“...until the end of 1944, the method of transportation for deportees was bearable....
“Anyone who reported for the manpower mobilization in January 1945, enjoyed improved transportation facilities—that is, almost the whole journey by rail, although only in freight cars....”
SEYSS-INQUART: Even for our own use we had no other cars at that time.
I should like to refer to the fact that I also drafted Dutch workers in order to carry out the construction work entrusted to me by the Führer on the resistance lines east of the Ijssel. I used part of the transports which came from Rotterdam, et cetera, for this purpose, and thus I prevented these people from being sent to the Reich. I had no influence on the treatment in the Reich; I only forbade further transports into the Gau Essen, because it was reported to me that in the Rees Camp the treatment was very poor, and that some Dutch people had died.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now I come to the next count of the Indictment—that is, to the Jewish question. The Netherlands Government report, Exhibit USA-195, sums up all ordinances submitted by the Prosecution. I should like to submit this Document 1726-PS to my client, so that it may remind him of the laws. The Court already has it.
[Turning to the defendant.] What did you, as Reich Commissioner, do about the Jewish question?
SEYSS-INQUART: When I took over the functions of the Reich Commissioner, I of course realized that I had to take a definite attitude, and would have to take some steps with regard to the Jews in the Netherlands. Amsterdam, in western Europe, is perhaps one of the best known and one of the oldest seats of Jewish communities in western Europe. Moreover, in the Netherlands there were a great many German Jewish emigrants.
I will say quite openly that since the first World War and the postwar period, I was an anti-Semite and went to Holland as such. I need not go into detail about that here. I have said all that in my speeches, and would refer you to them. I had the impression, which will be confirmed everywhere, that the Jews, of course, had to be against National Socialist Germany. There was no discussion of the question of guilt as far as I was concerned. As head of an occupied territory I had only to deal with the facts. I had to realize that, particularly from the Jewish circles, I had to reckon with resistance, defeatism, and so on.
I told Generaloberst Von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, that in the Netherlands I would remove Jews from leading posts in the economy, the press, and the administration. The measures taken by me from May 1940 to March 1941 were limited to that. The Jewish officials were dismissed, but were given pensions. The Jewish firms were registered, and the heads of the firms were dismissed. In the spring of 1941 Heydrich came to me in the Netherlands. He told me that we would have to expect that the greatest resistance would come from Jewish circles. He told me that the Jews would at least have to be treated like other enemy aliens. The English, for instance, in the Netherlands, were interned and their property confiscated. In view of the large number of Jews—about 140,000—this was not so simple. I admit frankly that I did not object to this argument of Heydrich’s. I also felt that this was necessary in a war which I absolutely considered a life and death struggle for the German people. For that reason, in March 1941 I ordered that the Jews in the Netherlands be registered. And then things went on step by step.
I will not say that the final results—as far as the Netherlands are concerned—were intended thus from the beginning; but we decided on this method. The regulations cited here, if they appeared in the Dutch Legal Gazette, were mostly signed by me personally. At least, they were published with my express assent. Individual measures mentioned here, however, were not by me. For example, in February 1,000 Jews were supposed to have been arrested and sent to Buchenwald and Mauthausen. That much I know. In the Amsterdam ghetto...