100 Aly, ‘Final Solution’, p. 214.
101 Statement by Walter Burmeister, 24/01/1961, p. 3, BArch ZStL 203 AR-Z 69/59, vol. 4. (ZStL is the central legal administration office dealing with National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg.)
102 Browning, Origins, p. 367.
103 Longerich, Holocaust, p. 282.
104 Although note that two smaller camps – at Maly Trostenets and Bronna Gorá – were established in Belarus where Jews were murdered. Maly Trostenets started operation in May 1942 – its chief function to murder the Jews of Minsk. Bronna Gorá in western Belarus began killing Jews from the surrounding area shortly afterwards. Though the exact number killed in these camps is unknown, neither approached the scale of the Operation Reinhard camps.
105 Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 87, 25 October 1941.
106 Browning, Origins, p. 362.
107 Testimony from 8 November 1961, BArch ZStL 203 AR-Z 69/59, vol. 3, pp. 5–6. And Rees, Auschwitz, p. 92.
108 Dr Goebbels, ‘Die Juden sind schuld!’, Das Reich, no. 46, 16 November 1941, pp. 1–2.
109 For Professor Christopher Browning’s own detailed analysis, see his Origins, pp. 358–73.
110 Hitler’s Table Talk, pp. 57–8, night of 13–14 October 1941.
111 Patrick Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, I. B. Tauris, 2012, p. 34.
112 See here.
113 Michael Thad Allen, ‘The Devil in the Details: The Gas Chambers of Birkenau, October 1941’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, Autumn 2002, pp. 189–216. Rees, Auschwitz, pp. 82–3.
Chapter 11: The Road to Wannsee
1 Account by V. S. Pronin, President of the Moscow Soviet, Voenno-istoricheskii Zhurnal, vol. 10 (1991), pp. 335–41.
2 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. 2: Untergang, R. Löwit, 1973, pp. 1773, 1779, Hitler speech, 8 November 1941.
3 Laurence Rees, World War II: Behind Closed Doors, BBC Books, 2008, p. 114.
4 Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 2, pp. 1773–4.
5 Ibid., pp. 1804, 1808, Hitler speech to the Reichstag, 11 December 1941.
6 Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Diktate 1941–1945, vol. 2, K. G. Saur, 1996, pp. 498–9, entry for 13 December 1941.
7 Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (eds.), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1975, pp. 452–9, here p. 457.
8 Patrick Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, I. B. Tauris, 2012, p. 22.
9 Ibid., p. 43.
10 Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, Heinemann, 2004, p. 417.
11 Ibid., p. 372.
12 Montague, Chełmno, p. 64.
13 Browning, Origins, p. 418.
14 Eugen Kogon et al., Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, S. Fischer Verlag, 1983, pp. 122–3. Also J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, Exeter University Press, 1991 edn, p. 1140.
15 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 91.
16 Montague, Chełmno, p. 59.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., pp. 65–6.
19 Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, Indiana University Press, 2008, p. 370, Rumkowski’s speech of 20 December 1941, document no. 122: YI-1221.
20 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 91.
21 Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, vol. 3, pp. 1127–34.
22 David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes, Vintage, 2005, p. 114.
23 Browning, Origins, p. 406.
24 Cesarani, Eichmann, p. 114.
25 Sister Margherita Marchione, Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Pius XII, Paulist Press, 2002, p. 71.
26 Laurence Rees, War of the Century, BBC Books, 1999, pp. 78–80.
27 Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, Pan, 2001, p. 571, cited in Jost Dülffler, Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1945, Kohlhammer, 1992, p. 125.
28 Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 2, pp. 1828–9, Hitler speech, Berlin Sportpalast, 30 January 1942.
29 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 97.
30 Previously unpublished testimony.
31 Quoted in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Riess, ‘The Good Old Days’, Konecky & Konecky, 1991, p. 255.
32 Browning, Origins, p. 420.
33 Rudolf Reder, Belzec, Auschwitz Museum, 1999, p. 115.
34 Ibid., pp. 118–20.
35 Ibid., pp. 124–5.
36 Ibid., p. 130.
37 Ibid., pp. 132–3.
38 Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II, vol. 3, K. G. Saur, 1994, pp. 557–63, entry for 27 March 1942.
39 Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 295.
40 Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi–Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 66.
41 See Wisliceny’s post-war testimony in Slovakia, 6–7 May 1946 (Statny oblastny archive v Bratislave, Fond Ludovy sud, 10/48) and 12 August 1946 (Statny oblastny archive v Bratislave, Fond Ludovy sud, 13/48), plus Koso’s testimony of 11 April 1947 (Statny oblastny archive v Bratislave, Fond Ludovy sud, 13/48).
42 Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 2, pp. 1828–9, Hitler speech, Berlin Sportpalast, 30 January 1942.
43 Previously unpublished testimony.
44 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 108.
45 Previously unpublished testimony.
46 Previously unpublished testimony. Also see Rees, Auschwitz, p. 108.
47 Previously unpublished testimony.
48 Previously unpublished testimony.
49 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 110.
50 Previously unpublished testimony.
51 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 114.
52 Previously unpublished testimony.
53 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 299.
54 Previously unpublished testimony.
55 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 114.
56 Hoess, Commandant, pp. 149–50.
57 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 207.
58 Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, Pimlico, 1995, pp. 111–12.
59 Ibid., pp. 113–14.
60 Ibid., p. 131.
61 Klee et al., ‘The Good Old Days’, p. 232.
62 Jules Schelvis, Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp, Berg, 2007; see Chapters 3, 4 and 5, but in particular pp. 63–6.
63 Even though a number of the Soviet POWs were not from Ukraine, they were collectively known in the camp as ‘Ukrainians’ and so that usage is adopted here.
64 Rees, Auschwitz, pp. 210–11.
Chapter 12: Search and Kill
1 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, Stanford University Press, 1995, p. 88. Vallat made this statement at his trial after the war, though it was ‘almost identical’ to a speech he had given in sping 1942.
2 Ibid., p. 90.
3 Ulrich Herbert, ‘The German Military Command in Paris and the Deportation of the French Jews’, in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, Berghahn Books, 2000, pp. 128–62, here p. 139.
4 Ibid., p. 140.
5 Ibid., p. 143.
6 David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes, Vintage, 2005, pp. 139–40.
7 Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, p. 243.
8 Serge Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, New York University Press, 1996, p. 34.
9 Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, pp. 233–4.
10 Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French and the Jews, Bison Books, 1993, p. 99. Dannecker is the source for the Laval quotation; Laval’s words to the Council of Ministers six days later also tally with this previous statement reported by Dannecker.
11 Previously unpublished
testimony. Also see Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, pp. 126–31.
12 Klarsfeld, French Children, p. 45. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, p. 263.
13 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 130.
14 Previously unpublished testimony.
15 Previously unpublished testimony.
16 Previously unpublished testimony.
17 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 132, together with previously unpublished testimony.
18 Previously unpublished testimony.
19 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–65, Indiana University Press, 2000, pp. 92–3.
20 Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, p. 261.
21 Margherita Grassini Sarfatti, My Fault: Mussolini as I Knew Him, ed. Brian R. Sullivan, Enigma Books, 2014, p. 84.
22 Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival, University of Nebraska Press, 1996, p. 77. Michele Sarfatti, The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality to Persecution, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006, pp. 159–60.
23 Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, p. 317.
24 Ibid.
25 Nuto Revelli (ed.), Mussolini’s Death March: Eyewitness Accounts of Italian Soldiers on the Eastern Front, Kansas University Press, 2013. See in particular the testimony of Bartolomeo Fruttero in Warsaw, pp. 219–20.
26 Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands 1940–1945, Arnold, 1997, p. 91.
27 Jacob Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry, Souvenir Press, 2010, p. 142. And Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 93.
28 Presser, Ashes, p. 147.
29 Ibid.
30 Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, Pimlico, 2001, pp. 46–7.
31 Michael Fleming, Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 106.
32 Ibid., p. 107, note from Maurice Perlzweig of the WJC, in late September 1942.
33 See Jan Karski’s testimony, pp. 288–9.
34 Fleming, Auschwitz, p. 116, Anthony Eden, House of Commons, 17 December 1942.
35 Testimony from Gerhart Riegner in Reputations: Pope Pius XII: The Pope, the Jews and the Nazis, produced by Jonathan Lewis, executive producer Laurence Rees, transmitted on BBC2 in 1995.
36 This translation taken from Reputations: Pope Pius XII. See also http://catholictradition.org/Encyclicals/1942.htm.
37 Translation of letter at http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2012/07/70th-anniversary-of-pastoral-letter-of.html.
38 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/labmind/2011/01/archbishop-de-jong-the-cost-of-speaking-up.html?repeat=w3tc.
39 Research for Reputations: Pope Pius XII.
40 Testimony from Reputations: Pope Pius XII, transmitted on BBC2 in 1995.
41 See Phayer, Catholic Church, p. 94. Phayer contends that the argument that de Jong’s protest caused the deportation of baptized Jews ‘rings hollow’ and that ‘The archbishop’s protest was simply an excuse the Nazis used to seize these Jewish converts prematurely.’
42 Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 79, quoting the work of Dr Jacob Presser.
43 Testimony from Witold Złotnicki in Reputations: Pope Pius XII, transmitted on BBC2 in 1995.
44 Livia Rothkirchen, ‘The Churches and the Deportation and Persecution of Jews in Slovakia’, in Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith and Irena Steinfeldt (eds.), The Holocaust and the Christian World, Yad Vashem, 2000, pp. 104–7.
45 James Mace Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia, Cornell University Press, 2013, p. 232.
46 Rothkirchen, ‘Persecution of Jews in Slovakia’.
47 Mace Ward, Jozef Tiso, pp. 234–6.
48 Testimony from Jan Karski in Reputations: Pope Pius XII, transmitted on BBC2 in 1995.
49 Peter Longerich in Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 362, gives a figure of 52,000 Jews in Belgium at the end of 1940.
50 Ibid., p. 372.
51 Hans Fredrik Dahl, Quisling: A Study in Treachery, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 287.
52 Figures from the Norwegian Royal Commission (NOU 1977: 22) quoted in ibid.
53 Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941–1945, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1964, pp. 120–21.
54 Ibid., pp. 101–2. Original: Nuremberg document NOKW-1071.
55 Ibid., p. 99.
56 Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof, Nürnberg, 14. November 1945–1. Oktober 1946, vol. XV, p. 327.
57 Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Serie E: 1941–1945, vol. VII, 1. Oktober 1943 bis 30. April 1944, doc. no. 352, pp. 658–60.
58 Randolph L. Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System 1939–1945, East European Quarterly, 1977, p. 28. Also see Robert Rozett, Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Labourers on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, Yad Vashem, 2013, pp. 158–63.
59 Cesarani, Eichmann, p. 151.
60 I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and its Jews, Greenwood Press, 1992, p. 138.
61 Ibid., p. 139.
62 Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans Umbreit, Organization and Mobilization in the German Sphere of Power: Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1942–1944/5, vol. 5, issue 2 of Germany and the Second World War, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 855. Also Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Penguin, 2007, p. 587.
63 Cesarani, Eichmann, p. 152.
64 Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, vol. 4: 1941–1945, Bolchazy-Carducci, 2004, pp. 2679–80, Hitler speech, 30 September 1942.
65 Lothar Gall (ed.), Krupp im 20. Jahrhundert. Die Geschichte des Unternehmens vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gründung der Stiftung, Siedler, 2002. Werner Abelshauser, Rüstungsschmiede der Nation? Der Kruppkonzern im Dritten Reich und in der Nachkriegszeit 1933 bis 1951, pp. 267–472, here p. 412. Original in FAH, 5 C 48.
66 Domarus, Hitler (English edn), vol. 4, p. 2687, Göring speech, 4 October 1942, in Berlin.
Chapter 13: Nazi Death Camps in Poland
1 There were also camps in Belarus, for example, at Maly Trostenets and Bronna Gorá where Jews were murdered, but neither had fixed gas chambers.
2 Tatiana Berenstein et al. (eds.), Faschismus – Getto – Massenmord. Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges, Röderberg-Verlag, 1960, p. 303. In English in J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, Exeter University Press, 1991, pp. 1159–60.
3 Léon Poliakov and Joseph Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener, Ullstein, 1983, pp. 471ff. Also in document 170-USSR, in Der Prozessgegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof, Nürnberg, 14. November 1945–1. Oktober 1946, vol. XXIX, 1949, pp. 385ff. Stenographic report of the meeting of Reich Marshal Göring with the Reich Commissioners for the occupied territories and Military Commanders on the food situation, 6 August 1942.
4 Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Penguin, 2007, p. 545.
5 Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 570. Also see pp. 561–8 for his analysis of the reasons behind Himmler’s 19 July statement.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., pp. 564 and 572.
8 Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, Hutchinson, 1956, pp. 132–4, entry for 16 July 1942. These memoirs have to be treated with considerable care and are not always reliable. This section, however – also quoted in part by Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction, p. 526 – is credible.
9 Joseph Poprzeczny, Odilo Globocnik: Hitler’s Man in the East, McFarland, 2004, pp. 320–21. Also Longerich, Himmler, pp. 583–4.
10 Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron and Josef Kermisz (eds.), The Warsaw Diary of Adam C
zerniaków, Elephant, 1999, pp. 381–5.
11 Ibid., p. 385.
12 Jacob Sloan (ed.), Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, from the Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, iBooks, 2006, p. 292, entry dated ‘June 1942’.
13 Ibid., pp. 330–31 (no precise date given).
14 Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, Fontana, 1990, p. 145, entry for 1 August 1942.
15 Previously unpublished testimony.
16 Auschwitz was the only place where more Jews were murdered, but unlike Treblinka Auschwitz was never solely a death camp.
17 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 162.
18 Michael Grabher, Irmfried Eberl. ‘Euthanasie’ Arzt und Kommandant von Treblinka, Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 70–71, letter from Irmfried Eberl to Ruth, 20 June 1942, HHStAW 631a, no. 1631.
19 Ibid., p. 73, letter from Irmfried Eberl to Ruth, 30 July 1942, HHStAW 631a, no. 1631. Also quoted in Ute Hofmann and Dietmar Schulze, ‘… wird heute in eine andere Anstalt verlegt’. Nationalsozialistische Zwangssterilisation und ‘Euthanasie’ in der Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg – eine Dokumentation, Regierungspräsidium Dessau, 1997, pp. 67–8.
20 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 162.
21 Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, 1999, p. 84.
22 Ibid., p. 85.
23 Ibid., p. 87.
24 Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, Pimlico, 1995, pp. 160–61.
25 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 163.
26 Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Riess, ‘The Good Old Days’, Konecky & Konecky, 1991, p. 244.
27 Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p. 96.
28 Sereny, Darkness, p. 161.
29 Volker Rieß, ‘Christian Wirth – der Inspekteur der Vernichtungslager’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul (eds.), Karrieren der Gewalt. Nationalsozialistische Täterbiographien, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004, pp. 239–51, here p. 247. Original in BArch 208 AR-Z 252/59, vol. 9, pp. 1689ff., hearing of Josef Oberhauser, 13 December 1962.
30 Previously unpublished testimony.
31 Previously unpublished testimony.
32 Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997, p. 165.
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