Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (86 page)

Latvian concentration camps, while around 4,000 people were deported to

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

385

Sobibor or murdered in the mass execution centre at Ponary. After the final

liquidation of the ghetto at the end of September 2,500 Jews were left in labour

camps in Vilna.
58
The Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia was set up on 15 September 1943 in direct connection with the action against the ghettos of

Vilnius and Kaunas. It served as a transit camp for the Jews deported from the

ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas as well as from the Reich, Theresienstadt, Poland,

and Hungary. Some 20,000 people passed through this camp and were distributed

around smaller labour camps.
59

While the examples of Slutsk and Glebokie make it clear that in 1943 the Jewish

population of White Russia continued its resistance against the policy of exter-

mination, conditions in the Baltic were rather different. Here, after the major

ghetto actions in 1941, in which the majority of the Jewish population had already

been murdered, resistance groups formed in various ghettos beginning in early

1942. However, the fact that a long phase of relative calm began, one which was to

last until 1943 during which as a rule no ‘actions’ occurred, in the final analysis

produced a negative effect on resistance activities. The high percentage of Jews

employed ‘productively’ fed the illusion that the Germans were at least leaving

those Jews ‘fit for work’ and their relatives alive.

In Kaunas a Communist and a Zionist underground group combined forces in

the summer of 1943; the underground activities were covered up by the chairman

of the Jewish council, Elkes. The focus of the work of the underground lay in

reinforcing the resistance of the ghetto-dwellers through cultural and educational

activities. Several hundred resistance fighters finally managed to flee the ghetto in

small groups and join the partisans in the forests. No attempt at an uprising in the

ghetto was undertaken.
60

In Vilnius the FPO resistance group founded early in 1942 prepared for an

armed uprising. However, their activities were considerably frustrated by the

chairman of the Jewish council, Jacob Gens, for fear of reprisals against the

ghetto-dwellers. When the ghetto was cleared in several ‘actions’ in August and

September 1943, the FPO did not, as planned, manage to light the initial spark for a

general uprising through armed resistance. The surviving resistance fighters

continued the struggle in the forests.
61
There were also underground movements in the ghettos of the Lithuanian towns of Schaulen and Svencian, but they did not

attempt an uprising.
62

In Lithuania in 1943–4 a total of around 1,150 ghetto-dwellers fled to the forests

as participants in resistance groups and a further 650 did so independently. This

meant that a total of 4.5 per cent of the ghetto population managed to escape

extermination through flight.
63

In the Latvian capital of Riga, an underground organization with several

hundred members formed early in 1942. In October 1942 the attempt to bring a

group of resistance fighters out of the ghetto failed; the secret organization was

eliminated by the occupying forces.
64

386

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

Continuation of the Deportations

German Reich

After Hitler’s decision in September 1942 to replace those Jews still working in

armaments production, the preparations for a sudden (schlagartig) deportation of

this group began in late 1942. In view of the large-scale recruitment of foreign

workers planned for early 1943, the replacement of Jewish skilled workers did not

seem to pose an insuperable problem.
65

The ‘withdrawal of all Jews still engaged in the work process’ began on

27 February 1943. In Berlin alone, the SS Bodyguard units (Leibstandarte) arrested

some 7,000 people in their workplaces or homes; a few days later they were

deported to Auschwitz.
66
At this point there were no plans to deport Jews living in ‘mixed marriages’; they were also arrested, but they were released to go home.

In Berlin, however, hundreds of men from this group were held in two buildings

belonging to the Jewish community, presumably to have staff available to replace

the deported employees. Remarkably, there was a spontaneous public protest by

the families of these men, who stood for days outside the building on Rosen-

strasse. But the fact that the Gestapo finally released the men held in Rosenstrasse

was not the result of this protest; at this point there had been no plans to deport

them in any case.
67

After this surge in deportations (between early January and mid-March 1943 a

total of sixteen transport trains, most of them carrying 1,000 people each, had

gone to Auschwitz
68
), 31,897 people of Jewish origin still lived in the Reich, more than 18,515 of them in Berlin. Of the Jews living in the Reich 17,517 were free of the

obligation to wear the yellow star.
69
From then on the deportations continued only on a smaller scale.
70

The major deportations to Theresienstadt in the summer of 1942 were followed

by numerous smaller transports. From November 1942 until mid-1943 there were

almost 100 of these, each one usually carrying 50 or 100 people. The only special

train to Theresienstadt, involving more than 1,200 people, left Berlin on 17 March

1943.
71

In December 1943 the RSHA ordered the ‘change of residence’ to Theresien-

stadt of certain groups hitherto spared deportation. This was to start at the

beginning of the year and particularly affected were the Jewish spouses of mixed

marriages that no longer existed, and who—because of the existence of children

who were not deemed to be Jewish—had been free of the obligation to wear the

yellow star.
72
In 1943, ten transports had gone from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, each carrying more than 1,000, but in some cases far more than 2,000 people.
73

During the whole of 1944 further smaller deportations left the Reich

for Auschwitz. In particular, during that year further large transports left

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

387

Theresienstadt for Auschwitz: three carrying 2,500 people in May, and a further

eleven in September and October, with between 1,500 and 2,500 people.
74

In January 1945, in one last action, the RSHA planned to deport those Jews still

‘on work deployment’ to Theresienstadt, but also the elderly, the sick, and

children hitherto excluded from the deportations. But because of military devel-

opments this plan could not be carried out across the whole of the Reich.
75

Netherlands

In the Netherlands,
76
from which 38,000 people had been deported by the end of 1942, the deportations resumed in January 1943, after a one-month ‘Christmas

break’. As a rule, one train per week travelled to Auschwitz from the collection

camp of Westerbork. In the middle of January a second camp was opened at

Vught. In March, when the murder of the Jews from Thessaloniki began in

Auschwitz, the Dutch transports went to Sobibor extermination camp, where

almost all deportees were murdered immediately on their arrival. In May, pre-

sumably in connection with the general radicalization of Judenpolitik after the

Warsaw ghetto uprising, the RSHA ordered that the number of those to be

deported from the Netherlands be raised forthwith: between 18 May and 20 July,

almost 18,000 people were deported to Sobibor, including children from the

Vught labour camp, accompanied by their mothers. Of the 34,313 people

who came to Sobibor from the Netherlands by 20 July, only 19 would survive.

After a five-week break the deportations resumed on 24 August at weekly inter-

vals—with interruptions in September/October and between November and

January—primarily to Auschwitz. From September 1944 some transports also

went to Theresienstadt and some to the ‘delivery camp’ (Auslieferungslager) of

Bergen-Belsen. It was only in the spring of 1944 that the pace of the deportations

slowed. However, on 3 September 1944, another 1,019 people were deported to

Auschwitz; the last deportation from the Netherlands, to Bergen-Belsen, was

carried out on 13 September.
77
Overall, 107,000 Jews living in the Netherlands were deported; around 102,000 of those died.

Belgium

From the end of 1942 the RSHA and the German department of the Foreign

Ministry urged that Jews of Belgian citizenship, who had so far been spared,

should now be deported. In December 1942 Luther requested that the Brussels

office of the Foreign Ministry, ‘in association with the military commander,

consider the possibility of extending the measures already taken to all the Jews

in Belgium, and round them up in the collection camps until they could be

transported . . . A thorough cleansing of Belgium of the Jews must occur sooner

388

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

or later at all costs.’ The deportation of Belgian Jews should begin as soon as

possible.
78

The director of the Foreign Ministry office in Brussels, Werner von Bargen,

confirmed in January 1943 that after the deportation of all foreign Jews it was also

planned to ‘get rid of’ some 4,000 Jews with Belgian citizenship ‘at the same time’;

however, because of a shortage of rolling stock no deportations were possible. And

the capacity of the single camp, Mechelen, was not enough to intern all the

country’s Jews there.
79
It was not until 29 June that the Gestapo office in Brussels informed Mechelen camp that because of an order from Himmler, ‘Jews of Belgian

citizenship must now be included in the deportation actions without delay’.
80

On 3 and 4 September large numbers of Belgian Jews were arrested in a raid in

Brussels and Antwerp. On 20 September 1943 the first transport train carrying

only Belgian Jews left the country.
81
In 1943 a total of six deportations occurred, involving almost 6,000 people. In 1944 there were four further transports with

over 2,300 people.
82
All trains went to Auschwitz.

However, these deportations did not go completely smoothly. One of the trains,

the twentieth RSHA transport from Belgium, was the target of a unique rescue

action. On 19 April 1943, the day the ghetto uprising in Warsaw began, three

members of the Belgian resistance stopped the train and freed seventeen prisoners

from a wagon. More than 200 other deportees managed to jump off the train as it

continued on its journey, and found refuge with Belgian citizens.
83

The number of Jews deported from Belgium and murdered is estimated at

around 28,500, which is to say that about 32 per cent of the pre-war Jewish

population had been killed.
84
Around 1,000 of these were Belgian nationals.
85

In spite of this shockingly high death toll, the Jews in Belgium had better

chances of survival than those in the neighbouring Netherlands, where about

102,000, or 73 per cent of the entire Jewish population of around 140,000 people

were murdered. In Belgium as many as 25,000 Jews, or almost 50 per cent of the

Jews resident in Belgium, managed to survive in the underground. There are a

variety of reasons for their superior chances of survival. On the one hand, in

Belgium the SS played a relatively small part in the military administration; the

military was primarily concerned with the security situation, and set in motion the

anti-Jewish measures preceding the deportations at a relatively slow pace.

In Belgium—unlike the Netherlands—the government apparatus was not actively

involved in the persecution of the Jews, and the subordinate administrative

organizations carried out the German instructions relatively carelessly. Not least

for that reason, it proved impossible to construct a system of arrest and deport-

ation in Belgium similar to that in the Netherlands. Instead, attempts were made

to arrest the Jews in raids, a process that prompted panic and encouraged flight

into illegality. One final significant factor in the survival of the Jews was that, by

virtue of the fact that the large majority of them were not integrated into Belgian

society, they had maintained a healthy suspicion of the adminsitrative measures

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389

preceding the deportations. Last of all, the Jews in Belgium benefited from the fact

that there was a stronger national resistance movement than there was in the

Netherlands, and that there were more specifically Jewish resistance organizations

working closely with the general resistance movement.
86

Croatia

The deportations also continued in the zone of Croatia occupied by the Wehr-

macht: in May 1943, some 2,000 people were deported to Auschwitz in two further

transports.
87
If the deportations of August 1943 are included, more than 7,000 Jews were deported from the German-occupied zone of Croatia to Auschwitz.

In the spring of 1944 Himmler ordered Hans Helm, the police attaché in

Belgrade, to ‘sort out the Jewish question in Croatia as quickly as possible’.