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

to ensure that ‘no further measures be taken against the Jews in order to show the

Americans that they were unwilling to obey the instructions of the German

government’. However, Laval would approve measures against the Jews if he

‘received some political concession for it from Germany towards the French

people’. In a discussion on the same day Laval had declared ‘that the Americans

had already [stated] to France that France would receive all the previous Italian

colonies and would get all the French colonies back and France would receive

more than the Rhine border in Europe. The Germans had made him no promises

for the post-war period. In my view Laval will swallow the Jewish measures if he

receives a political assurance of some form.’114

This statement illustrates clearly the centrality of Judenpolitik for Germany in

the second half of the war. With the deportation of French citizens the Vichy

government had been made an accomplice of the German extermination policy to

a much greater extent than had already occurred with the deportations from the

unoccupied zone in the summer of 1942: but this meant that their prospects of

reaching an agreement with the Western powers must dramatically fade. How-

ever, in view of the military situation, which had changed since the previous

summer, a political price had to be paid to the French.

In this letter Knochen referred to a further significant limitation on the

possibility of intensifying German Jewish policy throughout the whole of France:

as long as the Italian occupying forces opposed the persecution measures of the

Vichy authorities, through their own behaviour they were providing the French

government with arguments against anti-Jewish measures.

Since 1942, the Italian occupation authorities had in fact refused several times to

implement anti-Jewish measures by the Vichy authorities; 115 in a large renewed arrest action in the southern zone in which, in mid-February, Jewish men of

foreign citizenship were arrested by the Vichy police and finally 2,000 people were

handed over to the Germans for deportation to Sobibor, the Italian occupying

authorities had compelled the liberation of the Jews arrested by the French

police. 116

Efforts by the Germans to compel the Italians to take a more severe

attitude towards the Jews living in their zone were to remain unsuccessful.

After Ribbentrop addressed this question when talking to Mussolini on a visit

to Rome on 25 February117 and instructed the German ambassador, Eberhard von Mackensen, to pursue the matter further, the ‘Duce’ assured Mackensen on 17

March that he would instruct the Italian military not to get involved in the

matters of the French police. 118 However, he changed his mind a short time later.

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

Influenced by the ideas of Italian diplomats and military officers, he transferred

the solution of the ‘Jewish question’ in the Italian zone of occupation to the Italian

police, and appointed a ‘general inspector of the racial police’, whom he entrusted

with the task of evacuating the Jews from the coastal zone to the hinterland. By

doing this he had removed the supposed security risk that the Germans had

always presented as the reason for their demand to hand over the Jews. 119 Over the months that followed the Italians were to continue their obstructive policy

towards German Judenpolitik in a similarly effective way. 120

Unlike the commander of the Security Police, Knochen, who took into account

the overall political context, Heinz Röthke, the Gestapo Jewish expert in Paris,

took the hard line represented by Eichmann. On 6 March he wrote in a memo-

randum: ‘The transport of the Jews from France must not be allowed to stop

before the last Jew has left French soil, and that must happen before the end of the

war.’121 To achieve this goal within a few months, 122 the Italians had ‘categorically to be led to abandon their hitherto adverse attitude’, while on the other hand the

circle of people due for deportation (a total of 49,000 Jews had been deported from

France so far, 12,000 of them from the southern zone) had to be widened. To this

end all Jews from the old occupied zone must be assembled in Paris; the French

government must hand over all foreign Jews who were ‘capable of deportation’

(i.e. no longer under the protection of their home countries); and a law must be

passed revoking French citizenship for Jews naturalized after 1927 or after 1933.

In this way, Röthke thought, he could implement the ‘mass transportation from

April 1943 (8,000–10,000 Jews each week)’.

These suggestions by Röthke reveal the continuity in the RSHA’s deportation

planning. After Eichmann had set out his plan, at the end of August 1942, to

deport all foreign Jews from France ‘by the end of June 1943’, 123 Röthke intended to achieve this goal by a radical acceleration of the deportations between April and

June; between 90,000 and 100,000 people were involved. Afterwards, he wanted to

begin the intended deportation of Jews of French citizenship.

But Röthke’s suggestions, which he renewed at the end of the month, 124

encountered resistance from BdS Knochen. In a letter to Eichmann125 dated 29 March 1943, Knochen made it clear that no deportations were to occur in the

near future, as ‘measures against Jews of French citizenship can hardly be imple-

mented for political reasons because of the attitude of the Marshall [Petain]’ and,

because of the Italian position, no unified approach towards the ‘Jewish question’

in France was assured. On the other hand, Knochen did adopt one of Röthke’s

suggestions: the French citizenship laws, shortly to be introduced, meant that

some 100,000 Jews would lose their citizenship and be deported, a figure that

Knochen deliberately set too high in order to obtain Eichmann’s consent. 126

The positions of Eichmann and Röthke, on the one hand, and Knochen, on the

other, clearly represent the two fundamentally different approaches towards

Judenpolitik which became clear within the leadership of the German occupation:

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

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while Eichmann and Röthke wanted to speed up the deportations precisely

because of the military setbacks, and bring them to their conclusion before the

end of the war, and were ready to put the French government under pressure to

achieve this, Knochen argued that the deportations should be implemented only

on a limited scale and with French consent, and that they should thus be treated as

a significant element in collaboration policy.

In fact the Vichy government seemed prepared to revoke the