Admissions of the accused Windisch
The accused Windisch denies the deeds attributed to him.
He has changed his admissions in each questioning and wound himself up in a mass of contradictions. He is of the opinion that the accusations against him are directed by a Jewish conspiracy. Vol 7 p 1048, vol 18 p 2521/22
His first interrogation under oath took place in 1953 before the Landesgericht in Linz, Austria, in the framework of a legal proceeding against him for war crimes. BA 8 BVr 1555/53 LG Linz, p 14 ff
In this interrogation, the accused steadfastly denied ever having been part of the Regional Commissariat Lida. He claimed to have been merely an officer o f the III./JR 727. In that capacity he had ordered Jewish workshops in Lida to produce winter uniforms for the Wehrmacht. He knew nothing of a mass execution in Lida. Although in May 1942 Jews had been “taken away” or “transported off” from Lida by Lithuanian Police. In that process he had personally interceded on behalf of about 10,000 Jews manufacturing winter uniforms and saved these Jews from “deportation. For this reason he was court-martialed for friendliness to Jews. He had thereafter been transferred to the front by the Ilmensee as punishment.
These assertions manufactured in whole cloth during that proceeding the accused no longer tried to maintain during his first interrogation by the prosecution in October 1962. He claimed, however, to have been representative RC as well as chief of staff and Judenreferent for only a short time (to about January 1942). Then the witness Borrmann took over all these duties from him. Vol 1 p 9/122, vol 1 p 105.
These assertions the accused still maintained during his second prosecutorial interrogation in November 1964. Vol 7 p 1016
Only in his interrogation by the prosecutor of February 1966 did the accused admit to having been assistant RC as well as chief of staff and Judenreferent the entire time he was in Lida vol 17 p 2428, vol 18 p 2523, vol 17 p 2433, 2440, 2444, 2453, vol 18 p 2462 f, 2494
In regard to the individual acts, the accused admitted the following:
a) Admission in the first prosecutorial interrogation of October
1962
The mass execution in Lida had been a complete surprise to him.
In the early morning hours of 8 May 1945, he was wakened by “shooting”
and had thought it was a partisan attack or a police action. He then
went to the Judenrat president Altmann in the Jewish section and had encountered
there a Lithuanian unit that was driving Jews from their houses and was
shooting at “resistance”. The German Gendarmerie was only engaged
in holding the remaining civilian population out of the area. On
his “directions” the commander of the Lithuanian unit had ceased the “shooting”
and had withdrawn his people from the Jewish section. Then he –so
continued the accused – had called in the Judenrat and the Jewish police
to “pull out” the Jewish artisans, who had one of the “artisan’s cards”
he had issued. These Jews he had “not let out of his sight”.
The remaining Jews had been led off by the “annihilation squad”.
He had personally, with the assistance of other members of the RC had again
“removed” Jews with appropriate identity papers from this column
In a few cases he had even “defined Jews as artisans and removed them”
when they weren’t. In this way and without any direction from the
RC, he’d saved about 2,000 Jews from execution. Vol 1 p 110/113/121,
vol 7 p 111/121.
Furthermore, he had not been at the execution site during the executions. He’d stayed in the street along which the Jews had gone to the execution site. Only toward evening did he visit the execution site, which had already been covered.
In contrast, the accused
b) in his second prosecutorial interrogation of November 1964 admitted the following:
On the day before the mass execution, 5 –6 SD members from Baranovichi, under the command of SS-Obersturmfuehrer Gruenzfelder arrived in Lida in the course of the afternoon. Gruenzfelder told him at dinner that on the 8 May 1942 an Aktion – already planned by Gruenzfelder and Hanweg – would take place against those Jews that had “trickled into” Lida and were “legitimately” in Lida. These Jews were to be “deported”, and not shot. He knew nothing of the digging of any burial trenches. Vol 7 p 1037/54/75
The morning of 8 May 1942 he went, on return from the Jewish section, to the RC, where the RC was meeting with the division leaders. In a long meeting that lasted well into the afternoon, he and others, including Borrmann and Werner were given the job of “giving permits” to Jews “passing by”. This he had done at an intersection – and only there – and thereby “rescued” 2,000 Jews from execution. In the general chaos it wasn’t possible to prevent some Jews with work permits not being “freed” from the guards and from being “forced” to the execution site. Vol 7 p 1039, 1051
In the course of further interrogations the accused avoided answering direct questions and remonstrances and thereby embroiled himself in significant contradictions.
Finally he asserted that at the Aktion only he had had the “courage” to “protest the senseless destruction of the labor base” and “start” with the “removal” of able-bodied workers. Vol 7 p 1049
For the rest, he didn’t recall having “purposely” mistreated Jews at the “identity papers handout”. In the noise he had had to scream at some families. Vol 7 p 1051
In the course of the afternoon he had pulled out a few members of the Judenrat and of the Lida population near the execution site. He had not gone closer than 100 m to the execution site. If he’d stubbornly insisted otherwise during his first interrogation, it was because, as an officer, he distinguished between a “preparatory space” – an area before the execution site – and the actual execution site. Vol 7 p 1041, 1046
Toward evening he had conversed with SS-Obersturmfuehrer Gruenzfelder on a bench in front of his residence. His secretary, the witness Dellemann nee Neimcz, was present for part of this conversation. Then he learned that Gruenzfelder had directed the whole Aktion. Later he went a way outside Lida nd lay down in a section of forest. Vol 7 p 1043
He had wanted to be alone after the events of the day, and had not participated in the “cozy get together” that evening, either.
c) In the interrogation by the prosecuting attorney (March 1966) the accused, in contrast, admitted the following:
On the evening of 7 May 1942 he had learned from SS-Obersturmfuehrer Gruenzfelder that there would be a “legitimation Aktion” in Lida on 8 May 1942. He had been of the opinion that this Aktion would be “in all cases against the Jews who’d trickled into Lida”. On the morning of 8 May 1942, “shooting” woke him up. Thereupon he went to the Judenrat, had the shooting stopped from there, and went home again. Later he’d gone again to “the houses of the Judenrat” and had stayed there for several hours to be able to “give protection” to the Jews in these houses. But as he saw Jews “in masses brought out from the Jewish section”, he believed that “these Jews – as was customary elsewhere – were being deported”. Then he had, presumably at a railway underpass, with the Judenrat, “stood facing the column of these Jews and, with the help of the Judenrat pulled from the column those Jews for whom he could justify it”. These Jews he sent on to a street on the right which led to the Jewish section. Vol 18 p 2517 f
He had allowed these Jews to “guarded by his personal companion and to sit for a time to calm down”. He was of the opinion that in this way 2,000 to 3,000 Jews returned to the Jewish section.
Furthermore, in the process – as in Aktionen in the other towns of the region – fights broke out, so that he was “wiped out”. He had been surrounded so closely by Jews that he could do nothing more. Vol 18 p 2522
The accused then refused to say anything more. Vol 18 p 2519
The accused admits hereto only to have learned on the afternoon of 9 May 1942 from the RC that an Aktion had also been carried out in Zoludek. Vol 7 p 1054/56 vol 18 p 2520
On orders from the RC he went to Zoludek to find out what was happening there. On the spot, he’d only seen 2 open trenches with visible bodies near a section of forest. An unknown execution squad was still combing the woods for fleeing Jews, bringing them to the trenches and shooting them. Then he drove back to Lida and reported his observations.
The accused claims never to have been in Vasiliski, as far as he can remember. He claims never to have heard of mass executions in Vasiliski. Vol 7 p 1057, 1058
Already in his
a) first prosecutorial interrogation in October 1942
the accused admittted that he had informed the Judenrat in Voronovo
of a forthcoming “papers check”. Voronovo was in a region threatened
by partisans. For this reason one wanted to “dissolve” the Jewish
section in Voronovo and to relocate the Jews working for the Wehrmacht
there, to the extent they had valid working papers, to Lida and other villages.
Vol 1 p 116,121
On 11 May 1942, the day of the executions, he had performed the papers check. The Jews “passed” by him either to the right or the left. Thereby he had “kept by him” those Jews possessing papers. These Jews were presumably relocated to Lida. It is possible that he sent other Jews straight ahead, because he “could only take” to Lida those who were working for the Wehrmacht and who had valid working papers. During the “papers check” he had not realized that Jews without papers were to be liquidated. Although on the basis of the previous day’s events in Radun he’d “feared” that these Jews weren’t only to be “deported” but shot. Vol 1 p 116,118
b) In contrast, in his second prosecutorial interrogation (November 1942)
The accused made such mutually contradictory statements that they cannot be individually relayed here. For the most part, he asserted the following:
He had had no concrete foreknowledge of an Aktion against the Jews of Voronovo. Although he had had to “fear”, based on the previous Aktionen in other villages, that there would be an “annihilation Aktion” in Voronovo, too. It was true that he’d ordered a papers check for all the Jews of Voronovo in the Market Place on 11 May 1942. This was not, however, because of a planned mass execution, but “in the course of a report to the RC about refugee groups of Jews from Vilnius”. Vol 7 p 1065 f
When on 11 May 1942, he intended to accomplish the papers check in the Judenrat building, there were immediately “disturbances”, and a Lithuanian Commando unit had forced the Jews to the south exit of Voronovo. For this reason, he never managed to do the papers check he planned. Vol 7 p 1065
In the same interrogation the accused asserted a short time later that he, with the local German Gendarmerie and members of the RC, among them Hanweg and Borrmann, stood across the street from the Judenrat building and carried out this very papers check. In the course of which about 500 Jews with papers were “held back” and Jews “without papers” were led on. Then a “disturbance” erupted and wild shooting began. Thereupon he and members of the Judenrat forced the Jews with papers into a side street and there, he and the whole group took cover on account of the shooting. Vol 7 p 1066 f
The accused absolutely refuses to use the expression “selection” and insists that this term is Jewish propaganda. Vol 18 p 2497
c) In the interrogation by the examining attorney (March 1966)
The accused only spoke briefly regarding the Aktionen in Voronovo, as well as Zoludek, Vasiliski, and Ivje, and mentioned that he remembered having told the Judenrat in Voronovo that it was responsible for discipline. Vol 19 p 2520
On the day of the execution, he encountered in Voronovo, Hanweg, who was on his way back from Radun. On the main street in Voronovo, he and Hanweg removed Jews “from the SS-Apparatues” in the columns passing by, to the extent possible by the “legitimate” nature of the Jews in question.
The accused had
a) testified as follows in his first prosecutorial interrogation
in October 1942 regarding the mass
execution in Ivje:
He only first heard of the mass execution in Ivje from a telephone call from the mayor of Ivje. Thereupon he immediately set out for Ivje “with an escort”. On his arrival in Ivje, the Jews had already been collected. With his escort he had immediately removed those Jews who had legitimate working papers. These Jews had been spared the later execution. Furthermore, the entire Aktion had been “probably directed from Lithuania and by a unit stationed in Lithuania”. Vol 1 p1 113 f
In contrast, the accused
b) in his second prosecutorial interrogation of December 1964 admitted the following:
Ivje lay in the eastern forest of the RC Lida. “Out there” there had always been “events”. To pacify this “furnace of unrest” around Ivje, all Jews from Ivje were to be relocated to Lida. RC Hanweg had sent him to execute this relocation. Hanweg had informed him that for this “displacement” an external Einsatzkommando would be in Ivje “at his disposal”. He had in no way any idea that this Einsatzkommando was in reality an execution squad. His task had merely been to move the Jews with “legitimate papers” to Lida, using the Einsatzkommando. Vol 7 p 1069/74
On his arrival in Ivje, the Jewish population was already “assembled” in a plaza “under guard”. The “papers check” was, on his arrival, essentially complete, having been done by the local Judenrat. In total 2 groups of about 200 to 300 Jews were separated. There were “crossings over” between the individual groups. During these “crossings over” he and other “German officials” and members of the Judenrat checked papers. Only when the Jews who had no papers weren’t turned over to him, did he have to reckon, after the “events” of the previous days, with the “possibility” that the majority would be shot. He was never at the execution site, he had heard, however, that the execution site was outside Ivje. However, shots had already been fired during the “papers check”. Furthermore, he had not had anything to do with the preparation and covering of the mass graves.
The accused refused to say anything about the Aktion in Ivje to the prosecutor.
6) Shooting of a Jewish painter (September 1942)
The accused denies ever having himself shot a single person. According to his recollections, he wasn’t even in Lida in September 1941 yet. If the witness Cummings claims to have been an eyewitness to the shooting of the Jewish painter, he can only explain it as a manifestation of “collective hate”. Although he does have vague recollections of having heard, only as hearsay, that a Jewish painter had been knocked off a ladder and “shot at” in the building next to his by a member of the RC Lida. Vol 7 p 1030, vol 18 p 2492 f
7) Shooting of the Jewish student Zeldowicz
The accused denies the act and insists that the accusing witness Reznik is an “agent provacateur”. Vol 21 p 2952/54, vol 22 p 3095
8) Aktion against the “Vilner Jews” (1 March 1942)
In his prosecutorial interrogation (November1964) the accused asserted that he knew nothing of this Aktion. Vol 7 p 1020/21
In contrast, in his examination by the prosecuting attorney (February 1966) he admitted the following
To improve the living conditions of the Jews in Vilnius, he had, on his own responsibility, permitted about 80 Jews from Vilnius who had relatives in Lida, to move there. For these Jews, Lida was a sort of “el Dorado”. He himself had, shortly before the Aktion (against the Vilner Jews) brought some 80 Jews from Vilnius to Lida in a light truck and a bus for a sort of “family reunion”. This he had to disguise to Hanweg and General Commissar Kube, however, as obtaining reserve labor. On his instigation, the Judenrat had issued papers for these Vilner Jews. Vol 18 p 2505, vol 18 p 2496
On top of this, numerous other Jews from the vicinity fled to Lida, the “el Dorado”, which he and Hanweg initially tolerated. He – Windisch – had also tolerated that the Judenrat provided these Jews with papers. Vol 18 p 2502
He had known nothing in advance of the Aktion against the Vilnius Jews under consideration here. Apparently it concerned Police Aktionen planned by Hanweg and the Regional Police Chief, about which he first heard around noon, in his office, presumably from a member of the Judenrat. When he thereupon went to the site, he saw merely about 80 Jews assembled under guard. He had no idea how these Jews had been identified. Hanweg checked out these 80 Jews. He made Hanweg aware of the fact that among these 80 were some Jews whom he had brought from Vilnius. These Jews he’d “legitimized”. This Aktion was a “model” for the later SD-Aktionen. He had determined at this time that “in the case of legitimizing papers there was an opportunity for intercession”. Vol 18 p 2495 f, vol 18 p 2500
Of the 80 Jews, a further group of local Jews employed in the workshops was “identified” by Werner. The groups “identified” by him and by Werner were led back to the Jewish section. The remaining Jews were led off by the police. He did not know the fate of these Jews. Vol 18 p 2497
9) Shooting of the Judenrat members (March 1942)
The accused admitted the following about this matter in his prosecutorial interrogation :
The witness Cummings had informed him that some members of the Judenrat had given falsified papers to Jews who trickled in from Vilnius. Kerzner and Lichtmann were ordered to appear in his residence and informed of the “danger” of their actions. Kerzner had “documented” for him the granting of additional papers for Jews from Vilnius. With this the matter was “contained” and the 2 members of the Judenrat had gone back home. Then he was back in Germany for about 2 weeks. In this time, Kerzner, Lichtmann and other members of the Judenrat were jailed by Hanweg and Bormann. When he wanted to talk to the Judenrat members in jail on his return, it was prohibited him with the explanation that only Hanweg and Borrmann were permitted to speak to the Judenrat members. About 10 days later he learned that the Judenrat members had been shot on Hanweg’s orders for forging illegal work papers. Vol 7 p 1014, 1021
In the interrogation by the prosecuting attorney, the accused testified quite differently. Then he asserted that only on his return from Germany – presumably after Easter – had he heard for the first time anything about the issuing for forged papers by the Judenrat. These forgeries probably came from the direction of Voronovo. He had interceded in vain on behalf of the Judenrat members with Hanweg, and had said encouraging words to them in the Lida jail. The arrest of the Judenrat had, moreover, been a “power play” and a “personal insult” by Hanweg against him. Therefore he – the accused – ordered the burial of the executed Judenrat members as a “demonstration”. Vol 18, p 2468 f p 2502/06
Ordering Kerzner to his residence had nothing to do with his arrest and the arrest of the other members of the Judenrat. This discussion with Kerzner had taken place already in January or February 1942, thus a longer time before the arrest of the Judenrat members by Hanweg. Vol 18 p 2509 f
10) Shooting the Jew Halpern (July/August 1942)
The accused refused any information on this topic and designated the testimony of the accusing witness Jacob Druck as “propaganda”. Vol 7 p 1029
In spite of the denials of the accused, he will be indicted for this deed due to the testimony of the witnesses and other evidence.
The accused in fully responsible for the deeds described previously.
In the course of the investigation he wrote a multitude of letters of confused content to, among others, Mao Tes-tung, the Pope, Goldwater/USA, the Bundespresident, the mayor of Berlin, the Archbishop of Salzburg, the Israeli Ambassador Ben Nathan, Queen Sirikit, and others, denounced politicians, judges and prosecuting attorneys, and submjtted numerous petitions to various officials.
According to a certificate obtained for the purpose from Prof. Dr. Kluge, the accused is competent to stand trial. Vol 15 p 2056/2158, (2151/53), vol 17 p 2340/44
According to the convincing explanations in the certificates, the accused
has, among other things, psychopathic tendencies with querulousness,
his letters, petitions and denunciations are to be taken as a reaction
to his imprisonment.
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