Feb. 17, 1964 - A German historian testified today in Frankfurt that Nazi atrocities against the Jews were a “natural, evolutionary development of German history.” Dr. Helmut Krausnick, 58 years old, of the Munich Institute of Modern History, said that “Adolf Hitler was not an accident but the result of centuries of anti-Semitism in Germany.” The prosecution called Dr. Krausnick to the trial of 22 former SS guards and Nazi functionaries at the Auschwitz death camp to tell why the Germans supported a Government that tried to eliminate the Jews. He is a specialist on anti-Semitism at the institute, a Government-supported organization specializing in the history of the Nazi movement.
Dr. Krausnick said that although Hitler always intended to wipe out the world’s Jews, many other Germans, both members and nonmembers of the Nazi party, were merely interested in making them leave Europe. Evidence of this, he said, was a plan developed by the German Foreign Ministry for the removal of European Jews to Madagascar. He explained: “Their idea was to build a ghetto for millions of Jews, whom they planned to use as hostages to squeeze what they believed would be millions of dollars out of American Jews.”
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