Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews
Page 99
demonstrated the lack of effectiveness of German propaganda hitherto; on the other
hand the German leadership could not bring itself to expose the terrible realization of the
‘prophecy’ with an offensive propaganda campaign going beyond general hints.
5. Dienstkalender, ed. Witte et al., 294. According to Gerlach (‘Wannsee-Konferenz’, 22 and 27), the term ‘partisan’ should be taken to mean that in view of the now imminent war on
two fronts Hitler had fallen into a ‘kind of fortress-continental-Europe mentality’, and saw the European Jews in general as dangerous enemies in his own hinterland. As far as one
can tell, however, there is no evidence for the use of the term ‘partisan’ to describe the European Jews in Hitler’s otherwise stereotypical anti-Semitic diatribes. On the other hand the idea that the Jews in the occupied Soviet territories were generally partisans or helpers of partisans and must therefore be removed was so widespread among the Germans even
by the end of 1941 that Hitler’s statement seems quite clear.
6. See Gerlach, ‘Wannsee-Konferenz’. However, Gerlach does not explain why Himmler,
whom he takes to have been present during Hitler’s address on 12 December, himself
left no notes about the ‘fundamental decision’, but—as one of those chiefly responsible
for the murder of the Jews—was only informed by Hitler about that decision six days
later. Similarly it seems questionable whether one can really, with Gerlach, draw such
extensive conclusions from the fact that during these days a series of discussions was
held by people who played a leading role in the ‘Final Solution’, but about the contents of which we have no detailed information (pp. 23–4).
7. PAA, Inland IIg 177, conference minutes. Published in Longerich, Ermordung, 83 ff. For an English translation see Noakes and Pridham, eds, Nazism, iii. 535–41.
8. Trial of Eichmann, vii. 879 (text written by Heydrich and Müller); IfZ G 01 (trial
transcript, German version), session of 24 July: in fact the terms used at the conference were ‘killing’, ‘elimination’, and ‘annihilation’
9. See n. 7.
10. On the issue of forced labour at this point see Longerich, Politik, 476 ff. The details will be examined in the following chapter.
11. Zhitomir City Archive, P 1151-1-137. I am most grateful to Wendy Lower for allowing me to have a copy of this document.
12. Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, 457–8.
13. Ibid., 16 Dec. 1941.
14. Cf. especially Cornelia Essner, Die ‘Nürnberger Gesetze’ oder die Verwaltung des
Rassenwahns (Paderborn, 2002), 410 ff.; Jeremy Noakes, ‘The Development of Nazi
Policy towards the German-Jewish Mischlinge 1933–1945’, LBIY 34 (1989), 291–354; John
A. S. Grenville, ‘Die “Endlösung” und die “Judenmischlinge” in Dritten Reich’, in
Ursula Büttner, ed., Das Unrechtsregime, vol. ii: Verfolgung—Exil—Belasteter Neube-
ginn (Hamburg, 1996), 91–122.
17.
The Beginning of the Extermination Policy on a European Scale in 1942
1. In a narrow sense the expression ‘extermination through work’ refers to the delivery,
agreed between Justice Minister Thierack and Himmler, of judicial prisoners to the SS.
(See Goebbels’s note about conversation with Thierack, 15 Sept. 1942 (Nuremberg
Notes to pages 314–317
543
Document (ND) 682-PS) and Thierack’s file note about his conversation with Himm-
ler, 18 Sept. 1942 (ND 654-PS); cf. Hermann Kaienburg, ‘Zwangsarbeiter an der “Straße
der SS” ’, 1999, 11 (1996), 13–39, 14.) Here the term is used in a broader sense.
2. EM 86.
3. Cf. Karl-Heinz Roth, ‘ “Generalplan Ost”—“Gesamtplan Ost” ’, in Mechthild Rössler
and Sabine Schleiermacher, eds, Der ‘Generalplan Ost’. Hauptlinien der nationalsozia-
listischen Planung und Vernichtungspolitik (Berlin, 1995), 73 ff.; BAB, NS 19/2065.
4. Cf. Hermann Kaienburg, Vernichtung durch Arbeit. Der Fall Neuengamme (Bonn,
1990), 144 ff.
5. Jan Erik Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung. Das Wirtschaftsimperium der SS.
Oswald Pohl und das SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt, 1933–1945 (Paderborn,
2001), 334 ff.
6. See pp. 247 f.
7. Schulte, Zwangsarbeit, 351 ff.; Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht und
die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1978), 212–13.
8. Ibid. 204.
9. Individual cases in Walter Naasner, Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegs-
wirtschaft, 1942–1945 (Boppard, 1994), 300 ff.
10. Himler’s decision on amalgamation presumably coincided with a meeting on 10 Jan.
1942. See Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Ham-
burg, 1999), 105; the corresponding order from Pohl was passed on 19 Jan. 1942 (NO
495); further details in Schulte, Zwangsarbeit, 357.
11. Schulte, Zwangsarbeit, 343 ff.
12. BAB, NS 19/2065; cf. Roth, ‘Generalplan Ost’, 74–5.
13. 129-R, IMT xxxviii. 362 ff.; cf. Naasner, Machtzentren, 269.
14. 129-R, IMT xxxviii. 365 ff.; Naasner, Machtzentren, 269; Roth, ‘Generalplan Ost’, 77.
15. Hermann Kaienburg, ‘Zwangsarbeit: KZ und Wirtschaft im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in
W. Benz et al., Die Ort des Terrors. Gechichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentra-
tionslager, vol. i: Die Organisation des Terrors (Munich, 2005), 229 ff.; and Mark
Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefan-
gene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa, 1939–1945 (Stuttgart
and Munich, 2001), 183 ff. Spoerer refers to the fact that it was also advantageous from
the point of view of industry to deploy forced labourers, as companies were dependent
on armaments commissions for capital preservation or growth.
16. Kaienburg, Vernichtung, 145, 314 ff.; Naasner, Machtzentren, 274 ff.
17. Falk Pingel, Häftlinge unter NS-Herrschaft (Hamburg, 1978), 118. Naasner similarly
establishes the ‘irreconcilability of the SS economy with the fundamental requirements
of economic planning’ (Machtzentren, 274).
18. On the forced labour of concentration camp inmates see, apart from the literature
already mentioned, Reiner Fröbe, ‘Der Arbeitseinsatz von KZ-Häftlingen und die
Perspektive der Industrie’, in ‘Deutsche Wirtschaft’. Zwangsarbeit von KZ-Häftlingen
für Industrie und Behörden (Hamburg, 1991), 33–78, also in Ulrich Herbert, ed., Europa
und der ‘Reichseinsatz’. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und KZ-Häftlinge in
Deutschland 1938–1945 (Essen, 1991), 351–74; the essays in the collection Hermann
Kaienburg, ed., Konzentrationslager und deutsche Wirtschaft (Opladen, 1996); Bernd
544
Notes to pages 317–318
C. Wagner, IG Auschwitz. Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung von Häftlingen des Lagers
Monowitz 1941–1945 (Munich, 2000).
19. Naasner, Machtzentren, 300–1. Fröbe, ‘Arbeiteinsatz’, 34, indicates that concentration camp inmates were used predominantly for building work throughout the whole of
1942, some in the erection of industrial plant, but not generally in production.
20. Berenstein
et al., eds, Faschismus-Ghetto-Massenmord. Dokumentation über
Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges
(Frankfurt a. M., 1962), 268. On this decision and its effects see in particular Michael
&nb
sp; Thad Allan, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor and the Concentration
Camps (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 148 ff.; and Schulte, Zwangsarbeit, 361. A day before,
Himmler had already telephoned Heydrich to give him the task of putting ‘Jews in the
Kl.s’. See Dienstkalender ed. Witte et al., 25 Jan. 1942, p. 326. The decision to deport
Jews to the concentration camps and use them as slave labourers may have been made
in the course of a meeting that Himmler held on 14/15 January with the heads of the
SS-Hauptämter. A few days after that conference Pohl issued an order in Himmler’s
name to set up the Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (ND NO 495). On 17 Jan.
1942 the following telegram was sent by the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern
Territories (Rosenberg) to Reichskommissar Lohse, which clearly indicates a funda-
mental change in the question of the preservation of Jewish workers: ‘The Economic
Leadership Staff East have issued instructions that Jewish skilled industrial and craft
workers are to be retained for work, since they are of great value to the war economy
in individual instances. Their retention must be ensured through negotiation with the
local offices of the Reichsführer SS’ (BAB, R 92/1157). See Wolfgang Scheffler, ‘Das
Schicksal der in die baltischen Staaten deportierten deutschen, österreichischen
und tschechoslovakischen Juden 1941–1945. Ein historischer Überblick’, in Wolfgang
Scheffler and Diana Schulle, Buch der Erinnerung. Die ins Baltikum deportierten
deutschen, österreichischen und tschechoslovakischen Juden 1941–1945 (Munich,
2003), i. 6. Finally, we should bear in mind that only a few days after this meeting,
on 20 Jan. 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich made his remarks about
the columns of Jewish slave labourers who were to be taken to the East for
‘road-building’.
21. See p. 325.
22. ZSt, Doc. USSR 401, quoted in Peter Klein, Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten
Sowjetunion 1941/42 (Berlin, 1997), 410–11. This might be the letter that Wislicency
mentioned in an interrogation: according to this, in the summer of 1942 he had seen an
instruction from Himmler to Heydrich. In this letter the complete extermination of the
Jews on Hitler’s orders was ordered; only those Jews who were fit for work were to be
excluded from the extermination and placed in concentration camps (Trial of Eich-
mann, Doc. 856).
23. Reference to this in dispatch from the Reich Labour Minister, 27 March: IMT xxxvii.
493, L-061.
24. Wolf Gruner, Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden. Zur Zwangsarbeit
als Element der Verfolgung 1938–1943 (Berlin, 1997), 291 ff.; H. G. Adler, Der verwal-
tete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974),
216 ff.
Notes to pages 318–321
545
25. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Diktate 1941–1945,
vol. iv, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1995), entry 30 May 1942, p. 405;
cf. Gruner, Arbeitseinsatz, 298 ff.
26. See p. 324.
27. Sybille Steinbacher, ‘Musterstadt’ Auschwitz. Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich, 2000), 276–7.
28. Cf. Kaienburg, ‘Jüdischer Arbeitslager an der “Strasse der SS” ’, Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 11 (1996), 13–39. On the Galician section of
DG IV: Thomas Sandkühler, Die ‘Endlösung’ in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen
(Bonn, 1996), 141 ff.; Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenvefolgung in Ostgalizien
(Munich, 1996), 167 ff., 338 ff.
29. Kaienburg, ‘Jüdische Arbeitslager’, 26; Pohl, Ostgalizien, 338 ff.
30. Kaienburg, Jüdische Arbeitslager’, 37.
31. See below, p. 341.
32. ‘But the Jew will not exterminate the European nations, but will be the victim of his own attack’ (Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden 1932 bis 1945, vol. iv (Wiesbaden, 1973), 1821).
33. ‘We are clear about the fact that the war can only end either with the extermination of the Aryan peoples, or with the disappearance of Jewry from Europe’ (Domarus, Hitler.
Reden, iv. 1828–9).
34. ‘my prophecy will be fulfilled not with the destruction of Aryan humanity through this war but rather with the extermination of the Jews’. See VB, 26 Feb. 1942 and Domarus,
Hitler. Reden, iv. 1844.
35. ND PS 1063, printed in Peter Longerich, Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden
(Munich, 1989), 165–6. See also guidelines on the technical implementation of the
evacuation of Jews to the General Government (undated, presumably January 1942),
IfZ, Erlass-Sammlung Gestapo Würzburg, printed in Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 191–2.
On the deportations from the Reich see ibid. for Germany Ino Arndt and Heinz
Boberach, in W. Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer
des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1996), 23–65; for Austria Jonny Moser, pp. 67–94, for
Czechoslovakia, Eva Schmidt-Harman, pp. 353–80; Henry Friedländer: ‘The Deport-
ation of the German Jews: Post-War German trials of Nazi Criminals’, LBYB 29 (1984),
201–26.
36. Besprechungsprotokoll of 9 Mar. 1943, Eichmann, Doc. 119, printed in Longerich.
Ermordung, 167–8.
37. See the schedule in Peter Longerich, Die Politik der Vernichtung. Eine Gesamtdarstel-
lung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), 485–6, based on the
information of the International Tracing Service in Arolsen and various individual
sources; Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle, Die ‘Judendeportationen’ aus dem
deutschen Reich 1941–1945. Eine kommentierte Chronologie (Wiesbaden, 2005), 182 ff.
An activity report by the agent for the Four-Year Plan, traffic group, mentions 37 special trains of Jews, or only 16 more than can be individually identified (R 26 IV/v., 47; see
Christian Gerlach, ‘The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of the German Jews, and Hitler’s
Decision in Principle to Exterminate all European Jews’, Journal of Modern History 70
(1998), 40).
38. Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen, 167 ff.
546
Notes to pages 321–324
39. On the separation of transports in Lublin: note from Reuter, Abteilung Bevölkerungs-
wesen und Fürsorge, 17 Mar. 1942 about communication from Höfle the previous day,
quoted in Hans-Günther Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsge-
meinschaft, Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie, 2nd edn (Tübingen, 1960), 50–1.
40. Archivum Panstwowe w Lublinie (APL), Gouverneur Distrikt Lublin, Judenangelegen-
heiten, Sygn. 273, Vermerke Distriktsverwaltung Lublin, Unterabteilung Bevölkerungs-
wesen und Fürsorge, 20 and 23 Mar. 1942, with individual information concerning
arriving Central European and deported local Jews. Details in Longerich, Politik, 487.
41. Note from Reuter, Abteilung Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge, 17 Mar. 1942 concern-
ing message from Höfle the previous day (quoted from Adler, Theresienstadt, 50–1).
42. Example in Peter Witte, ‘Letzte Nachrichten aus Siedliszcze. Der Transport Ax aus
Theresienstadt in den Distrikt Lublin’, Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (1996),
98–113.
43. Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen, 213.
44. Ibid. 211 ff. The authors produce a certain amount
of admittedly weak evidence to
suggest that the first deportation trains went straight to Sobibor after 3 June, or that the passengers of those trains were brought to Sobibor after a stopover lasting only a few
days.
45. Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna, 1993), 179.
46. Two transports from the old Reicht, nine from Vienna, six from Theresienstadt; one
transport from Theresienstadt only got as far as Baranowicze (a large ‘ghetto action’
was taking place in Minsk), where the deportees were shot immediately after their
arrival on 31 July 1942. Details in Longerich, Politik, 48 ff., assembled from the docu-
ments of the International Tracing Service (YV, JM 10.73), from the files of the main
railway station administration [Mitte] in Minsk (StA Minsk, 378-1-784) and the find-
ings of the Heuser trial (Judgement LG Koblenz, 21 May 1963, published in Justiz xix,
no. 552); Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen, 237 ff.; on the transport to Bar-
anowicze (see above): Jakov Tsur, ‘Der verhängnisvolle Weg des Transportes AAy’,
Terezin Studies and Documents 2 (1995), 107–20.
47. On this subject we have the reports of Sonderkommando set up by the Waffen-SS
Battalion z.b.V. See Unsere Ehre heist Treue. Kriegstagebuch des Kommandostabes
Reichsführer SS. Tätigkeitsberichte der 1. and 2. SS-Inf. Brigade, der 1. SS Kav.-Brigade und von der Sonderkommandos der SS (Vienna, 1965), 236 ff
48. Judgement LG Koblenz of 21 May 1963, printed in Justiz xix, no. 552 (Heuser-Verfahren), p. 192.
49. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 193 ff. and Moser, ‘Österreich’ in Benz, ed., Dimensionen,
80–1; see also Victor Klemperer, To the Bitter End: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer
1942–45 (London, 1999), 8 July 1942, p. 91.
50. Hartmann, ‘Tschechoslowakei’, in Benz, ed., Dimension, 365–6.
51. On the course of the deportations in detail, Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen, 260 ff.
52. Ibid. 337 ff.
53. Ibid. 250 ff.
54. Ibid. 226 ff.
55. Ibid. 393 ff.
Notes to pages 324–327
547
56. W. Boelke, Deutschlands Rüstung im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Hitlers Konferenzen mit Albert
Speer 1942–1944 (Frankfurt a. M., 1969), 189.