Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews
Page 89
with Honor! . . . Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives ‘O.
S.’ (‘Oneg Shabbath’), ed. and annotated Joseph Kermish (Jerusalem, 1986); Emmanuel
Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War, ed. Joseph Kermish
and Shmuel Cracowski (New York and Jerusalem, 1976), an essay on the Warsaw
ghetto written in 1943; Emmanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The
Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, ed. and trans. Jacob Sloan (New York, Toronto, and
London, 1958); Mary Berg, Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary, ed. S. L. Schneiderman (New
York, 1945); ‘Daily Entries of Hersh Wasser’, intro. and notes Joseph Kermish, YVS 15
(1983), 201–81; Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto
(Oxford, 1988). See also Janina Baumann, Winter in the Morning: A Young Girl’s
Life in the Warsaw Ghetto and Beyond 1939–1945 (London, 1986); Adam Czerniakow,
The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw
Staron, and Josef Kermish (Chicago, 1999); Chaim Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The
Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. A. I. Katsch (New York, 1973); Janusz Korczak,
Ghetto Diary (New Haven and London, 2003); Konrad Plieninger, ‘Ach, es ist alles
ohne Ufer . . . ’. Briefe aus dem Warschauer Ghetto (Göttingen, 1996), which are letters
by Josef Gelbart; Eugenia Szajn-Lewin, Aufzeichnungen aus dem Warschauer Ghetto.
Juli 1942 bis April 1943 (Leipzig, 1994); Michal Zylberberg, A Warsaw Diary (London,
1969); Stanislaw Adler, In the Warsaw Ghetto. An Account of a Witness: The Memoirs
of Stanislaw Adler (Jerusalem, 1982). For Cracow, see Halina Nelken, Freiheit will ich
noch erleben. Krakauer Tagebuch (Gerlingen, 1996). On the critical assessment of these
contemporary records, see Robert Moses Shapiro, ed., Holocaust Chronicles: Individu-
alizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts
(Hoboken, 1999).
130. On the relationship of councils and ghetto inhabitants see Trunk, Judenrat, 379 ff.
Corni (Ghettos) stresses the respect that these councils also enjoyed alongside
widespread criticism.
131. On the attitude of the Jewish councils to the Germans see Corni, Ghettos, 77 ff. and Trunk, Judenrat, 388 ff.
Notes to pages 169–173
491
132. On methods of keeping order in the Jewish community, see Corni, Ghettos, 106 ff. and Trunk, Judenrat, 475 ff.
133. Aharon Weiss, ‘Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland: Postures and Attitudes’, YVS
12 (1977), 335–65.
134. This problem has been examined by Dan Diner: ‘Die Perspektive des “Judenrats”. Zur
universellen Bedeutung einer partikularen Erfahrung’, in Kiesel et al., eds, ‘Wer zum
Leben’, 11–36.
135. Gutman, Jews, 119 ff. The same conclusion about underground action by the
Socialist League in this period is reached by Daniel Blatman, For our Freedom
and yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland 1939–1949 (London, 2003), 44 ff. In
Corni’s account of resistance in the ghettos (Ghettos, 293 ff.) there are virtually no
data for the period before the onset of the deportations, and the same is true of
Trunk, Judenrat, 451 ff.
136. See Corni, Ghettos, 70–1.
137. Pohl, ‘Lublin’, 88.
138. Willi A. Boelke, ed., Kriegspropaganda 1939–1941. Geheime Ministerkonferenzen im
Reichspropagandaministerium (Stuttgart, 1966), 492 (6 September). By the end of the
war it was envisaged that c.500 Jews per month would be ‘sent to the South-East’.
139. Toury, ‘Austreibungsbefehls’, 436–7.
140. Ibid.
141. BAB, R 43 II/1334a; Toury, ‘Austreibungsbefehls’, 446.
142. Anonymous report from Karlsruhe dated 30 Oct. 1940, published in Sauer, Dokumente
der Verfolgung, no. 441 (¼ NG 4933; see also other relevant documents here), which
may have come from groups associated with the Confessing Church (Bekennende
Kirche); cf. Toury, ‘Austreibungsbefehls’, 453. The report assumes that it was originally the intention to deport to France all the other Jews from the Reich area, including the
Protectorate.
143. Toury (‘Austreibungsbefehls’, 443) notes that in a draft for a letter made on 7
December Rademacher initially used the formulation ‘deportation ordered by the
Führer’ which he corrected to ‘deportation approved by the Führer’: Toury assumes
that the initiative for these deportations (which are often referred to as the ‘Bürckel
campaign’) was Gauleiter Wagner’s.
144. Minute taken by Bormann: IMT, xxxix. 425 ff.
145. Faschismus, ed. Berenstein et al., 59, circular of 23 Nov. 1940 from the government of the GG to the governors of the districts informing them of the ban dated 25 Nov. 1940.
146. Telex from Frank to Greiser, 2 Nov. 1940, reproduced in express telex from the
Inspector of the Sipo and the SD in Poznan to the RSHA, 5 Nov. 1940 (Biuletyn, XII
(1960), doc. 50); Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 126–7.
147. Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch. Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabs des Heeres 1939–1942, ed. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (Stuttgart, 1962), vol. ii, 4 Nov. 1940.
148. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen
1923–1941, Band 8, bearbeitet von Jana Richter (Munich, 1998), 5 Nov. 1940, (‘yester-
day’), p. 406.
149. These totals are derived from Polish sources and research in Werner Röhr, ed., Die
faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen (1939–1945) (Bonn, 1989), 356–7.
492
Notes to pages 173–175
150. Hitler’s directives no. 18 (Russia) from 12 Nov. 1940 and no. 21 from 18 Dec. 1940
(Operation Barbarossa), Wolfgang Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung
1939–1945. Dokumente des OKW (Frankfurt a. M., 1962), 71 and 84 ff. are central to this
point.
151. On the deportation plans after the failure of Madagascar, see Browning, Origins, 213 ff.
152. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 147 ff.; Gruner, Kollektivausweisung; Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle, Judendeportationen aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945. Eine kommentierte Chronologie (Wiesbaden, 2005), 46 ff.
153. BAB, NS 19/3979.
154. This figure is certainly not a ‘first reference’ to the later total of the victims of the systematic murder of the European Jews, as Wolfgang Benz suggests in Dimension
des Völkermords, 2; it does not include the Soviet Jews, for example. Cf. Aly, ‘Final
Solution’, 126. On the day before, 3 December 1940, Eichmann had informed the
Reich Interior Ministry official responsible for ‘Jewish affairs’, Bernhard Lösener,
about the ‘plans that the Reich Security Office had for the conclusive solution of the
Jewish question in the German Reich’. They included the intention ‘to transport the
Jews from the whole area of Europe under German rule to Madagascar after the war,
within the context of a four- or five-year plan’. This plan embraced six million
people. (Note by Lösener with Eichmann: BAB, R 18/3746, quoted by Bernhard
Lösener, ‘Als Rassereferent im Reichsministerium des Innern’, VfZ 9/3 (1961),
296–7.)
155. According to Krüger’s report on 15 January in Cracow: Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and
Jacobmeyer, 327 ff. On 11 January Frank had told Krüger that Hitler had described
accepting 800,000 Jews and Poles into the General Government
as unavoidable (ibid.,
11 Jan. 1941, pp. 318 ff.).
156. For details see Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 141. On the deportations from Vienna, see Safrian, Eichmann-Männer, 97–8 and Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 147 ff.
157. Relevant documents in YV, JM 10454 (¼ Lublin Archive, Gouvern. Distr. Lubl., Sign.
892), and various reports in Else R. Behrend-Rosenfeld, ed., Lebenszeichen Piaski.
Briefe deportierte aus dem Distrikt Lublin 1940–1943 (Munich, 1968), 165 ff.
158. Cf. Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 127–8.
159. CDJC, V-59, published in Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auchwitz. Die Zusammenarbeit der
deutschen und französischen Behörden bei der ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ in Frankreich
(Nördlingen, 1989), 361 ff.
160. Published in Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 152.
161. Goebbels had left lunch with Hitler on 17 March under the impression that Vienna
would very soon be ‘free of Jews’ and Berlin would soon ‘have its turn’ but had
‘evidently made a wrong estimation of the timescale’. ‘I will discuss that with the
Führer and Dr Franck [sic]. He will set the Jews to work and they are pretty compliant.
Later they will have to get out of Europe completely’; Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, Band 9: Dezember 1940–März
1941, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998), 18 Mar. 1941, p. 193.
162. Ibid. Entry for 22 Mar. 1940, p. 199. This matches a remark of the former League of
Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, Carl J. Burkhardt, found by Breitmann
(Architekt, 152) to the effect that two absolutely trustworthy civil servants from the
Notes to pages 175–181
493
Ministry of War and the Foreign Ministry had seen a written order by Hitler giving
instructions for the area of the Reich to be made ‘free of Jews’ by the end of 1942.
163. BAB, 75 C Re 1, no. 45, summons of 17 Mar. 1941.
164. Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, 26 Mar. 1941, pp. 338–9.
165. Ibid., 3 Apr. 1941, pp. 343 ff.
166. Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 172, citing ZASM 500-3-795.
167. 710-PS in IMT xxvi. 266.
168. ND NO-203, Brack to Himmler, 28 Mar. 1941. According to a statement made by Brack
in May 1947, Himmler had given him this task in January 1941 because he feared the
miscegenation of Polish and Western European Jews (Trial of the War Criminals
before the International Military Tribunal (Washington, DC, 1947–9), i. 732).
169. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen
1923–1941, Band 9, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998), entry for 20 June
1941, p. 390.
170. Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, 17 July 1941, p. 386.
171. ADAP, series D, vol. 13, no. 207.
10.
Laying the Ground for a War of Racial Annihilation
1. Studies of the attack on the Soviet Union include Horst Boog et al., Germany and the
Second World War, vol. iv: The Attack on the Soviet Union (Oxford, 1999); Peter Jahn
and Reinhard Rürup, eds, Erobern und Vernichten. Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion
(Berlin, 1991); Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie. Politik und Kriegführung 1940–
1941 (Frankfurt a. M., 1965); Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfram Wette, eds, ‘Unterneh-
men Barbarossa’. Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941 (Paderborn, 1984);
Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, and Ulrike Jureit, eds, Verbrechen der Wehr-
macht. Bilanz einer Debatte (Munich, 2005); Bernd Wegner, ed., Zwei Wege nach
Moskau. Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt zum ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’ (Munich, 1991).
2. Gerd Ueberschär, ‘ “Russland ist unser Indien”. Das “Unternehmen Barbarossa” als
Lebensraumkrieg’, in Hans Heinrich Nolte, ed., Der Mensch gegen den Menschen.
Überlegungen und Forschungen. Zum deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941
(Hanover, 1992), 66–77.
3. Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Von der Wirtschaftsallianz zum kolonialen Ausbeutungskrieg’, in
Boog et al., Attack 98–189 (here p. 157). On the economic aspects of the war see in
particular Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Ver-
nichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999), 59 ff.
4. Andreas Hillgruber, ‘Der Ostkrieg und die Judenvernichtung’, in Ueberschär and
Wette, eds, ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’, 219–36.
5. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London, 1969), 604–5.
6. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 66 ff. On planning for food-supply policies, see Gerlach,
‘German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in
Belorussia 1941–1943’, in Ulrich Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000); Götz Aly
and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne
für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, 1991), 366–7, and Rolf-Dieter Müller,
494
Notes to pages 181–183
‘From Economic Alliance to a War of Colonial Exploitation’, in Boog et al., eds,
Germany and the Second World War, vol. iv: Attack, 118–224.
7. The Economic Organization for the East was directed by the Head of the War
Economy and Armaments Department, General Georg Thomas, who received com-
prehensive authority for the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union from Goering,
who was formally responsible for this.
8. IMT iv. 535–6. Bach-Zelewski dates the meeting in Nuremberg at January 1941 but it
must have taken place between 12 and 15 June of that year (see note 76); Peter Witte
et al., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (Hamburg, 1999), 172.
9. Goering to Ciano on 15 Nov. 1941: ‘20–30 million people will starve in Russia this year.
Perhaps that is for the best, since there are peoples that need to be decimated.’ Czeslaw Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Cologne,
1988), 92.
10. 2718-PS, IMT xxxi. 84 ff.
11. EC 126, IMT xxxvi. 135 ff., 145.
12. NG 1409.
13. By March 1942 there were thirteen Army Rear Areas.
14. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegs-
gefangener’, in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates (Munich, 1979) doc. 1.
15. Percy Ernst Schramm, ed., Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht
1940–1945 (KTB), i. 341.
16. Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv (BAM), RW 4/v, 522 (¼ IMT xxvi. 53 ff., 447-PS).
17. On 26 March Wagner was able to present a first draft of the order, drawn up after
discusssions with Heydrich: Bundesarchiv Berlin (BAB), RW 4v/575, published in
Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, doc. 2. On 16 April Wagner met Himmler, Heydrich,
the Head of the Order Police, Kurt Daluege, and Hans Jüttner (Chief of Staff in the SS
Main Leadership Office) in a hotel in Graz, clearly in order to discuss the draft
(Himmler, Dienstkalender, ed. Witte, 150). The negotiations are presented in detail by
Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südli-
chen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg 2003), 41 ff.
18. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 81.
19. RH 22/155. Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, doc. 3.
20. RH 31-Iv.23; cf. Jürgen Förster, ‘Operation Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and
and Walter Manoscheck, ‘Serbien ist Judenfrei’. Militärbesatzungspolitik und Judenver-
nichtung in Serbien 1941/42 (Munich, 1993), 41–2.
21. Halder, KTB ii. 317 ff., 320.
22. Ibid. 335 ff., 336–7.
23. BAM, RH 22/155, published in Reinhard Rürup, Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941–
1945. Eine Dokumentation (Berlin, 1991), 45; for details of the genesis of this measure see Förster, ‘Operation Barbarossa’; and Ralf Ogorreck, Die Einsatzgruppen und die Genesis
der ‘Endlösung’ (Berlin, 1996), 19 ff. The accompanying letter by the Commander-in-
Chief of the army of 24 June (Disciplinary Decree; Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, doc.
10) pursues the line of the need to prevent the excessive implementation of this order
from the Führer by the troops on the ground. The activity report made by the
Notes to pages 183–185
495
intelligence officer of the Third Tank Group for the period between January and July
1941 (BAB, RH 21–3/v, 423) shows how the intelligence officers and military judges of
the Group were informed of the order on 11 June by Special Purpose General Müller:
‘One of the two enemies must fall by the wayside, those who hold hostile view are to be
finished off, not preserved . . . . The severity of the war demands severe punishments
(remember the First War: the Russians in Gumbinnen: shooting dead all the inhabit-
ants of villages on the route between Tilsit and Insterburg in case the route was
damaged). Where there is any doubt about who the perpetrators are, suspicion will
often have to suffice. It is often not possible to provide unambiguous proof.’
24. BAM, RH 2/2082, published in Rürup, Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, 46. On the
Commissar Order in general see Felix Römer, Der Kommissarbefehl Wehrmacht und
NS-Verbrechen an der Ostfront 1941/42 (Paderborn, 2008 ) .
25. BAM, RH 22/12. There are similarities in the tenor of the instructions drawn up by the Army Propaganda Department for the Implementation of Propaganda in the case of
Barbarossa (BAM, RW 4/v, 578) and the June edition of the journal Troop Information.
26. NOKW 2079, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, 184–5.