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

area. This ‘nature reserve’ or ‘Reich ghetto’, as Heydrich called

it, would not only take Jews but also ‘undesirable’ Poles from the eastern areas that

had been incorporated into the Reich. 45

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On 29 September Hitler told Rosenberg that he wanted the newly conquered

Polish territories to be divided into three strips: the area between the Vistula and

the Bug was for settling the Jews from the whole of the Reich and ‘all other

elements that are in any respect unreliable’; there was to be an ‘Eastern Wall’

erected along the Vistula, and on the old German–Polish border a ‘broad belt

of Germanization and colonization’, and between them a Polish ‘statehood’

(Staatlichkeit). 46 The idea of a ‘Jewish reservation’ was discussed relatively openly by the National Socialist leadership in the following weeks: Hitler mentioned it to

the Swedish manufacturer Dahlerus on 26 September, 47 whilst on 1 October he explained the idea of an ‘ethnic cleansing’ (volkliche Flurbereinigung) in the East

to the Italian Foreign Minister. 48 The German press was told of these plans in confidence and immediately speculation on the ‘reservation’ appeared in the

international press. 49 On 6 October Hitler explained in his speech to the Reichstag that the ‘most important task’ after the ‘collapse of the Polish state’ was ‘a new

order of ethnographic relations, which is to say a resettlement of nationalities’; in

the course of this ‘new order’ an attempt would be made ‘at ordering and

regulating the Jewish problem’. 50

On the following day, 7 October 1939, Hitler issued the decree for the ‘Strength-

ening of the German Nation’ and thereby gave Himmler the double task of, on the

one hand, ‘collecting and settling’ into the Reich ‘German people who have had to

live abroad, and, on the other, ‘arranging the settlement of the ethnic groups

within its sphere of interest so as to improve the lines of demarcation between

them’. Himmler was specifically to take responsibility: first, for the ‘repatriation’

(Rückführung) of Reich and ethnic Germans, second for the ‘exclusion of the

detrimental influence of those elements of the population who are ethnically alien

and represent a danger to the Reich and the community of Germans’ (for which

purpose, it went on to say, he would be allowed to assign the elements in question

particular areas to live in), and third for the ‘formation of new German settlement

areas through population transfer and resettlement’. The Reichsführer-SS was

instructed to make use of the ‘existing authorities and institutions’ in order to

implement these tasks. 51

Within the framework of these new responsibilities Himmler concentrated

first and foremost on organizing the ‘repatriation’ (Heimführung) of the ethnic

Germans from the Soviet Union and the Baltic states into the annexed areas of

Poland, which had been agreed on 28 September and over-hastily put into

practice, and at the same time set in train the large-scale ‘resettlement’ of Jews

and Poles.

chapter 9

DEPORTATIONS

Deportations Phase I: The Nisko–Lublin Plan

of October 1939

The so-called Nisko Project was the first concrete programme for deportation that

the SS organized in the context of the authority they had been given to ‘eliminate

the harmful influence of . . . elements of the population distinct from the German

people’ and to place them in ‘designated areas of settlement’.

On the day before the Decree for the Strengthening of the German Nation was

issued, on 6 October 1939, Heinrich Müller (the Head of the Gestapo) instructed

Adolf Eichmann (who was at that time Director of the Central Office for Jewish

Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) in Prague) to prepare

for the deportation of some 70,000–80,000 Jews from the region of Katowice

(Kattowitz), which had recently been formed from the annexed Polish areas. The

order also made provision for the deportation of Jews from Ostrava in Moravia

(Mährisch-Ostrau). 1 Both expulsion campaigns had already been initiated or planned by either the army or the Gestapo in the Protectorate (German-occupied

Czech territory) by the middle of September. 2 It was also on 6 October that Eichmann ordered the compilation in Berlin of a comprehensive list of all Jews,

who had hitherto been listed under the particular congregations of which they had

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been members. This suggests that a much more comprehensive ‘resettlement

campaign’ was being planned. 3

In the days immediately afterwards Eichmann devoted great energy to the

organization of deportations not only from Ostrava and Katowice but from

Vienna, too. It is clear from a note sent by Eichmann to the Gauleiter of Silesia

that the former’s original instructions had in the meantime been extended.

Eichmann said that after the first four transports the ‘Head of the Security Police,

and the RFSS and Head of the German Police had to be presented with a progress

report which would then in all probability be passed on to the Führer. They should

then wait until the general removal of all Jews was ordered. The Führer has

initially directed that 300,000 Jews be transferred out of the Old Reich and the

Ostmark.’4 Eichmann also mentioned this ‘order of the Führer’s’ on his visit to Becker, the Special Representative for Jewish Questions on Bürckel’s staff, noting

that those Jews still living in Vienna would be driven out in less than nine

months. 5

On 16 October, on a further visit to Vienna, Eichmann envisaged ‘2 transports

per week, each with 1,000 Jews’; on the same day he informed the Director of the

Reich Criminal Investigation Department, Artur Nebe, that the deportations

from the Old Reich would begin in three to four weeks. 6 Between 12 and 15

October, Dr Franz-Walther Stahlecker, the commander of the Security Police in

the Protectorate and Eichmann decided upon Nisko on the San as the target

station for these deportations and as the location for a ‘transit camp’. This camp,

situated right on the border with the district of Lublin, was evidently intended

to serve as a kind of filter through which the deportees would be moved to

the ‘Jewish reservation’. The transportees were promised accommodation in

barracks, for which plans were in fact originally made, 7 but these plans were now consciously abandoned. 8

The deportations were also to include Gypsies. When asked by Nebe as Head of

the Reich Criminal Investigation Department ‘when he could send the Berlin

Gypsies’, Eichmann responded that he intended to ‘add a few wagons of Gypsies’

to the transports from the district of Katowice and the Protectorate.