196. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), pp. 173–74.
197. The report written by G. Jaszunski, head of the cultural department of the council, is reproduced in Lucy S. Dawidowicz, ed., A Holocaust Reader (New York, 1976), pp. 208ff.
198. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 67.
199. Ibid.
200. Ibid., p. 72.
201. Quoted in Antony Polonsky, “Beyond Condemnation, Apologetics and Apologies: On the Complexity of Polish Behavior toward the Jews during the Second World War,” in Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 5, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), p. 46.
202. Ibid., p. 47.
203. Ibid.
204. Ibid.
205. Dawid Rubinowicz, The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edmonds, WA, 1982), p. 38.
206. Ibid., p. 43.
207. Ibid., pp. 85–87.
208. Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages. Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, 2002), pp. 322–23.
209. Ibid., p. 325.
210. Ibid., p. 327.
211. Ibid., p. 306.
212. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 149.
213. Ibid., p. 151.
214. Introduction to Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. xx.
215. Avraham Barkai, “Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto,” in The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, CT, 1989), p. 418.
216. Ibid., p. 420.
217. Ibid., pp. 419ff.
218. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, pp. 163–64.
219. Ibid., pp. 181–182.
220. Ibid., p. 185.
221. Ibid., pp. 193–94.
222. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, pp. 292–93.
223. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emanuel Ringelblum, ed. Jacob Sloan (New York, 1974), p. 251.
224. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham Isaac Katsh (New York, 1965), p. 237.
225. Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), p. 328 (at this level the annual mortality rate would have been 14 percent).
226. Ibid., p. 328.
227. Ibid., p. 330.
228. Ibid., p. 339.
229. Ibid.
230. Ibid., p. 342.
231. For the meeting, see Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington, 1982), pp. 168ff; Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 170ff; Daniel Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre: Le mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939–1949 (Paris, 2002), pp. 130ff.
232. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 168; Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, p. 174; Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre, p. 130.
233. One may also argue that the time had not yet come, as there was a collective responsibility for the Jewish population. On that important point see Ruta Sakowska, “Two Forms of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto—Two Functions of the Ringelblum Archives,” Yad Vashem Studies 21 (1991), p. 217.
234. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 169; Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, p. 174; Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre, p. 130.
235. For a history of the Bund in Poland during the war and immediate postwar years and for the Bundist view of a common front with the Zionists, see Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre, particularly pp. 129ff. In his memoirs Zuckerman describes the Bund’s attitude as seen from the Zionist perspective. See Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, pp. 170ff.
236. About the publicity given to the Bund report in the British media, see Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York, 1981), pp. 42–43.
237. Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (New York, 2005), p. 139.
238. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 343.
239. Note in Ibid., p. 344n. The killings took place during the night of the seventeenth to the eighteenth: Czerniakow noted them under the April 17 entry, usually, the April 18 date is referred to.
240. Note in ibid., p. 344 n.
241. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, pp. 177ff.
242. See Zuckerman’s indications about the rise and fall of the “Anti-Fascist Bloc” in the late spring of 1942. Ibid., pp. 180ff.
243. Hersch Wasser, “Daily Entries of Hersch Wasser,” Yad Vashem Studies 15 (1983), pp. 271–72.
244. Almost every study or memoir about the Warsaw ghetto mentions Rubinstein. See in particular Jan Marek Gronski, Life in Nazi-Occupied Warsaw. Three Ghetto Sketches (1992), p. 192ff.
245. Yitzhak Perlis, “Final Chapter: Korczak in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in The Ghetto Diary, ed. Janusz Korczak (New York, 1978), pp. 78ff.
246. Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary, ed. Aaron Zeitlin (New York, 1978), p. 192.
247. For details about Lewin see Antony Polonsky, introduction to his edition of Lewin’s diary, Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, ed. Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1988).
248. Ibid., p. 80.
249. Quoted in Ruta Sakowska, Menschen im Ghetto: Die jüdische Bevölkerung im besetzten Warschau 1939–1943 (Osnabrück, 1999), p. 220. The author assumes that the message was well understood; this cannot be established.
250. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, pp. 376–77.
Chapter Seven: July 1942–March 1943
1. This report, titled “Observations about the ‘Resettlement of Jews’ in the General Government” (IfZ, Munich, doc. ED 81) is reproduced in Raul Hilberg, ed., Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933–1945 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 208ff.
2. For the growing crisis and the unfolding military situation, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), pp. 526ff.
3. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss (unter Mitarbeit) and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 330.
4. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols., vol. 2, part 1 (Munich, 1965), p. 1920. For an analysis of these sadistic aspects of Hitler’s “prophecy,” see Philippe Burrin, Ressentiment et Apocalypse. Essai sur l’antisemitisme nazi (Paris, 2004), pp. 78ff.
5. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944, ed. Radu Ioanid (Chicago, 2000), p. 511.
6. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945 (New York, 1998), p. 150.
7. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1996), part 2, vol. 6, pp. 445–46.
8. Ibid., vol. 5, p. 378.
9. Nuremberg doc. NO-205, in John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (New York, 1982), vol. 9, p. 173.
10. See Longerich and Pohl, Die Ermordung, p. 371–72.
11. Helmut Heiber, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten., vol. 1, part 2 (München, 1983), abs. no. 26773.
12. Ibid., part 1, vol. 1, abs. no. 16019.
13. Ibid., part 1, vol. 2, abs. no. 26778. The pamphlet Der Untermensch (Berlin, 1942) was published by the SS Hauptamt.
14. Rudolf Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen., ed. Martin Broszat (Stuttgart, 1958), p. 207; Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), p. 492 n. 70.
15. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 188. The order was brought to Höss by Paul Blobel, the former head of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, who in the meantime had been put in charge of Akti
on 1005, the elimination of all traces of the murder operations, mainly by opening the mass graves and burning the bodies. See Shmuel Spector, “Aktion 1005—Effacing the Murder of Millions,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5, no. 2 (1990), p. 159.
16. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 210.
17. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), pp. 92–93.
18. Quoted in Peter Longerich and Dieter Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945 (Munich, 1989), p. 258.
19. Guus Meershoek, “The Amsterdam Police and the Persecution of the Jews,” in Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), vol. 3, p. 547.
20. Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–1945 (Oxford, 1988), p. 175.
21. Mussert’s party was more strongly represented in the police than in any other Dutch agency. Ibid., pp. 175ff.
22. Ibid., p. 178.
23. Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “Der Befehlshaber der Sipo und des SD in den besetzten niederländischen Gebieten und die Deportation der Juden 1942–1943,” in Die Bürokratie der Okkupation: Strukturen der Herrschaft und Verwaltung im besetzten Europa, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Johannes Houwink ten Cate, and Gerhard Otto, Nationalsozialistische Besatzungspolitik in Europa 1939–1945 (Berlin, 1998), vol. 4, p. 202.
24. Ibid., pp. 206ff.
25. Louis de Jong, The Netherlands and Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 12.
26. Ibid., p. 13.
27. Quoted in J. Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (Detroit, 1988), p. 167.
28. Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 96.
29. Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943 (New York, 1983), p. 147.
30. Ibid., pp. 152–53.
31. Ibid., p. 166.
32. Ibid., p. 167.
33. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, ed. Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler (New York, 1995), pp. 18ff. and 21.
34. Presser, Ashes in the Wind, pp. 152–53.
35. Ibid., pp. 154–55. Presser’s sharp criticism of the council has itself been forcefully attacked. In regard to the August event for example, Presser does not mention that De Wolff, a student of his, saved Presser’s wife from deportation on this occasion. About this and other aspects of Presser’s account see Henriette Boas, “The Persecution and Destruction of Dutch Jewry, 1940–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 6 (1967). The highly emotional feuding about the behavior of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam and even more specifically about its two leaders Cohen and Assher (particularly Cohen) has been going on since the end of the war. See, for example, the attack on Cohen’s main detractors De Jong, Isaak Kisch, and Presser and the favorable interpretation of his stewardship in Piet H. Schrijvers, “Truth Is the Daughter of Time: Prof. David Cohen as Seen by Himself and by Others.” In Chaja Brasz and Yosef Kaplan, eds. Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and by Others (Leiden, 2001, pp. 355ff).
36. Ibid., pp. 40–41.
37. Ibid., p. 41.
38. Benjamin Leo Wessels, Ben’s Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press, ed. Kees W. Bolle (Carbondale, IL, 2001), p. 43. The stealing and mistreatment by the Wehrmacht unit stationed in Oostvoorne is confirmed in other letters.
39. Most of the details mentioned here are quoted from Louis de Jong, “The Netherlands and Auschwitz,” Yad Vashem Studies 7 (1968), pp. 39ff.
40. Ibid., pp. 47–48.
41. Ibid., p. 50.
42. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), p. 128.
43. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945 (Göttingen, 1975), vol. 4, p. 328.
44. If Cohen knew of these clandestine activities and approved them, his role appears in a different light; the testimonies on this issue are contradictory.
45. See Debórah Dwork, Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (New Haven, 1991), pp. 45ff.
46. The number one thousand is mentioned in Werner Warmbrunn, “Netherlands,” in Laqueur and Baumel, eds., Holocaust Encyclopedia, p. 440.
47. See in particular Bob Moore, “The Dutch Churches, Christians and the Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands,” in Dutch Jews, ed. Chaya Brasz and Yosef Kaplan (Leiden, 2001), pp. 277ff; see also Bert Jan Flim, “Opportunities for the Jews to Hide from the Nazis, 1942–45,” in ibid., pp. 289ff. Louis de Jong has estimated the number of Dutch families that hid Jews at one stage or another at approximately 25,000 (De Jong, The Netherlands and Nazi Germany, p. 21).
48. Quoted in Presser, The Destruction, p. 182.
49. Ibid., p. 183 (emphasis in original).
50. Ibid., p. 184 (emphasis in original).
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., p. 183.
53. On the function of Vught, see in particular J. W. Griffioen and R. Zeller, “A Comparative Analysis of the Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium During the Second World War” (Amsterdam, 1998), p. 11.
54. For these statistics see Gerhard Hirschfeld, “Niederlande,” in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991), p. 151.
55. Biélinky, Journal, pp. 232–33.
56. Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Everyday Life in the French Heartland under the German Occupation (New York, 2003), pp. 259–60.
57. André Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation (Paris, 1991), p. 222.
58. Renée Poznanski, Être juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1994), p. 385.
59. On July 15, Biélinky noted in his diary: “It appears that Jews and Jewesses aged eighteen to forty-five are going to be arrested and sent to forced labor in Germany.” Jacques Biélinky, Journal, 1940–1942: Un journaliste juif à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Renée Poznanski (Paris, 1992), p. 233.
60. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation, p. 224.
61. Quoted in ibid., p. 226–27.
62. Poznanski, Être juif, p. 385.
63. Ibid., 386.
64. Ibid., p. 386.
65. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris, 1990), p. 258.
66. Ibid., p. 260.
67. Ibid., pp. 260–61.
68. Biélinky, Journal, p. 236.
69. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, p. 255.
70. Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1983–85), vol. 1, p. 328.
71. Ibid., p. 330.
72. Georges Wellers, De Drancy à Auschwitz (Paris, 1946), pp. 55ff.
73. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 355.
74. Richard I. Cohen, The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust (Bloomington, 1987), p. 79.
75. Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985), p. 180.
76. Ibid., p. 178.
77. Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1998), pp. 253–56. For the text of a draft of July 28, see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 295.
78. Cohen, Richard I. The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 80ff and 122ff.
79. Schwarzfuchs, Aux Prises avec Vichy; see also Richard I. Cohen, “Le Consistoire et L’UGIF—La Situation Trouble des Juifs Français Face à Vichy,” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah: Le monde juif 169 (2000), pp. 33ff.
80. Serge Klarsfeld, Les transferts de juifs du camp de Rivesaltes et de la région de Montpellier vers le camp de Drancy en vue de leur déportation 10 août 1942–6 août 1944 (Paris, 1993), p. 31–32.
81. For some of the préfets’ repo
rts about reactions in their districts, see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, pp. 305ff.
82. Renée Poznanski, “Jews and non-Jews in France During World War II: A Daily Life Perspective,” in Lessons and Legacies V: The Holocaust and Justice, ed. Ronald M. Smelser (Evanston, IL, 2002), p. 306.
83. Ibid.
84. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation, pp. 306–7. The main Catholic periodical of the Free French in London, Volontaires pour la cité chrétienne, hardly mentioned the persecution and extermination of the Jews at all. See Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–1945: Entre Vichy et la Résistance (Paris, 1998), p. 176.
85. The notes are published in Michèle Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, 1940–1945: La rèpentance en question (Paris, 1998), p. 224.
86. For part of the interpretation, see ibid. In part the reading of the notes is my own.
87. For the French original see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 280. See also Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, 1940–1945, p. 225. Cardinal Suhard was known for his support of Vichy’s policies even against the Jews. Thus he took disciplinary measures against two priests of his diocese who had counterfeited baptismal certificates to help Jews. See Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–1945: Entre Vichy et la Résistance, p. 78.
88. Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, p. 266. For Valerio Valeri’s letter to Maglione, where the expression is used, see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 297
89. Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy, pp. 209–10.
90. About Chaillet’s assistance to Jews, see mainly Renée Bédarida, Pierre Chaillet: Témoin de la résistance spirituelle (Paris, 1988).
91. Translated in Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation (New York, 1966), p. 115.
92. Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, pp. 234ff. A few days after the reading of the letter, the deputy attorney general of Toulouse questioned Saliège. The prelate declared that the parties had “indecently misused his letter.” See the text of the interrogation in Eric Malo, “Le camp de Récébédou (Haute-Garonne),” Le Monde Juif 153 (1995), pp. 97–98.
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