“The first radio picture from the United States of America shows quite clearly that a Jew stands behind the explosion of our airship Hindenburg. Nature has depicted quite clearly and quite correctly that devil in human guise.”
And although it is not at all clear from that photograph, I think the meaning of that comment is that the cloud of smoke in the air is in the shape of a Jewish face.
On the next page Document M-4 is a speech he made in September 1937 at the opening of a bridge in Nuremberg. I will quote only the last paragraph on Page 24. The bridge in question is called the Wilhelm Gustloff bridge, and he says:
“The man who murdered Wilhelm Gustloff must have come from the Jewish people, because the Jewish textbooks teach that every Jew has the right to kill a non-Jew; and indeed, that it is pleasing to the Jewish God to kill as many non-Jews as possible.
“Look at the road the Jewish people have been following for thousands of years past; everywhere murder, everywhere mass murder! Neither must we forget that behind present-day wars there stands the Jewish financier who pursues his aims and interests. The Jew always lives on the blood of other nations; he needs such murder and such victims. For us who know, the murder of Wilhelm Gustloff is the same as ritual murder.”
And then on the next page:
“It is our duty to tell the children at school and the bigger ones what this memorial means. . . .”
I go to the next paragraph:
“The Jew no longer shows himself among us openly as he used to. But it would be wrong to say that victory is ours. Full and final victory will have been achieved only when the whole world is rid of Jews.”
That becomes Exhibit GB-171.
Now the next two documents in your document books are simply extracts from the correspondence columns of his Der Stürmer, showing again one of the methods he employed in this propaganda. I do not need to read them. The correspondence columns of all his issues are full of letters coming in from Germans saying that some German has been buying her shoes from a Jewish shop and so on, and in that way assisting in the general boycott of the Jews. In other words, they really are a weekly column of libels against the Jews all over Germany.
I pass then to another and particular form of propaganda that he employed and which he called “ritual murder.” The Tribunal may well remember that some years ago—I think it started in 1934—this Der Stürmer began publishing accounts of Jewish ritual murder which horrified the whole world to such an extent that even the Archbishop of Canterbury eventually wrote to the Times protesting, as indeed did people from every country in the world, protesting that any Government should allow matter like this to be published in their national newspapers.
He takes his ritual murder, I understand, from a medieval belief that during their Eastertide celebrations the Jews were in the habit of murdering Christian children; and he enlarges upon this and misrepresents this belief, this medieval belief, to show that not only did they do it in the Middle Ages, but that they are still doing it and still want to do it. And if I might just quote one or two passages from his newspapers and show one or two pictures which he published in connection with his campaign of ritual murder, it will illustrate to the Court the type of teaching and propaganda that he was putting up. On Page 29 of the Tribunal’s document book, I will quote from the third but last paragraph:
“This the French front-line soldier should take with him to France: The German people have taken a new lease on life. They want peace, but if anybody should attack them, if anyone should try to torture them again, to throw them back into the past, then the world would witness another heroic epic; then may Heaven decide where righteousness lies—here with us, or where the Jew has the whiphand and where he instigates massacres, one could almost say the biggest ritual murders of all times. If the German people are to be slaughtered according to the Jewish rites, the whole world will be thus slaughtered at the same time.”
And the last paragraph:
“Just as you have drummed morning and evening prayers into your children’s heads, so now drum this into their heads, so that the German people may gain the spiritual power to convince the rest of the world which the Jews desire to lead against us.”
That Document is M-2, Exhibit GB-172.
And on the following page of the document book there is a reproduction of a photograph taken from Der Stürmer of April 1937 which illustrates three Jews ritually murdering a girl by cutting her throat and shows the blood pouring out into a bucket on the ground. The caption underneath that photograph is as follows:
“Ritual Murder at Polna. Ritual murder of Agnes Hruza by the Jews Hilsner, Erdmann, and Wassermann (taken from a contemporary postcard.)”
That is Exhibit Number USA-258. It is already in a copy of Der Stürmer, which has been put in.
There appears on the next page of the document book an extract from that same Der Stürmer, April 1937. I will not read it now, because it has been put in and has all been read to the Court. It describes what happens when ritual murder takes place, and the blood is mixed with the bread and drunk by the Jews having their feast. The Tribunal will remember that during the feast the head of the family exclaims, “May all gentiles perish—as the child whose blood is contained in the bread and wine.”
That is already Exhibit Number USA-258, and it has been read in the transcript at Page 1437 (Volume III, Pages 522, 523).
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a good time to break off?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If My Lordship pleases.
[A recess was taken until 1400 hours.]
Afternoon Session
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: May it please the Tribunal, if I might just refer to two further copies of Der Stürmer on the subject of “ritual murder,” the first of which appears on Page 32 of the document book, 2700-PS. It is the copy in Exhibit USA-260. It is an article in Der Stürmer for July 1938:
“Whoever has had the occasion to be an eyewitness to the ritualistic slaughtering of animals or at least to see a truthful film on this method of slaughtering will never forget this gruesome experience. It is horrifying. And instinctively he is reminded of the crimes which the Jews have committed for centuries on human beings. He will be reminded of the ritual murder. History offers hundreds of cases in which non-Jewish children were tortured to death by Jews. They, too, received the same gash in the throat as is found on ritualistically slaughtered animals. They, too, were slowly bled to death while fully conscious.”
My Lord, on special occasions, or when he had some particular subject matter to put before the world, he was in the habit of issuing special editions of his newspaper Der Stürmer. Ritual murder was such a special subject that he issued one of these special editions dealing solely with it. The Tribunal will have a photostatic copy of the complete issue for May 1939.
Now I have not attempted to have translated all, or indeed any, of the articles which appear in that edition. It is perhaps sufficient to look at the pictures, the illustrations, and for me to read the captions which appear underneath the photographs; and I regret the translations of the captions have not been attached to the Tribunal’s copy but perhaps I may be permitted to refer to the pictures and read the captions for the Tribunal.
The pages are marked in red pencil on the right-hand corner. On Page 1 I see a picture of a child having knives stuck into its side, blood spurting from it, and below the pedestal on which it stands are five presumably dead children lying on the ground. The caption to that picture is as follows:
“In the year 1476 the Jews in Regensburg murdered six boys. They drew their blood and tortured them to death. In an underground vault which belonged to the Jew Josfol, the judges