Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination

by Saul Friedlander

  On June 7 the star became mandatory in the occupied zone of France. Vichy refused to enforce the decree on its territory, in order to avoid the accusation that a French government stigmatized Jews of French citizenship (the more so because Jewish nationals of countries allied with Germany, as well as of neutral or even enemy countries, were exempted from the star decree by the Germans). There was some irony and much embarrassment in the fact that Vichy had to beg the Germans to exempt the Jewish spouses of some of its highest officials in the occupied zone. Thus, Pétain’s delegate in Paris, the anti-Semitic and actively collaborationist Fernand de Brinon, had to ask the favor for his wife, née Frank.178 Among Catholic intellectuals, communists, and many students, reactions to the German measure were particularly negative.179 The Jews themselves quickly recognized the mood of part of the population and, at the outset at least, the star was worn with a measure of pride and defiance.180

  In fact indications about French attitudes were contradictory: “Lazare Lévy, professor at the Conservatory, has been dismissed,” Biélinky noted on February 20. “If his non-Jewish colleagues had expressed the wish to keep him, he would have remained as professor, as he was the only Jew at the Conservatory. But they did not make the move; cowardice has become a civic virtue.”181 On May 16 Biélinky noted some strange inconsistencies in Parisian cultural life: “The Jews are eliminated from everywhere and yet René Julliard published a new book by Elian J. Finbert, La Vie Pastorale. Finbert is a Jew of Russian origin raised in Egypt. He is even young enough to inhabit a concentration camp…. Although Jews are not allowed to exhibit their work anywhere, one finds Jewish artists at the Salon [the largest biannual painting exhibition in Paris]. They had to sign that they did not belong to the ‘Jewish race’…. A concert by Boris Zadri, a Romanian Jew, is announced for May 18, at the Salle Gaveau [a well-known Paris concert hall].”182 And on May 19 Biélinky recorded the opinion voiced by a concierge: “What is done to the Jews is really disgusting…. If one didn’t want them, one should not have let them enter France; if they have been accepted for many years, one has to let them live as everybody else…. Moreover, they are no worse than we Catholics.”183 And, from early June on, Biélinky’s diary indeed recorded numerous expressions of sympathy addressed to him and to other Jews tagged with the star, in various everyday encounters.184

  Yet individual manifestations of sympathy were not indicative of any basic shifts in public opinion regarding the anti-Jewish measures. Despite the negative response to the introduction of the star and soon thereafter to the deportations, an undercurrent of traditional anti-Semitism persisted in both zones. However, both the Germans and Vichy recognized that the population reacted differently to foreign and to French Jews. Thus in a survey that Abetz sent to Berlin on July 2, 1942, he emphasized “the surge of anti-Semitism” due to the influx of foreign Jews and recommended, along the lines of the agreement reached on the same day between Oberg and Bousquet, that the deportations should start with the foreign Jews in order to achieve “the right psychological effect” among the population.185

  “I hate the Jews,” the writer Pierre Drieu la Rochelle was to confide to his diary on November 8, 1942. “I always knew that I hated them.”186 In this case at least, Drieu’s outburst remained hidden in his diary. On the eve of the war, however, he had been less discreet (but far less extreme) in Gilles, an autobiographical novel that became a classic of French literature. Compared to some of his literary peers, Drieu was in fact relatively moderate. In Les Décombres, published in the spring of 1942, Lucien Rebatet showed a more Nazi-like anti-Jewish rage: “Jewish spirit is in the intellectual life of France a poisonous weed that must be pulled out right to its most minuscule roots…. Auto-da-fés will be ordered for the greatest number of Jewish or Judaic works of literature, paintings, or musical compositions that have worked toward the decadence of our people.”187 Rebatet’s stand regarding the Jews was part and parcel of an unconditional allegiance to Hitler’s Reich: “I wish for the the victory of Germany because the war it is waging is my war, our war…. I don’t admire Germany for being Germany but for having produced Hitler. I praise it for having known how…to create for itself the political leader in whom I recognize my desires. I think that Hitler has conceived of a magnificent future for our continent, and I passionately want him to realize it.”188

  Céline, possibly the most significant writer (in terms of literary importance) of this anti-Semitic phalanx, took up the same themes in an even more vitriolic form; however, his manic style and his insane outbursts marginalized him to a point. In December 1941 the German novelist Ernst Jünger encountered Céline at the German Institute in Paris: “He says,” Jünger noted, “how surprised and stupefied he is that we soldiers do not shoot, hang, exterminate the Jews—he is stupefied that someone availed of a bayonet should not make unrestricted use of it.” Jünger, no Nazi himself but nonetheless quite a connoisseur in matters of violence, strikingly defined Céline and—undoubtedly—also a vast category of his own compatriots: “Such men hear only one melody, but that is singularly insistent. They’re like those machines that go about their business until somebody smashes them. It is curious to hear such minds speak of science—of biology, for instance. They use it the way the Stone Age man would; for them, it is exclusively a means of killing others.”189

  Robert Brasillach was outwardly more polished, but his anti-Jewish hatred was no less extreme and persistent than that of Céline or Rebatet. His anti-Jewish tirades in Je Suis Partout had started in the 1930s, and for him the ecstatic admiration of German victories and German dominance had a clearly erotic dimension: “The French of different persuasions have all more or less been sleeping with the Germans during these last years,” he wrote in 1944, “and the memory will remain sweet.”190 As for the French and German policies regarding the Jews, Brasillach applauded at each step but, as far as the French measures went, they appeared to him at times too incomplete: “Families should be kept together and Jewish children deported with their parents,” he demanded in a notorious Je Suis Partout article on September 25, 1942.191

  How far the virulent anti-Semitism spewed by the Paris collaborationists influenced public opinion beyond the rather limited segment of French society that supported them politically is hard to assess. Be that as it may, Rebatet’s Les Décombres became a runaway bestseller and could have sold about 200,000 copies (given the orders for the book) despite its very high price, had the publisher been able to receive a sufficient allocation of paper. It was the greatest publishing success in occupied France.192

  Les Décombres was published by the notoriously collaborationist Denoël. More-respected publishers found other ways to make some profit under the circumstances. Thus on January 20, 1942, Gaston Gallimard made a bid for the acquisition of the previously Jewish-owned publishing house Calmann-Lévy. In a registered letter sent that day to the provisional administrator of Calmann-Lévy, with a copy to the CGQJ, Gallimard stated: “We herewith confirm our offer to buy the publishing and bookselling firm known under the name of Calmann-Lévy…. This offer is based on a price of two million five hundred thousand francs payable in cash. It is understood that the Librairie Gallimard (Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française) will not absorb the Calmann-Lévy company, which will remain autonomous and have its editorial board, of which Mssrs Drieu la Rochelle and Paul Morand [also a notorious anti-Semite] will no doubt agree to be members. We wish to inform you at this time that the Librairie Gallimard…is an Aryan firm backed by Aryan capital.”193

  Neither UGIF-North nor UGIF-South played much of a role during the first six months of 1942. In the occupied zone the council, which had been fined one billion francs by the Germans, was mainly trying to find ways of repaying the loans taken from French banks without imposing heavy new taxes on the impoverished community. The situation was quieter in the South but for both councils, apart from dealing with the growing welfare needs, much time was spent in fending off demands of all sorts from the Germans or from the
CGQJ, and dealing with difficulties created by the Consistoire and with the Fédération’s warring leaders.194 “The very rich Jews, the majority of the Consistoire,” Lambert noted on March 29, 1942, “are afraid that the Union (the UGIF) will compel them to pay too much for the poor; and, look at the scandal: at the instigation of two or three young Turks, they prefer to give money to the “Amitiés Chrétiennes” than to leave it to the welfare organizations that are part of the Union.”195

  X

  After most of the Jewish population of Vilna had been murdered in the summer and fall of 1941, a “quiet” period (that was to last for some eighteen months) set in at the beginning of 1942. Now more than ever, Kruk and Rudashevski tried to record the “everyday.” And the everyday offered its ordinary lot of misery but also quite unexpected dilemmas: For example, should one allow a theater in the ghetto? Kruk, a moralist in the Bundist-socialist tradition, was appalled: “Today,” he recorded on January 17, “I received a formal invitation from a founding group of Jewish artists in the ghetto announcing that the first evening of the local artistic circle will be held on Sunday, January 18, in the auditorium of the Real Gymnasium at Rudnicka 6…. I felt offended, personally offended about the whole thing, let alone the festive evening. In every ghetto you can amuse yourself, cultivating art is certainly a good deed. But here, in the doleful situation of the Vilna Ghetto, in the shadow of Ponar, where of the 76,000 Vilna Jews, only 15,000 remain—here, at this moment, this is a disgrace. An offense to all our feelings. But, as we know, the real initiators of the evening are the Jewish police. Furthermore, important guests, Germans, will come to the concert. Lyuba Bewicka, the brilliant German singer, is even trying to have some Jewish songs ‘on hand.’ In case, God forbid, a German will ask for them!…You don’t make a theater in a graveyard.

  “The organized Jewish labor movement [the Bund] has decided to respond to the invitation with a boycott. Not one of them will go to the ‘crows’ concert.’ But the streets of the ghetto are to be strewn with leaflets: ‘About today’s concert. You don’t make theater in a graveyard!’ The police and the artists will amuse themselves, and the Vilna ghetto will mourn.”196

  Notwithstanding the Bund’s initial qualms, intense cultural activity developed in the ghetto throughout 1942 and early 1943: “The number of cultural events in March [1942],” a contemporary record indicated, “was exceptionally high, because all existing suitable premises in the ghetto, like the theater, gymnasium, youth club and school quarters, were used. Every Sunday, six to seven events took place with over two thousand participants.” However, lack of space soon became a problem: “At the end of the month the Culture Department had to give up to the incoming outof-town Jews a number of premises like the gymnasium, School No. 2, Kindergarten No. 2, and a part of School No. 1. This will greatly affect the work of the schools, the sports division, and also the theater, which had to take into its building the sports division and the workers’ assemblies.” The section of the report dealing with the activity of the lending library indicated that as of April 1 the library had 2,592 [subscribing] readers. “An average of 206 persons visited the reading room daily (155 in February)…. During the month the Archives collected 101 documents. Besides that, 124 folklore items were assembled.197

  In Kovno, the German presence was more direct than in Vilna, even during the respite period. On January 13, 1942, a German Ghetto Guard was established inside the Jewish area.198 Moreover, the local Germans seem to have been more inventive: “An order,” Tory noted on January 14, “to bring all dogs and cats to the small synagogue in Veliounos Street, where they were shot [the bodies of the cats and dogs remained in the synagogue for several months; the Jews were forbidden to remove them].”199 On February 28 Tory recorded: “Today is the deadline for handing over all the books in the ghetto, without exception, as ordered by the representative of the Rosenberg organization, Dr. Benker.” (Benker had threatened anybody failing to hand in books with the death penalty.)200

  XI

  From the beginning of 1942 mass killings of Jews were spreading throughout the Warthegau and the General Government, as the days of total annihilation were rapidly approaching. One may wonder whether the exceptional and exceptionally visible German bestiality had any impact upon the traditional attitudes of the majority of Poles toward their Jewish countrymen. The answer seems negative. “Only in Poland,” Alexander Smolar wrote in the 1980s, “was anti-Semitism compatible with patriotism (a correlation considerably strengthened under the Soviet occupation in 1939–1941) and also with democracy. The anti-Semitic National Democratic Party was represented both in the Polish government in London and in the structures of the underground within Poland. Precisely because Polish anti-Semitism was not tainted by any trace of collaboration with the Germans, it could prosper—not only in the street but also in the underground press, in political parties, and in the armed forces.”201

  Polonsky, who quoted Smolar, rephrased the argument by pointing out that “whereas the socialist and democratic organizations continued to advocate full equality for the Jews in a future liberated Poland, pre-war antisemitic parties did not abandon their hostility to the Jews merely because the Nazis were also anti-semites.”202 The socialist and democratic organizations represented a minority in relation to the anti-Semitic camp. And among the anti-Semites themselves there were nuances. Thus in January 1942, Narod, the paper of the Christian Democratic Party of Labor, a party that belonged to the government-in-exile coalition, phrased its stance as clearly as could be: “The Jewish question is now a burning issue. We insist that the Jews cannot regain their political rights and the property they have lost. Moreover, in the future they must entirely leave the territories of our country. The matter is complicated by the fact that once we demand that the Jews leave Poland, we will not be able to tolerate them on the territories of the future federation of Slavic nations [which the journal advocated.] This means that we will have to cleanse all of Central and Southern Europe of the Jewish element, which amounts to removing some 8 to 9 million Jews.”203

  Is there much difference between the views expressed in Narod, considered moderately anti-Semitic, and those carried in these same days of January 1942 by Szaniec, the organ of prewar Polish fascists? Szaniec put it thus: “Jews were, are and will be against us, always and everywhere…. And now the question arises, how are the Poles to treat the Jews…. We, and certainly 90 percent of Poles, have only one answer to this question: like enemies.”204

  Szaniec’s emphatic statement seems indeed to have expressed widely held views. Even German anti-Jewish propaganda was manifestly well accepted and internalized by many Poles. On January 16, 1942, Dawid Rubinowicz, the young diarist from the Kielce area, noted that on that evening the mayor of nearby Bieliny visited his family’s home: “Father fetched some vodka and they finished it off together because he [the mayor] was a bit chilled…. The mayor said all Jews would have to be shot because they were enemies. If I could only write down just a part of all he said at our house, but I simply can’t.”205 German anti-Jewish posters adorned the walls of the smallest villages and the populace enjoyed it. On February 12 Dawid described one of the posters put up by the “village constable”: “A Jew is shown mincing meat and putting a rat into the mincer. Another is pouring water from a bucket into milk. In the third picture a Jew is shown stamping dough with his feet and worms are crawling over him and the dough. The heading of the notice reads: ‘The Jew is a Cheat, Your only Enemy.’ A ditty followed commenting on each caricature; The last two lines rendered the tone of the entire ‘poem’: ‘Worms infest their home-made bread/Because the dough with feet they tread.’ When the village constable had put it up,” Dawid added, “some people came along, and their laughter gave me a headache from the shame that the Jews suffer nowadays.”206

  During the weeks and months that followed, Dawid’s diary repeatedly evoked the killing spree that engulfed his region. On June 1, the diary entry started untypically: “A happy day.” Dawid’s father,
who had been arrested, was back. Then, however, the tone changed: “I have forgotten to write down the most important and most terrible news of all. This morning, a mother and a daughter had gone out into the country. Unfortunately the Germans were driving from Rudki to Bodzentyn…. When the two women caught sight of the Germans they began to flee, but were overtaken and arrested. They intended shooting them on the spot in the village, but the mayor wouldn’t allow it. They then went into the woods and shot them there. The Jewish police immediately went there to bury them in the cemetery. When the cart returned it was full of blood. Who—”207 There, in midsentence, Dawid Rubinowicz’s diary ended.

  In his straightforward way Dawid described events as they happened before his eyes. Some of the other Jewish diarists in the Polish provinces, more “sophisticated” and older by a few years, were more reflective. But for most of them, be they in the neighborhood of Kielce or a few hundred miles away, the writing would also suddenly end, in the same month of June 1942. In the early spring Elisheva from Stanislawów had inserted the notes of an anonymous friend in her own chronicle: “We are utterly exhausted,” the “guest diarist” recorded on March 13, 1942. “We only have illusions that something will change; this hope keeps us alive. But how long can we live on the power of the spirit that is also fading? Sometimes there are rumors in the ghetto that graves are being dug. Seemingly strong people, both young and old, submit to the gossip. It is a terrible feeling. You feel that you have a halter on your neck and the guards are watching you very carefully, and on the other hand you are aware that you could live longer since you are healthy and strong but without any human rights…. Yesterday, Elsa [Elisheva] told me that a man who had died of starvation couldn’t fit into the coffin, so his legs had to be broken. Unbelievable!”208