“. . . On the other hand I also support personally the work of your Einsatzstab wherever I can do so, and a great part of the seized cultural objects can be accounted for by the fact that I was able to assist the Einsatzstab with my organizations.”
If I have tried the patience of the Tribunal with numerous details as to the origin, the growth, and the operation of the art-looting organization, it is because I feel that it will be impossible for me to convey to you a full conception as to the magnitude of the plunder without conveying to you first, information as to the vast organizational work that was necessary in order to enable the defendants to collect in Germany cultural treasures of staggering proportions.
Nothing of value was safe from the grasp of the Einsatzstab. In view of the great experience of the Einsatzstab in the complex business of the organized plunder of a continent, its facilities were well suited to the looting of material other than cultural objects. Thus, when Rosenberg required equipment for the furnishing of the offices of the administration in the East, his Einsatzstab was pressed into action to confiscate Jewish homes in the West. Document Number L-188, which is Exhibit USA-386 and which I now offer in evidence, is a copy of a report submitted by the director of Rosenberg’s Office West, operating under the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. I wish to quote at some length from this document and I call the Tribunal’s attention to the third paragraph on Page 3 of the translation:
“The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg was charged with the carrying out of this task”—that is, the seizure of art properties—“in the course of this seizure of property. At the suggestion of the Director West of the Special Section of the Einsatzstab, it was proposed to the Reichsleiter that the furniture and other contents of the unguarded Jewish homes should also be secured and dispatched to the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories for use in the Eastern Territories.”
The last paragraph on the same page states:
“At first all the confiscated furniture and goods were dispatched to the administrations of the Occupied Eastern Territories. Owing to the terror attacks on German cities which then began and in the knowledge that the bombed-out persons in Germany ought to have preference over the Eastern people, Reich Minister and Reichsleiter Rosenberg obtained a new order from the Führer according to which the furniture, et cetera, obtained through the ‘M Action’ was to be put at the disposal of bombed-out persons within Germany.”
The report continues with a description of the efficient methods employed in looting the Jewish homes in the West (top of Page 4 of translation):
“The confiscation of Jewish homes was carried out as follows: When no records were available of the addresses of Jews who had fled or departed, as was the case, for instance, in Paris, so-called requisitioning officials went from house to house in order to collect information as to abandoned Jewish homes.—They drew up inventories of those homes and sealed them. . . . In Paris alone, about twenty requisitioning officials requisitioned more than 38,000 homes. The transportation of these homes was completed with all the available vehicles of the Union of Parisian Moving Contractors who had to provide up to 150 trucks, 1,200 to 1,500 French laborers daily.”
If Your Honor pleases, I am omitting the rest of the details of that report because our French colleagues will present the details later.
Looting on such a scale seems fantastic. But I feel I must refer to another statement, for though the seizure of the contents of over 71,000 homes and their shipment to the Reich in upwards of 26,000 railroad cars is by no means a petty operation, the quantities of plundered art treasures and books and their incalculable value, as revealed in the document I am about to offer, will make these figures dwindle by comparison.