Odette Daltroff-Baticle remembers that before the children left Drancy they endured one last degradation in the camp: ‘they had their heads shaved. It was dreadful. I remember there was a little boy who had relatively long blond hair and he said: “Oh but my mum likes my blond hair so much, we can’t cut it.” But I saw him later and his head was shaven and [he looked] completely hopeless … It was true – he had especially beautiful hair. For the children, particularly the little girls, of ten or twelve years old, when they were shaved it was really a humiliation …’18
There were protests in France about the deportations, most notably from clerics. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse said on 23 August: ‘that children, women and men, fathers and mothers, should be treated like a vile herd of cattle, that members of the same family should be separated from each other and sent to an unknown destination – it was reserved for our time to witness this tragic spectacle.’19 Other leading churchmen, like the Archbishop of Marseilles, also protested. But there was not one word of public support for these sentiments from Pope Pius XII, and the compassionate remonstrations of the French clerics came to nothing.
A total of 42,500 Jews were deported from France to Poland by the end of 1942. Prime Minister Laval gave every sign that he was pleased to see them go. ‘Laval made no mention of any German pressure,’ reported a visiting group of Americans who met him in August 1943, ‘but stated flatly that “these foreign Jews had always been a problem in France and that the French government was glad that a change in German attitude towards them gave France an opportunity to get rid of them.” ’20
The approach of the French authorities to the persecution and deportation of the Jews was in stark contrast to that of their neighbours to the south – the Italians. It comes as a surprise to many people to learn that the Fascist regime under Benito Mussolini did not deport any Italian Jews. Only the removal of Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy in the summer of 1943, and the subsequent German occupation, changed that situation. Ironically – since Hitler saw Mussolini’s takeover of Italy in 1922 as an inspiration for the Nazi movement – many Italian Jews were also Fascists, with Guido Jung serving as Finance Minister in Mussolini’s cabinet from 1932 until 1935. One of Mussolini’s most intimate companions was also Jewish – Margherita Sarfatti, who was his mistress for almost twenty-five years. Despite this, however, there is still controversy over Mussolini’s own beliefs about Jews during this period, and whether or not he was a committed anti-Semite even at this time.21 What is certain is that whatever his personal views might have been they didn’t stop him working – and sleeping – with Jews.
It wasn’t perhaps surprising that Mussolini’s Fascists tolerated Jewish Italians. Jews had fought alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi – the great Italian hero and an inspiration to Mussolini – in the battle to unite Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century, and in the wake of Garibaldi’s victory official discrimination against Italian Jews had ceased. Italian Jews could now reach the highest positions in the state – for example, in 1902, Giuseppe Ottolenghi became Minister of War and in 1905 Alessandro Fortis became Prime Minister.
It was only after Mussolini had decided to commit to an enduring friendship with Hitler’s Germany in the late 1930s that his regime became openly anti-Semitic. In 1938 a whole raft of legislation was introduced, including provisions to outlaw marriage between Jews and non-Jews and prevent Italian Jews from serving in the armed forces. But these measures were primarily motivated by opportunism rather than by deep anti-Semitic conviction. Though there were undoubtedly some Italian Fascists who were Jew-haters, most Italians found it hard to understand why their Jewish neighbours were suddenly the victims of persecution. Even within the Fascist administration there was considerable flexibility in the application of anti-Semitic legislation. In July 1939, for instance, a commission was established which could ‘Aryanize’ selected Jews – chiefly those who paid large enough bribes.
Italy’s entry into the war in 1940 did not herald a massive upsurge in persecution against Italian Jews, though Italian police began to intern foreign Jews living in the country. In the areas outside Italy occupied by the Italian Army, the policy towards Jews was often relatively benign. In Croatia, for example, where the Italians occupied much of the coastline, the Italian Army protected Jews from the Croat Ustaše, the anti-Semitic militia. In 1942 the Croat government agreed with the Nazis that the remaining Jews left alive in the country could be deported. But the Italians would not relinquish the several thousand Jews who had sought sanctuary in the Italian zone. The Germans asked Mussolini to tell his representatives in Croatia to cooperate. Mussolini said he would try, but still the Italian authorities in Croatia procrastinated and kept coming up with reasons why they could not accede to German demands.22
In November 1942, in response to the Allied landings in North Africa, the Germans occupied the area of France previously under the control of the Vichy government. At the same time the Germans also agreed that the Italians could send their forces into eight French departments in former Vichy territory, near the Mediterranean coast. This led to a direct confrontation between the Italian and French administrators, and in the process revealed their very different attitudes towards the treatment of the Jews. The Italian General Carlo Avarna di Gualtieri told the Vichy authorities that the Italians would seek to govern their area of France with ‘humane legislation’.23 In pursuit of this aim, the Italians frustrated Vichy’s desire to persecute the Jews. For instance, the Italians allowed foreign Jews to carry on living along the coast – Vichy regulations said they should be moved inland – and refused to implement a French demand that the documentation of the Jews should be stamped with an identifying mark. The French authorities did not welcome this more ‘humane’ approach to the ‘Jewish question’. Pierre Laval complained to the Italians about their behaviour and went as far as to ask the German authorities for ‘appropriate support’24 in order to reassert French control.
How can we explain the ‘humanity’ of the Italians in these occupied areas? Partly it was because the Italians wanted to demonstrate that they were equal partners with their German allies. They were not about to be bullied. Unlike the French, the Italians were not a defeated nation forced into an unwanted relationship with the Germans, but subjects of a proudly independent country that had chosen to be an active belligerent. In addition, Italy, unlike France, had not absorbed large numbers of foreign Jews, nor had Italians been educated to hate Jews as the Germans had. The Italians could now protect Jews in the territory they occupied at little risk to themselves. So why not help them? This is not to say, however, that Italian soldiers were saints – one collection of oral testimony from Italian soldiers on the eastern front reveals that on occasion individual soldiers sexually exploited Jewish women.25
At the same time as the Italians were protecting Jews in the areas they controlled, thousands of Dutch Jews were en route to Auschwitz – by the end of 1942 about 40,000 Jews had been sent from the Netherlands to the east. All this was made possible not just because of the continuing cooperation of the Dutch authorities, but as a result of the comprehensive system of registration that the Germans had put in place. In January 1941 all Dutch Jews had been told to register with the authorities and virtually every single one of them had done so – altogether nearly 160,000 registrations.
Unlike in France, the Germans were also able to deal with the Dutch Jews through a single umbrella organization – the Jewish Council. The leaders of the Jewish Council – Dr David Cohen and Abraham Asscher – were later vilified. Many saw their cooperation with the Germans in the deportation process as betrayal. In part this was because the Jewish Council was granted 17,500 exemption certificates by the Germans in 1942 which meant that members of the Council and their families were spared deportation, albeit temporarily. When Cohen and Asscher were themselves eventually deported, they were sent not to the death camps of the east but to concentration camps within the Old Reich and Protectorate, and both
survived the war.
At the Berlin meeting on 11 June 1942, Eichmann had originally planned on deporting 15,000 Jews from the Netherlands during the initial series of transports, but by the end of the month he had raised that demand to 40,000. It is possible that Eichmann took that decision because the Nazis found it easier to deport Dutch Jews than they had anticipated. This was in contrast to France, where Dannecker had expressed concern about his ability to meet his quota, as he argued with the Vichy authorities over the deportation of French Jews as opposed to foreign ones.26
On 4 July 1942 the first letters were sent out requiring Dutch Jews to present themselves for mass deportation. At the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam, Dr Hemelrijk, one of the teachers, remembers the atmosphere: ‘The shadow of death hung heavily over the first graduation ceremony (it was also the last) at my school. Girls over the age of fifteen had all received orders to report for transportation to [the] Central Station at one a.m. Destination unknown. All the parents knew was that they had to send their daughters out into the night, defenceless prey, never to be seen again. No one was allowed to accompany these children. The girls went, often after heart-rending domestic scenes, in the hope that by doing so they were sparing their parents. Not that they did.’27
No one on the Jewish Council, or within the Jewish community as a whole, knew for certain what was going to happen to these girls or to the thousands of other Jews about to be sent to a ‘destination unknown’. But within days of the deportations beginning rumours started to circulate. The underground newspaper De Waarheid printed a plea to Dutch policemen on 3 August, saying ‘think of your human and professional duty – arrest no Jews and only make a show of carrying out orders directed against them. Let them escape and go into hiding. Remember that every man, every woman and every child you arrest will be killed and that you are their murderer.’28 On 29 July, Radio Orange, broadcasting from London, had said: ‘Just how does it help the German war effort to herd together thousands of defenceless Jewish Poles and do away with them in gas-chambers? How does it help the war effort when thousands of Jewish Dutchmen are dragged out of their country?’29
The reference to ‘gas-chambers’ demonstrates that even this early in the deportation process there was some public knowledge of what was happening to the Jews. In London, on 9 July, at a press conference held by the Polish government-in-exile and attended by Brendan Bracken, the British Minister of Information, journalists had been briefed that the Germans were ‘deliberately carrying out their monstrous plan to exterminate Jews’ in Poland.30 But the Allies were still uncertain about the Germans’ broader intentions – did they, for instance, just want to kill Polish Jews? Were the Dutch and other European Jews perhaps genuinely to be used as forced labour?
The first firm warning that Hitler had an overall plan of extermination came in August 1942 from Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva. With access to intelligence from German sources in central Europe, Riegner concluded that ‘a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany, numbering three and a half to four millions, should, after deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in order to resolve once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be planned for the autumn. Ways of execution are still being discussed including the use of prussic acid. We transmit this information with all necessary reservation, as exactitude cannot be confirmed by us.’31
When the leaders of the World Jewish Congress in New York received this news, they did not ‘doubt that the information is at least substantially correct’ but were concerned that publishing the information might ‘have a demoralizing effect on those who are marked as hopeless victims’. As a consequence, they sought ‘the best advice possible’ about what to do.32 Riegner’s telegram reached the British government by the middle of August and the American government shortly afterwards. To begin with, there was disbelief. It took the best part of four months for the Allies to accept that the news was undoubtedly true, and to make a concerted statement to the world about the Nazis’ actions. Only after they had received information from other sources – including an eyewitness account of the Warsaw ghetto – did they commit to condemning the crime in a concerted way.33
On 17 December 1942 the British, Americans and Soviets all issued statements expressing outrage at the Nazis’ murderous attack on the Jews. In the House of Commons, Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, drew attention to ‘numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe … None of those taken away are ever heard of again.’ Eden said that the Allies ‘condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination’ and that they would ‘ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution …’34
Months before Anthony Eden stood up in the House of Commons and revealed what was known about the Nazis’ plans, Gerhart Riegner and his colleagues had personally brought intelligence about the destruction of the Jews to the papal nuncio in Switzerland, Monsignor Philippe Bernardini. ‘We said, please ask the Vatican to intervene,’ says Riegner, ‘to preserve, at least in those countries [where it was still possible], what could still be preserved of the Jewish community.’35 He remembers that the reply from the Vatican was ‘wishy-washy’ and that ‘the attempt to involve the Vatican was a failure.’ Pope Pius XII still refused publicly to condemn the extermination of the Jews – though in his Christmas message of 1942 he did speak of those ‘who through no fault of their own and sometimes only on grounds of nationality or race, are destined for death or slow deterioration’.36 But he was not prepared to say the word ‘Jews’.
Those who seek to defend the inaction of Pope Pius XII often point to events in the Netherlands in the summer of 1942 as one of the key reasons for his silence. When the Nazis had learnt that Archbishop Johannes de Jong of Utrecht planned to condemn the deportation of the Jews, they warned him that if he did so they would also deport Jews in the Netherlands who had converted to Christianity. Archbishop de Jong stood firm in the face of this blackmail, and on 20 July 1942 his pastoral letter was read from pulpits across the country. The letter referred directly to the ‘persecution of the Jews’ and included the words of a telegram that had been sent to the ‘authorities of the occupying forces’ nine days before, which said that ‘The undersigned Dutch churches’ were ‘already deeply shocked by the actions taken against the Jews in the Netherlands that have excluded them from participating in the normal life of society’, and had now ‘learned with horror of the new measures by which men, women, children, and whole families will be deported to the German territory and its dependencies’. This action was ‘contrary to the deepest moral sense of the Dutch people’, and so the churches urged the Germans ‘not to execute these measures’.37
Not surprisingly, the ‘occupying authorities’ ignored the churches’ plea that they should act with common humanity towards the Dutch Jews. Not only that, the Nazis carried out their threat to deport Jews in the Netherlands who had converted to Christianity. No exact figures exist for how many were sent east as a result – it might have been several hundred,38 though it could have been no higher than ninety-two.39 Whatever the precise figure, it is argued that a number of people lost their lives as a consequence of Archbishop de Jong’s decision to have his letter of protest read in Dutch churches. This was a key reason, it is said, why Pope Pius XII kept quiet. ‘The persecution of the Jews in Holland had an enormous effect on the line that Pius XII subsequently took,’ says Archbishop Emanuele Clarizio, who worked in the Vatican during the war. ‘That’s obvious.’ Moreover, sa
ys Archbishop Gennaro Verolino, who was a papal diplomat at the time, the Pope ‘tried everything that he could. And if sometimes it seems he didn’t go all the way, it’s because he was afraid of making the situation worse. That his actions would be misinterpreted and lead to worse reprisals.’40
At first sight this appears a powerful justification – it was necessary to keep silent or there might have been more deaths. But it is crucial to remember that Archbishop de Jong was not responsible for the death of the Jewish converts – the Nazis were. They chose to kill them, not him. What Archbishop de Jong must surely have understood was that once you ignored your own feelings about what was right and wrong, your feet rested on quicksand. In any case, who was to say that the Nazis would ever have kept their promise not to deport the Dutch converts even if Archbishop de Jong had kept quiet?41 More than that, suppose the Nazis had said they would kill an innocent child every day unless Archbishop de Jong publicly renounced his entire faith? Would he then be worthy of condemnation if he had decided to stay true to his beliefs?
Similarly, a common excuse from bureaucrats who collaborated with the Nazis was that they ‘sought to change the system from within’ and that if they had been replaced the situation would have been ‘even worse’. After the war, for instance, Dutch civil servants could point to a number of Nazi measures that were watered down as a result of their involvement. Except that a close examination of the evidence reveals that this excuse lacks validity. That is because the Nazi Reichskommissar’s practice was to make deliberately excessive demands, so as to allow the civil servants to think that they had accomplished something when he subsequently reduced his requests to the level he had intended all along. By this simple trick the Nazi leadership helped ensure the administrative cooperation of the civil servants.42
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