M. DUBOST: Did Seyss-Inquart return the property of the 1,000 Jews who were deported to Theresienstadt?
HIRSCHFELD: As to the Jews who were deported to Theresienstadt, I know that these people, on the basis of a promise given to my colleague Frederiks, were to be given preferential treatment; but that their property had been given back is not known to me and I do not believe it.
M. DUBOST: Was that property returned to them?
HIRSCHFELD: It had been confiscated. I did not hear that it was returned to them.
M. DUBOST: Seyss-Inquart said that in February 1941, 400 Jews had been transported from Amsterdam to Mauthausen as a measure of reprisal for the fact that a member of the NSB was supposedly murdered at Amsterdam by Jews. What do you know about this?
HIRSCHFELD; I know that in February 1941 there were two difficult situations in Amsterdam. One referred to shipyard workers. I believe 3,000 of them were to be forcibly sent to Germany. I intervened with Seyss-Inquart and succeeded in preventing this. There was, however, unrest in Amsterdam on this subject. In the second place, Jews were already being arrested in Amsterdam, which was the occasion for a strike. The incident of these 400 Jews of whom you speak took place after this strike in Amsterdam as far as I recall, because they wanted to make the Jews responsible for the strike. Fischböck told me so himself, and I said that I did not believe it and that this was only an excuse.
M. DUBOST: If I have understood you correctly, these Jews were arrested because the population in Amsterdam was opposed to their deportation. There were demonstrations and riots during which members of the NSB were killed. These Jews were therefore not deported in reprisal for the murder of the members of the NSB; on the contrary, the men of the NSB were killed at the time when they were going to arrest the Jews, before there was any idea of reprisal.
HIRSCHFELD: I recall that in these days the Amsterdam workers resisted when the Jews were being arrested, and this led to an uprising in Amsterdam and to the strike. Exactly what happened I do not know from my own experience.
M. DUBOST: Did Seyss-Inquart prohibit ration cards to be given to workers who evaded deportation to Germany?
HIRSCHFELD: When in May 1943 the so-called age groups were called up for labor commitment in Germany, instructions were sent on 6 May to the competent Netherlands authorities announcing that workers who were called in these age groups could no longer receive any food cards. That was a decree of 6 May 1943, signed by an official of the Reich Commissariat by the name of Effger. We received this instruction; and although it reached us when martial law was in effect, the instruction was not carried out by the Netherlands authorities. What the German authorities argued, in effect, was: “Whoever does not work for Germany gets nothing to eat.”