Is that what you were working for when you say you were working for the international solution to this problem, an annihilation of world Jewry?
STREICHER: If that is how you understand “annihilation.” That was written by my chief editor at the time. He says that the Jewish problem will not yet be solved when the last Jew will have left Germany. And when he suddenly says that only when world Jewry has been annihilated will it be solved, then he certainly may have meant that the power of world Jewry should be annihilated. But my Party comrade Holz did not think of mass killing or the possibility of mass killing.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: The German word used there is “vernichtet,” is it not? Look at your copy. “Vernichtet” that means “to annihilate.”
STREICHER: Today, when you look back, you could interpret it like that, but not at that time.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well, we won’t waste time because we have quite a number to look through. Will you look on to the next page. That was in January you were writing that. In April 1939, Document D-810, Exhibit GB-332, I refer only to the last two lines. This is an article again by your editor: “Then perhaps their graves will proclaim that this murderous and criminal people has, after all, met its deserved fate.”
What do you mean by “graves” there? Do you mean excluding them from the business of the world?
STREICHER: This is the first time that I have seen this article. That is the statement of opinion of a man who was probably looking ahead and making a play on words; but as far as I knew him, and as far as we discussed the Jewish problem, there was no question of mass extermination; we did not even think of it. Maybe it was his wish—I do not know—but anyway, that is the way it happened to be written.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Just turn over, will you now, to May 1939, Document Number D-811, Exhibit Number GB-333. I quote the last six lines: “There must be a punitive expedition against the Jews in Russia.”
This, of course, was before the Russian invasion.
“There must be a punitive expedition against the Jews in Russia, a punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every murderer and criminal must expect, death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be utterly exterminated. Then the world will see that the end of the Jews is also the end of Bolshevism.”