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

deportations planned for occupied Poland. These were initially to

be put into effect using additional ‘short-term plans’.

To start with, a second short-term plan made provision for transporting

600,000 people, all without exception Jews, into the General Government between

15 January and the end of April. 37 (As part of the second short-term plan, it had still been intended in December 1939 to ‘resettle’ 220,000 Jews and Poles from the

annexed Eastern areas into the General Government in January and February.)38

However, the start of the second short-term plan was put off on several occasions,

for the last time on 1 April 1940.39 In this period those responsible were juggling with different figures for the people to be deported, 40 whilst at the beginning of January Eichmann announced an order from Himmler that once more underlined

Deportations

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the intention of deporting the Jews from the annexed territories into the General

Government. 41 Amongst other things the Head of the Reichskommissar’s Planning Division presented a master plan on 23 January which covered settlement in

the incorporated Eastern areas, according to which in the long term 3.4 million

Poles were to be deported. The plan also worked on the basis that the approxi-

mately 560,000 Jews in this area were also to be deported. 42

On 30 January 1940 Heydrich announced another decision: some 800,000 to 1

million Poles from the incorporated Eastern territories were to be brought into the

area of the Reich as a (provisional) ‘workforce’. Only some 40,000 Jews and Poles

were to be transported to the General Government from annexed Polish territory,

the new ‘Ostgaue’ (to make room for the Baltic Germans to settle), alongside, from

March onwards, 120,000 Poles (to make room for the Volhynian Germans). After

this, as a ‘last mass movement’ it was envisaged that all the Jews from the

integrated Polish areas and 30,000 Gypsies from the Reich would be transported

to the General Government. In addition, Heydrich announced that 1,000 Jews

would be deported at once from the area of the Old Reich, from Stettin. There was

no mention here of further deportations of Jews from the Old Reich. 43

Between 10 February and 15 March it was intended to carry out the deportation

of 40,128 Jews and Poles from western Polish cities into the General Government,

a campaign referred to as an ‘intermediate plan’ (the second short-term plan had

still not been initiated at that point). 44

As Heydrich had announced, on 12 and 13 February in addition more than 1,100

Jews were deported from the region of Stettin—almost the whole of the Jewish

community of that city—into the area around Lublin. At the same time the RSHA

instructed the Gestapo offices to ‘concentrate’ the German Jews forcibly in certain

places across the whole of the Reich, the better to be able to deport them when

the time came. This took place before the end of that month in the district of

Schneidemühl (in Pomerania), when 544 people—all Jews from that district—

were ‘collected’ in the district capital of Schneidemühl. 45 On 12 March some 160

people were taken from there to Glownew near Poznan. 46 Himmler justified the first deportations from the area of the Old Reich to the Gauleiters on 29 February

with the necessity of creating additional space for the Baltic German settlers; he

added that they should not ‘raise any false hopes’ about further deportations from

their Gaus. 47 The background to this remark was the fact that on 19 February Goering had put a stop to the deportations from the pre-war area of the Reich into

the General Government in order not to endanger the movements of people from

the incorporated Polish areas. 48 As a result the measures needed to achieve the further ‘concentration’ of Jews in certain cities were halted by the RSHA. 49

The deportations from Stettin and Schneidemühl, and the accommodation

of the deportees in ghettos in the Lublin district took place under miserable and

sub-human conditions such that in the first six months some 30 per cent of those

transported had died. 50

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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

In his speech to the Gauleiters on 29 February Himmler explained that in the

course of the coming year (‘provided that the war lasts the whole year’) he intended

to turn his attention to ‘the emigration of the Jews . . . in so far as this is possible, given the numbers’ and in so far as the conditions in the General Government

permitted it. ‘As far as the 400,000 Jews and half-Jews in the area of the Old Reich or

the “Ostmark” and the Sudetengau are concerned’, he said, ‘despite the war, the

emigration of the Jews will continue as normal. We still want to emigrate [sic]

6,000–7,000 Jews a month, to Palestine, South America and North America.’

Alongside emigration for a maximum possible 80,000 Jews annually, the deport-

ations into the General Government were to start according to the following list of

priorities: ‘First I have to try to get the Jews out of the eastern provinces, Posen and

West Prussia, eastern Upper Silesia and South-East Prussia. Then follows the Old

Reich, then the Protectorate. The Gypsies are a separate question.’51

However, far-reaching deportation planning met with resistance from Frank.

At a leadership meeting on 12 February in Karinhall under the chairmanship of

Goering (in his capacity as the most senior figure responsible for dealing with the

Jewish question) he had spoken against the ‘continuation of resettlement practice

so far’ and gained Goering and Himmler’s agreement to discuss the mechanisms

of evacuation with him in more detail. 52

On 19 February 1940 Goering made it clear in a letter to Heydrich that ‘Jews

living in the area of the Reich, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and

Moravia . . . —with the exception of special cases—could not be evacuated into

the General Government’. In contrast, however, those Jews living in the annexed

Polish areas should be ‘refused permission to emigrate since they will be trans-

ported into the General Government as soon as possible’. ‘At this time’, he went

on, ‘a normal evacuation of the 500,000 Jews living in these areas to the overseas

countries for which Jewish immigration is possible does not seem feasible.’53 In the meantime the RSHA had come to the conclusion that an alternative plan—to

deport the Jews from the Reich to the Soviet Union—was impossible since it was

rejected by the