Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  National Socialist sphere of influence.

  Territorial expansion and the establishment of occupying regimes dominated

  by the radical elements of the Party and the SS meant a further increase in

  National Socialist power. By radicalizing policy on the fringes, German society

  could be converted more rapidly into a racially homogeneous Volksgemeinschaft

  (national community) and the principle of ‘selection’ (in the form of ‘extirpation’)

  could be established as a permanent and all-embracing process.

  From the point of view of the National Socialists war represented a means of

  racial selection, a method for maintaining the ‘racially valuable’ and thus an

  important instrument in the establishment of a social order that was able to

  stand up for itself. The loss of ‘racially valuable’ individuals in the war also

  legitimated the violent destruction of large numbers of ‘inferior specimens’ in

  order to restore a ‘national biological balance’. Such a radical, dehumanizing

  approach only had a chance of being put into practice in wartime, in a more

  generally brutalizing atmosphere in which the existence of the individual was

  already to an extent devalued.

  chapter 7

  THE PERSECUTION OF JEWS IN THE

  TERRITORY OF THE REICH, 1939–1940

  In the first months of the war there was a characteristic concentration of the

  jurisdiction of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) with respect to the ‘Jewish

  question’. The Gestapo and the Security Police were merged under the Reich

  Security Head Office (RSHA) in October 1939 and from the beginning of 1940

  responsibility for Jewish affairs was concentrated in a new Department, IV D 4

  (Emigration and Evacuation), which was altered shortly afterwards to IV B 4

  (Jewish Affairs and Evacuation Matters). 1

  Amongst other things, this Department oversaw the Reich Association of Jews

  in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland), founded in July 1939, in

  respect of which the responsible officials performed their duties in the pettiest,

  most intransigent, and least cooperative manner possible. 2 The Reich Association of Jews oversaw existing communities and administered them as branch or district

  associations. 3 The Jewish institutions that still existed (associations, organizations, foundations) were gradually dissolved and their functions incorporated into the

  responsibilities of the Reich Association. 4

  In autumn 1939 the Jewish schools that were still in existence were also

  assimilated into the remit of the Reich Association, which was by then heavily

  overburdened. In October 1939 there were still 9,555 Jewish pupils in a total of 126

  schools, including 5 secondary schools, 1 middle school, and a secondary modern.

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  The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

  Two years later, in the autumn of 1941, there were 74 schools remaining for some

  7,000 Jewish children of school age, of which only one was a secondary school. By

  the end of 1941 teaching was impossible in practical terms because of the deport-

  ations and numerous other restrictions in the lives of the Jewish population. 5 In 1942 the whole network of Jewish schools was dissolved on the orders of the

  Gestapo. 6 The existing centres for the education of the Jewish population in agricultural and technical professions, in preparation for their emigration, not

  only survived but were positively encouraged by the RSHA. However, after the

  summer of 1941 it pushed for a reduction in their number, and by the end of that

  year it was aiming to shut them down altogether. 7

  In the first months of the war Jews were almost wholly excluded from German

  society. 8 The collection of documents edited by Joseph Walk reveals that between the November pogroms and the outbreak of war 229 anti-Jewish regulations were

  issued, rising to 253 between 1 September 1939 and the beginning of the deport-

  ations in October 1941. In September 1939, for example, an (unpublished) general 8

  p.m. curfew was imposed on Jews, 9 their radios were confiscated, 10 and their telephones were disconnected in summer 1940. 11 In June 1940 they were excluded from the National Air-Raid Protection League (Reichsluftschutzbund), 12 and an order of the Aviation Ministry of 7 October 1940 assigned them separate air-raid

  shelters or ensured that they would be kept apart from other inhabitants in the

  event of an air raid. 13 Jews’ ration cards were marked with a ‘J’, 14 they were only permitted to use certain shops, 15 and the times when they were permitted to shop were strictly regulated by the municipality (and often limited to one hour a day). 16

  Jews were systematically discriminated against in the distribution of rations, and

  by turn refused the right to buy luxury foods17 and then clothing. 18 These drastic measures had the effect of starving the Jewish population and ensuring that they

  devoted most of their energies to obtaining food. 19

  In addition, since the summer of 1939 many cities had taken their own measures

  to stop Jews from moving in. 20 Jews were being driven out of their homes in increasing numbers since the war had begun and were taken into designated

  ‘Jewish houses’. 21 From May 1941 Gestapo units started to erect special ‘Jewish camps’ on the outskirts of the municipalities. 22

  After the war started the so-called forced-labour deployment of German Jews in

  segregated work brigades (or geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz) was extended. Hitherto,

  enforced employment had only affected people registered as without an income or

  in receipt of benefits, but in the spring of 1940 it was extended to include all Jews

  ‘capable of work’, which meant above all women. Jews were deployed chiefly in

  industrial production. In February 1941 41,000 people were involved in this

  geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz, and the regime had thereby effectively exhausted

  the working potential of the Jewish population. 23

  At the same time the regime continued with its policy of forcing the Jewish

  minority into exile. In a keynote speech before the Gauleiters held on 29 February

  Persecution of Jews in the Reich, 1939–40

  135

  1940 Himmler declared that the continuation of emigration measures was one of

  his priorities for the rest of that year. 24 According to the reports of the SD, 10,312

  Jews emigrated from Germany in the first quarter of 1940.25 On 24 April the RSHA informed the Gestapo regional offices that they should ‘continue to press ahead

  with Jewish emigration from the territory of the Reich even during the war’. 26 In the process it was important to ensure that ‘Jews fit for military service or for

  work’ should if possible not be allowed to emigrate to another European country,

  and under no circumstances into enemy states.

  Euthanasia Programmes

  In spring and summer 1939—not coincidentally at a time when intensive prepar-

  ations for war were under way—the National Socialist regime began to make

  concrete arrangements for the systematic ‘annihilation of lives unfit for further

  existence’. Such plans had long been the subject of discussion by specialists, with

  the constant support of the NSDAP. 27 In the field of psychiatry ideas on racial hygiene had been making headway since 1933, and in particular long-term patients

  thought to be suffering from hereditary deficiencies, resistant to treatment, and

  otherwise unproductive were not only the preferred targets of enforced steriliza-
r />   tion but the day-to-day victims of systematic neglect, since they were considered

  ‘non-contributive mouths to feed’. 28

  A background such as this certainly contributed to the receptiveness among

  psychiatrists—and the state bureaucracy concerned with psychiatric care—to the

  idea of systematic ‘annihilation’ of patients in psychiatric institutions. However,

  the decision to put this radical idea into practice was intimately linked to the

  regime’s wider orientation towards war. From the perspective of the ‘national

  biological’ (volksbiologisch) considerations of radical National Socialists, it was not

  merely legitimate but necessary to compensate for the potential loss of ‘healthy’

  national biological substance (Volkssubstanz) due to the war by ‘eradicating’ the

  least ‘desirable’ elements of the population at the same time. Such a drastic

  intervention could only be contemplated within an atmosphere in which human

  life was more generally brutalized and devalued, in other words when faced by the

  vast scale of killing and death that a war represented. Only in the exceptional

  situation that the war represented was it possible to conceal mass murder behind

  the façade of supposedly ‘war-related’ measures, such as the ‘freeing up’ of the

  psychiatric institutions for purposes connected with the war, saving the costs of

  care, and so forth. Justifications with this kind of functionalist rationale were

  supplied from various branches of the administration, each from its own particu-

  lar perspective, and were to play a significant role when the ‘euthanasia pro-

  grammes’ were eventually carried out. However, historical analysis runs the risk

  of regarding these apparently ‘rational’ motives as cumulatively constituting a

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  The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

  multi-dimensional context of justification for ‘euthanasia’ and thus losing sight of

  the true starting point for the murders—the fact that the National Socialists used

  the war as a welcome opportunity to put their ideologically founded ‘biological

  revolution’ project into practice more radically than had hitherto been possible.

  The planning and preparation phase for the ‘euthanasia programmes’ can only

  be partially reconstructed, mostly on the basis of statements by those involved

  made after the end of the war. The mass murder of the disabled and the sick began

  with a distinct programme of children’s ‘euthanasia’. 29 It has long been clear that an individual case played an important role in triggering this programme of

  murders: on the basis of a petition from one set of parents Hitler gave his personal

  physician, Karl Brandt, the authority to have a severely handicapped child killed.

  According to more recent research the killing of this child, who had been born in

  the Leipzig area on 20 February 1939, took place on 25 July 1939.30 Most probably contemporaneously with this individual case Hitler had charged his personal

  physician, Karl Brandt, and Philipp Bouhler, the Head of the Chancellery of the

  Führer of the NSDAP, with devising a process for proceeding in the same manner

  with similar cases in the future. The Chancellery convened a small group of

  experts, who established the procedures for the ‘euthanasia’ of small children.

  To facilitate their implementation a front organization was formed under the

  name of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Severe Illnesses

  with Hereditary or Predisposed Causes (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen

  Erfassung von erb- und anlagebedingten schweren Leiden).

  The deliberations of this group must have taken place in July at the latest, since

  on 18 August 1939 the Reich Minister of the Interior used an unpublished circular

  decree to introduce a Requirement to Report Newborn Children with any form of

  Handicap (Meldepflicht über misgestaltete usw. Neugeborene). This constrained

  medical personnel to report all children who displayed ‘severe hereditary illnesses’

  before the end of their third year to the Health Authorities, who would pass the

  information forward to the Reich Committee. The Committee submitted the

  report forms to three experts, who each gave their assessment in turn. If their

  conclusions were negative, as soon as the parents had given their consent to

  hospitalization, the children were transferred to one of the approximately thirty

  so-called ‘specialist children’s clinics’ where they were killed by means of tablets,

  injections, or by starvation. It is thought that children’s ‘euthanasia’ claimed some

  5,000 victims in all.

  The fact that the first ‘euthanasia’ murder took place at the end of July 1939 (and

  not early in 1939 as has previously been assumed) makes necessary a partial

  revision of the prehistory of the whole ‘euthanasia’ programme. Hitler’s instruc-

  tion to carry out adult ‘euthanasia’ is evidently to be seen in closer chronological

  connection to the beginning of children’s ‘euthanasia’ than it has been hitherto,

  and an interpretation of the whole ‘euthanasia’ complex in the context of direct

  preparations for the war is therefore much more plausible. From the new dating

  Persecution of Jews in the Reich, 1939–40

  137

  for the killing of the child in Leipzig it emerges that the decisive discussions during

  which Hitler, in the presence of Bormann, Lammers, and Leonardo Conti (State

  Secretary for Health in the Ministry of the Interior and Director of the NSDAP’s

  Main Office for the People’s Health), gave instructions for the systematic murder

  of adult psychiatric institution inmates took place before Hitler personally

  authorized the first individual ‘euthanasia’ case and not, as has hitherto been

  supposed, several months afterwards. It now seems highly probable that Hitler’s

  instructions for the ‘euthanasia’ of children and adults were chronologically in

  very close proximity, and that they were issued in June or early July 1939. In any

  case Bouhler and Brandt, who had rapidly conceived a programme for the murder

  of children on the basis of the Leipzig precedent, succeeded relatively quickly in

  taking over the task of adult ‘euthanasia’ from Conti.

  It was probably at the end of July that Bouhler arranged a meeting with some

  fifteen to twenty doctors at which the plans for ‘euthanasia’ were established on

  the basis of the supposed necessity of freeing up psychiatric institutions and carers

  for war-related purposes. With the help of the Technological Institute of the Reich

  Criminal Investigation Department (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt), which had

  already developed appropriate poisons for children’s ‘euthanasia’, an apparently

  suitable method of killing was found: asphyxiation by carbon monoxide. 31 It was significant that during the preparations for ‘euthanasia’ an instruction for

  enforced sterilization that had been issued on 31 August (thus immediately before

  the start of the war) was officially suspended except F-cases, which were seen as

  particularly serious. 32

  At a meeting of leading ‘euthanasia’ doctors held on 9 October it was agreed to

  kill approximately every fifth psychiatric in-patient, or some 65,000–70,000 indi-

  viduals. 33 Also in October 1939, it seems that Hitler issue
d a document on his personal notepaper in which he instructed Bouhler and Brandt ‘to extend the remit

  of certain named doctors to grant those who are as far as anyone can humanly

  judge incurably sick a merciful death (Gnadentod) after critical investigation of

  their state of health’. With this document, which Hitler significantly backdated to 1

  September 1939, the activities of those who were responsible for the ‘euthanasia’

  programme and who had so far been acting without any legal basis were legitim-

  ized. Terms such as ‘critical investigation’ and ‘merciful death’ were intended to

  obscure the fact that what was being organized was in fact mass murder. 34

  From October 1939 psychiatric institutions were asked to indicate on special

  forms those patients who were suffering from certain serious psychological

  conditions and who were ‘unemployable or only able to fulfil mechanical tasks’.

  In addition, without reference to health profile or capacity for work, registration

  was required for all patients who had been in an institution for more than five

  years, who had been detained as criminally insane, or who ‘do not possess German

  citizenship or are not of German or similar blood’: this formulation referred to

  patients who were of Jewish, Gypsy, or non-European origin. 35

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  The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

  However, even before the mass murders of the T4 Programme had begun,

  patients in institutions for the mentally ill had already been systematically killed,

  especially in the annexed areas of Poland but also within the Old Reich, in

  Pomerania. At least 7,700 people fell victim to this programme of mass murder.

  From the end of September to December members of the Eimann Special Guard

  Division (Wachsturmbann Eimann)—a unit made up of SS members from

  Danzig, ethnic German Self-Defence Corps (volksdeutscher Selbstschutz) and

  members of Einsatzgruppen (task forces) in the new Reichsgau of Danzig-West-

  Prussia—shot thousands of the inmates of psychiatric institutions, most notably

  patients in the Kocborowo (Conradstein) Mental Hospital. The victims were

  people incapable of work or those of Polish or Jewish ethnicity. 36