Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  and requested them to fetch their Jewish nationals back from occupied Western

  Europe by the end of March. 92 The deportation of those 2,400 Turkish Jews who had not been expressly protected by the government in Ankara, for which

  reminders had been issued since early 1943 by the Security Police, was postponed

  several times by the Foreign Ministry until September 1943, when the Turkish

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  government finally declared itself willing to request these people to return to

  Turkey. 93

  With its decree of 24 February 1943 the Foreign Ministry established that Jews

  from a total of fifteen countries as well as stateless Jews were ‘to be included in any

  measures generally made against Jews in that sphere or in such measures yet to be

  made’. This included Jews from Poland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia,

  Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Estonia, Latvia,

  Lithuania, and Norway. Jews of Italian, Finnish, Swiss, Spanish, Portuguese,

  Danish, and Swedish citizenship were to be ‘given the opportunity to “return”

  to their so-called “home-lands” ’ by 31 March 1943, while Jews from other states

  were to be left unharmed. 94 These deadlines, however, were postponed in varying degrees. Thus the deadline set for the Italians, 31 March 1943, was extended several

  times, and the date fixed for Hungary during 1942 (31 December 1942) was also

  extended several times.

  In July 1943 the RSHA turned to the Foreign Ministry with the request that a

  total of ten states ‘be given a definitive final date of 31 July, and thus declare their

  agreement that after that deadline the general anti-Jewish measures be also

  applied to all foreign Jews remaining within the German sphere of influence,

  with the exception of Jews from hostile states and Argentina’. 95 After the Foreign Ministry had declared its agreement and informed the states in question, 96 on 23

  September 1943—after Italy seceded from the Axis alliance—the RSHA instructed

  the offices of the Security Police and the Higher SS and Police Commanders to

  deport Jews from Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Finland,

  Hungary, Romania, and Turkey—divided by sex—to Buchenwald and Ravens-

  brück concentration camps. 97

  The German Policy of Extending the Deportations after

  the Allied Landing in North Africa (Late 1942

  until Summer 1943)

  Even after the turn of the war in winter 1942/3, the RSHA tried to extend

  deportations to a series of other countries or regions: Greece, Bulgaria, and the

  Italian-occupied zones in Greece, Yugoslavia, and the southern zone of France

  (where deportations had occurred temporarily in the summer of 1942). In these

  areas the ‘Jewish question’ was plainly to be radically solved early in 1943.

  With the ceasefire between Italy and the Allies in September 1943, new

  conditions were to be set once again for Judenpolitik within the block under

  German rule.

  The direct consequence of the geographical extension of the war after the

  Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria in October 1942 was that a further

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  large Jewish group was exposed to German attack: the Jews of French North

  Africa, who had already been included among the victims of the coming

  ‘Final Solution’ envisaged at the Wannsee Conference. 98 With the occupation of Tunisia in November 1942 some 85,000 Jews came under German control.

  The German occupiers introduced forced labour for Jews; some 5,000 Jews

  were affected by these measures, but most of them managed to escape the

  camps set up for this purpose. The German occupying forces had also sent

  around twenty arrested Jewish activists to the extermination camps. In add-

  ition, there were large-scale confiscations of Jewish property, and large sums

  of money were extorted.

  In the spring of 1943, the concrete deportation preparations under discussion

  reveal that in Fortress Europe the RSHA was clearly planning a radical ‘solution’

  of the ‘Jewish question’ in Greece, Bulgaria, and France.

  Greece

  After all efforts to reach a common approach towards the ‘Jewish question’ with

  the Italian occupying forces had collapsed the previous year, towards the end of

  1942/beginning of 1943 the Foreign Ministry and the RSHA resolved to act

  independently in the German-occupied zone. 99

  On 7 January Luther informed the ambassador in Athens, Günther

  Altenburg, that the Foreign Ministry was interested in the quickest possible

  introduction of anti-Jewish measures in Greece. 100 At the beginning of February 1943 Alois Brunner of the RSHA’s Jewish desk joined Dieter

  Wisliceny (who had been temporarily removed from his post as Jewish

  adviser in Pressburg (Bratislava)) at the head of a Sonderkommando sent to

  Thessaloniki to prepare the deportation. Already in February, the marking

  and ghettoizing of the Jews of Thessaloniki had been introduced together with

  further restrictions.

  Between mid-March and mid-May 1943, the Jews of Thessaloniki and the

  surrounding Macedonian communities were deported, in some sixteen transports,

  and two more followed in mid-August. Almost all of these 45,000 people were

  murdered in Auschwitz. In August a small transport of a total of 441 Jews went to

  the ‘exchange camp’ of Bergen-Belsen: these were either Jews with Spanish

  citizenship, high-ranking representatives of the Jewish community of Thessalo-

  niki, or collaborators who had assisted the SD. 101 When the Germans once again requested an extension of the deportations to the Italian-occupied zone, the

  Foreign Ministry in Rome suggested in March that the Italian Jews in Greece be

  excluded from the persecutory measures, and the Greek Jews be interned.

  But both the Jewish desk of the Foreign Ministry and Eichmann, the individual

  within the RSHA responsible for the deportations, considered these suggestions

  inadequate. 102

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  Bulgaria

  Shortly before Brunner and Wisliceny arrived in Greece, in January 1943 Theodor

  Dannecker had taken up his role as ‘Jewish adviser’ at the German embassy in

  Sofia. 103 On 22 February 1943, the Bulgarian Commissar for the Jews and Dannecker had reached an agreement for the deportation of 20,000 Jews by May

  1943. 104 Those affected were all the Jews from the Bulgarian-occupied zones of Thrace (Greece) and Macedonia (Yugoslavia), as well as around 6,000–8,000 Jews

  from Old Bulgaria. In fact, in March 1943, the Jews living in Thrace—over 4,000—

  and those living in Macedonia—over 7,000—were arrested by the Bulgarians and

  deported to the General Government, where most of them were murdered in

  Treblinka. 105

  However, the preparatory measures for the deportation of the Jews of Old

  Bulgaria, for which work had begun in March, had to be interrupted and post-

  poned because of massive protests, especially by a group of deputies around the

  parliamentary vice president, Dimiter Peshev. 106 In April 1943, Tsar Boris stressed to Ribbentrop that only ‘Communist elements’ among the Jews of Old Bulgaria

  should be deported. In contrast, the German Foreign Minister insisted on a
radical

  solution. 107

  In May 1943 the Jews of Sofia were resettled, amidst high levels of protest in the

  capital, to surrounding provincial towns. 108 But the Bulgarians were not ready for the next step, expected by the Germans, the deportation of the Jews to Poland. 109

  France

  After the occupation of southern France by German and Italian troops on

  11 November 1942, the Jews in this area were also exposed to direct German

  action. 110 The Vichy government had already agreed to the deportation of foreign and stateless Jews in the summer of 1942, but had interrupted this in September

  1942 in the face of strong public protest. 111

  In January and February 1943, at the instigation of the German Security Police

  in Paris, predominantly foreign and stateless Jews, but also those of French

  citizenship living in Marseilles (where the old harbour district was completely

  destroyed) and in other places across France were arrested and placed in the

  camps of Drancy and Compiègne along with the Jews already interned there. 112

  On 9 February the deportations resumed: by early March four transports had gone

  from Drancy collection camp to Auschwitz, and four more to Sobibor. 113

  On 10 or 11 February 1943 in Paris, Eichmann presented a maximum pro-

  gramme for the deportation of all Jews living in France, including French nation-

  als. This plainly coincided with the concrete preparations for deportation in

  Greece and Bulgaria.

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  But the commander of the Security Police in France, Helmut Knochen, resisted

  Eichmann’s suggestion in a letter to Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, on

  12 February 1943: if ‘large-scale measures were to be taken against all Jews

  with French citizenship at this time’ they could ‘expect political setbacks’. In

  France an imminent Allied victory was generally expected, and they were trying

  to ensure that ‘no further measures be taken against the Jews in order to show the

  Americans that they were unwilling to obey the instructions of the German

  government’. However, Laval would approve measures against the Jews if he

  ‘received some political concession for it from Germany towards the French

  people’. In a discussion on the same day Laval had declared ‘that the Americans

  had already [stated] to France that France would receive all the previous Italian

  colonies and would get all the French colonies back and France would receive

  more than the Rhine border in Europe. The Germans had made him no promises

  for the post-war period. In my view Laval will swallow the Jewish measures if he

  receives a political assurance of some form.’114

  This statement illustrates clearly the centrality of Judenpolitik for Germany in

  the second half of the war. With the deportation of French citizens the Vichy

  government had been made an accomplice of the German extermination policy to

  a much greater extent than had already occurred with the deportations from the

  unoccupied zone in the summer of 1942: but this meant that their prospects of

  reaching an agreement with the Western powers must dramatically fade. How-

  ever, in view of the military situation, which had changed since the previous

  summer, a political price had to be paid to the French.

  In this letter Knochen referred to a further significant limitation on the

  possibility of intensifying German Jewish policy throughout the whole of France:

  as long as the Italian occupying forces opposed the persecution measures of the

  Vichy authorities, through their own behaviour they were providing the French

  government with arguments against anti-Jewish measures.

  Since 1942, the Italian occupation authorities had in fact refused several times to

  implement anti-Jewish measures by the Vichy authorities; 115 in a large renewed arrest action in the southern zone in which, in mid-February, Jewish men of

  foreign citizenship were arrested by the Vichy police and finally 2,000 people were

  handed over to the Germans for deportation to Sobibor, the Italian occupying

  authorities had compelled the liberation of the Jews arrested by the French

  police. 116

  Efforts by the Germans to compel the Italians to take a more severe

  attitude towards the Jews living in their zone were to remain unsuccessful.

  After Ribbentrop addressed this question when talking to Mussolini on a visit

  to Rome on 25 February117 and instructed the German ambassador, Eberhard von Mackensen, to pursue the matter further, the ‘Duce’ assured Mackensen on 17

  March that he would instruct the Italian military not to get involved in the

  matters of the French police. 118 However, he changed his mind a short time later.

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  Influenced by the ideas of Italian diplomats and military officers, he transferred

  the solution of the ‘Jewish question’ in the Italian zone of occupation to the Italian

  police, and appointed a ‘general inspector of the racial police’, whom he entrusted

  with the task of evacuating the Jews from the coastal zone to the hinterland. By

  doing this he had removed the supposed security risk that the Germans had

  always presented as the reason for their demand to hand over the Jews. 119 Over the months that followed the Italians were to continue their obstructive policy

  towards German Judenpolitik in a similarly effective way. 120

  Unlike the commander of the Security Police, Knochen, who took into account

  the overall political context, Heinz Röthke, the Gestapo Jewish expert in Paris,

  took the hard line represented by Eichmann. On 6 March he wrote in a memo-

  randum: ‘The transport of the Jews from France must not be allowed to stop

  before the last Jew has left French soil, and that must happen before the end of the

  war.’121 To achieve this goal within a few months, 122 the Italians had ‘categorically to be led to abandon their hitherto adverse attitude’, while on the other hand the

  circle of people due for deportation (a total of 49,000 Jews had been deported from

  France so far, 12,000 of them from the southern zone) had to be widened. To this

  end all Jews from the old occupied zone must be assembled in Paris; the French

  government must hand over all foreign Jews who were ‘capable of deportation’

  (i.e. no longer under the protection of their home countries); and a law must be

  passed revoking French citizenship for Jews naturalized after 1927 or after 1933.

  In this way, Röthke thought, he could implement the ‘mass transportation from

  April 1943 (8,000–10,000 Jews each week)’.

  These suggestions by Röthke reveal the continuity in the RSHA’s deportation

  planning. After Eichmann had set out his plan, at the end of August 1942, to

  deport all foreign Jews from France ‘by the end of June 1943’, 123 Röthke intended to achieve this goal by a radical acceleration of the deportations between April and

  June; between 90,000 and 100,000 people were involved. Afterwards, he wanted to

  begin the intended deportation of Jews of French citizenship.

  But Röthke’s suggestions, which he renewed at the end of the month, 124

  encountered resistance from BdS Knochen. In a letter to Eichmann125 dated 29 March 1943, Knochen made it clear that no deportations were to occur in the

  near future, as ‘measures against Jews
of French citizenship can hardly be imple-

  mented for political reasons because of the attitude of the Marshall [Petain]’ and,

  because of the Italian position, no unified approach towards the ‘Jewish question’

  in France was assured. On the other hand, Knochen did adopt one of Röthke’s

  suggestions: the French citizenship laws, shortly to be introduced, meant that

  some 100,000 Jews would lose their citizenship and be deported, a figure that

  Knochen deliberately set too high in order to obtain Eichmann’s consent. 126

  The positions of Eichmann and Röthke, on the one hand, and Knochen, on the

  other, clearly represent the two fundamentally different approaches towards

  Judenpolitik which became clear within the leadership of the German occupation:

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  395

  while Eichmann and Röthke wanted to speed up the deportations precisely

  because of the military setbacks, and bring them to their conclusion before the

  end of the war, and were ready to put the French government under pressure to

  achieve this, Knochen argued that the deportations should be implemented only

  on a limited scale and with French consent, and that they should thus be treated as

  a significant element in collaboration policy.

  In fact the Vichy government seemed prepared to revoke the citizenship of Jews

  with French citizenship as demanded by the German security police. In April, the

  chief of police, Reneé Bousquet, produced a draft law to denaturalize those Jews

  who had entered the country since 1932. On the prompting of the Germans, the

  entry date was altered to 1927, as already provided for in a draft presented by

  Jewish Commissioner, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, in December 1942, but taken

  no further. 127

  Since the German Security Police now assumed that within a relatively short

  space of time they would be able to deport a large number of Jews who had had

  their citizenship revoked, in spring they reduced the number of arrests and the

  deportations were suspended between 25 March and 23 June. 128

  On 8 June 1943, however, Himmler urged the HSSPF in France, Carl-Albrecht

  Oberg, to secure publication of the denaturalization law, which had already been

  signed by Laval. 129 In Himmler’s view, the deportations to the Reich were to be concluded by 15 July 1943 since, as Himmler put it, referring to the military