Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  Jon E. Lewis is the author of numerous books in the Autobiography series, including England: The Autobiography, London: The Autobiography and Spitfire: The Autobiography. His books have been published in languages as diverse as Japanese and Portuguese Brazilian, and have sold more than a million copies.

  Praise for his previous books:

  England: The Autobiography:

  ‘A triumph’ Saul David, author of Victoria’s Army

  The British Soldier: The Autobiography:

  ‘This thoughtful compilation ... almost unbearably moving’

  Guardian

  ‘Compelling Tommy’s eye view of war’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘What a book. Five stars’ Daily Express

  Other books by Jon E. Lewis

  World War II: The Autobiography

  London: The Autobiography

  Rome: The Autobiography

  Survivor: The Autobiography

  SAS: The Autobiography

  The Mammoth Book of Native Americans

  The Mammoth Book of The Edge

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © J. Lewis-Stempel, 2012

  The right of John Lewis-Stempel to be identified as the author of this work has been assured by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1990

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-84901-723-7

  eISBN: 978-1-78033-082-2

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Part I:

  SPARK

  The Nazis and the Jews in Germany, 1933–1938

  Part II:

  FLAME

  The Holocaust, 1939–19 January 1942

  Part III:

  ASH

  The Final Solution, 20 January 1942–1946

  ENVOI:

  The Nuremberg Trials

  Appendix:

  Estimated Number of Jews Killed in the Final Solution

  Bibliography

  Sources and Acknowledgements

  Index

  INTRODUCTION

  This is a history of the Holocaust against the Jews. The term ‘Holocaust’ is sometimes extended to other victims of the Nazis – Roma, homosexuals, political opponents – but the Jews held a special place in the demonology of the Third Reich. The Nazis’ motive for the mass murder of Socialists – or even the Roma – was not the same, in type or extent, as for their destruction of European Jewry. This war against the Jews began in earnest in 1941, after nearly a decade of preliminaries, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, bringing millions of Jews within the borders of the Third Reich. For four years SS ‘special groups’ and camp guards, aided and abetted by Wehrmacht soldiers and local sympathizers, waged war on the Jews; at the height of the persecutions, between 1942 and 1944, Jews were daily being murdered by the thousand. By the time of Germany’s defeat in May 1945 six million European Jews had died; it was only invasion by the Allies that put a stop to the genocide, and saved the lives of Europe’s remaining two million Semites.

  During the Holocaust as many as two million Jews were shot in the open air, in streets and forest clearings; perhaps two and three-quarter million were gassed in the extermination camps; the remainder of those who perished did so from disease or malnutrition in the camps and ghettos, or were worked to death, or succumbed in the ‘death marches’ of the winter of 1944–5.

  There are many who deny the scale of the Holocaust, or even the fact of its existence. The testaments of those who survived the genocide of the Jews comprise the prime evidence of the Holocaust, and it is some of these ‘voices’ that are gathered in this book to show the tragedy that befell both individuals and a whole race of people. I have also included the voices of the perpetrators – not for ‘balance’, but because the greatest indictment – and the most incontrovertible proof – of the Holocaust is the records kept by the SS themselves. Few of these records are as chilling as the dry, statistical report from the Commanding Officer of Einsatzkommando 3 in December 1941 in which he records the execution of 137,346 East European Jews, listed by place and number killed.

  The Holocaust did not spring fully formed from the monstrous, collective head of Adolf Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and other senior Nazis. Anti-Semitism in Germany and Eastern Europe had deep roots; the Nazis found it bewilderingly easy to turn ancient prejudice into modern mass murder. In dark corners of Europe, Christians had believed for centuries that the Jews killed Christ and that the blood of Christian babes was used in the making of Passover bread. Had Martin Luther himself not stated in 1543 that in payback for these ‘crimes’, synagogues ‘should be set on fire’ and the Jews driven from the land? Numerous European political entities took him and his fellow anti-Semites at their word. Throughout the medieval and early-modern eras Jews were expelled from one land after another, or confined to ghettos. On the surface, the nineteenth century seemed, at last, to bring enlightenment to the racial politics of Europe, and Jews were ‘assimilated’ into mainstream society and politics. Britain even had a Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Yet the integration was never universal; in whole swathes of Eastern Europe peasant pogroms against Jews continued unabated. These same areas – the Ukraine, Poland, Volhnyia – would offer enthusiastic support for the Holocaust once they were incorporated into the Third Reich. But supposedly assimilated Jews in urban, ‘sophisticated’, nineteenth-century society also found themselves on the receiving end of racism, constantly being vilified as grasping usurers and political Machiavellis. And aliens.

  Such was the case in Germany, the most modern of major European countries. In 1881, a mere decade after unification, a quarter of a million Germans signed the so-called ‘Anti-Semites Petition’ which declared:

  In all regions of Germany the conviction has prevailed that the rank growth of the Jewish element bears within it the most serious dangers to our nationhood. Wherever Christian and Jew enter into social relations, we see the Jew as master, the indigenous Christian population in a subservient position ...

  After railing against the concentration of capital in Jewish hands and the baleful influence of Jews in the press and public offices, the petition called upon the Reich Chancellor to, inter alia, exclude Jews from all governmental positions, restrict their numbers in the judiciary, and expel them as teachers from the classroom.

  Anti-Semitism was part of the fabric of German society from the outset. There was something else stitched into the weave: German nationalism was early defined by the sense of Volk and the primacy of the Aryan race. How toxic was the racist nationalism of Germany was demonstrated in a far-off corner of another continent, when the Aryan rulers of German South West Africa caused the deaths of 100,000 of the Herero and Nama peoples between 1904–7. Germany committed the first genocide of the twentieth century, as well as the largest one.

  Among those who applauded the ethnic cleansing of South West Africa were the myriad Volkisch clubs and societies in Germany, which added a strand of occultism to the country’s hyper-racist nationalism. One such society was the obscure Order of Teutons, fou
nded in 1912. Those who wished to join the Order were required to sign an oath by which:

  The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or coloured blood flows in either his or in his wife’s veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the coloured races.

  Once branch of the Order of Teutons (symbol: the swastika) developed into the Thule Society which then became the German Workers’ Party, later organized by Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party. Fascism was not inherently anti-Semitic; Mussolini generally considered persecution of the Jews to be ludicrous, and the Spanish dictator Franco positively protected Spanish nationals from the Holocaust. But the German preoccupation with blood purity – rather than politics – meant that German fascism was irrevocably anti-Semitic. This was further exacerbated by Germany’s defeat in the Great War. Loud and insistent voices were raised, blaming ‘the Jews’ for the country’s shame – either because they were ‘Bolshevik’ traitors, or because they were arch-capitalist manipulators who put profit before country. In all likelihood Adolf Hitler was genuinely convinced that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s woes, but he was not above opportunistic scapegoating to gain mass support. Whatever the root cause, it became his unshakable conviction that Germany’s Jews should be removed from the face of the country in a race war. Hitler told an NSDAP meeting on 12 April 1922:

  ... there can be no compromise – there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.

  In case anyone outside the beer halls of Munich and the NSDAP’s 3,000-strong membership failed to heed his anti-Semitic message, he made it the motif of his political testimony, Mein Kampf (My Battle), written in prison following the failed Putsch of 1923:

  It is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat except by the sword. Only the assembled and concentrated might of a national passion rearing up its strength can defy the international enslavement of peoples. Such a process is and remains a bloody one.

  In another passage he declared:

  The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude towards Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with Beelzebub.

  After meeting Jews in Vienna in his youth, Hitler wrote, he came to wonder:

  Was there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew did not participate? On putting the proving knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Jew who was often blinded by the sudden light.

  And most ominously, in light of later events, he wrote:

  If at the beginning of the War and during the War, twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under a poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.

  Only by destroying the Jews, Hitler argued, could Germany become great again.

  His attack on the Jews was not confined to paper. He had already set up the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung, or ‘Stormtroopers’, in the Nazi Party, whose duties were divided between defending NSDAP meetings from the ‘Reds’ and beating up Jews on the streets.

  Despite the high sales of Mein Kampf and the street antics of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazis were nothing but a strident right-wing sect until 1929, when the Weimar Republic began splitting asunder. Inflation began to rise, as did unemployment – the latter reaching three million by the end of 1929. Amongst the political benefactors was the German Communist Party (KPD), whose gains in membership and electoral seats created panic in middle Germany. Almost overnight, Hitler’s NSDAP, a presumed bulwark against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’, became a serious contender for political power. In the Reichstag election of 1928, the Nazi Party had secured twelve seats; when Germans went to vote on 14 September 1930 they returned 107 Nazi deputies; in the elections of July 1932 the Nazis won 230 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler had enough deputies to form a government in coalition with other parties, but refused to accept any arrangement in which he was not Chancellor. The political crisis rumbled on, and fresh elections were called for 6 November 1932.

  To the dismay of Hitler, Nazi votes and seats fell (the latter to 196). He need not have worried. In the end, to borrow Alan Bullock’s famous maxim, Hitler was ‘jobbed into power by a backstairs intrigue’. Faced with the prospect of a KPD-Socialist government, the parties of the right and centre struck a deal in which Hitler would head a coalition. He grabbed his chance: on 30 January 1933 the forty-three-year-old Austrian former corporal was appointed Chancellor.

  The Holocaust had already begun, with the murder of eight Jews by the Sturmabteilung in Berlin on 1 January 1930. With the Nazis’ seizing of power the eradication of Jewry became official policy; for the first time in history a state would dedicate itself to the genocide of a people. Six million more Jews would follow the victims of Berlin into the grave.

  PART I: SPARK

  The Nazis and the Jews

  in Germany, 1933–1938

  On the bleak winter’s day of 30 January 1933, shortly before noon, Adolf Hitler took office as Chancellor of Germany. He swore the following oath:

  I will employ my strength for the welfare of the German people, protect the Constitution and laws of the German people, conscientiously discharge the duties imposed on me and conduct my affairs of office impartially and with justice to everyone.

  Not a word of this oath would Hitler go on to observe, except in the breaching of it. Within four days he had persuaded Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, to sign a decree banning public meetings and publications likely to endanger public security. In other words, meetings by and newspapers of the organizations opposed to Hitler. On 27 February the Reichstag building was set afire. The arson was allegedly the work of a deranged Communist Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe; more likely the Nazis set the building alight themselves. Whatever the true facts were, the incident gave Hitler the opportunity to issue more decrees undermining both the constitution and basic liberties, including free speech and right of assembly. House searches no longer required warrants, while a rule regarding ‘protective custody’ legalized arbitrary incarceration. Germany had taken the first decisive steps towards dictatorship; henceforth the heavy banging on the door at night, the stamp of the goose-step, and pop-pop-pop of the Maschinenpostole would become the soundtrack of the Third Reich.

  The Reichstag is Set Alight, Berlin, 27 February 1933

  D. SEFTON DELMER

  Sefton Delmer was a journalist working for the British Daily Express.

  ‘This is a God-given signal! If this fire, as I believe, turns out to be the handiwork of Communists, then there is nothing that shall stop us now crushing out this murderous pest with an iron fist.’

  Adolf Hitler, Fascist Chancellor of Germany, made this dramatic declaration in my presence tonight in the hall of the burning Reichstag building.

  The fire broke out at 9.45 tonight in the Assembly Hall of the Reichstag.

  It had been laid in five different corners and there is no doubt whatever that it was the handiwork of incendiaries.

  One of the incendiaries, a man aged thirty, was arrested by the police as he came rushing out of the building, clad only in shoes and trousers, without shirt or coat, despite the icy cold in Berlin tonight.

  Five minutes after the fire had broken out I was outside the Reichstag watching the flames licking their way up the great dome into the tower.

  A cordon had been flung round the building and no one was allowed to pass it.

  After about twenty minutes of fascinated watching I suddenly saw the famous black motor car of Adolf Hitler slide past, followed by another car containing his personal bodyguard.

  I rushed after them and was just in time to attach myself to the fringe of Hitl
er’s party as they entered the Reichstag.

  Never have I seen Hitler with such a grim and determined expression. His eyes, always a little protuberant, were almost bulging out of his head.

  Captain Göring, his right-hand man, who is the Prussian Minister of the Interior, and responsible for all police affairs, joined us in the lobby. He had a very flushed and excited face.

  ‘This is undoubtedly the work of Communists, Herr Chancellor,’ he said.

  ‘A number of Communist deputies were present here in the Reichstag twenty minutes before the fire broke out. We have succeeded in arresting one of the incendiaries.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Dr Goebbels, the propaganda chief of the Nazi Party, threw in.

  ‘We do not know yet,’ Captain Göring answered, with an ominously determined look around his thin, sensitive mouth. ‘But we shall squeeze it out of him, have no doubt, doctor.’

  We went into a room. ‘Here you can see for yourself, Herr Chancellor, the way they started the fire,’ said Captain Göring, pointing out the charred remains of some beautiful oak panelling.

  ‘They’ve hung cloths soaked in petrol over the furniture here and set it alight.’

  We strode across another lobby filled with smoke. The police barred the way. ‘The candelabra may crash any moment, Herr Chancellor,’ said a captain of the police, with his arms outstretched.

  By a detour we next reached a part of the building which was actually in flames. Firemen were pouring water into the red mass.

  Hitler watched them for a few moments, a savage fury blazing from his pale blue eyes.

  Then we came upon Herr von Papen, urbane and debonair as ever.

  Hitler stretched out his hand and uttered the threat against the Communists which I have already quoted. He then turned to Captain Göring. ‘Are all the other public buildings safe?’ he questioned.