Apart from that, one had to expect that if the war should last a fairly long time, the Jews who naturally because of the treatment they had undergone were not, and could not be, friends of the Germans, might become dangerous, and, therefore, that they should be considered as enemies—if not in the formal sense of the word, at least, practically so.
The Reich Commissioner began to carry out this order with much hesitation, although in the official conference he pointed out that he could not help doing so because he could not assume such a responsibility.
So far as I remember, this can be ascertained immediately from the Reich Commissioner’s ordinance bulletin. At first, steps were taken to register the property of the Jews, then to prevent German maidservants from being in Jewish households; the Police requested that especially, because naturally all kind of information could be carried back and forth in this way. Then, when Berlin became more insistent in that question, the Reich Commissioner finally decided to decree and regulate a registration of all Jews by ordinance. It was pointed out particularly that we would at least have to know where the Jews were, because only in this way could the proper Security Police control and supervision be made possible.
In themselves those were measures which were far behind those which were already being carried out in the Reich at that time.
Then more pressure was exerted; I do not know whether it was perhaps Heydrich who did this at that time, whether he was already in the Netherlands at that time—I never saw him. I know only that he visited the Reich Commissioner in the Netherlands at least twice.
At any rate, in the course of the year 1941 and particularly in 1942, a comprehensive treatment of the question was urged. At first the Reich Commissioner still believed that he could meet these demands by bringing the Jews in the Netherlands together in one place where they could be more easily supervised, and therefore the idea arose that in Amsterdam one, two, or three districts of the city might be used to house the Jews there, which was also connected with the necessity of resettling a part or a considerable number of non-Jewish Netherlanders because there was not yet a completely separate Jewish quarter at that time. The non-Jewish Dutch did not live completely apart from them.
THE PRESIDENT: All this evidence that the witness is giving is all in the decree and has already been given by the defendant, has it not? What is the difference?
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the point of it?
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. President, I wanted to say only one thing, and that is that on such an important question I wanted to have confirmation briefly by the witness.