planned to bring the ‘Final Solution’ to its conclusion in the General Government
and in the Reichskommissariat Ostland. Moreover, immediately after the issuing
of the order on 21 June, the Security Police in Latvia began to withdraw the
workers who were, in their view, not important to the war effort, from individual
firms.
The Kaiserwald concentration camp, which had been built near Riga on
Himmler’s instructions, was to achieve a capacity of 2,000 inmates at the most;
in fact it was to act as a transit camp. Here labour columns were assembled which
were marched to the individual firms where they were lodged in primitive
accommodation, known as ‘barracks’, near the production facilities. 53 In these camps and in Kaiserwald continual selections of those unfit for work took place;
on 28 April 1944 the children were removed from all the camps and murdered. 54
The Riga ghetto was, by contrast, dissolved. As in the Kaiserwald camp and in
the ‘barracks’ only Jews who were actually in the ‘work programme’ were sup-
posed to live there. On 2 November the Security Police drove together the children
and the sick in the ghetto and deported them to Auschwitz. 55 After that the ghetto was gradually cleared once and for all. The two other large ghettos remaining in
the Baltic, the ghettos of Kaunas and Vilnius (Vilna), were removed in September
1943.
The Kaunas (Kovno) ghetto was turned into a concentration camp (‘KZ
Kauen’) on 15 September. By this point many of the ghetto-dwellers were already
living in work camps outside the ghetto, which were now subordinated to the
concentration camp. A total of 2,800 Jews were deported to Estonia and deployed
as forced labourers; those ‘unfit for work’ were murdered. On 27 March 1944
prisoners who were not used as slave labour, 1,800 children, and elderly people
were murdered. 56
In the spring of 1943 the smaller ghettos in the district of Vilnius were dissolved,
and the bulk of the inhabitants murdered, the smaller part interned in the Vilnius
ghetto, and in June and July the same thing happened to the labour camps in this
area. 57 In August and September the remaining 20,000 or so inhabitants of the ghetto were herded together; most of them were dispatched to Estonian and
Latvian concentration camps, while around 4,000 people were deported to
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
385
Sobibor or murdered in the mass execution centre at Ponary. After the final
liquidation of the ghetto at the end of September 2,500 Jews were left in labour
camps in Vilna. 58 The Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia was set up on 15 September 1943 in direct connection with the action against the ghettos of
Vilnius and Kaunas. It served as a transit camp for the Jews deported from the
ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas as well as from the Reich, Theresienstadt, Poland,
and Hungary. Some 20,000 people passed through this camp and were distributed
around smaller labour camps. 59
While the examples of Slutsk and Glebokie make it clear that in 1943 the Jewish
population of White Russia continued its resistance against the policy of exter-
mination, conditions in the Baltic were rather different. Here, after the major
ghetto actions in 1941, in which the majority of the Jewish population had already
been murdered, resistance groups formed in various ghettos beginning in early
1942. However, the fact that a long phase of relative calm began, one which was to
last until 1943 during which as a rule no ‘actions’ occurred, in the final analysis
produced a negative effect on resistance activities. The high percentage of Jews
employed ‘productively’ fed the illusion that the Germans were at least leaving
those Jews ‘fit for work’ and their relatives alive.
In Kaunas a Communist and a Zionist underground group combined forces in
the summer of 1943; the underground activities were covered up by the chairman
of the Jewish council, Elkes. The focus of the work of the underground lay in
reinforcing the resistance of the ghetto-dwellers through cultural and educational
activities. Several hundred resistance fighters finally managed to flee the ghetto in
small groups and join the partisans in the forests. No attempt at an uprising in the
ghetto was undertaken. 60
In Vilnius the FPO resistance group founded early in 1942 prepared for an
armed uprising. However, their activities were considerably frustrated by the
chairman of the Jewish council, Jacob Gens, for fear of reprisals against the
ghetto-dwellers. When the ghetto was cleared in several ‘actions’ in August and
September 1943, the FPO did not, as planned, manage to light the initial spark for a
general uprising through armed resistance. The surviving resistance fighters
continued the struggle in the forests. 61 There were also underground movements in the ghettos of the Lithuanian towns of Schaulen and Svencian, but they did not
attempt an uprising. 62
In Lithuania in 1943–4 a total of around 1,150 ghetto-dwellers fled to the forests
as participants in resistance groups and a further 650 did so independently. This
meant that a total of 4.5 per cent of the ghetto population managed to escape
extermination through flight. 63
In the Latvian capital of Riga, an underground organization with several
hundred members formed early in 1942. In October 1942 the attempt to bring a
group of resistance fighters out of the ghetto failed; the secret organization was
eliminated by the occupying forces. 64
386
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
Continuation of the Deportations
German Reich
After Hitler’s decision in September 1942 to replace those Jews still working in
armaments production, the preparations for a sudden (schlagartig) deportation of
this group began in late 1942. In view of the large-scale recruitment of foreign
workers planned for early 1943, the replacement of Jewish skilled workers did not
seem to pose an insuperable problem. 65
The ‘withdrawal of all Jews still engaged in the work process’ began on
27 February 1943. In Berlin alone, the SS Bodyguard units (Leibstandarte) arrested
some 7,000 people in their workplaces or homes; a few days later they were
deported to Auschwitz. 66 At this point there were no plans to deport Jews living in ‘mixed marriages’; they were also arrested, but they were released to go home.
In Berlin, however, hundreds of men from this group were held in two buildings
belonging to the Jewish community, presumably to have staff available to replace
the deported employees. Remarkably, there was a spontaneous public protest by
the families of these men, who stood for days outside the building on Rosen-
strasse. But the fact that the Gestapo finally released the men held in Rosenstrasse
was not the result of this protest; at this point there had been no plans to deport
them in any case. 67
After this surge in deportations (between early January and mid-March 1943 a
total of sixteen transport trains, most of them carrying 1,000 people each, had
gone to Auschwitz68), 31,897 people of Jewish origin still lived in the Reich, more than 18,515 of them in Berlin. Of the Jews living in the Reich 17,517 were free of the
obligation to wear t
he yellow star. 69 From then on the deportations continued only on a smaller scale. 70
The major deportations to Theresienstadt in the summer of 1942 were followed
by numerous smaller transports. From November 1942 until mid-1943 there were
almost 100 of these, each one usually carrying 50 or 100 people. The only special
train to Theresienstadt, involving more than 1,200 people, left Berlin on 17 March
1943. 71
In December 1943 the RSHA ordered the ‘change of residence’ to Theresien-
stadt of certain groups hitherto spared deportation. This was to start at the
beginning of the year and particularly affected were the Jewish spouses of mixed
marriages that no longer existed, and who—because of the existence of children
who were not deemed to be Jewish—had been free of the obligation to wear the
yellow star. 72 In 1943, ten transports had gone from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, each carrying more than 1,000, but in some cases far more than 2,000 people. 73
During the whole of 1944 further smaller deportations left the Reich
for Auschwitz. In particular, during that year further large transports left
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
387
Theresienstadt for Auschwitz: three carrying 2,500 people in May, and a further
eleven in September and October, with between 1,500 and 2,500 people. 74
In January 1945, in one last action, the RSHA planned to deport those Jews still
‘on work deployment’ to Theresienstadt, but also the elderly, the sick, and
children hitherto excluded from the deportations. But because of military devel-
opments this plan could not be carried out across the whole of the Reich. 75
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, 76 from which 38,000 people had been deported by the end of 1942, the deportations resumed in January 1943, after a one-month ‘Christmas
break’. As a rule, one train per week travelled to Auschwitz from the collection
camp of Westerbork. In the middle of January a second camp was opened at
Vught. In March, when the murder of the Jews from Thessaloniki began in
Auschwitz, the Dutch transports went to Sobibor extermination camp, where
almost all deportees were murdered immediately on their arrival. In May, pre-
sumably in connection with the general radicalization of Judenpolitik after the
Warsaw ghetto uprising, the RSHA ordered that the number of those to be
deported from the Netherlands be raised forthwith: between 18 May and 20 July,
almost 18,000 people were deported to Sobibor, including children from the
Vught labour camp, accompanied by their mothers. Of the 34,313 people
who came to Sobibor from the Netherlands by 20 July, only 19 would survive.
After a five-week break the deportations resumed on 24 August at weekly inter-
vals—with interruptions in September/October and between November and
January—primarily to Auschwitz. From September 1944 some transports also
went to Theresienstadt and some to the ‘delivery camp’ (Auslieferungslager) of
Bergen-Belsen. It was only in the spring of 1944 that the pace of the deportations
slowed. However, on 3 September 1944, another 1,019 people were deported to
Auschwitz; the last deportation from the Netherlands, to Bergen-Belsen, was
carried out on 13 September. 77 Overall, 107,000 Jews living in the Netherlands were deported; around 102,000 of those died.
Belgium
From the end of 1942 the RSHA and the German department of the Foreign
Ministry urged that Jews of Belgian citizenship, who had so far been spared,
should now be deported. In December 1942 Luther requested that the Brussels
office of the Foreign Ministry, ‘in association with the military commander,
consider the possibility of extending the measures already taken to all the Jews
in Belgium, and round them up in the collection camps until they could be
transported . . . A thorough cleansing of Belgium of the Jews must occur sooner
388
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
or later at all costs.’ The deportation of Belgian Jews should begin as soon as
possible. 78
The director of the Foreign Ministry office in Brussels, Werner von Bargen,
confirmed in January 1943 that after the deportation of all foreign Jews it was also
planned to ‘get rid of’ some 4,000 Jews with Belgian citizenship ‘at the same time’;
however, because of a shortage of rolling stock no deportations were possible. And
the capacity of the single camp, Mechelen, was not enough to intern all the
country’s Jews there. 79 It was not until 29 June that the Gestapo office in Brussels informed Mechelen camp that because of an order from Himmler, ‘Jews of Belgian
citizenship must now be included in the deportation actions without delay’. 80
On 3 and 4 September large numbers of Belgian Jews were arrested in a raid in
Brussels and Antwerp. On 20 September 1943 the first transport train carrying
only Belgian Jews left the country. 81 In 1943 a total of six deportations occurred, involving almost 6,000 people. In 1944 there were four further transports with
over 2,300 people. 82 All trains went to Auschwitz.
However, these deportations did not go completely smoothly. One of the trains,
the twentieth RSHA transport from Belgium, was the target of a unique rescue
action. On 19 April 1943, the day the ghetto uprising in Warsaw began, three
members of the Belgian resistance stopped the train and freed seventeen prisoners
from a wagon. More than 200 other deportees managed to jump off the train as it
continued on its journey, and found refuge with Belgian citizens. 83
The number of Jews deported from Belgium and murdered is estimated at
around 28,500, which is to say that about 32 per cent of the pre-war Jewish
population had been killed. 84 Around 1,000 of these were Belgian nationals. 85
In spite of this shockingly high death toll, the Jews in Belgium had better
chances of survival than those in the neighbouring Netherlands, where about
102,000, or 73 per cent of the entire Jewish population of around 140,000 people
were murdered. In Belgium as many as 25,000 Jews, or almost 50 per cent of the
Jews resident in Belgium, managed to survive in the underground. There are a
variety of reasons for their superior chances of survival. On the one hand, in
Belgium the SS played a relatively small part in the military administration; the
military was primarily concerned with the security situation, and set in motion the
anti-Jewish measures preceding the deportations at a relatively slow pace.
In Belgium—unlike the Netherlands—the government apparatus was not actively
involved in the persecution of the Jews, and the subordinate administrative
organizations carried out the German instructions relatively carelessly. Not least
for that reason, it proved impossible to construct a system of arrest and deport-
ation in Belgium similar to that in the Netherlands. Instead, attempts were made
to arrest the Jews in raids, a process that prompted panic and encouraged flight
into illegality. One final significant factor in the survival of the Jews was that, by
virtue of the fact that the large majority of them were not integrated into Belgian
society, they had maintained a healthy suspicion of the adminsitrative measures
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
389
preceding the deportations. Last of all, the Jews in Belgium benefited from the fact
that there was a stronger national resistance movement than there was in the
Netherlands, and that there were more specifically Jewish resistance organizations
working closely with the general resistance movement. 86
Croatia
The deportations also continued in the zone of Croatia occupied by the Wehr-
macht: in May 1943, some 2,000 people were deported to Auschwitz in two further
transports. 87 If the deportations of August 1943 are included, more than 7,000 Jews were deported from the German-occupied zone of Croatia to Auschwitz.
In the spring of 1944 Himmler ordered Hans Helm, the police attaché in
Belgrade, to ‘sort out the Jewish question in Croatia as quickly as possible’.
Himmler’s order documents the determination on the part of the Germans to
track down small groups of Jews, even in the most remote corner of their
occupied territory and in what was a very critical phase of the war, and murder
them. However, Helm had to report that a few hundred Jews still lived in
Croatia, but they were claimed for urgent work by the Ustasha state, or shielded
against persecution by Ustasha functionaries. 88 Thousands of Jews had escaped to the Italian-occupied zone, and most of them were able to escape the German
occupation there even after the collapse of Italy—we will explore this in greater
detail below. 89 Many Croatian Jews had also escaped the German occupation zone to join Tito’s Partisans. Overall, however, only around 7,000 of the
originally 30,000–40,000-strong Jewish minority were to survive the Holocaust
in Croatia. 90
Intensified Efforts to Deport Jews from Third-Party
States within the German Sphere of Influence in 1943
In 1943 the Foreign Ministry continued its efforts to include in the deportations
the Jews from occupied, allied but also neutral states, who lived outside their
native lands, but within the German sphere of influence. While the Swiss had
agreed early in 1943 to the German proposal that Jews of Swiss citizenship be
requested to return to Switzerland, 91 on 22 January the Foreign Ministry also turned to the governments of Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden,
Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Page 69
