Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (109 page)

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