THE PRESIDENT: Certainly.
M. MOUNIER: This declaration is simply the following:
“The special staff”—that is to say, the Einsatzstab Rosenberg—“not only seized a very considerable portion of the collection which the Rothschilds had left behind in their Paris mansion. . . .”
I shall not read the rest.
Here then, Gentlemen, is an official report which cannot be disputed and which demonstrates, like the previous proof, that the Rothschild collection was among those pillaged.
I do not insist on these facts, which are known to you. It seems to me that the two points on which I have just cast a ray of light suffice to make it clear that illegal seizures—fraudulent seizures—were really operated by the Defendant Rosenberg to the detriment of France and to the detriment, likewise, of the western countries. As for their importance, I do not want to abuse the patience of the Tribunal by quoting statistics. I respectfully ask the Tribunal to refer to the Scholz report which I have twice mentioned in the course of my previous statements.
I should not, however, wish to leave the case of Rosenberg, for the time being, without quoting to the Tribunal a passage from an article by the French writer François Mauriac, of the French Academy. François Mauriac was present on 7 November 1945 at the inaugural session of the National Constituent Assembly at the Palais Bourbon. On this occasion François Mauriac invoked a memory which was recalled in Le Figaro of 6 November 1945 in the following terms:
“Almost five years ago to a day, from the height of this rostrum, the most illustrious in Europe, a man spoke to other men dressed in field grey. His name was Alfred Rosenberg. I can testify to the exact date. It was 25 November 1940.
“Rosenberg leaned his elbows on this rostrum, where the voices of Jaurès and of Albert De Mun were once heard and where, on 11 November 1918, Clemenceau nearly died of joy. Here are his words:
“ ‘In one gigantic revolutionary burst’—he said—‘the German nation has reaped such a harvest as never before in its history. The French will admit one day, if they are honest, that Germany has freed them from the parasites of which they could not rid themselves unaided.’