Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (87 page)

Himmler’s order documents the determination on the part of the Germans to

track down small groups of Jews, even in the most remote corner of their

occupied territory and in what was a very critical phase of the war, and murder

them. However, Helm had to report that a few hundred Jews still lived in

Croatia, but they were claimed for urgent work by the Ustasha state, or shielded

against persecution by Ustasha functionaries.
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Thousands of Jews had escaped to the Italian-occupied zone, and most of them were able to escape the German

occupation there even after the collapse of Italy—we will explore this in greater

detail below.
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Many Croatian Jews had also escaped the German occupation zone to join Tito’s Partisans. Overall, however, only around 7,000 of the

originally 30,000–40,000-strong Jewish minority were to survive the Holocaust

in Croatia.
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Intensified Efforts to Deport Jews from Third-Party

States within the German Sphere of Influence in 1943

In 1943 the Foreign Ministry continued its efforts to include in the deportations

the Jews from occupied, allied but also neutral states, who lived outside their

native lands, but within the German sphere of influence. While the Swiss had

agreed early in 1943 to the German proposal that Jews of Swiss citizenship be

requested to return to Switzerland,
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on 22 January the Foreign Ministry also turned to the governments of Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden,

and requested them to fetch their Jewish nationals back from occupied Western

Europe by the end of March.
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The deportation of those 2,400 Turkish Jews who had not been expressly protected by the government in Ankara, for which

reminders had been issued since early 1943 by the Security Police, was postponed

several times by the Foreign Ministry until September 1943, when the Turkish

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

government finally declared itself willing to request these people to return to

Turkey.
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With its decree of 24 February 1943 the Foreign Ministry established that Jews

from a total of fifteen countries as well as stateless Jews were ‘to be included in any

measures generally made against Jews in that sphere or in such measures yet to be

made’. This included Jews from Poland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia,

Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Estonia, Latvia,

Lithuania, and Norway. Jews of Italian, Finnish, Swiss, Spanish, Portuguese,

Danish, and Swedish citizenship were to be ‘given the opportunity to “return”

to their so-called “home-lands” ’ by 31 March 1943, while Jews from other states

were to be left unharmed.
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These deadlines, however, were postponed in varying degrees. Thus the deadline set for the Italians, 31 March 1943, was extended several

times, and the date fixed for Hungary during 1942 (31 December 1942) was also

extended several times.

In July 1943 the RSHA turned to the Foreign Ministry with the request that a

total of ten states ‘be given a definitive final date of 31 July, and thus declare their

agreement that after that deadline the general anti-Jewish measures be also

applied to all foreign Jews remaining within the German sphere of influence,

with the exception of Jews from hostile states and Argentina’.
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After the Foreign Ministry had declared its agreement and informed the states in question,
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on 23

September 1943—after Italy seceded from the Axis alliance—the RSHA instructed

the offices of the Security Police and the Higher SS and Police Commanders to

deport Jews from Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Finland,

Hungary, Romania, and Turkey—divided by sex—to Buchenwald and Ravens-

brück concentration camps.
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The German Policy of Extending the Deportations after

the Allied Landing in North Africa (Late 1942

until Summer 1943)

Even after the turn of the war in winter 1942/3, the RSHA tried to extend

deportations to a series of other countries or regions: Greece, Bulgaria, and the

Italian-occupied zones in Greece, Yugoslavia, and the southern zone of France

(where deportations had occurred temporarily in the summer of 1942). In these

areas the ‘Jewish question’ was plainly to be radically solved early in 1943.

With the ceasefire between Italy and the Allies in September 1943, new

conditions were to be set once again for Judenpolitik within the block under

German rule.

The direct consequence of the geographical extension of the war after the

Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria in October 1942 was that a further

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

391

large Jewish group was exposed to German attack: the Jews of French North

Africa, who had already been included among the victims of the coming

‘Final Solution’ envisaged at the Wannsee Conference.
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With the occupation of Tunisia in November 1942 some 85,000 Jews came under German control.

The German occupiers introduced forced labour for Jews; some 5,000 Jews

were affected by these measures, but most of them managed to escape the

camps set up for this purpose. The German occupying forces had also sent

around twenty arrested Jewish activists to the extermination camps. In add-

ition, there were large-scale confiscations of Jewish property, and large sums

of money were extorted.

In the spring of 1943, the concrete deportation preparations under discussion

reveal that in Fortress Europe the RSHA was clearly planning a radical ‘solution’

of the ‘Jewish question’ in Greece, Bulgaria, and France.

Greece

After all efforts to reach a common approach towards the ‘Jewish question’ with

the Italian occupying forces had collapsed the previous year, towards the end of

1942/beginning of 1943 the Foreign Ministry and the RSHA resolved to act

independently in the German-occupied zone.
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On 7 January Luther informed the ambassador in Athens, Günther

Altenburg, that the Foreign Ministry was interested in the quickest possible

introduction of anti-Jewish measures in Greece.
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At the beginning of February 1943 Alois Brunner of the RSHA’s Jewish desk joined Dieter

Wisliceny (who had been temporarily removed from his post as Jewish

adviser in Pressburg (Bratislava)) at the head of a Sonderkommando sent to

Thessaloniki to prepare the deportation. Already in February, the marking

and ghettoizing of the Jews of Thessaloniki had been introduced together with

further restrictions.

Between mid-March and mid-May 1943, the Jews of Thessaloniki and the

surrounding Macedonian communities were deported, in some sixteen transports,

and two more followed in mid-August. Almost all of these 45,000 people were

murdered in Auschwitz. In August a small transport of a total of 441 Jews went to

the ‘exchange camp’ of Bergen-Belsen: these were either Jews with Spanish

citizenship, high-ranking representatives of the Jewish community of Thessalo-

niki, or collaborators who had assisted the SD.
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When the Germans once again requested an extension of the deportations to the Italian-occupied zone, the

Foreign Ministry in Rome suggested in March that the Italian Jews in Greece be

excluded from the persecutory measures, and the Greek Jews be interned.

But both the Jewish desk of the Foreign Ministry and Eichmann, the individual

within the RSHA responsible for the deportations, considered these suggestions

inadequate.
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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

Bulgaria

Shortly before Brunner and Wisliceny arrived in Greece, in January 1943 Theodor

Dannecker had taken up his role as ‘Jewish adviser’ at the German embassy in

Sofia.
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On 22 February 1943, the Bulgarian Commissar for the Jews and Dannecker had reached an agreement for the deportation of 20,000 Jews by May

1943.
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Those affected were all the Jews from the Bulgarian-occupied zones of Thrace (Greece) and Macedonia (Yugoslavia), as well as around 6,000–8,000 Jews

from Old Bulgaria. In fact, in March 1943, the Jews living in Thrace—over 4,000—

and those living in Macedonia—over 7,000—were arrested by the Bulgarians and

deported to the General Government, where most of them were murdered in

Treblinka.
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However, the preparatory measures for the deportation of the Jews of Old

Bulgaria, for which work had begun in March, had to be interrupted and post-

poned because of massive protests, especially by a group of deputies around the

parliamentary vice president, Dimiter Peshev.
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In April 1943, Tsar Boris stressed to Ribbentrop that only ‘Communist elements’ among the Jews of Old Bulgaria

should be deported. In contrast, the German Foreign Minister insisted on a radical

solution.
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In May 1943 the Jews of Sofia were resettled, amidst high levels of protest in the

capital, to surrounding provincial towns.
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But the Bulgarians were not ready for the next step, expected by the Germans, the deportation of the Jews to Poland.
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France

After the occupation of southern France by German and Italian troops on

11 November 1942, the Jews in this area were also exposed to direct German

action.
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The Vichy government had already agreed to the deportation of foreign and stateless Jews in the summer of 1942, but had interrupted this in September

1942 in the face of strong public protest.
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In January and February 1943, at the instigation of the German Security Police

in Paris, predominantly foreign and stateless Jews, but also those of French

citizenship living in Marseilles (where the old harbour district was completely

destroyed) and in other places across France were arrested and placed in the

camps of Drancy and Compiègne along with the Jews already interned there.
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On 9 February the deportations resumed: by early March four transports had gone

from Drancy collection camp to Auschwitz, and four more to Sobibor.
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On 10 or 11 February 1943 in Paris, Eichmann presented a maximum pro-

gramme for the deportation of all Jews living in France, including French nation-

als. This plainly coincided with the concrete preparations for deportation in

Greece and Bulgaria.

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

393

But the commander of the Security Police in France, Helmut Knochen, resisted

Eichmann’s suggestion in a letter to Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, on

12 February 1943: if ‘large-scale measures were to be taken against all Jews

with French citizenship at this time’ they could ‘expect political setbacks’. In

France an imminent Allied victory was generally expected, and they were trying

to ensure that ‘no further measures be taken against the Jews in order to show the

Americans that they were unwilling to obey the instructions of the German

government’. However, Laval would approve measures against the Jews if he

‘received some political concession for it from Germany towards the French

people’. In a discussion on the same day Laval had declared ‘that the Americans

had already [stated] to France that France would receive all the previous Italian

colonies and would get all the French colonies back and France would receive

more than the Rhine border in Europe. The Germans had made him no promises

for the post-war period. In my view Laval will swallow the Jewish measures if he

receives a political assurance of some form.’
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This statement illustrates clearly the centrality of Judenpolitik for Germany in

the second half of the war. With the deportation of French citizens the Vichy

government had been made an accomplice of the German extermination policy to

a much greater extent than had already occurred with the deportations from the

unoccupied zone in the summer of 1942: but this meant that their prospects of

reaching an agreement with the Western powers must dramatically fade. How-

ever, in view of the military situation, which had changed since the previous

summer, a political price had to be paid to the French.

In this letter Knochen referred to a further significant limitation on the

possibility of intensifying German Jewish policy throughout the whole of France:

as long as the Italian occupying forces opposed the persecution measures of the

Vichy authorities, through their own behaviour they were providing the French

government with arguments against anti-Jewish measures.

Since 1942, the Italian occupation authorities had in fact refused several times to

implement anti-Jewish measures by the Vichy authorities;
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in a large renewed arrest action in the southern zone in which, in mid-February, Jewish men of

foreign citizenship were arrested by the Vichy police and finally 2,000 people were

handed over to the Germans for deportation to Sobibor, the Italian occupying

authorities had compelled the liberation of the Jews arrested by the French

police.
116

Efforts by the Germans to compel the Italians to take a more severe

attitude towards the Jews living in their zone were to remain unsuccessful.

After Ribbentrop addressed this question when talking to Mussolini on a visit