—the Romanian or Spanish border—because I was still thinking: how can you transport a million Jews at all?

Part I, scan 091.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Do you really believe Eichmann wants to free a million Jews in exchange for dollars or trucks?

Part I, scan 092.

Eichmann:

[opening fragment] of the Führer’s order, the RF-SS would have been ready at once to send one million Jews abroad; who knows how everything might then have unfolded, if the discussion I therefore held myself with the leading Jewish officials, or with their representatives, had produced a positive result. I am sure that afterward the entire Jewish matter would have been handled differently, just as all Jews existing in the world could immediately have emigrated to the Reich.
At present there is no place on earth that would have been willing to take in the Jews. Not even that one million.

Part I, scan 113.

Eichmann:

Of the groups I sent from Hungary, most were not physically annihilated, because I had set in motion the deal by the Kastner-Brandt group of 10,000 trucks in exchange for one million Jews, and because of the result ...

Part I, scan 129.

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Emigration claims and hypothetical 10,000 releases

In arguing over money and negotiations, Eichmann claims hundreds of thousands emigrated and uses one million as an illustrative funding calculation. The interlocutor then invents a hypothetical release of 10,000 for aircraft while distinguishing this from prewar emigration. None is stated as a death toll.

Eichmann:

And you know what enormous work I had to do to raise the many millions of dollars, etc., to enable hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate abroad. Each person was calculated at around $250; for one million Jews that comes to a good $250 million.

Part I, scan 085.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

It was not as if Jews came to the Germans and said: “Just release 10,000 of our people, and in return you get 43 airplanes.” This first happened in Hungary.

Part I, scan 085.

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Klausenburg: 100–200, 50 people/families, 200 people/families

The interviewer reads Kastner’s narrative of proposed transfers and bargaining. Eichmann rejects the story as fabricated. Scans93–94 distinguish people from families: 100–200 proposed transfers, 50 people versus 50 families, then 200 families versus 200 people. The existing translation’s “12 Jews” elsewhere on scan94 is not a secure number: visual checking shows overwritten wording at that spot. It is excluded from the extracted numerical inventory.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Then he was seized by another fit of rage, banged on the table, and wanted to hear nothing more. After an hour he made a completely unexpected proposal: “You know what? I will send 100–200 Jews from Klausenburg to Theresienstadt. We will do it this way: I will attach them in five extra cars to a deportation train, but they will arrive in Slovakia; they will not go to Auschwitz …”

Part I, scan 093.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Now they are negotiating how many may come. Eichmann wants to allow 50 people; I demand 50 families.”

Part I, scan 093.

Eichmann:

All of this that you have read to me is a lie, fabricated from whole cloth.

Part I, scan 093.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

because he asks for 200 families. You (Eichmann) are willing to give him 200 people, and so on.

Part I, scan 094.

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Slovakia: 40,000–45,000, 60,000 and 30,000

Eichmann tentatively recalls 40,000–45,000 taken from Slovakia and asks the interlocutor to check literature. The reply gives 60,000 with 30,000 “disappeared, that is, were transported away.” The word relating the first figure to deportation is damaged. Disappearance here is glossed as transport, not independently established killing.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Can you indicate numerically something about the Jews in Slovakia, how many there may have been?
I cannot say exactly. I can give you a number, but I ask you to consult relevant literature that came out after the war. I would say that perhaps about 40,000–45,000 Jews [uncertain: left Slovakia / were taken from Slovakia]. That number is circling in my head. — The figures are 60,000, and 30,000 of those disappeared, that is, were transported away.

Part I, scan 101.

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Supplement: 350,000 transported; 200,000 left; several thousand emigrants

The unlabelled supplement gives Hungary’s transported and remaining populations and vaguely quantifies illegal emigrants. It also contains a blanket denial that Eichmann or his command killed a Jew in Hungary or ordered it. These are claims of responsibility and population movement, distinct from the overall casualty arithmetic.

Eichmann:

As I said, as far as I remember, 350,000 Jews were transported into Reich territory; about 200,000 remained in the Budapest ghetto and were overrun by the Russians. In addition there were several thousand Jews who emigrated illegally, more or less under direction, as well as those who escaped abroad on their own; I do not know their number, though naturally it cannot have been small. Neither I nor my representative, SS-Obersturmführer Krunz, nor anyone else in my command killed a Jew in Hungary or gave the order to do so. I swear to that.

Part I, scan 113.

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Hypothetical release capacity: 10,000–40,000

Eichmann says he could have initiated releases in groups of 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000; arranged 20,000 in two days; and then a second stage of 30,000–40,000. This is a hypothetical logistical assertion, not a record of completed rescue or killing.

Eichmann:

I could also have started the movement of 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 Jews.

Part I, scan 122.

Eichmann:

Moving 20,000 Jews through Romania to Palestine, or through France to Spain, would have happened very quickly on our side. The delay would have occurred on the receiving side, that is, with the Jews themselves. I estimate that at that time I could have arranged for 20,000 Jews to be transported out in two days; but at least 14 days, or three to four weeks, would then have passed on the receiving side while the facilities created by international Jewry got underway, before a second stage of 30,000 or 40,000 could begin. Since those receiving facilities would only just be getting started, the first group would have taken many times longer than the fourth, fifth, or sixth group, by which time things might have gone more smoothly because the organization would already be operating. At the time, it would not have been especially difficult for me, once I had pressured the Reich Ministry of Transport, to get the rolling stock to move 20,000 people within two days.

Part I, scan 122.

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Auschwitz: 10,000 arrivals daily and over 100,000 inmates

Eichmann says at times 10,000 arrived daily during the Hungarian transports, then elsewhere alleges the camp encompassed several hundred thousand “units,” at any rate over 100,000. A later question refers to a proposal involving several hundred thousand concentration-camp inmates generally; Eichmann denies knowledge. These are intake/camp population claims, not direct death totals.

Eichmann:

At times, 10,000 units arrived daily ...

Part I, scan 130.

Eichmann:

His camp contained several hundred thousand units—at any rate, more than 100,000.

Part I, scan 133.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

“During the last days of the war, did Müller, Kaltenbrunner, or anyone among your immediate superiors point out to you that around mid-April the RF had been presented with a proposal to mark perhaps several hundred thousand concentration-camp inmates with blood-group symbols, thereby making impossible the otherwise immediate identification of all SS men?”

Part I, scan 136.

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Hungarian death marches: 10,000, 12,000, or 14,000

The interviewer describes 10,000 deportees, mostly women, and says those left behind were shot, without quantifying the shootings. Eichmann recalls 10,000, 12,000, or 14,000 on a trek. Elsewhere he presents a hypothetical shooting of 10,000 to argue Hungarian sovereignty; it is not an admitted incident.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

But on November 8 deportations resumed from the Budapest ghetto: 10,000 people, mostly women. Those left behind were shot. They spent the night in the open air.

Part II, scan 030.

Eichmann:

But I do know that at one point about 10,000, 12,000, or 14,000 people were on the trek.

Part II, scan 033.

Eichmann:

If E. had had some reason and, for example, had wanted his gendarmerie to shoot 10,000 Jews who were on the march in the street, no one could have stopped him.

Part II, scan 035.

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One million offered for trucks; a hypothetical two million

Eichmann repeatedly discusses a proposed exchange of one million Jews for 10,000 trucks. He says two million might have been offered if needed; the local text’s “10,000 Jews” in that sentence appears anomalous in the truck-deal context. He also uses availability of one million as an argument against the claimed extermination chronology. These are proposed release quantities, not deaths.

Eichmann:

something like the deal that unfortunately fell through: 10,000 winterized IKW trucks for one million Jews, with the promise that the trucks would not be used on the Western Front.

Part II, scan 007.

Eichmann:

And I am convinced we would, if necessary, have given you two million for these 10,000 Jews as well. Then I would have negotiated whatever could be negotiated.

Part II, scan 019.

Eichmann:

Where, then, were we supposed to get one million Jews from, if we were to have them? Of course we had one million Jews, but the point was that it was biologically valuable Jewish blood.

Part II, scan 032.

Eichmann:

We did the utmost and advertised a million Jews like sour beer, but no one took them.

Part II, scan 065.

Eichmann:

If Brandt says, “I would have said: I cannot sell you all the Jews of Europe, even if you raised that much money; not yet, perhaps someday, but I can let one million Jews go” … That contradicts itself. I told him I could not give them all to him yet, not yet. He should have left that sentence out; then his stories about gassing would have been much more credible.

Part II, scan 065.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 066.

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Hungarian release negotiations: 100,000, 30,000, and 18,000

The discussion distinguishes Eichmann’s claimed promise of 100,000 on confirmation of the truck deal from the interviewer’s account of a dozen trains/30,000 and later six trains/18,000 sent to Strasshof. One formulation on scan 18 instead says six trains/about 30,000. Eichmann rejects the interviewer’s account of the separate arrangement. These inconsistent quantities should be preserved as competing statements.

Eichmann:

since the Jewish side had in no way made any declaration that the deal had been finalized—the agreement—and that I could now set out these 100,000 promised Jews for departure.

Part II, scan 012.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

K. then asked you in mid-June 1944, when there was no word from Brandt, to hold back in Hungary 100,000 of the people assigned to the transport trains and keep them ready in case the Brandt undertaking succeeded. The Javada would immediately provide 5 million Swiss francs as an advance payment. You then accepted Kastner's proposal; you only said that it could not be 100,000: you could bring a dozen deportation trains with about 30,000 Jews to Austria and put them on ice there. But we cannot take these 30,000 from the Ka... or Transylvania, because the Jews there are more valuable and more fertile; I have no intention of keeping them alive.

Part II, scan 017.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

So 18,000 people were taken in six trains from [illegible]... They went to Strasshof, but the five million francs were never paid to the Germans.

Part II, scan 018.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

That alone is out of the question, but you did then take six trains with about 30,000 Jews, who were not supposed to be of childbearing age, to Strasshof.

Part II, scan 018.

Eichmann:

All that was said was 100,000, I told you; as soon as the telegram arrives, the matter is settled. After that there was no more talk of 100,000.

Part II, scan 018.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 019.

Back to related transport and population figures

Kastner transports: 700 or 800; 1,000; 1,700; 1,800; 136

The discussion uses several different quantities for selected young people, relatives, and the Bergen-Belsen/Switzerland transports. The interviewer refers to 700 or 800, 1,700 rescued, and all 1,800 reaching Switzerland; Eichmann says there were certainly over 1,000 and dismisses the distinction between 700 and 7,000. Scan 36 refers to 136 in the local text. These are transport/release figures, not death totals.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

That is not the issue. The issue is that you had promised him that you would gather those 700 or 800 Jews from the ghettos for him....

Part II, scan 012.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

In Jewish circles K. was later reproached for having devoted so much energy to rescuing these 1,700, the so-called Bergen-Belsen transports. You can confirm, so to speak, that K. constantly got on your nerves, can't you? Yes, that's right...

Part II, scan 014.

Eichmann:

Was I supposed, of all things, to check the 700 people K. named, when in reality there were certainly over 1,000 who were rushing off to Palestine, and thereby give the Hungarian gendarmerie a reason to come down on me? These were matters settled, so to speak, by a gentlemen's agreement between K. and me.

Part II, scan 014.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

So you mean one transport? All 1,800 arrived in Switzerland; so they did get to Switzerland, and they arrived there only in April...

Part II, scan 015.

Eichmann:

Yes, what did a transport of 700 or 7,000 Jews matter to me by comparison? ...

Part II, scan 015.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Nevertheless, although nothing had been deposited, the Jews were released in Switzerland, and Kastner received permission to see again the 136 Jews who had left Budapest months earlier.

Part II, scan 036.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 066.

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Budapest and western Hungary: 200,000, 30,000, and 15,000

An account read to Eichmann describes a planned evacuation of about 200,000 Budapest Jews, about 30,000 left, and an attempted 15,000 deportation reversed by Horthy. Eichmann acknowledges wanting to clear Budapest but disputes the account of returned transports. Scan 26 asks about 30,000 in western Hungary; he allows that a few dozen or hundred could have been returned unofficially.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

That happened on the same day that Eichmann, the opponent, called the head of the Hungarian gendarmerie and State Secretary L.E. to a meeting to draw up a plan to evacuate about 200,000 Budapest Jews, and you had immediately reached the decision that between June 5 and 12 they would somehow get them all to Auschwitz, at a ... height. The Jews were to be relocated to houses marked with the yellow star, in preparation for the next step of the evacuation.

Part II, scan 022.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

But the Hungarian prime minister did not dare openly oppose Eichmann in order to carry out the formal resolution of the Crown Council. Thereupon Bichmann said to Kastner: “I will remove the Budapest Jews; about another 30,000 Jews will remain... not very valuable human material.”

Part II, scan 022.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

As late as July 14, when deportation had long been forbidden, he tried to smuggle about 15,000 Jews [illegible] out of the country. The Jewish Council immediately informs Horthy’s cabinet office, and the train is sent back. So it was only a sham success.

Part II, scan 022.

Eichmann:

Perhaps a few dozen or a few hundred were brought back unofficially; that is quite possible. In any case, these are matters of absolutely no fundamental significance.

Part II, scan 026.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Then you began clearing western Hungary on July 1, about 30,000 Jews?

Part II, scan 026.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 023; Part II, scan 024.

Back to related transport and population figures

Transport loading: about 3,000 per train

The interviewer asks about one or two daily trains, 45 cars and about 3,000 people, with 80 to a car and four per square meter. These are proposed transport-capacity quantities within the questioning, not a mortality count.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

(In the last week of May and then at the beginning of June, did you send one or two trains a day? Did a train consist of 45 cars and carry an average of about 3,000 people?.... So, 80 men to a car, I told you.... 21 square meters—four people per square meter?)

Part II, scan 010.

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Greece, Bulgaria, and the early Lublin settlement

Related population/transport quantities: about 1,240 Jews from Rhodes; 20,000 arrests in Bulgaria; 2,000 exemption certificates covering 5,000; and Eichmann’s recollection of an early settlement of 2,000 from Moravian Ostrava. They do not themselves count deaths.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Do you know that the last transport from Greece, in August 1944, deported the entire Jewish population of the island of Rhodes, about 1,240 people?

Part II, scan 045.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

It is claimed that Dannecker helped in the arrest of 20,000 Jews. It is also claimed that the German envoy exerted a certain pressure on the Bulgarian government in the Jewish question. Yes, that is true.

Part II, scan 048.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The Sipo commander was Otto Hofmann … and the whole affair turned into a failure: the government issued 2,000 exemption certificates for 5,000 Jews; the population held demonstrations for the Jews, and Hofmann had to be content with failure.

Part II, scan 047.

Eichmann:

It began with the settlement of 2,000 Jews from Moravian Ostrava …

Part II, scan 042.

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Slovak transports: 20,000 requested; 17,000 workers; 10,000 family members; 7,000 children

The interviewer supplies 20,000 requested and 17,000 workers sent, then eleven family transports/about 10,000 with 7,000 children. The subsequent question changes to 10,000 children, which Eichmann says is possible while disclaiming knowledge. Later questioning adds a 35,000 total, repeated 1,000, and Eichmann’s “paltry 13,000.” The transcript’s shifts should not be combined into a clean total.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

As a result of these negotiations about the 20,000 Jews, about 17,000 Jewish workers—that is, Jews fit for work—were then transported from the Sered camp to Auschwitz and Lublin. Do you know about that? – Yes, not specifically the 17,000; I know that transports were continually taking place from Slovakia.

Part II, scan 053.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

So the 17,000 apparently went to Auschwitz. ... It goes on to say: subsequently, 11 family transports, about 10,000 people, went to smaller localities in the Lublin District; among them, supposedly, were 7,000 children alone.

Part II, scan 053.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

So there is a possibility that 10,000 children? ...

Part II, scan 053.

Eichmann:

Yes, that is entirely possible, and I would not rule it out, since this matter had been left to the discretion of the Slovak government. ...

Part II, scan 053.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Following this meeting with the Slovak government, the Slovak government sent a request to the German government that the relatives of the Jews deported earlier—17,000, who were deported to Auschwitz and [illegible]—also be sent there to join their family members? You must know about it; it is claimed that you first refused, but then went to Pressburg yourself, held negotiations with the old Tuka, and agreed with him to increase the family members together with those already there in the Lublin district to 35,000, in 1942?

Part II, scan 068.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

I must remind you that this concerned 1,000 Jews??

Part II, scan 068.

Eichmann:

A Polish horizon was what mattered to me, but not a paltry 13,000.

Part II, scan 068.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 052; Part II, scan 069.

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Ghetto and workshop populations: 30,000–50,000; Łódź 200,000; several thousand in Lublin

Eichmann describes earlier ghetto sizes as 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 and Łódź as about 200,000. In another passage he recalls seeing several thousand working in Globocnik’s workshops. These are asserted populations or observations, not death totals.

Eichmann:

There were Jewish ghettos with 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 Jews, but no more. For the first time, a large ghetto was then assembled in Łódź; it occupied a third of the city of Łódź, where around 200,000 Jews lived.

Part II, scan 058.

Eichmann:

He had many workshops operating in Lublin, and he took Jews in there; in any case, I saw several thousand of them working.

Part II, scan 034.

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Allegedly false reports of 12,000 deportees

The interviewer offers 12,000 as a hypothetical transport figure that may have been falsified. Eichmann agrees such deception now seems possible and says he received handover reports, not confirmation from Auschwitz. No alternative actual figure is given.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Do you consider it possible that when Wi tells you, “Today the transport left with 12,000 men,” in reality only [uncertain: ...] departed?

Part II, scan 076.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Was there no way for you to check, since the destination told you, “Yes, 12,000”? They were not counted. – –

Part II, scan 076.

Eichmann:

I was not given confirmation of their arrival, only of the handover, which was passed along to me by the police, and in this case that was a copy from the police office of the evacuated country, from Wi or someone else, with the numbers. But confirmed only by Wi. I never received confirmation of these figures from Auschwitz; I believe I never counted. ...

Part II, scan 076.

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Fifteen, twenty, or thirty thousand treated as a triviality

The interviewer challenges Eichmann’s apparent indifference to 15,000, 20,000, or 30,000 Jews while apologizing for a slap. These are illustrative magnitudes in a moral challenge, not an independently identified death or transport total.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

I do not quite understand your apologizing for an accidental slap while speaking of 15, 20, or 30,000 Jews as a triviality.

Part II, scan 070.

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Tens of thousands allegedly escaped through marriage

Eichmann claims tens of thousands avoided persecution or went underground through marriages and asserts that he could not intervene under the legislation. He says an exact number was impossible. This is his unverified assertion about survival/escape, not an extermination total.

Eichmann:

They did it everywhere; it runs into the tens of thousands. We could do nothing about it;

Part II, scan 085.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

You have no idea how high the number of Jews who went underground in this way was? Impossible to know exactly; there must have been tens of thousands.

Part II, scan 085.

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Romania and proposed releases: 100,000, 28,000, 70,000, 5,000, 85 percent

Questioning mentions 100,000 Jews planned for deportation across the Bug and an interrupted 28,000 return-transport statement. Later it mentions a scheme for 70,000 French/Romanian Jews, a 5,000-person offer with 85 percent children, an alleged demand for 20,000 Germans, and Eichmann’s hypothetical 50,000 based on 1:10. A further 5,000 children are linked to a ghetto facing liquidation. These are plans, release/exchange quantities, or claims read aloud; Eichmann repeatedly does not remember.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Perhaps you recall that the local police attaché Richter reported to the Reich Security Main Office that Antonescu planned to deport 100,000 Jews across the Bug?

Part II, scan 143.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The deportations then apparently stopped, but Rademacher testified that the return transports to [illegible] [sentence cut off after the visible fragment “that he 28,000 Jews back—”].

Part II, scan 143.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Is it known to you that in 1943 the Jewish World Congress approached the North American State Department; a sum is reported, a transfer to a Swiss blocked account, which supposedly would have been enough to buy the escape of 70,000 French and Romanian Jews?

Part II, scan 147.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Do you know anything about an English offer to send 5,000 Jews from Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, among them 5,000 Jews of whom 85% were children, to Palestine? 1943.

Part II, scan 147.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Eichmann insisted that 20,000 [handwritten insertion above: “German”?] of working age be exchanged. [Handwritten addition, mostly illegible: “Rest ... quickly ...”]

Part II, scan 147.

Eichmann:

I cannot remember, but if that had been the case, then I would certainly have wanted to get a plus for the Reich out of it; but I do not understand why 20,000, why I did not demand 50,000, according to the RF’s principle of 1:10. – Ideologically the matter appeals to me, but I cannot remember it.

Part II, scan 147.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Moreover, he claims Eichmann had said that the only place where 5,000 children still remained was the ghetto of [uncertain: “Lodz-Motsch”?], but this too would be liquidated shortly on Himmler’s orders. [typed question marks]

Part II, scan 147.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 144.

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France: 300,000 residents, at most 65,000 deported, and changing quotas

The interviewer gives a population of 300,000 and at most 65,000 deported, then other passages contrast 3,600 naturalized Polish Jews with 30,000 Reich immigrants. Transport plans include 1,000, a proposed 6,000, and competing three-month quotas of 100,000 and 40,000. Eichmann later lists changing quotas of 10,000/15,000 and 4,000/5,000/3,000/2,000. These count populations, arrests, planned quotas, or transports, not established deaths.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

It is now further claimed that the measure to build a kind of Jewish association in France failed completely, since of the 300,000 Jews at most 65,000 were deported. –

Part II, scan 149.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Dannecker himself said that he never made a secret of his sympathy for assimilated Jews, and that the arrest of 3,600 Polish Jews naturalized in France caused more commotion in V-Reg. circles than the arrest of 30,000 unwanted Jews who had immigrated from the Reich.

Part II, scan 151.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

He demanded the execution of 100 hostages in reprisal for three attacks on his soldiers; in addition, Parisian Jews were to pay a collective fine of 1 billion francs, and 1,000 Jews and 500 Communists were to be deported to the East for forced labor.

Part II, scan 154.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

On 9 March Eichmann told Rademacher, his blindly devoted subordinate in the Foreign Office, that the number of deportees to be expected immediately would be 6,000.

Part II, scan 154.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Do you know that Dannecker told his colleagues in Brussels and The Hague that the French quota for the next three months would amount to 100,000 Jews from both zones? A completely insane number.

Part II, scan 156.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Eichmann himself then informed Rademacher that the French quota amounted to only 40,000.

Part II, scan 156.

Eichmann:

But you see in all the books that at the beginning tens of thousands were sent away with a certain rapid pace; then there was a standstill, then there was a struggle—not with weapons—then things moved again: a quota of 10,000 or 15,000, or only 4, 5, 3, or 2,000; then there were more struggles to get through, then another part was released, and so it went ...

Part II, scan 162.

Source and related passages: Part II, scan 155.

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Old Reich population arithmetic and emigration

The interviewer quotes 503,000 in 1935, 168,972 in May 1941 and 14,574 in September 1944 (also rounded to 500,000/169,000 and 168,000/14,000). Eichmann had just asserted 31,000 in 1941. He explains about 350,000 as emigrants, allows 5,000 or 10,000 imprisoned but not killed, and attributes the later disappearance of roughly 150,000 to deportation/labor rather than extermination. He adds 100,000 Austrian emigrants and about 100,000 remaining. These are his contested explanations of quoted statistics; the approximations do not reconcile exactly.

Eichmann:

My explanation is that no increase in workload occurred because by 1941 the number of Jews living in the Reich had already fallen to 31,000.

Part II, scan 211.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Now that you have read the book, you also know the statistics it contains. I will repeat them very briefly: in 1935, after the annexation of the Saar Territory, 503,000 Jews lived in the so-called Old Reich.

Part II, scan 211.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

According to this statistic, in May 1941 there were still 168,972, and on 1 September 1944, 14,574 Jews, Jews by religion alone.

Part II, scan 211.

Eichmann:

Now about 350,000 Jews are missing, are they not? They reached emigration by the normal route. I had emigration only until 1941, and then emigration stopped altogether. Now, not all of them emigrated completely, but I assume that perhaps 5,000 or 10,000 sat in concentration camps, but as prisoners, not, for example, gassed or killed.

Part II, scan 212.

Eichmann:

In Austria too, within one year, from 1938–39, we brought the round total of 100,000 Jews to emigration. Thus the number of Jews in Austria, as established by the Israelite Religious Community, fell from that level to around 100,000;

Part II, scan 212.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Thus the disappearance of the 150,000 Jews is explained in this way.

Part II, scan 212.

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Other release quantities: 367 and several thousand

The interviewer mentions 367 Spanish Jews released via Spain. Elsewhere the corpus says several thousand were released or rescued, without a fixed count: Romanian releases in the scan 147 exchange and ships to Sweden in the unlabeled Tape 36 monologue. These are survival/release figures, not death totals.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Perhaps you remember if I tell you that in February 1944, 367 Spanish Jews were released from Bergen-Belsen via Spain. They then went to North Africa and received the right of transit from the Spanish government.

Part II, scan 043.

Eichmann:

Many, many thousands; I cannot give you the number.

Part II, scan 147.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

In the end, ransom was used for several thousand Jews, a small part of this money.

Part II, scan 147.

Unlabeled speaker:

at precisely the same time, ship space was made available to rescue a certain number, several thousand Jews, by taking them to Sweden;

Part II, scan 181.

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Wannsee discussion: more than eleven million as a population and target figure

The Wannsee text read aloud describes about eleven million people under consideration for the “Final Solution,” and the following country list totals over eleven million. It is a population/target list, not a death toll. Eichmann calls the list fabricated and objects to using before-and-after populations as a casualty calculation. The figures below reproduce this interview’s reading, including apparent errors; they should not be substituted for a critical edition of the Wannsee Protocol.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

In the course of this Final Solution of the European Jewish question, around 11 million are under consideration, distributed among the individual countries as follows;

Part III, scan 130.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Another 11 million, excluding those who emigrated;

Old Reich 131,800 — Ostmark 43,700 — so there were only 190,000 Jews present in the whole Ostmark?

Eastern territories 24,000 — General Government 2 million, 284,000.

What does “Eastern territories” mean?

Bialystok 400,000—

I named Bialystok separately; impossible, I can’t name a city.

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 74,200— Estonia, free of Jews—Latvia 3,500—Lithuania 34,000—Belgium 43,000—Denmark 5,600—France, occupied territory 165,000—unoccupied territory 700,000—Greece 69,600-Netherlands 160,800—Norway 1,300—

B) (the countries not under German influence;)

Bulgaria 48,000—England 330,000—Finland 2,300-Ireland 4,000—Italy 58,000—Albania 200—Croatia 40,000—Portugal 3,000—Romania including Bessarabia 342,000—Sweden 8,000-Switzerland 1,800—Serbia

No, no, no, this list has been fabricated.

Slovakia 88,000—Spain 6,000—Turkey........57,500ø—Hungary 752,800—Soviet Union 5 million—Ukraine 2,994,684—Belarus excluding Bialystok 446,484—total over 11 million—

Now the intention is quite clear: if there were so many, and now there are only so many left, then the others have been killed.

This has been fabricated, as surely as I stand here....

Part III, scan 131.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

^The influence of the Jews in all areas of the Soviet Union is known. In the European region about 5 million live; in the Asian region, nearly half a million Jews.

Part III, scan 132.

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Wannsee discussion: two and a half million in the General Government, half unable to work

In the discussion of Bühler’s contribution, the figure is 2½ million Jews, with half said to be unable to work. The following reply disputes the proportion unable to work by pointing to small tradesmen. Speaker boundaries inside the first paragraph are not marked, so the exchange is quoted without attributing the whole paragraph to a single person.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Yes, I can remember that; now I can remember Bühler, that the Jew in particular had to be removed from the General Government because, as a carrier of disease, he posed an eminent danger, and because through persistent black-market trading he threw the country’s economy into disorder. Of those—of the 2 1/2 million Jews in question—half, by the way, were said to be unable to work.

That is naturally exaggerated—precisely in the General Government the opposite is true—precisely the General Government supplied an abundance of small tradesmen.

Part III, scan 134.

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The train-count argument: one thousand, five hundred, and eighty trains

Using 2,500 people per train, Eichmann says 2½ million would imply 1,000 trains. He then offers 500 trains to all destinations as a “grossly exaggerated” guess, allocating 40–50, or even 80, to other destinations. The interviewer converts 500 over four years to 125 a year and 10–12 a month. These unsupported recollections are not a comprehensive transport record.

Eichmann:

So that would be 1,000 transport trains—that does not add up. I never received or requested 1,000 transport trains from the Reich Ministry of Transport, never.

Part III, scan 146.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

I do not know; I cannot say—but I will give a ballpark figure: say 500 trains. I claim that number is grossly exaggerated by me. But of course it is very difficult today when people are put under pressure; you can get anything from them if you promise them anything and everything. But records had to be filled out when the timetables were being prepared, and I can consider a number correct only if the records are shown to me.

What do those 500 trains refer to?

Everywhere—to everywhere.

Part III, scan 146.

Eichmann:

But if I am to name a number here without documents, based on my own feeling, a number out of the 500 trains, then I will calculate upward and say that there were the other loading stations indicated by the VWHA, 40–50 trains; let it be 80......

Part III, scan 147.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

That makes 125 trains a year for 4 years, that is, you transported 10–12 trains a month? Is that possible, is that too low or too high?

Yes, that is possible; it is indeed so, often there was a month when nothing was transported at all.

Part III, scan 147.

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Hungary: three hundred thousand deported, two hundred thousand remaining

Eichmann claims to have deported around 300,000 from an alleged Hungarian Jewish population of 400,000–500,000, leaving 200,000. The exchange proposes 2½ months, then four months, while Eichmann insists on a longer span and finally March to 16 December (nine months). A confused train calculation refers to 125 trains, 30 trains, and effectively one daily. These are his retrospective figures and the interviewer’s calculations.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Did you ever have a month with 50 trains? Or with 30?—

50 trains, no—. In Hungary I evacuated around 300,000 over a period of—

2½ months...

No, the period was considerably longer...

You did not transport 300,000 either; 200,000 were still left.

Well, there were around 400,000–500,000 Jews in Hungary, so let us take 500,000 and 200,000 remained inside; so I did transport 300,000, didn’t I?

But you had completed everything by August.—

Yes, today people are astonished by it; at the time we were astonished that such a thing was possible at all.... It was indeed an exceptional achievement, one never recorded before or after.

[handwritten insertion: 300,000 people]

So that would be 125 trains a month for 4 months, then 30 trains, practically one train every day.

Yes, that may be right for Hungary—but that happened with all available forces mobilized—[handwritten addition: illegible] so that the whole world was also upset—all within March to December 16, that is, 9 months, and one must divide the trains across that period.

Part III, scan 147.

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Auschwitz transport hypotheticals: 250,000, 50:50, and half a million

The continuation switches between 250,000 per month and per five months; assumes 2,500 per train, 100 trains and 1,000 overall; estimates capacity at 250,000; and uses a 50:50 labour/death assumption to double the requirement to half a million every five months. These internally inconsistent units and figures are preserved as the source’s argument, not endorsed arithmetic.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Then I would have had to transport 250,000 people to Auschwitz every month.
1. Is that impossible? How many transport trains alone would I have needed if I calculate 2,500 people per transport train?
Then I would have needed 100 transport trains every month, steadily, for four years. Every five months, 100 transport trains make 1,000 transport trains in all—never, ever. That is something so untrue as nothing else could be. In addition, one must consider that they would then all have had to be completely gassed and burned in the concentration camps. But after Pohl, or rather the RF, gave the order that those fit for work were to be integrated into the work process—and half, indeed more, had been fit for work. Let us calculate a high figure, say 50:50; then in truth I would have had to transport double, namely half a million every five months.
So we estimate the camp's capacity at 250,000; that was once the established population. Now the new transports arrived; those fit for work were separated out, and the established population was reduced or capacity increased to make room for the newcomers. Surely one would not take out a man, a Jew, who was already trained at a lathe and gas him to make room for a newcomer at that lathe.
Of course one must take that into consideration too—they were not all killed. But be that as it may, I would have had to send 250,000 people to Auschwitz every five months. Where would I have got these people from?

Part III, scan 150.

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Emigration figures used in the population discussion

These are emigrant counts, not deaths. Earlier recollections give Austria 100,000 in the first year and about 206,000 overall, then “206, 210,000”; for Prague, well over 100,000 while also recalling 97,000. In the Wannsee reading, 537,000 total is broken down in the transcript as Old Reich 63,000 (later 360,000), Ostmark 147,000 and Protectorate 30,000. Eichmann disputes the last two and offers 204,000–205,000 for the Ostmark. Preserve these discrepancies rather than silently correcting them.

Eichmann:

In the first year, 100,000 Jews emigrated after the central office in Vienna was established. It was probably the first well-organized emigration, in cooperation with German and Jewish employees. There may have been 206,000 in total, something like that; I don't know exactly anymore.

Part III, scan 026.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

In any case, I had the figure 206, 210,000, something like that, in mind.

How many got away from Prague?
I cannot say, but well over 100,000, although only a few months later the war broke out, because I still remember a figure of 97,000.

Part III, scan 027.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Despite these difficulties, from the seizure of power up to the cutoff date of 31 October 1941, around 537,000 Jews were brought to emigrate. Of that, from the Old Reich, from 31 January 1933, around 63,000.

From the Ostmark, from 15 March 1938, around 147,000.

From 15 March 1939, from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, around 30,000.

No, that is wrong; that is a misprint. It can’t possibly be 30,000.

From the Ostmark, no more than 147,000 either?

From the Reich, no more than 360,000.

I can’t tell you about the Reich—from the Ostmark, that can’t really be right either. I wasn’t listening closely enough while it was being read; these are my words, so I have to tell you that the figure for the Protectorate is certainly wrong; that made me listen more closely. And for the Ostmark, I did give you a figure of 204/205,000—that was written down by the Jewish Community in Vienna itself and drawn on my slip of paper. As for the Old Reich, well, I don’t know the number, but on the basis of this matter I would reject that figure.

Part III, scan 130.

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Poland and the proposed emigration pool: three million, three and a half million, half a million

Eichmann estimates three million Jews in Poland at the start of the war. A text read aloud describes about 3½ million across Germany, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia; the ensuing exchange subtracts three million for Poland and leaves half a million elsewhere, with a qualification about emigrants. These are population figures in the emigration discussion, not casualties.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

How many Jews remaining in Poland would you estimate there were by September 1, 1939?
3 million.

Part III, scan 028.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Eichmann returned to his emigration plans, and now had to include Polish Jewry in his calculations. It was clear that Palestine would never be in a position to receive the approximately 3 1/2 million Jews from Germany, Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

That would mean that, if the 3 million Jews went to Poland, only half a million would remain for Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia?
Yes, that may be right; subtract the emigrants and that can be exactly right.

Part III, scan 031.

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France: round-up and child-transport figures

The reading describes a 10,000 target versus 6,000 found in camps, 28,000 stateless Jews estimated in Paris, a planned 22,000 detainees versus 12,800 taken, including 3,000 working-age men and 4,000 children; 6,000 went to Drancy and 6,800 elsewhere. It subsequently gives 4,051 children; Eichmann says he cannot remember a transport of 4,000 children. These are arrest/deportation figures read to him, not a death tally.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Dannecker would not be satisfied with that and declared that for the major roundup set for July 13, the 10,000 Jews needed were to be taken directly from the internment camps in the unoccupied zone, so as not to have to deal with the difficulties of a new registration.

Dannecker then tried to obtain permission to inspect the camps in the unoccupied zones in order to determine what reserve of Jews was available. He then reported—the trip was not satisfactory, for there were only 6,000 Jews there

Part III, scan 160.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The French police then informed the Sipo that, according to their findings, there must be 28,000 stateless Jews in Paris, meaning that there was an adequate reservoir of Jews for the major roundup.

Part III, scan 161.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

The number of detainees was not 22,000, as Dannecker had calculated, but only 12,800. Of these, only 3,000 men were of working age, but there were 4,000 children. Of them, 6,000 were sent directly to Drancy, while 6,800, including all the children, ...

Part III, scan 162.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

Among all the terrible things brought by the Second World War, the story of the 4,051 children in the H.... is one of the worst.

Part III, scan 163.

Eichmann:

To that I can only say that I cannot remember a transport involving 4,000 children at all.

Part III, scan 164.

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Hungarian transports: 310,000 planned, at 12,000 a day

The Veesenmayer telegram read aloud records 200,000 in one zone and 110,000 in another, for 310,000 to be deported, with four daily transports of 3,000. Eichmann qualifies the derived 12,000 per day by availability of wagons. These are plans and transport figures, not death counts.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Ghettoization work in the Carpathian region, Zone 1, has been completed in these days. About 200,000 Jews have been registered in 10 camps and ghettos. In Transylvania, Zone 2, concentration of the roughly 110,000 Jews living in this area began today.
The deportation to Germany of the 310,000 Jews from Zones 1 and 2 is to begin in mid-May; four transports of 3,000 Jews each are planned daily. A timetable conference for these transports will take place in Vienna on 4 May, with representatives of the Reich Railway, the SIPO, and the Hungarian gendarmerie participating.

Part IV, scan 032.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

So this is also proof that there were trains with 3,000; with four trains that would be 12,000.

That may be, if I had the necessary wagons.

Part IV, scan 033.

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Population, migration, and a sterilization proposal

Related numerical passages used in the discussion include Frank’s statement that only a few of an initial 3.5m Jews remained, Eichmann’s speculation about tens or hundreds of thousands escaping through Western Europe, and a Brack letter referring to roughly 10m European Jews with an able-bodied subset. The original scan gives two to three million able-bodied people; this corrects the working translation’s “8 to 3 million.” It must not be silently converted into a death count.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

Then Frank says on August 2, 1943: “Things are quite clear with us. If someone asks, ‘What will happen to the Nazi Party?’ the Nazi Party will certainly outlive the Jews. We began here with 3.5 million Jews; of them only a few remain.”

Part IV, scan 056.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

There were thousands, tens of thousands—not Jews—who came from Holland, Belgium, and France, especially through unoccupied France, to Spain and Portugal and on to North Africa......
Some then went to England, to America, and so on..... so if that was already the case with people who were politically opposed to the Germans, and there were perhaps tens of thousands of them, then there is no reason to wonder that there were also tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of Jews

Part IV, scan 061.

Interviewer reading a Brack letter (scan-checked number):

Good, now let us return to Viktor Brack, who in a letter [cropped/illegible at right] to the RF, among other things, says that among approximately 10 million European Jews, in my estimation 2 to 3 million very able-bodied men and women are included.

Part IV, scan 183.

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Poland’s population: 2.5 to 3.5 million; migration of 100,000–250,000

The reader cites a rise in estimated Jewish population in Poland from 2.5 to 3.5 million and expressly connects this with later extermination calculations. Asked about migration to the Russian side, Eichmann gives a hunch of 100,000/200,000/250,000 and admits there was no way to check. These are population and migration claims, not murdered totals.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

So, a few things emerge from this: this is dated September 9, 1941—that is, two months after the start of the eastern campaign, two months after the Commissar Order took effect. He goes on to say that the estimated number of Jews in the East, in Poland, had risen from 2.5 million to 3.5 million. Probably these were Jews who had increasingly slipped through. This was also being reported from the Jewish side, so Poland became more and more a reservoir for Jews. This is not unimportant for the later calculation of the stated numbers of those exterminated. On the other hand, a large migration of Jews to the Russian side must also have taken place.

Part IV, scan 050.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

They fled like swarms of bees, and the Russians immediately let them pass if they gave them a watch ... if I am not mistaken, Murmelstein told me that.

Do you have any idea how many?

Yes, I once estimated them at 100,000–200,000–250,000, in any order of magnitude. But that was just a hunch on our part; we had no way to check, since they crossed over along the whole broad front. That was before the Russian war.

Part IV, scan 050.

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Belgium: 25,000 deported and 1,800 privileged prisoners

The interlocutor cites a Brussels court’s finding of responsibility for deportation of 25,000 while expressly distinguishing responsibility for subsequent torture and murder. Earlier in the same exchange several hundred Antwerp Jews and 1,800 privileged deportees are mentioned. Eichmann accepts that the general course described may have happened but says he does not remember the 1944 details.

Exchange (speakers inferred):

It is now explained here that the first native Belgian Jews arrived at Auschwitz camp on August 3, 1943. Until then there had been only one mass roundup in Belgium. On September 3, several hundred Belgian Jews from Antwerp were taken in furniture vans from their homes to the barracks ... (?) in [uncertain: Marlin?]. The Queen and Cardinal van Rey (?) then intervened, and Reeder again ordered the release of these Belgian Jews. The attempt at a mass roundup was not repeated after that.

That may be ...

Other privileged groups, 1,800, were taken in 1944 to Theresienstadt, Bergen-Belsen, and other German camps.

I no longer know about that; 1944—I no longer need to know, because I was no longer in office in Berlin for most of that year.

Part IV, scan 067.

Interviewer / text read aloud:

In any case, in the trial of Reeder and Falkenhausen, concluded in 1951, the Brussels court found their guilt in the deportation of 25,000 Jews to be proven, but did not hold them responsible for the later torture and murders.

Part IV, scan 067.

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