The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (70 page)

Despite strong prejudice against Jews and particularly against the vast number of foreign Jews, two factors led to a far higher rescue percentage in Belgium than in neighboring, relatively non-anti-Semitic Holland, home to a vast majority of native Dutch Jews: The spontaneous reaction of the population and the involvement of Belgian resistance organizations.

There is no question that large-scale rescue operations initiated by “ordinary Belgians” took place at all levels of society. The issue that remains unresolved—and probably unresolvable—is the degree of influence of the Catholic Church and its institutions on this surge of compassion and charity. That Catholic institutions did hide Jews, particularly Jewish children, is well documented; whether these institutions, and mainly the rank-and-file Catholic population, responded to the encouragements and instructions of the church hierarchy or merely to their own feelings remains unclear, as does the degree of the memory of German brutality in World War I.
⁹⁶

Active cooperation between a rapidly established Jewish underground (Comité de Défense des Juifs, or CDJ) and Belgian resistance organizations led to the hiding of about 25,000 Jews.
⁹⁷
This cooperation was facilitated by the fact that, from the outset, a significant number of foreign Jewish refugees were affiliated, one way or another, with the Belgian Communist Party or with left-wing Zionist organizations—particularly with the Communist organization for foreign workers, MOI (Main d’Oeuvre Immigrée, or “Immigrant Labor Organization”);
⁹⁸
the communists were highly influential moreover in the Belgian Resistance.

IV

While Jews were rapidly disappearing from the Reich, the “Jewish question” remained as present as ever not only in official propaganda but also in everyday life. In early December 1942, for example, as the issue was about to reach the courts, “Katag A.G.,” a textile firm in Bielefeld, decided to consult the Reich Justice Ministry. “Katag,” the firm’s petition read, “was ‘aryanized’ in the years 1937–38. The name “Katag,” an abbreviation for Katz & Michel Textil A.G., was changed in the course of the ‘aryanization’ insofar as we registered it as fantasy identification and added ‘A.G.’ [Aktien Gesellschaft], so that now the business registry in Bielefeld carries the name ‘Katag A.G.’ Recently, however, the German Labor Front objected to the identification of our company as ‘Katag’ because it still carries a syllable of the Jewish name Katz. We hold to the point of view that in the name ‘Katag A.G.’ the first two letters
Ka
cannot in any way be recognized as the components of a Jewish name.”…
⁹⁹

There was no easy resolution to the problem; the Justice Ministry asked for the opinion of the Party Chancellery, and after much debate, on March 23, 1943, Bormann’s office reached a Solomonic decision, if one dare say: “Katag A.G.” would be allowed to keep its name temporarily for the duration of the war.
¹⁰⁰

During the same fateful days of December 1942, the Reich Ministry of Education decided that
Mischlinge
of the second degree could, under certain conditions, enroll as students of medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy, but not veterinary medicine. The decision was based on the assumption that mixed breeds of the second degree did not have the slightest chance of finding employment as veterinarians on completion of their studies.
¹⁰¹
In other words
Mischlinge
of the second degree could eventually take care of sick people, but no good German would wish them to attend to sick animals.

Completing the deportations from Germany was, of course, only a matter of logistics and of time. As we previously saw, from the early summer of 1942 onward, probably as a consequence of the attempt by the “Baum group” to set fire to the “Soviet Paradise” exhibition, no Jewish laborers were to be kept in the Reich, even in war-essential jobs. A letter sent by Sauckel on November 26, 1942, to the heads of labor exchanges stated this in the clearest terms: “In agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, Jews still employed will now be evacuated from the territory of the Reich and replaced by Poles, who are being deported from the General Government…. Poles…if fit for labor, will be transported without their families to the Reich, particularly to Berlin; there they will be put at the disposal of the labor exchange offices to serve as replacements for Jews to be eliminated from armament factories. The Jews who will become available as a result of the employment of Polish labor will be deported
at once.
This will apply first to Jews engaged in unskilled labor since they can be exchanged most easily. The remaining so-called qualified Jewish laborers will be left in the industries until their Polish replacements become sufficiently familiar with the work process after a period of apprenticeship to be determined for each case individually. Loss of production in individual industries will thus be reduced to the absolute minimum.”
¹⁰²
As we shall see further on, this was the exact expression of Himmler’s policy as stated in a letter of October 1942 to the OKW.

On February 27, 1943, the deportation of the “Jews employed in industry” (the
Fabrikaktion
) began. It had a double aim: to seize and deport all full Jews working in industry in the Old Reich and to expel any Jewish partners of mixed marriages from these workplaces.
¹⁰³
In fact the roundups included not only the Jewish laborers but also their families and, more generally, any full Jews still remaining anywhere in the Reich.
¹⁰⁴
In Berlin, where more than 10,000 Jewish forced laborers had still been employed, the operation lasted almost one full week. On March 1, the first transport departed for Auschwitz. Within a few days some 7,000 Jews were deported from the capital, and 10,948 from all over the Reich.
¹⁰⁵

Some 1,500 to 2,000 Berlin Jews who had been seized but excluded from deportation (mainly mixed-marriage partners) were assembled in a building on 2-4 Rosenstrasse, for identification and work selection in remaining Jewish institutions (such as the one remaining Jewish hospital). Most of these internees were released by March 8.
¹⁰⁶
During these few days scores of spouses, other relatives, and friends did gather on the opposite sidewalk and at times called for the prisoners; they mainly waited for information or tried to get food parcels into the building. Such unusual gatherings certainly demanded a measure of courage, but they were relatively modest and completely nonaggressive. They did not bring about the release of the detainees, as deportation had not been planned at any time for these Jews. The event turned into legend, however: A demonstration of thousands of German women brought about the liberation of their Jewish husbands. It is an uplifting legend, yet a legend nonetheless.
¹⁰⁷

The
Fabrikaktion
had been preceded, in late 1942, by the deportation of Jewish concentration camp inmates from camps in the Reich to camps in the East;
¹⁰⁸
on October 20, 1942, the
Gemeindeaktion
(the “community operation”) had led to the deportation of most of the staff of the Reichsvereinigung and of the Berlin community.
¹⁰⁹
Several transports followed at the end of 1942 and in early 1943. After the
Fabrikaktion
another transport carried half of the remaining Berlin Jewish hospital staff to Auschwitz;
¹¹⁰
in May and June transports of bedridden patients followed from the Jewish hospital to Theresienstadt.
¹¹¹
In the meantime, however, 10,000 elderly inmates were deported from Theresienstadt to Treblinka. According to a report from Müller to Himmler, it would ease the overpopulation in the “ghetto.”…
¹¹²

Leo Baeck and other leaders of the Reichsvereinigung were deported to Theresienstadt in January 1943, and in June the Reich association de facto ceased to exist. The one-thousand-year-old history of the Jews in Germany was coming to an end.

Hertha Feiner was among the last employees of the Berlin community to be deported. She did not wait for the Gestapo in her apartment but, warned by neighbors, moved to the community building; there she was arrested on March 9, 1943. A non-Jewish acquaintance tried without success to have her released, as mother to two
Mischling
daughters. On March 12 she was put on the transport to Auschwitz. She poisoned herself in the train.
¹¹³

A few months earlier, it seemed that the Kleppers would be able to escape the worst. On December 5, 1942, the Swedish legation informed them that their daughter Renate had been granted a visa.
¹¹⁴
Would Hanni be able to join her daughter? On the eighth Jochen Klepper was in the office of his protector, Interior Minister Frick. The minister, apparently quite distressed, informed Klepper that he couldn’t do a thing to facilitate the mother’s departure: “Such matters cannot be kept secret; the Führer hears of them and a terrible outburst takes place.”
¹¹⁵
Frick arranged for Klepper to meet Eichmann. The head of IVB4 didn’t even promise that Reni would be allowed to leave; in any case the mother would not be authorized to follow.
¹¹⁶
The next day, December 10, Eichmann definitively rejected Hanni’s departure. Jochen, Hanni, and Renerle did not hesitate: They would die together. That same night all three committed suicide.
¹¹⁷

V

On June 18, 1942, Wehrmacht private HK wrote home from Brest-Litowsk: “In Bereza-Kartuska, where I stopped for lunch, 1,300 Jews had just been shot on the previous day. They had been brought to a pit outside of the town. Men, women and children had to undress completely and were then liquidated with a shot in the back of the neck. The clothes were disinfected and used again. I am convinced that if the war goes on much longer, the Jews will be turned into sausage and served to Russian war prisoners and to the Jewish specialized workers….”
¹¹⁸

That same day a meeting of district governors and SS commanders in the General Government reviewed the progress of the extermination: “
Oberregierungsrat
Engler: The Jewish question has been solved in the city of Lublin. What was the Jewish quarter has been evacuated…. SS and Police Leader Katzmann presented the security situation in the
district of Galicia
…. Jews have already been evacuated in rather large numbers…. In the next few weeks further Jews are to be resettled….
Amtschef
Dr. Hummel reports on conditions in the
Warsaw District
…. He hopes that the city of Warsaw will be freed of the burden of Jews unable to work in a reasonable period of time…. To the question of State Secretary Dr. Bühler whether there was a chance of decreasing the ghetto population more quickly, State Secretary Krüger responded that a better overview would be possible in the course of August…. Deputy
Amtschef
Oswald spoke about the current situation in the
Radom District
: The Radom District had fallen behind in resettling the Jews…. This resettlement of the Jews now depended only on the problem of transport…. State Secretary Krüger indicated that as far as the police were concerned, the Jewish operation had been prepared down to the last detail and that implementation was only dependent on transport.”
¹¹⁹

In mid-July, Höfle arrived in Warsaw from Lublin with a group of “specialists.” SS units in the city would in due time be reinforced by Polish “police,” and by Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian auxiliaries. On July 20 Czerniaków, aware of widespread rumors about pending deportations, decided to get some information from his longtime German “interlocutors”: “In the morning at 7:30 at the Gestapo. I asked Mende how much truth there was in the rumors. He replied that he had heard nothing. I turned to Brandt; he also knew nothing.” And so it went. Czerniaków continued his tour of German officials and was repeatedly told that the rumors were
Quatsch
and
Unsinn
[utter nonsense]. “I ordered Lejkin [the acting Jewish police chief] to make the public announcement through the precinct police stations.” The chairman then proceeded to Auerswald to discuss the fate of children held in detention centers: “He [Auerswald] ordered me to write him a letter for their release, on condition that they be placed in reformatories and that a guarantee would be given that they would not escape…. It appears that about 2,000 children will qualify for reformatories.”
¹²⁰

On July 21 several members of the council were arrested as hostages and so were other prominent Jews in the ghetto administration and beyond (Czerniaków’s wife was also on the list but managed to remain with him in his office).
¹²¹
The next morning, July 22, the entrance to the council building was blocked by a few SS cars; the council members and the heads of all departments assembled in Czerniaków’s office, and Höfle arrived with a small retinue. Reich-Ranicki was called in to take down the minutes of the meeting in the conference room. The windows were wide open on that sunny day, and in the street the SS were playing Strauss waltzes on a portable phonograph.
¹²²

Höfle announced that the deportations would start within a few hours, and, according to Reich-Ranicki, read out the German instructions, “awkwardly and with some difficulty,” as if he had hardly glanced at the text beforehand: “There was a strained silence in the room, made even more tense by the rattle of my typewriter, the clicking of the cameras of some SS officers, who kept taking pictures, and the gentle melody of the ‘Blue Danube Waltz’ wafting in from the street…. From time to time Höfle looked at me to make sure I was keeping up. Yes, I was keeping up all right…. The final section of the ‘Instructions and Tasks’ set out the penalties for those who attempted to evade or disrupt the resettlement measures! There was but one punishment and it was repeated at the end of each sentence like a refrain: ‘…will be shot.’” 123