I also offer in evidence the affidavit of Otto Hoffmann, SS Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS and Police, our Document L-49. I offer it as Exhibit Number USA-473. Hoffmann was Chief of the Main Office for Race and Settlement in the SS Supreme Command, until 1943. This affidavit was taken on August 4, 1945, at Freising, Germany. I shall read Paragraph 2 of that affidavit:
“The executive power, in other words the carrying out of all so-called resettlement actions, that is to say, sending away of Polish and Jewish settlers and those of non-German blood from a territory in Poland destined for Germanization, was in the hands of the Chief of the RSHA (Heydrich, and later Kaltenbrunner, since the end of 1942). The Chief of the RSHA also supervised and issued orders to the so-called immigration center, which classified the Germans living abroad who returned to Germany and directed them to the individual farms already freed. The latter was done in agreement with the Staff Main Office of the Reichsführer SS.”
Other SS agencies were involved in the program for deportation. The Tribunal has already received in evidence our Document 1352-PS, as Exhibit Number USA-176. It is a report relating to the confiscation of Polish agricultural enterprises, dated May 22, 1940, and signed “Kusche.” Portions of that document dealing with the confiscation of Polish agricultural enterprises and the deportation of Polish owners of the land to Germany were read into the record. I shall read only one further paragraph showing SS personnel involved in this action. It appears on Page 2 of the translation, the first full paragraph; and on Page 10 of the original, Paragraph 2.
Referring to the deportation of Polish farmers, the report says; and I quote:
“Means of transportation to the railroad can be provided: 1. By the enterprise of the East German Corporation of Agricultural Development; 2. By the SS noncommissioned officers’ school in Lublinitz and the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
“These two latter places will also detail the necessary SS men for the day of the confiscation, and so forth.”
The extent to which almost all departments of the Supreme Command of the SS were concerned with the evacuation program is shown by the minutes of a meeting on the 4th of August 1942 dealing with the deportation of Alsatians. It is our Document R-114, and was received in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-314. I shall read only the list of persons and offices represented at that conference, since the body of the report has been read in part into the record already.
I start at the beginning of the document, Page 1 of R-114:
“Memo on meeting of 4. 8. 42. Subject: General directions for the treatment of deported Alsatians.