Tapping Hitler's Generals

The Governor at LVOV, a Dr LASCH,[322] invited me to go to the opera with him. After the long interval he suddenly said to me: ‘You know, Graf ROTHKIRCH, it was terrible. It’s so dreadful it’s indescribable. Just imagine what I have done. If only I hadn’t done it. I attended one of those shootings today.’ The man was completely out of his mind. A year ago I was in charge of the guerrilla school where men were being trained in guerrilla warfare; I went on an exercise with them one day and I said: ‘Direction of march is that hill up there.’ The directors of the school then said to me: ‘That’s not a very good idea, sir, as they are just burning Jews up there.’ I said: ‘What do you mean? Burning Jews? But there aren’t any Jews any more.’ ‘Yes, that’s the place where they were always shot and now they are all being disinterred again, soaked with petrol and burnt so that their bodies shan’t be discovered.’ ‘That’s a dreadful job. There’s certain to be a lot of loose talk about it afterwards.’ ‘Well, the men who are doing the job will be shot directly afterwards and burnt with them.’ The whole thing sounds just like a fairy story.[323]

RAMCKE: From the inferno.

ROTHKIRCH: Yes, I was at KUTNO,[324] I wanted to take some photographs–that’s my only hobby–and I knew an SS leader there quite well and I was talking to him about this and that when he said: ‘Would you like to photograph a shooting?’ I said: ‘No, the very idea is repugnant to me.’ ‘Well, I mean, it makes no difference to us, they are always shot in the morning, but if you like we still have some and we can shoot them in the afternoon sometime.’ You can’t imagine how these men have become completely brutalised. Just think of it some of these Jews got away and will keep talking about it. And the craziest thing of all: how is it possible for pictures to get into the press? For there are pictures in this paper (Weltwoche?[325]). They even filmed it and the films, of course, have got abroad; it always leaks out somehow. In LVOV, just like people catching fish with a net, ten SS men would walk along the street and simply grab any Jews who happened to be walking along. If you happened to look Jewish, you were just added to their catch (laughs). Sometime the world will take revenge for that. If those people, the Jews, come to the helm and take revenge, it will of course be terrible. But I think it doubtful whether the enemy will permit them to get there, for most of the foreigners, the English, the French and the Americans, are also quite clear about the Jews. It won’t be like that. They’ve allied themselves with the devil in order to beat us; just as we concluded that alliance with the Bolsheviks for a time, they are doing the same thing. The important question is: which ideology should gain the upper hand in the world? And whether they will trust us? One must now work to that end so that they will trust us and we must steer clear of everything which will arouse them afresh so that we first show them: ‘Friends, we want to cooperate in creating a sensible world.’

Document 130

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 272

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 16–19 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

HEYDTE: There’s another camp which is even worse than LUBLIN; it’s in CZECHOSLOVAKIA. Half-a-million people have been put to death there for certain. I know that all the Jews from BAVARIA were taken there. Yet the camp never became over- crowded.[326]

WILDERMUTH: Yes, I’ve heard of that too.

HEYDTE: But I don’t only know that all the Jews from BAVARIA were taken there, I know that all the Jews from AUSTRIA were taken there, and still the camp wasn’t over-crowded.

WILDERMUTH: From all over GERMANY. It appears that most of the Jews from GERMANY were either sent to LUBLIN or to that place.