Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews
Page 29
politics’ being worked out simultaneously by the Racial Policy Office of the
NSDAP. 31 At the same time a ‘short-term plan’ was established, according to which 80,000 Jews and Poles were to be removed from the Warthegau in order to
house the Baltic Germans who were then in provisional accommodation in camps. 32
And indeed, according to the Higher SS and Police Commander, Wilhelm Koppe’s
concluding report, between 1 and 17 December there were more than 87,000 people
deported from the Warthegau into the General Government, 33 ‘politically incriminated Poles, Jews, Polish intelligentsia, criminal and asocial elements’. 34
Although the original intention of deporting the Jews from the whole of the
area of the Reich into occupied Poland was not part of the long-range plan, the
RSHA had by no means given up this goal. A note about the ‘final solution to the
Jewish problem’ from the Jewish Affairs Department of the SD dated 19 December
1939 worked on the basis of two possible alternatives:35 either a ‘Jewish reservation’
would be created in Poland or the Jews transported from the area of the Reich
would ‘be accommodated in the future Gouvernement of Poland’. The author of
this note also asks the question of whether the ‘emigration of the Jews should not
still be carried out with a view to creating a reservation’, whereby in foreign-policy
terms the reservation would constitute a ‘good means of bringing pressure to bear
on the Western powers’: ‘perhaps it could be used to raise the question of a
worldwide solution at the end of the war’.
On 21 December Heydrich announced that he had appointed Eichmann his
‘special expert’ for ‘dealing with the centralized security police arrangements as
the clearance of the Eastern territories was carried out’, 36 and made him responsible for all the deportations planned for occupied Poland. These were initially to
be put into effect using additional ‘short-term plans’.
To start with, a second short-term plan made provision for transporting
600,000 people, all without exception Jews, into the General Government between
15 January and the end of April. 37 (As part of the second short-term plan, it had still been intended in December 1939 to ‘resettle’ 220,000 Jews and Poles from the
annexed Eastern areas into the General Government in January and February.)38
However, the start of the second short-term plan was put off on several occasions,
for the last time on 1 April 1940.39 In this period those responsible were juggling with different figures for the people to be deported, 40 whilst at the beginning of January Eichmann announced an order from Himmler that once more underlined
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157
the intention of deporting the Jews from the annexed territories into the General
Government. 41 Amongst other things the Head of the Reichskommissar’s Planning Division presented a master plan on 23 January which covered settlement in
the incorporated Eastern areas, according to which in the long term 3.4 million
Poles were to be deported. The plan also worked on the basis that the approxi-
mately 560,000 Jews in this area were also to be deported. 42
On 30 January 1940 Heydrich announced another decision: some 800,000 to 1
million Poles from the incorporated Eastern territories were to be brought into the
area of the Reich as a (provisional) ‘workforce’. Only some 40,000 Jews and Poles
were to be transported to the General Government from annexed Polish territory,
the new ‘Ostgaue’ (to make room for the Baltic Germans to settle), alongside, from
March onwards, 120,000 Poles (to make room for the Volhynian Germans). After
this, as a ‘last mass movement’ it was envisaged that all the Jews from the
integrated Polish areas and 30,000 Gypsies from the Reich would be transported
to the General Government. In addition, Heydrich announced that 1,000 Jews
would be deported at once from the area of the Old Reich, from Stettin. There was
no mention here of further deportations of Jews from the Old Reich. 43
Between 10 February and 15 March it was intended to carry out the deportation
of 40,128 Jews and Poles from western Polish cities into the General Government,
a campaign referred to as an ‘intermediate plan’ (the second short-term plan had
still not been initiated at that point). 44
As Heydrich had announced, on 12 and 13 February in addition more than 1,100
Jews were deported from the region of Stettin—almost the whole of the Jewish
community of that city—into the area around Lublin. At the same time the RSHA
instructed the Gestapo offices to ‘concentrate’ the German Jews forcibly in certain
places across the whole of the Reich, the better to be able to deport them when
the time came. This took place before the end of that month in the district of
Schneidemühl (in Pomerania), when 544 people—all Jews from that district—
were ‘collected’ in the district capital of Schneidemühl. 45 On 12 March some 160
people were taken from there to Glownew near Poznan. 46 Himmler justified the first deportations from the area of the Old Reich to the Gauleiters on 29 February
with the necessity of creating additional space for the Baltic German settlers; he
added that they should not ‘raise any false hopes’ about further deportations from
their Gaus. 47 The background to this remark was the fact that on 19 February Goering had put a stop to the deportations from the pre-war area of the Reich into
the General Government in order not to endanger the movements of people from
the incorporated Polish areas. 48 As a result the measures needed to achieve the further ‘concentration’ of Jews in certain cities were halted by the RSHA. 49
The deportations from Stettin and Schneidemühl, and the accommodation
of the deportees in ghettos in the Lublin district took place under miserable and
sub-human conditions such that in the first six months some 30 per cent of those
transported had died. 50
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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941
In his speech to the Gauleiters on 29 February Himmler explained that in the
course of the coming year (‘provided that the war lasts the whole year’) he intended
to turn his attention to ‘the emigration of the Jews . . . in so far as this is possible, given the numbers’ and in so far as the conditions in the General Government
permitted it. ‘As far as the 400,000 Jews and half-Jews in the area of the Old Reich or
the “Ostmark” and the Sudetengau are concerned’, he said, ‘despite the war, the
emigration of the Jews will continue as normal. We still want to emigrate [sic]
6,000–7,000 Jews a month, to Palestine, South America and North America.’
Alongside emigration for a maximum possible 80,000 Jews annually, the deport-
ations into the General Government were to start according to the following list of
priorities: ‘First I have to try to get the Jews out of the eastern provinces, Posen and
West Prussia, eastern Upper Silesia and South-East Prussia. Then follows the Old
Reich, then the Protectorate. The Gypsies are a separate question.’51
However, far-reaching deportation planning met with resistance from Frank.
At a leadership meeting on 12 February in Karinhall under the chairmanship of
Goering (in his capacity as the most senior figure responsible for dealing with the
Jewish question) he ha
d spoken against the ‘continuation of resettlement practice
so far’ and gained Goering and Himmler’s agreement to discuss the mechanisms
of evacuation with him in more detail. 52
On 19 February 1940 Goering made it clear in a letter to Heydrich that ‘Jews
living in the area of the Reich, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia . . . —with the exception of special cases—could not be evacuated into
the General Government’. In contrast, however, those Jews living in the annexed
Polish areas should be ‘refused permission to emigrate since they will be trans-
ported into the General Government as soon as possible’. ‘At this time’, he went
on, ‘a normal evacuation of the 500,000 Jews living in these areas to the overseas
countries for which Jewish immigration is possible does not seem feasible.’53 In the meantime the RSHA had come to the conclusion that an alternative plan—to
deport the Jews from the Reich to the Soviet Union—was impossible since it was
rejected by the Soviet authorities as most recent research has shown.
After his discussion with Himmler and Goering on 12 February and a further
conversation with Hitler on 29 February, Frank agreed that ‘at least another
400,000 to 600,000 Jews could come into the country’ (the General Government),
which he announced at a meeting on 2 March. Two days later he informed the
District and City chiefs of Lublin that the area east of the Vistula was still ‘intended
to be a kind of Jewish reservation’. It was true that they had abandoned the idea of
being gradually able to ‘transport 7½ million Poles into the Generalgouvernement’,
but they were still planning ‘to remove from the Reich some 100,000–120,000
Poles, some 30,000 Gypsies and a number of Jews to be established at our
discretion’. For the ‘ultimate goal’ was to make the German Reich ‘free of Jews’.
Frank noted as a positive sign the fact that future transports now depended on his
explicit agreement. 54
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159
On 8 March the German authorities took the decision to postpone the forma-
tion of a ghetto in Warsaw, not least because they were assuming that the district
of Lublin would be designated the ‘reservation’ for the Jewish population of the
General Government and those Jews deported from the Reich. 55
On 24 March Goering actually banned all deportations into the General
Government until further notice unless they were explicitly authorized by him
and by Frank. 56 This effectively put an end to deportations but was in all likelihood only a temporary measure in the face of the pressures on the transport
systems caused by the troop movements in the west, since the authorities in the
General Government were expecting the transports to recommence after a few
months. 57 With the cessation of the deportations, however, the project of a special
‘Jewish reservation’ in Lublin was definitively dropped, while in Warsaw prepar-
ations for the construction of a ghetto were immediately resumed. 58
Between the failure of the Nisko plan in October 1939 and the provisional end of
deportations in March 1940, a total of about 128,000 people had been deported
from the Warthegau into the General Government under the aegis of the first
short-term plan and the intermediate plan, and this figure includes a few tens of
thousands of Jews. As we have seen, the extent and modalities of these ‘resettle-
ments’ were affected above all by the ethnic German ‘returning settlers’. Both the
comprehensive plans for resettlement on the German side (in other words above
all the intention to drive millions of Poles into the General Government) and the
aim of making first the annexed Eastern regions and then the area of the Old
Reich ‘free of Jews’ had to be postponed for the foreseeable future.
The second short-term plan was to be realized, however, albeit in a modified
version. Between 1 April 1940 and 20 January 1941 130,000 Poles and 3,500 Jews from
the Warthegau were to be transported into the General Government. The second
short-term plan was also the framework for the resettlement of 30,275 ethnic
Germans from the areas around Chelm (German Cholm) and Lublin into the
Warthegau between 2 September and 14 December 1940 (the so-called ‘Cholm
campaign’) and for the compensatory deportation of 28,365 Poles from that region. 59
After the deportations into the General Government had more or less stopped, the
Oberpräsident and Gauleiter of Silesia, Josef Wagner, was forced to alter his plans after having announced in February that 100,000 to 120,000 Poles and 100,000 Jews would
be removed from the annexed area of eastern Upper Silesia into the General Govern-
ment. The provincial authorities were now concerned with deporting the Jews from
the western part of eastern Upper Silesia (the areas that had been part of the Reich
until 1921/2 and were urgently to be ‘Germanized’) into the eastern part of eastern
Upper Silesia (a purely Polish area). By the end of June whole districts (Landkreise) of
the western areas were ‘free of Jews’; about half the whole Jewish population of Upper
Silesia was now living in the three cities of the eastern part of Upper Silesia. 60
Just as in the other annexed Polish areas, this ‘resettling’ of Jews was a
component of much more comprehensive resettlement plans. There was therefore
160
The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941
probably in addition an unknown number of Jews amongst the more than 81,000
inhabitants of the province that had to make room for 38,000 ethnic Germans
between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1942.
Anti-Jewish Measures in the First Months
of the Occupation
We have seen how, during the first phase of the German occupation of Poland,
not only the Einsatzgruppen but also the military administration came to prom-
inence through anti-Semitic measures (the latter albeit only briefly). 61 In the first months of the General Government the ruling authorities set about intensifying
and extending these anti-Jewish measures. The core of ‘Jewish policy’ as exercised
in 1939–40 was definition, labelling, forced labour, expropriation, restriction of
the freedom of domicile, and the establishment of Jewish-run administrative
bodies.
On 23 November 1939 the General Government authorities instituted the
compulsory labelling of Jews over 10 years old with a blue Star of David on a
white armband. 62 A regulation dated 24 July 1940 established a definition of Jews in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws after Frank had disregarded more far-reaching suggestions. 63 Compulsory labour for all Jews between 14 and 60 had already been introduced in the General Government in October 1939: first labour
gangs and then work camps were instituted under the supervision of the SS
responsible for putting compulsory labour into practice. 64 In November 1939
Jewish bank accounts were suspended and Jewish businesses were labelled; at
the beginning of 1940 instructions were issued for the registration of Jewish
capital. The Jews in the General Government were not in fact to be excluded
from economic life in general via these regulations but over a longer period
they were to be driven out by means of confiscation, ‘Aryanization’, or the
enfo
rced closure of Jewish businesses, amongst other measures. 65 A regulation of 11 November 1939 limited the rights of Jews to live where they pleased: leaving
their place of residence required formal permission; a curfew was imposed. 66
From the beginning of 1940 bans were issued on Jews using public transport. 67
In accordance with the order given in Heydrich’s express letter of 21 Sep-
tember 1939 to ‘increase the concentration’ of Jews in large cities, in many
places special Jewish quarters were designated. Closed ghettos were only
introduced gradually, however, and on the basis of local initiatives. 68 Preparations for the first large ghetto began in December 1939 in Lodz, but it was only
actually established by an order of 8 February 1940.69 In the rest of the Warthegau further ghettos were set up in the first six months of 1940, Brzeziny
in April, Kutno in June, for example. In the district of Zichenau, the annexed
area that bordered directly onto East Prussia, the first ghetto was established at
the beginning of 1940. 70
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161
The establishment of ghettos in the General Government seems to have
begun in the district of Radom, where the first ghettos appeared at the end of
1939.71 The first ghetto in Pulawy in the district of Lublin was established in December 1939, and Krasnystaw followed in August 1940.72 The preparations for a ghetto in Warsaw began in February 1940, but as has already been
described, the plan was put back at the beginning of March and work begun
only in April. 73
The 60,000–80,000 Jews living in Cracow, the capital of the General Govern-
ment in whose deportation Frank was particularly interested, were given permis-
sion in spring 1940 to leave the city ‘voluntarily’ by 15 August 1940; otherwise they
would have to count on being expelled by force. 74 After this deadline those Cracow Jews who could not prove they were in work were gradually expelled; in
this manner all the Cracow Jews except some 15,000 people were driven out by
March 1941; it was only then that a walled ghetto was established for these people
in the Podgorze part of the city. 75
The occupying powers made formal provision for the establishment of Jewish
councils in November 1939, and these were made responsible for implementing