Description:

HANS FRANK CLAIMS HE SOUGHT 'TO IMPROVE THE LOT OF THE POLISH POPULATION'
HANS FRANK (1900-1946) Nazi occupational Governor of Poland partly responsible for the genocide perpetrated there. FRANK SOUGHT 'TO IMPROVE THE LOT OF THE POLISH POPULATION' Historic content partly-printed D.S. 'Frank', 1p. legal folio, Nuremberg, Nov. 21, 1945 - one day after the start of the Nuremberg Trials - a submission to the International Military Tribunal headed: 'Defendant's Application for Document' for use in Frank's defense. Frank asks to be supplied with the: 'Exchange of letters ie: all files between the Governor-General (Generalgouverneur) [Frank] and the Reich Chancellery...'. Frank states that these documents would be used to prove: 'This exchange of letters...reflect the efforts of the defendant Frank to improve the lot of the Polish population, especially in regard to food. Furthermore, they offer further disclosures about Franks combatting of the measures of the SS and SD, the Gestapo, the Higher SS (Hohere SS) and Police Leaders and Frank's struggle against those. The files further show that Frank has waged a constant conflict against the intended resettlement-actions...insofar as he even received knowledge of them, against the requisitions of the Reich with regard to labor-conscription and the delivery or grain etc. The files contain a number of complaints and memoranda whose intonation exceed by far the memorandum 437-PS....' He again refers to 'document 437-PS...a single form of these files', undoubtedly a damning document which we suspect was read or entered into record in one of the prosecutor's opening statements. Boldly signed at the bottom by Frank, and additionally signed and stamped by his defense attorney, ALFRED SEIDL (1911-1993). Mounted, along with the official Tribunal translation (also mounted), near fine. Frank, in submitting a document that is comprised entirely of lies, is clearly very desperately fighting for his life at the very outset of his trial. From the day of his installation as Governor-General, Frank oversaw the expulsion from their homes of hundreds of thousands of Poles considered not suitable for 'Aryanization'. Ethnic Germans took their properties, and the displaced Poles, with no place to go, died en route and in transit camps and at Auschwitz from simple starvation. Almost immediately after the invasion, Germans also began forcibly conscripting laborers. The laborers, Jews, Poles and others, were employed in SS-owned enterprises (such as the German Armament Works, Deutsche Ausrustungswerke, DAW), but also in many private German firms – such as Messerschmitt, Junkers, Siemens, and IG Farben. A total of 2.3 million Polish citizens, including 300,000 POWs, were deported to Germany as forced laborers. Finally, the 'Hunger Plan' was instituted in 1941 to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the genocide by starvation of millions of Slavs following Operation Barbarossa, as Germany was not self-sufficient in food supplies. The plan created a famine as an act of policy, killing millions of people. In early 1943, Frank estimated that three million Poles would face starvation as a result of the Plan. In August, the Polish capital Warsaw was cut off from grain deliveries. Only the bumper harvest of 1943 and the collapsing Eastern Front of 1944 saved the Poles from starvation. Of course, Frank had prior knowledge of every single one of these actions, and not one of them could have been possible without Frank being in complete lockstep with Himmler's SS, SD, and Gestapo! The '437-PS' document to which Frank refers was a June 19, 1943 40-page report sent by Frank to Hitler. In it, Frank complains of resistance by the Poles to the harsh measures imposed upon them. However, in 1941 Frank wrote in his own diary: 'Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Walbaum expresses his opinion of the health condition of the Polish population...the majority of Poles had only about 600 calories allotted to them, whereas the normal requirement for a human being was 2,200 calories. The Polish population was weakened to such an extent that it would fall an easy prey to spotted fever [typhus]...' Nevertheless Frank approved, in August 1942, a new plan which called for a much larger contribution of foodstuffs to Germany at the expense of the non-German population of Poland. One of the most insidious documents to ever cross our hands. This document originates from the files of Hans Werner, Director of Printing for the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. It was his task to publish the 42-volume record of the trial using this document and scores of others. Following completion of his task, Werner was permitted to retain possession of the documents, which were never tagged as evidence. They were then sold by autograph expert Charles Hamilton in his auctions, in 1979.

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December 7, 2021 10:00 AM EST
Elkton, MD, US

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