International Military Tribunal - The Nuremberg Trials - Complete Tribunal Proceedings (V. 5)

“In August 1938 he beat the editor Burker at the Gauhaus together with District Office Leader Schöller and his adjutant, König.”

To show the authority and power that he held in his Gau, I refer to the last paragraph on that page:

“According to reports of reliable witnesses, Gauleiter Streicher is in the habit of pointing out on the most varied occasions that he alone gives orders in the district of Franconia. For instance, at a meeting in the Colosseum in Nuremberg in 1935 he said that nobody could remove him from office. In a meeting at Herkules Hall, where he described how he had beaten Professor Steinruck, he emphasized that he would not let himself be beaten by anybody, not even by an Adolf Hitler. . . .

“For, this also must be stated here, in Franconia the Gau acts first and then orders the absolutely powerless authorities to approve.”

My Lord, both of those volumes of that report, Document 1757-PS, will become Exhibit GB-175.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal isn’t altogether satisfied that that has any bearing on the case against Streicher.

LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, it is the object of that document to show the kind of treatment and persecution which the Jews were receiving in the district or Gau over which this defendant ruled and, secondly, to show the absolute authority with which this defendant acted in his district. That is the purpose of that document.

As a result either of that investigation or of some other matter the defendant was relieved of his position as Gauleiter in February 1940, but he did not cease from his propaganda or from the control of his newspaper. I would only quote one further short extract from Der Stürmer. An article written by him on the 4th of November 1943, which appears in the document book on Page 53, is Document 1965-PS and becomes Exhibit GB-176; and it is an extract of importance:

“It is actually true that the Jews have so to speak disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish ‘Reservoir of the East,’ from which the Jewish pestilence has for centuries beset the peoples of Europe, has ceased to exist. But the Führer of the German people at the beginning of the war prophesied what has now come to pass.”

My Lord, that article was signed by Streicher, and it is my submission that it shows that he had knowledge of what was going on in the East, of which this Court has had such evidence. That was written November 1943. In April ’43, the Tribunal will remember, the Warsaw ghetto was destroyed. Between April 1942 and April 1944, 1,700,000-odd Jews were killed in Auschwitz and Dachau—I quote now from the transcript—and throughout the whole of that period millions of Jews were to die. It is my submission that that article appearing on the 4th of November and signed by him shows that he knew what was happening, perhaps not the details, but that he knew that the Jews were being exterminated.

I leave Der Stürmer and I would draw the attention of the Tribunal quite shortly to a matter which is perhaps as evil as any other aspect of this man’s activity, and that is the particular attention that he paid to the instruction—if you can call it that—or the perversion of the children and the youth of Germany. He was not content with inciting the German population. He seized the children as early as he could at their schools, and he started to poison their minds at the earliest possible date. Already in some of the extracts to which I have referred, the Tribunal will remember that there are mentions of children and the need for teaching them anti-Semitism. I refer now to Page 54 of the document book, and I would quote four or five lines from the last paragraph, starting in the middle of the last paragraph. It is a report of a speech by Streicher as early as June 1925, when he says:

“I repeat, we demand the transformation of the school into an ethno-German institution of education. If German children are taught by German teachers, then we shall have laid the foundations for the ethno-German school. This ethno-German school must teach racial doctrine.”

I now go to the last line of the first paragraph on the following page:

“We demand, therefore, the introduction of racial doctrine into the school.”

That is in a copy of Der Stürmer which has already been put in. It is Exhibit GB-165 (Document M-30).

The following Document, M-43, is an extract from the Fränkische Tageszeitung of the 19th of March 1934, when he addressed the pupils at a girls’ school at Preisslerstrasse after their finishing their vocational course. He was continually holding children’s meetings and attending children’s schools. I quote the third paragraph:

“Then Julius Streicher spoke about his life and told them about a girl who had at one time been a pupil of his and who had fallen a victim to a Jew and was finished for the rest of her life.”

I need not read the rest. It is all in the same tone. That becomes Exhibit GB-177.

Every summer they celebrated in Nuremberg what they called their solstice celebration, some pagan rite where the youth of Nuremberg rallied—organized or at least encouraged by the Defendant Streicher.

On Page 58 of the document book is a report taken from his paper, Fränkische Tageszeitung, of his speech to the Hitler Youth on what they called the “Holy Mountain” near Nuremberg, on the 22d of June 1935.

“Boys and girls, look back a little more than 10 years ago. A great war—the World War—had raged over the peoples of the earth and had left in the end a heap of ruins. Only one people remained victorious in that dreadful war, a people of whom Christ said that its father is the Devil. That people had ruined the German Nation in body and soul. At that time Adolf Hitler, an unknown man, arose from among the people and became a voice which proclaimed a holy war and struggle. He cried to the people to take courage again and to rise and join in liberating the German people from the Devil, so that mankind might again be free from that race which has roamed the globe for centuries and millennia, marked with the brand of Cain.

“Boys and girls, even if it is said that the Jews were once the chosen people do not believe it, but believe us when we say that the Jews are not a chosen people. Because it cannot be that a chosen people should act among the peoples as the Jews do today.”

And so on, with similar kind of propaganda. That Document, M-1, will be Exhibit GB-178.

The next Document, M-44, from which I will not read now, becomes Exhibit GB-179. The Tribunal will see that it was a report of Streicher’s address to 2,000 children at Nuremberg at Christmastime 1936. Underlined it says:

“ ‘Do you know who the Devil is?’ he asked his breathlessly listening audience. ‘The Jew, the Jew,’ resounded from a thousand children’s voices.”

But he wasn’t content only with writing and talking. He actually issued a book for teachers, a book which he published from his Der Stürmer offices, called The Jewish Question and School Instruction.

I have not had the whole of that book translated. It is addressed to school teachers. It is intended for their benefit, and it emphasizes the necessity of anti-Semitic teaching in schools, and it suggests ways in which the subject can be introduced and handled.

On Page 60 of the document book, M-46, the Tribunal will see a few extracts which have been taken from that book. The preface part of it is as follows:

“The National Socialist State has brought fundamental changes into all spheres of life of the German people.

“It has also presented the German teacher with new duties. The National Socialist State demands that its teachers instruct German children on racial questions. As far as the German people is concerned the racial question is a Jewish question. Those who want to teach the child about the Jew must themselves have a thorough knowledge of the subject.”