Now, it seems to us that this Document Number 1948-PS, which was signed by Fischer, concerning compulsory labor of able-bodied Jews, answers the argument that persons of the rank of Gauleiter were ignorant of the atrocities of the Gestapo and the SS in their own locality. It shows further that even the assistants of the Gau leaders were informed of the details of the persecution projects which were afoot at the time.
Schirach also had concern for, and knowledge of, the housing shortage in Vienna, which was alleviated for some members of the alleged master race who succeeded to the houses of the luckless Jews who were moved into oblivion in Poland.
On December 3, 1940, the conspirator Lammers wrote a letter to Schirach. It is our Document 1950-PS, Page 64 of your document book, and it is offered in evidence as Exhibit USA-681. The letter is very short:
December 1940. . .”
the stationery of the Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery, and it is marked “secret”:
“To the Reich Governor in Vienna, Gauleiter Von Schirach:
“As Reichsleiter Bormann informs me, the Führer has decided, after receipt of one of the reports made by you, that the 60,000 Jews still residing in the Reichsgau Vienna will be deported most rapidly”—that is, still during the war—“to the Government General, because of the housing shortage prevalent in Vienna. I have informed the Governor General in Kraków, as well as the Reichsführer SS, about this decision of the Führer, and I request you also to take cognizance of it.”—Signed—“Lammers.”
As a last piece of illustrative evidence against this youngest member of the defendants in the dock, I take something from his own lips, which was published for all Vienna and, indeed, for all Germany and the world to know, even at that time. It appears in the Vienna edition of the Völkischer Beobachter, on the 15th of September 1942, Document 3048-PS, your document book, Page 106. It is already in evidence as Exhibit USA-274.
I would like to point out that these words were uttered before the so-called European Youth League in Vienna in 1942. The Tribunal will recall that Schirach was still Reich Leader for Youth Education in the NSDAP at that time: