Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (81 page)

Security Police in Belgium was given comparatively little room to manoeuvre by

the military administration, and the Belgian administrative apparatus was not so

associated with the anti-Jewish measures. There was also the fact that the Jews

living in Belgium, precisely because of their relatively low level of integration,

mistrusted the measures of the authorities and tried to elude them, and the fact

that in Belgium both the national resistance organization, which had come into

being relatively early, and specifically Jewish resistance groups could provide

greater support than in the Netherlands.
272

After the RSHA’s decision in June 1942 to deport 10,000 Jews from Belgium to

the extermination camps, the initial focus was upon Jews who had become

Extermination on a European Scale, 1942

363

stateless.
273
In July 1942 Jews who were unemployed and who did not have Belgian citizenship were summoned to report to the collection camp of Malines for ‘labour

deployment in the East’. When this did not occur on the desired scale, raids were

carried out.
274

The first transport left Malines on 4 August 1942, heading for Auschwitz. By the

end of October 1942, a total of sixteen further transports had followed, so that the

quota of 10,000 people specified by the RSHA was already reached by 15 September

and the Security Police set themselves a goal of 20,000 deportees by the end of

1942.
275
By the end of 1942, 16,882 Jews had been deported from Belgium, all the foreign or stateless Jews. As in the case of the deportations from France and the

Netherlands, in a series of transports workers were taken off the trains at Kosel in

Silesia.

After the first deportations of 6,000 hostages from France the deportations in

the second half of 1942 were extended to the whole of the occupied Western

territories and set in motion on a large scale. The following overview may further

clarify this development:

After Heydrich’s statement in April 1942 that a deportation of a total of ‘half a

million’ Jews from the Protectorate, Slovakia, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands

was taking place, in June the RSHA had established concrete deportation quotas

until the end of the year for France (100,000), the Netherlands (15,000), and

Belgium (10,000). In July these numbers had been altered, because of difficulties

arising in France, to 40,000 each for France and the Netherlands and 10,000 for

Belgium.

In July the order was issued that in the next four months 25,000 stateless Jews

were to be deported from the Netherlands. In mid-December 38,000 people

overall were to be deported. In Belgium the originally specified quota of 10,000

people had already been filled in September, and towards the end of the year

considerably exceeded with far more than 16,000 victims. At the end of August

Eichmann pursued the intention of deporting a total of 75,000 people from France

by the end of October, and all ‘foreign’ Jews by the end of June 1943. In fact, by the

end of the year 42,000 people had been deported from France.

Efforts to Involve Germany’s Allies in the

Deportation Programme (Summer 1942)

After the deportations from Central and Western Europe to the extermination

camps had begun in July 1942, the RSHA immediately set about involving other

German allies in the murder programme above all in South-Eastern Europe, apart

from Slovakia, which had agreed to the deportation of Jews living in the country.

The Foreign Ministry was heavily involved in this policy.

364

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

As a general rule the Germans initially—as a first step to the involvement of the

allies in the extermination programme—tried to win the consent of the countries

in question to the deportation of their Jewish citizens living in the Reich or in the

occupied territories. The governments of Romania, Croatia, and Slovakia had

already declared their agreement with this process at the end of 1941.
276

A second batch of such requests followed in the summer of 1942. In July, the

Foreign Ministry managed to win the consent of the Bulgarian government to

the deportation of its Jews living in the Reich by responding to a suggestion from

the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Popoff in 1941 that henceforth all Jews with

European citizenship should be treated the same.
277
The deportation of Bulgarian Jews was quickly extended to the occupied Western territories.
278
In August 1942

the Romanian government again expressly declared its agreement with the inclu-

sion of the country’s Jews in the German deportation measures. The Romanian

government had in fact already given such a declaration in November 1941, but in

the meantime it had become concerned about the possible worse treatment of

Romanian Jews in comparison with Hungarian Jews in a similar position. How-

ever, the German Foreign Ministry had been able to allay these concerns.
279

In contrast, in August 1942 the Hungarian government resisted the German

deportation plan. In response, the Germans asked Hungary to withdraw Jews of

Hungarian citizenship from the whole of the German sphere of influence by the

end of the year; this deadline was later extended a number of times.
280

Also, in August 1942, the Foreign Ministry approached the Italian government

with a request either to agree to include the Italian Jews in Germany’s Jewish

persecution measures, or to withdraw this group of people from the occupied

Western territories by the end of the year.
281
In their reply, on 10 October 1942, the Italians made it clear that they had to protect Jews with Italian citizenship in the

Mediterranean area because of their important economic role for reasons of

national interest. Involvement in the German deportation programme in the

occupied Western territories would weaken this position and must therefore be

rejected.
282

The willingness on the part of the allies to consent to the inclusion of their Jews

living in Germany or in the occupied territories in the German deportation

programme was to smooth the way to bringing about a general agreement on

the part of the allies to hand over their Jews. As early as the end of 1941, in the

‘wishes and suggestions’ that he had noted as part of the preparations for the

Wannsee Conference, the desk officer for Jewish affairs in the Foreign Ministry

had stressed to the RSHA that they should ‘express their willingness to the

Romanian, Slovakian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Hungarian governments to evacu-

ate to the East the Jews living in those countries as well.’
283

While the deportation of the Slovakian Jews had already begun in the spring

of 1942, the Germans did not develop any initiatives towards the other four

countries named (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Croatia) during the next six

Extermination on a European Scale, 1942

365

months. On the contrary, a suggestion by the Foreign Ministry’s Jewish desk

officer, Rademacher, in May 1942, concerning the ‘Abtransport’ (transporting

away) of the Croatian Jews received a negative response from the
RSHA284
and in June 1942 the German embassy in Sofia received the instruction to give a

basically positive response to any wishes by the Bulgarians concerning the de-

portation of their Jews, but to point out that this could not occur in the course of

the current year.
285
In July 1942, however, this picture would fundamentally change.

In July 1942 the German police attaché in Zagreb was commissioned by the

RSHA to prepare the ‘resettlement’ of the Croatian Jews to the ‘German Eastern

territories’. At this point over half of the more than 30,000 Jews living in the

country had been interned in camps by the Ustasha regime.
286

The Croatian government formed after the occupation of the country, which

was based on the Fascist Ustasha movement, had already passed its first anti-

Jewish law on 30 April 1941 according to which the approximately 30,000 Jews in

the country were defined on the model of the Nuremberg Laws. A wave of anti-

Jewish legislation followed on the German model: ‘mixed marriages’ were

forbidden, the Jews were to be labelled, their property confiscated. This policy

must be seen in the context of the policy of the Ustasha regime to create a

homogeneous Croatian nation and systematically exclude Serbs (who consti-

tuted 30 per cent of the population), Jews, and Gypsies from citizens’ rights.

This mass murder of the Jews must in turn be seen in the context of the mass

murders of Serbs and Gypsies. A few weeks after the foundation of the Ustasha

state, the displacement of Serbs resident in Croatia to German-occupied Serbia

began, while the Ustasha were already organizing various massacres. After Hitler

had encouraged the new Croatian head of state, Ante Pavelic, in his policy of

‘ethnic corridor cleansing’ on his visit to Berlin,
287
and in a German-Croatian treaty an exchange of 170,000 Slovenians from Serbia had been agreed against the

corresponding number of Serbs from Croatia, a massive wave of displacement and

flight began, in the course of which possibly as many as 200,000 Serbs reached

Croatia. Around 200,000 Serbs were forced to convert to Catholicism. In addition

to this, however, Ustasha units began large-scale massacres of Serbs and interned

Serbs in concentration camps built on the German model, in which a large

number were murdered. Most of the prisoners were interned in the notorious

camp complex at Jasenovac. The number of victims in this camp alone is

estimated as 60,000–80,000; we may assume a total number of far more than

200,000 victims.
288

In parallel with the anti-Serbian policy, the persecution of the 30,000 to 40,000

Jews in Croatia also escalated. From May 1941 onwards more than half of the

Jewish population was interned in such camps; the majority of the Jewish

prisoners lost their lives in these camps. A large number of the Jewish prisoners

were executed immediately after entering the camp; the survivors were exposed to

366

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

constant ‘murder actions’ by the guards or lost their lives because of the terrible

conditions or as the result of epidemics.
289

On 31 July 1942 all Croatian Jews were summoned for registration. In those

parts of Croatia occupied by German troops (there was also an Italian zone of

occupation) further Jews were arrested in addition to the large number already

interned. On 13 August the first deportation train left Zagreb for Auschwitz

containing 1,200 Croatian Jews.
290
Seven railway transports to Auschwitz had already been specified for the month of August;
291
in fact four trains can be shown to have arrived in Auschwitz that month.
292
Thus, in the summer of 1942, 4,927

Jews were deported from Croatia and murdered in Auschwitz almost without

exception.
293

In July 1942, German efforts to extend the deportations were also directed

towards Romania. Romania had taken an active part in the German extermination

policy towards the Jews in the newly conquered Eastern territories. In the newly

conquered territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina an estimated 50,000 people lost

their lives in massacres; the surviving Jewish population of that territory, around

150,000 Jews, had been deported to the area between Dnjestr and Bug, where at

least 65,000 more people perished through hunger, epidemics, and shootings; in

the Ukraine Romanian forces had also taken an active part in the German

extermination policy, particularly in the massacre in Odessa.
294

The approximately 320,000 Jews living in Romania itself had been subject to

constantly tightened anti-Semitic special legislation since 1938. From early 1942

onwards they were registered by a newly created compulsory body, the Centrala

Evreilor din Romania.
295
The deportation of 60,000 Jewish men to Bessarabia in August 1941 as forced labourers had only failed because of a German intervention

that sought at all costs to prevent further mass deportations to German-occupied

Ukraine while the war was going on.
296

In July 1942 the adviser on ‘Jewish questions’ at the German embassy in

Bucharest, Gustav Richter, and the deputy Prime Minister, Mihai Antonescu,

agreed to the deportation of the Romanian Jews authorized by Marshal Anto-

nescu, which was to begin around 10 September 1942. The transports were to go to

the district of Lublin where, as the German plenipotentiary Manfred Killinger

reported to the Foreign Ministry ‘the part that was fit for work will be deployed

in a work programme, and the rest subjected to special treatment’.
297
The immediately imminent deportations were already being publicly announced.
298

However, the fact that this agreement was reached behind the back of the

Foreign Ministry greatly annoyed Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. He demanded

that the director of the German department, Martin Luther, explain his previous

measures in the area of Judenpol
itik299
and, on 25 August, issued a directive that the measures agreed with the Romanians were to be continued, but that no