channels of negotiation which might be used in peace feelers. The extent to
which the SS would really have been prepared to release large numbers of Jewish
prisoners on a quid pro quo basis, which would have meant returning to the
pre-war policy of expulsion, or whether they only appeared to offer such
negotiations in order to construct a dialogue with the Western Allies is impos-
sible to establish beyond doubt. It is also unclear whether Himmler was acting
in accord with Hitler in these complicated manoeuvres, or whether he was from
the outset pursuing a policy of his own to secure his position against the
threatening collapse of the Third Reich, and it is equally unclear whether the
negotiations undertaken by Eichmann and Wisliceny were fully in accord with
Himmler’s plans. But it is also entirely imaginable that these efforts to establish
contacts with the West were part of a double game: if the Western Allies agreed
412
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
to enter negotiations with the Nazi regime over the surviving Jews, either one
could extend such negotiations to other ‘humanitarian’ issues and use them as
peace feelers, or one could abandon the negotiations and effectively compromise
the other side, sowing suspicion between the Western Allies and the Soviet
Union or revealing the USA and Great Britain as stooges of Jewish interests,
thus bolstering the claim of German military propaganda that Germany was
waging a war against world Jewry. 236
Thus, Himmler saw the Jewish prisoners as hostages with whom one could, in
one way or another, exert an influence on the Western Allies. This attitude was
not new: it can already be demonstrated in connection with Kristallnacht; the
reason for taking Jews as hostages to prevent the Americans from entering the
war seems to have played a part in starting the deportations of the German Jews
in the autumn of 1941, and from 1942 the SS leadership repeatedly allowed
individual Jews to travel to neutral countries abroad in return for high payments
in foreign currency. 237 Himmler had received express permission from Hitler for this in December 1942, and in that context pursued the project of holding
around 10,000 Jews back in a special camp as ‘valuable hostages’. 238 It was in accordance with this idea that the ‘holding camp’ at Bergen-Belsen was set up,
which Himmler placed under the control of the Business and Administration
Head Office, to rule out the possibility of agencies outside the SS having access
to the camp. 239 Finally, the German Jewish adviser in Slovakia, Wisliceny, had in 1942 accepted a large sum in dollars from the Jews. It remains unresolved
whether this payment had any causal connection with the suspension of
deportations from Slovakia. Thus, treating Jewish prisoners as negotiating
counters was not a new procedure. 240
In March 1944, representatives of the Vaada Aid and Rescue Committee,
supported by Zionist organizations, contacted Wisliceny, who had by now
begun preparations for the deportations in Budapest as a member of Sonder-
kommando Eichmann. Negotiations were carried out concerning the depart-
ure from the country of a large number of Hungarian Jews in return for
foreign currency or goods; the SS’s desire for 10,000 lorries proved to be at
the core of this. The Jewish negotiators made several large advance payments
in dollars. In compliance with an agreement made with Eichmann, Vaada
representatives went to Istanbul to make contact with the Allies, since the
possibility of as many as several hundred thousand people leaving the country
and the receipt of material benefits in return was only imaginable with Allied
support. But the mission failed: the two Vaada emissaries were arrested by
the British in Syria, and the British steadfastly refused to get involved in
bartering of this kind. 241
Meanwhile Vaada, represented by Rudolf Kastner, continued to negotiate
with the SS in Budapest. Two operations emerged out of this. On the one
hand, at the end of June 15,000 Jews, rather than being sent to Auschwitz,
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
413
were deported as forced labourers to Austria where, as Kastner said, quoting
Eichmann, they were to be ‘put on ice’, to be kept ready for further barter
negotiations. It seems probable that this step was not a substantial concession
on Eichmann’s part, but that he was only responding to an urgent request from
Kaltenbrunner to send forced labourers to the area around Vienna. Also, at the
end of June, in accordance with an agreement made between Kastner and
Eichmann, 1,684 Hungarian Jews were taken to Bergen-Belsen on a special
transport. From there they travelled to Switzerland in two groups, in August
and December. In the meantime, Kurt Becher, the head of the equipment staff of
the HSSPF in Hungary, the man responsible for the exploitation of stolen Jewish
property, took over the negotiation of the benefits to be expected in return from
the Jews, first with the representatives of Vaada, then, from August 1944, also
with the representative of the JDC in Switzerland, Saly Mayer. Until January 1945
further discussions were held in Switzerland between representatives of the SS
and Jewish organizations, covering large-scale barter deals of people for money
or goods. Becher succeeded in securing the attendance of a representative of the
War Refugee Board, an American government body, at one of these meetings
early in November in Zurich; he had thus achieved the goal that Himmler linked
with these negotiations, namely contact with official American agencies. But
these discussions produced no results whatsoever, either in terms of further
rescue projects or of possible peace feelers. 242
But in the meantime negotations on another plane had achieved a concrete
success: as a result of direct discussions between former Swiss President Jean-Marie
Musy and Himmler—they were held in Vienna in October 1944 and in Wildbad
(Black Forest) in January 1945—in February 1,200 Jews were released from
Theresienstadt to Switzerland. 243 In the last phase of the war, Himmler would once again try to use the fate of the Jewish concentration camp inmates as a starting
point for making contact with the Allied side.
The negotiations concerning the release of Jewish prisoners show once
again how flexibly Judenpolitik could be administered. Even if the goal of the
systematic murder of the European Jews was of prime importance to the SS,
at the same time Himmler was prepared to make tactical concessions in the
form of the release of smaller contingents of prisoners, if other targets—the
shortage of foreign currency, the SS’s need of equipment, the possibility of
establishing negotiating channels with the Western Allies—were temporarily
of prime importance. Himmler also seems to have been prepared to nego-
tiate seriously over the release of larger groups of Jews, if it meant that the
collapse of the Third Reich could be delayed or even prevented as a result.
Hitler did not agree with this approach as Himmler was forced to recognize:
the Führer reacted with great indignation when he subsequently learned of
the release of the Jews to Switzerl
and, and forbade similar steps in the
future. 244
414
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
The Clearing of the Concentration Camps and the Death Marches
As early as 17 June 1944 Himmler transferred to the Higher SS and Police
Commanders the right of command over the concentration camps in the event
of ‘A Case’ (initially an uprising by inmates, but then above all the approach of
enemy troops). 245 Accordingly, the HSSPF established precisely when the clearance was to take place and organized it in collaboration with Department D of the
WVHA. As to the further fate of the inmates, organizational measures taken at an
intermediate level were to prove crucial. Thus, right into the final phase of the war
the perpetrators had a great deal of room for manoeuvre as far as the murder of
Jews and other prisoners was concerned.
The clearance and evacuation led to a new selection of the prisoners. While in
some concentration camps German prisoners were released, weak and sick
prisoners—mainly Jewish—were generally murdered in the camps before the
order to evacuate was given. The evacuation marches then ordered by the camp
authorities—in some cases there were also railway transports—generally occurred
in winter conditions, with inadequate provisions or none at all. There were
inadequate breaks and accommodation and the escorting troops, often with
local help, murdered the prisoners who were left behind. In these columns,
generally composed of members of all categories of prisoners, the chances of
survival of the Jewish prisoners were worst because of their generally advanced
exhaustion.
As a rule the sub-camps were cleared first and the prisoners brought to the
main camp. The goal of the so-called ‘evacuations’ of the main camps was in turn
the concentration camps in the centre of the German Reich. Bringing together a
large number of prisoners in fewer and fewer camps generally led to an almost
total breakdown of supplies for the prisoners in the camps and a further worsen-
ing of already almost unbearable conditions. Instead of the imminent liberation
that many prisoners expected from the Allied advance, for most prisoners the
occupation of Germany meant a further intensification of their torment, which
often continued for months. 246
The former ghettos and camps for Jewish forced labourers in the Baltic, which
had been turned into concentration camps on Himmler’s instructions, were
cleared in the summer of 1944. The clearance of the camp complex around the
Kaiserwald concentration camp in Riga began in June 1944. At first the sub-camps
were gradually closed, and the prisoners brought to Kaiserwald; the prisoners who
were no longer fit for forced labour, as well as all children, were separated from the
rest and murdered. From August until October the prisoners were brought by ship
to Danzig, where they were confined in the concentration camp. 247
From Kaunas concentration camp the surviving 8,000 Jews were deported to
the west by rail and on barges, the women to Stutthof, the men to sub-camps of
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
415
Dachau. Prisoners who were ‘unfit for work’ were separated out and taken to
Auschwitz. 248 Also in August 1944 all camps of the Vaivara complex were dissolved and most of the prisoners shipped to Tallinn and from there to
Stutthof. 249
In the summer of 1944 the camp commandant of Stutthof, Günther Hoppe,
received the order from the Department D inspector of the WVHA with respon-
sibility for the concentration camps, that all Jewish prisoners in Stutthof were to
be murdered by the end of the year. To this end, in autumn 1944 a clothes
delousing installation was turned into a gas chamber. Here, from September
1944 onwards, groups of between twenty-five and thirty-five people—mostly
female Jewish prisoners from the Baltic and Hungary—were murdered with
Zyklon B. A second gas chamber was set up in an abandoned railway wagon. 250
At the end of 1944, when the clearance of Stutthof camp began, to avoid the
approaching front, there were still 47,000 prisoners there, two-thirds of them
Jewish. 251
In mid-January at least 6,000 prisoners, predominantly Jewish women, were
driven out of the sub-camps of Stutthof concentration camp, situated in East
Prussia, towards the Baltic. Around 50 per cent of the prisoners lost their lives.
In the coastal town of Pamnicken the escort troops—supported by local Nazis and
members of the Gestapo from Königsberg—carried out a massacre among the
surviving prisoners, in which around 200 people were killed. As far as one can tell,
this murder was carried out on the initiative of the leader of the escort troops, who
wanted to get rid of the prisoners so that they could get away more quickly from
the advancing Red Army. 252
At the end of the year the first railway transports carrying prisoners left Stutthof
main camp, until Hoppe finally ordered the partial clearance of the camp on
25 January. Eleven columns, each of 1,000 prisoners, were formed, who marched
on foot towards Lauenburg, 140 km away. Only around a third of the prisoners
reached the town; when the Red Army reached Lauenburg in mid-March they
found around 15,000 survivors of the death march from Stutthof. 253
In the summer of 1944 the SS began moving about half of the prisoners from
Auschwitz concentration camp—there were about 130,000 people there at the
time—to other concentration camps. 254 The ‘evacuation’ of Auschwitz concentration camp, in which by then there were still 67,000 prisoners, began in mid-
January 1945. Over 56,000 prisoners were driven westwards in marching columns
of whom an estimated two-thirds were Jews. In accordance with an order from
HSSPF Breslau, Heinrich Schmauser, that no prisoners were to fall into the hands
of the enemy, the guards shot all prisoners who could not keep up with the
marching pace. Given the terrible conditions on the marches, an estimated quarter
of the prisoners fell victim to this practice. Some of the marching columns reached
Groß-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia, which became the transit camp
for the camps and prisons cleared in the East. 255
416
Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945
The Groß-Rosen concentration camp complex, which had numerous
sub-camps, was cleared from January 1945 onwards, and the clearance of the
completely overcrowded main camp began in February: it is demonstrable that
44,000 prisoners were moved on rail transports to concentration camps further to
the west, an unknown figure dying on the way. 256
As a result of the clearance of the camps in the East, there was now a
large number of Jewish prisoners in the camps in the Reich. In Ravensbrück
concentration camp the camp authorities had been preparing for the evacu-
ation since January 1943—at this point 48,000 prisoners were crammed together
in the camp—and systematically murdered the weak prisoners by leaving
them to die in special death zones, giving prisoners injections of poison,
shooting them, and finally, in January 1945, converting a wooden barrack into
a provisional gas chamber, in whi
ch a total of several thousand prisoners were
murdered. 257
In March 1945 Himmler once again returned to the idea of using Jewish
prisoners as hostages. In the middle of that month, during a visit to Germany
by his personal doctor Felix Kersten, who had by now moved to Sweden and had
contact with the Swedish foreign minister, he told Kersten—or so Kersten
claimed—that the concentration camps would not be blown up as the Allies
approached, further killing of the prisoners was forbidden, and the prisoners
were instead to be handed over to the Allies. 258
For a short time Himmler ordered the camp commandants not to kill any more
Jewish prisoners, saying that they must combat death rates among the prisoners.
The order was personally passed on to concentration camp commandants by
Pohl. 259
During his meeting with Himmler in March, Kersten informed his contact at
the World Jewish Congress, Hillel Storch, that Himmler had also agreed to release
10,000 Jewish prisoners to Sweden or Switzerland. 260 And in fact large numbers of Jewish prisoners were able to reach Sweden. Since February Himmler had been in
direct contact with the vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke
Bernadotte, who was responsible for trying to secure the release of the Scandi-
navian concentration camp prisoners on behalf of the Swedish government. They
were first brought together in Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg
and finally Bernadotte managed to ensure that they were brought to Sweden
by columns of Red Cross medical orderlies—the legendary ‘white buses’—via
Denmark to Sweden. Above all because of the sustained pressure from the
Swedish government, but also possibly as the result of efforts by other parties, 261
far more than the 8,000 Scandinavian prisoners were saved in the end, namely
more than 20,000 people, including several thousand Jews. 262
However, contrary to Himmler’s pledge, the camps of Dora-Mittelbau and
Buchenwald—on the express orders of the Reichsführer SS—were not handed
over to the Allies, but also cleared at the beginning of April. The SS managed to
Murders and Deportations, 1942–3
417
bring around 28,000 from a total of 48,000 prisoners in Buchenwald out of the
Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Page 74