Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (36 page)

15 January and the end of April.
37
(As part of the second short-term plan, it had still been intended in December 1939 to ‘resettle’ 220,000 Jews and Poles from the

annexed Eastern areas into the General Government in January and February.)
38

However, the start of the second short-term plan was put off on several occasions,

for the last time on 1 April 1940
.39
In this period those responsible were juggling with different figures for the people to be deported,
40
whilst at the beginning of January Eichmann announced an order from Himmler that once more underlined

Deportations

157

the intention of deporting the Jews from the annexed territories into the General

Government.
41
Amongst other things the Head of the Reichskommissar’s Planning Division presented a master plan on 23 January which covered settlement in

the incorporated Eastern areas, according to which in the long term 3.4 million

Poles were to be deported. The plan also worked on the basis that the approxi-

mately 560,000 Jews in this area were also to be deported.
42

On 30 January 1940 Heydrich announced another decision: some 800,000 to 1

million Poles from the incorporated Eastern territories were to be brought into the

area of the Reich as a (provisional) ‘workforce’. Only some 40,000 Jews and Poles

were to be transported to the General Government from annexed Polish territory,

the new ‘Ostgaue’ (to make room for the Baltic Germans to settle), alongside, from

March onwards, 120,000 Poles (to make room for the Volhynian Germans). After

this, as a ‘last mass movement’ it was envisaged that all the Jews from the

integrated Polish areas and 30,000 Gypsies from the Reich would be transported

to the General Government. In addition, Heydrich announced that 1,000 Jews

would be deported at once from the area of the Old Reich, from Stettin. There was

no mention here of further deportations of Jews from the Old Reich.
43

Between 10 February and 15 March it was intended to carry out the deportation

of 40,128 Jews and Poles from western Polish cities into the General Government,

a campaign referred to as an ‘intermediate plan’ (the second short-term plan had

still not been initiated at that point).
44

As Heydrich had announced, on 12 and 13 February in addition more than 1,100

Jews were deported from the region of Stettin—almost the whole of the Jewish

community of that city—into the area around Lublin. At the same time the RSHA

instructed the Gestapo offices to ‘concentrate’ the German Jews forcibly in certain

places across the whole of the Reich, the better to be able to deport them when

the time came. This took place before the end of that month in the district of

Schneidemühl (in Pomerania), when 544 people—all Jews from that district—

were ‘collected’ in the district capital of Schneidemühl.
45
On 12 March some 160

people were taken from there to Glownew near Poznan.
46
Himmler justified the first deportations from the area of the Old Reich to the Gauleiters on 29 February

with the necessity of creating additional space for the Baltic German settlers; he

added that they should not ‘raise any false hopes’ about further deportations from

their Gaus.
47
The background to this remark was the fact that on 19 February Goering had put a stop to the deportations from the pre-war area of the Reich into

the General Government in order not to endanger the movements of people from

the incorporated Polish areas.
48
As a result the measures needed to achieve the further ‘concentration’ of Jews in certain cities were halted by the RSHA.
49

The deportations from Stettin and Schneidemühl, and the accommodation

of the deportees in ghettos in the Lublin district took place under miserable and

sub-human conditions such that in the first six months some 30 per cent of those

transported had died.
50

158

The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

In his speech to the Gauleiters on 29 February Himmler explained that in the

course of the coming year (‘provided that the war lasts the whole year’) he intended

to turn his attention to ‘the emigration of the Jews . . . in so far as this is possible, given the numbers’ and in so far as the conditions in the General Government

permitted it. ‘As far as the 400,000 Jews and half-Jews in the area of the Old Reich or

the “Ostmark” and the Sudetengau are concerned’, he said, ‘despite the war, the

emigration of the Jews will continue as normal. We still want to emigrate [sic]

6,000–7,000 Jews a month, to Palestine, South America and North America.’

Alongside emigration for a maximum possible 80,000 Jews annually, the deport-

ations into the General Government were to start according to the following list of

priorities: ‘First I have to try to get the Jews out of the eastern provinces, Posen and

West Prussia, eastern Upper Silesia and South-East Prussia. Then follows the Old

Reich, then the Protectorate. The Gypsies are a separate question.’
51

However, far-reaching deportation planning met with resistance from Frank.

At a leadership meeting on 12 February in Karinhall under the chairmanship of

Goering (in his capacity as the most senior figure responsible for dealing with the

Jewish question) he had spoken against the ‘continuation of resettlement practice

so far’ and gained Goering and Himmler’s agreement to discuss the mechanisms

of evacuation with him in more detail.
52

On 19 February 1940 Goering made it clear in a letter to Heydrich that ‘Jews

living in the area of the Reich, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and

Moravia . . . —with the exception of special cases—could not be evacuated into

the General Government’. In contrast, however, those Jews living in the annexed

Polish areas should be ‘refused permission to emigrate since they will be trans-

ported into the General Government as soon as possible’. ‘At this time’, he went

on, ‘a normal evacuation of the 500,000 Jews living in these areas to the overseas

countries for which Jewish immigration is possible does not seem feasible.’
53
In the meantime the RSHA had come to the conclusion that an alternative plan—to

deport the Jews from the Reich to the Soviet Union—was impossible since it was

rejected by the Soviet authorities as most recent research has shown.

After his discussion with Himmler and Goering on 12 February and a further

conversation with Hitler on 29 February, Frank agreed that ‘at least another

400,000 to 600,000 Jews could come into the country’ (the General Government),

which he announced at a meeting on 2 March. Two days later he informed the

District and City chiefs of Lublin that the area east of the Vistula was still ‘intended

to be a kind of Jewish reservation’. It was true that they had abandoned the idea of

being gradually able to ‘transport 7½ million Poles into the Generalgouvernement’,

but they were still planning ‘to remove from the Reich some 100,000–120,000

Poles, some 30,000 Gypsies and a number of Jews to be established at our

discretion’. For the ‘ultimate goal’ was to make the German Reich ‘free of Jews’.

Frank noted as a positive sign the fact that future transports now depended on his

explicit agreement.
54

Deportations

159

On 8 March the German authorities took the decision to postpone the forma-

tion of a ghetto in Warsaw, not least because they were assuming that the district

of Lublin would be designated the ‘reservation’ for the Jewish population of the

General Government and those Jews deported from the Reich.
55

On 24 March Goering actually banned all deportations into the General

Government until further notice unless they were explicitly authorized by him

and by Frank.
56
This effectively put an end to deportations but was in all likelihood only a temporary measure in the face of the pressures on the transport

systems caused by the troop movements in the west, since the authorities in the

General Government were expecting the transports to recommence after a few

months.
57
With the cessation of the deportations, however, the project of a special

‘Jewish reservation’ in Lublin was definitively dropped, while in Warsaw prepar-

ations for the construction of a ghetto were immediately resumed.
58

Between the failure of the Nisko plan in October 1939 and the provisional end of

deportations in March 1940, a total of about 128,000 people had been deported

from the Warthegau into the General Government under the aegis of the first

short-term plan and the intermediate plan, and this figure includes a few tens of

thousands of Jews. As we have seen, the extent and modalities of these ‘resettle-

ments’ were affected above all by the ethnic German ‘returning settlers’. Both the

comprehensive plans for resettlement on the German side (in other words above

all the intention to drive millions of Poles into the General Government) and the

aim of making first the annexed Eastern regions and then the area of the Old

Reich ‘free of Jews’ had to be postponed for the foreseeable future.

The second short-term plan was to be realized, however, albeit in a modified

version. Between 1 April 1940 and 20 January 1941 130,000 Poles and 3,500 Jews from

the Warthegau were to be transported into the General Government. The second

short-term plan was also the framework for the resettlement of 30,275 ethnic

Germans from the areas around Chelm (German Cholm) and Lublin into the

Warthegau between 2 September and 14 December 1940 (the so-called ‘Cholm

campaign’) and for the compensatory deportation of 28,365 Poles from that region.
59

After the deportations into the General Government had more or less stopped, the

Oberpräsident and Gauleiter of Silesia, Josef Wagner, was forced to alter his plans after having announced in February that 100,000 to 120,000 Poles and 100,000 Jews would

be removed from the annexed area of eastern Upper Silesia into the General Govern-

ment. The provincial authorities were now concerned with deporting the Jews from

the western part of eastern Upper Silesia (the areas that had been part of the Reich

until 1921/2 and were urgently to be ‘Germanized’) into the eastern part of eastern

Upper Silesia (a purely Polish area). By the end of June whole districts (Landkreise) of

the western areas were ‘free of Jews’; about half the whole Jewish population of Upper

Silesia was now living in the three cities of the eastern part of Upper Silesia.
60

Just as in the other annexed Polish areas, this ‘resettling’ of Jews was a

component of much more comprehensive resettlement plans. There was therefore

160

The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

probably in addition an unknown number of Jews amongst the more than 81,000

inhabitants of the province that had to make room for 38,000 ethnic Germans

between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1942.

Anti-Jewish Measures in the First Months

of the Occupation

We have seen how, during the first phase of the German occupation of Poland,

not only the Einsatzgruppen but also the military administration came to prom-

inence through anti-Semitic measures (the latter albeit only briefly).
61
In the first months of the General Government the ruling authorities set about intensifying

and extending these anti-Jewish measures. The core of ‘Jewish policy’ as exercised

in 1939–40 was definition, labelling, forced labour, expropriation, restriction of

the freedom of domicile, and the establishment of Jewish-run administrative

bodies.

On 23 November 1939 the General Government authorities instituted the

compulsory labelling of Jews over 10 years old with a blue Star of David on a

white armband.
62
A regulation dated 24 July 1940 established a definition of Jews in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws after Frank had disregarded more far-reaching suggestions.
63
Compulsory labour for all Jews between 14 and 60 had already been introduced in the General Government in October 1939: first labour

gangs and then work camps were instituted under the supervision of the SS

responsible for putting compulsory labour into practice.
64
In November 1939

Jewish bank accounts were suspended and Jewish businesses were labelled; at

the beginning of 1940 instructions were issued for the registration of Jewish

capital. The Jews in the General Government were not in fact to be excluded

from economic life in general via these regulations but over a longer period

they were to be driven out by means of confiscation, ‘Aryanization’, or the

enforced closure of Jewish businesses, amongst other measures.
65
A regulation of 11 November 1939 limited the rights of Jews to live where they pleased: leaving

their place of residence required formal permission; a curfew was imposed.
66

From the beginning of 1940 bans were issued on Jews using public transport.
67

In accordance with the order given in Heydrich’s express letter of 21 Sep-

tember 1939 to ‘increase the concentration’ of Jews in large cities, in many

places special Jewish quarters were designated. Closed ghettos were only