I remained until this had taken place; left the village and already at the appointed edge of the town the point of the column was standing at the determined time and then started marching. I was up in the front at the Rumanian side of the shore, and let this column pass by me. They left in about one to one and a half hours, I can not say exactly, it was a close column. A few times there were interruptions but the thing took its course in one go.
There were some officers I had, or some man, to find out whether anybody was left at that camp site. I can not say whether I was there myself. I would assume so, but no one was there, and we didn't expect any one who would want to remain there, That completed my mission. I thanked the men. I thanked the German bridge commander, and early the next morning I went back to the Garrison in Tscharnomin and made a report about it to the Satzgruppe chief, and told them about the fact this camp had been quickly taken care of, for which I had to thank nobody but the German bridge commander.
Q. Witness who was the German bridge commander?
A. The German bridge commander was the then master sergeant in the engineers company, by profession, an attorney, Dr. Harsch of Halle.
Q. Could this German bridge commander observe this whole procession from the beginning to the end?
A. Yes absolutely.
Q. And did any shootings take place on this occasion?
A. Certainly not.
DR. HOFFMAN: Your Honor, may I notify the Tribunal that just today I received the address of this German bridge commander by telegram, therefore, I would want to make an application to hear this witness, perhaps. I would be glad if I might suggest that neither I nor the Prosecutor examine this witness, but that the witness be interrogated by the Tribunal here in the interest of an immediate hearing.
THE PRESIDENT: That is entirely satisfactory to the Tribunal, and I would suggest that you notify the defense information center to telegraph this man to proceed to Nurnberg to testify in this case, and to report to the defense information center.
DR. HOFFMANN: Yes. BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q. How long did your command remain in Tscharnomin?
A. Only a few more days. I think that on the 23rd the Group-staff left this place and went to Ananjew, and there the Commando X-B was transferred also. One or two days later Einsatzcommando XII left Tscharnomin, all of it.
Q. Where did your commando go?
A. It had the order to proceed to the Ethnic German areas, into that area which includes the German Settlement Area in Tscharnomin.
Q. What was the cause and what was the nature of the work assigned up there?
A. The cause of this was the following: not be discussed here, and which in its Eastern frontier border at the Bug River, was declared to be part of the Rumanian Sovereign territory at that time. That is, the Rumanian Sovereign territory was extended up to that point, East. I assume that because of this the commandos which were to bring in the harvest had to interrupt their work because the German Economic Command of the Army, as well as all the other agencies, had to leave this area because If it became Rumanian Sovereign territory, then it was no longer German rear Army area, End, therefore, all German agencies in this area evacuated that territory, and, thus, the necessity of the new work which Einsatzcommando XII got, was the protection of the interest of the large settlements of Ethnic Germans in this area.
Q Was this also Rumanian sovereign territory? never became an area of the German civil administration. On one of the maps existing the Bug is denoted as a special border. such a German occupation? between the German Army agencies there and between the Rumanian Army leadership and between the German agencies there, and were made in Berlin. I can imagine that it was the Army Staff of the 11th Army and that it agreed with the Rumanian war leadership, and that because of this agreement it was permitted to a German commando to look after the interests of these ethnic Germans.
Q Against what were they to be protected? immediate protection against excesses of military units or other people from the population. Without passing any judgment on our then Allies, the Rumanians it can be said , as is shown by many reports, and as we are able to establish it from our own experience, that the Rumanians soldiers were very much undisciplined.
Q When did the advance from Tscharnomin come about?
Q And what was your objective? definite objective, if I disregard the fact that Speyer was the Center of this area, in which place, weeks ago, the Special Commando 10-A of Einsatzgruppe D had been stationed and had been active. Furthermore, it was our mission to distribute the commando in the smallest detachments over the whole area in such a manner of ten that often there were only two, three or four men; that it might be possible to get hold of these ethnic Germans, to register them, and as far as they were living in mixed settlements with Ukrainians, to get them out by exchanging them, and resettle them in purely German areas.
Q Why did the Special Commando 10-A not remain there? 10-A was attached to d definite Army unit and that it always moved with this Army unit. The front had been advanced further forward and the Commando 10-A probably had kept its Army unit to the front, but Einsatzkommando 12 was not subordinate to any Army unit. activity cease there? that is, until the 15th of October, the last remnants of it had been taken out. I, personally, was not able to do much during this period. Until the first days of September at the latest, I remained active as commanding officer of the commando. Already in the first weeks of our stay in Russia I had to suffer from dysentery and hardly any of the officers or men were spared from this disease,I think not even Herr Ohlendorf himself.
THE PRESIDENT: Was there any special reason why it did not hit him.
THE WITNESS: No. BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q Witness please don't become so extended. We know that you got dysentery, Herr Ohlendorf too, and that you got sick of another disease.
A It was a complication. I had an intestinal ailment, and after the examination it was found that only by hospital treatment could I be cured. I had myself examined at a field hospital. When I reported to the Einsatzgruppe Chief in Ananjev, that is about a week after we had left, and after I had distributed some parts of my unit among the area, the Einsatzgruppe Chief noted that I was painfully ill. He asked me about it, and I told him what the examination had resulted in, and he ordered that I should go into a hospital, that he would give the command of the commando to Captain Haussmann and "when you are all right again, report back to me."
Q When was this exactly?
Q And how long did you stay in the hospital and where? had been moved. I had even the commando to Haussmann, and it must have been around the 6th or 8th of September that I was admitted into the Field Hospital 227. The Hospital was in Hove Odessa on the other side of the Bug River. That is in the in the German rear Army area.
Q How long did you stay in the hospital? September.
Q And where did you go them? Nikolaev.
Q What orders did you get where you reported there? thus commando, and that I wanted to go back into the area where the Einsatzkommando 12 was active. Then the Einsatzgruppe Chief told me that this whole work had been interrupted, a detail of the Office for Registration of Ethnic Germans was moving in. That was the Reich agency or the Reich organization which was competent for such tasks, namely the registration and supply and care of these people, and when the commando of this agency moved in, the units of Einsatzkommando 12, after handing over their functions, were to be relieved.
Q And where was the commando to go then? Nikolaev in order to await new orders there, namely, to be attached to a new Army.
Q And when did the commando actually arrive in Nikolaev?
A The various detachments came after each other. I executed the order by notifying the various detachments that after the command of the agency for ethnic Germans had arrived that they should leave, and the first ones arrived in the first days of October, and the last around the 15th of October. That is when the last part must have arrived in Nikolaev.
Q What activity did you have in Nikolaev?
A In Nikolaev I reorganized the commando. We went into the billets of Commando 11-A, I believe, which had been active in Nikolaev previously. The Chief III of the Group Staff and others assigned the commando various missions in the reporting service about the domestic problem there, about the economic reconstruction, about industry, shipbuilding, social structure, etc. you received? the commando from the 15th of October on lasted only ten days. Then again parts of the commando were already on the march.
Q And where were they supposed to go? attached to the 17th Army which was then about seven hundred kilometers further east, in the area between Rostov and Stalino, where it was active and where it was advancing. it had been with the 17th Army?
A. It would have been committed . the way the Commando 10-A was committed with the 11th Army. They moved along and took care of all Security Police measures as the others did.
Q. Did you proceed?
A. As far as the time is concerned, nothing was changed, but during those days messaged had been received about increasing partisan activity in the Dnjepr Bend. These were bands which had come from the swamp area and which threatened the supply columns.
Q. Witness, you now use the word "band" for the first time. When were you aware of this and when did these partisan groups appear?
A. Until I went to Nikolaev I personally did not experience a anything of an express partisan warfare.
Q. When was this?
A. Until I arrived in Nikolaev on the 15th of October.
Q. What year?
A. 1941. That refers to my commando and my own experience.
Q. And now you suddenly heard something about partisan groups?
A. I had already heard partisan groups from other commandos which were already operating hundreds of kilometers east of myself; the reports came from the Einsatzgruppe of from the Army. The Army now decreed that the Einsatzgruppe was to become active in such a way that security was maintained.
Q. And what definite mission did you get now in this connection?
A. There was another area which was especially threated by bands. That was the dune territory of the Dnjepr Delta. That was a completely opposite direction from the Dnjepr Bend. The one was northwards, the other southeast. Therefore the commando was divided into two parts, and one-half was attached to Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Bolte who had just arrived and subordinated to him who was equivalent in rank to myself.
He received the order to operate in this area. I don't know his orders, and I don't know exactly, but I assume that he operated with Army units.
Q. Thus there was another half of Commando 12 which remained?
A. Yes, and I went on with his half.
Q. What was the first objective?
A. The mission was partisan warfare in the Dnjepr Bend. Thus I picked out a point on the map which might serve as our first objective, and purely by the map I established the village Mikailowka.
Q. How far was Mikailowka from your garrison?
A. As the crow flies it was at least 300 kilometers from Nikolaev.
Q. When did you get there?
A. I personally got there around the 8th or 10th of November, but now it must be mentioned that this detachment which I led did not march in one column but in two for the following reason: Because vehicles had dropped out and because vehicles had been surrendered to other units I was forced to equip half of the detachment with horses; horses disturbed the supply column of the road, of the main road, which was only provided for heavy trucks.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Hoffmann, is all this detail necessary?
DR. HOFFMANN: No, it is a little bit too extended. I shall shorten it a little.
THE PRESIDENT: He went into action, and get to the action, what it was, but how many horses they had and the dust they created and the flies, etc., is a little bit excessive.
Q. (By Dr. Hoffman) When did you arrive in Mikailowka?
A. I personally got there on the 6th of November, and the equipment of the other detachment with horses -
Q. I just want to ask you directly, when did you arrive there?
A. Half of my men came in on the 6th of November with me by vehicle about.
Q. That is, on the 6th of November you could start with your mission?
A. Partly, because now another half was missing.
Q. How many were you there?
A. The people that arrived with me included the administrative people, and other people who were fit for combat were about 25 men.
Q. What did you do there; how did you fight the partisans?
A. First I tried to determine where the other people were because I wanted to know what was the matter, and then I heard through a courier who had come from Nikopol that the other half had got stuck in Nikopol and had been already committed by the Army to fight partisans in the Dnjepr Bend. Then I got the first report about fights and arrests and shootings of partisans. I handed this report to the group.
Q. Did you make any other reports at this time?
A. Yes, several. I personally went around. I was active in reconnaissance of partisans. We advanced from Mikailowka in a northerly direction, and several times we had fights with partisans though not very severe as the group led by the Army, but we found out that these were only minor units with which we were dealing, and that the decisive cleaning of these islands was handled by that group which included half of my own detachment.
Q. What was the report like which you made out?
A. Well, there were several reports. The fights took place at various times, and I got various reports. Thus in the first report it was stated how many groups there were, how they were equipped, who commanded. We found this out through deserters, and thing like this: How many were shot in the fight; who were the leading partisans; and that partisan prisoners had been released because they had just been recruited under threats. Thus in three or four reports these matters were handed down to Group.
Q. These reports which you handed on, did you make these out from your own experience, or were those events reported to you and passed on by you?
A. Well, essentially I only passed them on. I never was in Nikopol. I could only report what my men who were fighting with the Army experienced themselves, but what I experienced I reported from my own experience.
Q. What did you do; what did you report from your own experience?
A. I reported that we had fights but we ourselves made no prisoners.
Q. How did such a reconnaissance action take place? Briefly describe it, will you?
A. We did this in several actions. Three or four villages which we wanted to attack from various directions, that is the unit was divided up in several vehicles and ordered to be there at a certain time.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Hoffmann, this is purely a technical matter, giving us the history of how he attacked. How is that going to help us in solving the real issue which is in the indictment. He was fighting partisans. All right, he fought partisans. He fought in one village; he fought in another village. We have a general idea of how this fight occurred, but to give us all the minute movements of various platoons and men is just a little bit of unnecessary detail.
Q. (By Dr. Hoffmann) Witness, apart from partisan warfare you know that you are charged here with having executed Jews, women, and children, on the basis of the Fuehrer Order. Did this happen during this period?
A. No.
4 Dec 1947_A_MSD_24_1_Ninabuck (Lea)
Q. Why not?
A. There was a special mission here to fight the Partisans in this area, that is to stop the disturbance to the supply columns. That was the mission in which kept the Kommando from reaching the 17th Army. That was an unpleasant interruption of the march and I was constantly on the march. to? a large area and on this flat land the prerequisites did not exist. We would have had to search and we didn't do that, and I may add that I was in the German settlement area, North-East of this area for a brief period or one trip. Of the population of thirty thousand people, none were left. They had been committed to dig an anti-tank ditch and they had been sent back into the interior of Russai when the Germans approached. The villages were empty. Only a few inhabitants had remained.
Q Did you ever get to the 17th Army?
A Never. The only person from the 17th Army I talked to was the G-2 of the 17th Army.
Q Where was he?
Q And where was your Kommando at that time? had gotten stuck there in the winter. the officer of the 17th Army?
A I think this distance is not so important. Mariupol is at least another two hundred kilometers away.
Q What did you speak about with the officer of the 17th Army? the Einsatzgruppe chief had visited Milkailowka and that winter had set in, that I had only been able to travel ten kilometers a day and that I had finally been forced to stop at a place, Fedorowka, which was not my objective at all and which was not even on the map, that I could neither proceed nor go back, whether he had any orders for me where I should proceed to.
Then he described to me the situation of the Army as a result of the setting in of winter. The advance had stopped; the Army had fallen back on the Mius front. There was no combat activity. The supply line was endangered and now everything would remain where it was. I asked him whether I should go any place else. At least I wanted better shelter for the winter. Thereupon, he said, "Just remain where you are. Everyone wants to move now in winter. It would make the supply problem more difficult. Just stay where you are. I have no orders to give you, and now there is nothing else to do but to wait till we can consider advancing.
Q When was this?
A I arrived at Fedorowka about the 18th. A few days later, before Christmas, I visited the G_2 in Mariupol, about the 20th, or 21st. D?
Q Did you report the result of the conference with the G_2 to the Einsatzgruppe?
Q Was, the Einsatzgruppe in agreement?
A Yes, I did not get any other directives. At any rate in this situation there was nothing else for me to do. Of course, there was a reaction when I received the radio order to take a detachment of about 30 to 35 men and send it to the Crimea where it was needed urgently because of the military situation.
Q When did you set this Kommado started?
Q And how many were left with your Kommando in January?
Q And where were all these people?
Q And what were the local conditions?
A Fedorowka was a very primitive settlement. The shelters were accordingly. The winter was especially severe in this steppe area. There were snow storms and impassibility of the few existing roads which prevented any activity. Vehicles had already gotten stuck some distance back and one could only more around by sled.
Q Witness, how long did this condition last in Fedorowka? Crimea, it was only a short way to get to the coast at least they had a better opportunity to get moving along the coast because a supply line had been laboriously established along the shore, and my Einsatz Kommando remained there until the first days of March. Then a change came in the weather. At this time the other half Kommando under Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Bolte joined me in Fedorowka then I was relieved.
Q When did this happen?
DR. HOFFMANN: Your Honor, I must now come to talk about the documents and the points with which the Prosecution charges the defendant Noeske. I would be grateful if I could start this on Monday.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I think that would be a very logical thing to do. The Tribunal will now adjourn until Monday morning at the usual time of 9:30 o'clock.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 8 December 1947 at 0930 hours.)
America, against Otto Ohlendorf, et al., defendants, 0930-1630.
Justice Musmanno, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal II. Tribunal.
DR. KOESSL: Dr. Koessl for the defendant Ott. In the name of the defendant Ott, and my own name also, I would like to express to the Tribunal my thanks for the generous favor, namely, that the defendant Ott was allowed to attend the funeral of his mother in Augsburg. For the defendant it was a significant event, and it was a great relief for him that the Tribunal granted him that favor.
THE PRESIDENT: You are very welcome indeed, and we are happy that we were able to grant a very reasonable request which was made by you on behalf of your client, and we can not help but express a regret and sympathy with the defendant for the great loss which he has suffered.
DR. KOESSL: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed, Dr. Hoffmann. BY DR. HOFFMANN: if I remember correctly. Now I should like to go through the Prosecution's documents with you very briefly. I refer to the Prosecution's charge in which it says, which is on page 246 of the German record of the 30th of September, the case against the defendant Gustav Nosske - - - - and the Prosecution there says, in accordance with your own declaration
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Hoffmann, you have n ot given us the number of the book.
DR: HOFFMAN: Excuse me. Your Honor, I said from the record on page 246.
THE PRESIDENT: I see. BY DR. HOFFMAN: that from June 1941 to March 1942 you were the commander of Einsatzkommando XII, is that correct? your activities after you were relieved in Russia, and the Prosecution assumed that you were in charge of a type of Commando Staff. Now, I Would like to discuss this activity in Berlin with you. What happened to you when you returned to the Reich?
MR. WALTON: May it please the Tribunal, that is Document Book III, page 69 of the English -
THE PRESIDENT: Even you are not giving it to us. III what?
MR. WALTON: Document Book III-B, Your Honor, page 69 of the English, page 114 of the German, and it is Prosecution's Document NO4146, Exhibit No. 167. He particularly refers to paragraph 4 of that affidavit, which is on page 2 of the Original. BY DR. HOFFMAN: the Reich?
reported for the second time to the Personnel office. That was the beginning of May. My final employment had not been deceided upon as yet. That is what I found out there. Probably I would be employed in office IV. In the meantime, Office I asked me to work there as an Auditor, and, they asked me as such to go to the Security Training School in Charlottenburg. Q What was your activity exactly as an Auditor? A Correction - it was as Pruefer, Examiner, not an Auditor. I was active as an examiner in Penal Procedure, Administrative Law, and Civil Law. Q Did you also work in office IV at that time? A No, not at that time. Q Who was your immediate superior? A May I ask you, you mean of Office IV? Q No, I mean during this time. A During this time, of course. I was subordinate to Office I. My final activity had not been decided upon, and I was subordinate to the director of the Fuehrer School. Q When did you start your office activity? A In June 1942, I reported to Office IV, that was about ten days after Heydrich's death. When I reported to the Chief of Office IV, he told me that I was to take over a new department. That would be Department IV-D-5, which had been part of Lindergruppe, of Group-D, and one job of this office was to evaluate the reports concerning the Partisan warfare. Attached to this particular department was a sub-department for the evaluation in which the documents which had been seized in the Soviet Zone would be translated. All other matters I would find out eventually when I would report to my immediate superior.
Q Who was that? Oberregierungsrat, Senior Government Councillor, Dr. Jonas. to you? he acquainted me with it, and concerning my own activity, he gave me the following explanation: With the beginning of the Russian Campaign, the position of information and intelligence officer had been created in the RSHA, and this man would have to deal with all reports from the Einsatzgruppen via the office chief, and they would then pass into Office IV-A-I, which would deal with the actual evaluation and report almost daily about the reports coming from Soviet Russia. In the Autumn of 1941 the office of the Einsatz Intelligence Officer had been given up. But actually the activity itself had not changed, and the Department IV-A-I, now called"Commando staff" still evaluated the Eastern reports. Since, however, the reports were very unreliable, incorrect and inaccurate, a basic change had to be made in the Spring of 1942. The evaluation of the Eastern Reports from this time on, was not undertaken by this one Department IV-A-I, but by the competent sub-departments off all the departments to which these reports were sent. Since the reports about partisan activity and warfare could not be handled by any existing department, the new department IV-D-5 has been created, of which I was going to be in charge from then on. asked you quite specifically, did you find out about the reports coming from Russia and dealing with executions on the part of Einsatzkommando, and did you receive such reports?
Order, after this change in making reports, were, in my own time, no longer incorporated in the reports. I know that these reports went via the Office Chief IV to the GroupEichmann IV-B-IV. As a consequence,of this, in the compiling of the reports, the individual contributions furnished by the various departments, as for instance, Jewish actions, could no longer be incorporated in the new report from the Eastern Occupied territory.
Q Witness, who was Eichmann? deal with all Jewish matters. the RSHA hear anything about the assignment which Eichmann had, and of the activity that he carried on? the small circle around him. actual elimination order in the safe? this fact? Even his office, geographically speaking, was not in the Main Building of the RSHA, and was in a special building. I never entered this building, and when the secrecy in the office was very strict, Eichmann's seclusion was almost hermetic.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Hoffmann, you state that the elimination order - - - you stated the elimination order was in Eichmann's safe.
By whom was that order signed?
DR. HOFFMANN: Your Honor, this order was also signed by Hitler. I now refer to a statement by Vitzizety in the IMT, who described how he first learned from Eichmann that 250,000 Czechoslovakian Jews had been exterminated in Auschwitz; that it what this defendant said when he was on the witness stand for the IMT, and when he asked Eichmann in Berlin how these 250,000 Jews were exterminated, Eichmann went to the safe and showed him this particular order which was signed by Hitler. I believe Mr. Walton also will remember this episode.
THE PRESIDENT: Was this the Fuehrer Order, or another order?
DR. HOFFMANN: That was another order.
THE PRESIDENT: If you know the reference number, or can without too much trouble locate it, we would appreciate your letting us have the page number in the IMT record in which this episode is related.
DR. HOFFMANN: Very well. Your Honor, I just learned that it is contained in the Document Book of Ohlendorf's, and was submitted, and even though it is, I shall submit it to the Tribunal.