The Eichmann Trial Diary by Sergio Minerbi

Author:Sergio Minerbi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enigma Books
Published: 2011-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Friday, May 19

In Yugoslavia as well the attitude of the Italian authorities toward the Jews was different from that of the Nazis: this clearly appears in the testimony of the witnesses and even more from the documents introduced today by the prosecutor. At the start of the afternoon session, the only one held today, Dr. Hinko Salz from Tel Aviv was the first to take the stand. He was a medical officer in the Yugoslav army. Taken prisoner a few days after the war broke out, Dr. Salz first worked as liaison in a military hospital. His father who was over seventy, died at that time due to the bad treatment he received in the work detail he had been assigned to. A few months later, in July 1941, 1500 Jews in Belgrade were ordered to appear in a city square the following day or face the death penalty. The witness was part of a group of 100 Jewish hostages who were to be shot if a 17 year old who was accused of sabotage was not given up by the community. “I understood that this was a desperate situation,” said the witness. “I took a step forward and waved the travel document issued to me by the hospital as I said as authoritatively as I could: ‘I protest on the basis of the Geneva Convention; I am an officer and a prisoner of war.’ The SS commander looked at me and with one wave of the hand ordered that I be set free.”

A few days later the witness managed to reach the Italian zone of occupation and safety. From Ljubliana he went to Italy and then on to Switzerland.

The second witness of the day, Alexander Arnon, was also saved by the Italian authorities. He was the secretary of the Jewish community in Zagreb and in that capacity he visited the concentration camps in Croatia where the Ustashi, Ante Pavelic’s fascists, killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and gypsies. When the Jadovna camp was about to be taken over by Italian troops the Ustashi were speeding up the shootings. Of the 75,000 Jews living in Yugoslavia before the war, the Nazis and the Croatians killed 60,000. “Unfortunately, no one protested. The Catholic Church in Croatia didn‘t utter a word of protest against the deportation of the Jews.”

The witness managed to escape to Ljubljana, then occupied by Italian troops. “While I was in the hospital they handed me the extradition order. When I went to the Italian police a few days later the commissioner told me that they made sure they had lost the file and I was able to stay. I was sent to an assigned residence in the village of Alba in the province of Cuneo. After September 8, I was saved by a peasant family and then escaped into Switzerland.”

Some of the documents introduced today refer to the Italian authorities. “In Dubrovnik,” one reads in a report sent to the German Foreign Office, “the Italians have allowed

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