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

measure meant that Jews did not receive clothing coupons, tokens

for knitting or sewing, or shoes. They were provided with second-hand clothing by the

municipality (see Hildesheimer, Selbstverwaltung, 168).

19. This emerges particularly clearly from Victor Klemperer’s diaries.

20. For examples see Joseph Werner, Hakenkreuz und Judenstern. Das Schicksal der

Karlsruher Juden im Dritten Reich (Karlsruhe, 1988), 281 (Karlsruhe); Horst Matzerath,

‘Der Weg der Kölner Juden in den Holocaust. Versuch einer Rekonstruktion’, in

Gabriele Rogmann and Horst Matzerath, eds, Die jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozia-

lismus aus Köln. Gedenkbuch (Cologne, 1995), 534 (Cologne). The Oberpräsident

(provincial governor) responsible for the Rhine Province issued a general ban on

moves into cities on 15 Feb. 1940 (Herbert Lepper, Von der Emanzipation zum

Holocaust. Die israelitischen Synagogengemeinde zu Aachen 1801–1942; geschichtliche

Darstellung Bilder, Dokumente, Tabellen, Listen (Aachen, 1994), ii, doc. 1109).

21. Vienna was in the forefront of such developments. Partly because of direct pressure

from the NSDAP the majority of Jews had been driven out of their homes by the end of

1938. In September and October 1939 plans were drawn up for the settlement of

Vienna’s Jews in closed camps, but they were dropped as the Nisko Programme

began (see Gerhard Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1938 bis

1945. Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik

(Vienna, 1975), 57 ff. and 94). In September 1938 in Berlin Speer had masterminded the

confiscation of Jewish homes in his capacity as General Building Inspector for the Reich

Capital, and in January 1939 he began to systematize the utilization of homes that Jews

had been forced to leave as a result of a relaxation in the regulations governing notices to quit (see Susanne Willems, Der entsiedelte Jude. Albert Speers Wohnungspolitik für

den Berliner Hauptstadtbau (Berlin, 2000), 105 ff.). In summer 1939 Speer began to

create ‘Jew-free districts’ in the city and after January 1941 the Jews were driven out of their homes in organized ‘clearance operations’ (ibid. 134 ff. and 186 ff.). In Karlsruhe the majority of Jews still living in the city were accommodated in the ‘Jewish houses’ by the end of April 1939 (Werner, Hakenkreuz, 280). On 1 April 1940 the decision was

taken in Aachen to bring together the remaining Jews in ‘Jewish houses’ (Lepper,

Emanzipation, ii. 134). Between October and November 1939 a total of 47 ‘Jewish

houses’ were established in Leipzig, which initially received Jewish tenants from

municipal housing (Klemperer, Zeugnis, i. 503). In Minden/Ravensberg ‘Jewish houses’

were set up in the larger districts from 1939 but filling them took until autumn 1940

(Joachim Meynert, Was vor der ‘Endlösung’ geschah. Antisemitische Ausgrenzung in

Minden-Ravensberg 1933–1945 (Münster, 1988), 227–8). On ‘Jewish houses’ see Wolf

Gruner, Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden. Zur Zwangsarbeit als Element

der Verfolgung, 1938–1943 (Berlin, 1997), 249 ff.

22. Wolf Gruner has identified 38 such camps: Arbeitseinsatz, 250.

23. For more detail on this see ibid. 107 ff.

24. Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, ed. Bradley

F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt a. M., 1974), 115 ff.

476

Notes to pages 135–138

25. OS, 500-1-597.

26. OS, 503-1-324.

27. On euthanasia see Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany

1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994); Ernst Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die ‘Vernichtung

lebensunwerten Lebens’ (Frankfurt a. M., 1983); Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi

Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995); Hans-Walther

Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur

Vernichtung ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’, 1890–1945 (Göttingen, 1987).

28. On the ‘misery of psychiatry’ before the outbreak of the Second World War, see in

particular Dirk Blasius, ‘Einfache Seelenstörung’. Geschichte der deutschen Psychiatrie

1800–1945 (Frankfurt a. M., 1994), esp. 145 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 43 ff.; Ludwig Siemen,

Menschen blieben auf der Strecke. Psychiatrie zwischen Reform und Nationalsozialismus

(Gütersloh, 1987); Hans Walter Schmuhl, ‘Kontinuität oder Diskontinuität? Zum

epochalen Charakter der Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus’, in Franz-Werner Ker-

sting, Karl Teppe, and Bernd Walter, eds, Nach Hadamar. Zum Verhältnis von

Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, 1993), 112–36.

29. On children’s ‘euthanasia’, see Friedlander, Origins, 84 ff.; Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 77 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 93 ff.; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, 182.

30. Ulf Schmidt, ‘Reassessing the Beginning of the “Euthanasia” Programme’, German

History 17 (1999), 543–50, and Udo Benzendörfer, ‘Bemerkungen zur Planung bei der

NS-“Euthanasie” ’, in Boris Böhm and Thomas Oelschläger, eds, Der sächsische Son-

derweg bei der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Ulm, 2001), 21–54.

31. On the organizational preparations for the T4 programme see Friedlander, Origins,

77 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 93 ff.; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, 182.

32. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 85–6; Instruction for Implementation of the Law concerning Pre-

vention of Children with Hereditary Illnesses and of the Marriage Health Law, 31 Aug.

1939 (RGBl, I, p. 1560). Sterilizations did nevertheless take place until the end of the war, albeit in limited numbers. ‘F-cases’ were those where the threat of ‘reproductive activity’

was great (fortpflanzungsgefahr).

33. Götz Aly, ‘Medizin gegen Unbrauchbare’, in Götz Aly et. al., Aussonderung und Tod.

Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Berlin, 1985), 20 ff.

34. Nuremberg Document (ND) PS-630.

35. According to Rieß’s estimate, Volker Rieß, Die Anfänge der ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ in den Reichsgauen Danzig-Westpreußen und Wartheland 1939/40 (Frankfurt a. M., 1995),

355.

36. See esp. ibid. 23 ff.

37. Ibid. 243 ff.

38. Ibid. 290 ff.

39. Ibid. 321 ff.; Matthias Beer, ‘Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden’,

VfZ 35 (1987), 404 ff.; Eugen Kogon et al., eds, Massentötungen durch Giftgas. Eine

Dokumentation (Frankfurt a. M., 1986), 62 ff.; Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 105 ff.

40. Ibid. 222 ff. See also esp. Heike Bernhardt, Anstaltspsychiatrie und ‘Euthanasie’ in

Pommern 1933 bis 1945. Die Krankenmorde an Kindern und Erwachsenen am Beispiel

der Landesheilanstalt Ueckermünde (Frankfurt a. M., 1994).

41. Ibid. 188 and 288 ff.

Notes to pages 138–140

477

42. See below pp. 290–1.

43. Rieß, Anfänge, 104 ff., 131, 135–6, 168, 256, and 334.

44. Götz Aly’s assertion that the murder of more than 10,000 mentally ill patients in the East was ‘causally linked to the “Heim-ins-Reich” [home into the Reich] movement of

60,000 Baltic Germans’ is therefore unconvincing (Aly, Final Solution: Nazi Population

Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London, 1999), 70 ff.). Aly himself notes

(p. 116) that the murder of the inmates of the Kocborowo Mental Hospital began on 22

September, and thus before the Soviet–German Resettlement Agreement. Even the

request made on 23 October 1939 by Sandberger, Head of the Central Immigration

Office, for 5,000 beds to be cleared for ethnic German migrants came too late to explain

the murders that had already begun earlier in October in Neustadt, Schwetz,