It is probably during a conversation with Hitler on March 17 that Frank managed once more to deflect the new deportation plans. On the same occasion the Nazi leader fantasized about the germanization of the General Government within the next fifteen to twenty years and promised that after the end of the war Frank’s kingdom would be the first occupied area to be emptied of its Jewish population.36
Yet, “small-scale” deportations into the General Government could not, in the meantime, be avoided. The Nazi leadership in Vienna had repeatedly tried to get hold of as many remaining Jewish homes as possible (some 12,000 to 14,000 out of 70,000 in March 1938), either by systematically forcing their inhabitants to move into Jews’ houses or by having most of the 60,000 elderly and impoverished Jews still living in the city deported. On October 2, 1940, Vienna’s Gauleiter, Reichsleiter Baldur von Schirach, personally presented the request to Hitler.37
Three months later, Hans-Heinrich Lammers, the chief of the Reich Chancellery, informed Schirach of the decision: “The Führer decided that the deportation of the 60,000 Jews still living in Vienna into the General Government should be accelerated and take place even during the war, because of the housing crisis. I have informed the General Governor in Kraków, as well as the SS Reichsführer, of the Führer’s decision, and I hereby wish to inform you about it as well.”38 The deportations started at the beginning of February 1941, and within two months some 7,000 Viennese Jews were shipped off to the General Government, mainly to the Lublin district. By mid-March 1941, however, growing military traffic linked to the buildup for Barbarossa put an end to these deportations, as had already been the case in October 1939.
A simpler method of confiscating Jewish homes was developed in the Bavarian capital; it originated in the Munich Gauleiter’s “Aryanization office,” in coordination with the municipal authorities. In the spring of 1941 a barracks camp was built by the city’s Jews, at their own expense, in the Milbertshofen suburb. Some eleven hundred Jews were relocated to the camp, where, from then until their deportation to the East in November of that year, they lived under the guard of the local police. Their former houses were allocated to party members and other “deserving” Germans.39
In February 1941 the Klemperers were ordered to sell the car they had managed to acquire in the midthirties, although they had not been permitted to drive it since the end of 1938 (in December of that year the drivers’ licenses of Jews had been revoked). “The next blow to be expected,” Klemperer wrote, “is the confiscation of the typewriter. There is one way of safeguarding it. It would have to be lent to me by an Aryan owner.” There were some possible “lenders,” but they were afraid. “Everyone is afraid of arousing the least suspicion of being friendly to Jews, the fear seems to grow all the time.”40
At all levels of the system the stream of deliberations, meetings, and decisions regarding the Jews never stopped. While several ministries were involved in an endless debate about which categories of foreign Jews should be reimbursed for war related damages, while, at the same level, an eleventh ordinance to the citizenship law was being drafted and redrafted, some more down-to-earth measures were decided upon without too many hesitations: In Berlin in January 1941, Jews were excluded from the clients’ lists of all shoemakers, with the exception of one company and its local branches: Alsi-Schuhreparaturen (Alsi-Cobblers).41 In February and March, 1,000 out of 2,700 employees belonging to the Berlin Jewish community and to the Reichsvereinigung were transferred to compulsory labor.42 At the end of March, on orders of General Construction Inspector Albert Speer, Jewish tenants had to vacate their homes to be replaced by Aryans whose own homes were being torn down as a result of the major construction projects started in the capital.43 In April the Jewish community of Berlin had to change its name to “Jewish Religious Association in Berlin.”44
A decree ordered all Aryanized firms and businesses to de-Judaize their names (Entjudung von Firmennamen). Usually such a measure caused no problems. However, in the case of the world-famous Rosenthal-Porzellan, the new Aryan owners demurred: A lengthy exchange ensued involving the company, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Propaganda, and the Party Chancellery. On June 7, 1941, the company could prove that the number of Jews on its board had steadily diminished (in 1931 there had been three Jews on a seven-members board; in 1932, two out of five; in 1933, one out of eight). The Propaganda Ministry saw the importance of keeping the name “Rosenthal,” the Justice Ministry concurred, and so did the Party Chancellery: In August 1941 the matter was settled.45
The most intricate issues remained those regarding mixed breeds, and not only in the Wehrmacht. Frequently Hitler intervened. At times, however, he gave instructions that he later postponed for reasons that remain unclear. Thus, on May 7, Hans Pfundtner, state secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, informed various agencies that the Führer wished to forbid sexual intercourse (ausserehelicher Verkehr) between Mischlinge of the first degree and full Germans, or among Mischlinge of the first degree themselves. But on September 25, 1941, Lammers advised Frick that Hitler wanted the matter to be deferred.46 No explanation was offered.
Some of the mixed-breeds issues that the Nazi leader had to decide about, on the eve of the campaign in the East, were straightforward: In April 1941, Lammers informed the minister of Agriculture, Walther Darré, that Hitler did not object to Mischlinge of the second degree owning racehorses or stud farms; therefore the stud belonging to the quarter-Jewish Oppenheim brothers, a horse called Schlenderhan, could be sold to the Reich studs’ administration.47
The most frequent issues relating to mixed breeds of the first degree were petitions for admission to universities, usually after army service followed by discharge (as mixed breeds). Those decorated for bravery were mostly accepted—in line with a Hitler decree of October 1940—the others mostly rejected—even if they boasted of particularly famous ancestry. On February 1, 1941, the Office of the Führer’s Deputy had to decide on the petition of one Jürgen von Schwerin, whose ancestors on his father’s side belonged to the foremost Prussian aristocracy. The trouble came from the mother’s side: Schwerin’s maternal grandfather was a Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a banker who had worked closely with Bismarck. Of course the name also indicated some relation to the famous Jewish composer, and although his grandparents had converted, Schwerin carried the burden of the name Mendelssohn. He was accepted only after lengthy efforts.48
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s descendant was a relatively easy case compared with that of a professor at the University of Munich, Dr. Karl Ritter von Frisch, a Mischling of the second degree (his maternal grandmother was “fully Jewish”). According to paragraph 72 of the Civil Service Law, Frisch had to retire and on March 8, 1941; the Minister of Education informed his colleague Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and the ubiquitous Martin Bormann of his decision to implement the law. Frisch, it should be added, was the head of the zoological institute of the university and a world-renowned bee specialist. Not only were bees essential for food production, but according to a newspaper article included in the file, in the spring of 1941 a disease decimated hundreds of thousands of bees in the Reich and the specialist who was supposed to devise the appropriate countermeasure was none other than Frisch.
For Bormann there was no problem. On July 11, 1941, he informed the education minister that Frisch was to retire, according to paragraph 72, the more imperatively so because even after 1933 he was known to have maintained many contacts with Jews, to have declared that German science was harmed by the departure of Jews, and to have attempted to remove from his institute scientists who were known for their anti-Semitic views. In a further letter, on January 31, 1942, Bormann added that Frisch could continue his research even in retirement.49 It remains unclear what compelled the all-powerful chief of the party chancellery to change his mind. On April 27, 1942, however, after lamely referring to new information indicating that retirement would harm Frisch’s research, Bormann instructed the minister of education to postpone it until after t
he end of the war.50
No matter of any importance in the ongoing anti-Jewish harassment could be settled without Hitler’s consent. In August 1940, as we saw, it was Hitler who gave the green light for implementing the anti-Jewish measures in occupied France. During the same month the Nazi leader authorized Gauleiter Gustav Simon to introduce anti-Jewish legislation in occupied Luxembourg.51 In October he ordered the deportation of the Jews of Baden and the Saar-Palatinate into the Vichy zone, and in January 1941, he agreed to the deportations from Vienna. At approximately the same time Hitler authorized the beginning of the “Aryanizations” in Holland: “Following a presentation by the Reich Commissar” (Seyss-Inquart), the head of the Economic Department of the Wilhelmstrasse wrote on March 1, “the Führer had in principle decided three months ago that the Aryanization plan could be carried out. Reichsleiter Bormann is aware of the current status of the matter.”52 Even more telling in this respect was an issue discussed at lower levels since 1938 and brought up again in 1940: the marking of the Jews living in the Reich with a special sign.
In April and May 1941 the matter resurfaced (probably in view of the forthcoming campaign in the East) on Heydrich and Goebbels’s initiative. Both turned to Göring for an answer, to no avail.53 A few days after the onset of the attack, the Reichsmarschall informed the minister and the chief of the RSHA that the matter had to be submitted to Hitler, whereupon Heydrich asked Bormann for a meeting with the Nazi leader to present the case. Goebbels, on his part, sent a message to the Reichsleiter, emphasizing that he considered the matter “exceptionally urgent and necessary [ausserordentlich dringlich und notwendig].” After expostulating on the manifold difficulties in implementing the anti-Jewish measures as long as the Jews were not outwardly identified, the memorandum, which sums up Goebbels’s view, continued: “As a departure of the Jews [from the Reich] is not to be expected in the near future [da eine baldige Abwanderung der Juden nicht zu erwarten ist] it is essential to mark the Jews…in order to avoid their attempts to influence the morale of the Volksgenossen.”54 As we shall see, in August Hitler agreed to Goebbels’s entreaty—and soon thereafter ordered the “departure” of the Jews.
Throughout the Reich the Jews cowered under the increasing incitement surrounding them and the relentless drive of the authorities to harm and humiliate them by an endless accumulation of new measures. “We live here in such troubled times,” Hertha Feiner wrote to her daughters on March 11, 1941, “that notwithstanding all my longing, I am glad that you have escaped this and can quietly work…. Many teachers have been dismissed: of the 230 teachers, only 100 remain and as many of these have a permanent position [they had worked for the community before 1928]; you can imagine how limited my prospects are [to continue teaching]. It will be decided by April 1. These worries and many more don’t leave me the peace of mind to read.”55
For the time being she was allowed to stay. “Work at the school is very tiring,” she reported on June 1, 1941, “as, due to the dismissal of teachers, the number of our students increases while our salaries decrease. But, the community is in bad shape and nothing can be done about it.”56 A week later Feiner continued to describe the everyday life unfolding around her: “I am glad when nothing special happens, because it’s rarely something good. Aunt Irma works in a factory. She likes it, even if she earns little, because she and her mother have to live somehow…. They have received an affidavit from ‘Amerika’ and hope to emigrate, possibly in half a year. I spoke with the Goldsteins…their daughter is in Palestine but they hear nothing from her.”57
In December 1940 Jochen Klepper had been drafted into the Wehrmacht; his diary was interrupted for the next ten months.
III
Although the creation of ghettos was an uneven process in the General Government, the concentration of Jews in separate town areas progressed apace throughout early 1941. “At ten o’clock a Jew dropped in from Kielce,” Dawid Rubinowicz noted on April 1. “The same day Jews who have relatives outside the Jewish quarter already left Kielce to go to their families…. Uncle came from Kielce to consider what he should do. Papa told him he should join us for the time being; he’ll do as we do. So he went to order a cart for tomorrow.”58 The first uncle arrived at the Rubinowiczes’ in the early hours of April 3; then, during the day, another uncle arrived: “I wondered where on earth they could find room to stay in our house,” Dawid noted on the third.59 But, to everbody’s surprise the second uncle “thought things over and drove back to the Jewish quarter. We were worried because we know very well he would get nothing to eat there.”60
Indeed, during these same months, hundreds of thousands of Jews lived on the edge of starvation, mainly in the largest ghettos of the Warthegau and the General Government. Among German officials two contrary approaches to the crisis were envisioned. On the one hand the new chief administrator of the Lodz ghetto, Hans Biebow, favored a level of economic activity that would grant at least minimum subsistence to its population; on the other Biebow’s own deputy did not mind letting the Jews starve to death. Greiser opted for Biebow’s policy; Biebow’s deputy, Alexander Palfinger, was transferred to Warsaw.61
The path of reorganization was not clear, however, even after the Gauleiter’s decision to support a “productionist” policy, in Christopher Browning’s terms. Greiser himself displayed an unusual talent for extortion: He levied a 65 percent tax on all Jewish wages. Moreover, local German agencies and businesses withheld raw materials or food from the ghetto (or delivered substandard products and pocketed the difference). It was only in the late spring of 1941 that Biebow was able to impose the regulations he had been demanding: “For working Jews, ‘Polish rations’ were to be a minimum; non-working Jews were to receive the long-promised ‘prison fare.’”62
Rumkowski’s mistakes sometimes added to the chronic starvation. According to a ghetto survivor interviewed immediately after the war, the population was particularly incensed by the potato affair. “A lot of potatoes were brought into the ghetto,” Israel U. told the American psychologist David Boder in a 1946 interview. “When Rumkowski was asked why he didn’t distribute them, he answered: ‘you have no business to meddle in my affairs. I will distribute the potatoes when I want.’ Frosts came and the potatoes became rotten and they had to be thrown away. They were buried. And afterwards for three years people still searched for potatoes at this spot where they lay buried. Moreover, the people talked themselves into believing that they tasted better that way, because the water had evaporated from the potatoes.”63
Yet the witness also recognized that over time some order was introduced into the food distribution system by the same dictatorial chairman: “In the beginning a committee was organized in every [apartment] house; it received the allotment for the entire house, and distributed it to all the people. This was very bad. They stole. But Rumkowski remedied this. There were forty-three district warehouses arranged according to streets. And everybody had a card for bread, a card for vegetables, and so forth. Today, for instance, bread comes out for such and such numbers. One went to the warehouse, the card was clipped, [and the transaction was] entered in the book.”64
Rumkowski’s “rationalization” of the ghetto food distribution system was effective only insofar as supply from the outside was authorized by the Germans; yet, despite a wave of strikes and protests by ghetto workers in the spring of 1941, the chairman did impose a measure of equality among the inhabitants that, as already mentioned, contrasted with the situation in Warsaw. Even the “Elder’s” most adamant ideological opponents noted his initiatives with a derision tempered by acquiescence: “Rumkowski is leaving for Warsaw to bring doctors, and is reorganizing the food-distribution system in the ghetto,” Sierakowiak wrote down on May 13. “The number of food cooperatives is increasing; separate vegetable units are being created, while the bread and other food units are being combined. Creation of new squares, lawns, and even cobblestone and construction works completes the “Spring Program” in the ghetto, marching in ‘glory
on the road of ascent and highest achievement.’”65
Even with all the “productivization” efforts—which in Lodz reached a significant scale—the food supply situation never improved beyond chronic starvation for much of the population. We have some knowledge of everyday life from individual records but mainly from the detailed “Chronicle” in which, from January 1941 to July 1944, a group of “official” diarists (in other works, diarists appointed by Rumkowski) regularly wrote down what they considered of significance for “future historians.” At first the writers were Lodz Jews; then, after the deportation from the Reich and the Protectorate in late 1941, Jews from Vienna and Prague were added to the initial group. The chroniclers reported the events of everyday life and used documents assembled in the ghetto archives, a vast and ongoing collection of all available information pertinent to the ghetto, and to the life and work of the megalomaniac Rumkowski. Although they avoided comments on the material they thus kept for history, the chroniclers—by their very presentation of the evidence—told a story whose implications the reader could not miss.66
In the first entry of the “Chronicle,” on January 12, 1941, the authors noted two minor but telling incidents: “Appearing at one of the precincts of the Order Service, an eight-year-old boy filed a report against his own parents, whom he charged with not giving him the bread ration due to him. The boy demanded that an investigation be conducted and that the guilty parties be punished.” And immediately following this entry, the chroniclers recorded another strange occurrence: “The residents of a building found themselves in a very disconcerting situation when, after waking up, they discovered that in the course of the night unknown culprits had stolen…their stairs as well as their handrail and banister.”67
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