tion and alliance policy, it now threatened to undermine earlier forms of collab-
oration and alliance. In future, deportations, where they were not organized by the
German occupation apparatus itself, were only possible with the help of terror
regimes which were entirely under the control of the Nazi regime, had little
support from the local population, and were prepared to act with extreme
brutality against it.
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
401
The Allied landing in North Africa, with the shift of power that it brought to the
whole of the Mediterranean area still under Axis control, had constituted the
starting point for an expansion of persecution: the Jews of Tunisia and southern
France had now fallen into the immediate clutches of their German persecutors,
while in early 1943 the RSHA was organizing mass deportations from Greece and
Bulgaria. The further military successes of the Western Allies, the rising prospect
of an Allied landing on the continent, and the advance of the Red Army, but above
all the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April/May 1943 led to a further burst of
radicalization in the spring/early summer, which we have already examined
with reference to the Holocaust in Poland and the occupied Soviet territories.
But this new radicalization was also evident in Western and South-Eastern
Europe. It was apparent in the deportation of thousands of children from the
Netherlands, it was seen in the demands of the RSHA to start the deportation of
Jews with Belgian citizenship, and it lay behind Himmler’s call on 8 June to deport
French Jews who were due to be denaturalized by 15 July. But the radicalization
can also be observed in German Judenpolitik in Croatia in May 1943, when the
Germans were urging that the deportations be taken to their conclusion; and it
was also apparent in Slovakia, where a new initiative was introduced in the spring
of 1943, to spur the government there to resume deportations.
A further burst of radicalization began in September 1943, after Italy’s secession.
On the one hand, Judenpolitik now had the new function just referred to, on the
other hand, as was seen in Denmark, the German deportation machinery lacked
the power to implement further deportations on its own; it was forced more than
ever to rely on the collaboration of local forces. Where that collaboration worked,
the murder machine was horribly effective.
Italy
After the ceasefire in September 1943, the invasion of the Wehrmacht, and the
formation of a new Fascist government in the northern half of the country, the
RSHA was resolved ruthlessly to deport the Jews living in that part of the country,
numbering between around 33,000 and 34,000. 163
In October, Dannecker was sent to Rome as leader of a small Einsatzkom-
mando. 164 Two days after a large-scale raid on 16 October, more than 1,000 Jews were deported from the Italian capital to Auschwitz. Dannecker’s commando
went on to organize further raids in other Italian cities, so that by the end of the
year almost 1,400 people had been deported to Auschwitz in four transports. But
the RSHA reached the view that this approach had not produced ‘any noteworthy
result’, as the great majority of Jews living in Italy had by now gone into hiding. 165
At the beginning of December, representatives of the Foreign Ministry and the
RSHA therefore agreed to involve the Italian authorities in the persecution. 166
To achieve this, they exploited the fact that the government of the ‘Social Italian
402
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
Republic’ had independently ordered the internment of all Jews in late November,
without at first officially informing the Italians about the final goal of the perse-
cution, deportation, and mass murder. The Fascist state was thus to be enmeshed
in a murderous complicity with the ‘Third Reich’.
In accordance with this new persecution strategy Dannecker’s mobile com-
mando was replaced early in 1944 by a special Jewish department attached to the
commander of the Security Police, led by Friedrich Bosshammer, also a colleague
of Eichmann. With the help of the apparatus of the BdS, Bosshammer had the
chance to deploy the Italian police as an auxiliary organization for systematic
persecution. Beginning in January, the office of the BdS demanded that the Italian
police hand over the interned Jews. Bosshammer ignored Italian laws forbidding
the arrest of certain groups (the elderly, those married to non-Jews, etc.). In mid-
March Bosshammer took over the Fossoli camp from the Italian authorities and
made it the central collection camp for the Jews arrested by the Italian police and
the branch commandos of the BdS. In August 1944, given the approaching front,
the central collection camp was transferred to Bolzano.
Overall, throughout 1944 at least fifteen transports carrying more than 3,800
Jews left Italy for Auschwitz, where the great majority were murdered. Meanwhile
over 80 per cent of the Jews living in Italy managed—thanks to the solidarity of the
Italian population—to escape the clutches of their persecutors. 167
Since September 1943, Odilo Globocnik, himself originally from Trieste, and
one of the men chiefly responsible for the extermination of the Polish Jews, had
been appointed HSSPF to the ‘Operation Zone of the Adriatic Coastal Region’,
along with part of the Einsatzkommando Reinhard. This was the area around
Trieste which had been directly incorporated into the territory of the Greater
German Reich. The Risiera di San Sabba, a former rice mill, served as a collection
camp for the Jews arrested in this area. From December 1943 until February 1943,
twenty-two transports carrying more than 1,100 Jews left Trieste for Auschwitz,
the last one reaching Bergen-Belsen. Over 90 per cent of the deportees were
murdered. 168
Former Italian Zones of Occupation in Greece and Croatia
After the Wehrmacht had taken over the Italian zones of occupation in Greece as
well as Albania, Montenegro, and the Dodecanese (the eastern Aegean group of
islands, Italian since 1912), in response to Italy’s departure from the war, a further
(approximately) 16,000 Jews came under German control. 169
After an ‘action’ in March 1944 against the Jews living in the former Italian zone
of occupation on the Greek mainland, on 2 April a transport carrying a total of
5,000 people left Athens for Auschwitz, reaching the camp nine days later after
unimaginable hardships. 170 Between May and August 1944 the members of the Jewish communities on the Greek islands (Corfu, Rhodes, Crete) were arrested by
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
403
the Wehrmacht, transported to the mainland, and deported to Auschwitz in two
transports. 171
When the Italian occupation of Croatia ended in September, the majority of the
Jews who had by now been rounded up in an internment camp on the island of
Rab were able to escape to a zone controlled by the People’s Liberation Army;
around 200 Jews were captured by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz in the
second half of March. The same fate awaited several hundred Jews in other parts
of the formerly Italia
n-occupied zone. 172
Further Radicalization of the Persecution in France
Immediately after the German troops marched into the Italian-occupied zone of
southern France on 8 September, following the ceasefire between Italy and the
Allies, Brunner’s Sonderkommando began to hunt down those Jews who had so far
been left unmolested. 173
Brunner concentrated particularly on Nice, where about 20,000–25,000 Jews,
mostly refugees, were living. Without French support, however, he managed only
to deport 1,800 people to Drancy within three months. 174
The security police had always seen the Italian resistance to the German
persecution of the Jews as a significant hindrance to a radical ‘solution’ of the
Jewish question across the whole of France. From the point of view of the Security
Police, the removal of this factor opened up the possibility of radicalizing the
persecution of the Jews across France on the massive scale sketched out by
Eichmann and Röthke in the summer of 1943,175 and deporting, where possible, all Jews living in France regardless of their nationality.
Since as early as August 1943, the Gestapo had stepped up their arrests of French
Jews across the whole of France for alleged infringements of the French anti-
Jewish laws. 176 After the head of the militia, Darmand, had replaced Bousquet as general secretary of the police, on the orders of the Security Police the French
police increasingly participated in the arrest of French Jews in the provinces. 177
But after the French government had been reshuffled to the right in March
1944,178 there was no further reason for the Germans to take into consideration French objections and reservations about the deportations. For the French government’s support among the population was in any case so weak that the country
could only be kept under control by means of a rule of terror.
On 14 April 1944, Brunner and Knochen ordered all Jews, regardless of their
nationality, to be arrested, with the exception of people living in ‘mixed mar-
riages’. Rewards were offered for denunciations. In the four months leading to the
cessation of the deportations in August 1944 more than 6,000 people were
deported. 179 By then a total of almost 76,000 Jews had been deported from France, a further 4,000 had died in camps or been murdered in the country. This meant
that, as a whole, a quarter of the Jews living in France had become victims of the
404
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
Holocaust. Among the deportees were around 24,000 French nationals, including
8,000 children of foreign parents who were born in France, and 8,000 naturalized
Jews. 180 Around two-thirds of the deportees were deported from occupied France, and about a third from southern France, unoccupied until 1942. 181
Slovakia
By the time of the temporary cessation of the deportations from Slovakia in
October 1942, around 58,000 people had been deported from the country to
occupied Poland. 182 Around 24,000 Jews had been excluded from the deportions by so-called ‘writs of protection’ issued by the Slovakian authorities. The Germans
repeatedly stressed their demand for the resumption of the deportations, but
could not impose their will on Slovakia.
After a German initiative in early summer 1943—clearly in the context of the
general radicalization after the Warsaw ghetto uprising (the parallel with the
German initiatives in France and Croatia is plain)—in June, the ambassador,
Hans Ludin, had to report to the Foreign Ministry that the ‘implementation of
the evacuation of the Jews from Slovakia’ had ‘presently reached a dead end’. The
Prime Minister, Vojtech Tuka, wanted to continue the ‘resettlement’ and was
requesting ‘the diplomatic support of the Reich’. The Secretary of State,
Weizsäcker, advised him to inform President Tiso that the halt to the deportations
was causing surprise in Germany. 183
At this point there were more than 18,000, possibly up to 25,000 Jews, living in
Slovakia. 184 More than 15,000 of these were claimed to be indispensable by the Slovakian authorities; a few thousand were imprisoned as forced labourers in
concentration camps within Slovakia.
In July 1943, the head of department Inland II of the Foreign Ministry, Horst
Wagner, informed the ambassador, Ludin, on Ribbentrop’s instructions, that
‘there were not at present any plans to approach the Slovakian government
concerning the final stage of the cleaning up of the Slovakian Jewish question’.
However, the Foreign Ministry’s South-Eastern Europe expert, Edmund Veesen-
mayer, would soon informally tell President Tiso, in the course of a visit to
Pressburg, of ‘the continuing interest in the cleaning up of the Jewish question
in Slovakia’. 185
After an initial visit in July, in December 1943 Veesenmeyer began negoti-
ations with Tiso, and won his agreement that the remaining Jews still living in
Slovakia, whose numbers were estimated as between 16,000 and 18,000, were
to be ‘taken to Jewish camps’ by 1 April 1944 at the latest. 186 In fact the Slovaks did not keep their part of the agreement. Efforts by Veesenmeyer, by
now the German ambassador in Hungary, to organize the deportation of the
Slovakian Jews in the wake of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, were
unsuccessful. 187
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
405
The refusal of the Slovakian government to comply with German demands
has much to do with the change of political climate that had occurred in
Slovakia since early in 1942, but increasingly since early 1943, with the defeat
at Stalingrad. The deportations had encountered opposition among influential
circles of the Slovakian population, and that attitude of opposition became more
marked after details of the fate of the deportees leaked out and, with the Red
Army’s advance towards the national border, it became increasingly likely that
this blatant crime would be punished. 188
Given the delaying response of the Slovakian government towards its German
ally, the last phase of the persecution of the Jews in the country only started after
the beginning of the popular uprising in Slovakia in August 1944 and the occu-
pation of the country by German troops. Himmler appointed his close confidant
Gottlob Berger, head of the SS Main Office, ‘commander of German troops
in Slovakia’ and Hermann Höfle, who had played a central part in ‘Aktion
Reinhardt’, as HSSPF. He also appointed a commander of the Security Police
(BdS) for the territory, which was not treated as an occupied country, but as an
ally. However, the BdS was also assigned its own Einsatzgruppe, H, assembled
from five Einsatzkommandos. These commandos erected a system of bases around
the country, and began hunting Jews living in Slovakia, most of whom were
imprisoned in the camp at Sered. In the face of opposition from the Slovakian
government, the SS imposed the resumption of the deportations: between
September 1944 and March 1943 eleven transports left Slovakia. Almost 8,000
people were deported to Auschwitz, more than 2,700 to Sachsenhausen, and over
1,600 to Theresienstadt. 189 An unknown number of these deportees lost their lives during the transports, as a result of their conditions of imprisonment and the
; death marches implemented after the dissolution of the concentration camps.
Hungary
During 1943 the Nazi regime continued its policy of exerting pressure on the
Hungarian government to persuade it to deport its Jews. In January Luther
attempted to influence the Hungarian ambassador to this end, 190 while in March 1943 the Foreign Ministry asked Bormann191 once again to inform his guest, a Hungarian minister, about German requests: the exclusion of the Jews
from the cultural and economic life of Hungary.
At what became known as the first Kleßheim Conference on 17 and 18 April
1943, Ribbentrop responded to Horthy’s question about ‘what he should do with
the Jews’ (‘he couldn’t kill them, after all’) quite unequivocally that they must
‘either be exterminated or taken to concentration camps’. Hitler interjected that
Jews were ‘to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, which could affect healthy
bodies’. 192 At the end of April, Ribbentrop told the Hungarian ambassador, Döme Sztojay, that Germany planned to deport all Jews from the area under
406
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
German control, and that it expected its allies to participate in these measures. 193
Hitler’s strong personal interest in this matter is also revealed by a passage in
Geobbels’s diaries from early May. According to this, Hitler had told the Reichs-
leiters and Gauleiters that the ‘Jewish question’ was being resolved ‘worst of all by
the Hungarians’; Horthy, who was ‘extraordinarily strongly enmeshed with the
Jews through his family’, would fight tooth and nail against really tackling the
Jewish problem. 194
In his report of 30 April Veesenmayer, who had been sent to Hungary to
investigate the situation in the country, established a close connection between
the Hungarian reticence concerning Judenpolitik and the expectations prevailing
in the post-war era. He wrote that the government and wide sections of the
bourgeoisie expected ‘clemency and benevolent treatment’ from the British and
the Americans ‘because of their hospitable attitude towards Jewry. They see Jewry
as a guarantee of “Hungarian concerns” and believe that through the Jews they can
demonstrate that it was only under duress that they waged this war alongside
Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Page 72
