The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (115 page)

27. Andreas Hillgruber,
Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes
vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1967–70), pp. 573–74.

28. This measure was most probably taken to allow for a maximum of emigration possibilities for Jews from the Reich and the Protectorate. As for the reference to the forthcoming final solution, it was, at this stage, a vague and widely used formula referring to any range of possibilities. For the text of the RSHA’s decree, see Kurt Pätzold, ed.,
Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942
(Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 289.

29. Nuremberg doc. 1028-PS, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal,
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
, vol. 3 (Washington, DC, 1946), p. 690.

30. Himmler,
Der Dienstkalender
, p. 161 n. 23.

31. For the preparation of the economic exploitation of the eastern territories, see mainly Rolf-Dieter Müller, “From Economic Alliance to a War of Colonial Exploitation,” in
Germany and the Second World War
, ed. Horst Boog et al. (Oxford, 1998), pp. 118ff and in particular 136ff.

32. About these plans see mainly Christian Gerlach,
Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg
(Hamburg, 1998), pp. 10ff. and 14ff. For an English summary of Gerlach’s argument see Christian Gerlach, “German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia 1941/43,” in
National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies
, ed. Ulrich Herbert,
Studies on War and Genocide
, vol. 2 (New York, 2000), pp. 210ff.

33. See Wulff Breback, “Wewelsburg,” in Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, eds.,
Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus
(Stuttgart, 1997), p. 806.

34. Himmler,
Der Dienstkalender
, p. 172; Richard Breitman,
Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew
(New York, 1998), p. 40. There is no necessary connection between Himmler’s musings that seem to imply long-term plans (also related to the Reichsführer’s colonization projects) and the “hunger plans” discussed at the OKW, whose aim was the immediate easing of the food supply for the
Ostheer
.

35. Hans Frank,
Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945
, ed. Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), pp. 326ff.

36. Ibid., pp. 335ff.

37. Gerhard Botz,
Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1938 bis 1945: Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik
(Vienna, 1975), p. 108.

38. Kurt Pätzold, ed.,
Verfolgung
, p. 279.

39. Stadtarchiv München, ed.,
“…verzogen, unbekannt wohin”: Die erste Deportation von Münchner Juden im November 1941
(Zurich: 2000), p. 17.

40. Victor Klemperer,
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41
(New York, 1998), vol. 1, p. 374.

41. Wolf Gruner,
Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933–1945: Eine Chronologie der Behördenmassnahmen in der Reichshauptstadt
(Berlin, 1996), p. 77.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., p. 78.

45. Peter Longerich, ed.,
Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten
, part 4, vol. 2 (Murich, 1992), abs. no. 41008.

46. For the documents regarding this issue, see John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds.,
The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes
, vol. 2 (New York, 1982), pp. 249ff.

47.
Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents
, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, vol. 20 (New York, 1993), pp. 32–33.

48. Longerich,
Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP,
part 4, vol. 2, abs. no. 40601.

49. Ibid., part 1, vol. 1, abs. no. 14865.

50. Ibid.

51. Nuremberg doc. NG 2297, in Mendelsohn and Detwiler, eds.,
The Holocaust
, vol. 2:
Legalizing the Holocaust: The Later Phase, 1939–1943
(New York, 1982), pp. 135ff.

52.
DGFP: Series D
, vol. 12 (Washington, DC, 1962), p. 204.

53. Longerich,
Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP
, Part 4, vol. 2, abs. no. 41006.

54. Ibid., abs. no. 41282.

55. Hertha Feiner,
Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters, January 1939–December 1942
, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, 1999), pp. 79–80.

56. Ibid., p. 85.

57. Ibid., p. 87.

58. Dawid Rubinowicz,
The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz
(Edmonds, WA, 1982), p. 11.

59. Ibid., p. 12.

60. Ibid.

61. Christopher R. Browning,
The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution
(Cambridge, 1992), pp. 35ff.

62. Ibid., pp. 44–46.

63. Donald L. Niewyk, ed.,
Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), p. 174.

64. Ibid., p. 175.

65. Dawid Sierakowiak,
The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak
(New York, 1996), p. 89.

66. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed.,
The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944
(New Haven, 1984), p. 6.

67. For the establishment of the archives and the work of the chroniclers see Dobroszycki, introduction, pp. ixff.

68. See indications in Frank,
Diensttagebuch
, pp. 340 and 340 n. 12.

69. Hilberg and Staron, “Introduction,” Adam Czerniaków,
The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków
, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), p. 48.

70. Ibid., pp. 48ff.

71. Quoted in Wladislaw Bartoszewski, “The Martyrdom and Struggle of the Jews in Warsaw Under German Occupation 1939–1943,” in
The Jews in Warsaw. A History
, ed. Wladislaw T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1991), p. 314.

72. Quoted in Joanna Michlic-Coren, “Battling Against the Odds: Culture, Education and the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–1942,”
East European Jewish Affairs
27, no. 2 (1997), p. 80.

73. For the JDC’s financial support to Polish Jewry and its institutions during the period 1939–1941 see mainly Yehuda Bauer,
American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945
(Detroit, 1981), pp. 67ff and particularly p. 73.

74. Yosef Kermish, “The Judenrat in Warsaw,” in
Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945
, ed. Israel Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 78–80.

75. Lucy S. Dawidowicz,
The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945
(Toronto, 1986), pp. 328ff.

76. Emanuel Ringelblum,
Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum
, ed. Jacob Sloah (New York, 1974), p. 121.

77. Chaim Aron Kaplan,
Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan
, ed. Abraham Isaac Katsh (New York, 1965), p. 245. There are many detailed descriptions of the inventiveness of the smugglers and the crucial function of these operations. See for example Yitzhak Zuckerman,
A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
, ed. Barbara Harshav (Berkeley, 1993), p. 129.

78. Yisrael Gutman,
The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt
(Bloomington, 1982), p. 68.

79. Ibid., p. 71.

80. Ibid.

81. Jacob Celemenski’s text is excerpted from his memoirs (in Yiddish) and quoted in Moshe Fass, “Theatrical Activities in the Polish Ghettos during the Years 1939–1942,” in
Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs
, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb (Baltimore, 1999), pp. 100–101. The pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman performed in such a cabaret. See Wladyslaw Szpilman,
The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939–1945
(New York, 1999), pp. 83ff.

82. Hersch Wasser, “Daily Entries of Hersch Wasser,” in
Yad Vashem Studies
, ed. Joseph Kermish (1983), vol. 15, p. 239.

83. These testimonies are quoted in Michlic-Coren, “Battling Against the Odds,” pp. 79–80.

84. Ibid., p. 80.

85. Ibid., p. 91.

86. Ibid.

87. Joanna Michlic-Coren, “Battling Against the Odds: Culture, Education and the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–1942.”
East European Jewish Affairs
, vol. 27, no. 2, 1997, p. 91.

88. Marcel Reich-Ranicki,
The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki
(London, 2001), p. 153.

89. Ibid., p. 157.

90. Ibid., p. 141.

91. Ibid., p. 159.

92. Dobroszycki,
The Chronicle
, pp 25ff and 35.

93. Sierakowiak,
Diary
, p. 88.

94. Ibid., p. 89.

95. Ibid., p. 90.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid., p. 91.

98. Yisrael Gutman, “Zionist Youth,” in
Zionist Youth Movements during the Shoah
, ed. Asher Cohen and Yehoyakim Cochavi,
Studies on the Shoah
4 (New York, 1995), pp. 13–14; Aharon Weiss, “Zionist Youth Movements in Poland during the German Occupation,” in
Zionist Youth Movements during the Shoah
, ed. Asher Cohen and Yehoyakim Cochavi,
Studies on the Shoah
4 (New York, 1995), p. 243.

99. Dina Porat, “Zionist Pioneering Youth Movements in Poland and Their Attitude to Erets Israel during the Holocaust,”
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry
9 (1996), pp. 195ff.

100. The deep sense of betrayal and the bitterness of the survivors were papered over at the end of the war but reappeared as time went by and found widespread expression in interviews, memoirs, and in new historical research, mainly from the 1980s on.

101. See the notes above, as well as Erica Nadelhaft, “Resistance through Education: Polish Zionist Youth Movements in Warsaw, 1939–1941,”
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry
9 (1996), pp. 212ff.

102. Quoted in Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds.,
Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union
(Jerusalem, 1981), p. 230.

103. Shimon Huberband, “Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland during the Holocaust,” ed. Jeffrey S. Gurock and Robert S. Hirt (New York, 1987), p. 120.

104. Rolf-Dieter Müller,
Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik: Die Zusammenarbeit von Wehrmacht, Wirtschaft und SS
(Frankfurt am Main, 1991), pp. 21ff. Immediately after the end of the Polish campaign, Himmler had declared that “2.5 million Polish Jews would be used to dig antitank ditches along the demarcation line with the Soviet Union.” See Halder,
Kriegstagebuch
, vol. 1, 184n. There was yet another way of sending tens of thousands of Jews into slave labor. In early 1941 Greiser took an ideologically unusual step: He offered some 70,000 Jewish workers from his territory to the Reich labor minister for employment in Germany. Göring, faced with the growing needs of the German war economy as the preparations for the campaign against the Soviet Union were moving into high gear, gave his assent. The Reichsmarschall apparently informed all regional authorities not to hinder the employment of this new and unexpected work force. All these plans came to naught: In April 1941, Hitler forbade any transfer of Jews from the East into the Reich, even for employment in war industries.

105. Tatiana Berenstein, ed.,
Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über
Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges
(Berlin [East], 1961), p. 221.

106. Czerniaków,
Warsaw Diary
, p. 233.

107. Wasser, “Daily Entries of Hersch Wasser,” p. 266.

108. Kermish, “The Judenrat,” in Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J., Haft,
Patterns of Jewish leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945
(Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 80–81.

109. Isaiah Trunk,
Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation
(New York, 1972), pp. 499–500.

110. Calel Perechodnik,
Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman
, ed. Frank Fox (Boulder, CO, 1996), p. 9.

111. Ibid., p. 14.

112. Mary Berg,
Warsaw Ghetto, A Diary
, ed. Sh. L. Shnayderman (New York, 1945), pp. 45–46. Berg’s diary may well have been thoroughly reworked by the author and the publishers and thus is hardly used in this study.

113. Gutman,
The Jews of Warsaw
, p. 92.

114. Ganzweich’s case shows in fact that at times there was possibly more solidarity among the ghetto Jews than met the eye. An inhabitant of the ghetto, Hillel Zeidman, met with Ganzweich in his apartment, probably in early 1941, and was shown some of the reports prepared for the Germans. “Do these reports (I browsed through dozens of them) amount to denunciation?” Zeidman noted in his diary. “One cannot say that. On the contrary, they contain proposals…meant to prove to the Germans that it is to their advantage to treat the Jews with lesser severity.” Hillel Zeidman,
Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto
[Hebrew] (New York, 1957), pp. 177–78. Ganzweich’s reports were found and published in the 1980s: The milder evaluation was confirmed. Much in the reports was intended to convince the Germans “that the ghetto residents should be regarded as a valuable asset.” Christopher R. Browning and Yisrael Gutman, eds., “The Reports of a Jewish ‘Informer’ in the Warsaw Ghetto—Selected Documents,”
Yad Vashem Studies
17 (1986), pp. 247ff. and 255. The case of another notorious informer Alfred Nossig was not fundamentally different. Shmuel Almog, “Alfred Nossig: A Reappraisal,”
Studies in Zionism
7 (1983).

115. See in particular Huberband, “Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland during the Holocaust,” pp. 136ff.

116. Auerswald’s report is published in Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot,
Documents on the Holocaust
, pp. 244–46.

117. Berenstein,
Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord
, p. 140.

118. Ringelblum,
Notes
, pp. 204–5. The health condition of the Jewish populations was not the same from one ghetto to another. Thus, in Vilna for example, from the fall of 1941 (after the establishment of the ghetto) mortality rates from disease stabilized at a relatively low level. This unusual situation may have been the result of a series of unconnected factors: The remaining population (after the exterminations of the summer and fall) was mostly young, the food supply was ampler than in Warsaw or Lodz, the number of physicians in the ghetto was relatively high, the main Jewish hospital of the city remained within the ghetto boundaries, and strict rules of hygiene and sanitation were imposed by the health department of the council. On the health situation in the Vilna ghetto see Solon Beinfeld, “Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
12, no. 1 (1998), p. 66.

119. Ringelblum,
Notes
, p. 194.

120. Czerniaków,
Warsaw Diary
, p. 261.

121. Walter Manoschek, ed.,
“Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944
(Hamburg, 1997), p. 17.

122. Ibid., p. 18.

123. Ibid., p. 25.

124. Zygmunt Klukowski,
Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44
, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL, 1993), p. 115.

125. Kaplan,
Scroll of Agony
, pp. 241–42.

126. Ringelblum,
Notes
, p. 181.

127. Daniel Uziel, “Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews,”
Yad Vashem Studies
29 (2001), pp. 36–37.

128. On “Das Reich” see Norbert Frei and Johannes Schmitz,
Journalismus im Dritten Reich
(Munich, 1989), pp. 108ff.

129. Ibid., pp. 114ff. and 118ff.

130. Quoted in Elizabeth Harvey,
Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization
(New Haven, 2003), p. 126.

131. Susannah Heschel,
Transforming Jesus from Jew to Aryan: Protestant Theologians in Nazi Germany
(Tucson, 1995), p. 6.

132. For some aspects of this research during the 1930s see Friedländer,
Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1
, pp. 190ff.

133. For the most detailed study of both Institutes see Helmut Heiber,
Walter Frank und sein Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands
(Stuttgart, 1966). See also Patricia von Papen, “Schützenhilfe nationalsozialistischer Judenpolitik: Die Judenforschung des Reichsinstituts für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, 1935–1945,” in
“Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses—”: Antisemitische Forschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus
, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut,
Jahrbuch 1998/99 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust
(Frankfurt, 1999), p. 17ff; Dieter Schiefelbein, “Das Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage Frankfurt am Main,” in
“Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses
…
”: Antisemitische Forschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus
, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut,
Jahrbuch 1998/99 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust
(Frankfurt, 1999), pp. 43ff.

134. For the opening ceremony and for Rosenberg’s address, see
Völkischer Beobachter
, March 27–30, 1941.

135. Max Weinreich,
Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People
(New York, 1946), p. 104.

136. Ibid., pp. 107–10. Emphasis in original.

137. Götz Aly and Susanne Heim,
Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung
(Hamburg, 1991), p. 219.

138. Weinreich,
Hitler’s Professors
, p. 110.

139. Aly and Heim,
Vordenker der Vernichtung
, pp. 217ff.

140. Papen, “Schützenhilfe,” p. 29.

141. Ibid.

142. Monica Kingreen, “Raubzüge einer Stadtverwaltung: Frankfurt am Main und die Aneignung ‘Jüdischen Besitzes,’”
Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus
17 (2001), pp. 32ff.

143. Ibid.

144. Ibid.

145. Quoted in Hector Feliciano,
The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art
(New York, 1997), p. 33.

146. For the details, see mainly Jonathan Petropoulos,
Art as Politics in the Third Reich
(Chapel Hill, 1996), p. 129.

147. Ibid., p. 130.

148. Pätzold,
Verfolgung
, p. 285.

149. Ulrich von Hassell,
Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland
, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss (unter Mitarbeit) and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 254.

150. Manoschek,
“Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung,”
p. 16.

151. Kater,
Das “Ahnenerbe,”
p. 254.

152. Hitler,
Reden
, part 2, pp. 1663–64.

153. Mihail Sebastian,
Journal, 1935–1944
(Chicago, 2000), p. 316. For a more graphic description of the “bestial ferocity,” see particularly the report sent by the U.S. minister in Bucharest, Gunther, to the secretary of state, on January 30, 1941.
Foreign Relations of the United States, Europe, 1941
, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1959), p. 860. The German minister to Romania, SA leader Manfred von Killinger, mentioned on January 23 Antonescu’s description of “unbelievably brutal acts…. The 693 Jews who were interned in Jilava dead under the most shameful torture.”
DGFP: Series D
, vol. 11, p. 1175.

154. For a general survey of Romanian anti-Semitism see Leon Volovici,
Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s
(Oxford, 1991); Stephen Fischer-Galati, “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism,” in
The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry
, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York, 1994), mainly p. 10ff.

155. Quoted in Volovici,
Nationalist Ideology
, p. 63.

156. Quoted in Jean Ancel, “The ‘Christian’ Regimes of Romania and the Jews, 1940–1942,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
7, no. 1 (1993), p. 16. Among the young Iron Guard intellectual anti-Semites, the future world-renowned historian of religion Mircea Eliade was probably one of the most rabid. As Warsaw crumbled under the German onslaught, in September 1939, Eliade declared: “The Poles’ resistance in Warsaw is a Jewish resistance. Only Yids are capable of the blackmail of putting women and children in the frontline to take advantage of the Germans’ sense of scruple…What is happening on the frontier of Bukovina is a scandal, because new waves of Jews are flooding into the country. Rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate.” Sebastian,
Journal,
p. 238.

157. Fischer-Galati, “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism,” mainly pp. 19ff.

158.
Foreign Relations of the United States Europe, 1940
, vol. 2, p. 764.

159. Ibid., p. 774.

160. Ibid., 1941, vol. 2, p. 860.

161. Anne Grynberg,
Les Camps de la honte: Les internés juifs des camps français, 1939–1944
(Paris, 1991), p. 12. In a meeting at the German embassy on February 2, 1941, Dannecker confirmed these data. See Serge Klarsfeld, ed.,
Die Endlösung der Judenfrage in Frankreich: Deutsche Dokumente 1941–1944
(Paris, 1977), p. 17.

162. Matteoli Commission, “Interim Report,” p. 181, quoted and translated in Michael J. Bazyler,
Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts
(New York, 2003), p. 175.

163. See Philippe Verheyde, “L’aryanisation economique: Le cas des grandes entreprises,”
Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah: Le monde juif
168 (Jan.–Apr. 2000).

164. Klarsfeld,
Die Endlösung
, p. 13.

165. Pätzold,
Verfolgung
, pp. 281–82.

166.
DGFP: Series D
, vol. 12 (Washington, DC, 1962), p. 228.

167. For details on the establishment of the CGQJ and on Vallat’s activities, see Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton,
Vichy et les juifs
(Paris, 1990), pp. 79ff.

168. The Commissariat Général even established its own police unit (
La Police aux Questions Juives
, or PQJ), but after a year or so, it became obvious to both the Germans and the French that this special police force did not have the means for systematic action. It was finally integrated into the general police as a
Section d’Enquêtes et de Contrôle
, or SEC. See in particular Serge Klarsfeld,
Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 1943–1944
(Paris, 1985), pp. 55ff.