The Holocaust: A New History
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33 Previously unpublished testimony.
34 Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p. 190.
35 Laurence Rees, Their Darkest Hour, Ebury Press, 2007, p. 94.
36 In conversation with author; see ibid., p. 94.
37 Tomasz Kranz, Extermination of Jews at Majdanek Concentration Camp, State Museum, Majdanek, 2010, p. 13.
38 Ibid., p. 59.
39 Previously unpublished testimony.
40 Testimony from Touched by Auschwitz, written and produced by Laurence Rees, transmitted on BBC2, 20 January 2015.
41 Previously unpublished testimony.
42 Testimony displayed at the State Museum, Majdanek.
43 Elissa Mailänder, Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942–1944, Michigan State University Press, 2015, p. 242.
44 Ibid., pp. xi–xiii.
45 The total for Treblinka is given in the decoded telegram as 71,355, but this is an obvious misprint, as in order to get the total contained in the telegram of 1,274,166 the number killed at Treblinka has to be 713,555 – a number that is also confirmed as credible by other documentary evidence.
46 PRO HW 16/10.
Chapter 14: Killing, and Persuading Others to Help
1 Laurence Rees, War of the Century, BBC Books, 1999, p. 128.
2 Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds.), The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, Greenhill Books, 1988, p. 646, entry for 23 July 1942.
3 Rees, War of the Century, p. 159.
4 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. 2: Untergang, R. Löwit, 1973, p. 1916, Hitler speech, Berlin Sportpalast, 30 September 1942.
5 FDR address 12 February 1943, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/casablan.asp.
6 Theodore S. Hamerow, Why We Watched: Europe, America, and the Holocaust, W. W. Norton, 2008, p. 349. The Roosevelt–Noguès and the Roosevelt–Giraud Conversations at the President’s Villa, noon and 4:20 p.m., 17 January 1943, Roosevelt Papers, McCrea Notes, in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington 1941–1942 and Casablanca 1943, US Department of State, 1968, pp. 608–11.
7 Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Diktate 1941–1945, vol. 7, K. G. Saur, 1993, p. 454, entry for 2 March 1943.
8 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 321–6.
9 Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, Nemesis, Allen Lane, 2000, p. 582.
10 Andreas Hillgruber (ed.), Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Zweiter Teil. Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes 1942–1944, Bernard & Graefe, 1970, pp. 234–63, here pp. 238, 240, 245, 256–7, meeting on 16 April and 17 April 1943.
11 Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II, vol. 8, K. G. Saur, 1993, p. 225, entry for 7 May 1943.
12 Record by SS-Oberführer Veesenmayer, in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Serie E: 1941–1945, vol. VI, 1. Mai bis 30. September 1943, pp. 78–80, here p. 79.
13 Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II, vol. 8, pp. 236, 238, entry for 8 May 1943.
14 Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 2, p. 2003, communiqué concerning the meeting of Hitler and King Boris, 3 April 1943.
15 Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, Heinemann, 2004, p. 212. Also Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 663–4.
16 Previously unpublished testimony.
17 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 176.
18 Previously unpublished testimony.
19 This is a suspiciously exact figure, to be treated with caution. (The fact that it is the same forwards as backwards only adds to that suspicion.)
20 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 316.
21 Jadwiga Bezwińska and Danuta Czech (eds.), Amidst a Nightmare of Crime, Howard Fertig, 1992, p. 47, deposition of Alter Feinsilber (also known as Stanislaw Jankowski).
22 Previously unpublished testimony.
23 Bezwińska and Czech (eds.), Amidst a Nightmare, p. 52.
24 Previously unpublished testimony.
25 Previously unpublished testimony.
26 Dr Miklós Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, Penguin, 2012, p. 24.
27 Previously unpublished testimony.
28 Nyiszli, Auschwitz, p. 42.
29 Previously unpublished testimony.
30 Previously unpublished testimony.
31 Bezwińska and Czech (eds.), Amidst a Nightmare, p. 119.
32 Ibid., p. 56, deposition of Alter Feinsilber.
33 Ibid.
34 Previously unpublished testimony.
35 Rees, Auschwitz, pp. 236–7.
36 Bezwińska and Czech (eds.), Amidst a Nightmare, p. 119.
37 Previously unpublished testimony.
38 Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial, Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 80.
39 Testimony from Touched by Auschwitz, transmitted on BBC2, 20 January 2015, and previously unpublished testimony.
40 Previously unpublished testimony.
41 Previously unpublished testimony.
42 Previously unpublished testimony.
43 Bezwińska and Czech (eds.), Amidst a Nightmare, p. 59.
44 Kurt Jonassohn, with Karin Solveig Björnson, Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations in Comparative Perspective, Transaction, 1999, p. 283.
45 Wim Willems, In Search of the True Gypsy: From Enlightenment to Final Solution, Routledge, 2013, p. 251.
46 Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, Gypsies under the Swastika, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2009, pp. 38–9.
47 Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, p. 584.
48 Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II, vol. 8, p. 288, entry for 13 May 1943.
Chapter 15: Oppression and Revolt
1 Testimony from The Nazis: A Warning from History, Episode 6: Fighting to the End, written and produced by Laurence Rees, first transmission October 1997, BBC2.
2 Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, vol. 4: 1941–1945, Bolchazy-Carducci, 2004, p. 2818, Hitler speech, 10 September 1943.
3 Martin Gilbert, The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, Black Swan, 2003, p. 439.
4 Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival, University of Nebraska Press, 1996, p. 81.
5 Renzo De Felice, ‘Hunting Down the Jews’, in Stanislao G. Pugliese (ed.), Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present, Rowan & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 200–206, here p. 202.
6 José M. Sánchez, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy, Catholic University of America Press, 2002, p. 143.
7 Testimony from Reputations: Pope Pius XII: The Pope, the Jews and the Nazis, produced by Jonathan Lewis, executive producer Laurence Rees, transmitted on BBC2 in 1995.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Zuccotti, Italians and the Holocaust, p. 133.
11 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965, Indiana University Press, 2000, pp. 240–45.
12 Figures from Zuccotti, Italians and the Holocaust, p. xxv. Note this is the figure for those who died. The estimate on p. 274 is for the number deported to Auschwitz.
13 Zuccotti, Italians and the Holocaust, pp. 235–6.
14 Previously unpublished testimony.
15 Previously unpublished testimony.
16 Emmy E. Werner, A Conspiracy of Decency: The Rescue of the Danish Jews during World War II, Westview Press, 2002, p. 49.
17 Previously unpublished testimony.
18 Michael Mogensen, ‘October 1943 – The Rescue of the Danish Jews’, in Mette Bastholm Jensen and Steven L. B. Jensen (eds.), Denmark and
the Holocaust, Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2003, pp. 33–61, here p. 45.
19 Previously unpublished testimony.
20 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, pp. 221–2.
21 Mogensen, ‘Rescue’, p. 33. See also Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969.
22 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives a figure of 72,000 Jews in Greece at the time of the occupation and ‘nearly 60,000’ who died in the Holocaust: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005778. Steven B. Bowman, The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945, Stanford University Press, 2009, p. 77, states that nearly 90 per cent of Greek Jewry perished.
23 Bowman, Agony of Greek Jews, p. 177.
24 David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–49, Macmillan, 2016, p. 600. Also see Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, Yale University Press, 2001, for a description of the deportation of the Jews from Salonica, pp. 238–46.
25 Previously unpublished testimony.
26 Israel Cymlich and Oskar Strawczynski, Escaping Hell in Treblinka, Yad Vashem, 2007, p. 167.
27 Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997, p. 170.
28 Previously unpublished testimony.
29 Cymlich and Strawczynski, Escaping Hell in Treblinka, p. 178.
30 Yankel Wiernik, A Year in Treblinka, General Jewish Workers’ Union of Poland, 1945, Chapter 13. www.zchor.org/treblink/wiernik.htm.
31 Previously unpublished testimony.
32 Thomas Toivi Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor, Northwestern University Press, 1997, p. 129.
33 Cesarani, Final Solution, pp. 676–7. Although this impact should not be exaggerated. Very few Dutch Jews survived Auschwitz.
34 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 210.
35 Previously unpublished testimony.
36 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 214.
37 Previously unpublished testimony.
38 Rees, Auschwitz, pp. 214–15.
39 Previously unpublished testimony.
40 Previously unpublished testimony.
41 Previously unpublished testimony.
42 Blatt, Ashes of Sobibor, p. 167.
43 Ibid., p. 222.
44 Previously unpublished testimony.
45 Tatiana Berenstein et al. (eds.), Faschismus – Getto – Massenmord. Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkriegs, Röderberg-Verlag, 1960, p. 352, Circular by SS and Police Chief of Warsaw district, 13 March 1943.
46 Cymlich and Strawczynski, Escaping Hell in Treblinka, p. 58.
47 Ibid., p. 61.
48 Naomi Baumslag, Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus, Praeger, 2005, p. 117.
49 Statistics taken from Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945, Yale University Press, 2002, pp. 2–9 and 231.
50 Ibid., p. 231.
51 Previously unpublished testimony.
52 Joshua D. Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 9–10.
53 Gian P. Gentile, How Effective Is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned from World War II to Kosovo, New York University Press, 2001, pp. 59–60.
54 Domarus, Hitler (English edn), vol. 4, p. 2819, Hitler speech, 10 September 1943.
55 BArch NS 19/4010. Also reproduced in Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (eds.), Heinrich Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Propyläen Verlag, 1974, pp. 162–83, here pp. 169–70.
56 Rees, Auschwitz, pp. 215–16. Also see Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, 1999, p. 366.
57 Tomasz Kranz, The Extermination of Jews at Majdanek Concentration Camp, Majdanek, 2010, p. 64.
58 Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 382.
59 Testimony of Henryk Nieścior, State Museum, Majdanek, permanent exhibit.
60 Kranz, Majdanek, p. 66.
61 Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof, Nürnberg, 14. November 1945–1. Oktober 1946, vol. XXXIV, 1949, doc. 4024-PS, pp. 58–92, here p. 72.
62 Ibid., pp. 69–70, Himmler letter, 30 November 1943.
63 Zuccotti, Italians and the Holocaust, pp. 185–6.
64 Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, Pimlico, 1995 edn, p. 261.
Chapter 16: Auschwitz
1 More Jews were sent to the ‘family camp’ in two subsequent transports in December 1943 and March 1944 – giving a final total of 17,500 inmates.
2 Previously unpublished testimony.
3 Previously unpublished testimony.
4 Dr Miklós Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, Penguin, 2012, p. 35.
5 Previously unpublished testimony.
6 Previously unpublished testimony.
7 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 187.
8 Previously unpublished testimony.
9 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 187.
10 Wolfgang U. Eckart and Hana Vondra, ‘Disregard for Human Life: Hypothermia Experiments in the Dachau Concentration Camp’, in Wolfgang U. Eckart (ed.), Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006, pp. 157–66, here p. 163.
11 Ibid.
12 Maura Phillips Mackowski, Testing the Limits: Aviation Medicine and the Origins of Manned Space Flight, Texas A&M University Press, 2006, p. 94.
13 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 334.
14 Previously unpublished testimony.
15 Previously unpublished testimony.
16 Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939–1945: From the Archives of the Auschwitz Memorial and the German Federal Archives, I. B. Tauris, 1990, p. 591.
17 Previously unpublished testimony.
18 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 143.
19 Ibid., p. 167.
20 Previously unpublished testimony.
21 Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozess. Eine Dokumentation, Neue Kritik, 1995. See the testimony of Konrad Morgen in Frankfurt am Main on 8 March 1962, at the Auschwitz trial, ibid., pp. 143–5.
22 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, vol. 2: Untergang, R. Löwit, 1973, p. 2083, Hitler speech, 30 January 1944.
23 Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 193.
24 Ibid., pp. 210–11.
25 Laurence Rees, The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler, Ebury Press, 2012, p. 381.
26 Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Hitlers Ansprache vor Generalen und Offizieren am 26. Mai 1944’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, vol. 20, no. 2 (1976), pp. 141–61, here p. 156, Hitler’s address to generals and officers, 26 May 1944. In English in Peter Longerich, The Unwritten Order, Tempus, 2005, p. 212.
27 Clive Emsley, Eric Johnson and Pieter Spierenburg (eds.), Social Control in Europe, vol. 2, Ohio State University Press, 2004, p. 312.
28 David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–49, Macmillan, 2016, p. 727.
29 Previously unpublished testimony.
30 Previously unpublished testimony.
31 Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides (eds.), Łódź Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege, Penguin, 1991, p. 328.
32 Ibid., p. 329.
33 Ibid., p. 331.
34 Rees, Auschwitz, p. 102.
35 Previously unpublished testimony.
36 Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, Indiana University Press, 2008, p. 281, Josef Zelkowicz’s description of the September Action, ‘In Those Nightmarish Days’, no. 102: YI-54.
37 Trunk, Łódź Ghetto, p. 246.
38 Laurence Rees, Their Da
rkest Hour, Ebury Press, 2007, pp. 109–10.
39 Lucjan Dobroszycki (ed.), The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto 1941–1944, Yale University Press, 1984, p. 252, entry for 14 September 1942.
40 Previously unpublished testimony.
41 Previously unpublished testimony.
42 Testimony from The Nazis: A Warning from History, Episode 4: The Wild East, written and produced by Laurence Rees, first transmission October 1997, BBC2.
43 Trunk, Łódź Ghetto, p. 250.
44 Patrick Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, I. B. Tauris, 2012, p. 162.
45 Dobroszycki (ed.), Chronicle of Łódź Ghetto, p. 534, entry for 25 July 1944.
46 Note also the timing of the change from sending the Łódź Jews to Chełmno to sending them to Birkenau. That’s because by the start of August the mass killing of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz was over and the gas chambers of Birkenau now had the spare capacity to kill the Łódź Jews.
47 Max’s father had died in the ghetto; see here.
48 Previously unpublished testimony.
49 Previously unpublished testimony.
50 Michal Unger, Reassessment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, Yad Vashem, 2004, p. 13.
51 Rees, Auschwitz, pp. 104–5.
52 Ibid.
Chapter 17: Hungarian Catastrophe
1 Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Diktate 1941–1945, vol. 11, K. G. Saur, 1994, pp. 396, 399–400, entry for 4 March 1944.
2 Ibid., p. 348, entry for 25 February 1944.
3 Simo Muir and Hana Worthen (eds.), Finland’s Holocaust: Silences of History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Also Elina Suominen’s work, Kuoleman laiva s/s Hohenhörn (Death Ship S/S Hohenhörn), WSOY, 1979, and Luovutetut: Suomen ihmisluovutukset Gestapolle (The Extradited: Finland’s Extraditions to the Gestapo), WSOY, 2003, the latter title written under her married name Elina Sana.
4 The Finns signed an armistice with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom on 19 September 1944.
5 Previously unpublished testimony.
6 Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, Wayne State University Press, 1994, p. 110.
7 David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes, Vintage, 2005, p. 167.
8 Previously unpublished testimony.