Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  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.

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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