POST-WAR STATEMENTS OF ATTENDEES OF THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
Josef Bühler (16th February 1904 – 22nd August 1948)
Josef was a German lawyer who, as the protégé of Governor General Hans Frank, rose to become his deputy as the State Secretary in the German, Third Reich-controlled General Government in Kraków during the Second World War.
In his youth he had studied law at the universities in Munich, Kiel, Berlin and Erlangen. He earned a Doctor of Law degree and passed the state law examination in 1930.
He attended the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution to the Jewish Question deportation plan was discussed.
He testified in Frank's defence at the Nuremberg show-trial on 23rd April 1946, and denied all knowledge of any plan to exterminate all Jews (the Holocaust). He himself was tried and convicted at the Nuremburg show-trial, and was eventually killed in a lynching in Krakow, Poland in 1948.
DR. SEIDL: The Prosecution submitted an extract from Frank's diary in evidence under Number USA-281 (Document Number 2233(d)-PS.) This is a discussion of Jewish problems. In this connection Frank said, among other things:
"My attitude towards the Jews is based on the expectation that they will disappear; they must go away. I have started negotiations for deporting them to the East. This question will be discussed at a large meeting in Berlin in January, to which I shall send State Secretary Dr. Buehler. This conference is to take place at the Reich Security Main Office in the office of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich. In any case Jewish emigration on a large scale will begin."
I ask you now, did the Governor General send you to Berlin for that conference; and if so, what was the subject of the conference?
BÜHLER: Yes, I was sent to the [Wannsee] conference and the subject of the conference was the Jewish problem.
I might say in advance that from the beginning, Jewish questions in the Government General were considered as coming under the jurisdiction of the Higher SS and Police Leader and handled accordingly. The handling of Jewish matters by the state administration was supervised and merely tolerated by the Police.
During the years 1940 and 1941 incredible numbers of people, mostly Jews, were brought into the Government General in spite of the objections and protests of the Governor General and his administration. This completely unexpected, unprepared for, and undesired bringing in of the Jewish population from other territories put the administration of the Government General in an extremely difficult position.
Accommodating these masses, feeding them, and caring for their health-combating epidemics for instance — almost, or rather, definitely overtaxed the capacity of the territory. Particularly threatening was the spread of typhus, not only in the ghettos but also among the Polish population and the Germans in the Government General. It appeared as if that epidemic would spread even to the Reich and to the Eastern Front.
At that moment Heydrich's invitation to the Governor General was received. The [Wannsee] conference was originally supposed to take place in November 1941, but it was frequently postponed and it may have taken place in February 1942.
Because of the special problems of the Government General I had asked Heydrich for a personal interview and he received me. On that occasion, among many other things, I described in particular the catastrophic conditions which had resulted from the arbitrary bringing of Jews into the Government General. He replied that for this very reason he had invited the Governor General to the conference. The Reichsführer SS, so he said, had received an order from the Führer to round up all the Jews of Europe and to settle them in the Northeast of Europe, in Russia.
I asked him whether this meant that the further arrival of Jews in the Government General would cease, and whether the hundreds of thousands of Jews who had been brought into the Government General without the permission of the Governor General would be moved out again. Heydrich promised me both these things.
Heydrich said furthermore that the Führer had given an order that Theresienstadt, a town in the Protectorate, would become a reservation in which old and sick Jews, and weak Jews who could not stand the strains of resettlement, were to be accommodated in the future.
This information left me definitely convinced that the resettlement of the Jews, if not for the sake of the Jews, then for the sake of the reputation and prestige of the German people, would be carried out in a humane fashion. The removal of the Jews from the Government General was subsequently carried out exclusively by the Police.
… MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I shall quote three sentences from the typed transcript of the report. Please hand the original to the witness.
I quote three sentences from this document. It is Dr. Frank's speech:
"I should like to emphasise one thing. We must not be too soft-hearted when we hear that 17,000 have been shot. These persons who have been shot are also victims of the ever.... Let us now remember that all of us who are meeting together here figure in Mr. Roosevelt's list of war criminals. I have the honor of being Number 1. We have thus, so to speak, become accomplices in terms of world history".
Your name is second on the list of those present at the conference. Do you not consider that Frank must have had sufficient grounds to number you among the most active of his accomplices in crime?
BÜHLER: About such statements of the Governor General I have already said all that is necessary.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Then you ascribe this to the Governor General's temperament?
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, that is not an answer to the question. The question was, do you consider yourself to be one of those criminals?
BÜHLER: I do not consider myself a criminal.
Pages 68 & 90 | 23rd April 1946. | NUREMBURG SHOW TRIAL TRANSCRIPTS