“1. Previous evacuations of Jews have been restricted to Jews who were not married to non-Jews. In consequence, the numbers of Jews who have remained in the interior is quite considerable. As the ordinance would also include these Jews as well, the measures it plans are not objectless.
“2. The provision of article 7 of the ordinance according to which, at the death of a Jew, his fortune escheats in its entirety to the Reich, results in the accumulation of considerably less work for the State Police. At the present time the procedure used by the State Police in handling the confiscation of such Jewish inheritances must frequently be modified to suit each special case.”
He adds that the provision for the transfer of Jews to the police is based on an agreement between Himmler and Thierack, who had by that time succeeded Schlegelberger as Reich Minister of Justice.
On 21 April 1943 a memorandum for the files of the Reich Chancellery reports a conference of State secretaries on the proposed ordinance at which the defendant Rothenberger was present. The conference came to the conclusion that certain modifications should be made. The final result of the prolonged discussion was the enactment of the 13th regulation under the Reich Citizenship Law of 1 July 1943, which was signed by Frick, Bormann, and Thierack. It will be recalled that that regulation, supra, provided that criminal actions committed by Jews should be punished by the police; that the property of a Jew should be confiscated after his death. These and other provisions were also made effective in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia where German courts had jurisdiction.
With few exceptions Jews were wholly excluded from the administration of justice. In a speech before the NSDAP congress on 14 September 1934, Hans Frank stated:
“It is unbearable to us to permit Jews to play any role whatsoever in the German administration of justice. * * * It will therefore be our firm aim to exclude Jews increasingly from the administration of the law as time goes on.”
On another occasion Frank, as president of the Academy for German Law, directed: “For all future time it will be impossible that Jews will act in the name of German Law. * * *”
In an order reminiscent of the “burning of the books” in medieval days, Frank also directed that the works of Jewish authors should be removed from all public or study libraries whenever possible.
On 5 April 1933 the defendant Barnickel made an entry in his diary:
“Today it is said in the newspaper that in Berlin there are about 3,500 attorneys and more than half of them are Jewish. Only 35 of them are to be admitted as lawyers. * * * To exclude these Jewish attorneys from one day to the next means terrible brutality.”