The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (122 page)

117. Barkai,
From Boycott to Annihilation
, pp. 177ff.

118. Ibid., pp. 177–79. Regarding the H and W accounts one may accept the hypothesis that the Reichsvereinigung was itself cheated at the outset, but for how long? On the policies of the Reichsvereinigung see, among others, Yehoyakim Cochavi, ““The Hostile Alliance”: The Relationship Between the Reichsvereinigung of Jews in Germany and the Regime,”
Yad Vashem Studies
22 (1992), pp. 262ff.

119. Pätzold,
Verfolgung
, p. 309.

120. See Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds.,
Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents
, 22 vols. (New York, 1990), vol. 20, doc. 17, pp. 32–33.

121. Nuremberg doc. NG-978, reproduced in John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds.,
The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes
(New York, 1982), vol. 2, pp. 284–85 (the translation has been slightly revised).

122. For this issue see Beate Meyer,
“Jüdische Mischlinge”: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933–1945
(Hamburg, 1999), pp. 230ff; Bryan Mark Rigg,
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military
(Lawrence, KS, 2002), pp. 116ff.

123. Rigg,
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers
, pp. 128ff.

124. Ibid., pp. 144ff.

125. Ibid., p. 132.

126. Béla Bodo, “The Role of Antisemitism in the Expulsion of Non-Aryan Students, 1933–1945,”
Yad Vashem Studies
30 (2002), pp. 216–17.

127. Walter Manoschek, ed.,
“Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944.
(Hamburg, 1997), p. 45.

128. Ibid., p. 49.

129. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel,
Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945
(Düsseldorf, 2004), pp. 467–68.

130. For the reports of Swiss diplomatic representatives, see Daniel Bourgeois,
Business helvétique et Troisième Reich: Milieux d’affaires, politique étrangère, antisémitisme
(Lausanne, 1998), pp. 197ff.

131. Walter Laqueur,
The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression of Information about Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’
(London, 1980), p. 26. What German officials knew, British intelligence knew even more precisely by intercepting and decoding the radio messages sent by police battalions operating on Soviet territory to their headquarters in Berlin. However, this information was kept strictly secret to protect the British code-breaking operation. See mainly Richard Breitman,
Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew
(New York, 1998).

132. Helmuth James von Moltke,
Letters to Freya: 1939–1945
, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (New York, 1990), pp. 155–56.

133. Ibid., p. 175.

134. Ibid., p. 183.

135. Ulrich von Hassell,
Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland
, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 277.

136. Quoted in Gordon J. Horwitz,
In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen
(New York, 1990), p. 35.

137. SD Aussenstelle Minden, 12.12.1941 in Kulka and Jäckel,
Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945
, p. 477.

138. Quoted in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds.,
Nazism, 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader.
vol. 3:
Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination
; (Exeter, UK, 1998), p. 1044.

139. Ernst Klee,
“Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens”
(Frankfurt am Main, 1983), p. 349.

140. Kulka and Jäckel,
Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945
, pp. 476ff.

141. Ibid. p. 478.

142. Ibid., pp. 483–84.

143. Quoted in Götz Aly and Susanne Heim,
Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung
(Hamburg, 1991), p. 199.

144. Ibid.

145. Ibid.

146. Ibid., p. 200.

147. Ibid., pp. 200–201.

148. Ibid., p. 199 n. 22.

149. For all the details regarding Schieder’s confidential survey and for the quotations, see Götz Aly, “Theodor Schieder, Werner Conze oder die Vorstufen der physischen Vernichtung,” in
Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus
, ed. Winfried Schulze and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Frankfurt, 1999), p. 167.

150. Quoted in Ludwig Volk, ed.,
Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1933–1945.
6 vols., vol. 5:
1940–1942
(Mainz, 1983), p. 555 n.

151. For Cardinal Bertram’s pastoral letter, see ibid., p. 555ff.

152. Bertram to Faulhaber, 17.11.1941, quoted in Ernst Klee,
Die SA Jesu Christi: Die Kirchen im Banne Hitlers
(Frankfurt am Main, 1989), p. 144.

153. Cordelia Edvardson,
Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer
(Munich, 1989), pp. 54–55.

154. Richard Gutteridge,
Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950
(Oxford, 1976), pp. 229–30.

155. Kulka and Jäckel,
Die Juden
, pp. 468–69.

156. Gutteridge,
Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950
, p. 230.

157. Ibid., p 231.

158. Ursula Büttner, “‘The Jewish Problem Becomes a Christian Problem’: German Protestants and the Persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich,” in
Probing the
Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941
, ed. David Bankier (New York, 2000), pp. 454ff.

159. Quoted in Klee,
Die SA Jesu Christi
, p. 148.

160. Goebbels,
Tagebücher
, part 2, vol. 2, pp. 362–63.

161. Klee,
Die SA Jesu Christi
, p. 148.

162. Gutteridge,
Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950
, pp. 231–32.

163. Quoted and translated in Wolfgang Gerlach,
And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews
, ed. Victoria Barnett (Lincoln, NE, 2000), p. 194.

164. Ibid., pp. 194–96.

165. Ibid., p. 196.

166. Ibid., p. 197.

167. Jochen Klepper,
Unter dem Schatten Deiner Flügel: Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942
, ed. Hildegard Klepper (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 1009.

168. For the text of the draft pastoral letter, see Ludwig Volk, ed.,
Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhaber
, vol. 2,
1935–1945
(Mainz, 1978), pp. 827ff.

169. Ibid., p. 853.

170. Klaus Schölder,
A Requiem for Hitler: and Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle
(London, 1989), p. 163.

171. Ibid.

172. Volk,
Akten deutscher Bischöfe
, vol. 5, Mainz, 1983, p. 675n.

173. Ibid.

174. Ibid., p. 636.

175. Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen,
Akten, Briefe und Predigten
, ed. Peter Löffler, vol. 2,
1939–1946
(Mainz, 1988), pp. 910–11.

176. Ibid., pp. 910 ff.

177. Raul Hilberg,
Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945
(New York, 1992), p. 268.

178. Breitman,
Official Secrets
, pp. 68 and 106, among others.

179. Raya Cohen, “The Lost Honor of Bystanders? The Case of Jewish Emmissaries in Switzerland,” in
Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation
, ed. David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine (London, 2002), p. 162.

180. Riegner protested but had to accept Wise’s decision. On the other hand, Alfred Silberschein, the man in charge of the Relief Committee (RELICO) set up to help the starving Jewish populations, continued to organize the sending of food against Wise’s instructions. See ibid., pp. 162ff.

181. For both quotes see Gulie Ne’eman Arad,
America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism
(Bloomington, 2000), p. 212.

182. Dina Porat,
The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945
(Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 18.

183. Quoted in Tuvia Friling,
Arrow in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv’s Leadership and Rescue Efforts during the Holocaust
(Tel Aviv, 1998), 2 vols., vol. 1, p. 45.

184. Yoav Gelber, “Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939–1942),”
Yad Vashem Studies
13 (1979), pp. 191–92.

185. Porat,
The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David
, p. 22.

186. Friedlander and Milton, eds.,
Archives of the Holocaust
, vol. 4,
Central Zionist Archives
, p. 40. It was in this context of utter misperception regarding the fate of European Jewry under German rule that a splinter of the Revisionist clandestine group Irgun, the “Stern group” (or
Lehi
), offered the Reich, in late 1940 (via a German diplomat in Beirut), to fight on the Axis side of against the British, in exchange for German help in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The
Lehi
offer never received an answer.

187. Adler,
Der verwaltete Mensch
, pp. 380ff.

188. Cohn,
Als Jude in Breslau 1941
, p. 122.

189. Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband,
What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany: An Oral History
(Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 306.

190. Kulka and Jäckel,
Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945
, p. 474.

191. Ibid., p. 472.

192. It seems that in most such cases the Jews were not utilized as agents; the Abwehr used the pretext to help some selected (and wealthy) individuals to leave the Reich. See for example Winfried Meyer,
Unternehmen Sieben: eine Rettungsaktion für vom Holocaust Bedrohte aus dem Amt Ausland/Abwehr im Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
(Frankfurt am Main, 1993). However, notwithstanding the opposition of some senior Abwehr officers to the regime, other members and particularly the secret military police (Geheime Feldpolizei) units and their commanders were deeply involved in the mass murder of Jews and other groups, in the eastern territories. Even later participants in the military conspiracy against Hitler were implicated. See Christian Gerlach, “Männer des 20 Juli und der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion,” in
Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944
, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (Hamburg, 1995), pp. 434ff.

193. Mark Roseman,
A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany
(New York, 2001), pp. 125ff, 130ff, and 133ff.

194. Konrad Kwiet, “The Ultimate Refuge: Suicide in the Jewish Community under the Nazis,” in
Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute
(London), p. 151.

195. Ursula Baumann, “Suizid im ‘Dritten Reich’—Facetten eines Themas,” in
Geschichte und Emanzipation
, ed. Reinhard Rürup et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), p. 500.

196. Goebbels,
Tagebücher
, part 2, vol. 2, p. 247.

197. Stadtarchiv Müchen, ed.,
“…verzogen, unbekannt wohin”: Die erste Deportation von Müchner Juden im November 1941.
(Zürich: Pendo, 2000), doc. 14 [the document section is unpaginated].

198. Ibid., p. 20; Porat, “The Legend of the Struggle of the Jews from the Third Reich in the Ninth Fort near Kovno, 1941–1942,” pp. 363 and 370.

199. Yaacov Lozowick, “Documentation: “Judenspediteur,” Deportation Train,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
6, no. 3 (1991), pp. 286ff.

200. Shalom Cholavsky, “The German Jews in the Minsk Ghetto,”
Yad Vashem Studies
17 (1986), pp. 223–25.

201. For the details about Rosenfeld’s life see the editor’s introduction to Oskar Rosenfeld,
In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lódz
, ed. Hanno Loewy (Evanston, IL, 2002), pp. xiii–xviii.

202. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

203. Ibid., p. 11.

204. Ibid.

205. Ibid., p. 21.

206. For an excellent survey and analysis see Avraham Barkai, “Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto,” in
The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews
, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, 1989), vol. 6, pt. 1, pp. 378ff, and, specifically, pp. 394–395.

207. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed.,
The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944
(New Haven, 1984), p. 79.

208. Sierakowiak,
Diary
, p. 141.

209. Ibid., p. 144.

210. Ibid., p. 142.

211. Dobroszycki,
The Chronicle
, pp. 80–81.

212. Donald L. Niewyk, ed.,
Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), p. 303.

213. Dobroszycki,
The Chronicle,
p. 109.

214. Ibid., pp. 109 and 109n3.

215. Ibid., p. 113.

216. Rosenfeld,
In the Beginning Was the Ghetto
, pp. 31–32.

217. Ibid., p. 32.

218. Zapruder,
Salvaged Pages
, p. 233.

219. May’s postwar memoir is quoted in Dobroszycki’s “Introduction” to Dobroszycki, ed.,
The Chronicle
, pp. lv–lvi.

220. Ibid., p. 108.

221. Guenter Lewy,
The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies
(New York, 2000), p. 115.

222. Translated from the original and quoted in Laqueur,
The Terrible Secret
, p. 130.

223. Ibid., p. 131.

224. David Graber, “Some Impressions and Memories,” in Joseph Kermish, ed.,
To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!…: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives
“O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbath”). (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), p. 61.; Yitzhak Zuckerman,
A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
(Berkeley, 1993), p. 156ff.