Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (25 page)

himself the granting of permission for individual actions against the Jewish

population in the Reich’.
40

The Berlin Operation was followed in June/July by further riots against Jewish

businesses, particularly in Frankfurt, Magdeburg, and Hanover, but also in Stutt-

gart. But by the end of July these attacks, expressed in daubings, boycotts, and so

on, had subsided once more.
41

Forced Expulsion

With the International Conference on Refugees held in July 1938 in Evian on the

initiative of President Roosevelt in July 1938, and the formation of the Intergov-

ernmental Committee on Political Refugees, the German side gained the prospect

of the expulsion of the Jews from the Reich area being made an internationally

soluble ‘problem’.
42
First of all, however, according to a report on the conference produced for Heydrich by the Jewish department of the SD, it was ‘the most

urgent task for the immediate future to cause as many Jews as possible to emigrate

under the existing conditions while no decisions have been made by the new

Committee’. But foreign currency would have to be raised for the purpose.
43

With the dissolution on 30 August of the state Zionist organization, already

demanded by the Jewish department in February 1938 because of diminishing

chances of emigration, the regime finally abandoned the option of encouraging it

through apparent support of Zionist efforts to emigrate to Palestine.
44

Meanwhile in Austria, Eichmann was developing a model that might speed up

the expulsion of the Jews, without eating into the Reich’s foreign-exchange

reserves. Since April Eichmann had been acting as the official responsible for

Jewish affairs in the local SD regional headquarters (Oberabschnitt), where he was

initially responsible for the control of Jewish organizations. To accelerate the

emigration, Eichmann took the initiative and saw to it that Reichskommmissar

Bürckel set up a Central Office for Jewish Emigration, formally under the control

of SD Oberabschnittsleiter Walther Stahlecker, but actually run by Eichmann

himself.
45
In fact, with this office, established by a state official, the Reichskommissar, the SD had for the first time succeeded in exercising executive functions in

106

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

its own right.
46
Eichmann and the SD’s young ‘Jewish experts’ saw this decision as the opportunity to involve themselves energetically in the persecution of the Jews.

The expulsion of the Viennese Jews was to provide the model case.

The Central Office, based in the Palais Rothschild, contained branches of all

authorities required to be involved in applications to emigrate. Eichmann was to

describe the basic concept of the Central Office in his police interrogation in

Jerusalem as ‘a conveyor belt. The initial application and all the rest of the

required papers are put on at one end and the passport falls off the other end.’
47

By means of this conveyor-belt-like process the applicants could be herded

through the building and be stripped almost seamlessly of their remaining assets.

With this money, extorted from Jews who were forced into emigration, Eich-

mann set up an ‘emigration fund’. The Central Office also sent officials from

Jewish organizations abroad to negotiate emigration places and obtain foreign

currency.
48
By placing the burden of finance for emigration on the expelled individuals themselves, or on foreign-aid organizations, Eichmann had shown

in exemplary fashion that one of the chief obstacles to larger-scale emigration, the

question of cost, could be solved.

In the balance sheet drawn up by the Central Office for 1938, however, it was

apparent that the number of emigrating Austrian Jews had not increased in spite

of the introduction of the ‘conveyor belt’. Whereas 46,000 Austrian Jews had

emigrated in the five months from March to August 1938, the figure for the period

between 26 August—the day the Central Office opened—and the end of the year

was 34,467—a development that, given the diminishing opportunities for emigra-

tion overall, the Jewish department neverthless considered a success.
49

But the ruthless expulsion of the Jews from Austria was only able to work

because of the considerably more radical line taken in that country, particularly

through the combination of riots, expulsions, and complete expropriation, and

even then only for a limited period of time.

The Sudeten crisis made it very clear to those responsible for Germany’s

Judenpolitik that they constantly had to reckon with the possibility of entering a

war before the emigration of the German and Austrian Jews was complete. The

previous general plans, on the other hand, had always been based around a longer-

term preparation for war, in which the Entjudung of Germany was considered an

important precondition for the achievement of readiness for war in terms of the

economy and morale. Now, though, there was suddenly a real prospect of having

in the country, during a war, several hundred thousand people who were seen as

enemies of the state.

One initial suggestion as to how this situation might be overcome was made by

the head of the SD Jewish Department, Herbert Hagen, early in September under

the title ‘Activity of the Department in the Event of Mobilization’.
50
Apart from the ‘arrest of all Jews of foreign nationality to prevent their making contact with

other countries’, Hagen suggested (as their deployment in Ersatzreserve II
51
would Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

107

contradict the ‘military ethos of the German army’) the ‘accommodation of all Jews

in special camps and their deployment in munitions production and other work on

the home front’; Jewish women who were unfit for war work could ‘look after those

in need of help’. If mobilization were to occur after the planned census (which was to

make the complete record of all Jews possible for the first time, Hagen went on to say,

‘the definition of a person’s Jewish character should be undertaken according to the

stipulations of the Reich Citizenship Law, unless particular reasons relating to the

intelligence service or the security police require special treatment’. The document

does not reveal whether the term ‘special treatment’ merely refers euphemistically to

an exemption from the stipulations of the Reich Citizenship Law or—which in my

view seems more likely—is supposed to refer, according to the usual terminology of

the SS, to the liquidation of this group.

Between Sudetenland Crisis and Pogrom: Increasing

Attacks on the German Jews

A further brutalization of ‘Jewish policy’ began in September with the end of the

Sudetenland crisis, when Party activists resumed their anti-Jewish operations. As

in the summer riots, these activists were still determined to intensify the pressure

to emigrate still further. The tension that had built up during September in the

face of the expectation of the immediately impending military conflict was now

discharged in direct acts of violence by Party activists against Jewish property and

Jewish life, which put the activities of the summer in the shade.

This connection between a foreign-policy crisis and increased outbreaks of

anti-Semitic hatred was established, for example, in a report by the SD for the

month of October,
52
according to which ‘the increasing anti-Jewish attitude of the population, which was chiefly caused by the provocative and impertinent behaviour of individual Jews during the period of the foreign policy crisis’, found ‘its

most powerful expression in actions against the Jewish population, which in the

south and south-west of the Reich partly assumed the character of a pogrom’.

According to an SD report that would not be dispatched because of the events

of 9 November, the operations in late September/October were at first largely

concentrated upon the area of the SD regional headquarters South, South-West,

West, and Danube, before moving in isolated instances to Danzig and central

Germany. The focus of the riots lay without question in Middle Franconia.
53

In many places synagogues were damaged or destroyed beginning in late

September:

^ in Beveringen and Neuenkirchen (Kreis Wiedenbrück) in September;

^ in Neuwedel (Neumark) on the night of 28/9 Sept. 1938;

^ in Mellrichtstadt (Lower Franconia) on the night of 30 Sept./1 Oct.

1938;
54

108

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

^ in a small village near Euskirchen on the night of 1/2 Oct. 1938;
55

^ in Leutershausen on the night of 16/17 Oct.;

^ in Dortmund-Hörde on 27/8 Oct.;
56

^ in October, in the district of Alzenau (Lower Franconia) two syn-

agogues were damaged by stones;
57

^ at the end of October a tear-gas grenade was thrown into the synagogue

in Ansbach;
58

^ in October the interior of the synagogue in Langen (Hesse) was

destroyed;
59

^ on 1 November an arson attack was carried out on the synagogue in

Konstanz;
60

^ in Zirndorf near Nuremberg a synagogue was destroyed on the night of

4/5 Nov.
61

In many places windows were smashed and Jews violently attacked.
62

The further radicalization of the persecution of the Jews was expressed in the

expulsion of Jewish families, some of long standing, from their homes. Particularly

in the Gaus of Franconia and Württemberg, according to an SD report for the

month of October,
63
‘the Jews of individual towns and villages were forced by the population to leave their homes immediately, taking with them only bare necessities. Most of these actions encouraged by [Party] local branches or district

leaders and carried out by the Party formations [SA and SS] were mostly purely

local in character.’

The anti-Jewish riots in Vienna were also particularly violent. On the night of

5 October, in various districts of Vienna the Jews living there were forced to clear

their homes immediately. It was hoped that this threat, which was later with-

drawn, would unleash a panic-stricken flight of the Jews.
64

Towards the end of October the riots directed against the Jews were concen-

trated particularly in Franconia, where the Gauleiter Julius Streicher, according to

information from the SD, had declared as early as July, with reference to the

‘Jewish question’, ‘that the Anschluss has brought the problem to a stage in which

fundamental decisions can no longer be ignored. The question could now no

longer be addressed by propagandistic means.’
65

At the end of October, SD regional headquarters South reported that a few days

previously all Jews had been registered on file on Streicher’s orders: ‘The political

leaders are expecting a major operation against the Jews within the next few days.’

On 24 October 1938, the deputy Gauleiter, Karl Holz, was said to have declared at a

local Nazi rally in Nuremberg that it would ‘even have been desirable if the exodus

of the Jews had been encouraged a little more quickly in Nuremberg as well’.
66

In response to an enquiry from SD regional headquarters South on 22 October,

asking whether the instigators of individual actions ‘should still be treated

ruthlessly’, the Jewish Department of the SD observed on 3 November ‘that a

Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

109

general ruling cannot be given, as no decision has yet been received from C (¼

Heydrich)’.
67

The Pogrom of 9/10 November 1938: Reichskristallnacht

While the Party activists were, with their violent actions, exerting an even stronger

‘pressure to emigrate’ both on Jews living in Germany and on countries outside

Germany, increasingly alarmed by terrifying reports from Germany, the regime

decided in the course of October to strengthen its Judenpolitik still further.

On the one hand the government considered itself compelled by the inter-

national situation—considerably worsened as a result of its own policies—to

undertake greater efforts to rearm, for which in turn the remaining assets of the

Jews were urgently needed, as Goering made plain at a meeting of the General

Council of the Four-Year Plan on 14 October. Goering declared that he was ‘under

instruction from the Führer to increase armaments to an abnormal degree . . . He

faced unimaginable difficulties. The coffers were empty, manufacturing capacity

was full to the brim with contracts for years ahead . . . He would turn the economy

around, with violent means if necessary, to achieve that goal.’ Above all the ‘Jewish

question’ must now ‘be addressed with all possible means, because they must now

leave the economy’.

‘Aryanization’ was not to be seen, however, as it had been in Austria, ‘as a

welfare system for inadequate Party members . . . It was entirely a matter for the

state. But he could not make foreign currency available for the evacuation of the

Jews. If necessary, ghettos would have to be set up in the individual cities.’
68

A note by the leader of Main Department IV of the Reich Economics Ministry