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

Forschungsamt, 16 Jan. 1942, YVA, 051/13b; See Klein, ‘Rolle der Vernichtungslager’, 474.

96. Steinbacher, ‘Musterstadt’ Auschwitz, 135 ff.

97. Ibid. 273 ff. The author was unable to clarify whether the Jewish workers were also

suffocated with gas or executed. On the start of murders with Zyklon B in Auschwitz

cf. pp. 281 ff.

98. Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jakobmeyer, 14 Oct. 1941, p. 413.

99. Ibid., esp. 427–8. The decree was back-dated to 15 October; see , Faschismus, Beren-

stein et al., 128–9.

100. IfZ, MA 120. This was the result of a meeting that Frank held with a small group,

plainly following on from the government meeting. Bogdan Musial (Deutsche

Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement. Eine Fallstudie

(Wiesbaden, 1999), 196 ff.) on the other hand, sees the statement as already contain-

ing the plan to kill these people in the district itself. This, he writes, should be seen as the ‘prelude to state-organized mass murder’. At the meeting on 17 October 1941,

Musial states, Frank had already been commissioned by Hitler to take part in the

systematic murder of the Jews of the General Government, which Hitler had already

decided upon. (In fact, on 17 October, Frank mentioned that he would soon be

appearing frequently in Lublin ‘because of a special commission from the Führer’,

but he does not identify that commission more closely.) Musial’s argument is

unconvincing. The transcripts of the meetings do record that the representatives

of the civil administration attempted to persuade one another, using radical rhetoric,

of the need to set Judenpolitik on the road to mass murder; but they do not show that

the measures for the implementation of a genocide that had already been decided

upon and which were to cover the whole of the General Government, were discussed

here. The planned ‘transfer’ of the 1,000 Jews from Lublin (possibly to the district

538

Notes to pages 293–295

of Galicia, where the mass shootings had begun) precisely shows that at this point

there were no plans yet to murder millions. The Nazis were still talking about

crossing the threshold to genocide, but were not yet at a stage at which mass murder

was being organized and executed. In fact the murderous plans at this point were

likely to have been restricted to Jews unfit for work in the districts of Lublin and

Galicia, a commission that Globocnik hid from the civil administration. See

also Dieter Pohl, Von den ‘Judenpolitik’ zum ‘Judenmord’. Der Distrikt Lublin des

Generalgouvernements 1939–1944 (Frankfurt a. M., 1993), 108, who states that these

plans were ‘precisely at the threshold between plans for expulsion and for mass

murder’.

101. IfZ, MA 120, in abbreviated form in Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, 436.

102. Ibid.

103. Tagungsbericht, ZStL Polen 98, 1-213.

104. Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944. Die Orga-nisierung und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich, 1996),

140 ff. Typical of this phase, for example, is the ‘intelligence action’ in Stanislau on 3

August, in which 600 men were shot (Urteil LG Münster v. 31 May 1968, 5 Ks 4/65, IfZ

Gm 08.08). On these first murders see also Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’, 148 ff.

105. Pohl, Ostgalizien, 138.

106. IfZ, Gm 08.08, Münster district court. 31 May 1968, 5 Ks 4/65, statement from the

director of the field office, Krüger, vol. xxx. 96–7.

107. On Stanislau, see Pohl, Ostgalizien, 144 ff.

108. Dienstkalender, ed. Witte et al., 233

109. BAB, BDC-Akte Globocnik, memo to Himmler, 1 Oct. 1941. Cf. Pohl, Lublin, 101.

110. This is also the view of the editors of the Dienstkalender, p. 233, n. 35.

111. BDC-Akte Globocnik. The letter refers to having ‘fundamentally agreed with’

Globocnik’s ideas concerning the ‘German settlement’ of the district of Lublin

and the ‘gradual expulsion of the indigenous population’, but this agreement on

Himmler’s part does not, as Breitman, Architect, 186, claims, refer to the ‘cleansing’

of the district of Jews.

112. Musial sees a direct connection between the decision to build Belzec and plans for the settlement of ethnic Germans. See Musial, Zivilverwaltung, 201 ff., and Musial, ‘The

Origins of “Operation Reinhard”. The Decision-Making Process for the Mass Murder

of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement’, YVS 28 (2000), 113–53. The author himself

does admit, however, that the ambitious plans for the German settlement of the

district would still not have been feasible even with the murder of the 300,000

inhabitants (‘Origins’, 151–2). Musial’s assertion that Belzec was intended for the

murder of the Jews across the whole of the General Government within a time-

frame of around ten years is pure speculation (Zivilverwaltung, 207–8).

113. 208 AR-Z 252/59, 6 Nov. 1979, statement by Stanislav Kozal. Building start on 1

November, published in Nationalsozialistische Massentungen, ed. Kogon et al. (Frank-

furt a. M., 1985), 152–3. This date is confirmed by the study of Michael Tregenza,

‘Belzec Death Camp’, Wiener Library Bulletin 30 (1977), 8–25.

114. See pp. 280 ff.

115. See pp. 262 ff.

Notes to pages 295–298

539

116. Peter Chroust, ‘Selected Letters of Doctor Friedrich Mennecke’, in Götz Aly, Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore, 1994), 242–3, 25 Nov. 1941.

117. Dienstkalender, ed. Witte et al., 20 Oct. 1941, p. 241. The editors quote from a

declaration by Mach on 26 Mar. 1942 to the Slovakian council of state, which mentions

the German offer (see n. 167, below).

118. Klein, ‘Rolle der Vernichtungslager’, 478, has already referred to this.

119. Jules Schelvis, Vernichtungslager Sobibor (Amsterdam, 2003), 37; on the preparations for its construction there is a statement by the Polish railway worker Piwonski, from

1975: ZSt Dok. 643, 71-4-442; cf. Browning, Origins, 365. It cannot, however, be clearly

established whether these building preparations in autumn 1941 actually refer to an

extermination camp; it could equally be another planned building that was later

converted.

120. Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’ 159 ff.

121. Pohl, Lublin, 101 and 105–6.

122. APL, Governor, district of Lublin, Judenangelegenheiten, Sygn. 270.

123. Pohl, Lublin, 109 ff.

124. StA Lwów, R 35 (Governor, district of Galicia), 12–97, Rundverfügung des Distrikt-

gouverneuers.

125. Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’, 141 ff.

126. StA Lwów, R 37 (Stadthauptmann Lemberg), 4–140, File note re meeting of district

administration, concerning meeting on 9 January 1940.

127. Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’, 148 ff., and Pohl, Ostgalizien, 180 ff., have different view on this.

128. Minute of 10 Jan. 1942, as in n. 126.

129. Lange to Stahlecker, 1 Oct. 1941, OS, 504-2-8. As early as August, Einsatzgruppe A had received permission to set up an ‘enlarged police prison’. The further suggestion,

already submitted by Stahlecker on 21 July and renewed on