With Himmler’s agreement a few euthanasia experts had already been sent to Lublin in early September. If Hitler’s order about the deportation from the Reich had been conveyed to the Reichsführer at the beginning of September, the arrival of euthanasia experts at that time meant that the elimination of part of the ghetto populations was considered from the outset as the best solution to the overcrowding issue. A visit by Brack, and then by Bouhler himself, followed, and on November 1 the construction of Belzec started.97 The killing installation Lange set up in Chelmno near Lodz was much simpler: Three gas vans were delivered by the RSHA sometime in November, and by early December everything was ready for the first batch of victims.
In regard to this sequence of events, Eichmann’s testimony at his Jerusalem trial was confusing. According to Eichmann, Heydrich sent him on an inspection visit to Lublin after telling him that Hitler had decided to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. When he arrived in Lublin the trees still had their autumn foliage, and at Belzec (Eichmann did not remember the name) he saw only two small huts being prepared for the gassing. This does not fit, of course, with the fact that the construction of Belzec started only in early November (when the trees would already have lost their autumn colors) and that the first barracks were ready in December. It seems that Eichmann did not remember precisely when Heydrich told him about the “final order” and which inspection tour took place in early autumn in the Lublin area.98
Additional indications pointing to the initially “local” function of Belzec and Chelmno include the technically “limited capacity” of the Belzec gassing installations (before their “upgrading” in the late spring of 1942), and the letter Greiser sent Himmler in May 1942, indicating that Chelmno was meant to exterminate part of the Jewish population of the Warthegau, including Lodz (about 100,000 Jews, according to Greiser).99
A few days after his meeting with Krüger and Globocnik, Himmler ordered the cessation of all Jewish emigration from the Reich (and thus, from the entire Continent). The Reichsführer’s order, issued on October 18, was conveyed by Müller to all Gestapo stations on the twenty-third, “in view of the forthcoming ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish question.”
Furthermore, on the eve of Himmler’s order, a step, puzzling at first glance, had been taken by Heydrich. The chief of the RSHA asked Luther to reject an offer from the Spanish government to evacuate to Morocco two thousand Jews of Spanish nationality arrested over the previous months in Paris. Heydrich argued that the Spaniards would be unwilling and unable to guard the Jews in Morocco and that, moreover, “these Jews would also be too far out of the direct reach of measures for a basic solution to the Jewish question to be enacted after the war.”100 Heydrich demanded that this explanation be conveyed to the Spaniards.
In fact, to allow any exception would have considerably reduced the ominous significance of the deportations from the Reich that had just started and of Himmler’s end-of-all-emigration decree. Moreover, had the transfer of Spanish Jews been agreed to, wouldn’t the Hungarian, Romanian, or Turkish governments, for example, ask for custody of their own Jews living in France or elsewhere in Western Europe?
A teletype sent to the Wilhelmstrasse on October 30, 1941 (barely a few days after Heydrich’s decision), by Rudolf Schleier, the councillor in charge of Jewish affairs at the German embassy in Paris, confirmed that fear of setting a precedent may have been on Heydrich’s mind when he turned down the Spanish request: “Military Commander France has arrested a considerable number of Jews including foreign nationals, in the course of the big roundup on August 20, 1941, of French and foreign Jews involved in communist and de Gaullist activities and in attempts against members of the Wehrmacht in the occupied zone of France. Foreign consuls in Paris have requested assistance of the embassy for the release of Jewish nationals of their respective countries. Military commander and Security Service take the view that the fact that arrested Jews are foreign nationals can in no way influence the measures taken. Release of individual Jews would create precedents.”101 As for the last part of Heydrich’s comment—“these Jews would be too much out of reach of measures for a basic solution to the Jewish question to be enacted after the war”—the reference to the forthcoming “Final Solution” in forbidding emigration had become a standard Nazi formula; as may be remembered, it was also used by Göring on May 20, 1941, when he forbade further emigration of Jews from France and Belgium.
While Heydrich was dealing with the Spaniards, one of Rosenberg’s acolytes in the ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Eberhard Wetzel, ventured to issue instructions of his own: He had no objections that those Jews from the Ostland ghettos who were unable to work and Reich Jews of the same category should be “removed by Brack’s device” [gas vans].102 Wetzel’s nihil obstat of October 25 would have been a first direct allusion to a general extermination plan, except for the fact that neither Wetzel nor Rosenberg had any say in the matter. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that Rosenberg may have been informed of a general extermination plan in mid-November at the earliest (if such a plan existed at the time), and otherwise only in December.
A number of other documents, mostly of less intrinsic significance, have been adduced to argue that Hitler’s final decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe was made sometime in late September or early October 1941; others, obversely, have been introduced to demonstrate that it was made after the American entry into the war.103 Either way the decision was taken sometime during the last three months of 1941.
If the decision for total extermination had already been made in October, the apparently local killings deriving from the deportations from Germany would turn out to be part and parcel of that overall plan; if the final decision was taken later, the “local measures” seamlessly became part of the generalized “Final Solution” from December 1941 on. Moreover, one could plausibly argue that from October to December, Hitler mulled over the decision, as shown by his obsessive daily attacks on the Jews: The Nazi leader had to convince himself that systematically murdering millions of people was indeed the right decision. In that case the decision may first have been considered in October or even before, to become final once the United States joined the war, the Soviet forces counterattacked, and the dreaded “World War,” in the East and in the West, became a reality.
Hitler’s acolytes and their underlings may have interpreted his anti-Jewish harangues from October 1941 on as implicit encouragement to forge ahead with local murderous initiatives to solve the problems caused by the deportations from the Reich; they could not, however, have interpreted them as an order to start the complete extermination of all European Jews. Crossing the line from local murder operations to overall extermination required a go-ahead signal from the supreme authority.
We do not know, of course, at what point Hitler started harboring the project of immediate extermination; this much, however, is certain: The timing of Hitler’s decisions was a matter of circumstances; the decisions as such were not. And the timing regarding the “Final Solution” was in part determined by the “prophecy” of January 1939. This prophecy, although politically motivated (as a deterrent), was nonetheless solemnly uttered again in January 1941 (despite its more open-ended wording). A prophet could not afford to hesitate when the circumstances heralding the fulfillment of the prophecy occurred; a savior could not, at that crucial moment, shy away from implementing an open and repeated threat. Thus, beyond his belief in the Jewish danger in case of world war, Hitler had to make good on what he had prophesied, once the circumstances that would lead to extermination of the Jews were becoming reality. The Jews could have been deported to northern Russia and decimated there; this, however, was no longer an option in the late fall of 1941. They would have to be murdered in areas closer to the heart of the Nazi empire and that of the “new Europe.”
And, what was generally true in regard to the whole Volk was particularly valid about Hitler’s bond with his old guard. As we saw, the Nazi leader delivered the most threatening
indication regarding the pending annihilation of the Jews to the assembled Gauleiter and Reichsleiter on December 12. He was addressing the innermost circle, the most fanatical party faithful, men who in their immense majority were as radical as he was in regard to “the Jewish question,” and possibly as ready as he was to move from massacre to total extermination. Withholding the go-ahead at this stage would have meant that the supreme and providential leader did not believe in the most basic tenet of the common faith. Procrastination could have undermined the Führer’s grip on the hearts and minds of his most devoted followers, those who would be ready to stand by him in this struggle to the very last. A process that had started months earlier had reached the point of no return.
Furthermore, now that a rapid and victorious campaign in the East was receding out of sight, now that the dangers of a prolonged and difficult war had become concrete—the mobilization of all national energies was essential. For Nazism the Jews, the Jewish peril, and the uncompromising struggle against “the Jew” were, as we have seen, the mobilizing myth of the regime. The time had come not only to brandish Goebbels’s slogan “The Jews Are Guilty!” but to take the steps that would galvanize the Volksgenossen into fighting this mortal threat with all available strength and would offer the hard-core party members an increasingly necessary taste of retribution.
Finally Hitler’s unusual declaration to Goebbels on the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union had become more real than ever before. If, before the attack, the Reich had no choice but to win in order to escape eradication, how vastly more compelling the argument must have appeared after six months of mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The increasing number of Germans from all segments of society involved in all aspects of the extermination campaign knew perfectly well, as did the party elite, that they were now accomplices in crimes of previously unimagined scope; victory or fighting to the end were the only options left to their leader, their party, their country—and themselves.
V
Throughout the weeks and months of the fall of 1941, as the deportations from the Reich started and the signal for the extermination of all the Jews of Europe was given, “ordinary” persecution of Jews in the Reich did not abate. Moreover, legislation dealing with the practical sequels of the deportations was finalized mainly to allow a smooth takeover of all assets and property left behind.
On September 18, 1941, the Reich Transportation Ministry issued a decree barring Jews from using sleeping and dining cars of the Reichsbahn; they were also forbidden to use excursion buses or excursion ships (outside their usual domicile area). Jews were allowed to use all other means of public transportation only when available seats remained, never at times of heavy traffic when seats were unavailable to non-Jews. Jews were allowed to travel only in the lowest class (at the time third class was the lowest passenger class on railways), and they could be seated “only when no other passengers were standing.”104 On September 24 the Reich Ministry of the Economy forbade Jews to use checks.105 On that same day, the Ministry of Justice excluded them from any benefit (property or asset) received from a full German. “Such benefits,” the decree stated, “are in sharp contradiction with healthy German popular feelings.”106
A month later an RSHA circular ordered the arrest of any German publicly showing friendly relations with a Jew; in serious cases the Aryan offender would be sent to a concentration camp for at least three months; in each case the Jew was to be sent to a concentration camp.107 On November 13 Jews had to register their electric appliances; that same day they had to turn in typewriters, bicycles, cameras, and binoculars; on November 14 Jews were forbidden to sell their books.108
The main laws and decrees were of course aimed at canceling any remaining legal rights of Jews still living in the Reich and also of those who had emigrated or were being deported. The RSHA got involved in the deliberations, and so did the Führer’s Chancellery. At times Hitler himself would intervene.
Three issues were at the top of the agenda: The judicial status of Poles and Jews, the legal situation of Jewish laborers, and finally the status of Jews who were still German nationals but were no longer living in the Reich…. By mid-October 1941 the first law was ready: Almost any offense committed by a Pole or a Jew was punishable by death; the law was signed on December 4.109
The new “Labor Law” for Jews was published on November 4. Like the one covering judicial status, it had been discussed for more than a year. The result was no less clear-cut: A Jewish laborer had no rights whatsoever and could be dismissed from one day to the next. Apart from a minimal daily salary, a Jew could not claim any social benefit or compensation.110 Nonetheless Jewish laborers had to forgo nearly half of their meager salary in income tax and social benefits payments.111
The citizenship decree brought Hitler’s intervention. The Ministries of Justice and the Interior, the Finance Ministry, and the RSHA were working out complex formulas that would have enabled the state to impound any remaining assets and possessions of Jews who left the Reich.112 Hitler decided on a simpler solution. German Jews residing outside the Reich would lose their citizenship and all their assets would become the property of the state. On November 25, 1941, the new regulation was promulgated as the Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law.113 This ordinance brought into the open an ongoing tug-of-war between the Reich Finance Ministry and the RSHA regarding the ultimate fate of the assets and property of the Jewish deportees from Germany.
As we saw, the property of the Jews deported from the Reich in 1940 was confiscated by an order issued by Himmler on April 4, 1941, and turned into law by Hitler, on May 29, 1941. While the SS impounded this property for its own operations, the Finance Ministry claimed its own right of receivership. During the summer of 1941 the Finance Ministry had demanded that all banks prepare a list of Jewish accounts, while the Reichsvereinigung—under instructions from the RSHA—informed all the country’s Jews of the obligation to establish a precise inventory of their homes, apartments, and property; thereafter any nonauthorized transfer would be punishable by arrest. Thus both the Finance Ministry and the RSHA (via the Reichsvereinigung) were poised for the beginning of the deportations (to the Russian Far North or elsewhere).
On November 4, the finance minister established the mandatory administrative channels for the takeover of the deportees’ property by the ministry’s local, regional, and central authorities. “It is especially necessary,” the minister stressed, “to make sure that there are no appropriation orders for these properties by other offices.”114 A few days later, however, the Reichsvereinigung conveyed an order from the RSHA demanding that all Jews about to be deported to settle any outstanding amounts owed to the association (which would transfer them to the RSHA). They were told not to include these amounts on the forms they had to present at the assembly points (to avoid their transfer to the Reich Finance Ministry) in fact, they were prodded to settle these financial matters before reaching the assembly points.115
The Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law seemed to settle the competition in favor of the state authorities. Jews whose “usual place of residence was abroad” lost their German citizenship. The law applied with immediate effect to Jews who resided abroad on the date of its publication and to those who were to reside abroad thereafter. The loss of citizenship entailed the forfeiture of all property and assets to the benefit of the Reich.116 To avoid any misunderstanding about the significance of “abroad,” the finance minister issued a circular on December 3 indicating that this notion also included “the territories occupied by German troops…especially the General Government and the Reichskom-missariate Ostland and the Ukraine.117
Ultimately, however, the RSHA had its way in regard to the funds owed to the Reichsvereinigung by arguing among other things that these funds were the financial basis for implementing all measures regarding the Jews. And to increase these amounts, Heydrich’s men figured out various schemes to further delude and despoil the unsuspecting victims. Thus elderly Jews co
uld buy homes in the “old people’s ghetto” by signing off to the Reichsvereinigung the necessary funds, which would then be transferred to the RSHA. Some of these homes, the deportees were told, had a lake view and others faced a park. In one way or another, the victims were financing their own deportation and, ultimately, their extermination.118
The homes abandoned by the deportees generated a measure of local cooperation between Gestapo and party officials, as had already been the case in Vienna and in Munich. In the Frankfurt area, for example, in order to avoid tension and competition, the Gauleiter of Hesse-Nassau, Jakob Sprenger, appointed the Frankfurt Kreisleiter as the sole representative of the Gau entitled to negotiate with the Gestapo about the fate of Jewish homes and apartments.119
Sometimes, however, unexpected difficulties arose. The Jews who over the first two years of the war (or even beforehand) had been compelled to leave their apartments or homes to congregate in a “Jews’ house” were mostly renting apartments in buildings where they alone were allowed to live but which nonetheless belonged to “Aryan” landlords. When the deportations started, some of the apartments were vacated by the deportees, while others remained temporarily inhabited by their Jewish tenants. According to a letter of complaint sent to the Düsseldorf Gestapo on August 25, 1942, by one August Stiewe to (the landlord of such a house), the deportation of some of his Jewish tenants entailed a significant loss of income from unpaid rents, since Aryan tenants could not be asked to move into a house still partly occupied by Jews. The Gestapo did not deny the existence of the financial loss but told Stiewe to address his grievance to the local branch of the Finance Ministry, as it was pocketing the Jewish assets.120
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