Eichmann Trial -- Session 42 -- Testimony of Heinrich Grueber, Charlotte Salzberger; affidavit of Bernard Loesener

Bernard Lösener was the "Racial Expert" of the German Interior Ministry from 1933 to 1943. In this post, Lösener took part in drafting twenty-seven anti-Jewish decrees. Most important among them were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and the subsequent legal definitions that distinguished among different kinds of partial Jews ("hybrids, " or mischlinge), in effect exempting quarter Jews and secularized half Jews from the full brunt of persecution. After the war, Lösener recalled how he was summoned at the last minute to bring his Interior Ministry files to the 1935 Nazi party rally, where the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws took place over a hectic weekend. His detailed first-hand account of this event has been frequently cited, especially by those historians who emphasize the unplanned and evolutionary nature of Nazi Jewish policy. Lösener was the son of a minor judicial official. He served as a soldier in World War I, attended the University of Tübingen, and passed his civil service examinations, becoming a customs official in 1924. He joined the Nazi party in December 1930. In April 1933, when experienced officials with party credentials were in short supply, he was summoned from his obscure customs post to the Interior Ministry in Berlin. By his own account, Lösener quickly became disillusioned with the Nazis, for two reasons: the inclusion of even one-quarter Jews among those banned from the civil service, and the party's intervention in the internal affairs of the Evangelical church. Like many others, Lösener claimed that he clung to his post to prevent worse from happening and to save those who could still be saved. By his own admission, this meant accepting the impossibility of doing anything for "full Jews, " but doing everything possible to prevent quarter and half Jews, as well as the latter's parents living in mixed marriages, from being equated with full Jews. It also meant abjuring open opposition and framing his arguments on the basis of Nazi ideology, despite the "internal aversion" and "shame" he felt. Two factors distinguish Lösener's apologia from those of others. First, he did in fact work consistently, tenaciously, and with considerable success to prevent Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages from being affected by the regime's anti-Jewish measures. According to his calculations, this saved from deportation as many as 100,000 of the former and 20,000 of the latter. Second, unlike others who clung to their posts allegedly to prevent worse, but in fact steadily accommodated themselves to the escalating violence, Lösener had a limit beyond which he would not go. When he learned of the December 1941 massacres of the first German Jews deported to Riga, he requested a transfer from his post as Rassereferent. Eventually, in March 1943, he was appointed as a judge. Lösener was arrested in November 1944 for hiding a couple implicated in the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler. He was expelled from the party for "treason, " but survived his Berlin imprisonment until liberation. After two subsequent arrests -- first by the Russians and then by the Americans -- and submitting to denazification proceedings, he was briefly employed by the German mission of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1949. He then resumed government employment until his death. A posthumous memoir was published about Lösener's activities in the Interior Ministry, "Als Rassereferent im Reichsministerium des Innern, " Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 9/3 (1961), pp. 264 - 313. Courtesy of: "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" ©1990, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, NY 10022

Emil Knebel was a cinematographer known for Andante (2010), Adam (1973), and Wild Is My Love (1963). He was one of the cameramen who recorded daily coverage of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (produced by Capital Cities Broadcasting Corp and later held academic positions in Israel and New York teaching filmmaking at universities. Refer to CV in file.