The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (49 page)

The Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law seemed to settle the competition in favor of the state authorities. Jews whose “usual place of residence was abroad” lost their German citizenship. The law applied with immediate effect to Jews who resided abroad on the date of its publication and to those who were to reside abroad thereafter. The loss of citizenship entailed the forfeiture of all property and assets to the benefit of the Reich.
¹¹⁶
To avoid any misunderstanding about the significance of “abroad,” the finance minister issued a circular on December 3 indicating that this notion also included “the territories occupied by German troops…especially the General Government and the Reichskom-missariate Ostland and the Ukraine.
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Ultimately, however, the RSHA had its way in regard to the funds owed to the Reichsvereinigung by arguing among other things that these funds were the financial basis for implementing all measures regarding the Jews. And to increase these amounts, Heydrich’s men figured out various schemes to further delude and despoil the unsuspecting victims. Thus elderly Jews could buy homes in the “old people’s ghetto” by signing off to the Reichsvereinigung the necessary funds, which would then be transferred to the RSHA. Some of these homes, the deportees were told, had a lake view and others faced a park. In one way or another, the victims were financing their own deportation and, ultimately, their extermination.
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The homes abandoned by the deportees generated a measure of local cooperation between Gestapo and party officials, as had already been the case in Vienna and in Munich. In the Frankfurt area, for example, in order to avoid tension and competition, the
Gauleiter
of Hesse-Nassau, Jakob Sprenger, appointed the Frankfurt
Kreisleiter
as the sole representative of the
Gau
entitled to negotiate with the Gestapo about the fate of Jewish homes and apartments.
¹¹⁹

Sometimes, however, unexpected difficulties arose. The Jews who over the first two years of the war (or even beforehand) had been compelled to leave their apartments or homes to congregate in a “Jews’ house” were mostly renting apartments in buildings where they alone were allowed to live but which nonetheless belonged to “Aryan” landlords. When the deportations started, some of the apartments were vacated by the deportees, while others remained temporarily inhabited by their Jewish tenants. According to a letter of complaint sent to the Düsseldorf Gestapo on August 25, 1942, by one August Stiewe to (the landlord of such a house), the deportation of some of his Jewish tenants entailed a significant loss of income from unpaid rents, since Aryan tenants could not be asked to move into a house still partly occupied by Jews. The Gestapo did not deny the existence of the financial loss but told Stiewe to address his grievance to the local branch of the Finance Ministry, as it was pocketing the Jewish assets.
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By the fall of 1941 the status and fate of mixed-breeds remained as confused as ever. On the eve of the deportations from the Reich, in a conversation with Lammers, Walter Gross, head of the racial policy office of the party, pointed to two major
desiderata
, from “a purely biological viewpoint”: “1. No reappearance of persons of mixed blood of the second degree—that is, the necessity of sterilizing persons of mixed blood of the first degree where exceptions [having to do with marriage] are necessary for political reasons. 2. The maintenance of some kind of clear distinction between persons of mixed blood of the second degree and Germans, so that a certain stigma could still be attached to the term ‘Mischling.’ Only by clearly keeping persons of mixed blood beyond the pale can racial consciousness be kept alive and the birth of children of mixed blood…be prevented in the future. We must reckon with such births in view of the extensive contacts between peoples and races in the future. Reichsminister Lammers listened attentively to both ideas and
declared himself in favor of the sterilization of persons of mixed blood of the first degree, if they were allowed to remain on the territory of the Reich
(emphasis added). Furthermore, he himself suggested that a marriage permit be compulsary for persons of mixed blood of the second degree, in order to keep control in every case over their choice of partners. The aim of such a measure would be to prevent, under all circumstances, the marriage of mixed-breeds of the second degree among themselves, because of the danger of transmitting Jewish characteristics in accordance with Mendel’s [heredity] laws. I answered,” Gross added, “that…one should thoroughly examine whether it was more advantageous to spread Jewish traits throughout the entire Volk rather than isolating them among a limited section of the community from which, now and than, persons possessing an accumulation of Jewish characteristics would appear, who in turn could be eradicated in some way.”
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The issue was left pending.

Finding a solution was becoming urgent, however, first and foremost in view of the deportations, but also in regard to the continuing service of at least some categories of
Mischlinge
in the Wehrmacht or in regard to their admission to universities. In principle Hitler’s decisions of 1940 regarding
Mischlinge
serving in the Wehrmacht remained valid, and were actually imposed more rigorously after the end of the French campaign and maintained despite the growing difficulties on the Eastern Front: Half Jews had to be discharged; quarter Jews could stay in the army but were not to be promoted, even to NCO ranks.

In reality, though, confusion persisted. It seems that in Rommel’s Afrika Korps these rules were entirely disregarded; in the navy their implementation was postponed, whereas in the army and the Luftwaffe, they were applied only if and when the racial identity of the soldier or officer was declared or discovered.
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Hitler usually kept for himself the right to promote quarter Jews to NCO or officer ranks. And, in addition to the existing confusion, the Nazi leader decreed that if a
Mischling
(even a half Jew) fell on the battlefield, the family should be protected from anti-Jewish measures.
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It seems, in other words, that in 1941 the Wehrmacht was still drafting half Jewish
Mischlinge
for active service.
¹²⁴

As could be expected, some
Mischlinge
were mistreated by commanding officers or fellow soldiers when their identity was uncovered. Many later testified, however, that they encountered humane, even friendly, attitudes from members of their units. Some
Mischlinge
felt deeply deprived at having to leave the army; others were relieved not to have to serve Hitler any longer. Most of the mixed-breeds found civilian work, at times in highly sensitive positions, such as scientific research in missile construction plants at Peenemünde, among other places.
¹²⁵

Access to universities remained extremely difficult for
Mischlinge
of the first degree, although, as we saw, the Reich Ministry of Education accepted candidates with distinguished military credentials. As beforehand, however, the Party Chancellery and the rectors represented the hard line and used every possible argument (including the observation by some of the rectors of negative racial traits of the candidates) to close the doors of the universities to part Jews.
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Generally, part Jews were spared from deportation, as were the Jewish spouses in mixed marriages with children, although as time went by and defeat appeared more certain, the radicalization and extension of the persecution increased.

VI

In the Reich information about massacres perpetrated in the East was first and foremost spread by soldiers who often wrote home quite openly about what they witnessed—and quite approvingly as well. “In Kiev,” Cpl. LB wrote on September 28, “mines explode one after the other. For eight days now the city is on fire and all of it is the Jews’ doing. Therefore all Jews aged 14 to 60 have been shot and the Jewish women will also be shot, otherwise there will be no end to it.”
¹²⁷
On November 2 Pvt. XM described a former synagogue, built in 1664, that was in use up to the war. Now, only the walls remained. “It won’t ever be used in the previous function,” XM added. “I believe that in this country [the Soviet Union] the Jews will soon not be in need of any prayer house. I already described to you why it is so. For these dreadful creatures it remains after all the only right redemption.”
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An SD report of October 2 from Münster conveyed a conversation between two officials of the mayor’s office about soldiers’ letters recently received from the Russian front. The extraordinary brutality of the fighting stemmed, for example, from “the intentional destruction of all religious and moral feelings by the Jews. The Russians were solely driven by their blind fear of the Jewish commissars. The Russian defends himself and bites like an animal. This is what Jewry has done to the Aryan peoples of Russia…. Already in peacetime, a substantial part of the Russian soldier hordes were purely Mongols. The Jews have mobilized Asia against Europe.”
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The letters these officials received in Münster must have represented a random opinion sample of the
Ostheer
.

The information about the gigantic exterminations of Jews in the East was of course not conveyed only by soldiers’ letters. As early as in July 1941, Swiss diplomatic and consular representatives in the Reich and in satellite countries were filling detailed reports about the mass atrocities; all their information stemmed from German or related sources.
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Senior and even midlevel officials in various German ministries had access to the communications of the
Einsatzgruppen
and to their computations of the staggering number of Jews they had murdered. Such information was mentioned in internal Foreign Ministry correspondence in October 1941 and not even ranked top secret.
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In a letter addressed to his wife, Freya, Helmuth von Moltke displayed a clear understanding of what was going on: “The news from the East is terrible again. Our losses are obviously very, very heavy. But that could be borne if we were not burdened with a hecatombe of corpses. Again and again one hears reports that in transports of prisoners or Jews only 20 percent arrive…What will happen when the nation as a whole realizes that this war is lost, and lost differently from the last one? With a blood guilt that cannot be atoned for in our lifetime and can never be forgotten.”
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These lines were written at the end of August 1941.

Later that year, in October and November, Moltke commented on the deportations: “Since Saturday,” he wrote to Freya on October 21, “the Berlin Jews are being rounded up. They are picked up at 9:15 in the evening and locked into a synagogue overnight. Then they are sent off, with what they can carry to Litzmannstadt and Smolensk. We are to be spared the sight of them being simply left to perish in hunger and cold, and that is why it is done in Litzmannstadt and Smolensk.”
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And, on November 13: “I find it hard to remember these two days. Russian prisoners, evacuated Jews, evacuated Jews, Russian prisoners…. That was the world of these two days. Yesterday, I said goodbye to a once famous Jewish lawyer who has the Iron Cross First and Second Class, the Order of the House of Hohenzollern, the Golden Badge for the Wounded, and who will kill himself with his wife today because he is to be picked up tonight.”
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Regarding the killings in occupied Soviet territories, Hassell received much of his information from Gen. Georg Thomas, chief of the Economic and Armaments Division of the Wehrmacht (who played a strange role as enforcer of looting in the occupied Soviet territories on the one hand, and source of information for the opposition to the regime on the other). “Conversations with Frida [Dohnanyi], among others and particularly a report from Auerley [Thomas], who again arrived from the front,” Hassell recorded on October 4, “confirm the continuation of the most disgusting atrocities mainly against the Jews who are executed row after row without the least shame…. A headquarters commanding medical officer…reported that he tested Russian dum-dum bullets in the execution of Jews and achieved such and such results; he was ready to go on and write a report that could be used in [anti-Soviet] propaganda about this ammunition!”
¹³⁵

German populations were also quite well informed about the goings-on in the concentration camps, even the most deadly ones. Thus, people living in the vicinity of Mauthausen, for example, could watch what was happening in the camp. On September 27, 1941, Eleanore Gusenbauer sent a letter of complaint to the Mauthausen police station: “In the concentration camp Mauthausen at the work site in Vienna Ditch inmates are being shot repeatedly; those badly struck live for yet some time, and so remain lying next to the dead for hours or even half a day long. My property lies upon an elevation next to the Vienna Ditch, and one is often an unwilling witness to such outrages. I am anyway sickly and such a sight makes a demand on my nerves that in the long run I cannot bear. I request that it be arranged that such inhuman deeds be discontinued, or else done where one does not see it.”
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As for the fate of Jewish deportees from the Reich, some information seeped back from the very outset. Thus, on December 12, 1941, the SD reported comments from the inhabitants of Minden, near Bielefeld in Westphalia, on the fate of the Jews from their own town, deported to the East a few days beforehand. “Until Warsaw,” people were saying, “the deportation takes place in passenger trains. From there on, in cattle cars…. In Russia, the Jews were to be put to work in former Soviet factories, while older Jews, or those who were ill, were to be shot.”
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