English Translation

V Copy Only for personal, strictly confidential information. Not intended for publication. R.M.f.d.b.O. Berlin, 2 June 1942 I/8-d Auslandsinformation Sachbearbeiter:Gruppeleiter Krausskopf S p ra c h r eg eg u ng zur Ordnung der Reichskommissare Ostland und Ükraine über die Rechtsbeziehungen religious Organisationen. In his speech in Riga on May 5, 1942, Reichsminister Rosenberg stated among other things that it was the task of the German leadership in the future to create conditions for a form of life that would provide the spiritual and psychic forces of the individual peoples with a corresponding space for their impact, precisely where Bolshevism was trying to destroy them. Thus, the Reichskommissare für das Ostland und die Ukraine will soon issue regulations regulating the legal relations of religious societies.The German administration will restore religious tolerance as a natural prerequisite for the inner life of the liberated peoples. The decrees mentioned by the Minister of the Interior Rosenberg are now announced by the competent Reich Commissioners. The purpose of these decrees is to clarify the German position on the existing religious organizations in the Occupied Eastern Territories in order to promote the pacification of the population. On the basis of the principle that peoples in the Occupied Eastern Territories are granted freedom of religious activity as a matter of course, even without a detailed legal certificate, the two substantive regulations limit themselves to the definition of provisions which will render future denominational development under administrative control. In the first place, the intention is that the emergence of religious conflicts, for example, by the violent intrusion of such religions,