|
Evacuation
of the Jews
...
I
also want to speak to you here, in complete frankness, of a
really grave chapter. Amongst ourselves, for once, it shall be
said quite openly, but all the same we will never speak about
it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934,*
to do our duty as we were ordered, and to stand comrades who
had erred against the wall and shoot them, and we never spoke
about it and we never will speak about it. It was a matter of
natural tact that is alive in us, thank God, that we never
talked about it amongst ourselves, that we never discussed it.
Each of us shuddered and yet each of us knew clearly that the
next time he would do it again if it were an order, and if it
were necessary.
I
am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, the
extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of the things
that is easily said: "The Jewish people are going to be
exterminated," that's what every Party member says,
"sure, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews,
extermination - it'll be done." And then they all
come along, the 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has
his one decent Jew. Of course, the others are swine, but this
one, he is a first-rate Jew. Of all those who talk like that,
not one has seen it happen, not one has had to go through with
it. Most of you men know what it is like to see 100 corpses
side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stood fast through this
and except for cases of human weakness to have stayed decent,
that has made us hard. This is an unwritten and
never-to-be-written page of glory in our history, for we know
how difficult it would be for us if today under bombing raids
and the hardships and deprivations of war if we were still to
have the Jews in every city as secret saboteurs, agitators,
and inciters. If the Jews were still lodged in the body of the
German nation, we would probably by now have reached the stage
of 1916-17.
The
wealth they possessed we took from them. I gave a strict
order, which has been carried out by SS Obergruppenfuehrer
Pohl, that this wealth will of course be turned over to the
Reich in its entirety. We have taken none of it for ourselves.
Individuals who have erred will be punished in accordance with
the order given by me at the start, threatening that anyone
who takes as much as a single Mark of this money is a dead
man. A number of SS men they are not very many committed this
offense, and they shall die. There will be no mercy. We had
the moral right, we had the duty towards our people, to
destroy this people that wanted to destroy us. But we do not
have the right to enrich ourselves by so much as a fur, as a
watch, by one Mark or a cigarette or anything else. We do not
want, in the end, because we destroyed a bacillus, to be
infected by this bacillus and to die. I will never stand by
and watch while even a small rotten spot develops or takes
hold. Wherever it may form we will together burn it away. All
in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most
difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people. And we
have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our
character....
PS-1919.
*
The reference is to "the night of the long knives"
murder of Roehm, SA leaders and other purges. |
