Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (63 page)

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Reich. In Auschwitz they were intended for a large number of predominantly

non-Jewish prisoners, and possibly in the district of Galicia to cover the area that

was to become an important link to the future colonial territories further to the

east. The temporal parallels between the start of the deportations and the

preparation and installation of these murder facilities in the autumn of 1941

reflect the planning of the Nazi regime to extend the strategy of judenfrei areas,

already applied in the Soviet Union, to the Polish territories. In certain regions

that were of central importance for the further population displacements planned

as part of the racist ‘New Order’, at least those members of the local Jewish

population who were ‘unfit for work’ were to be exterminated. Parallel efforts by

various parties during these months to develop technologies for the mass killing

of people with gas are clear indications that preparations were generally under

way to carry out mass murders on a large scale in the near future. (In the case of

Auschwitz these preparations did not primarily affect Jewish prisoners, but

Soviet prisoners of war and sick prisoners
.39)
However, the plans for systematic mass murder among the Jewish population had so far affected only certain

regions, and the intention to deport the remaining Jews to the occupied Soviet

territories after the end of the war was also a plan for the ‘Final Solution’, the

physical destruction of the European Jews. However, it was a plan that was to be

realized in the long term and not primarily through actions of direct murder. At

this point, the plans to murder people with gas concerned hundreds of thou-

sands, not millions of people.

The fact that the agents in question had still not received an order by late

summer and autumn 1941 to kill all European Jews with gas as quickly as possible,

but that this plan only took shape over the course of the next few months, clarifies,

amongst other things, the complicated story of the transfer of the murder tech-

nology. From 1940 onwards, in the context of the ‘Euthanasia’ programme, a ‘tried

and tested’ technology and a complex organization for the implementation of

mass murder had been developed, which, from August 1941, was available for

other purposes. Instead of transferring this well-practised and available apparatus

to Eastern Europe in one piece, and deploying it for the systematic murder of the

Jews, only part of the staff of the T4 organization was gradually deployed, or

even—as in the case of Riga—offered in vain, while with the gas vans an essentially

already familiar technology was redeveloped and in Auschwitz completely new

purposes were found for the use of Zyklon B. This was a complicated process in

which the various agents, SSPF Globocnik, Gauleiter Greiser in the Warthegau,

the camp leadership of Auschwitz, as well as the Security and Criminal Police were

all clearly working independently and in a largely uncoordinated fashion. All

of this shows that in the autumn of 1941 no overall plan for the murder of

the European Jews had been set in motion step by step, but that subordinate

organizations—albeit within the context of a centrally controlled policy—were

largely developing their own initiatives.

284

Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941

At the start of this part we closely examined Eichmann’s statements about the

journeys he made between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1942 to the

extermination sites. Even if we have reached the conclusion that these statements

cannot be a key source for the dating of the ‘Führer’s decision’ to implement the

‘Final Solution’, it does seem remarkable that at this crucial time Eichmann, who

was responsible for the deportations, visited the places in which extermination

camps were built: Belzec, Chelmno, Treblinka, and Minsk. For Lemberg (Lvov),

which he also visited, there is also, as we have already described, an indication of

the planned construction of an extermination camp. Three of these extermination

camps—Belzec, Chelmno, and Minsk—were directly linked with the deportations

from the German Reich.
40
Presumably Eichmann’s journeys were part of the efforts of the RSHA to coordinate the various initiatives for the implementation

of the mass murder programmes in the various regions with the plans of head

office.

Administrative Preparations for the Deportations

The RSHA deportation programme for the Jews of the German Reich and the

continuing plans for the deportation of Jews from the whole area under German

control were safeguarded from late summer 1941 by a series of administrative

measures.

One major precondition for the implementation of the deportations was the

visible identification of Jews. But the introduction of the yellow ‘Jewish star’ on 19

September 1941, which German Jews had to wear visibly on pain of punishment,

was primarily motivated by the wish more easily to exclude the Jews from certain

locations, from the purchase of certain goods, and from the acceptance of certain

services.
41
This form of identification had already been carried out for a long time by various offices within the Third Reich.
42
In August 1941 Goebbels took up this project, which was also pursued at the same time by other senior Nazis,
43
with renewed vigour. By marking out the Jews as an ‘internal enemy’ he hoped to lend

additional weight to a propaganda campaign designed to inculcate in the popu-

lation an understanding that Germany was in a global conflict with ‘the Jews’.
44

After agreement had been reached concerning the identification of the Jews at an

inter-ministerial meeting in the Propaganda Ministry on 15 August,
45
on 17 August Hitler granted Goebbels permission for this identification,
46
which was ordered on 5 September by police decree.
47

The decree of 3 October 1941 concerning the employment of Jews
48
as well as the Implementation Order of the Reich Minister of Labour on 31 October
49

followed the trend of withdrawing almost all kinds of employment protection

from those Jews still in work. On 23 October, at a meeting with Eichmann and

Lösener, representatives of the Economy and Armament Office of the OKW won

Autumn 1941: Deportation and Mass Murders

285

the agreement that the Jews still in ‘closed work deployment’ would not be

deported for the time being.
50

Early in November 1941 the Reich Finance Ministry passed regulations about

the removal of the property of ‘Jews who are due for deportation to a town in the

Eastern territories within the next few months’.
51
The relatively complicated procedure for property removal set out in this decree was considerably simplified

by the Eleventh Implementation Decree of the Reich Citizenship Law passed on

25 November:
52
a Jew ‘whose normal residence is abroad’ (that is, ‘who resides there under circumstances which show that he is not only temporary staying

there’) would lose German citizenship. His property ‘falls to the Reich with the

loss of his citizenship’. According to a supplementary ruling by the Reich

Ministry of the Interior in December, ‘abroad’ referred to all occupied territories,

particularly the General Government and the Reichskommissariats of Ostland

and Ukraine.
53

On 18 October Himmler discussed the planned emigration ban in a telephone

conversation with Heydrich.
54
Finally, on 23 October a decree from the RSHA in Himmler’s name generally prohibited the emigration of Jews from the German

sphere of influence; exceptions from this general prohibition were, however,

allowed.
55

While these administrative measures affected the Jews in the Reich, the ban

on the emigration of Jews issued in October 1941 already affected all Jews within

the German sphere of influence.
56
Two memoranda from the head of the German department in the Foreign Ministry, Martin Luther, mark the period

in which a basic decision against further emigration must have been made. On

13 October Luther noted that the suggestion of deporting Spanish Jews residing

in France to Spanish Morocco was ‘a suitable contribution to the solution of the

Jewish question in France’. Four days later, however, on 17 October, Luther

maintained that the RSHA had opposed this deportation ‘because of the meas-

ures to be taken after the end of the war for the fundamental solution of the

Jewish question’.
57
The decision to ban emigration was thus made at precisely the same time as the deportation of the Jews from the Reich began. It was a

crucial precondition for the existing plan of the total deportation of all

Jews under German rule to the occupied Eastern territories after the end of

the war.

Immediately after the emigration ban the Germans began to put in place

the necessary preconditions to involve the allied nationals living in the Reich in

the deportations: in November the Foreign Ministry officially asked the govern-

ments of Slovakia, Croatia, and Romania whether they had any objections to the

deportation of their Jewish nationals living in Germany. The governments of all

three countries replied positively; but the Slovakian government agreed only after

lengthy hesitation, and made it an express condition that its claims to the property

of its deported nationals were entirely secured.
58

286

Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941

The First and Second Waves of Deportation from the

‘Greater German Reich’

In fact the deportations from the Reich began in mid-October.
59
In a first wave, between 15 October and 9 November, some 25,000 people were taken to Lodz in

twenty-five transports, 10,000 Jews from the Old Reich, 5,000 each from the

Protectorate and Vienna and 5,000 Gypsies from the Burgenland. Between

8 November and 6 February a total of thirty-four transports went to Riga,
60

Kovno (Kaunas),
61
and Minsk.
62
Originally this wave of deportations was supposed to have ended by the beginning of December, and to have involved 50,000 people.
63

The deportations to Minsk had to be interrupted at the end of November because

of transport problems; by this time some 8,000 people had been deported to the

ghetto there. The deportations to Riga and Kovno (Kaunas) were suspended in

early February, when the planned figure of 25,000 people had almost been reached.

However, as early as November 1941, the RSHA assumed that the deportations

which could not be completed, as originally planned, in the course of that year

would be continued the following spring with a third wave of deportations. This

appears in a note from Goebbels concerning a discussion with Heydrich on 17

November:
64
‘Heydrich tells me about his intentions regarding the deportation of the Jews from the Reich . . . In the third instalment, which becomes due at the

beginning of next year, it should follow the procedure that I have suggested,

clearing city by city, so that when the evacuation begins in one city it is also

brought to an end as quickly as possible and the disturbance of public opinion

caused by it does not have too long and damaging an effect. Heydrich is also acting

very consistently with regard to this issue.’ In his entry for 22 November 1941

Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler had agreed to ‘city-by-city’ deportation.

The deportations were organized by Eichmann’s ‘special department’ in the

RSHA, which was now responsible for ‘Jewish matters and Evacuation Affairs’; by

the spring of 1941 it already had a staff of 107
.65

Responsibility for the implementation of the deportations lay with the regional

Gestapo offices, or with the Central Offices for Jewish Emigration in Austria and

in the Protectorate, which were controlled by the Gestapo. In larger cities the

Gestapo themselves organized the deportations, while in smaller towns and in the

countryside, where the Gestapo did not have offices of its own, it was the duty

of the local authorities, mayors, and district administrators, to implement the

deportations. Generally speaking, the administrative apparatus of the Jewish

communities was used to assemble the deportation lists and information about

the victims.
66

The deportations required considerable bureaucratic effort, and many offices

were involved.
67
Arrangements had to be made with the Reich railways concerning Autumn 1941: Deportation and Mass Murders

287

the provision of special trains, the fixing of timetables, and the calculation of travel

costs.
68
The deportation trains, most of which consisted of goods wagons, at first generally carried 1,000 people; later, attempts were made to increase the number of

passengers. In accordance with an agreement reached in September, the uniformed

Order Police were assigned to guard the trains.
69

Special efforts were made to seize any remaining property from the victims of

the deportations; this called for close collaboration with the financial authorities.

The people selected for deportation had to make a complete declaration of their