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

erection of industrial plant, but not generally in production.

20. Berenstein

et al., eds, Faschismus-Ghetto-Massenmord. Dokumentation über

Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges

(Frankfurt a. M., 1962), 268. On this decision and its effects see in particular Michael

Thad Allan, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor and the Concentration

Camps (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 148 ff.; and Schulte, Zwangsarbeit, 361. A day before,

Himmler had already telephoned Heydrich to give him the task of putting ‘Jews in the

Kl.s’. See Dienstkalender ed. Witte et al., 25 Jan. 1942, p. 326. The decision to deport

Jews to the concentration camps and use them as slave labourers may have been made

in the course of a meeting that Himmler held on 14/15 January with the heads of the

SS-Hauptämter. A few days after that conference Pohl issued an order in Himmler’s

name to set up the Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (ND NO 495). On 17 Jan.

1942 the following telegram was sent by the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern

Territories (Rosenberg) to Reichskommissar Lohse, which clearly indicates a funda-

mental change in the question of the preservation of Jewish workers: ‘The Economic

Leadership Staff East have issued instructions that Jewish skilled industrial and craft

workers are to be retained for work, since they are of great value to the war economy

in individual instances. Their retention must be ensured through negotiation with the

local offices of the Reichsführer SS’ (BAB, R 92/1157). See Wolfgang Scheffler, ‘Das

Schicksal der in die baltischen Staaten deportierten deutschen, österreichischen

und tschechoslovakischen Juden 1941–1945. Ein historischer Überblick’, in Wolfgang

Scheffler and Diana Schulle, Buch der Erinnerung. Die ins Baltikum deportierten

deutschen, österreichischen und tschechoslovakischen Juden 1941–1945 (Munich,

2003), i. 6. Finally, we should bear in mind that only a few days after this meeting,

on 20 Jan. 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich made his remarks about

the columns of Jewish slave labourers who were to be taken to the East for

‘road-building’.

21. See p. 325.

22. ZSt, Doc. USSR 401, quoted in Peter Klein, Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten

Sowjetunion 1941/42 (Berlin, 1997), 410–11. This might be the letter that Wislicency

mentioned in an interrogation: according to this, in the summer of 1942 he had seen an

instruction from Himmler to Heydrich. In this letter the complete extermination of the

Jews on Hitler’s orders was ordered; only those Jews who were fit for work were to be

excluded from the extermination and placed in concentration camps (Trial of Eich-

mann, Doc. 856).

23. Reference to this in dispatch from the Reich Labour Minister, 27 March: IMT xxxvii.

493, L-061.

24. Wolf Gruner, Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden. Zur Zwangsarbeit

als Element der Verfolgung 1938–1943 (Berlin, 1997), 291 ff.; H. G. Adler, Der verwal-

tete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974),

216 ff.

Notes to pages 318–321

545

25. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Diktate 1941–1945,

vol. iv, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1995), entry 30 May 1942, p. 405;

cf. Gruner, Arbeitseinsatz, 298 ff.

26. See p. 324.

27. Sybille Steinbacher, ‘Musterstadt’ Auschwitz. Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich, 2000), 276–7.

28. Cf. Kaienburg, ‘Jüdischer Arbeitslager an der “Strasse der SS” ’, Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 11 (1996), 13–39. On the Galician section of

DG IV: Thomas Sandkühler, Die ‘Endlösung’ in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen

(Bonn, 1996), 141 ff.; Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenvefolgung in Ostgalizien

(Munich, 1996), 167 ff., 338 ff.

29. Kaienburg, ‘Jüdische Arbeitslager’, 26; Pohl, Ostgalizien, 338 ff.

30. Kaienburg, Jüdische Arbeitslager’, 37.

31. See below, p. 341.

32. ‘But the Jew will not exterminate the European nations, but will be the victim of his own attack’ (Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden 1932 bis 1945, vol. iv (Wiesbaden, 1973), 1821).

33. ‘We are clear about the fact that the war can only end either with the extermination of the Aryan peoples, or with the disappearance of Jewry from Europe’ (Domarus, Hitler.

Reden, iv. 1828–9).

34. ‘my prophecy will be fulfilled not with the destruction of Aryan humanity through this war but rather with the extermination of the Jews’. See VB, 26 Feb. 1942 and Domarus,

Hitler. Reden, iv. 1844.

35. ND PS 1063, printed in Peter Longerich, Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden

(Munich, 1989), 165–6. See also guidelines on the technical implementation of the

evacuation of Jews to the General Government (undated, presumably January 1942),

IfZ, Erlass-Sammlung Gestapo Würzburg, printed in Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 191–2.

On the deportations from the Reich see ibid. for Germany Ino Arndt and Heinz

Boberach, in W. Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer

des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1996), 23–65; for Austria Jonny Moser, pp. 67–94, for

Czechoslovakia, Eva Schmidt-Harman, pp. 353–80; Henry Friedländer: ‘The Deport-

ation of the German Jews: Post-War German trials of Nazi Criminals’, LBYB 29 (1984),

201–26.

36. Besprechungsprotokoll of 9 Mar. 1943, Eichmann, Doc. 119, printed in Longerich.

Ermordung, 167–8.

37. See the schedule in Peter Longerich, Die Politik der Vernichtung. Eine Gesamtdarstel-

lung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), 485–6, based on the

information of the International Tracing Service in Arolsen and various individual

sources; Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle, Die ‘Judendeportationen’ aus dem

deutschen Reich 1941–1945. Eine kommentierte Chronologie (Wiesbaden, 2005), 182 ff.

An activity report by the agent for the Four-Year Plan, traffic group, mentions 37 special trains of Jews, or only 16 more than can be individually identified (R 26 IV/v., 47; see

Christian Gerlach, ‘The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of the German Jews, and Hitler’s

Decision in Principle to Exterminate all European Jews’, Journal of Modern History 70

(1998), 40).

38. Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen, 167 ff.

546

Notes to pages 321–324

39. On the separation of transports in Lublin: note from Reuter, Abteilung Bevölkerungs-

wesen und Fürsorge, 17 Mar. 1942 about communication from Höfle the previous day,

quoted in Hans-Günther Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsge-

meinschaft, Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie, 2nd edn (Tübingen, 1960), 50–1.

40. Archivum Panstwowe w Lublinie (APL), Gouverneur Distrikt Lublin, Judenangelegen-

heiten, Sygn. 273, Vermerke Distriktsverwaltung Lublin, Unterabteilung Bevölkerungs-

wesen und Fürsorge, 20 and 23 Mar. 1942, with individual information concerning

arriving Central European and deported local Jews. Details in Longerich, Politik, 487.

41. Note from Reuter, Abteilung Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge, 17 Mar. 1942 concern-

ing message from Höfle the previous day (quoted from Adler, Theresienstadt, 50–1).

42. Example in Peter Witte, ‘Letzte Nachrichten aus Siedliszcze. Der Transport Ax aus

Theresienstadt in den Distrikt Lublin’, Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (1996),

98–113.

43. Gottwaldt and Schulle, Judendeportationen, 213.

44. Ibid. 211