Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  channels of negotiation which might be used in peace feelers. The extent to

  which the SS would really have been prepared to release large numbers of Jewish

  prisoners on a quid pro quo basis, which would have meant returning to the

  pre-war policy of expulsion, or whether they only appeared to offer such

  negotiations in order to construct a dialogue with the Western Allies is impos-

  sible to establish beyond doubt. It is also unclear whether Himmler was acting

  in accord with Hitler in these complicated manoeuvres, or whether he was from

  the outset pursuing a policy of his own to secure his position against the

  threatening collapse of the Third Reich, and it is equally unclear whether the

  negotiations undertaken by Eichmann and Wisliceny were fully in accord with

  Himmler’s plans. But it is also entirely imaginable that these efforts to establish

  contacts with the West were part of a double game: if the Western Allies agreed

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  to enter negotiations with the Nazi regime over the surviving Jews, either one

  could extend such negotiations to other ‘humanitarian’ issues and use them as

  peace feelers, or one could abandon the negotiations and effectively compromise

  the other side, sowing suspicion between the Western Allies and the Soviet

  Union or revealing the USA and Great Britain as stooges of Jewish interests,

  thus bolstering the claim of German military propaganda that Germany was

  waging a war against world Jewry. 236

  Thus, Himmler saw the Jewish prisoners as hostages with whom one could, in

  one way or another, exert an influence on the Western Allies. This attitude was

  not new: it can already be demonstrated in connection with Kristallnacht; the

  reason for taking Jews as hostages to prevent the Americans from entering the

  war seems to have played a part in starting the deportations of the German Jews

  in the autumn of 1941, and from 1942 the SS leadership repeatedly allowed

  individual Jews to travel to neutral countries abroad in return for high payments

  in foreign currency. 237 Himmler had received express permission from Hitler for this in December 1942, and in that context pursued the project of holding

  around 10,000 Jews back in a special camp as ‘valuable hostages’. 238 It was in accordance with this idea that the ‘holding camp’ at Bergen-Belsen was set up,

  which Himmler placed under the control of the Business and Administration

  Head Office, to rule out the possibility of agencies outside the SS having access

  to the camp. 239 Finally, the German Jewish adviser in Slovakia, Wisliceny, had in 1942 accepted a large sum in dollars from the Jews. It remains unresolved

  whether this payment had any causal connection with the suspension of

  deportations from Slovakia. Thus, treating Jewish prisoners as negotiating

  counters was not a new procedure. 240

  In March 1944, representatives of the Vaada Aid and Rescue Committee,

  supported by Zionist organizations, contacted Wisliceny, who had by now

  begun preparations for the deportations in Budapest as a member of Sonder-

  kommando Eichmann. Negotiations were carried out concerning the depart-

  ure from the country of a large number of Hungarian Jews in return for

  foreign currency or goods; the SS’s desire for 10,000 lorries proved to be at

  the core of this. The Jewish negotiators made several large advance payments

  in dollars. In compliance with an agreement made with Eichmann, Vaada

  representatives went to Istanbul to make contact with the Allies, since the

  possibility of as many as several hundred thousand people leaving the country

  and the receipt of material benefits in return was only imaginable with Allied

  support. But the mission failed: the two Vaada emissaries were arrested by

  the British in Syria, and the British steadfastly refused to get involved in

  bartering of this kind. 241

  Meanwhile Vaada, represented by Rudolf Kastner, continued to negotiate

  with the SS in Budapest. Two operations emerged out of this. On the one

  hand, at the end of June 15,000 Jews, rather than being sent to Auschwitz,

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  were deported as forced labourers to Austria where, as Kastner said, quoting

  Eichmann, they were to be ‘put on ice’, to be kept ready for further barter

  negotiations. It seems probable that this step was not a substantial concession

  on Eichmann’s part, but that he was only responding to an urgent request from

  Kaltenbrunner to send forced labourers to the area around Vienna. Also, at the

  end of June, in accordance with an agreement made between Kastner and

  Eichmann, 1,684 Hungarian Jews were taken to Bergen-Belsen on a special

  transport. From there they travelled to Switzerland in two groups, in August

  and December. In the meantime, Kurt Becher, the head of the equipment staff of

  the HSSPF in Hungary, the man responsible for the exploitation of stolen Jewish

  property, took over the negotiation of the benefits to be expected in return from

  the Jews, first with the representatives of Vaada, then, from August 1944, also

  with the representative of the JDC in Switzerland, Saly Mayer. Until January 1945

  further discussions were held in Switzerland between representatives of the SS

  and Jewish organizations, covering large-scale barter deals of people for money

  or goods. Becher succeeded in securing the attendance of a representative of the

  War Refugee Board, an American government body, at one of these meetings

  early in November in Zurich; he had thus achieved the goal that Himmler linked

  with these negotiations, namely contact with official American agencies. But

  these discussions produced no results whatsoever, either in terms of further

  rescue projects or of possible peace feelers. 242

  But in the meantime negotations on another plane had achieved a concrete

  success: as a result of direct discussions between former Swiss President Jean-Marie

  Musy and Himmler—they were held in Vienna in October 1944 and in Wildbad

  (Black Forest) in January 1945—in February 1,200 Jews were released from

  Theresienstadt to Switzerland. 243 In the last phase of the war, Himmler would once again try to use the fate of the Jewish concentration camp inmates as a starting

  point for making contact with the Allied side.

  The negotiations concerning the release of Jewish prisoners show once

  again how flexibly Judenpolitik could be administered. Even if the goal of the

  systematic murder of the European Jews was of prime importance to the SS,

  at the same time Himmler was prepared to make tactical concessions in the

  form of the release of smaller contingents of prisoners, if other targets—the

  shortage of foreign currency, the SS’s need of equipment, the possibility of

  establishing negotiating channels with the Western Allies—were temporarily

  of prime importance. Himmler also seems to have been prepared to nego-

  tiate seriously over the release of larger groups of Jews, if it meant that the

  collapse of the Third Reich could be delayed or even prevented as a result.

  Hitler did not agree with this approach as Himmler was forced to recognize:

  the Führer reacted with great indignation when he subsequently learned of

  the release of the Jews to Switzerl
and, and forbade similar steps in the

  future. 244

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  The Clearing of the Concentration Camps and the Death Marches

  As early as 17 June 1944 Himmler transferred to the Higher SS and Police

  Commanders the right of command over the concentration camps in the event

  of ‘A Case’ (initially an uprising by inmates, but then above all the approach of

  enemy troops). 245 Accordingly, the HSSPF established precisely when the clearance was to take place and organized it in collaboration with Department D of the

  WVHA. As to the further fate of the inmates, organizational measures taken at an

  intermediate level were to prove crucial. Thus, right into the final phase of the war

  the perpetrators had a great deal of room for manoeuvre as far as the murder of

  Jews and other prisoners was concerned.

  The clearance and evacuation led to a new selection of the prisoners. While in

  some concentration camps German prisoners were released, weak and sick

  prisoners—mainly Jewish—were generally murdered in the camps before the

  order to evacuate was given. The evacuation marches then ordered by the camp

  authorities—in some cases there were also railway transports—generally occurred

  in winter conditions, with inadequate provisions or none at all. There were

  inadequate breaks and accommodation and the escorting troops, often with

  local help, murdered the prisoners who were left behind. In these columns,

  generally composed of members of all categories of prisoners, the chances of

  survival of the Jewish prisoners were worst because of their generally advanced

  exhaustion.

  As a rule the sub-camps were cleared first and the prisoners brought to the

  main camp. The goal of the so-called ‘evacuations’ of the main camps was in turn

  the concentration camps in the centre of the German Reich. Bringing together a

  large number of prisoners in fewer and fewer camps generally led to an almost

  total breakdown of supplies for the prisoners in the camps and a further worsen-

  ing of already almost unbearable conditions. Instead of the imminent liberation

  that many prisoners expected from the Allied advance, for most prisoners the

  occupation of Germany meant a further intensification of their torment, which

  often continued for months. 246

  The former ghettos and camps for Jewish forced labourers in the Baltic, which

  had been turned into concentration camps on Himmler’s instructions, were

  cleared in the summer of 1944. The clearance of the camp complex around the

  Kaiserwald concentration camp in Riga began in June 1944. At first the sub-camps

  were gradually closed, and the prisoners brought to Kaiserwald; the prisoners who

  were no longer fit for forced labour, as well as all children, were separated from the

  rest and murdered. From August until October the prisoners were brought by ship

  to Danzig, where they were confined in the concentration camp. 247

  From Kaunas concentration camp the surviving 8,000 Jews were deported to

  the west by rail and on barges, the women to Stutthof, the men to sub-camps of

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  Dachau. Prisoners who were ‘unfit for work’ were separated out and taken to

  Auschwitz. 248 Also in August 1944 all camps of the Vaivara complex were dissolved and most of the prisoners shipped to Tallinn and from there to

  Stutthof. 249

  In the summer of 1944 the camp commandant of Stutthof, Günther Hoppe,

  received the order from the Department D inspector of the WVHA with respon-

  sibility for the concentration camps, that all Jewish prisoners in Stutthof were to

  be murdered by the end of the year. To this end, in autumn 1944 a clothes

  delousing installation was turned into a gas chamber. Here, from September

  1944 onwards, groups of between twenty-five and thirty-five people—mostly

  female Jewish prisoners from the Baltic and Hungary—were murdered with

  Zyklon B. A second gas chamber was set up in an abandoned railway wagon. 250

  At the end of 1944, when the clearance of Stutthof camp began, to avoid the

  approaching front, there were still 47,000 prisoners there, two-thirds of them

  Jewish. 251

  In mid-January at least 6,000 prisoners, predominantly Jewish women, were

  driven out of the sub-camps of Stutthof concentration camp, situated in East

  Prussia, towards the Baltic. Around 50 per cent of the prisoners lost their lives.

  In the coastal town of Pamnicken the escort troops—supported by local Nazis and

  members of the Gestapo from Königsberg—carried out a massacre among the

  surviving prisoners, in which around 200 people were killed. As far as one can tell,

  this murder was carried out on the initiative of the leader of the escort troops, who

  wanted to get rid of the prisoners so that they could get away more quickly from

  the advancing Red Army. 252

  At the end of the year the first railway transports carrying prisoners left Stutthof

  main camp, until Hoppe finally ordered the partial clearance of the camp on

  25 January. Eleven columns, each of 1,000 prisoners, were formed, who marched

  on foot towards Lauenburg, 140 km away. Only around a third of the prisoners

  reached the town; when the Red Army reached Lauenburg in mid-March they

  found around 15,000 survivors of the death march from Stutthof. 253

  In the summer of 1944 the SS began moving about half of the prisoners from

  Auschwitz concentration camp—there were about 130,000 people there at the

  time—to other concentration camps. 254 The ‘evacuation’ of Auschwitz concentration camp, in which by then there were still 67,000 prisoners, began in mid-

  January 1945. Over 56,000 prisoners were driven westwards in marching columns

  of whom an estimated two-thirds were Jews. In accordance with an order from

  HSSPF Breslau, Heinrich Schmauser, that no prisoners were to fall into the hands

  of the enemy, the guards shot all prisoners who could not keep up with the

  marching pace. Given the terrible conditions on the marches, an estimated quarter

  of the prisoners fell victim to this practice. Some of the marching columns reached

  Groß-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia, which became the transit camp

  for the camps and prisons cleared in the East. 255

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  The Groß-Rosen concentration camp complex, which had numerous

  sub-camps, was cleared from January 1945 onwards, and the clearance of the

  completely overcrowded main camp began in February: it is demonstrable that

  44,000 prisoners were moved on rail transports to concentration camps further to

  the west, an unknown figure dying on the way. 256

  As a result of the clearance of the camps in the East, there was now a

  large number of Jewish prisoners in the camps in the Reich. In Ravensbrück

  concentration camp the camp authorities had been preparing for the evacu-

  ation since January 1943—at this point 48,000 prisoners were crammed together

  in the camp—and systematically murdered the weak prisoners by leaving

  them to die in special death zones, giving prisoners injections of poison,

  shooting them, and finally, in January 1945, converting a wooden barrack into

  a provisional gas chamber, in whi
ch a total of several thousand prisoners were

  murdered. 257

  In March 1945 Himmler once again returned to the idea of using Jewish

  prisoners as hostages. In the middle of that month, during a visit to Germany

  by his personal doctor Felix Kersten, who had by now moved to Sweden and had

  contact with the Swedish foreign minister, he told Kersten—or so Kersten

  claimed—that the concentration camps would not be blown up as the Allies

  approached, further killing of the prisoners was forbidden, and the prisoners

  were instead to be handed over to the Allies. 258

  For a short time Himmler ordered the camp commandants not to kill any more

  Jewish prisoners, saying that they must combat death rates among the prisoners.

  The order was personally passed on to concentration camp commandants by

  Pohl. 259

  During his meeting with Himmler in March, Kersten informed his contact at

  the World Jewish Congress, Hillel Storch, that Himmler had also agreed to release

  10,000 Jewish prisoners to Sweden or Switzerland. 260 And in fact large numbers of Jewish prisoners were able to reach Sweden. Since February Himmler had been in

  direct contact with the vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke

  Bernadotte, who was responsible for trying to secure the release of the Scandi-

  navian concentration camp prisoners on behalf of the Swedish government. They

  were first brought together in Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg

  and finally Bernadotte managed to ensure that they were brought to Sweden

  by columns of Red Cross medical orderlies—the legendary ‘white buses’—via

  Denmark to Sweden. Above all because of the sustained pressure from the

  Swedish government, but also possibly as the result of efforts by other parties, 261

  far more than the 8,000 Scandinavian prisoners were saved in the end, namely

  more than 20,000 people, including several thousand Jews. 262

  However, contrary to Himmler’s pledge, the camps of Dora-Mittelbau and

  Buchenwald—on the express orders of the Reichsführer SS—were not handed

  over to the Allies, but also cleared at the beginning of April. The SS managed to

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  bring around 28,000 from a total of 48,000 prisoners in Buchenwald out of the