Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (61 page)
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Authors: Peter Longerich
citizens were counter-productive, as they were likely to fan the flames of the
resistance, now hit on the idea of connecting the reprisals with the measures it
had already begun against the Jews: it deliberately extended the reprisals to Jews
and varied the methods used: apart from the shootings, collective fines were to
be imposed on the Jews, and a larger number of Communists and Jews
transported ‘to the East’ for forced labour. Thus, from December onwards,
Jews and Communists were selected en masse for deportations which, after
being initially postponed because of the poor transport situation, were to begin
in March 1942
.90
Two considerations in particular must have had a considerable influence on
this decision by the military administration to direct the reprisals deliberately at
the Jewish part of the population. On the one hand, even the military saw ‘the
Jews’ at the centre of the Resistance, and thus equated Jews with all forms of anti-
German activity, as had occurred on a much larger scale in the East. On the other
hand, the military must have speculated that a reprisal directed against Jews, in
their eyes a foreign body in French society, would be more easily accepted. In
addition, thousands of Jews had already been interned in overcrowded camps, and
it was known that their deportation to the East was in any case envisaged in the
long term. Bringing these deportations forward and declaring them a ‘reprisal’
was, from the perspective of the military administration, merely anticipating the
‘emigration’ of the French Jews, which had been planned in any case.
On the other hand, however, through this linking of reprisals and
deportations the military administration provided the RSHA with an excellent
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Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941
legitimation for the start of the deportations, which could now be described as a
deportation of particularly dangerous elements who had been imprisoned a long
time previously. It thereby joined the many institutions which had, in the
second half of 1941, urged an acceleration of the deportations and thus contrib-
uted to a radicalization of the persecution of the Jews. It also appears remark-
able that, by concentrating reprisals against Jews, the German military in France
was assuming precisely the attitude adopted by the military administration in
Serbia at the same time.
91
If we also take into account the indiscriminate murder of the Jewish population in the occupied Soviet territories in the
autumn of 1941 (word of which spread quickly in Wehrmacht circles, through
personnel transfers etc.), the attitude of the military in Paris does not seem
coincidental.
92
However, in August 1941—at the time of the large-scale anti-Jewish raids in
Paris—the expert on Jewish affairs at the German embassy and its contact
with the SD, Carltheo Zeitschel, had begun to present his ambassador with
increasingly radical suggestions for the ‘solution of the Jewish question’. After
a suggestion that all Jews under German rule be sterilized,
93
on 22 August he requested that Jews from the whole of Europe be deported to the
occupied Eastern lands, as ‘it was anticipated that a special territory was
being created for indigenous Jews’. Zeitschel asked the ambassador, Otto
Abetz, to present this idea to Ribbentrop and ask him to discuss this project
with Rosenberg and Himmler. Zeitschel knew that the latter was ‘at the
moment very receptive about the Jewish problem’, and, ‘given his current
attitude and in the light of his experience of the Eastern campaign, could
provide extraordinarily strong support for the implementation of the idea
that has just been developed’.
94
On 16 September, Abetz met Himmler and the latter agreed, as Zeitschel had
suggested, to the eastward deportation of the Jews interned in occupied France as
soon as the necessary means of transport were available.
95
Zeitschel’s request reached Himmler when the decision to deport the
Central European Jews was immediately imminent. The same day, according
to his diary, Himmler discussed the subjects ‘Jewish question. Resettlement to
the East’ with Ulrich Greifelt, the chief of staff of his agency for the Strength-
ening of the German Nation, and with Konrad Meyer, his Chief of Planning
for Eastern Settlement. Also, on the same day, Abetz met Hitler, who on this
occasion held forth in extravagant and extraordinarily brutal fantasies about
the configuration of his future empire in the East.
96
At the same time, as we have already said, Hitler had been presented with Rosenberg’s suggestion for
the ‘deportation of all the Jews of Central Europe’, which he presumably
discussed with Ribbentrop on 17 September. Also, on 18 September, at Hitler’s
request, Himmler informed Greiser about the imminent deportation of
60,000 Jews to Lodz.
97
Europe-Wide Deportation after Barbarossa
275
Apart from Himmler’s ready undertaking to Abetz to deport the Jews in France
as well, various indications suggest that, in the eyes of the Nazi leadership, the
beginning of the deportation to Lodz actually represented the starting point for
the launch of the long-planned deportation of all Jews within the German sphere
of influence to Eastern Europe.
On 20 October 1941 Himmler made an offer to the Slovakian head of state to
deport the Slovakian Jews to Poland.
98
Heydrich, in turn, explained in a letter to the army Quartermaster General on 6 November 1941, that a series of bombings of
Paris synagogues on the night of 2 to 3 October was carried out by a French anti-
Semitic group with the consent of his Paris office. Permission had only been
granted for this after he had heard ‘from the top as well—expressed in the
strongest terms—that Jewry was identified as the responsible arsonist in Europe,
who must vanish from Europe once and for all’.
99
On 4 October, at a meeting in the Eastern Ministry, Heydrich warned that Jews would continue to be claimed to
be indispensable workers. This, according to Heydrich, ‘would scupper the plan
for a total resettlement of the Jews from our occupied territories’.
100
The Foreign Ministry’s Jewish expert, Franz Rademacher, still assumed in a letter of October
1941 that those Serbian Jews who survived the reprisals of the Wehrmacht ‘would
be deported along the waterways to the reception camps in the East’, as soon as
‘the technical possibility’ for this existed ‘within the context of the total solution of the Jewish question’.
101
A further reference to the planned extension of the deportation programme
is contained in a note from Hitler’s army adjutant, Major Engel, concerning a
meeting in the Führer’s headquarters on 2 November 1941, in which, amongst
others, Hitler, Himmler, and General Jodl took part. According to this note,
Himmler spoke of the ‘displacement of those of other races (Jews)’, in this
context mentioning Riga, Reval (Tallinn), and Minsk as ‘main points’ and
stressed the Jewish population of Thessaloniki as a particular source of danger;
a series of assassinations had in fact occurred in the Thessaloniki area. Hitler
had agreed with him and demanded ‘that the Jewish element be removed from
T’ and went on to issue the special powers Himmler had demanded. In fact,
however, the deportation of the Jews from Thessaloniki would not occur until
1943.
102
Finally, Christopher Browning has drawn attention to reports by a Dutch SS informant, according to which he was already aware early in
December 1941 that the deportation of the German Jews, also to Eastern
Poland, which ‘meant a partial extermination of Jewry’, would occur the
following spring.
103
Overall, this chapter presents us with the following picture: in September and
October 1941 Hitler made the decision that there should be extensive deport-
ations from the German-dominated sphere, particularly from Central and
Western Europe. On the other hand, there are no unambiguous indications
that at this point—beyond general ideas of a physical ‘Final Solution’—there was
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Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941
already a concrete plan in existence for the systematic murder of these people in
the immediate future. The combination of the deportation machinery with the
killing technology already familiar from the ‘euthanasia’ programme to form a
programme of systematic extermination would not occur until the spring of
1942. The construction of gas killing chambers in Chelmno, Belzec, Auschwitz,
and other places did also begin, like the major deportations, in the autumn of
1941, but all of these projects originally had a regional connection.
AUTUMN 1941: THE BEGINNING OF THE
The Preconditions are Created: The End of ‘Euthanasia’
and the Transfer of Gas Killing Technology
to Eastern Europe
The transfer to Eastern Europe of the gas killing technology developed in the
context of the euthanasia programme since 1939 occurred in parallel with the start
of the deportations. The crucial precondition for this was that on 24 August 1941
Hitler ordered the ending of the ‘Euthanasia’ programme.
1
Moreover, this decision was not made abruptly or spontaneously, but was generally expected by the
Nazi leadership.
The suspension of the euthanasia action plainly occurred because the Nazi
regime wished to avoid provoking further agitation among the population by
murdering sick people, but it tellingly occurred at a moment when the original
quota of 70,000 murdered patients had been reached. While in the first months of
the T4 programme, a higher percentage of patients from institutions had been
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Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941
murdered than originally planned, and in the autumn of 1940 the planned figure
had risen from 70,000 victims to between 130,000 and 150,000, in 1941, in the face
of mounting protests and growing agitation about the murders among the popu-
lation, the planned goals of the programme had to be lowered again, to 100,000
patients initially.
2
When the euthanasia action spread to the three provinces of Hanover, the
Rhineland, and Westphalia in the summer of 1941, and church protests increased,
the programme was further restricted until it was finally suspended.
3
The governor of Westphalia, Kolbow, mentioned as early as July 1941 that the
action would end in two to three weeks.
4
On 22 August Goebbels noted, about a discussion with the Westphalian Gauleiter Alfred Meyer, in which they had both
talked about the ‘Church situation’:
5
‘Whether it was right to get involved in the euthanasia question on such a scale as has happened in the past few months must
remain a moot point.’ At this juncture Goebbels assumed that the mass murder of
patients was to cease: ‘At least we can be glad that the action connected with it is
coming to an end. It was necessary.’
However, in the summer of 1941 the T4 organization had initiated a follow-up
programme: the systematic killing of concentration camp prisoners who had been
selected by medical commissions in the camps. As early as the spring of 1941, in
response to a query from Himmler,
6
the T4 organization had begun to deploy medical commissions in four concentration camps. By the autumn they had
selected 2,500 prisoners and handed them over to the ‘euthanasia’ killing centres.
7
Immediately after the end of the T4 action in August 1941, the second, much more
extensive phase of the action, carried out under the abbreviation 14f13, began in
September: by November the medical commissions had selected a total of 11,000–
15,000 people, who were murdered in the killing institutions of the T4 organiza-
tion.
8
In the same period part of the T4 organization was deployed for a ‘special task’—which cannot be more precisely reconstructed—in the occupied Soviet
territories,
9
and it was only after this second part of Action 14f13 was concluded that the T4 staff were used on a larger scale from March 1942 within the context of
the ‘Final Solution’ in Poland.
What is remarkable in our context is the close temporal link between the end of
the first euthanasia action in August in the context of T4 and the decision to
deport the German Jews in September, as well as the concrete preparations for
other mass murders of Jews in other territories under German occupation, or their
start in October 1941. While in view of the fact that the euthanasia programme had
become public knowledge, the regime did not want to hazard any further agitation
among the population and stopped the T4 programme, they would respond to
certain expressions of displeasure prompted by the introduction of the Jewish star
in September 1941 with increased repression and intimidation.
10
The starting point for the deployment in Eastern Europe of the killing technol-
ogy already used in the context of the euthanasia programme must also have
Autumn 1941: Deportation and Mass Murders