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

citizenship of Jews

with French citizenship as demanded by the German security police. In April, the

chief of police, Reneé Bousquet, produced a draft law to denaturalize those Jews

who had entered the country since 1932. On the prompting of the Germans, the

entry date was altered to 1927, as already provided for in a draft presented by

Jewish Commissioner, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, in December 1942, but taken

no further. 127

Since the German Security Police now assumed that within a relatively short

space of time they would be able to deport a large number of Jews who had had

their citizenship revoked, in spring they reduced the number of arrests and the

deportations were suspended between 25 March and 23 June. 128

On 8 June 1943, however, Himmler urged the HSSPF in France, Carl-Albrecht

Oberg, to secure publication of the denaturalization law, which had already been

signed by Laval. 129 In Himmler’s view, the deportations to the Reich were to be concluded by 15 July 1943 since, as Himmler put it, referring to the military

situation, they had to ‘guard against all possible events’.

Immediately after this conversation the RSHA’s deportation specialist,

Alois Brunner, arrived in Paris at the head of a command unit and, along

with Röthke and Hagen, drew up a plan for the deportation of the Jews who

were to be denaturalized. The plan was to deport the families of this group

as well, both Jews and non-Jews. A raid was scheduled for 24 June; but the

date was repeatedly postponed, as the legal precondition, the denaturaliza-

tion law, did not exist. 130 In June, when Röthke requested 250 members of the Security Police from Gestapo chief Müller for the implementation of the

raid, Müller refused; given the shortage of available manpower on the

German side, the planned action could only be executed with the support

of the French police.

On 20 July 1943, however, Laval resolved to sign a new, harsher version of the

denaturalization law, which had been produced in the meantime by the head of

the French Office of Jewish Affairs, Darquier, and, in line with Brunner’s plans, to

revoke French citizenship from the family members of those denaturalized since

1927, thus creating the precondition for deportation. 131 However, on 25 July, the day of the fall of Mussolini, Laval decided to suspend publication of the denaturalization law. 132 On 7 August Laval told Oberg and Knochen that he planned to revert the law to the state of Bousquet’s draft. 133 On further prompting by the Germans Laval gave formal reasons for the decision: Pétain himself had to sign the

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

law. 134 But on 24 August the French head of state declared himself unwilling to provide this signature. 135

By now, however, the Gestapo Jewish desk in Paris had developed an alternative

plan: in case the planned action against the French Jews who were to be denatur-

alized, as Röthke had said in July, brought in ‘only a meagre result’, ‘all traceable

Jews’ were to be rounded up ‘in a large-scale operation involving the forces of the

Security Police (SD) commando and Einsatzkommandos with the assistance of

German troops’. All Jews ‘were to be transported to the East out of the area

occupied by us in 1943, or taken back by the states still resisting this’. 136

Reservations Concerning Italy, Germany’s Chief Ally

Before September 1943, the Germans made no serious attempt to persuade the

Italian government to hand over the 40,000 or so Jews living in the country who

had been subjected to special racial legislation since 1938. 137 When Himmler discussed the persecution of the Jews of Eastern Europe with Mussolini in October

1942, his interlocutor avoided any further discussion of the subject with an evasive

turn of phrase. 138

The Italian policy of protecting the Jews against the German persecutory

measures in their occupied zones in Greece, France, and Croatia irritated the

Germans not least because their Italian ally was thus endangering the unified

nature of Judenpolitik throughout the whole of the German sphere of influence,

and thus encouraging other governments to deviate from their radical line. 139

Italy’s policy was, as Himmler pointed out to Ribbentrop in January

140

1943

‘for

many circles in France and throughout Europe the pretext for holding fire on the

Jewish question, because they point out that not even Italy, our Axis partner, goes

along with us on the Jewish question’.

In February Ribbentrop ‘urgently’ requested the Italians to be informed ‘that

the anti-Jewish measures of the Reich Security Head Office . . . must not be sabo-

taged any further. Our efforts with regard to the governments of Croatia,

Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia to deport the Jews resident in those countries

have also encountered great difficulties with those governments because of the

attitude of the Italian government.’141

During his visit to Salzburg, at the beginning of April 1943, Mussolini may have

voiced the prospect of interning the Jews in his country; that at least was what

Ribbentrop assured the Hungarian Ambassador, Sztojay, when he tried to con-

vince him a short time later that Hungary should tighten up its Jewish policy. 142

Visiting Rome in the spring of 1943, the ‘Jewish expert’ at the German embassy

in Paris, Carltheo Zeitschel, concluded that the German embassy in Rome would

never ‘be able to crack such a hard nut as the Jewish question in Italy in the

interest of the Axis alliance’. The SD in turn was not able to act autonomously in

Italy. 143

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

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The German Policy for the Further Extension of the

Deportations after the Collapse of Italy

After Italy’s departure from the Axis alliance and the occupation of much of the

former ally’s territory and its zones of occupation by the Wehrmacht, the policy of

the systematic murder of the Jews was once again extended to a number of

territories. The application of the extermination policy to the former Italian-

occupied zone of southern France also led to the radicalization of the persecution

in the rest of France, where no distinction was now made between French

nationals and non-French people. The decision to deport the Danish Jews is

also closely related to the radicalization of German policy after the secession of

the Italian ally even if its history lies before these events. The German interven-

tions in Slovakia and above all in Hungary in 1944 were finally exploited by the

Nazi regime into a ruthless further