Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (37 page)

introduced gradually, however, and on the basis of local initiatives.
68
Preparations for the first large ghetto began in December 1939 in Lodz, but it was only

actually established by an order of 8 February 1940
.69
In the rest of the Warthegau further ghettos were set up in the first six months of 1940, Brzeziny

in April, Kutno in June, for example. In the district of Zichenau, the annexed

area that bordered directly onto East Prussia, the first ghetto was established at

the beginning of 1940.
70

Deportations

161

The establishment of ghettos in the General Government seems to have

begun in the district of Radom, where the first ghettos appeared at the end of

1939
.71
The first ghetto in Pulawy in the district of Lublin was established in December 1939, and Krasnystaw followed in August 1940
.72
The preparations for a ghetto in Warsaw began in February 1940, but as has already been

described, the plan was put back at the beginning of March and work begun

only in April.
73

The 60,000–80,000 Jews living in Cracow, the capital of the General Govern-

ment in whose deportation Frank was particularly interested, were given permis-

sion in spring 1940 to leave the city ‘voluntarily’ by 15 August 1940; otherwise they

would have to count on being expelled by force.
74
After this deadline those Cracow Jews who could not prove they were in work were gradually expelled; in

this manner all the Cracow Jews except some 15,000 people were driven out by

March 1941; it was only then that a walled ghetto was established for these people

in the Podgorze part of the city.
75

The occupying powers made formal provision for the establishment of Jewish

councils in November 1939, and these were made responsible for implementing

German regulations,
76
whether they applied to handing over money and goods or organizing gangs of forced labourers. The Jewish councils, which were usually set

up by the German authorities, were also responsible in particular for providing

accommodation and nourishment for the Jewish population and they organized

cultural and educational activities within the ghettos.
77
The Jewish councils had their own ‘police force’ with which to assert their authority.

The situation of the Polish Jews was characterized by the systematic under-

provision of goods necessary for survival
78
and the permanent terror to which the German occupiers subjected them: mistreatment, raids, organized shootings by

the gendarmerie, the Gestapo and the SS were commonplace, but so were attacks

by members of the German civilian administration and the army. A regime of

terror was the norm in the forced labour camps and the death rates were high.
79

Anti-Jewish policies were accompanied by parallel campaigns of systematic anti-

Semitic propaganda.
80

German Judenpolitik from Spring 1940 to mid-1941:

Comprehensive Resettlement Plans

The Madagascar Plan

In the early summer of 1940 plans for a ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jewish question’ via

mass deportations were once more making headway within the National Socialist

government. Now, after the victory in the West, the French colony of Madagascar

began to look like a suitable target destination.
81

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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

The idea that it would be possible to ‘export’ large numbers of European

Jews to Madagascar of all places had enjoyed a certain resonance in the anti-

Semitic circles of various European countries since the end of the nineteenth

century. Such ‘Madagascar Projects’ were combined with various other ambi-

tions and were vigorously revived after 1937/8 not only by leading National

Socialist functionaries,
82
but by politicians of other countries, too, and by the speculations of the international press.
83
On the German side these utopian, impracticable notions were to some extent turned into concrete plans in early

summer 1940.

An important stimulus evidently derived from Himmler, who presented a

memorandum to Hitler on 25 May 1940 in which he set out his intention of

‘seeing the concept “Jew” . . . completely extinguished by the possibility of a huge

emigration of all the Jews to Africa or one of the colonies’.
84
Interestingly, in this memorandum the Reichsführer SS had mentioned a radical alternative to his

resettlement plans, namely the ‘Bolshevist method of the physical extermination

of a people’, but for reasons of personal conviction he had rejected this as

‘un-Germanic and impossible’.

After Hitler had approved the basic principle underlying this memoran-

dum,
85
the idea of a ‘colonial’ solution was taken up by the Foreign Ministry, too. On 3 June Franz Rademacher, who had just been named Director of

the new ‘Department of Jewish Affairs’, presented a memorandum to the

Director of the Department for German Affairs, Hans Luther, in which he

asked for ‘a fundamental definition of German war aims in the matter of

the Jewish question by the Reich Foreign Minister’. Rademacher saw three

possibilities:

(a) ‘all Jews out of Europe’;

(b) a ‘separation of Eastern and Western Jews’, the Eastern Jews, who

were considered to be ‘the future Jewish intelligentsia, potent and well

grounded in the Talmud’, would remain ‘in German hands (Lublin?)

as a bargaining counter (Faustpfand)’ in order to ‘paralyse the

American Jews’, whilst the Western Jews would be deported ‘out of

Europe’, possibly to Madagascar;

(c) a ‘Jewish national homeland in Palestine’ (where Rademacher

immediately committed his doubts to paper with the note ‘danger of a

second Rome!’).
86

Within a short time Rademacher was given the task of writing a first draft of a

comprehensive deportation plan,
87
and began his work at a point where the Madagascar Project enjoyed a high level of support among the National Socialist

leadership: Hitler and Ribbentrop explained the plan to Mussolini and Ciano on

17 and 18 June;
88
Hitler mentioned it on 20 June to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Erich Raeder;
89
at the beginning of July Frank informed his colleagues of Deportations

163

the Madagascar Plan;
90
at the beginning of August Hitler mentioned the plan to drive all the Jews out of Europe to the German ambassador in Paris, Otto

Abet
z;91
and in mid-August he spoke of it to Goebbels.
92
Even representatives of the Jewish communities were semi-officially informed about the Madagascar Plan,

including those from the Reich Association, who were told at the end of July 1940,

and the Chair of the Warsaw Jewish Council, Adam Czerniakow, who learned of it

on 1 July.
93

By 24 June Heydrich had already intervened in the Foreign Ministry’s

preparations for the Madagascar Project via a letter to Ribbentrop.
94
The problem of the millions of Jews under German rule (to which Heydrich

assigned the figure 3¼ million) could no longer be solved by emigration:

‘therefore a territorial final solution is necessary’. Heydrich asked ‘to take

part . . . in the discussions that are envisaged on the final solution to the Jewish

question’.

A few days later, on 3 July, Rademacher presented a draft for the Madagascar

project.
95
His deft formula, ‘all Jews out of Europe’, showed unambiguously what kind of territorial solution was being sought at this point. He imagined that France

would ‘place Madagascar at [Germany’s] disposal for the solution of the Jewish

question’, as a mandate: ‘the part of the island that has no military importance

would be placed under the administration of a German police governor who

would report to the office of the Reichsführer SS. The Jews will be able to run their

own administration in this territory . . . ’ Rademacher’s goal was to ensure that the

Jews remained ‘a bargaining counter in German hands to guarantee the future

good behaviour of their racial associates in America’; the Madagascar Project,

then, was to function as a form of ‘hostage taking’, as the ‘Jewish reservation’ in

Poland had been intended to.

Another document by Rademacher, dated 2 July (‘Plan for a Solution to the

Jewish Question
’96
) contains further information about his intentions. ‘From a German perspective, the Madagascar solution means the creation of a huge

ghetto. Only the security police have the necessary experience in this field; they

have the means to prevent a break-out from the island. In addition, they have

experience of carrying out in an appropriate manner such punishment measures

as become necessary as a result of hostile actions against Germany by Jews in

the USA.’

Whilst Rademacher was obtaining expert opinion on the feasibility of his

project,
97
and whilst the Reich Office for Area Planning (Reichsstelle für Raumordnung) was confirming to Goering (who was thereby also involved in

the ‘planning for the final solution’) the existence of sufficient ‘settlement possi-

bilities’ on the island,
98
the Reich Security Head Office was putting together its own version of the Madagascar Plan, which was ready in booklet form by 15

August.
99
It contained the suggestion that a ‘police state’ be set up for the four million Jews who would be on the island at that point under German rule. The

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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

RSHA estimated that a period of four years would be necessary to transport these

people to Madagascar by ship.

In a later note, dated 30 August, Rademacher explicitly supported a sugges-

tion that had in the meantime been made by Victor Brack,
100
who was based in the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP and responsible for overseeing the

‘euthanasia’ programme. Brack proposed ‘using the wartime transport systems

that he had developed for the Führer for the transport of Jews to Madagascar at

a later date’. The mention of Brack and the fact that another key figure

responsible for the ‘euthanasia programme’, the Director of the Chancellery of

the Führer, Philipp Bouhler, was being considered for the role of Governor in

Madagascar, taken together cast the Madagascar Project in a very dark light

indeed. Furthermore, Rademacher’s document shows that the estimate of the

number of Jews that were to be settled on Madagascar had by then reached 6½

million, which suggests that the Jews from the south-east European states

and the northern French colonies were now being included in the plans for

deportation.

Fantastic though the Madagascar Plan now seems, it cannot simply be

dismissed as merely distraction tactics for a Judenpolitik that had reached a

dead-end.
101
It is precisely the lack of feasibility in this plan that points up the cynical, calculating nature of German Judenpolitik: the idea that millions of

European Jews would be deported to Madagascar for years and years, and the

fact that—without even considering the ‘punishment measures’ that Radema-

cher envisaged—a large proportion of the transported Jews would presumably

die there relatively quickly as victims of the hostile living conditions they would

meet, all this makes it perfectly clear that behind this project lay the intention of

bringing about the physical annihilation of the Jews under German rule. How-

ever, this was an intention that appropriate ‘good behaviour’ on the part of

the United States might cause to be revised. From the point of view of the RSHA

the Madagascar Project was a means of perpetuating the plans for a ‘Jewish

reservation’ in the General Government that were at that time unrealizable,

and of extending them to the Jews of Western Europe. When the Madagascar

Plan had to be suspended in the autumn of 1940 because of the failure to make

peace with Great Britain the preparations for Barbarossa immediately opened

up a new perspective for a ‘territorial solution’ of the ‘Jewish question’. For a

period of a few months, then, ‘Madagascar’ stood for ‘anywhere’ that might

permit the execution of a ‘final solution’, or in other words for the option of

initiating a slow and painful end for the Jews of Europe in conditions inimical

to life.

Inspired by the intention to annihilate the Jews under German rule, Hitler was

to keep coming back to the Madagascar Project time and again until 1942, by

which time the idea of ‘anywhere’ had been replaced by that of ‘nowhere’.
102
In the Foreign Ministry the plan was officially shelved in February 1942.
103

Deportations

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Judenpolitik between the Madagascar

Plan and ‘Barbarossa’

The German Regime and the Polish Jews

The progress of the war and the overall plans of the National Socialist regime for

the fate of the Jews under German rule had direct consequences for Judenpolitik in

the General Government.

The halt put to deportations of Jews into the General Government in March

1940 was initially seen as a provisional measure.
104
However, in the summer of 1940, after the victory in France, the aim of establishing a ‘Jewish reservation’ in

Poland was definitively abandoned. On 8 July, Frank informed his colleagues a few