THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off?
[A recess was taken.]
M. GERTHOFFER: Staff Rosenberg was not only interested in paintings and objects of art, but in books as well. Thus it appears, in a document discovered by the United States Army and registered under Document Number 171-PS, of which I submit a copy as Exhibit Number RF-1324, that 550,000 volumes were seized in France.
Holland also provided a heavy contribution in books. Libraries rich in early prints, books, and manuscripts were pillaged. It appears from Document Number 176-PS, discovered by the United States Army, a copy of which I submit as Exhibit Number RF-1325, that the value of the books amounted to about thirty or forty million Reichsmark.
It must also be noted, as proved by Documents 178-PS and 171-PS, which I submit as Exhibit Number RF-1326, that archives of the Rothschild Bank were taken away in the month of February 1941.
Staff Rosenberg likewise pillaged furniture. This is quite evident from a note addressed by the Defendant Rosenberg to the Führer, dated 3 October 1942, submitted under Document Number RF-1327. I read the following passage:
“For carrying out action ‘M’ the Dienststelle Westen was created in Paris with special branches (Einsatzleitungen) in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. This service has to date sent about 40,000 tons of furniture to the Reich, utilizing all available transport, ship, and railroad facilities. Since it was recognized that the needs of bombed-out people of the Reich should be given preference over the needs of those in the East, the Reich Ministry has placed a considerable part of this furniture (over 19,500 tons) at the disposal of bombed-out people in the Reich. . . .”
A copy of a Rosenberg report, dated 4 November 1943, Document Number 1737-PS(b), a copy of which I submit as Exhibit Number RF-1328, tells us:
“52,828 Jewish lodgings were seized and sealed in favor of the bombed-out victims. Including special orders, furniture has been removed from 47,569 dwellings for shipment to the bombed cities.”
Document Number L-188, found by the American 7th Army, is a report issued by the offices of the Defendant Rosenberg, Item 8 of which I submit as Exhibit Number RF-1329, shows that over 69,619 Jewish lodgings were looted, that the furniture occupied over 1 million cubic meters, and that it took 26,984 freight cars, that is, 674 trains, to remove it.
In the same file there is a document which I submit, Document Number RF-1330, which indicates that in Paris alone 38,000 Jewish lodgings were emptied of their contents.
Document Number 1772-PS, already submitted under Exhibit Number RF-1325, indicates that in Holland, from March 1942 to July 1943 inclusive, 22,623 lodgings were emptied of their contents and that it took 586 barges and 178 freight cars to move this furniture. These few figures undeniably suffice to support the accusation of economic pillage levied against Staff Rosenberg on behalf of the western European countries.
As has already been stated, although the material elements of the breach of the law remain unaltered, there can be no comparison between the pillaging typical of the history of this or that conqueror and practiced throughout the centuries, and the pillaging as understood by the defendants.
What prevents any comparison between the past pillaging and the looting practiced by Staff Rosenberg or the National Socialist chiefs, is the difference in purpose, however difficult and delicate a matter it may be to analyze it. The looting in the past of works of art may primarily be traced to the vanity of the conqueror, in which his egoism, his taste, and his love of glory played the determining part in the pillaging. It is of course possible to identify the same feeling as underlying the criminal activities of one or the other of the defendants. But—and here we find the fundamental difference—the National Socialist leaders, when estimating the value of this and that painting or of this or that work of art, wittingly took into account both the standard of aesthetic wealth, that is the value of the object to the individual, and the standard of material wealth, that is its exchange value, an exchange value in which it is a matter of retaining a pledge, if not to facilitate, at least to bring pressure to bear when negotiating future peace treaties, as is evident from the documents submitted to the Tribunal.
Whatsoever the pretexts or excuses submitted by the National Socialist leaders when seizing the artistic heritage of western Europe, whether by theft, by so-called preservative confiscations, or by direct purchase from the owners or the markets for the sale of objects of art, the criminal intention is always the same.
The German motive was undeniably the establishment of a reserve of securities, if not for the satisfaction of the individual desire, then for the satisfaction of a collective need in conformity with the myth of the “Greater Germany.”
This reserve of securities would have a triple advantage: A cultural advantage, that is, the advantage of the Hohe Schule. Secondly, an economic advantage, a basis for financial speculation and a reserve of securities easily negotiable in the markets of the world; above all, a reserve of fixed value entirely unaffected by the fluctuations in the cost of raw materials and unaffected either by the lowering or the manipulation of the currency. And, lastly, reserves of securities of political importance in the hands of those negotiating the peace treaties.
The Defense will perhaps object that exchanges and purchases on free markets cannot be held against the defendants, because they are in the nature of contracts, and there were agreements, and because equivalents existed. But the facts presented to the Tribunal render it possible to declare that these operations have merely an appearance of regularity, if we remember the conditions under which the contracts were drawn up, that the operations were made under duress, or if we consider the rights over the equivalents supplied, equivalents of exchange represented by stolen objects or works of art, by sales paid for in national currencies coming from contributions of a more or less regular nature, and especially by occupational indemnities or clearing operations.
Most of these particulars, from the point of view of the general principles of criminal law, are doubly tainted: On the one hand they were paid in stolen currency, since the work of art forming the object of the sale could never legitimately have become the heritage of the purchaser. On the other hand, fraud and deceit tainted a considerable share of the negotiations, as proved by numerous statements, such as the extract from the minutes of M. Rochlitz’s statement of 8 January 1946, which I have just read to the Tribunal under Document Number RF-1317 and which the Tribunal will allow me to recall to its notice by a brief reading of a few more passages. Rochlitz, picture dealer in Paris, states:
“Lohse came to see me in February 1941. He told me that he was looking for pictures for different highly placed persons, chiefly for Göring. I showed to him a painting by Wennix of which I was the owner and a “Portrait of a Man,” by Titian, of which two-thirds belonged to Birchentski and one-third to me. Lohse bought them. Then 8 or 10 days later he offered me some paintings in exchange, instead of money. Incidentally he considered that I had sold the paintings at too high a price. The price was about 2,000,000. He added that Göring had seen the paintings, that he did not want to pay for them at the price agreed, but that he had given an order to exchange them for modern paintings brought from Germany. He showed me a certain number of paintings and offered me 11 of them in exchange for the 2 paintings. He prevented me from looking at the backs of the paintings.”
Further on, the same witness states:
“I thought at that time that the paintings came from Germany. I found out shortly after that these paintings and those subsequently exchanged with Lohse were paintings confiscated from Jews. When I saw that these had been confiscated I protested and Lohse answered, ‘I am acting under Göring’s orders, you have nothing to fear. These confiscations have been anticipated by the Armistice Convention and the exchanges are regular.’ As I still protested, he called me an enemy of the people.”
Never—and this is the last remark I shall make on the subject—has history furnished an example of wholesale pillaging organized on so completely an administrative basis. The pillaging, together with the Einsatzstab, became a recognized institution