“d) The confiscation of private property in the western provinces was initiated by a decree of 31 January 1940. Special permission was required for acquisition of property and transfer of ownership rights in all enterprises in the incorporated territory. By another decree of 12 June 1940, Göring authorized the ‘Haupttreuhandstelle Ost’ to seize and administer, not only State property, but also the property of citizens of the ‘former Polish State.’
“e) The process of confiscation, however, went further. The property of Polish citizens became liable to seizure and confiscation unless the owner acquired German citizenship in accordance with Hitler’s decree of 8 October 1939.
“Other decrees dealt with the repayment of debts, because the sequestrators were authorized to repay debts to privileged creditors only. These were members of the ‘Deutsche Volksliste’ so far as war debts were concerned, as well as citizens of the Reich or the free city of Danzig, as regards debts incurred after 1 September 1939.”
I skip two pages of this report enumerating the companies which were specially created for carrying out of this plunder activity and also for plundering the Polish-Jewish population, which as is already known to the Tribunal, was later exterminated. I pass on to the end of the Polish Government report. The Tribunal will find this excerpt on Page 17 of the document book.
Mere quotations from these and other decrees may create a wrong impression as to the means used by the defendants in the case of the Jewish property in Poland. But it should be pointed out that steps concerning Jewish property were only preliminaries to infinitely greater crimes in the future. At the end of this section of the report is justly stated—I quote:
“Aside from the crimes which have been proved and described here, there are thousands of others which fade into insignificance beside the numberless crimes of mass murder, mass plunder, and mass destruction.”
It is impossible to enumerate all the crimes committed in Poland under the direct leadership of the Defendant Frank, who was the head of all the administration in the so-called Government General.
Frank’s diaries which were found and became part of the evidence in this case, give a clear and concrete idea of the crimes committed by the Hitlerites in Poland under his direction. In these diaries, Your Honors, are entries which have a direct bearing on the subject of my presentation.
Therefore I should like, with your permission, to quote excerpts from this diary which have not yet been quoted.
I quote from the volume entitled “Conference of Departmental Heads for 1939-1940” (Document Number USSR-223), Pages 11 and 12. In your document book, gentlemen, this excerpt is on Page 21: