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

Mihai Antonescu, on a visit to Hitler’s headquarters, again

confirmed to Ribbentrop his intention to deport the Romanian Jews. 319 During or immediately after this visit a fundamental decision must have been made by the

German leadership to intensify the deportations across the whole of Europe. For

the next day, 24 September, Ribbentrop instructed Luther by telephone to ‘acceler-

ate the evacuation of the Jews from the most diverse of countries in Europe’.

Ribbentrop had ordered that ‘we should now approach the Bulgarian, the Hungar-

ian, and Danish governments with the intention of setting in motion the evacuation

of the Jews from these countries as soon as possible’. Where Italy was concerned,

Ribbentrop had reserved further action to himself: either he would clarify the issue

with Ciano or it would be discussed between Hitler and Mussolini. 320 The fact that Ribbentrop was thus abruptly revoking his instruction of 25 August to stay out of

the deportation question indicates that he was obeying a decision from Hitler.

Immediately prior to this, at the armaments discussion held between 20 and

22 September, Hitler had called for the removal of those Jews still working in

armaments production within the Reich and their deportation. 321

On 25 September—the previous day the Croatian Prime Minister Ante Pavelic

had been received in the Führer’s headquarters, where he had talked to Hitler

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and Ribbentrop about the ‘Jewish problem’ in Croatia322—Ribbentrop issued a directive concerning the deportation of Jews in the Italian zone of Croatia, to

which Mussolini had already agreed in principle. The question should tentatively

be raised in Rome about ‘how matters stood’, although one should not strive

for ‘an actual demarche demanding, for example, that the Duce’s decision con-

cerning the instructions should be quickly passed on to the military authorities in

Croatia’. 323

In fact, however, apart from Croatia, all the allies who had come to be included

in the German deportation plans in the course of 1942 would thwart German

intentions in autumn 1942. This applied to Slovakia, where the deportations came

to a complete stop, 324 to Romania, which withdrew from the deportation agreement that it had given in July, to Bulgaria and Hungary, which had been newly

included in the deportation programme in September, and to Italy, which pre-

vented further deportations from its occupied zone in Croatia. In the last quarter

of 1942, the RSHA only managed to organize deportations from one other

country, Norway, possibly in place of Denmark, which had been brought into

play in September.

As regards Romania, in the last quarter of 1942 the Germans were forced to

acknowledge that the deportation agreed there in July was being delayed. 325

Towards the end of the year, the RSHA decided to postpone the deportations

from Romania to the following spring. On 14 December, Luther described this

postponement to the German embassy in Sofia as not very serious, as the

‘deportation’ (Abtransport) was ‘not in any case desirable during the main winter

months’. Things should be kept ‘in flux’ so that at the beginning of spring ‘one

could expect the measures to continue’. 326 In January 1943, however, Himmler reached the conclusion that further attempts to move the Romanian government

to hand over their Jews were pointless. He, therefore, proposed that the ‘Jewish

adviser’ be withdrawn from the German embassy in Bucharest. 327

On 16 October Luther ordered the German ambassador in Sofia to ‘discuss the

question of a transport to the East of the Jews due for resettlement according to

the new Bulgarian regulations’ with the Bulgarian government. Luther was start-

ing from the premise that these plans could be connected with the forthcoming

deportations from Romania. But Ambassador Adolf Beckerle learned from the

Bulgarian Prime Minister that the German offer was basically welcome, but the

Bulgarians wanted first to ‘concentrate (the Jewish workers) and deploy them

for road-building’. 328 After further discussions in mid-November, Beckerle still believed that the transport of the ‘the majority of the Bulgarian Jews’ was possible

in the near future. 329 In parallel with this, Richter, the ‘Jewish adviser’ at the German embassy in Bucharest, approached Protisch, the press attaché at the

Bulgarian embassy there, who had been specially commissioned by his govern-

ment to investigate Romania’s ‘Jewish policy’. Richter suggested that perhaps ‘the

resettlement of the Jews of Bulgaria in collaboration with the Reich, which has

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already been decided upon’, could be undertaken. He indicated that the ‘Reich

office responsible for the solution of the Jewish question was very interested in

such a collaboration.’330 As early as November, however, a detailed report from the SD foreign department reached the conclusion that further intensification of

the persecution of the Jews would encounter indifference and resistance. 331 The deportations that had originally been planned were thus, as in the case of

Romania, postponed to the following year.

In late September 1942 Luther also took the initiative with the Hungarian

government. 332 On 5 October, unofficially at first, he put the German demands about the ‘Jewish question’ to the Hungarian Ambassador in Berlin, Dominik

Sztojay. The Hungarian government was to declare itself in agreement with the

deportation of the Hungarian Jews from Germany and the occupied countries, or

fetch them back to Hungary by 31 December 1942. At the same time, Luther drew

up a comprehensive programme for the ‘treatment of the Jewish question in

Hungary’, including the deportation of the Hungarian Jews. 333

At this meeting Sztojay pointed out amongst other things that the Hungarian

Prime Minister, Miklos Kállay, was particularly interested to learn ‘whether the

Jews would be able to go on living after their evacuation to the East’. In this

context certain rumours were circulating, which he himself, of course, considered

unbelievable, but which concerned Kállay. He did not want ‘to be accused of

handing over the Hungarian Jews after their evacuation to misery or worse’.

Sztojay seemed content with Luther’s answer that all evacuated Jews would

‘initially find employment in road-building’, and would later be ‘accommodated

in a Jewish reservation’.

On 17 October, the German ambassador in Budapest handed over the German

demands in an official form. 334 Within the Foreign Ministry, however, it soon became clear that the Hungarian government was far from willing to start the

deportation of the Hungarian Jews. 335 However, towards the end of November, Himmler assumed that the deportations could soon be set in motion. To this end,

he suggested to