THE PRESIDENT: We might break off here for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
LT. ATHERTON: If the Tribunal please, at the time the Tribunal rose, I was in the process of considering the functions of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart, his place as Deputy Governor General of Poland, between 1939 and 1940.
Now the Tribunal has already heard evidence of the atrocities which were perpetrated by the administration which Seyss-Inquart thus helped to create. The prosecutors for the Soviet Union will present to the Tribunal more evidence of such atrocities. For our present purposes, to show the importance of the work which this man did to further the Nazi plan for the Government General of Poland, it is enough to quote a few words from the diary of the Defendant Frank.
On the occasion of what was apparently a farewell lunch to Seyss-Inquart, when he became Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands, Frank said—and I now quote from Document 3465-PS, Pages 510 and 511 of Volume 2, the 1940 volume of the diary, which is Exhibit Number USA-614:
“I am extremely glad, Mr. Reich Commissioner and Reich Minister, to assure you, in this hour of your departure, that the months of our collaboration with you belong to the most precious memories of my life and that your work in the Government General will be remembered forever in the building of the coming world empire of the German nation.”
Skipping down a little, if the Tribunal please, Frank went on to say:
“In the construction of the Government General your name will forever take a place of honor as an originator of this organization and this state system. . . . I express our thanks, Mr. Reich Minister, for your collaboration and for your creative energy.”
Then reading the last two or three sentences:
“During the hard times common work united us here in the East, but it is at the same time the beginning point for a gigantic power development of the German Reich. Its perfection will show the development of the greatest energy unit which there ever was in the history of the world. In this work you were placed by the Führer, very effectively, in the most important position.”