Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (39 page)

The diaries and memoirs of ghetto inhabi
tants129
show that the decisive factors for survival—access to work, the distribution of living space and of provisions—

were part of a complex network of links, contacts, and privileges in which

corruption often played a significant role. Lack of transparency in the division

of vital resources and the fact that the procedures of the Jewish councils were often

seen as arbitrary, unjust, and self-seeking led in many instances to feelings of

mistrust, even hatred towards the councils on the part of the ghetto populations.
130

There is no doubt that the often tense relationships between councils and popu-

lation made the job of the Germans’ relatively small administrative apparatus

considerably easier.

Initially the Jewish councils attempted to encourage the Germans towards

moderation, with the help of petitions, personal meetings, and offers to negotiate—

even on occasion using gifts and bribery.
131
Given the extraordinary imbalance in the influence of the occupying power and the Jewish councils there was no alternative to

these tactics, but they were bound to remain fruitless in the long run and ultimately

only led to the postponement of repressive measures by the Germans. Because

they could not resist the demands of the German side the Jewish councils gradually

reached the conclusion that it was their task to increase the chances of survival of

at least a part of the population of the ghettos by following German orders and

acquiescing in the wishes of the occupying powers, and in particular by encouraging

the workforce to be as productive as possible. For this reason the councils tended

to discipline the population of the ghettos in their own interests—as they believed.

The Jewish police therefore often proceeded rigorously in order to preserve the

authority of the councils.
132

It would be too simplistic to derive from this account an image of a Jewish elite

that was anxious to conform at all costs. After a detailed examination of the Jewish

170

The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

councils in the General Government and Upper Silesia Aharon Weiss has come to

the conclusion that of the 146 Jewish elders originally nominated by the Germans

57 lost their positions because they were not willing to meet the demands that were

placed upon them by the Germans: 11 resigned their posts, 26 were replaced, 18

were liquidated and 2 committed suicide. In the light of this it was not so much the

individual compliance of those holding these positions that ultimately guaranteed

the successful implementation of the Germans’ policies as a willingness on the

German side to force the institution of the Jewish councils into submission, if

necessary using the most brutal of methods. The relatively frequent changes in the

occupancy of the council posts had as a further consequence the effect of gradually

replacing the members of local elites, who had initially dominated the Jewish

councils, with newcomers and outsiders, who had less intimate connections with

the local population and therefore tended to reinforce the alienation that was

growing between the councils and the population of the ghettos.
133

If the institution of the Jewish councils tended to bow to the demands of the

Germans and was in particular prepared to treat different sectors of the popula-

tion of the ghettos in a differentiated manner—corresponding to their presumed

usefulness to the German occupying power—this was because the Jewish occu-

pants of council posts were guided by the idea that the Germans were pursuing a

rationally comprehensible goal and that their behaviour was ultimately calculable

or predictable. However, the fact that the policies of the occupying power were

based on ideologically racist premises to which all utilitarian perspectives were

subordinated was a phenomenon that must have been wholly incomprehensible

to the Jewish councils. The reality of a thoroughgoing racist occupation was

something without historical precedent.
134

From the perspective of the persecutors the system established in the ghettos

was remarkably efficient. The minimum of effort was needed to facilitate the total

exploitation and the near perfect dominance of the ghetto populations. The

occupiers could always rely on their instructions being carried out by the Jewish

councils, with a different membership if necessary. The ‘management’ of the

ghettos by the Jewish councils guaranteed in almost all cases the resolution of

conflict within the ghettos themselves, without bothering the occupying powers

with any serious need to intervene.

In the years 1940 and 1941 underground action within the ghettos was

restricted to social aid, cultural activities, illegal political meetings, and the

production of pamphlets. There was no real basis for any far-reaching organized

passive resistance, let alone any active measures.
135
Resistance from the ghettos was not a factor that would cause the German side any serious trouble in 1940–1.

On the contrary, the Jewish councils developed a routine of following German

instructions, which became fatally habitual: with the intention of preventing

the worst, the Jewish councils themselves became the instruments of German

anti-Jewish policy.

Deportations

171

It would be completely futile to try to analyse the conditions in the ghettos

without always remembering and bearing in mind at every stage of the analysis

that the ghettos were institutions conceived, realized, and rigorously controlled by

the Germans. The slightest degree of insubordination on the part of the Jewish

councils was met with the most draconian of punishments.
136
The autonomy of these Jewish councils within the ghettos, which was in any case only vestigial, and

the illusions of the inhabitants that derived from the appearance of autonomy,

were important components of the perfidious system of control that the Germans

employed. From the perspective of the historiography of the perpetrators any

judgement of the behaviour of the Jewish councils that does not take into account

the true power relations is entirely pointless.

However, turning the ghettos into productive enterprises and increasing the

deployment of Jews in forced labour projects within the General Government

after spring

137

1941

led to the increased differentiation of the Jewish population

according to their ‘capacity for work’. This distinction was an important precursor

of the concept developed by the SS from autumn 1941: ‘annihilation through

work’.

Deportations Phase III: The Consequences of

the Madagascar Plan

The Madagascar Plan also had a direct effect on ‘Jewish policy’ in the area of the

Reich. In mid-July 1940 the Gauleiter of Berlin, Goebbels, informed leading

officials in the Propaganda Ministry that immediately after the end of the war

he would have the more than 60,000 remaining Jews of Berlin ‘transported to

Poland’ within no longer than eight weeks. Then the ‘other Jew cities (Breslau,

etc.)’ would have their turn. In early September 1940 the official responsible for

‘Jewish affairs’, Hans Hinkel, once more confirmed that it was the authorities’

intention to deport all the Jews of Berlin immediately after the end of the war.
138

And indeed it was in October 1940 that deportations on the largest scale so far

were to take place: the expulsion of the Jewish minorities from Baden and the

Saar-Palatinate, who were deported to southern France following the expulsion of

Jews and other ‘undesirables’ from Alsace and Lorraine, which had been ear-

marked for annexation. By summer 1940 there had been protests in the Gaus of

the Palatinate and Baden when the population that had been evacuated from the

border zones at the outbreak of war began to return and the Jews also wished to

resettle in their former homes; in Breisach and Kehl local Party authorities had on

their own initiative driven the returning Jews into the occupied Alsatian zone,

although they were allowed to return from there a few weeks later after an

intervention from Berlin.
139

172

The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

From July onwards, and in especially large numbers in August and September,

tens of thousands of ‘undesirable persons’ (including almost the entire Jewish

population of some 3,000) had been transported from Alsace and Lorraine into

the unoccupied areas of France.
140
On 28 September Hitler demanded of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel of the Palatinate and Gauleiter Robert Wagner of Baden (who as

heads of the civilian administration were simultaneously responsible for Lorraine

and Alsace) that in ten years they should be able to report these French areas as

‘German, furthermore as purely German’; he said he would not ask ‘what methods

they had applied’.
141

The policy of organized deportations also encompassed the regions within the

area of the Reich over which these two Gauleiters had authority. On 22 and 23

October all the Jews from Baden and the Saar-Palatinate, approximately 7,000

people, were taken in twelve transports to southern France where the French

authorities interned them.
142
It seems that the Gauleiters themselves were responsible for the initiative for these deportations, which were explicitly approved by

Hitler.
143

In parallel to these deportations to southern France preparations were being

made in October 1940 for further transports to the General Government. In this

context statements made by Hitler in early October on the capacity of the General

Government to receive more people are of interest. When Gauleiters Baldur von

Schirach and Erich Koch asked General Governor Frank in the course of an

informal conversation in Hitler’s apartments on 2 October to take 50,000 Jews

from Vienna or a larger number of Poles and Jews from the area of Zichenau (now

part of East Prussia), Frank refused; Hitler’s view, however, was that ‘it is irrele-

vant how large the population in the General Government is’, although he did not

give a firm opinion on further deportations of Jews.
144

Frank could also no longer reckon on ‘relief’ through Jewish emigration: on 25

October 1940 the RSHA placed a ban on Jews leaving the General Government in

order not to impair opportunities for Jews to emigrate from the area of the

Reich.
145
However, in November Frank succeeded in putting a stop to further movements of Jews from the Warthegau by appealing to the preparations that

were already in place for the Eastern military deployment.
146
They were only to be resumed at the beginning of 1941 in the context of the so-called ‘third short-term

plan’.

At the beginning of November, however, Hitler took the concrete decision to

create more space in the annexed Polish territories for more ethnic Germans

coming from Romania and the Soviet Union: before the end of the war he wanted

some ‘150,000 to 160,000 Poles and Jews [amongst others] from the recovered

areas’ to settle in the General Government.
147

On the same day Gauleiters Erich Koch from East Prussia and Albert Forster

from Danzig-West-Prussia began to argue about the quotas for deportations,

with the result that Hitler had to ‘make peace, laughing’ between the two of

Deportations

173

them, as Goebbels’s diaries record. On the same occasion the ‘Führer’ confirmed

that ‘we will shove the Jews out of this area, too, when the time is right’.
148

By the end of the year more than 48,000 former Polish citizens, Jews and

non-Jews, were deported into the General Government from the district of

Zichenau, which was under the authority of the East Prussian Gauleiter, from

Gau Danzig-West-Prussia and from Upper Silesia.
149

Deportations Phase IV: A Successor to

the Madagascar Project

Between November 1940 and January 1941 the German leadership finally aban-

doned the Madagascar Plan having had to accept that a separate peace with

Great Britain was not possible. Within the context of the preparations for

‘Barbarossa’,
150
they began to develop a new project, a ‘Post-Madagascar Plan’.
151

When the Madagascar Project proved to be pie in the sky at the end of 1940 the

deportations into the General Government for which individual Gauleiters had

been pressing ever more firmly were resumed. The head of the Reich Chancellery,

Hans-Heinrich Lammers, informed Schirach in early December that his request

of two months earlier to transport the Jews of Vienna had been approved by

Hitler. A first step towards the transportation of a total of 60,000 people that he

had in mind was the deportation of 5,000 Jews from Vienna into the General

Government in February and March.
152

Further information about what the RSHA envisaged as a ‘solution’ for the

‘Jewish question’ is provided by the elaboration of some ideas that Eichmann

prepared for Himmler on 4 December in order to provide him with figures for a

speech to Gauleiters and Reichsleiters.
153
Eichmann drew a distinction between two phases, first the ‘initial solution to the Jewish question by means of emigration’ and then the future ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, by which he

understood ‘the resettlement of the Jews from the German people’s European

economic area into territories yet to be determined’—which was a clear reference

to the recent abandonment of the Madagascar Plan. In his notes for Himmler

Eichmann wrote that this project would encompass ‘a total of some 5.8 million

Jews’,
154
which is considerably more than the four million that the RSHA reckoned with when preparing the Madagascar Project. Planning had evidently been

extended in the meantime to include German allies and satellites in Eastern

Europe and the Jews in the French colonies.

In the speech that Himmler made on 10 December he identified ‘Jewish

emigration’ from the General Government as a key future task that would ‘create

more space for Poles’. The Reichsführer did not identify a destination for this

emigration.

174

The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

Various indications from January 1941 show that ‘resettlements’ were planned

on a huge scale even during the preparation of the third short-term plan. Influ-

enced by the waves of ethnic German ‘resettlers’ streaming into the area of the

Reich from Romania and the Soviet Union, comprehensive plans were being

drawn up for expelling more Poles and Jews from the incorporated Eastern

territories into the General Government.

At a meeting in the RSHA on 8 January 1941 Heydrich gave the figure of 831,000

to indicate the number of people to be resettled by the end of the year, which

included the 60,000 Viennese Jews. Another 200,000 people were to be expelled

from the General Government in order to be able to establish huge sites for

military exercises.
155
Initially it was proposed to deport 238,000 people in the context of the third short-term plan. But this plan was in fact destined to be

suspended as soon as 15 March after about 25,000 people had been transported

into the General Government: 19,226 people from the Warthegau who were ‘unfit

for work’ (including 2,140 Jews) and 5,000 Jews from Vienna (instead of the 10,000

that had been planned for the first phase).
156
No preparations had been made for the reception and support of these people who were being transported in the

depths of winter, just as had been the case with the Nisko Campaign and with the

transports from Schneidemühl and Stettin).
157

The third short-term plan was, however, not only the first step in the deport-

ation of a million people from the incorporated Eastern territories within the

space of a year; it was evidently connected to a much larger programme of

deportations that affected the whole area under German control.
158
This all-embracing programme of deportations can be reconstructed from two docu-