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

Die Deportation der Hamburger Juden 1941–

1945, 2nd edn (Hamburg, 2002), 13–29. Scheller and Schulla, Buch der Erinnerung

provides numerous other examples to show that the first stage of the deportations (as

a closed march from a collection point to the station) took place publicly in many

places at the end of 1941, including the cities of Berlin, Würzburg and Nuremberg,

Hamburg, Kassel, Bielefeld, and Hanover (contributions from Klaus Dettmer, Eck-

ehard Hübschmann, Jürgen Sielemann, Monica Kingreen, Monika Minninger, and

Peter Schulze).

73. Summarized in the volume of photographs by Klaus Hesse and Philipp Springer, Vor

aller Augen. Fotodokumente des nationalsozialistischen Terrors in der Provinz (Essen,

2002), 135 ff.

74. This is apparent in official surveys, some of which included critical voices: Stapostelle Bremen, 11 Nov. 1941, Stadt Münster, Bericht aus der Kriegschronik, 1 Dec. 1941; SD

Außenstelle Minden, reports on 6 Dec. 1941 and 12 Dec. 1941, and SD Hauptaußenstelle

Bielefeld, 16 Dec. 1941. These reports can be found in the publication compiled by Otto

Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten,

1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), Nos. 3371, 3401, 3387, 3388, 3386. That the deportations did not meet with indifference on the part of the public is also apparent from diaries,

letters, and reports from foreigners who were staying in the Reich at the time.

75. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 562 ff.

76. Ibid. 414.

77. Ibid. 491 ff. and 589 ff. and Wolfgang Dressen, Betrifft: ‘Aktion 3’. Deutsche verwerten jüdische Nachbarn (Cologne and Berlin, 1998). The topic of the auctions and the putting

to other uses of Jewish household goods for the benefit of German citizens is, in recent

years, increasingly being covered in local studies; for example: Jehuda Barlev, Juden und jüdische Gemeinde in Gütersloh, 1671–1943, 2nd edn (Gütersloh, 1988), 113; Matthias

Krispin et al., Ein offenes Geheimnis. ‘Arisierung’ in Alltag und Wirtschaft in Oldenburg zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Oldenburg, 2001), 119 ff.; Christiane Kuller, ‘ “Erster Grundsatz: Horten für die Reichsfinanzverwaltung”. Die Verwertung des Eigentums der deportierten Nürnberger Juden’, in Christoph Dieckmann et al., Die Deportation der Juden

536

Notes to pages 288–290

aus Deutschland. Pläne—Praxis—Reaktionen, 1938–1945 (Göttingen, 2004), 160–79;

Regina Bruss, Die Bremer Juden unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Bremen, 1983),

217–18; M. Buchholz, ‘Die hannoverschen Judenhäuser. Zur Situation der Juden zur

Zeit der Ghettoisierung und Verfolgung. 1941 bis 1945’, Quellen und Darstellungen zur

Geschichte Niedersachsens 101 (1987); Bernd-Lutz Lange, Davidstern und Weihnachts-

baum. Erinnerungen von überlebenden (Leipzig, 1992); in his study of Hamburg, Frank

Bajoh estimates around 100,000 beneficiaries of Jewish property in Hamburg and the

immediate area (‘Arisierung’ in Hamburg. Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer

1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1997), 331 ff.).

78. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 606 ff.; Susanne Willems, Der entsiedelte Jude. Albert Speers Wohnungspolitik für den Berliner Hauptstadbau (Berlin, 2000). The NSDAP district

headquarters in Göttingen reported in December 1941 that ‘the intention to transport

the Jews out of Göttingen in the near future’ had become ‘generally known among the

populace’; in consequence, the headquarters was ‘overrun’ with applications for allo-

cations of the abandoned dwellings (Kulka and Jäckel, Juden, No. 3400, NSDAP

Kreisleiter Göttingen, report 19 Dec. 1941).

79. Details in Longerich, ‘Davon haben wir nichts gewusst’, 171 ff. The police regulation of 24 Oct. 1941 was reproduced in Goebbels’s article ‘Die Juden sind schuld’ (The Jews are

to blame) on 16 Nov. 1941 in the weekly journal Das Reich in the form of ten

commandments on the treatment of Jews. On the avoidance of the subject of the

deportations in German propaganda see Goebbels’s instruction at the internal propa-

ganda conference on 23 Oct. 1941 (BA, NS 18alt/622).

80. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 176 ff.

81. Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (New York, 1999), 112 ff.; Zimmer-

mann, Rassenutopie, 228 ff.

82. PAA, Inland II AB, 59/3; Cf. Browning, ‘Decision’, 27.

83. Werner Jochmann, ed., Adolf Hitler: Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944. Die

Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heins (Hamburg 1980), 25 Oct. 1941, p. 106.

84. Das Reich, no. 46, 1941. English translation in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds, Nazism 1919–1945, vol. iii: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, rev. edn (Exeter,

2001), 515 ff.

85. Minutes of the speech; quoted in Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Rassenpolitik und Kriegfüh-

rung. Sicherheitspolizei und Wehrmacht in Polen und der Sowjetunion (Passau, 1991),

131–2, following PAA, Pol XIII, 25, VAA-Berichte; Cf. the note from a reporter,

published in Jürgen Hagemann, Die Presselenkung im Dritten Reich (Bonn, 1970), 146.

86. ADAP D XIII/2, no. 415, record of meeting between Hitler and the Great Mufti in the

presence of the Reich Foreign Minister on 28 November 1941 and 30 November 1941.

Arguably, Hitler’s statement to a visitor who was not a close and trustworthy ally

cannot be seen as a revelation of the dictator’s last and most secret intentions, but

primarily as an attempt to use the striking idea of the ‘destruction’ of the Jews of

Palestine as a common interest of German and Arab policy to distract the Great Mufti

from his desire to receive a public declaration from Hitler that the German government

supported the liberation of all Arabs. For, at that point, Hitler did not want to make

such a declaration, fearing that the French Protectorate government in Syria would

react to such a signal by switching to the Allied camp.

Notes to pages 290–293

537

87. Ian Kershaw, ‘ “Improvised Genocide”? The Emergence of the “Final Solution” in the

Warthegau’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 2 (1992), 65: in 1942

information reached the United States that in October 1941 the Jews of the district of

Konin, 3,000 people in all, had been systematically murdered. These figures were

confirmed by a German investigation (see ZSt, 206 AR-Z 228/73).

88. Ruling of Stuttgart district court, 15 Aug. 1950, in Irene Sagel-Grande et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer

Tötungsverbrechen, 1945–1966, vol. vii (Amsterdam, 1972), 231a.

89. Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 70 ff.

90. PRO, HW 16/32, 4 Oct. 1941.

91. Statement by Lange’s driver, Justiz und NS-Verbrechen xxi, no. 594, LG Bonn, ruling of 23 July 1965; see Kogon et al., eds, NS-Massentötungen, 110 ff.

92. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941–1944 (New Haven and

London, 1984), 96–7 and 124–5.

93. Faschismus-Ghetto-Massenmord. Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand

der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Tatiana Berenstein et al.

(Frankfurt a. M., 1962), 278.

94. The Lodz Gestapo report for 9 June 1942 also refers to the central role of Greiser

(‘Judentum’); Faschismus, Berenstein et al., eds, 285.

95. Monitoring report by the