Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (28 page)

of the Security Police determined that Jews were to stay in their homes from

midday until 8.00 p.m. on ‘days of national solidarity’.
104
A fundamental 118

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

edict issued by the President of the Reich Labour Exchange introduced a duty of

labour for ‘all unemployed Jews who are fit for work’.
105

On 28 December, after a conversation with Hitler, Goering announced the

authoritative ‘expression of the Führer’s will’ concerning further measures in

Judenpolitik.
106
In accordance with this catalogue, which was less severe than the far more radical plans discussed by Heydrich, Goebbels, and Goering after the

November pogrom, and which was aimed primarily at the restriction of the

mobility of the Jews, a further wave of discriminatory regulations was passed by

the ministerial bureaucracy over the ensuing weeks and months: Jews were

forbidden to use sleeping and dining cars,
107
rent protection for Jews was largely abolished.
108
Extensive restrictions, as decreed by Hitler, were imposed upon stays by Jews in spas and health resorts.
109

In the first months of 1939, these were joined by further anti-Jewish measures

that had not been contained in Hitler’s late-December catalogue. Thus, in

January and February 1939 various measures were introduced to force the

Jews to hand over to state offices jewellery, precious metals, and other valuable

objects.
110
In March 1939 Jews were definitively excluded from military and labour service.
111

If we consider the anti-Jewish measures passed in the first few months after the

November pogrom against the background of the steps discussed in the three

great meetings on 12 November, 6 and 12 December, it becomes apparent that the

five major problem areas discussed there—emigration, ‘Aryanization’, labelling,

ghettoizing, employment—were addressed at different tempos. While the further

intensification of the expulsion of the Jews—which was seen as the decisive

beginning of the solution—depended on the international negotiations under-

taken by Schacht, ‘Aryanization’ was pursued with the greatest vigour, spatial

concentration began relatively slowly, labelling was rejected or shelved, and the

problem of Jewish employment in view of the rapid impoverishment of the Jews

was acknowledged relatively late, but then taken up at an accelerated pace. After

large-scale ‘emigration’ proved to be illusory, compulsory employment and spatial

restriction (with a tendency towards ghettoization) were combined to form an

enforced regime and detention in camps was taken into consideration as the

‘interim solution’ best suited to a war situation.

Through the legal regulations for ‘Aryanization’ instituted after the November

pogrom, the existing authorization procedure became obligatory for the ‘Aryani-

zation’ or liquidation of Jewish property.
112
In December 1938 the procedure was straightened out by the relevant ministries and the staff of the Führer’s Deputy

(StdF), and in February there followed an order from the Führer’s Deputy

regulating the Party’s involvement in the context of the disposal of Jewish property.
113

A vivid picture of the practice of Aryanization after the pogrom is contained in

the special report from the mayor of Berlin on the Entjudung of the retail trade

in the Reich capital, published in January 1939.
114
According to this, after the Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

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pogrom there were 3,700 retailers; of these businesses about two-thirds had been

‘eliminated’, which had brought considerable relief to the retail trade. In the course of the liquidation procedure, goods ‘from Jewish sources’ were on offer from Economic

Group Retail worth a total of 6 million marks, which typically, after examination by

the responsible expert, were assigned an estimated value of only 4.5 million. Where

the takeover of Jewish business was concerned, ‘immediately after the events of the

night of 10 November such a crush began in the various districts that officials, for

example from the Mitte district, were kept busy all day doing nothing but providing

information to applicants and distributing forms. The first request from applicants

normally involved an application for credit for the takeover of a Jewish retail

business . . . For the bulk of applicants, who were entirely uninformed not only

about the financial side, but also about the retail sector, this prompted the second

question, namely where could they be “sure of finding” a good Jewish business. This

too is proof of the fact that elements who have no business experience are interested

in acquiring Jewish businesses.’ The report went on:

For each individual Jewish retail business there were usually at least 3–4 applicants. Among the retinues [i.e. staffs] various factions then formed, declaring themselves in favour of the various applicants, seeking to support them with numerous visits to more or less responsible officials, while accusing one another of friendship towards the Jews. . . . The retinues of a medium-sized department store near Görlitzer railway station appeared several times in

large numbers at my office even supporting an applicant whom I had already rejected . . . To introduce a certain order among the countless applicants, with the consent of the Reich

Economics Ministry, it was agreed between the Party’s Berlin offices and my department to involve the Berlin district leaders heavily in the selection of applicants . . .

At the front of the queue should be old and outstanding Party members who were injured

during the Kampfzeit. Next come Party members who want to make themselves independ-

ent, but who must have business experience, then those who have suffered loss through

demolition work (in the context of the reconstruction of Berlin), and finally long-term

employees of Jewish firms, as long as they are not Judenknechte [‘servants of the Jews’].

In view of the rush of frequently unqualified applicants for Jewish shops, the

mayor observed that the ‘overall impression’ left by ‘Aryanization’ was ‘not

pleasant’. He himself had not thought it possible that ‘the opportunity as a

German to take over Jewish businesses would prompt such an extraordinary

rush of applications’, or ‘that circles of whom it would not have been expected

often asked the person reporting whether he didn’t have “a good Jewish

property available”, could provide information about the whereabouts of Jewish

furniture etc.’.

To the taxes that had already been introduced, which were specially designed

for the economic looting of Jews, further financial burdens were added after the

pogrom. The contribution imposed on the German Jews raised a total of 1,127

billion RM.
115
The Jewish Assets Tax, imposed from December 1938, further 120

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

empowered the authorities to raise taxes for the benefit of the Reich through

‘Aryanization’. According to an order of 8 February 1939 issued by the Reich

Economics Minister the tax was to constitute 70 per cent of the difference

between the official estimated value and the price actually paid.
116
On 10 June 1940, Goering passed an ‘Order concerning the Verification of Entjudung

deals’,
117
which was intended as a compensation tax on all those Aryanization sales undertaken since 30 January 1933 in which the buyer had realized a

‘disproportionate benefit’.

There was also a special emigration tax, which had been levied since the end of

1938 by police stations or Gestapo offices in various places, and which—to some

extent at least—was used for the financing of emigration. One such tax had been

levied by the Gestapo in Hamburg since December 1938,
118
while the Chief of Police in Berlin, according to Heydrich, introduced a ‘special tax on wealthy Jews’,

which by February 1939 had already brought in three million RM, which were paid

to the Reich Economics Ministry.
119

These regulations were made standard for the whole Reich area from March

1939. With a decree of 25 February, issued to all Gestapo headquarters,
120
the Chief of the Security Police determined that ‘a special tax as a single extraordinary

contribution’ should be levied on all Jews upon emigration. The tax was to be

graded according to the assets of the emigrating individuals, and used to promote

the emigration of Jews without assets.
121
By virtue of the fact that the Jews now had to finance their own expulsion, a highly efficient connection between economic

robbery and forced ‘emigration’—on the model created by Eichmann in Vienna—

had been put in place. Altogether the various taxes and levies resulted in the

comprehensive financial theft of Jewish property.

Jewish Forced Labour before the Start of the War

Even before Reichskristallnacht, bureaucratic efforts had got under way to deploy

Jews for forced labour. From the regime’s point of view, the tense situation in the

labour market suggested, on the one hand, that the Jews excluded from economic

life could be used again as a workforce (separated from non-Jewish workers and in

subordinate occupations); on the other hand, the regime certainly also hoped that

through tough working conditions the pressure towards emigration could be

further heightened; an important additional factor for the introduction of forced

labour was also the hope of a reduction in state welfare costs.
122
After the pogrom forced labour, alongside forced expropriation, residence prohibition, and detention in camps, became one of the central elements of the forced regime imposed

upon the Jews.

Concrete plans for the forced labour deployment of Jews had begun in the

summer of 1938. At the meeting held in Goering’s office on 14 October, the

Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

121

proposal had been made to establish ‘Jewish labour columns’;
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the President of the Reich Labour Exchange had issued instructions to the labour offices to report

all Jews registered as unemployed.
124
In Vienna several hundred Jews had been deployed since as early as October in closed columns working apart from other

workers; an extension of this ‘labour deployment’ in Austria—mostly in quarrying

and similar heavy labour—was planned. Entirely in the spirit of the forced labour

that was to come, in October the Reich Labour Exchange had rejected the

suggestion of allowing an autonomous Jewish labour exchange to come into

being.
125

After Goering had stated that he was fundamentally in favour of the establish-

ment of Jewish ‘labour formations’, at the meeting on 16 December Frick an-

nounced that in future all Jews without work and assets were to be deployed in

closed labour columns; those who still lived on their remaining assets, on the other

hand, represented a ‘valuable pawn’ and were not to be subjected to the new

compulsory measures.
126

Through a fundamental order of 20 December by the President of the Reich

Labour Exchange it was finally determined that ‘all unemployed Jews who were fit

for work should be employed at a faster rate’, and that to this end they should be

deployed ‘separately’ in public and private enterprises.
127

The German historian Gruner estimates
128
that in May 1939 between 13,500 and 15,000 Jews were employed in the closed labour deployment, primarily for building work and communal work such as garbage removal, street cleaning, and so on.

In practice, however, it became apparent that the deployment possibilities for

Jewish workers in local government work were limited.
129

Given these limited possibilities, national deployment in the construction of

Autobahns and dams assumed growing importance; in the summer of 1939 more

than 20,000 Jews were deployed in such work.
130

In the face of this tendency to ‘erect camps for forced labour’ (Verlagerung), the

obvious idea was to put Jewish workers in barracks in the event of war. On

28 February 1939, under the chairmanship of the Interior Ministry’s ‘Jewish

expert’, Bernhard Lösener, representatives of the OKW, the Security Police, and

the Order Police, as well as the concentration camp inspectorate, met in the Reich

Ministry of the Interior to discuss the question of the ‘services to be performed by

Jews in the event of war’.
131

The immediate reason for this discussion was the planned exclusion of the Jews

from any form of military service. During the meeting it was agreed in principle

that in the event of war the German Jews aged between 18 and 55 should be

‘recorded’, which would involve the introduction of compulsory registration with

the police.

Lösener stated that the Jews should be employed ‘in columns, separate from the

“German-blooded” workers, primarily in road-building and the supply of the

requisite material (quarry work)’. Since ‘the work-related deployment’ of the Jews

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was to be seen as ‘a substitute for military service’, their ‘employment and

accommodation must also be tackled in a military form’. This was because ‘The

population would doubtless fail to understand if the Jews were able to pursue