Voices from the Holocaust
Page 14
The highest mortality turns out to be among children. The next highest is the age group 20–40. Refugees of advanced age are rare cases.
The deceased refugees come from: Rawa, Łowicz, Zakroczym, Lipno, Skierniewice, Nowy Dwór, Biezuń, Warka, Góra-Kalwaria, Sokołów, Cracow, Aleksandrów, Głowno, Sierpce, Żyrardów, Kałuszyn, Mszczonów, Błonie, Drobin, Kowal, Wyszków, Kutno, Częstochowa, Leszno, Raciąż, Słupce, Błędów, Grójec, Płońsk, Otwock, Tarczyn, Stryków, Zgierz.
3 Dzika Street
Number of residents – 1,613; rooms – 153. Only the orphans’ rooms and children’s club room are heated. No running water, and toilets are not working. About 10 per cent are exempt from meal charges. The locale has a diverse population (employable, beggars, and ordinary criminals), as the locale directors remark, because of poor nutrition, lack of occupation, and low cultural standard …
Unfortunately for the locale, persons stricken with dysentery remain here and even persons with broken limbs are not sent to the hospital. The locale still lacks plank beds. The refugees are in rags and tatters. Some are completely naked.
The number of deceased during the month was 183. The mortality rate is 11.5 per cent ...
9 Dzika Street
The locale at 9 Dzika is being transformed into a large children’s residence. The building is dirty, corridors and stairs with mud and excrement. The upper storeys are being prepared for the children. Meantime the children are in the most horrible sanitary conditions. Nutrition is inadequate, but tolerable in comparison to living in the conditions in the locales.
The number of children is 191. During the month 87 children were admitted. The children come from the following cities: Poznań, Zgierz, Łódź, Brzeziny, Żuromin, Stryków, Aleksandrów, Sierpce, and Kałuszyn. Besides the cities mentioned, there are also a small number of children from Warsaw.
No running water, and toilets are not working. Dysentery stalks the children’s centre. A large number of children suffer from rashes. The children are naked and barefoot. Several children sleep on one plank bed.
During the month 63 children died.
The mortality among children has reached 33 per cent of the total.
The children still do not get supplementary food rations from the management.
19 Dzika Street
The locale holds 136 refugees. Rooms – 8. The rooms are unheated. Running water works partially. One toilet is in operation. There have been no typhus cases, but, in contrast, there have been three cases of dysentery. There are also cases where the refugee does not get a midday meal, because some are not exempt from meal charges.
Only the children’s club room is heated.
There were 13 deaths, among them five children, 10 per cent of all ...
Some comments on conclusions to be drawn:
a. Births: 0. In December, one birth – a stillborn child.
b. Deaths: Children up to 14 years – 42 per cent.
c. Deaths are doubtless the result of harsh living and sanitary-hygienic conditions in the above-mentioned locales.
* Illegible portions of the original are indicated by a bracketed question mark; reconstructions are in brackets.
PART III: ASH
The Final Solution,
20 January 1942–1946
The Final Solution had already begun with the Einsatzgruppen: the Wannsee Conference, held in a suburban villa on the outskirts of Berlin, was convened to coordinate a more effective mass extermination of Europe’s Jews. Fifteen representatives of party and state apparatus attended this meeting about the Endlosung, which was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich. Adolf Eichmann took the minutes. The ensuing protocols do not explicitly mention extermination, hiding behind what Eichmann called ‘office speak’ (euphemisms to make mass murder innocuous, even mundane), but no one at the conference was under any illusions. What Heydrich meant by ‘practical experience is already being collected’ was that experiments had been carried out with gas chambers at Auschwitz and the other death camps. Heydrich’s striving for efficiency combined with mass gassing would bring the Holocaust to four million European Jews between 1942 and 1945.
Minutes of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin, 20 January 1942
SS OBERSTURMBANNFÜHRER ADOLF EICHMANN
Secret Reich Business!
30 copies
16th copy
Minutes of discussion.
I.
The following persons took part in the discussion about the final solution of the Jewish question which took place in Berlin, am Grossen Wannsee No. 56/58 on 20 January 1942.
Gauleiter Dr Meyer Reich Ministry for the Occupied
and Reichsamtleiter Eastern territories
Dr Leibbrandt
Secretary of State Dr Stuckart Reich Ministry for the Interior
Secretary of State Neumann Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan
Secretary of State Dr Freisler Reich Ministry of Justice
Secretary of State Dr Bühler Office of the Government General
Under Secretary of State Foreign Office
Dr Luther
SS-Oberführer Klopfer Party Chancellery
Ministerialdirektor Kritzinger Reich Chancellery
SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann Race and Settlement Main Office
SS-Gruppenführer Müller Reich Main Security Office
SS-Obersturmbannführer
Eichmann
SS-Oberführer Dr Schöngarth Security Police and SD
Commander of the Security Police
and the SD in the Government General
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Lange Security Police SD
Commander of the Security Police
and the SD for the General-District
Latvia, as deputy of the Commander
of the Security Police and the SD
for the Reich Commissariat ‘Eastland’.
II.
At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of the SD, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, reported that the Reich Marshal had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions. The wish of the Reich Marshal to have a draft sent to him concerning organizational, factual and material interests in relation to the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe makes necessary an initial common action of all central offices immediately concerned with these questions in order to bring their general activities into line. The Reichsführer-SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD) was entrusted with the official central handling of the final solution of the Jewish question without regard to geographic borders. The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following:
a) the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life of the German people,
b) the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people.
In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Jews from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution.
By order of the Reich Marshal, a Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in January 1939 and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with the management. Its most important tasks were
a) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Jews,
b) to direct the flow of emigration,
c) to speed the procedure of emigration in each individual case.
The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Jews in a legal manner.
All the offices realized the drawbacks of such enforced accelerated emigration. For the time being they had, however, tolerated it on account of the lack of other possible solutions of the problem.
The work concerned with emigration was, later on, no
t only a German problem, but also a problem with which the authorities of the countries to which the flow of emigrants was being directed would have to deal. Financial difficulties, such as the demand by various foreign governments for increasing sums of money to be presented at the time of the landing, the lack of shipping space, increasing restriction of entry permits, or the cancelling of such, increased extraordinarily the difficulties of emigration. In spite of these difficulties, 537,000 Jews were sent out of the country between the takeover of power and the deadline of 31 October 1941. Of these
approximately 360,000 were in Germany proper on 30 January 1933 approximately 147,000 were in Austria (Ostmark) on 15 March 1939 approximately 30,000 were in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939.
The Jews themselves, or their Jewish political organizations, financed the emigration. In order to avoid impoverished Jews remaining behind, the principle was followed that wealthy Jews have to finance the emigration of poor Jews; this was arranged by imposing a suitable tax, i.e., an emigration tax, which was used for financial arrangements in connection with the emigration of poor Jews and was imposed according to income.
Apart from the necessary Reichsmark exchange, foreign currency had to be presented at the time of landing. In order to save foreign exchange held by Germany, the foreign Jewish financial organizations were – with the help of Jewish organizations in Germany – made responsible for arranging an adequate amount of foreign currency. Up to 30 October 1941, these foreign Jews donated a total of around 9,500,000 dollars.
In the meantime the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Jews due to the dangers of an emigration in wartime and due to the possibilities of the East.
III.
Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Führer gives the appropriate approval in advance.
These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.
Approximately 11 million Jews will be involved in the final solution of the European Jewish question, distributed as follows among the individual countries:
Country Number
A. Germany proper
131,800
Austria
43,7000
Eastern territories
420,000
General Government
2,284,000
Bialystok
400,000
Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia
74,200
Estonia – free of Jews
Latvia
3,500
Lithuania
34,000
Belgium
43,000
Denmark
5,600
France/occupied territory
165,000
unoccupied territory
700,000
Greece
69,600
Netherlands
160,800
Norway
1,300
B. Bulgaria
48,000
England
330,000
Finland
2,300
Ireland
4,000
Italy including Sardinia
58,000
Albania
200
Croatia
40,000
Portugal
3,000
Rumania including Bessarabia
342,000
Sweden
8,000
Switzerland
18,000
Serbia
10,000
Slovakia
88,000
Spain
6,000
Turkey (European portion)
55,500
Hungary
742,800
USSR
5,000,000
Ukraine
2,994,684
White Russia excluding Bialystok
446,484
Total
over 11,000,000
The number of Jews given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Jews who still adhere to the Jewish faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term ‘Jew’ according to racial principles. The handling of the problem in the individual countries will meet with difficulties due to the attitude and outlook of the people there, especially in Hungary and Rumania. Thus, for example, even today the Jew can buy documents in Rumania that will officially prove his foreign citizenship.
The influence of the Jews in all walks of life in the USSR is well known. Approximately five million Jews live in the European part of the USSR, in the Asian part scarcely ¼ million.
The breakdown of Jews residing in the European part of the USSR according to trades was approximately as follows:
Agriculture 9.1 per cent
Urban workers 14.8 per cent
In trade 20.0 per cent
Employed by the state 23.4 per cent
In private occupations such as medical profession, press, theatre, etc. 32.7 per cent
Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labour in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.
The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history).
In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.
The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East.
SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich went on to say that an important pre-requisite for the evacuation as such is the exact definition of the persons involved.
It is not intended to evacuate Jews over sixty-five years old, but to send them to an old-age ghetto – Theresienstadt is being considered for this purpose.
In addition to these age groups – of the approximately 280,000 Jews in Germany proper and Austria on 31 October 1941, approximately 30 per cent are over sixty-five years old – severely wounded veterans and Jews with war decorations (Iron Cross I) will be accepted in the old-age ghettos. With this expedient solution, in one fell swoop many interventions will be prevented.
The beginning of the individual larger evacuation actions will largely depend on military developments. Regarding the handling of the final solution in those European countries occupied and influenced by us, it was proposed that the appropriate expert of the Foreign Office discuss the matter with the responsible official of the Security Police and SD.
In Slovakia and Croatia the matter is no longer so difficult, since the most substantial problems in this respect have already been brought near a solution. In Rumania the government has in the meantime also appointed a commissioner for Jewish affairs. In order to settle the question in Hungary, it will soon be necessary to force an adviser for Jewish questions on to the Hungarian government.
With regard to taking up preparations for dealing with the problem in Italy, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich considers it opportune to contact the chief of police with a view to these problems.
In occupied and unoccupied France, the registration of Jews for evacuation will in all probability proceed without great difficulty.
Under Secretary of State Luther calls attention in this matter to the fact that in some coun
tries, such as the Scandinavian states, difficulties will arise if this problem is dealt with thoroughly and that it will therefore be advisable to defer actions in these countries. Besides, in view of the small numbers of Jews affected, this deferral will not cause any substantial limitation.
The Foreign Office sees no great difficulties for south-east and western Europe.
SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann plans to send an expert to Hungary from the Race and Settlement Main Office for general orientation at the time when the Chief of the Security Police and SD takes up the matter there. It was decided to assign this expert from the Race and Settlement Main Office, who will not work actively, as an assistant to the police attaché.
IV.
In the course of the final solution plans, the Nuremberg Laws should provide a certain foundation, in which a pre-requisite for the absolute solution of the problem is also the solution to the problem of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood.
The Chief of the Security Police and the SD discusses the following points, at first theoretically, in regard to a letter from the chief of the Reich chancellery:
1) Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree
Persons of mixed blood of the first degree will, as regards the final solution of the Jewish question, be treated as Jews.
From this treatment the following exceptions will be made:
a) Persons of mixed blood of the first degree married to persons of German blood if their marriage has resulted in children (persons of mixed blood of the second degree). These persons of mixed blood of the second degree are to be treated essentially as Germans.
b) Persons of mixed blood of the first degree, for whom the highest offices of the Party and State have already issued exemption permits in any sphere of life. Each individual case must be examined, and it is not ruled out that the decision may be made to the detriment of the person of mixed blood.