Nazi Official Sought Closing Of Belsen

Press, Volume C, Issue 29517, 19 May 1961, Page 16

Nazi Official Sought Closing Of Belsen

tNZe.A -Rruler—Conynatll JERUSALEM, May 17. A Nazi official had recommended disbanding the Belsen prison camp because Jews being taken there would discover that 17.000 out of the original 18,000 inmates had died, the Court trying Adolf Eichmann was told today.

It was feared that the discovery would give the Jews ‘‘material for stepping up atrocity propaganda abroad.” The official who made the recommendation was a Jewish affairs expert at the German Foreign Ministry, Eberhad von Thadden. He will appear before a judge at Neuss, West Germany, tomorrow, as the first witness to give evidence in German}’ in connexion with the Eichmann trial. Von 'Thadden has been refused immunity from arrest by the Israeli Government and will give evidence at a siecial court in Germany, together with other simi-larly-placed witnesses. A report by von Thadden to Eichmann, one of a number of-documents introduced by the prosecution todav. said he visited Belsen in 1943 because of plans to send 30.000 Jews there. These Jews had . special connexions abroad and it was planned to exchange them later for German citizens held in Allied countries. In his report tq Eichmann, von Thadden said Jews being sent to Belsen would find out what had happened to Russian war prisoners sent there. Only 1000 out of the original 18.000 were alive and this would give the Jews propaganda material. He therefore recommended that the prison camp and the adjoining concentration camp be disbanded and the Jews interned in the deserted camps. According to the document, von Thadden had also reported that sanitary conditions in the Jewish section

of the camp were “completely inadequate." When British troops entered Belsen in April. 1945, they found about 13.000 unburied corpses. Some 13.000 inmates, ridden by typhus and starvation, died a few days later. Eichmann, who has often sat impassive as witnesses spoke of Nazi atrocities, today was busy making notes as the prosecution brought in more and more documents. The Court heard examples of how Eichmann dealt with attempts by individual Jews to escape deportation.