Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

other hand, there are no unambiguous indications

that at this point—beyond general ideas of a physical ‘Final Solution’—there was

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already a concrete plan in existence for the systematic murder of these people in

the immediate future. The combination of the deportation machinery with the

killing technology already familiar from the ‘euthanasia’ programme to form a

programme of systematic extermination would not occur until the spring of

1942. The construction of gas killing chambers in Chelmno, Belzec, Auschwitz,

and other places did also begin, like the major deportations, in the autumn of

1941, but all of these projects originally had a regional connection.

chapter 15

AUTUMN 1941: THE BEGINNING OF THE

DEPORTATIONS AND REGIONAL

MASS MURDERS

The Preconditions are Created: The End of ‘Euthanasia’

and the Transfer of Gas Killing Technology

to Eastern Europe

The transfer to Eastern Europe of the gas killing technology developed in the

context of the euthanasia programme since 1939 occurred in parallel with the start

of the deportations. The crucial precondition for this was that on 24 August 1941

Hitler ordered the ending of the ‘Euthanasia’ programme. 1 Moreover, this decision was not made abruptly or spontaneously, but was generally expected by the

Nazi leadership.

The suspension of the euthanasia action plainly occurred because the Nazi

regime wished to avoid provoking further agitation among the population by

murdering sick people, but it tellingly occurred at a moment when the original

quota of 70,000 murdered patients had been reached. While in the first months of

the T4 programme, a higher percentage of patients from institutions had been

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murdered than originally planned, and in the autumn of 1940 the planned figure

had risen from 70,000 victims to between 130,000 and 150,000, in 1941, in the face

of mounting protests and growing agitation about the murders among the popu-

lation, the planned goals of the programme had to be lowered again, to 100,000

patients initially. 2

When the euthanasia action spread to the three provinces of Hanover, the

Rhineland, and Westphalia in the summer of 1941, and church protests increased,

the programme was further restricted until it was finally suspended. 3

The governor of Westphalia, Kolbow, mentioned as early as July 1941 that the

action would end in two to three weeks. 4 On 22 August Goebbels noted, about a discussion with the Westphalian Gauleiter Alfred Meyer, in which they had both

talked about the ‘Church situation’:5 ‘Whether it was right to get involved in the euthanasia question on such a scale as has happened in the past few months must

remain a moot point.’ At this juncture Goebbels assumed that the mass murder of

patients was to cease: ‘At least we can be glad that the action connected with it is

coming to an end. It was necessary.’

However, in the summer of 1941 the T4 organization had initiated a follow-up

programme: the systematic killing of concentration camp prisoners who had been

selected by medical commissions in the camps. As early as the spring of 1941, in

response to a query from Himmler, 6 the T4 organization had begun to deploy medical commissions in four concentration camps. By the autumn they had

selected 2,500 prisoners and handed them over to the ‘euthanasia’ killing centres. 7

Immediately after the end of the T4 action in August 1941, the second, much more

extensive phase of the action, carried out under the abbreviation 14f13, began in

September: by November the medical commissions had selected a total of 11,000–

15,000 people, who were murdered in the killing institutions of the T4 organiza-

tion. 8 In the same period part of the T4 organization was deployed for a ‘special task’—which cannot be more precisely reconstructed—in the occupied Soviet

territories, 9 and it was only after this second part of Action 14f13 was concluded that the T4 staff were used on a larger scale from March 1942 within the context of

the ‘Final Solution’ in Poland.

What is remarkable in our context is the close temporal link between the end of

the first euthanasia action in August in the context of T4 and the decision to

deport the German Jews in September, as well as the concrete preparations for

other mass murders of Jews in other territories under German occupation, or their

start in October 1941. While in view of the fact that the euthanasia programme had

become public knowledge, the regime did not want to hazard any further agitation

among the population and stopped the T4 programme, they would respond to

certain expressions of displeasure prompted by the introduction of the Jewish star

in September 1941 with increased repression and intimidation. 10

The starting point for the deployment in Eastern Europe of the killing technol-

ogy already used in the context of the euthanasia programme must also have

Autumn 1941: Deportation and Mass Murders

279

occurred in August 1941. On a visit to Minsk Himmler is believed to have issued the

order to seek killing methods that would put less of a strain on the perpetrators, SS

men and Police than the mass executions. 11 Shortly after this visit Bach-Zelewski, the HSSPF for Russia Centre, tried—presumably in vain—to call Herbert Lange,

the leader of the Sonderkommando that had for a long time been murdering

patients in gas vans, to a ‘presentation’ in Minsk. 12 Nebe, the leader of Einsatzgruppe B and at the same time Chief of the Reich Criminal Police Office, who was

also likely to have been present at the meeting with Himmler, turned to the

Criminal Technical Institute with a request for appropriate support. Experts

from the institute then came to Belarus. After a further attempt to kill mentally

ill people near Minsk with explosives had led to terrible results, 13 patients were killed in walled-up rooms with car exhaust fumes introduced from outside in a

mental institution in Mogilev as well as in Novinki and Minsk (Himmler had

visited the latter on 15 August). 14

On the basis of these experiences, amongst other things, the decision was made

to create transportable gas chambers for the Einsatzgruppen. The model for this

was one already used by Lange’s Sonderkammando to murder Polish mental

patients in the winter of 1939/40, except that now, instead of using carbon

monoxide from gas canisters the exhaust from the vehicle was introduced directly

into the closed vehicle body itself. The requisite conversion of the vehicles was

undertaken by the Criminal Technical Institute. 15 Early in November