“NOTICE
“The Superior SS and Police Chief gives notice that on 20 November 1944 Schutzgruppenmann Janssen and on 13 December 1944 the Senior Officer Candidate Guse were shot in the back by criminal Netherlands elements. Both were robbed of their pistols.
“Independent of further investigation of the perpetrators, two houses were blasted and 12 Netherlanders were executed at the place of one of the crimes as reprisals.
“The Hague, 16 Dec 1944.” (1163-PS)
In an interrogation under oath Seyss-Inquart has acknowledged that Netherlanders were shot as hostages without trial. While he sought to shift responsibility to the SS he admitted that upon one occasion the SS called on him to furnish 50 hostages and that he gave five instead, all of whom were shot. (Transcript of Interrogation of Seyss-Inquart, 18 September 1945, p. 20)
Other crimes against humanity are documented in the statement of the Dutch Government. The vastness of the scale of the commission of such crimes and the necessary notoriety thereof clearly implicate Seyss-Inquart as the responsible civil head of the German Government in the Netherlands territory. (1726-PS)
E. SEYSS-INQUART PARTICIPATED IN THE CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AS SET FORTH IN THE INDICTMENT.
(1) Austria.
(a) Persecution of the Jews. While Seyss-Inquart was the Reich Governor of the Province of Austria, laws were issued against Jews and against those who opposed the Nazi Regime politically. As has been shown, this usually took the form of decrees providing for the sequestration and confiscation of the property of these so-called “enemies of the State.”
In the early days of November 1938, pogroms against the Jews took place all over the German Reich, including Austria. These pogroms resulted from the killing of von Rath, a diplomatic official at the German Embassy in Paris, by a young Jew named Grynszpan. Jewish synagogues, homes and shops were smashed and destroyed by fire. Large numbers of Jews were arrested, jailed, or placed in concentration camps. A partial report as to what occurred during the 9th and 10th of November 1938 is found in a letter written by the Reich Commissar for the Reunion of Austria with the German Reich, Josef Buerckel, to Goering, dated 18 November 1938. This report reveals that the fire department was not utilized to control the flames consuming Jewish homes, stores, shops, and synagogues. The school children in Vienna were given an opportunity to participate in the demonstration “according to the order.” Buerckel’s report also discloses that enormous quantities of valuables, jewelry, and merchandise were stolen from the Jews during these pogroms. (2237-PS)