jul 2, 1942 - *Albert Learns of Atrocities
Description:
It was from a somewhat unlikely source that Albert first learnt of these atrocities. It came in the summer of 1942 from Dr Max Winkler, the secretary of Albert’s arch-opponent within Škoda’s German management, Dr Wilhelm Voss. Winkler had just come back from Poland and requested an audience with Albert in Vienna, knowing that he would be very interested to hear such news and most likely act upon it. He proceeded to tell Albert how he had heard of “whole trainloads of Jews, men, women and children, old and young” being led up into the mountains and massacred by machine-gun fire.
Albert: ‘I met one day a Doctor Max Winkler . . . He had just come back from Poland, and he told me what terrible things he had heard there about what was happening . . . Whole train loads of Jews, men, women and children, old and young, had been taken up into the mountains and they had been shot by machine guns . . . At once I said I’m going to make a report on it.’ Interrogator: ‘What is the date of the report?’ Albert: ‘It may have been 1941 or 1942.’ Interrogator: ‘Well, which year did you think it was?’ Albert: ‘I know it was at the same time when the German Jews were collected from Berlin and other towns and deported.’45 The first trains intended for the death camps left Vienna between 15 October and 2 November 1941 carrying 20,000 Jews. Five trainloads of Austrian gypsies followed over the 8th and 9th. Between the 15th and the 23rd trains began rolling out of Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin and Breslau. Transports continued until 15 December, then began again on 21 January for another four weeks. Out of a total of thirty trains, eleven went from Vienna. Most of those aboard were murdered on arrival, dispatched with a single bullet. At Nuremberg, the interrogator let Albert continue his story. Albert: ‘I filed the report with the Air Ministry, and requested that it be given to my brother. Then when I came back some time later, I asked what had happened . . . I received the answer that it had been transferred to the competent department, which in my mind could only mean Himmler, and thus the vicious circle was completed . . . The thing ended where the murder had started.’
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Mein Bruder
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