I shall not dwell on the discussion which might arise about these misappropriations. I shall go straight on to the interrogatory of the Defendant Rosenberg. This is the document that was introduced yesterday by the Economic Section of the French Prosecution, which bears the Exhibit Number RF-1331, and which we use today as Document Number ECH-25.
I think that the Tribunal will easily be able to refer to this interrogatory, but meanwhile I should like very briefly to summarize the essential points which I think should be brought up.
Colonel Hinkel, questioning the Defendant Rosenberg, asked him on what legal grounds such looting could be justified. The Defendant Rosenberg first answered that these seizures were justified by the hostility which certain groups had manifested toward the National Socialist ideology. But a little further on, on Page 4, the Defendant Rosenberg made the following verbatim statement:
“I considered them”—he is referring to the measures which he himself had taken—“a necessity caused by the war and by the reasons which caused the war.”
A few moments later, pressed by Colonel Hinkel, the Defendant Rosenberg invoked the necessity of putting into safekeeping property thus seized, a necessity which will certainly constitute one of the main points of his defense. But Colonel Hinkel replied to the Defendant Rosenberg:
“And so if your idea was to safeguard art objects, it sounds rather strange, doesn’t it, that you were going to safeguard only some art objects and not others?
“On the other hand, with regard to the maintenance of the objects, there were objects at least equal in value to those which had been removed, but to which no one paid any attention.”
Finally, the Defendant Rosenberg admitted that he had very often given no receipt to those concerned, which in itself precluded any idea of eventually returning the property to the legitimate owners.
The truth of the matter is that these were treasures of very considerable value, and the Defendant Rosenberg in the end admitted that he regarded these acquisitions as an accomplished fact. We consider that the fact of having thus removed works of art and objects of value is purely and simply what is known in civil law as misappropriation. These misappropriations were made on a vast scale with the grandiose means which the Third Reich had at its disposal, means which were further facilitated by the intervention of the Army and the Luftwaffe. But it is nonetheless true that the criminal character of these misappropriations remains; and we urge the Tribunal, when it delivers judgment, to declare that it was by fraudulent seizure that the Defendant Rosenberg and his codefendants robbed France and the western countries of all the objects of value and all the art treasures and cultural treasures.
As to what the objects themselves consisted of, Mr. President and Your Honors, I would respectfully refer the Tribunal to the report submitted by the Economic Section yesterday, which was made by Dr. Scholz, the associate of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. This report was submitted by the Economic Section under Exhibit Number RF-1323 (Document Number 1015-PS), and in it the Tribunal will find enumerated everything that the Einsatzstab took out of France. In this connection I shall make an incidental remark in answer to the question that the President asked my colleague yesterday about the Rothschild collections. The President asked my colleague, “Have you proof that certain collections and objects of value were taken from the Rothschild collections?”