I skip one paragraph and continue the quotation, which the Tribunal will find on Page 86 of the document file, fifth paragraph.
“Furthermore, SS-Obergruppenführer Krüger and I have decided that appeasement measures should be speeded up. I pray you, gentlemen, to take the most rigorous measures possible to help us in this task. For my own part, I will do everything in my power in order to facilitate its execution. I appeal to you as the champions of National Socialism, and I need surely say nothing further. We will carry out this measure and I may tell you in confidence that we shall be acting on the Führer’s orders. The Führer said to me, ‘The handling of German policy in the Government General and its establishment on a firm basis is a matter which devolves personally on the responsible men in the Government General.’
“He expressed himself in this way: The men capable of leadership whom we have found to exist in Poland must be liquidated. Those following men must . . . be eliminated in their turn. There is no need to burden the Reich and the Reich police organization with this. There is no need to send these elements to Reich concentration camps, and by so doing involve ourselves in disputes and unnecessary correspondence with their relations. We will liquidate our difficulties in the country itself, and we will do it in the simplest way possible.”
I conclude this quotation and pass on to Page 87, second paragraph, first column of the text. I think that this quotation is characteristic, for it was precisely Frank, as the diary proves, who first thought about the creation of special concentration camps, later officially known as “Vernichtungslager” (extermination camps).
I quote the same speech of Frank, Page 9, first paragraph:
“As to the concentration camps, we know perfectly well that concentration camps in the true sense of the word are not going to be organized in the Government General. Every suspected person must be immediately liquidated. Internees from the Government General at present in concentration camps in the Reich must be handed over to us for ‘Operation AB’ or liquidated there.”
I quote further from the same speech in the section—further excerpts from the diary of Hans Frank concerning the year 1940. The Tribunal will find this place on Page 94 of the document book, fifth paragraph, first column of the text. I quote:
“We cannot burden the concentration camps in the Reich with our affairs. We had terrible trouble with the Kraków professors. If we had done the thing from here, it would have been different. For this reason I would ask you most urgently not to send any more people to concentration camps in the Reich but to liquidate them here or to impose punishment according to regulations. Any other method is a burden for the Reich and a perpetual source of trouble. We have an entirely different method of treatment here and we must adhere to it. I must point out expressly that even if peace is concluded, this treatment will not be altered. Peace will mean only that as a world power we should continue more intensively the same general political operations. . . .”
I deem it opportune to draw the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that all the major extermination camps were indeed located on the territory of the Government General.
There was its own periodicity or cycles in the fascist crimes and in the proportions they assumed, and if in 1940 Frank made a long speech to the policemen justifying the so-called “actions” with regard to several thousand Polish intellectuals, then on 18 March 1944, in his speech at the Reichshof, he stated—I quote from Page 93 of the document file, third paragraph, second column. I begin the quotation: