genocideflie lews in Europe1939-45

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Bflllantines llluslraleil HistoiyQD human

oi the Violent Century OD conflict llo4 )).

The editorial team

The authorWard Rutherford

Ward Rutherford, born in 1927,is one of the few Britons to havefirst hand experience of life

under the Nazis. From 1940 to

1945 he was in the Germanoccupied Channel Islands andwas imprisoned for listening to

the BBC. He has since workedas a journalist in newspapers, onhis own newsagency and in

television.

Editor-in-Chief:Barrie Pitt

Barrie Pitt, author of 'Zeebrugge,'

St. George's Day 1918', and'Revenge at Sea'. Contributor to

The Encyclopaedia Britannica onnaval warfare; historical con-sultant to The Sunday TimesColour Magazine; Editor of

Purnell's History of the SecondWorld War; consultant to the

producer of the B.B.C. film

series The Great War.

Editor:David Mason

A graduate in English Literature

and Philosophy of St John's

College Cambridge, DavidMason is an author and editor of

wide experience. After someyears as a news reporter andfeature writer in Fleet Street, heentered book publishing to help

launch Ballantine's Illustrated

Histories, and has written four

books in the series.

Art Director:Sarah Kingham

Sarah Kingham, who studied at

the Hornsey College of Art,

London, is now regarded as oneof the most original and talented

young designers in Londonpublishing. As design editor of

Ballantine's Illustrated Histories

she has established new stand-

ards for the presentation of

information in books, based onthe close integration of textual

and visual material.

Consultant Editor:

John Keegan

John Keegan was born in

London in 1 934 and educated at

King's College, Taunton,Wimbledon College and Balliol

College, Oxford, where hespecialised in military history.

Since 1960 he has been Senior

Lecturer in Military History at the

Royal Military Academy, Sand-hurst. He is the author of

numerous articles on military

history, strategy and international

affairs.

Consultant Editor:Sydney L. Mayer

Sydney L. Mayer, Jr. was born

in Chicago in 1937. Educated at

the University of Michigan,Yale University and the LondonSchool of Economics. He wasexecutive editor of Purnell's

History of the Second WorldWar, political consultant to

Purnell's History of the First

World War.

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Editor-in-Chief: Barrie Pitt

Editor: David MasonArt Director: Sarah KinghamPicture Editor: Robert Hunt^Designer: David AllenCover: Denis PiperSpecial Drawings: John BatchelorPhotographic Research: Carina DvorakCartographer: Richard Natkiel

Photographs for this book were especially selected from the following archives; from left to right pages 2-3 US National Archives,

Washington; 9 Archiv Gerstenberg, Frankfurt; 10-11 Mary Evans Picture Library, London; 12 Gerstenberg; 13 Mary Evans; 15 Gerstenberg;16-17 Bundesarchiv. Koblenz; 18 Gerstenberg; 18 Suddeutscher Verlag, Mijnchen; 20-21 Gerstenberg; 22-23 Bundesarchiv;24-26 Gerstenberg; 27 National Archives; 28-31 Gerstenberg; 32 Suddeutscher; 33 National Archives; 34-35 Bundesarchiv;34-37 Gerstenberg, 38-40 Bundesarchiv; 41 Suddeutscher; 42-43 National Archives; 46-47 Suddeutscher; 48 National Archives;

48 Gerstenberg; 48 National Archives; 48 Suddeutscher; 49 National Archives; 49-50 Suddeutscher; 51 National Archives;

52 Bundesarchiv 54 Black Star Publishing Co, London; 54-55Wiener Presse Bilderdienst, Wien; 57 Black Star; 58-61 Dr AlexanderBernfes, London; 60 Deutsche Presse Agentur, Germany; 60 Bundesarchiv; 61 Bernfes; 61 Bundesarchiv; 62 Suddeutscher;

62 National Archives; 64 Bernfes; 65 Suddeutscher; 66-67 Bundesarchiv; 68-72 Bernfes; 72-73 NationalArchives; 73 Bundesarchiv;74-77 Bernfes; 78 Black Star; 78 US Army; 79 Suddeutscher; 81 US Army; 82-83 Bernfes; 84 Gerstenberg; 84 National Archives;

84-85 US Army; 86 National Archives; 87 Bundesarchiv; 88 US Library of Congress; 90 Bundesarchiv; 92 Suddeutscher;

93 Bernfes; 94-95 Black Star; 96 Bernfes; 97 Gerstenberg; 98-99 Bernfes; 100 Keystone Press Agency, London; 101 CTK, Prague;

102 Rijkslnstituut voon Donlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam; 102 US Army; 103-104 Gerstenberg; 106-108 Bernfes; 110 National Archives:

110 Black Star; 111 National Archives; 112 Black Star; 112 US Army; 115 Bernfes; 117 Robert Hunt Library, London; 118-119 Gerstenberg;

120 Suddeutscher; 121 Gerstenberg; 122-123 Bernfes; 124-125 Robert Hunt; 126-127 Bernfes; 128 Robert Hunt; 129 Gerstenberg;

130 Bernfes; 131 Suddeutscher; 133-135 US Army; 136-137 Gerstenberg; 138-139 Bundesarchiv; 140-141 Black Star; 142-143 WienerLibrary, London; 144-146 US Army; 148 ImoerialWar Museum, London; 148 National Archives; 150 US Army; 151 National Archives;

152 US Army; 153 Bundesarchiv; 153-154 US Army; 154 Camera Press/IWM; 156-158 Black Star.

Front cover: Dr Alexander Bernfes.

Back cover: Black Star Publishing.

Copyright ©1973 Ward Rutherford

First printing : February 1973

Printed in United States of America

Ballantine Books Inc.

101 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10003

An Intext Publisher

Contents

6 Introduction

8 The Nazis predecessors

24 The years of harassment

56 The movement east begins

82 The massacres

98 The destruction of the ghettoes

116 Auschwitz

140 Out of the chaos

160 Bibliography

A new ond pervenedscienceIntroduction by Barrio Pitt

This is an account of the progressionof German treatment of the Jews,from commonplace antisemitismwhich was part and parcel of theNational Socialist Party dog-ma fromits inception, to the ruthless applica-

tion of what Hitler called the 'Final

Solution'.

Germany, after the end of the First

World War, provided a rich loam of

frustration and discontent into whichthe seeds of racialism could be cast.

Bolshevists and Jews were ready-

made scapegoats for Germany'sdefeat and to attribute that failure to

the machinations and subversive acti-

vities of these groups helped to makeunpleasant reality more acceptable to

many Germans. The National Socialist

Party - itself a product of national

reaction to bitter defeat and post-wareconomic chaos - issued in February1924 a manifesto in which its racialist

doctrines were stated in unequivocallanguage; German citizenship, it

declared, should only be available

to those of German blood, and it wenton to state specifically that no Jewtherefore could be a national. Evenbefore the party manifesto had beenpublished. Hitler had made public

his own antisemitic feelings; MeinKampf, written when he was imprison-ed after the unsuccessful Munich'putsch' of 1923, contained a crudeindictment of the Jews for their

part in undermining Germany's wareffort.

With hatred of the Jews early

established as an integral part of

Nazi philosophy, it followed thatthose who were first to espouse theNational Socialist cause should sharethe fanatical antisemitism of Hitler,for at this point in time the party wasnot so successful that it attractedadherents anxious only to climb onto its bandwagon. One of the 'first

generation' Nazis, only too ready toabsorb the outlandish theories ofNordic racial superiority, wasHeinrich Himmler.Commencing with an unpaid

position within the Party, Himmlerwas eventually rewarded with a paidpost and later was given the appar-ently nugatory appointment of

second-in-command of the SS, a smallinner group of Ernst Rohm's all-

powerful SA. This somewhat insigni-

ficant section was to burgeon andflower like some sinister and evil

plant, to choke its parent body almostto death and then throw out tendrils

to gather to itself the instrumentsof power of the totalitarian state.

Hermann Goring actually created

the infamous State Secret Police, or

Gestapo, and inaugurated, in 1933,

the concentration camps into whichthose unfortunates branded as

enemies of the State were uncere-

moniously herded ; but it was Himmlerwho was given eventual control of

these organisations of terror anddeath. When Himmler created an SSIntelligence Department (SD), heappointed Reinhard Heydrich to its

head, a young man of Nordic appear-

ance and satisfactory physical

strength, the very antithesis of the

Reichsfiihrer-SS himself. These twomen complemented one another; the

one concerning himself with concoct-

ing crackpot racialist theories, the

other pursuing a source of personal

power and self-aggrandisement. Theywere a formidable combination, and,

well served by such men as AdolfEichmann, they set about, withtypical German efficiency, imple-

menting the savage racial policies

of the megalomaniac Ftihrer.

Within weeks of Hitler coming to

power in 1933, the Jewish incumbentsof public office were being ruthlessly

weeded out and Jewish professional

and business men were being boy-

cotted and harassed. From thenonwards, persecution of Jews followed

an inevitable progression; fromharassment, through ridicule andvilification, exploitation and deporta-

tion, to the 'Final Solution' - total

annihilation. As the numbers of

Germany's conquests grew, so moreand more Jews came within the graspof Himmler's SS, and the graph of

Jewish deaths showed a steady up-

wards climb.

To keep pace with the increasingflow of victims it was necessary to

improve and make more efficient themethods of putting them to death. In

the spring of 1942, the gas-chambersof Auschwitz-Birkenau began operat-

ing, each capable of applying the'Final Solution' to 2,000 unfortunatepeople at a time. Gas was introducedinto the chambers by dropping ZyklonB crystals into the ventilator shafts,

and the bodies of the victims werelater removed and destroyed in

crematoria nearby. The whole ghastlyand inhuman process was given anair of unreality by the playing of

music from Lehar and Strauss duringthe grisly operation by an orchestraof potential victims.

The names of the concentrationcamps - Treblinka, Sobibor, Maj-danek, Belsec, Chelmno, Dachau,Dora, Mauthausen, Ravensbriick,

Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald,

have become grimly evocative, bring-

ing to mind films taken by the Allies

as these camps were overrun, record-

ing for posterity the awful reality of

what it meant to be a political

prisoner of the Third Reich: skeletal

figures clad in rags and barely dis-

tinguishable from their dead com-rades; survivors almost too far goneto grasp that they had at last been'liberated'.

These names are the battle honoursof the SS 'Death's Head' units formedto provide staffs for the concentrationcamps, whose enemies were the men,women and children of the 'inferior'

races, who had committed no crimebut were condemned to death throughan accident of birth.

Even with so many camps workingfeverishly to implement the Ftihrer's

orders, it was difficult to keep pacewith the train-loads of unfortunatesbrought in from all over Europe; andso the victims were forced to suffer

the final indignity of gross over-

crowding in the death-chambers.Jammed together, hands raised abovetheir heads and with small children

thrown in on top, they were abuseduntil their last moments on earth.

As the author points out, perse-

cution of the Jews was no n'ew thing.

Throughout history the Jewish race

has been vilified, segregated, dis-

criminated against - often with the

full support of the law - in countries

the world over, and instances of Jewsbeing the victims of bloody massacresare too frequent and too widespread.

But the followers of Hitler broughtanother dimension into this persecu-

tion; where previously excesses

against Jews had been perpetrated

when passions ran high, Himmler,Heydrich and their like introduced

an unemotional, inhuman and cold-

blooded efficiency into the commit-ting of genocide. The millions of

Jews who died in the concentration

camps of Nazi Germany were the

victims of a new and perverted

science.

The Nazis

predecessorsThere can surely be nothing whichbetter justifies Gibbon's famousdefinition of history as 'little morethan the register of the crimes,follies and misfortunes of mankind'than the treatment of the Jewishminorities. For almost 2,000 yearsGentiles have shown their gratitudeto those who gave them a uniquevision of their relation with theInfinite, and who provided the milieu,

intellectual and geographical, for thebirth of Christianity, by persecutionswhich have changed over the cen-

turies only in that they have grownin magnitude and ingenuity. AsBernard Levin wrote recently, review-ing a book on these two millenia,

while most religions and peoples havebeen persecuted by someone at sometime, 'only the Jews have always beenpersecuted by everybody'.But if Christian and post-Christian

civilisation has demonstrated apeculiar distinction in this respect,

the race was already old in sufl"ering

long before the birth of Christ. Theyknew occupation of their nation-statealmost from its inception; its peoplehad experienced deportation and en-

forced exile under Assyrians, Egypt-ians and Babylonians. Attempts to

compel them to desert the one godfor the state pantheon were made byalmost every one of these oppressorsand later by both Greece and Rome.Endeavours in this direction byAntiochus III, the Seleucid, led to

the successful rebellion of JudasMaccabeus in 167 BC.When Tiberius became emperor in

AD 14 his policy towards the Jewishmembers of the Roman Empire waslike Hitler's 'extermination of the

8

whole Jewish race'. The Romans werescandalised by the impudence of atiny nation which could dare toconsider its own religion superiorto theirs.

In AD 30 the Sanhedrin, the JewishHigh Court, lost jurisdiction over its

own people. In AD 70, the Temple atJerusalem was destroyed by Titus,after a Jewish revolt. In AD 132 therebegan the rebellion of Bar-Cochbawhich was ruthlessly suppressed bythe Romans. This, the last revolt of

the Jews against a foreign tormentoruntil the Warsaw ghetto rising of

1943, led the Romans to expel themfrom Jerusalem, destroying andploughing up the city.

The expulsion of the Jews fromJerusalem is usually taken as thebeginning of the period of Diaspora,or dispersal. In fact, under the goadof constant persecution at home,communities of Jews had alreadyemigrated to other countries.

If, however, the Romans thoughtthe Jewish nation and its insolent

people had been suppressed, they werewrong. A year or two after the fall

of their religious and governmentalcapital, a disaster of a kind whichhad preceded the total eclipse of

other nations, the Jews rallied roundtheir faith once more. A new centre

was started at Jamnia on the Medi-terranean coast, where new rabbinic

schools were founded and the San-hedrin re-established.

But these were small groups, andas the exiled people of a repressed

nation, the Jews sought sanctuarywherever it could be found. They were

Heavily embroidered Thora from 1750

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Above left : The Jewish inhabitants of

Cesarea suffer insults by the Greeks ontheir Sabbath-day.

Left : Pilate persecutes the Jews.Above: The Jews are expelled fromJerusalem during the reign of EmperorHadrian

The synagogue in Berlin in 1864

usually welcome until Constantlnemade his own brand of Christianitythe religion of the Roman Empire.When the empire divided, the Jews in

western Europe lost all the privileges

granted to them earlier. There was,at first, no intention to single themout; only to see that the importantoffices were filled by devotees of thenew established faith. In the centuriesthat followed, however, persecutionwas to become so widespread, so

diverse in form, that there is not oneaspect of Nazi tyranny for whichearlier exemplars cannot be found.Separated more and more from their

fellow men, the Jews became thecanvas on which every human vice

was portrayed. They were deicides

(for had they not acceded in Christ's

crucifixion?); they were the poisonersof wells; they were infanticides,

re-enacting the crucifixion on baptisedChristian children and using their

blood for Passover Bread.The church's view is adequately

summed up in a series of eight sermonsdelivered by St John Chrysostom in

387. The Jews, he averred, were

carnal, lascivious, avaricious; theywere drunkards, whoremongers andcriminals. His views and others likethem found frequent echo down thecenturies and from the mouths ofChristian leaders. There are thosewho seek to explain antisemitism asan economic product—the jealousmanifestation of those who havesufi*ered from the competition causedby a diligent and gifted minority intheir midst. History does not supportthe view. Persecution of the Jewswas fomented from the top, by thosewho did not sufi'er from such competi-tion. Ordinary working people in theEurope of the Middle Ages, as in

Hitler's Germany, hated the persecu-tions and lost rather than benefitedfrom them.The sight of the Jews suff'ering, the

Jews who had brought death to man'sredeemer, was supposed to be edifying,

in the same way that public exe-

cutions were held to be edifying, as

demonstrating the triumph of justice,

divine and temporal, and as providingan awesome warning of the results

of stubborn impenitence.The pogroms and ghetto massacres

promoted by the Crusaders of Hitler's

New Order emulated earlier models,for each of the Crusades was precededby massacres of 'the Saracens in ourmidst', the despoilers of the HolyPlaces, in France, Germany, Spainand England. When Benedict, leader

of the Jewish community of York,came to London in 1189 to bring gifts

for the coronation of Richard Coeurde Lion he was rewarded by being

murdered, with scores of his fellows in

the city. His death was followed bymassacres in Norwich, Stamford andKings Lynn, culminating in one in

York itself. Here a group of Jewsfinally chose suicide in preference to

the violence of the mob.Just as the citizenship laws of the

Nazis made Jews second class citizens

without rights, so in medievalEngland they were the property of

the king. As their synagogues wereburned in Germany, so they had been

12

Above : Fugitive Jews pitch camp at Gibraltar during their flight from Morocco.Below : Jews of Cologne are burned alive

burned in Rome and Spain. As theNazis extorted money from the Jews,so earlier had kings and prelates in

Christian Europe. The great churchesand cathedrals which stand as thepride of Christendom were largely

built from such funds, often extractedunder torture and with the torturers

receiving ecclesiastical and evenpapal blessing. As the Nazis forced

emigration and expulsion of the Jewsso had they been expelled fromEngland and France.The theories of Jewish conspiracies

had their beginnings in the MiddleAges. In Spain the clergy preachedthe need for the country to rid itself

of the Jews. Jews, they said, plannedthe enslavement of all Spaniardsfrom the King downwards. Thousandsdied in the massacres thus inspired.

The Middle Ages, too, saw the start

of the ghetto system in which Jewwas segrated from Aryan, a systemwhich was to be used so efficiently

in Poland and Russia in the 1940s.

Bitter as the insult was, it gave to

the Jews thus enclosed some measureof security, and the Jews returned to

the inbred and introspective comfortsof the ghetto whenever dangerthreatened.As the Germans instituted a bureau-

cracy of organised murder, so too did

Torquemada, the first Grand In-

quisitor, a worthy predecessor of

Heydrich and Eichmann.As Himmler preached on the trans-

cendant virtue of purity of blood,

so in 17th Century Spain 'limpieza de

sangre' was the excuse for turningupon the Jewish polluters. As theNazis rewrote history to exhibit

Jewish guilt so in the Middle Agesthe masses were taught that the Jewswere the tribe of Judas Iscariot, theChrist-betrayer.

When existence in western Europebecame intolerable the Jews beganto move eastwards. Here, they weretold, more reasonable attitudes pre-

vailed. And so at first it proved. In

Austria their rights as human beings

and full citizens were confirmed.

In Poland, Hungary, Rumania, at thelevel of ordinary humanity, Jew andChristian lived happily together. Butthe Church was uneasy at such analliance.

An opportunity occurred for sup-pression of the Jews when war brokeout between the Russians and Poles.In Poland they were said to be inleague with Russia; in Russia, inleague with the Poles. Thousandswere put to death.As the Jews, according to witnesses,

faced the Nazi shootings without aplea for mercy, so they went to thestake, singing psalms and refusingthe recantation and conversion whichcould save them. Among the indivi-

dual stories of these mass-burningswhich have reached us is that of asmall boy who encouraged and con-soled his younger brother as herecoiled from the flames into whichhe was about to be thrown, by telling

him he would go to Paradise. Solater, fathers, mothers, grandparentsand elder brothers and sisters were toconsole terrified younger ones in thedeath pits of Penary and the gas-chambers of Auschwitz.Even with The Enlightenment there

came no relief. Science was distortedin order to justify persecution andreason was held in abeyance. Voltairehimself could break the flow of his

logic to assail the Jews as ignorant,barbarous, avaricious, superstitious,

fllled with hatred.

In Russia the pogrom had becomean instrument of government policyto be applied whenever the peoplebecame restive. Even in the 1914 warwith Germany, persecution of theJews was granted no moratorium. It

was still being fanned when, as

happened in Germany later, it

threatened the conduct of the war.

And it was from Tsar Nicholas'sown press, at his country residence,

Tsarskoye Selo, that in 1905 - the yearof unsuccessful revolution - the

A traditional Jewish wedding during

the early 1800s

14

"ftWHt-1MR-*-»-JK^7=^^'*

A political cartoon from the late

1800s depicts the exodus of Je\A/s

from Germany ilMsju^ ^et.^'ittt'ict

erbogcnytoJT-

Richard Wagner Ste\A/art Houston-Chamberlain

notorious 'Protocols of the Eldersof Zion' was Issued. This product of

some paid government hack was anamalgam of all the absurd myths of

Jewish international plots from theMiddle Ages, and it was still beingcalled in evidence by Hitler thirty

years later. Tsar Nicholas II was not,

however, a man to whom reason wasever of much significance when it

came to attacking the Jews: he hadtold Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germanyabout the English: 'The Englishmanis a Yid\

In the rest of Europe the populist

and democratising movements of the

mid-19th Century produced a newstick with which to beat the Jews andwere responsible for introducing the

word 'antisemitism' into language. If

you were an opponent of democraticmovements and an antisemite, like

Gobineau, the Jews were communistsand socialists. If you were a socialist

and an antisemite, like Drumont,then the Jews were the financial

eminences noire s of capitalism.

Joseph Arthur, Count Gobineau,(1816-82) sought in his four volumeEssai sur VInegalite des Races Humainesto explain history in racial terms. It

was, he claimed, an eternal conflict

between the dolichocephalic (or long-headed) races and the brachycephalic(or broad-headed) races. Foremostamong the dolichocephalics were theblond Nordic peoples. The Jews, of

course, were brachycephalics. So per-

vasive were his ideas that British

propagandists looking for a newpejorative to apply to the Germanscalled them 'brachycephalics'.

Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) mergedantisemitism not only with socialism,

but with the occult as well - a com-bination also to be found among theNazis. And it was one of his followers,

Jacques de Biez, who coined the name'National Socialists'. He said in 1889:

'We are socialists. We are nationalsocialists, because we are attackinginternational finance. We want Francefor the French.' With 'Germany' and'the Germans' substituted in that

18

last sentence, the passage could havecome from Goebbels.

The persecutions that took place in

Russia, Poland, Rumania and Hun-gary drove the Jews westwardonce more. Many got no further thanAustria, but smaller numbers reachedGermany, France and beyond. Theywere accepted, but welcomed by none.

Bred in the ghettoes, their naturalinstinct was to cling together, hold-

ing on to their habits, customs andlanguage, ever fearful of new pogroms.The church saw them once more

as a threat to the faith of its flock.

Judaism, they contended, was the

antithesis of Christianity. Further-more, since history had shown the

Jews to be unconvertible they mustbe ejected. Even baptised Jews wereprobably fraudulent 'spies-within-the-

Church' and for the good of Chris-

tianity must be treated like their

unbaptised fellows. The mercantileand trading classes saw them as

competition. The assimilated middleclass Jews of Vienna and Berlin

viewed them with frank disgust, as

poor relations who had suddenlydescended on the family home. Theywere chagrined to find, in addition,

that gentiles refused to accept their

protests that they came uninvited.

'This', the gentiles told one another,

'is what happens when you let a Jewin. Before you know where you are

he has brought his whole family.'

There were other factors at work in

Germany. The Franco-Prussian Warof 1870 had been followed by an eco-

nomic crisis, while the movementtowards the unification of the Germanstates into one nation, started byBismarck, was still progressing. In-

evitably, this focused attention uponrace, upon 'German-ness'.The emigres from the east with their

strange customs and dress did notconform with this racial image. In acommunity of states suddenly con-scious of itself as one people therewas no place for the sad-eyed menwith their long black overcoats,beards, curled temple locks and flat

hats. 'The Jews,' one 19th Centurywriter stated 'are our bad luck.' Hisphrase was to become a Nazi slogan.

But it was felt that if life weremade uncomfortable enough for themthey might get up and go away, andthe antisemitic movements directedtheir eff"orts towards this end. Therewas already a substantial body of

antisemitic literature, and as moreappeared the views expressed becameincreasingly passionate. At flrst theJews were 'aliens' or 'decadent', asthey became again in Nazi languageof 1933-35; before the end of thecentury they were 'parasites' and'vermin', fit only 'to be troddenunderfoot'.

Darwin's theory of evolution, whichfirst upset the pet delusions of human-ity in the 1850s, was rapidly applied

to the social scene by interpreters

who made up in dogmatism what theylacked in understanding. Evolution,in their view, imparted a scientific

credibility to antisemitism. Thesemisconceptions also were to be takenup by Nazism which called itself

'the biological will of the people'.

Thousands of doors hitherto opento the Jews in Germany and Austriawere abruptly slammed. The univer-

sity societies adopted resolutions

banning Jews from membership. Theelite regiments and the army officer

reserve would no longer accept them.Clubs, societies, and chambers of

trade had tacit agreements that Jewswere not to be admitted.Frenchmen and Germans, otherwise

enemies, found a common cause here.

For it was to French thought on the

subject that the Germans turned.

There was, for example, a GobineauSociety in Freiburg. But the French,

a nation of intellectual speculators,

have rarely acted upon the products

of their speculations. With the Ger-

mans it was otherwise. Even the

most outrageous philosophy wassomething to be lived out.

Gobineau had been a personal

friend of Richard Wagner the com-poser, who had already attacked the

19 I

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judaica Qermano''

A cruel version of the Germannational arms: an illustration of the

anti-Je>A/ish feeling which grew as a

result of the Treaty of Versailles

^re iefeigen $a^rer!

X>ann t»SMi ^eu|Mlurfiona^

'Your present leaders. Do you wantothers? Then vote Deutschnational.'

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memory of the dead Mendelssohn,on the grounds that he was a Jew,from whom he had received nothingbut kindness and encouragement.To the composer of 'Tannhauser' and'The Ring' Mendelssohn's music nowappeared 'strange, cold, bizarre,

mediocre, unnatural and perverse'.

It was Wagner's antisemitism which,assuredly, commended him to Hitler

as much as his music.The Wagner home provided a

gathering place for 'intellectual'

antisemitism. Hitler was to be avisitor there. But an earlier one hadbeen Stewart Houston-Chamberlain(1855-1927), the British antisemite andFirst World War German propagan-

22

dist. Chamberlain was Wagner'sbiographer and married his daughter.It is to him that we are indebted for

the first logically consistent assertionof the antisemite's position: 'I hatethe Jews. I hate their star and their

cross'.

The outcome of the First WorldWar brought a new impetus to anti-

semitism. Defeat was a deeply trau-

matic experience for the Germansand the Austrians. During the last

week in October 1918 the Germanarmy was advancing. By the nextweek, on 7th November, an armisticewas being arranged. As a result the

Germans were to find themselves at

the mercy of the Entente Powers

''^^t

who had never ceased to regardGermany, even after a change to

liberal government, as an aggressivemilitarist. Their fury was the greaterbecause they had never really brokenthe fighting will of that aggressor at

the front. Thousands of soldiers,

undefeated, tramped back to Ger-many, to find a country economicallybroken and unable to support them.Something, they reasoned, must havehappened beyond the obvious, beyondthe mutiny at Kiel and the stringen-cies of the British blockade, to bringthis about.

It was certain, after all the centuriesof vilification and oppression and theunremitting build up of antisemitism

German troops return to Berlin, 1918

as an intellectual force, that sooneror later there would be an eruption.

It was thus that the Jews came to beheld responsible for Germany's 'stab

in the back'. The Jews, who foundfriends among the new liberal govern-ment, and were in that governmentitself, were held to form part of thegreat conspiracy aimed at Germany'soverthrow; and antisemitism, at best

the idiosyncratic idee fixe of certainindividuals or groups, was now apowerful force. Like a new religion it

set out on a career of proselytisation.

23

The years of

harassment

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Hitler was, of course, an antisemitefrom the beginning. From the time,

that is to say, of his earliest recordedutterances. His much-quoted sentence

in Mein Kampf which states that had12,000 to 15,000 'of these Hebrewenemies' been gassed at the beginningof and during the First World War'the sacrifices of millions at the front

would not have been in vain' wasprobably written in 1923, when hewas in Landsberg Prison, but he hadexpressed similar sentiments in a

speech in 1920 and in a letter in 1919.

His ideas on the subject wereprobably formed mainly during his

struggling days in Vienna - a timewhen he was not too proud to

accept the money sent to him bya Jewish friend of the family. Hisassociates, the embittered frequentersof the doss-houses - antiMarxists,antisemites and panGermanists -

killed time, their only freely availablecommodity, in the vain search for

scapegoats for Germany's woes whichthey believed were the cause of their

own.Historians seeking a philosophical

base for Hitler's antisemitism havesuggested a number of sources, amongothers the notions of the Cistercianmonk, Adolf Lenz. His views, propa-gated in the Arioheroiken, largelycorrespond with Hitler's. He toosupported the theory of Aryan'superiority' and advocated theelimination of the Jews by sterili-

sation and deportation. But the truthis such searches for inspiration arefutile; Hitler's antisemitism neverhad an intellectual base and, in

private, he poured scorn on thepan-German racial theories of AlfredRosenberg and Walter Darre. In so far

as he had to justify his stand, fromtime to time, his arguments weredrawn at random out of concepts fromGobineau, Nietzsche with his Uber-mensch, Darwin (Hitler was forevertalking about the 'survival of the

Prayers for the harassed Jews ofGermany In a New York synagogue

fittest' and 'natural selection') and,in particularly, the 'salon antisemit-ism' of the Wagners and StewartHouston-Chamberlain.

Hitler's antisemitism, like all trueracialism, was emotional and subject-

ive. When one begins analysingpsychological motives the difficult

area of sexual inadequacy and frustra-

tion has to be considered. For just aswhite racialists of today talk of thesupposed lusts and gross penises of

Negroes, so Hitler wrote of Jewishyouths lying lasciviously in wait for

German girls to drag them off andseduce them. In the half-world of

his own fantasies these images coulddrive him to paroxysms of fury. Thereis no reason to believe him impotentor, as wartime gossip suggested,sexually-malformed. The Russianautopsy evidence shows that this

was not so. But there is good reasonto suppose that he was unattractiveto girls, particularly in the dayswhen he was poor. Apart from his

dire poverty - for him undoubtedlya particular degradation - there washis gaucheness, his tendency tounprovoked fury, his burning-eyedfanaticism. And it is'no coincidencethat he so constantly reverts to thetheme of Jewish finance as corrupting,for money is frequently an uncon-scious symbol for blood, and 'corrupt-ing' the blood of Aryan girls wasprecisely what he saw his nightmareJewish youths doing.In the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche

Arbeiter-Partei, to give the Nazis theirfull and proper title, his antisemitismwas quickly given political embodi-ment. Points 4 and 5 of the NSDAP'smanifesto, published in February1924, stated that German citizenshipwas available to 'only those of Germanblood, regardless of religious persua-sion'. In case the meaning of thatsentence should be ambiguous thenext makes it quite specific: 'No Jew',it declares, 'can, therefore, be anational'. This is developed in thesucceeding point which states thatthose who do not possess state citizen-

25

ship are subject 'to the laws applyingto aliens'.

These principles were incorporatednot merely into the party's ideology,

but also into its behaviour. Alwayspara-military in character (it claimedto be fighting a battle against theCommunists), the party militia wasCaptain Ernst Rohm's Sturmabteilung

(Storm Detachments or, more popu-larly, Storm Troopers). When notparading and tilting at the windmillsof Bolshevism they were intimidatingJews or provoking intimidations byinflammatory speeches on street

corners.

Already, however, a new group wasgrowing up within the militia itself.

In 1922 a special unit of the SA hadbeen formed and given the nameSchutzstaffeln (Protection Forma-tions) or, for short, SS. Three yearslater a puny, myopic Bavarian witha receding blue chin, a man who hadfew other qualities than a plodding

and conscientious execution of partyduties, and whose name was HeinrichHimmler, joined the NSDAP. In 1926,

with the SS then numbering 200 menand mainly responsible for stewardingparty meetings, he was made secondin command. In 1929, at the direct

order of Hitler, Himmler, then twenty-eight, was appointed to succeedErhard Heiden as commander, or

Reichsfuhrer, of the SS. The body hadgrown by eight men, but was still

subservient to the SA and Rohm.If Himmler gave an impression of

small imagination, he enjoyed, like

Hitler, a strong fantasy-life peopledby the characters of Germanic legend.

Through the SS he saw how suchdreams might be realised. It was to

become a powerful, independent force

in Nazism and in Germany, a state

within the state. Its members wereto be something between a new order

of Teutonic Knights and a Society of

Jesus in the party - for his dreams

Heinrich Himmler

26

^m^:

1m

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Mm

SS parade

Reinhard Heydrich

SA storm troops make an arrest

outside their Berlin HQ

m

SA troops advocate a boycott of JeA/vish goods

K^^H;^

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Below: Desecration of a Jewish cemetery

i# -

MOwniiy

A poster announces an early

Goebbels speech; his theme:'Prepare to leave for Palestine'

always bore a tinge of mysticism.Uniformed in black, highly disci-

plined in contrast to the unruly SA,the SS quickly attracted members in

such numbers that of those whoreached the qualifying requirements(would-be recruits had to prove thepurity of their Nordic blood backto 1750) only one in ten could beaccepted. By the time of the invasionof Poland the SS numbered 26,000.

In June 1931 a blond, blue-eyedyoung man from Waldtrudering, whohad recently joined the SS, wasintroduced to Himmler through thegood offices of one of his own staff. Hewas Reinhard Heydrich, who hadbeen won for Nazism by his fiancee,

Lina von Osten, when he had beenforced to resign his commission in

the navy after a scandal involving ashipyard director's daughter.Himmler had, at the time, plan?

for an Intelligence service oi his ownin the SS, although one of his partyassociates, Hermann Goring, hadalways appeared to regard police

and security as his province.

Himmler's effort was, therefore,

bound to be in competition, but hewas always a master schemer. Heappointed the young Heydrich to

head this new department, to whichthe name of Sicherheitsdienst (SD) or

security service, was given. It hadpower to watch over and keep files

on even the highest party members.Thus were brought into collusion

the two men who between them andfrom very different traits of characterwere to take such a toll of humanlife. Himmler was a man convincedby cranky theories of 'blood and soil'

which fate had put him in the position

of implementing. He was not a sadist.

He took no pleasure in the suffering

he was to impose. On the contrary,

A British cartoon attacks Germananti-semitism

36

ALL FOOLS' DAY IN GERMANY.Chancell... Hitler AS A UETALIATION FOR THE FALSE STATEMENT BV rOKEICNERS

THAT WE HAVE BEEN PERSECI't-'NG THE JEWS. I FORBID YOU TO ENTER THIS SiUOV.'

MM

'J i

HIitsHI illi

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Left: Hermann Goring. Above and Below : Dachau in 1933

'^g*^

Guards at Dachau

like an Inquisitor, he deplored its

necessity. The only time he witnessedan execution, at Minsk in 1941, hewas afflicted with hysteria, drew the

reproof of the firing squad commander,and fainted. Yet he gave the orders

which sent millions to their death.

There is no sign that Heydricheither was in the strict sense a sadistic

or blood-thirsty man, and unlikeHimmler, he was not a devotee of anytheory. Indeed he would probably, in

secret, have ridiculed such things. Hewas, however, a man of heady am-bition and shared and surpassedhis master's gift for intriguing. Hewas, in the widest and most literal

meaning of that word, an amoral man,who simply saw where advantagelay and knew how to take it. OtherNazis at least claimed to have hadsome kind of internal conflict before

bringing themselves to do what wasasked of them. Heydrich never onceshowed any sign that he was troubled.

Had the Nazi Party been founded onthe concept that the presence of

Jews in Germany was its greatestfortune and that they should berewarded for their mere existenceHeydrich might well have carried

out the duties involved with the samezeal, especially as he himself hadsome Jewish blood.

Himmler, who suff'ered terrible con-flicts (which probably caused his

stomach-cramps of the later waryears), overcame them through his

belief that 'purity of blood' was so

all-important that it expunged everyother scruple, including loyalty to

his chief, Ernst Rohm. For in thesummer of 1934, a year-and-a-halfafter Hindenburg had appointed HitlerChancellor, Himmler made himselfparty to a plot among those Naziswho feared the SA as a private army.This led to the murder of Rohm andhundreds of his subordinates. Theexcuse was that Rohm was planning a

Oranienburg

Adolf Eichmann

coup or Putsch against Hitler, andthe success with which the Rohmgroup was destroyed left Himmler'sSS in virtual control of the field. TheSA had gained Germany a great dealof international notoriety by its

overt and unbridled brutality towardsthe Jews - particularly now that theCommunists had been pushed intohiding. The SS were plainly moredisciplined, more formal in procedure,in a word, more gentlemanly. None-theless, many people realised that in

Himmler and Heydrich they had acouple more devious and, in the longterm, more dangerous than thecandidly savage Rohm.While these convulsions were taking

place either unknown or with nosignificance attached to them bythe majority of the German people,

the NSDAP now in power was spread-ing the flames of antisemitismthroughout the land. The partymanifesto, written nearly ten yearsearlier, had laid down that Jews wereto be treated as aliens. Aliens canalways be asked by their host countryto 'go home". But the Jews of

Germany, unlike other aliens, hadno home; furthermore, many of themhad lived in the country for genera-tions. Germany came before Judaism

41

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for them. The policy, at first pursuedmore or less hapazardly, but later

more purposefully and officially, wasto make conditions in Germany so

unbearable tha»t many of these 'aliens'

would choose to leave. But departureon those terms was possible onlyfor the rich and influential who hadthe contacts which would make themwelcome elsewhere. So if Hitler's

policy did anything it coerced into

leaving Germany the very people hemost feared and (if his argumentswere followed) would force them to

become a cohesive group amongGermany's enemies.Nevertheless, as early as the spring

of 1933, within weeks of Hitler's

accession to power, Jews were being'weeded out' of all public offices:

Jewish lawyers, doctors, shopownerssaw their business and practices

boycotted. Those who refused to beintimidated were photographed andhad their pictures published in local

newspapers. Yet, as the Americanconsul in Leipzig pointed out, theboycott was disliked by the public.

The poorer people found themselvesforced to use the Nazi-appro-ved shopswhich were quick to raise their prices

as competition was reduced; othersdetested the whole principle of suchpersecution. Outside Germany, as

awareness grew of what was happen-ing there, there was already revulsionwhich was having repercussions ondiplomatic and trade relations.

Any group less maniacally obsessedwith racialism might have seen thatthe time had come to abandon their

antisemitic policies, but the Naziseven turned foreign criticism to their

own ends by saying that their policy

of persecution was in reprisal for

atrocities and menaces by Jewsabroad.When a visiting South African

Minister suggested that Hitler shouldfind a solution to the Jewish problemin ways which did not antagoniseBritain, the Ftihrer launched into one

Anti-Jewish rally in Berlin

43

^

J

L

of his diatribes of antisemitism whichincluded the threat that 'one day theJews would disappear from Europe'.To the Czechoslovakian ForeignMinister Hitler was even less

equivocal: 'We are going to destroythe Jews . . . The day of reckoning hascome'.In the face of criticism, however,

antisemitic measures had to becloaked in law. JMany people in

Germany, as in other countries,

believed the Jews to wield an in-

fluence and to hold an authoritydisproportionate to their numbers.Pressures on the Jewish community,by means of restrictive laws, wereseen therefore as simply correctingthis imbalance, and so they were madeto appear unexceptionable. Theirtotal efi*ect was to divide Jew fromGentile; to make the existence of

the Jew harsher, and by these joint

efi'ects to bring about both the meansand excuse for total segregation of

the minority community.Had the Jews been guilty of all that

was imputed to them, had the genetictheories borne the imprimatur of

reputable science, this unleashing of

the most contemptible elements in

the community, this chivvying andbullying, would still have beeninadmissable. It was only slightly

less repellent perhaps than the actsof those who later took such a promi-nent role, none of whom had even theexcuse that they were victims of thepsychosis of racialism. On the oneside there were the compulsive bullies

and sadists to whom the identity of

those at their mercy was indifferent;

on the other, the conscientious andambitious administrators who in their

anxiety to impress superiors purpose-ly extirpated from their souls thelast shreds of decency.The reality was that the Nazi case

for the persecution of the Jews hadfew pretensions to intellectual

seriousness. It was simply the wayof satisfying that need for 'enemies'

which at once justifies and excusesthe inefficiency and oppressions of

44

tyrants.

The oppressive nature of the regimewas quickly made obvious to all

Germans, gentile and Jew. It wasobvious by, among other manifesta-tions, the fact that so many of theNazi leadership, once in the saddle,

accreted to themselves police powers.Immediately after Hitler's ascent to

the Chancellorship it was Goring,not Himmler, who opened the first

concentration camps for political

enemies. Less than a month after

Hitler's appointment, on 28th Feb-ruary 1933, the day after the Reichstagfire, the first measure allowing thearrest of ordinary citizens and their

condemnation to 'protective custody'for an indefinite period and with noappeal was agreed. Implementationof that decree was also undertaken byGoring. By April in Prussia alone,

over 16,000 persons had been deprivedof their liberty. By Christmas 1933

the numbers had grown to suchproportions that Hitler was forced to

announce an amnesty for 27,000

prisoners: there was no more roomfor them.The camps in which they were

incarcerated rapidly became places of

ill-repute, whose keepers were res-

ponsible to no one. Himmler nowbegan his own essays in this sphere,

having already challenged Goringwith his SD, and opened a 'model'

concentration camp at Dachau,twelve miles from Munich. Here the

Himmlerian ideals of order anddiscipline were put into practice.

Characteristically, all camp existence

was governed by a code of regulations

which covered every eventuality fromhow fioggings and hangings were to

be carried out to how much the

prisoner-hangman was to be paid

for his services (three cigarettes!).

Obscenely as these regulations nowread, particularly when one realises

that they related to men and womenagainst whom no charge had ever

been laid, they were, in contrast to

the regulations at Goring's camps,intended to ensure an orderly admini-

stration.

For the men who would performthe duties of guards at Dachau and at

future camps, a duty which he neverceased to regard as responsible,

exacting" and even painful in the

extreme, Himmler opened yet anotherdepartment of the SS, the TotenkopfVerbdnde or Death's Head units.

Among those who joined the Dachaustaff in this way was a young mancalled Adolf Eichmann, destined to

rise so meteorically in the SShierarchy.Thus, by the end of 1934 Himmler

had assured for himself a place almostunassailable, except by Hitler himself,

in the new state. His ProtectionFormations contained their ownsecret service to hunt out the enemiesof the state and to select places to

which those enemies could be sentand kept. Himmler was on the way to

making himself what he ultimatelybecame, the second most powerfulman in the Third Reich.

In 1934 as in 1933 there was noreduction in the tormenting of theJews and every type of harassmentwas practised. Local authorities wentfar beyond their own legitimaterights and even flouted the Germanconstitution. Jews were forbiddenthe parks, buses, and swimmingpools, and in some places local

government employees were requiredto sign a declaration that they hadbroken off social relations with anyJews they knew. The Nazis sometimesstopped these practices, knowing theeffect they would have abroad, and it

was part of their applied cunningthat in so far as harassment wasenshrined in statute or decree it wasalways justifiable by the Nazis ongrounds of 'expediency'. Thus, whenentry for Jews to German schools andcolleges began to be calculated ontheir numbers in the population as

a whole, the excuse was that it was'to prevent overcrowding' in Germaninstitutions of learning.

In 1935 the first of NurembergLaws on Reich Citizenship which

implemented the party's stated policy

of turning Jews into aliens wasannounced by Hitler at one of theNuremberg rallies on 15th September.Moderates in the party (of which therewere many, though their voices andinfiuence were always muted) accep-ted the laws on the understandingthat they were an enactment madeonce for all time - actually they wereextended by some thirteen supple-

mentary decrees. Some evenwelcomed them as regularising theexisting situation and by so doingat once showing the Jews where theystood and giving them a measure of

protection under law, even if only as-

aliens, which in the previous state of

affairs they had lacked. The truthwas that such legalised social isola-

tion of the Jews as came aboutthrough the laws did not merelymake subsequent and harshermeasures easier both juridically andpsychologically, it was the essential

prerequisite for them. The decrees

made acceptable to the public the

idea of two classes of citizen: Reichs-

burger, who had to be of pure Germanblood, and Staatsangehoriger whothough subjects were not entitled to

citizenship. Such a division of menhad not existed in law since theRoman Empire.The first Nuremberg Laws pro-

scribed the Jews from many activities

including the Civil Service. Theyforbade intermarriage with Aryans,and more than this, the measuresmade the definition of a Jew broaderthan it had ever been in the mindsof the Jew-baiting rabble rousers.

As a consequence, people who werepractising members of the Christianor other faiths could find to their

horror that instead of being the'good Germans' they had imaginedthemselves to be, they were labelled

Jews and second class citizens. It

was, however, notable that theNuremberg Laws, neither in 1935

nor subsequently, attempted to de-

fine Jews. They were always describedvaguely as 'aliens'. Even as late as

45

'f-A^U^m^

/Mackensen, Hitler and Frick at theOlympic Games in Berlin

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'«Kaiar7«s^%A

Sigmund Freud Max Planck

Albert Einstein Herschel GriJnspan

Count von Welczek, GermanAmbassador in Paris

Ernst vom Rath, third secretary at

the embassy

the summer of 1943, Himmler forbadethe publication of a decree whichwould define Jewishness. 'Such dog-matism ties 'Our hands', he pointedout.

Immediate world reaction to theNuremberg Laws was strongly criti-

cal. Berlin had been chosen as thevenue for the 1936 Olympic Gamesbut representation was made to theInternational Committee to changethis, on the grounds that Germangovernment policy was sharply in

contradiction to the spirit of thegames. Hitler had set his heart on theBerlin Olympiad and the NurembergLaws were played down. The gamestook place and became a classic in

Olympic annals. Once finished, thestream of antisemitic legislation

followed steadily and unpityingly,

eroding the position of the Jewishcommunity. Jewish firms had to

distinguish themselves and register.

Individual Jews were expelled fromthe liberal professions and the univer-

sities, and in many cases forced to

emigrate. So there began that exodusof men and women, of whofa many,like Freud, Einstein and Max Planck,were world renowned figures.

The steady intensification of theNuremberg measures was not enoughin the Nazi view. Hitler was pre-

occupied with the polluting effect of

Jewish finance on the Aryan economy.The Jews must, therefore, be forced

outside it. But to do this far-reaching

laws were needed and these had to bejustified not only to German public

opinion, but also to world opinion.

The next act in the drama of Nazi-

relations was provoked by an incident

outside Germany. On 7th November1938 a seventeen-year-old GermanJew, Herschel Griinspan, visiting anuncle in Paris, presented himself at

the German Embassy there and askedto see the ambassador, Graf Johannesvon Welczek. A third secretary,

Ernst vom Rath - an official moreaugust than a stranger calling un-

heralded at a major embassy had aright to expect - came to ask what he

49

wanted. Griinspan drew a gun andshot him, claiming later that he tookthis young official for the ambassador.There were a number of suspiciouscircumstances surrounding theassassination: firstly, the absurdsuggestion supposedly made by thekiller that one so youthful could bethe ambassador; secondly, theimplied assumption that inter-

national envoys attended callers ontheir own doorsteps; and thirdly, thefact that vom Rath was an anti-Nazialready under Gestapo surveillance.

Furthermore in Germany there wasevery sign that the outburst of

violence which followed this event hadbeen prepared well in advance, notleast because those who might beaccused of inciting it had taken thetrouble to provide themselves withalibis.

The Volkischer Beobachter (People's

Observer) which, under the sloganEin Volk, Ein Reich, Ein FUhrer, pur-veyed the official party line, carried

a leader on the killing on 7th Novem-ber, the day it occurred. 'Obviously',

it said, 'the German people will beable to draw their own conclusionsabout this new outrage.' On the

night of 9th November Hitler went to

a dinner in Munich in celebration of

the 1923 Bierhalle plot and it was here

that Josef Goebbels, Reich Ministerof Propaganda and no doubt part-

inspirer if not author of that leader

in Volkischer Beobachter, revealed that

reprisals - by which he meant riots -

were already going on.

After Goebbels' s speech there waslittle doubt in the minds of the

assembly that party leaders of all

levels were expected to organise

and oversee the implementation of

riots, at the same time being careful

not to be identified as their instiga-

tors. In this therefore they werefollowing the example of their leaders,

who were at the Munich dinner andcould not be said to be connectedwith the violence. The only person

Josef Goebbels

50

who did not have this alibi wasGoring, but he had made sure he was ona train bound for Berlin, while the oneman who alone would have been able

to provide the 'reprisal personnel',

Reinhard Heydrich, was in Nurem-berg. But there exists a teleprinter

message sent by him that day, whichinstructs police chiefs in their duties

in the riots likely to break out. Theseincluded making sure that no Aryanproperty was damaged, preventing thelooting of shops and flats, whilepermitting their destruction, andmaking sure that no synagogue wasfired if it was situated where theconflagration could endanger adjacentproperty. A further message circu-

lated by one of his assistants orderedthe state police to arrest between20,000 and 30,000 Jews, particularly

wealthy ones, and to seize synagoguearchives.

During that night a tornado of furyfell upon the Jews of every majorGerman city. Street gangs, unham-pered by the police, looted andsmashed 7,500 shops, set fire to at

least 171 apartment houses and to

almost 200 synagogues, includingthat of Nuremberg, the city in whichHeydrich was staying. He feignedsurprise at the news.The rioters suffered only 117 arrests,

but thirty-six Jews died (later this

figure was raised to ninety-one), andanother thirty-six were injured;

20,000 were taken into custody 'for

their own protection'. Thus, the'spontaneous wrath' of the Germanpeople over the killing of an unknowndiplomat in Paris, turned not uponFrench residents of the country, butupon the Jews.Of the detained Jews some 10,000

were sent to Buchenwald concentra-tion camp, whence, in fact, many wereransomed.Griinspan, if not himself the stooge

of the Gestapo, was possibly eggedon by their agents provocateurs, for

what came to be called the Kristall-

nacht (mistranslated as 'The Nightof Broken Glass'). In fact the riots

lllli

rii^i;.

A Berlin synagogue is destroyed byfire

persisted for over a week and providedthe excuse for new action against theGerman Jews of which advantagewas swiftly taken.

Of Hitler's role in the Kristallnacht

little is sure. His reaction to it

was, in any case, typical of thathatred which paralysed his reasoningprocesses, for he at once andunconditionally accepted Jewishresponsibility for it and issued adiktat to Goring. This instructed himto see that the Jewish question was'coordinated and solved, once andfor air.

On 12th November, three daysfrom the start of the riots, with themobs still roaming the streets, Goringcalled a meeting at his Ministry of

Aviation to consider Hitler's in-

structions. The deliberations of theNazi chiefs were interrupted by amatter resulting from the riots; it

now appeared that while the shopswere certainly owned by Jews, thefreeholds belonged in many cases togentiles, some of whom had hadmillions of marks worth of damagedone to their property, in particularthrough the smashing of plate glass

51

t'The Night of Broken Glass'

windows, and were now claimingfrom insurance companies. If thecompanies paid up they would bebankrupted. If they did not therewould follow a damaging loss of

confidence in German insurance. Thecompromise reached by the meetingwas for a community fine on the Jewswhich would pay for the damage - anice insight into National Socialist

attitudes - and the insurance com-panies' representative present atthe meeting was told by Goring to

see that fewer windows were brokenin future.

In due course the minutes of this

meeting were circulated. They laid

down the pattern for persecution asit was to be repeated wherever theNazi writ ran. The Jews were to bedispossessed of their property; state-

nominated trustees would take overall their enterprises, paying themderisory compensation. Over the nextweeks and months recommendations

52

from a select committee appointedby the meeting were put into force.

Jews were prohibited from attendingGerman schools and from going to

cinemas and theatres. Plans were to

be laid down for the conscription of

Jews into forced labour gangs and atenancy law was drafted which allow-

ed Jewish-owned property to be let

only to Jews - the basis of a ghettosystem. Whatever other evidencethere was, the speed with which thesemeasures were introduced after theParis incident was itself indicative of

of the fact that the forces of anti-

semitism were prepared.

If there was ever any doubt as to

the fate awaiting the German Jews,Goring's meeting had dispelled it.

Announcing the thousand million

mark community fine to pay for thedamage, he said: 'If in the near future

the German Reich should come into

confiict with foreign Powers, it goeswithout saying that we in Germanywould first of all l^t it come to a

reckoning with the Jews.'

An article in the SS journal DasSchwarze Korps on 24th November - afortnight after the meeting in

Goring' s office - was still less equi-

vocal. Any Jews left in Germanyafter an outbreak of war would, thewriter declared, be 'annihilated'.

Important as such racial andideological questions might be,

Heydrich, Goring and their col-

leagues saw that in the short runthere were economic advantages to

be gained by using the Jews for a kindof sustained international blackmail.Heydrich had already been 'per-

mitting' Jewish emigration in returnfor payments in foreign currencywhich Germany needed and, since theKristallnacht, he had 20,000 Jews in

custody and purposely subjected tosuch conditions in Buchenwald thatthey could be expected to be ready topay even the most extortionate sumsfor their freedom.But Germany's attempts to solve

its so-called 'Jewish problem' werenot confined to internal efi'orts. It

had, in common with Poland andRumania, persuaded the world thatits desire to rid itself of part of its

own population was a problem otherscould help to solve. To this end, onthe initiative of President Roosevelt,a conference of thirty-two nationshad taken place at Evian, in Switzer-land, in the July of 1938, where thequestion of what was to be donewith the unwanted Jews of these threecountries was discussed - withoutresult. The conference broke up withno one willing to take even Jewishchildren. For Hitler and his fellow-

antisemites the failure of the con-ference, though it still left themsaddled with their own 'Jewishproblem', was evidence that theworld was largely apathetic towardsthe fate of the Jews. Whatever theGermans now did to the Jews theywere doing ld;rgely as a favour to therest of the world, which by its apathyat the conference, had acceptedimplicit responsibility for the fate

of the German Jews. The Kristallnacht

had been one quick result of this

failure.

A variety of schemes were toyedwith, all aimed at ridding Germany of

its Jewish population in ways whichwould avoid too direct an affront toworld opinion. A plan which theGerman Minister of Economics,Hjalmar Schacht, put for using Jewishassets to fund a loan to be used to

assist 'orderly Jewish emigration'and which was taken as far as Londonfor discussion in the December of

1938, collapsed when Hitler quarrelledwith Schacht. Another scheme wasthe famous Madagascar Project bywhich the German Jews were to beaccommodated in a 'reserve' in this

French colony. The idea is said to

have originated from the FrenchForeign Minister, who said that his

own government were thinking of

sending 10,000 Jews there. None of

these proposals ever materialised.

Europe was now moving towardsthe situation the German Jews, whosince Evian knew themselves withoutfriends, dreaded most - war betweenGermany and the major powers. Atthe same time the number of Jewsin German hands was growing withthe accession of new territories. TheAnschluss in Austria had brought185,000 under Nazi domination andexactly the same pattern of harass-ment was applied here as in the Reich.Its result - a satisfactory one to theyoung Lieutenant Adolf Eichmann,who had .been put in charge of emi-gration in Vienna - was the departureof 45,000 Austrian Jews in eightmonths, against only 19,000 fromGermany itself. In Czechoslovakia300,000 Jews had fallen into the handsof the Germans and here once moreEichmann, promoted to captain, wasbusy, squeezing Jews out of thecountry at an even higher rate thanin Austria.

And in case there was any hesitationabout leaving among those who couldafford it. Hitler now added his personalendorsement to the predictions of

Goring and Das Schwarze Korps. He

53

Above: Aryan shop sign in Prague. Se/ow; Jews are forced to scrub the streets of

Vienna; part of Austria's harassment.

w t i

told the Reichstag on 20th January1939: 'If the international Jewishfinanciers . . . again succeed in plung-

ing into world war, the result will

not be the bolshevisation of the earthand thus the victory of Jewry, butthe annihilation of the Jewish race

throughout Europe.'

The same year had seen the con-

solidation of all security services

under the SS into what came to be

called the RSHA (Reichssicherheits-

haupamt or Reich Main Security

Office), with Heydrich as its head. It

was the following year that Eich-

mann's talents were recognised whenhe was made head of DepartmentIVA4b, that responsible for Jews,with its own four-storey building at

116 Kurfurstenstrasse.Still the 'emigration' went on. It

meant one thing: simple expulsionfrom all the Reich territories. Boatfares were purchased by the Jewishcommunity at large and the emigrantsleft, often with very little likelihoodof acceptance by the countries of

destination, but in the certaintythat return to Germany meant alingering death in a concentrationcamp. With the assistance of the

Jewish Councils set up whereverpossible (on the model of an existingone the Germans had found inPrague) it was possible to keep apermanent watch all on Jews. On6th July 1939 the 'Tenth Decree,supplementing the Reich CitizenshipLaw' brought the union of Jewishrelief and charity organisations in

Germany itself under a departmentof state controlled by the RSHA.Under the same decree the remainingJewish firms were expropriated with-out compensation. Deprived of their

businesses, debarred from all em-ployment except work in the forcedlabour battalions, which in any casecould only absorb a small proportion- about a fifth, the German Jews,together with those of Austria andthe 'Protectorate', those parts of

the dismembered Czechoslovakianrepublic now under German rule,

were, as had always been intended,

driven into destitution and towardsthe ghettoes for which the way hadbeen paved by the tenancy laws.

Already virtual prisoners of state

(they could hardly be called hostagessince endeavour to have them ransom-ed by the world in general had failed)

they became actual prisoners whenwar was declared on Germany byBritain and France on 3rd September1939. In fact, emigration on a limitedscale to neutral countries continuedamong those Jews who still had themeans and the contacts to gain thementrees, and even after the fall of

France this went on. These wanderersof the new Diaspora spread even as

far as Shanghai, where the occupyingJapanese found them in 1942. For their

freedom the escapers were asked ahigh price which sometimes wentdirectly to the SS - for Himmlercertainly regarded such deals as alegitimate source of revenue; some-times into the pockets of corruptRSHA officials, who provided thenecessary documents, usually forged.

These believers i'n racial purity plied

their trade, under Hitler's nose,

almost to the war's last day.

55

The movemenl east

beginsStrangely, the outbreak of war hadrevived hopes in the breast of GermanJewry. Many Jews now believed thatthe German leaders would be toopreoccupied to continue persecutingthem. And in a major conflict mightthere not be a place for them, as

there had been in 1914? These hopeswere not totally ill-founded for thewar did bring, amelioration of their

lot to one small sector of the Jewishpopulation. Such a shortage of doctorsand dentists developed that it becamenecessary to restore many Jewishones to general practice.

In Poland, however, where therewere three million Jews, the biggest

haul yet gathered into the Germannet, the story was immediatelydiff'erent. As the Germans advanced,pogroms like those of the Kristall-

nacht, though immeasurably bigger

in scale, followed without even the

fear of damage to German property.

The local population of each Polish

city, as it was entered, was encouragedto expend its feelings about defeat

and occupation on its Jews. It wasthey, German-inspired stories had it,

who brought about Poland's betrayal.

And this was despite the fact that

when, in extremis, the Polish govern-

ment had off'ered guarantees andpromises to the Jewish population it

had persecuted and abused for three

centuries, thousands of them hadflocked to the colours and 30,000 fell

in the three week battle.

Those who joined in the pogromswere the more vicious local anti-

semites aftd criminal elements, some-times but not invariably assisted byGerman army rowdies. The real

force behind them, however, was no

56

doubt Heydrich, who provided theprofessional riot-raisers.

Even where local inhabitants did

not join in, the Nazis noted withgratiflcation that they were less

sensitive than the Germans had beenat the suffering of the Jews andcould witness the grossest excesseswithout protest. The fact was thatPolish antisemitism had broughtabout a total separation of the twocommunities so that there were noPoles to speak up for their 'goodJews', a German habit on which muchscorn and vituperation was pouredby Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann.Indeed, what protests there were in

Poland came from Germany armycircles.

If Heydrich's part as the malignantpuppeteer behind the pogroms is

conjectural, elements of his forces

and the SS as a whole were playingmore open ones. In the course of

the annexation of Austria, supposedlyso welcome to its citizens, it wasrealised that repression would haveto be imposed quickly if the countrywas to be brought to pliant sub-

jection. To assist this motorisedtask forces of the Security Police

and the Security Service (SD) wereformed with 'special political police

duties' as their official term of refer-

ence. These mobile Action Groups(or Einsatzgruppen) proved their

efficiency so thoroughly that theywere used in the Sudentenland and in

Czechoslovakia. Now they wereordered to fulfil the same duties in

Poland, where their mission was

SS troops look out across the

Danzig Corridor

^^^

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I

w^^^^M'

DOMINO %lA^ii

fc^»l

• J^'t

Above and right: Warsaw's Je\A/ish district: not yet a ghetto

w*^

•s>^. «m:

-w

German troops in Austria

outlined as 'the suppression of all

elements hostile to the Reich and to

Germany behind the fighting line'.

It was clear here, as elsewhere, just

who were included in the 'elementshostile to the Reich'. No specific

orders were given to execute Jewsin Poland and as a matter of fact

the lines of control were not as clearly-

marked out in this campaign as theywere later, so that technically theycame under the control of armycommanders, though orders wereactually being issued by Himmler.Nevertheless, the combined activities

against the Jews of Poland had, bythe end of 1939, produced around250,000 casualties.

From the very beginning of thecampaign mass shooting was beingcarried out on its own initiative byone Einsatzgruppe. This unit, underLieutenant-Colonel Udo von Woyrsch,

Below and right: SD troops carry out

searches in Poland

'I

The Star of David is introduced to

identify Jews

was later withdrawn at the requestof the army. On 24th October an SSbattalion in Wloclawek, having forced

local Jews to wear a distinguishingmark (the first experiment with theyellow Star of David later to becomeuniversal), rounded up about 800 andshot many of them 'while trying to

escape'.

In an earlier though smaller inci-

dent on 14th September, fifty Jewswere herded into a synagogue andshot. The perpetrators of the crime -

two SS men - were brought to trial,

but later pardoned under a generalamnesty decreed by Hitler on 4thOctober.The atrocities, up to this time,

appeared sporadic and betrayed noindications of a larger plan behindthem. But on 21st September camethe first obviously planned move: its

--^jf'*** k 'Nb

i%iim»

Hans Frank admires the view fromCracow Castle

form was the report of a secret con-ference over which Heydrlch hadpresided, circulated to higher armycommanders in Poland. It laid downthree steps: (i) the movement of all

Jews into 'communities' (a euphem-ism for 'ghettoes') of no fewer than500 persons each and near railwaylines; (ii) the appointment of JewishCouncils and (iii) registration of all

Jews by the Einsatzgruppen. Jewsfrom the Reich were to be deportedinto Poland - the first breath of thatcold wind that was to blow throughJewry in the coming years. It is

significant that Heydrich referred

to these measures as 'interim' onesand there was to be, he said, a 'final

objective', which would take longerto achieve. This taken in conjunctionwith the order to place the 'com-munities' near railway lines has led

Polish Jevjs are set to work as forced

labour in a munitions plant

./

- ?V ^

commentators to the conclusion thatthe 'final objective' was indeed the

Final Solution - the total extermina-tion of the Jews. But it must be said

at this stage that this might havebeen to facilitate their further

resettlement in a Jewish reserve to beestablished in Lublin.

In so far as it was possible with a

war raging, there were still attemptsto force Jewish emigration. Even in

Poland efforts were made to pushthem across the line of demarcationbetween the German and Russiansectors - for the Russians, too, hadof course marched into Poland'smost easterly provinces. Large groupsof Jews were driven across the river

San which for part of its coursemarked this border. Sometimes theywere lucky enough to be allowedthrough; some were later to berecaptured by the Germans in the warwith Russia; a few managed to reachthe safety of the armaments factories

In the Urals and Siberia. Those whodid not gain admittance had to recross

the San or the Bug and were oftenfired at and, if not shot, allowed to

drown. The few who avoided boththese fates were imprisoned.The result of German victory in

Poland had been to divide that partof the country now under their con-trol into two parts: the most westerlyPolish provinces up to Lodz wereincorporated into the Reich; the rest

became the 'General Government', akind of vast human dumping ground,with obviously tempting opportuni-ties for the demographic experimentsHitler and Himmler had long dreamedof. These were on the way towardsrealisation through a scheme knownas the 'Strengthening of GermanFolkdom' for which, on 12th October,Himmler was made Reichskommissar.This would entail wholesale move-ments of population. Germans abroadwould be brought back and put in

colonies in the German-incorporatedterritories of Poland. The Polesalready there (whose land was to beused) were to be subjugated by means

as unrealistic as they were brutal,

and a mass-deportation of Jews into

the region of the General Governmentwas envisaged.

The execution of Heydrich's plannedregroupment of the Jews was actuallyslower than he imagined it would be

:

he was always a totally unrealistic

planner. It was not, therefore, until

September the following year thata general order restricting Jewishresidence and thus paving the wayfor his ghettoes was issued. One causeof this delay was that Hans Frank,the governor appointed by Hitler to

head the civilian administration of

the General Government, who wasnow aping the medieval king in theWawel Palace in Cracow, his newcapital, shared the dislike of manyGermans for the SS. This was based,

in his case, not so much on humani-tarian considerations, as uponjealousy for their power and influence.

As soon as he learned of the plan,

he protested against Himmler's in-

tention to resettle Jews from theReich in his fief.

On 26th October 1939 the principle

of forced (and unpaid) labour for all

Jews between the ages of fourteenand sixty was introduced in Poland;on 23rd November all Jews and Jewishenterprises were required to bear adistinguishing mark. In the case of

individuals this was an armbandwith a yellow Star of David on it - it

was a further two years before thesedistinguishing marks were introducedinto the west. On 11th December awhole range of regulations werepromulgated, intended to restrict

the movements of Jews, and by26th January 1940. they were debarredfrom using the trains - a rule whichin the event proved impossible to

enforce.

In the Reich-incorporated terri-

tories of Poland were some 650,000

Jews. Half a million of these, Himmlerannounced, were, in spite of Frank'sprotests, to be expelled to the GeneralGovernment. He was as good as his

word and the deportation began

63

OIZUHG amQ'Z

'Jews not allowed'

before the end of the year 1939 andcontinued until the following March,though there had been a temporaryinterruption in January when Frank'scivil administration had been joinedin its protests by the army's Eco-nomics and Armaments Office. Theseprotests by the army, based on the

fact that the deportations weredepriving them of skilled personnel in

Germany, were to continue and wereat first taken at face value by Hey-drich and Himmler. Later, theyrealised the army was using this as

an excuse to save Jews from the fate

planned for them. At this time,

however, the army was not the onlysource of protest. Other representa-

tions were made by the officials of

the State Railways, who claimedthat the demands being made onthem were too great in view of otherwar needs - an argument not withoutjustification, particularly later.

The main General Governmentreception area for the deporteeswas at this time round Lublin, the

64

site of the Jewish 'reserve' - anotherof the projects talked of, begun andthen abandoned. In this case it wasdropped early in 1940 because it wassoon shown to be impracticable for

such large numbers.Not all the Jews now travelling

eastwards came from 'Reich' Poland.Some came from Czechoslovakia,Austria and even Germany itself.

The numbers were already too highfor the areas involved to absorbthem - a matter which elicited furtherprotest on purely administrativegrounds from Frank, and on humani-tarian ones from the Army Com-mander in the East, Field-MarshalBlaskowitz. Many people, he reported,

were dying of hunger in the receptionvillages; children were arriving in

the deportation trains frozen to death.

Notwithstanding this. Hitler told anAmerican newspaper correspondent,after the abandonment of the scheme,that to found a Jewish state on Lublinwould force them to 'live in suchovercrowded conditions it would beimpossible for them to attain atolerable standard of living'.

A more terrible fate awaitedGerman Jews who were moved fromareas such as Stettin and Schneider-

muhl to the General Governmentzone in mid-winter. Something like

1,360 were forced to march for fourteenhours through snow. By March, 230

were dead, many of those who perished

-being young children. That the

Germans were far from insensitive to

world opinion in this is shown by the

speed and vehemence with whichthey denied any rumours of these

deportations and their cost to the

deportees, which reached the neutralpress. They were also worried aboutreports of their activities reachingthe Russians, whose attitudes in

such matters they were unsure of.

Once in Lublin, Himmler had plansof his own for the migrants. Sincethe 1938 Anschluss which had broughtlarge numbers of political dissidents

into the concentration camps,Himmler and several of his associateshad been concerned about derivingsome benefit from this potential,

but unused, labour capacity. Amongthe immediate proposals were brick-making (thus imitating the Jews'early Egyptian slave-masters), andquarrying, although as ambition grewwithin the Nazi leadership, far moreelaborate projects were conceived.Himmler, for example, was anxiousto build up sources of revenue for

the SS should it cease to be the appleof his Fiihrer's eye. But none of thefar-reaching schemes instituted ortalked about was ever fully realised,

largely because for many people, notleast of all Heydrich, forced-labourwas just another way of destroyingunwanted bodies.

Nevertheless, Odilo Globocnik, headof the SS and Chief of Police in Lublin,began organising the forced-labouron what he saw as promising andprofitable lines. At the same time thetraffic in Jews became two-way assome 57,000 of them, considered asfit for work, were brought to Germanyin the first six weeks of Occupation.Many were employed in the Wehr-

Odilo Globocnik, head of the SS andchief of police in Lublin

macht's own ordnance factories.

Major-General Globocnik, a semi-literate, drunken lout with a talent

for deceit and conspiracy, was to useJewish labour in partnership withvarious German entrepreneurs as

corrupt as himself and amass a for-

tune before his final dismissal. Hesaw the General Government andparticularly Lublin as a special field

for his talents.

With all these schemes, therefore,

there had commenced the deportationand 'resettlement' programme, thecallous movement and deposition of

human souls which was to continue to

the last moment of the war.There were and would remain a

series of carefully graduated steps

in the German treatment of the Jews.Emigration and deportation repre-

sented one, and the Jews now withinthe General Government were beingforced, partly by external pressuresintended to have this eff"ect and partlyfrom the herd instinct which mani-^^sts itself most strongly in times of

65

ym

M

m^,.

m

1

\ \Above and right: The Warsaw ghetto, 1940

disaster, into the second phase:enclosure in ghettoes.

The first of these to be Establishedwas in Warsaw. The area chosen, in

keeping with the Nazi taste for thetraditional, was one which had in-

cluded the site of the medieval ghetto,and also, since there were more Jewsin Warsaw now than in the middleages, part of the city's former in-

dustrial area, including its railway-

station. At first the intention of this

'resettlement' was disguised asquarantine - the prevention of con-tagious diseases to which Jews weresupposed to be more prone thanothers. So in September 1940 thequarantine zone enclosed besides

240,000 Jews, 80,000 gentile Polesbehind its barbed wire and fencing.

The following month the quarantineexcuse was dropped and the Poleswere ordered out. In their place

another 120,000 Jews were moved in.

There were now 360,000 people in aplace intended for 160,000.

Similar ghettoes were established

in other cities under control of the

General Government: Cracow, Lublin,

Radom and Lwow. It had been seri-

ously supposed that once this had beendone the ghetto population could beexterminated by destitution andstarvation. This proved impracticalfor two reasons: firstly, although in

Germany, Austria and CzechoslovakiaJews nowhere represented more thanone to two per cent of the total popu-lation, in Poland they represented

ten per cent and in some individual

towns as much as twenty-five per

cent. Despite their segregation fromthe inhabitants as a whole they hadlearned many difl'erent trades andskills and so were able to provide

ghetto services in a way whichastonished their persecutors, whohad allowed themselves to be taken

in by their own propaganda of the Jewas a parasitical sharp trader and

Typhus is proclaimed as the excuse to

isolate the ghetto

68

iwiiiiiiiMiiWiii

sfiiiisiliiili-fc

yM^BJ^W

H"-"—"«^-i.

r

^Hfi

#

I

^^

1

.iiSl ^^

1- *'

Food is smuggled over the wall into

the ghetto

speculator. But the Polish Jews,placed in a society largely hostile

to them, had become past-mastersin the arts of survival, contributinga great deal to the general com-munity. Thus when it came to thepractical implementation of anti-

semitism the less-organised hostility

of the Poles wavered. The measuresthey had at first welcomed beganto cause real deprivation by denyingthem the talents they themselvesneeded for survival under a repressive

occupation. (As Slavonic Poles theywere only one rung higher in theGerman racial ladder and Poles andJews were normally bracketedtogether in German resettlementplans.) Without realising it theyhad grown dependent on Jewish skills

and they began to feel less enthusi-

asm even for this one aspect of Nazipolicy they had hitherto beenprepared to accept.

Jewish workers leave a factory within

the ghetto

All the same, the starvation policy

was tried and led to countless deaths,

but even after introducing summaryexecutions for any Jews caughtoutside the ghetto or who approachedtoo close to its barbed wire, trading

with the outer world could not be

stopped. In this the SS guards them-selves proved far from incorruptible.

Amid extreme difficulties somesemblance of an administration in

the ghetto was imposed by the JewishCouncil. To begin with there wereservices, including schools andhospitals, black market restaurants,

cafes, nightclubs and brothels, these

last luxuries being maintained largely

through the assistance of the Gestapowhose members made a handsomeprofit on the trade involved. TheGermans even allowed in parcels

sent from abroad at this time, thoughthis facility was later stopped and in

the end all mail from the ghetto wasrefused by the German post office,

which gave as its reasons for these

measures 'the fear of epidemics'.

The deterioration of ghetto life

became increasingly marked as its

numbers increased through the

resettlement of more and more Reichand other Jews. There were factories

in the ghetto and some outside to

which Jews were allowed to go eachday, but they were incapable of

supplying employment for the large

numbers now involved. Soup kitchenswere set up through the JewishCouncil, but these, at times drivento making soup from hay, in the endwere forced to close. Death frommalnutrition and starvation becamecommonplace. The bodies of the deadwere found lying on the streets

daily, generally stripped naked so

that others might use their rags as

clothing.

In these circumstances, fear of aplague constantly haunted theGermans: if ghetto deaths exceededthe capacity of the burial services,

what then? Furthermore, vastincreases in the numbers of Jewscoming east could be expected if

Goring lifted, as he was expected to,

a ban he had placed on deportationsfollowing a story about them in a

Death in the Warsaw ghetto quickly

becomes commonplace

^^!%»

W%fe

;^4l

r>

Swiss newspaper. Morever there wereother ways in which the numbersmight soon be substantially raised.

The invasion of Denmark aiid Norwayin the spring of 1940, then of Franceand the Low Countries, had broughtall these countries, with their Jewishpopulations, within the ambit of

German administration.Heydrich and his department were

never far behind events, however,and as an ambitious man he no doubtwelcomed the vast increments to

his empire, despite the problems theybrought - for in six weeks following

10th May 1940. 350,000 Jews fell into

German hands, of whom about 120,000

were refugees from Germany itself.

Heydrich's first reaction, faced bythis, was to use the Vichy zone of

France, unoccupied by the terms of

the armistice, for their 'resettlement',

in the way that the General Govern-ment of Poland had been used as adumping ground. In consequence noimpediment was placed in the way of

those who sought to leave the

Occupied Zone to go there. Thiscontinued after the Vichy Govern-ment promulgated a 'Statut des Juifs'

on 4th October 1940, which orderedthe interning of Jewish refugees (the

indigenous population, as Frenchcitizens, enjoyed the protection of

the law); 40,000 such Jews were in-

terned in camps at Gurs, Les Milles

and Rivesaltes, and thereby deprived

of liberty and civil rights Heydrichexceeded himself by slipping 7,450

Reich Jews, many of whom died onthe journey, into the UnoccupiedZone on 22nd October, but the French,fearing a large increase in this

practice, protested forcefully enoughto stop further movement.Hitler was so fanatical a believer

in a chimera of Jewish international

conspiracies that he hoped the

western Jews who had fallen into his

hands might be used as hostages to

Funeral vehicles in Warsaw. Demandson burial services soon exceededcapacity

76

^R.MTBPim W

Baldur von Schirach Dr Franz Six

circumvent them. Indeed, hostageswere another of his obsessions andat one stage in the war he deportedEnglish-boi'n families from theChannel Islands with the intentionthat they should be hostages againstBritish bombing of the Reich, bydistributing them in the bigger cities.

The European Jews, of this earlier

scheme, could - he seriously believed-

be held in Lublin or at some other

place where they would constitute

guarantees of the 'good behaviour'

of American Jews. The plan came to

nothing.Heydrich, now debarred from

dumping Jews in Vichy France, wastrying to introduce the classical

pattern of organising the Jewishpopulation in the Occupied Zone, byconsolidating the charity organisa-

tions and establishing Jewishcouncils. The tactic never workedas it had worked in other places

largely because the French Govern-ment officials whose cooperation wasessential lacked either the stomach or

the zeal for the preservation of the

racial purity of their occupiers. No

78

French Jew would lend his nameto the Jewish Councils, and even in

pro-Vichy circles there was a willing-

ness to help Jews, while naturalisedFrench Jews continued to be regardedas French citizens. The only peoplethe Germans could lay their hands onwere those refugees who had notbeen long enough in the country to

take out naturalisation papers. TheGermans wanted at all costs to makeit appear that the French had turnedspontaneously on their Jews andwere treating them as they had beentreated in Germany, Austria, Czecho-slovakia and Poland. In this they wereconstantly thwarted, and because of

their frustration, though attemptswere made and some Jews wereruthlessly executed, persecution of

Jews in France failed to take place

on any scale.

In other parts of occupied EuropeHeydrich's office was proceeding in

various ways, during the days follow-

ing German victory, to put into

operation the progressive steps of

its measures, trying to bring their

new acquisitions into an overall

Lieutenant-Colonel Rudolf Hoss,

Commandant of Auschwitz

schedule. They met with varyingsuccess. This had little to do with thenational attitudes to the Jews.Almost everywhere in northern andwestern Europe there was a lack of

enthusiasm for Jew-baiting, and evenin Germany, whose people had beensubjected to eight years of Nazipropaganda, there was much apathyand moral cowardice in the face of

vile injustice, but much detestation

for it. So throughout the war there

were German families who hid Jewsand they included all sections of

society, among them at least onefamily of Prussian aristocrats, whosehead was an active general of the

Wehrmacht.The success or failure of Heydrich's

endeavours in occupied Europetended to reflect the type of occupa-tion the country was undergoing andthe sort of Jewish organisation whichexisted in it before. Thus, in Holland,

where, unlike France, the wholegovernment of the country was underGerman supervision with a puppetDutch government dancing to its

tune, the rounding up and subsequent

deportation of Jews was almosttotally successful, despite the pro-

hibition the Cardinal Archbishopput on Catholic police officers par-

ticipating in this activity (their

refusal often cost them their jobs),

and the universal loathing felt byDutch people for this kind of persecu-

tion. Neighbouring Belgium was in

the hands of a military administrationand its governor. General von Falken-hausen, was an outspoken opponentof National Socialism. Here, fewerthan a third of the country's Jewswere rounded up. Denmark andNorway were diff'erent again. Den-mark was a neutral country underGerman occupation. Norway, thoughruled by a Reichskommissar like

Holland, was adjacent to neutral

Sweden, which throughout the warleft its door ajar to Jewish refugees,

even organising and distributing

Swedish naturalisation papers openlyin Norway through its consulate.

This, helped by the facts that the

Jewish population was small, andthe Norwegians were opposed like

the Dutch to antisemitism, helped

to forestall Heydrich's aims.

These are exceptions in an almosttotally dismal story.

Its dismal character is scarcely

alleviated by the absurdity of manyof the Nazi plans. One of these wasthe revival of the Madagascar Project

of 1938. With France, to whom the

island belonged, under occupation,

the Germans believed that such a

plan was a possibility and proposed to

send there the 'western Jews' whowere to be kept as international

hostages. Feasibility studies weretherefore begun by Adolf Eichmannin the summer of 1940 and lasted

nearly a year. With the seas patrolled

by the British navy the possibility

of moving 4,000,000 people - the

number projected - to an off'shore

island of the African continent cannever have looked very viable. No oneknew, for instance, where Germanywas to find the ships with which to

undertake this project.

79

A second plan also canvassed atthis time, but never seriously in-

vestigated, was for a Jewish NationalHome in Palestine. This -was spikedwith still greater difficulties.

Palestine was still in British handsand the British administration therehad made clear that it would acceptno more than a trickle of refugeesfor fear of offending the Arabs, apolicy which was to contribute vastly(as it had already contributed) to

Jewish sufferings, both before andafter the war. Furthermore, it wasfelt that this might lead to Palestinebecoming a kind of Judaic Vatican.Neither plan materialised, though

the Palestine project was kept alive

to the extent that rumours of it

would be dropped into the ghettoesfrom time to time, giving thosebecoming desperate an empty hope.The view that both plans amounted

to no more than a 'cover story' is

supported by two witnesses: Himmler(reported at second hand by his

masseur, Felix Kersten) and Baldurvon Schirach, gauleiter of Vienna.Hitler saw both these men in thesummer of 1940; Himmler at aboutthe time of the fall of France. Tovon Schirach, the Fuhrer confided

that he intended to resettle theViennese Jews in the General Govern-ment, but to Himmler he gave the

task of the progressive exterminationof the European Jews. If the

Madagascar project was referred to

at all at this meeting it must havebeen summarily dismissed. Himmler'sinstruction was given the formal seal

of a Fuhrer Order during the ensuingmonths, athough it was nevercommitted to paper and was revealedonly by stages to those involved.

There were from the outset to

be two prime instruments of des-

truction: 'natural diminution'(Heydrich's happy term) throughkillingly hard work in forced labourgangs; and the liquidation of thosesurviving in concentration campsassigned and equipped for the task.

A third method introduced into

plans subsequently was through theEinsatzgruppen of the SD, whose roleof 'cleansing' areas behind the armywas to be given a wider connotation.A number of groups were set up, one,headed by SS Colonel Professor DrFranz Six, former head of theEconomics Faculty at the Universityof Berlin, was appointed to controlthe Action Group to be sent toBritain after invasion. Training in

special crash courses was given atPrezsch, near Leipzig.

As to the other methods of destruc-tion, sites for the exterminationcamps had already been chosen andone, Auschwitz, began functioning asa normal concentration camp in thespring of 1940. Others were to be at

Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno andBelsec - all except Chelmno in theGeneral Government. To liquidate

the Jews of the Lublin 'reserve' therewould be facilities at the labour campMajdanek.The commandant Himmler had

appointed to Auschwitz, Lieutenant-Colonel Rudolf Hoss, was a man after

his own heart: full of plans as

grandiose as they were unrealistic,

including one to establish an agri-

cultural research station in the camp,which would specialise in plant andstock breeding.

Besides locations both techniquesand personnel were needed for the

mass-killings and the disposal of

bodies (this in particular was to

cause a problem). But in the matterof skills the Germans had someexpertise to call upon. Since 1939

gassing had been used for dispatchingthose condemned as incurable underthe euthanasia programme. Hitler,

as his Mein Kampf comment on Jewsindicates, having been gassed himself

in the First World War, had a fixation

about the subject. The methods used

in the euthanasia institutes hadincluded even coal gas. Hitler, in

deference to public opinion, was to

bring the euthanasia programme to

an end in August 1941 - though it

continued under a different guise.

L_

This, however, meant that the

institute staffs were to be available

for the extermination of the Jews.

Indeed, they were already being usedfor the purpose as those unfit for workwere sent off to the nearest 'institute'

on a one way ticket. Their numbersreached such proportions that this

led to a testy protest from the director

of one institute about overwork.While all these preparations were

being made, inside Germany andthroughout Occupied Europe there

was a tightening up of anti-Jewishmeasures. In France, Holland andBelgium the registration of Jews wasembarked upon; the Polish ghettoeswere walled up.

These measures were for the mostpart carried out without incident.

But not entirely. In February 1941,

German police with Dutch collabora-

tionist militia began raiding housesin the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam,because, it was claimed, shots hadbeen fired from a window. When they

saw what was going on Dutch workersfrom a nearby factory poured out tohelp the Jews and in the melee aDutch militiaman was killed. Furtherriots occurred when the Germansmounted a massive funeral for thedead man. 390 Jews, all young men,were arrested as hostages, whereupona general strike spread through thecity. The Germans were forced to

rush in police and SS troops fromGermany. Sixty Dutchmen were sent

to concentration camps and withthem the 390 Jewish hostages. Mostof them had died before the end of

the year.

As part of the same tightening upprocess, on 14th May 3,600 Paris Jewswere interned - an act which causeddeep anger in Vichy and led to manysubsequent problems for thoseGermans who had day-to-day dealings

with the Petain government.

Graveyard of a mental hospital; the

outcome of the euthanasia programme

The massacres

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Amid Europe-wide activity on the

part of RSHA and particularly depart-

ment IVA4b, the military planners

were also busily engaged. In the last

three months of 1940, they werelaying down, in the deepest secrecy,

the strategy for an attack on Russiato take place the following year.

Hitler, we now know, believed Britain

to be disabled as a belligerent force

and accordingly felt able to rid him-self of his last potential enemy onthe European continent and at the

same time carry to finality his long-

cherished dream of extirpating

Bolshevism.For Himmler this promised vast

new problems, but also vast new

opportunities: problems in that hehad the duty of dismantling thethe Soviet system and policing theoccupied areas; opportunities, in thatthis new territory would provide vastnew dumping grounds and in a regionfar enough removed from metro-politan Germany to allow muchgreater freedom of action.

For policing four Einsatzgruppenwere formed, designated A, B, C andD. The total number of these groupswas under 3,000, including specialists,

such as radio operators and inter-

preters (some of whom were women).They broke up into units orKommandos of between 600 and 900

each.

The lesson of Poland where theAction Groups were technically sub-servient to the army command hadbeen learned and clear demarcationsof control were agreed. The Einsatz-

gruppen were subordinate to the armyin regard to movement, rations andbilleting, but to Heydrich for

discipline, jurisdiction and technicalmatters. In other words, Heydrichissued the orders. The army hadinsisted on a clause whereby theycould give orders to Action Groupsnear the front line, though even this

right was severely circumscribed.Otto Ohlendorf, a handsome intel-

lectual, trained lawyer and economistwho joined the SD in 1936, described

under oath how he had been briefed

by Himmler when he was appointedto command one of the groups:

'Himmler stated that an importantpart of our task consisted in the

extermination of Jews - men, womenand children - and of Communistfunctionaries'. Ohlendorf was himselfresponsible for exterminating 90,000

men, women and children.

Some time in June 1941, Himmlerordered Rudolf Hoss, the Auschwitzcommandant, to 'prepare installa-

tions at Auschwitz where mass exter-

minations could take place'. He wasfurther told that Eichmann wouldvisit him there and give him detailed

instructions. Before Eichmann's visit

83

Otto Ohiendorf

Hoss went to the newly established

camp at Trebllnka where gassingswere already being carried out in apermanent chamber which usedcarbon monoxide gas generated frominternal combustion engines. He cameback with a poor opinion of this andwas to tell Eichmann when he arrived

in July that it was 'quite out of thequestion' to use such methods for

mass-extermination.While Hoss was absent from the

camp his security chief, CaptainFritzsch, tried experimenting withZyklon B crystals, a form of prussic

acid used for fumigation. Hossrepeated the experiment on a larger

scale. 850 prisoners, 600 of themRussian prisoners of war, were lockedin a cellar and the crystals thrownin. Twelve hours later the cellar wasopened up, but among the bodiespacked so tight they could not fall in

death, were some still alive on whomthe process had to be repeated.

ZYKLON B(5irTl3 A SI

liipiii W mi tfocken lajeia! «»r 1mm200 s

BRAUSEBAD

Entrance to a 'shower'

84

Can of Zyklon B

It had been suggested that it wouldbe politic not to have the extermina-tion centre in the main camp itself

and in fact the gas chambers first

used were two converted barns in acamp at Birkenwald nearby. Theycould not, in total, take more than250 victims, so that bigger chambershad to be designed and built. Of theseHoss was particularly proud.

It is said they were designed byPaul Blobel, a drunken Dusseldorfarchitect, soon to distinguish himselfas a commander of an Action GroupKommando. It was, however, anotheringenious planner who made thesechambers look like shower rooms,complete with douches in the ceiling.

In some place victims were evenprovided, to give verisimilitude to

the deception, with a cake of soap - in

fact a small block of cement, after-

wards recovered from dead hands to

be passed to the next candidate for

cleansing.

The first massive anti-Jewish action

of the war ~ perhaps what was neededto convince the more cautious

Germans that such things did notinevitably bring down the wrath of

humanity on , their heads - camefrom the third and perhaps least

significant of the three nations whichat Evian in 1938 had stated its desire

to be rid of its Jews - Rumania. Thecountry had its equivalent of the

Nazis - the Iron Guard. They hadhelped to make Rumania an ally of

Germany in the war on Russia. On22nd June three German army groupsbegan their thrusts into Russia, oneof them by way of Rumania. Twodays later the town of Jassy washeavily bombed by the Russians.

The Iron Guardists, who had alreadymassacred Jews in Bucharest andexposed their bodies in the city's

kosher butchers' shops, now turnedon those of Jassy. The Jews wererounded up during the night of

Gas chamber at Dachau

Antonescu, dictator of Rumania

28th June. The next day intermittentand summary executions took place.

Then some 5,000 were loaded on atrain, 120 to a wagon, bound for

Bucharest, 300 miles away. The train

never reached the city, but after twodays meandering round the country-side, during which at various stops

dead bodies were thrown out, it

reached a remote station in the

Carpathian foothills. By this timeonly 1,000 of the original numberwere still alive. If to the 4,000 whoperished on the train are added some3,000 killed in the streets and duringthe round up then some 7,000 Jewshad lost their lives

Hitler spoke with the warmestapproval of this action: 'A man . . .

like Antonescu', he said of the

Rumanian dictator, 'proceeds in these

matters in a far more radical fashion

than we have up to the present.'

Thus, the Rumanian killers were held

up as an example for German emula-tion and as implied criticism of their

reticence.

It was not long after this, in earlyJuly, that Heydrich received anofficial commission from Goring 'to

carry out all preparations . . . for atotal solution on the Jewish question'.

He was further authorised to submita report on measures so far takenfor the execution of the 'final solutionof the Jewish question' - the first

recorded use of the phrase. At his

trial before the Nuremberg WarCrimes Tribunal Goring was to dis-

pute the meaning of those last six

words. Heydrich appeared to be in

no doubt about it. For on 20th May1941 a decree was issued by RSHA to

German police and SD representativesin Belgium and France. This broughtto an end emigration outside theoccupied territories as well as'resettlement' in the east. The reasonfor this was stated to be 'the certainfinal solution of the Jewish problem'shortly to be applied. The 'Final

Solution' thus became the code namefor extermination.A minute circulated by Goring to

his four higher SS and police officers

began to put into eff'ect his com-mission. This underlined Himmler'sbrief to Ohlendorf : that part of their

task was to exterminate Jews andCommunist functionaries. A final

paragraph instructed them not to

interfere with any anti-Communistor anti-Jewish measures initiated bylocal people, but, on the contrary,to encourage them secretly, whilebeing sure that such encouragementcould not be attributed to theoccupiers. Its last sentence adds awarning: 'Special care should betaken in regard to the shooting of

doctors and others engaged in medicalpractice. .

.'

The instruction to encourage local

talent was quickly put into effect. InLithuania, liberated from the SovietUnion by the Wehrmacht early in thewar, bands of thugs roamed the streets

killing some 3,800 local Jews in thecapital Kovno alone, before theGerman army stepped in to stopsuch activities. Even after this, on

4th July, only two days after

Heydrlch's orders had been promul-gated, Lithuanian partisans underGerman instructions shot 416 Jews,

including nearly fifty women, outside

Kovno.Heydrich's man on the spot,

Brigadier-General Franz Stahlecker,

commander of Einsatzgruppe A, sawother ways in which local anti-

semitism and its violent manifesta-tions could be turned to their benefit.

He had the Jews confined in a ghetto -

for their 'own protection' - and whenhe found the one designated for thepurpose too small solved his accom-modation problem by executing all

the Jews unfit for work in batches of

fifty to a hundred. These killings

were repeated six days later when700 hostages taken in Vilna wereexecuted outside the town at petrol

storage tank pits thoughtfully dugby the Red Army at Penary. Pitexecutions of this kind were to becomea feature of the application of theFinal Solution in Russia and the Baltic

I

and this site itself was used again andagain. The second such occasion wasin September, allegedly after theshooting of two German soldiers,

when 700 hostages were executed.By the end of the year 30,000 Jews haddied in this place. In the meantimeat Kovno 10,000 people were shot ina single day and then a further 10,000

at Dvinsk.During November and December

24,000 people were taken in motorbuses to execution sites in Riga.Here, however, the action was seenby regular troops who brought backaccounts of the killings to Germany.There were to be many more suchoccasions.

The process used at Kovno becamethe classic pattern of destruction ofJews by Einsatzgruppen. The Jewishpopulation of a town would be en-closed in ghettoes - in practice anygroup of buildings which could befound irrespective of their suitability

Russian Jews are put to menial tasks

"-^

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for sustained human habitation. Theghetto had its own internal govern-ment, a Jewish Council, whosefunctions including making arrange-ments for those to be 'resettled',

which by this time meant executed.

Those first resettled would invariably

be the unemployed, sick and orphans.Reitlinger has indentified four stages

in the history of the Nazi ghettoes.

When first introduced they wereintended only to stop Jews fromtrading. Secondly, they became places

where the Jews were left to die of

hunger. The third stage was that in

which non-essential Jews were exe-

cuted. The last was yet to come: thetotal destruction of the ghettoesand their razing to the ground.Details of the method of execution

in use at this time were also givenby Ohlendorf in the trial statementquoted earlier: 'The unit selected . . .

would enter a village or city andorder prominent Jewish citizens tocall together all Jews for the purposeof resettlement. They were requestedto hand over their valuables . . . andshortly before execution to surrendertheir outer clothing. The men, womenand children were led to a place ofexecution which in most cases waslocated next to a more deeply excava-ted antitank ditch. Then they wereshot, kneeling or standing, and thecorpses thrown into the ditch. .

.'

Nor were the executioners by anymeans always limited to the Einsatz-gruppen members. We know thatlocal antisemites as well as thelocally-recruited police helped inthe killings. We also know thatGerman civilians, doing such jobs asinterpreting, and even railwaymen,volunteered to join the firing squadsbecause there was plunder to be hadand a special ration of schnapps.With killers so untrained it is nowonder that it was the exceptionrather than the rule for victims to bedispatched outright. Many, perhapsthe majority, died not from shootingbut from sufi'ocation caused by theweight of bodies on top of them or

of the soil when the grave was filled

in, and even from drowning in their

own and other people's blood. It wasunusual, the day after an action,

not to find a trail of dead and dyingoutside the grave. Some actuallyturned up for hospital treatmentand a few escaped altogether.

The massacres continued: at Koro-sten, at Berdichev, at Uman, atWinnitsa in the western Ukraine;at Zhitomir 2,531 Jews died in thelast week of July, another 407 in earlyAugust and some 1,668 in earlySeptember. And later in that samemonth there occurred the blackest of

all the massacres by the ActionGroups. This was in Kiev which fell

to the Germans on the 19th.

Five days after occupation theheadquarters of the Rear Area Com-mand of the Sixth Army in theContinental Hotel was destroyed in

an explosion, obviously from a booby-trapped mine left by the Russians,Hundreds of German troops diedfighting the subsequent fires.

It was decided that reprisals shouldfall upon the Jews. SS Colonel PaulBlobel, head of Kommando 4a of

Einsatzgruppe C, that same Blobelwho, allegedly, designed the Ausch-witz gas-chambers, was given the taskof carrying out the executions.

On 26th September therefore KievJews were ordered to report withinthree days for 'resettlement'. Nomore than 5,000 to 6,000 were expectedto obey the summons. Actually,

'thanks to an extremely clever

organisation', in the words of anEinsatzgruppe daily report, 30,000

arrived carrying their bundles. Twofurther reports put the figure at

nearer to 34,000.

The place of execution was the

Babi Yar ravine just outside Kiev.

Here as they stepped from a plank into

the ravine they were killed with ashot in the back of the neck. Theoperation took two days.

The executioners deceived them-selves that the population in generalknew nothing of the liquidations. It

89

v^^

was public knowledge and only terror

can have kept people from talkingabout it in such a way that theGermans would have learned of their

knowledge. The massacre was later

to form the subject of Russian poetYevgeny Yevtushenko's lament.The invasion of Russia had, of

necessity, brought Galicia, whichhad been part of Poland since 1919 andannexed by the Soviets in 1939, into

the sphere of Nazi influence. Here, asin the Baltic, measures against theJews were quickly instituted andlocal forces encouraged to partici-

pate in pogroms in one of which, atLwow, 7,000 Jews were killed duringwhat was called 'Aktion Petlura'.

Further massacres took place in

Kiev in October and January 1942,

in which a total of 15,000 peopleperished. At Dniepropetrovsk, on13th October 1941, 11,000 children andold people were killed in a single

action. At Borissov, a week later, all

the town's 7,620 Jews were killed byEinsatzgruppe A; on 6th November15,000 at Rowno, in the Ukraine.During December massacres at Riga,Vilna and Simferopol in the Crimeawere completed accounting for 70,000.

In four months 350,000, in all, had beenshot.

The executions were alwaysdisguised as actions against potentialpartisans or their sympathisers. Thecredibility of this is destroyed by thefact one Kommando of an Einsatzgruppereported shooting Jewish childrenalmost daily and in one action, on29th August 1941, executed 1,469 of

them. Einsatzgruppe A which hadalready executed 229,052 Jews, report-

ed by November 1941 that though it

had killed only fifty-six partisans,

plus 1,064 Communists, it had shot126,421 Jews. Still further destructiveevidence comes from Ohlendorf. Inthe Crimea the members of twoJewish sects had been rounded up.

One was of Muslims converted to

Judaism; the other of Jews con-verted to Muslimism. The first sect

was spared, on, Ohlendorf discovered,

the orders of Department IVA4b;the second, as racial Jews, was des-

troyed, thereby proving that it wason racial grounds and not the questionof their adherence to the partisans(which was never raised) that settled

their fate.

The shooting of children was an actwhich no one could be persuadedpartook of the character of anti-

partisan activity. To dispose of themmore discreetly gas-vans were in-

troduced. These were vehicles soadapted that at a touch of a lever thecarbon monoxide generated in theexhaust fumes was fed into thepassenger compartment. The victimswere conveyed from prison or ghettoto place of burial in the van and weresupposed to be extinct on arrival, aneat if macabre economy. Theintention was not always fulfilled -

though the innovators of the systemwere inclined to blame the vans'drivers rather than themselves for

this failure. The use of gassing vansdrew protests from the members of

Einsatzgruppen themselves on theground that the cruelties involvedwere morally indefensible. Since aletter giving instructions on theproper use of the vans speaks of

corpses smeared with excrement andwith their faces contorted fromsuff'ocation (as opposed to the pain-

less gas asphyxia the vans weresupposed to induce), one can under-stand how it turned even thesehardened stomachs. Nevertheless,

their use continued and was evenextended.

If horror at what was being doneappeared to focus itself round points

of detail rather than principle this

is not completely the case, thoughindignation and revulsion did notanywhere achieve a volume propor-tional to its causes. Disgust wasfreely expressed, for example, byordinary soldiers, among whom it

must be remembered were manywho had been through an indoc-trination in antisemitism in theHitler Youth. In consequence Field-

91

Field-Marshal Walter von Reichenau

Marshal Walter von Reichenau,commander of the Sixth Army, felt

compelled to offer some justification

for what was being- done. 'The soldier

in the Eastern Territories,' hedeclared in an Order-of-the-Day on10th October 1941, 'is not merely a

fighter according to the rules of theart of war. but also the bearer of a

I'uthless national ideology. . . There-fore, the soldier must have under-standing of the necessity of a severe

but just - revenge on sub-humanJewry'. Nevertheless, in an official

report written in December 1941,

a staff officer in the Army GroupCentre declared that the officer corps

'almost to a man, is against the shoot-

ing of Jews, prisoners and com-missars'. They saw it, the samewriter said, as a stain upon the

German army.A member of the army's economics

bureau in the Ukraine wrote that

there was 'no evidence that the Jewswere widely engaged in sabotage or

similar acts', nor could they be

considered 'to represent a threat tothe German WehrmachV . A strongerexpression of feeling came fromReichskommissar Wilhelm Kube, afounder-member of the NSDAP, whohad already demonstrated his loath-ing for these excesses and was beingwatched on Heydrich's behalf by theGestapo. He wrote to Himmler of

'indescribable brutality' and of"extreme beastliness' and describedhow a young Jewish girl was askedfor 5,000 roubles as the price for herfather's life and begun rushing every-where begging for money. Such un-easiness was ignored and by thespring of 1942 at least a million Jewshad perished in these actions.

Yet by no means all the Jews in

these regions had been killed. Theresidue remained in the ghettoeswith all their apparatus of JewishCouncils and with their inmatesforced to wear the yellow star onchest and back. They were orderedto be given only the minimum of

food, that available when the rest

of the population had been fed and'in no case more than was sufficient

to sustain life'.

A key-appointment was made in

September - a step towards theultimate destruction of the ghettoes.This gave Eichmann, in addition to

his other functions, charge of trans-

port organisation. His brief coverednot only movement eastward butalso that from the occupied westernand northern parts of Europe. Here,

too, progress in the Final Solutionwas being made, though in manyplaces with a tardiness Heydrich andhis RSHA found exasperating anddeplorable.

In October, with Eichmann in his

new office, deportations from theReich and beyond were going onapace. Goods trains, loaded with1,000 people drawn from Berlin, Ham-burg, Hanover, Dortmund, Diisseldorf,

Cologne, Frankfurt, Kassel, Stutt-

A further load of deportees leaves for

the camp

92

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Russian Jews murdered by Soviet

troops in the Ukraine

gart, Nuremberg", Munich and Breslau,

besides Vienna, Prague, Lu5j:embourgand even Antwerp were steaming east.

The deportations continued until

January 1942 to areas which includedLodz, Warsaw, Kovno, Minsk andRiga. In these deportations the con-solidated Jewish charity and relief

organisations - the Reich Union - andthe Jewish Councils were forced to

help by providing lists for 'resettle-

ment'.In 1941, the United States was still

neutral and a reporter of the NewYork Times approached close enoughto witness the departure of onetrain-load and duly filed his story.

The deportations were also public

knowledge in Berlin, at least, andcaused such revulsion that partyleaders were forced to distribute

leaflets among the crowd denouncingJewish 'guilt'.

Even so Gentiles began puttingon the Star of David, which the Jewsof Berlin had been compelled to

wear only a month before - twoyears from its first use in Poland. Ata sermon in St Hedwig's Cathedral,on the Sunday following one of thedepartures, the elderly CatholicProvost Lichtenberg said he wishedto be sent east to share the fate of

the Jews. He got, not his wish, butdeath in a concentration camp.None knew what the deportees

would meet on arrival. Those boundfor Kovno and Riga in one transportchanced to arrive while a 'special

action' - that is a mass-shooting -

was in progress and were draggedfrom the train to join the othervictims. Others, temporarily spared,

found overfilled and starving ghettoesto whose inhabitants their arrival wasscarely welcome. Frank, the gover-

nor, was furious about the restarting

of the 'resettlements' and in no moodto show magnaminity to those whowere adding to his burdens.

It might be supposed, with all this

94

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Ration card from the Warsaw ghetto

activity, that there would be little

time or energy left to harass theremaining Jews of Germany. Thiswas far from the case. The assaultupon their lives and liberties, fromevery quarter, which had begun in

1933, seemed to redouble in ferocity

between 1941 and the end of 1942, and,

whereas in peace-time the effects,

though unpleasant, were limited, it

now began to impose hideous hard-ship. Since 1940, shopping hours for

Jews had been restricted to betweenfour and five o'clock in the afternoonwhen, in other words, shops wereempty of the 'extras' which madesurvival on rations possible. In Berlin,

since June 1941, they had special

ration cards marked with a 'J\ Theycould not use public transport withouta police permit and they were notallowed to use the telephone, to visit

restaurants or station waiting roomsor to go into the countryside. Theyhad to surrender woollen and fur

clothing - even the fur collars off

coats: they had to surrender bicycles,

typewriters, records, binoculars,

radios and paint their homes with theStar of David. Their own schoolswere closed and they were still bannedfrom other schools. Finally, in Octo-ber 1942. their egg, meat, cereal andmilk rations were cancelled.

In every sector of existence pre-

parations were being made, therefore,

96

for 'the certain final solution of the

Jewish problem'. And while in Russia

and Poland the Einsatzgruppen werecarrying out their bloody tasks, the

extermination camps were being-

set up; two, Belsec and Chelmno,had been started in October 1941.

Yet there remained three basic

problems. The first was one which in

a sense, Himmler had created for

himself by his desire to make the

concentration camps self-supporting

ventures and contributors to the

German war-economy. Not only washis slave-labour being used, gratefully

in view of the general shortage of

labour in Germany, but in somefields in which Jewish people alonewere the specialists they were in

a position which made them seemindispensable. There were, for

example, the diamond-cutters of

Amsterdam; the furriers and leather

workers of Poland, all of whom werenow supplying the Wehrmacht's needs.

What was to happen to all these ?

It was made clear in a way which - in

view of the pressing needs of the

economy - makes explicit the manicnature of Nazi antisemitism. Nothingmust interfere with unimpeded pro-

gress towards the 'solution'. In

December 1941, Hinrich Lohse, Reichs-

kommissar for Ostland (the namegiven to the occupied Russian terri-

tories) asked whether skilled workersin the Wehrmacht's factories were to

be liquidated. He was told that 'Therules relating to the problem require

that the demands of the economy beignored.' In the end Goring, hardlya man to be suspected of sympathisingwith the Jews, had to intervenepersonally to prevent disruption of

the war-eff'ort. Even his eff'orts couldproduce only a twelve-month reprieve.

The following year the army wereforced to exchange trained Jewishworkers for untrained Poles, but onlyafter General von Gienath, MilitaryDistrict commander in the GeneralGovernment, had been relieved of

his command.The second problem was that of

Hinrich Lohse

the remaining rights of GermanJews under the law. The EleventhSupplementary Decree to the Reichcitizenship Law issued on 25th Novem-ber 1941 took care of that. Under it

Jews outside the Reich became state-

less, while those within becamestateless as soon as they crossed its

borders - even if dragged acrossagainst their will. Thereafter theyhad no rights at law.

The last problem facing thosedirectly concerned with the FinalSolution was that of implicatingothers. Himmler and Heydrich knewthemselves to be in the position

of Hitler's hired assassins. They wereno doubt acutely conscious of the fate

of hired assassins when once their

work had been done. They wantedtherefore to be in the position wherethey could say: 'Not we alone, butall these others share our guilt ; these

men who now sit in their offices so

respectably, they too were party to

what we did'.

To this question, in the last weeksof 1941, Heydrich addressed himself.

97

The deslniclion of

the ghenoes

^^K

For historians 1942 will always be thecrucial year of the war, It was theyear that marked the opening of

Stalingrad ; the year of Alamein ; theyear in which America threw hermight into the fray. The year in whichthe tide turned.

These events did not go unmarkedby the Jews of Europe, listening

clandestinely to the BBC on receivers

in the ghettoes or reading betweenthe lines of propaganda victories in

the German-run papers. If it gavethemhope it was hope that was to provehollow - for it was that same year in

which, notwithstanding the mass-murders in the east during the pre-

vious one, extermination became areality. In retrospect it is easy to

jump to the conclusion that Hitler,

perceiving the course of events, wasdetermined on one thing: that if

nothing else was achieved his prophecyof 1941 must be fulfilled. Jewry wouldbe annihilated. This, instead of his

thousand-year Reich, would be his

monument. Yet, as has been shown,the enactment of the Final Solutionwas no sudden thing, but a step-by-

step descent carried out to a timedstrategy and its beginnings could bedetected from the beginnings of theNazi era.

In view of the importance of theyear it is almost symbolical that themeans by which Heydrich sought to

implicate others beside himself wererealised in January 1942 at the GrossWannsee Conference. After a six-weekdeferment it took place on 20thJanuary and delegates invited, besidesRSHA officials, including Eichmann,

99

Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Israel

Herschel Grijnspan's father gives

evidence at Eichmann's trial

also numbered civilians from theMinistry of the Interior, the ForeignMinistry and other departments.Despite the euphemistic language

in which the matter was described to

them there can be very little doubthis hearers perfectly understoodHeydrich's meaning. Jews were to beused in labour gangs where a large

part would 'fall out through naturaldiminution'. The remnant which sur-

vived - 'unquestionably the part withthe strongest resistance' - would be

given 'special treatment'. 'Special

treatment' meant simply extermina-tion. In this way some eleven million

Jews - including those of Britain after

conquest - were to be annihilated.

Half-Jews were to be given the choicebetween death or sterilisation.

IfHeydrich was afraid of an outburstof indignation from the assembleddelegates his fears proved unfounded.Not a single voice was raised in

protest. Dr Otto Thierack, ReichMinister of Justice even offered to

hand over all Jews under his jurisdic-

tion to the SD, and Eichmann, at his

trial in Jerusalem in 1961, was able to

recount how at that moment hesensed a deep contentment 'such as

Pilate must have experienced, becauseI felt completely free of any guilt.

Here at this Wannsee conference themost prominent people of the Reichwere stating their views. The "popes"were giving their orders. Mine was to

obey'.

The initial hurdle so successfully

negotiated, the conference wentinto greater precision. In Eichmann'swords: 'We went on to discuss thevarious possible ways of killing them.'That this meeting can never have

been anything but a ruse to in-

criminate others is shown by the fact

that the matters discussed under the

head of 'possible ways of killing' were

100

suggestions already being ener-

getically implemented: starvation,

overwork, gassing, mass-shootings.For Heydrich, however, the occa-

sion was to prove something of aBelshazzar's Feast. He was never to

witness the realisation of his plans.

On 27th September 1942 he had beenpromoted to SS General and appointedProtector of Bohemia and Moravia.While visiting his domain he wasassassinated by Czech partisans on5th June 1942. For this crime a terrible

price was to be exacted, including thetotal destruction of the village of

Lidice and the massacre of most of

its inhabitants.

After Heydrich' s death Himmler did

not appoint a successor for some six

months, when he chose a formerAustrian lawyer, SS LieutenantGeneral Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whowas to prove in every respect a worthysuccessor. Indeed, from Himmler'sposition he was even superior, since

he was a less ambitious man thanHeydrich. During the interim period

until Kaltenbrunner's appointment,Heydrich' s duties fell on Eichmann,who on 6th March called a conferenceof his own, to discuss and seek answersto two problems. One was that of

finding transport; the other was howsterilisation 'of Jews married to

Gentiles and of their children was to

be carried out. The second problemwas never solved, despite hideoustortures inflicted on concentrationcamp 'guinea pigs'. Hitler did notwant his hands tied if he decided to

wipe out half-castes as well.

On 20th March 1942, three weeksafter Eichmann's conference, 8,000

Jews of mixed marriages in Hollandwere off'ered sterilisation as analternative to deportation. Sterilisa-

tions were actually carried out at theDutch detention camp, Westbork, in

some cases by SS doctors, butnormally by personal physicians. Thishad been done without Eichmann'sknowledge and his wrath on the heads

Horak's farm in Lidice

^^^

Vf »

l^^^

^^ jK: : -^

Ernst Kaltenbrunner Oswald Pohl

of those responsible followed, but, in

fact, it was being done under a private

agreement between Himmler and the

Higher SS and Police Leader for

Holland, General Hans Rauter. As aresult some 8,610 Dutch Jews were left

at liberty as, in Rauter's words, theywere now considered to be 'of nodanger to Germany'. They did noteven have to wear the Jewish badge,

while those born impotent could get

a certificate to this eff'ect and werealso exempt from the badge. Thismeasure led to a new racket for the

Gestapo who did a brisk business in

the sale of 'sterilisation' certificates.

After Gross Wannsee Himmlerpressed on with plans for making his

concentration camps economicallyviable, appointing a former navalpaymaster, Oswald Pohl, to head a

new department of the SS to developthe slave-labour programme. He hadalready seen to it that such obviousopportunities for profit as the removal

of gold fillings from the mouths of thedead, and in some cases of the living,

werenot overlooked. Despitedraconiansanctions intended to ensure that onlythe SS and no private person gainedfrom such activities, under concen-tration camp conditions these wereimpossible to enforce and it is believed

that hundreds of prisoners were killed

for the gold in their mouths. One man,Kriminalkomissar Christian Wirth,an expert on extermination from theold euthanasia institutes, wanderedthe camps with an empty jam tin in

which he collected gold fillings.

Even by 1942 there were still anumber ofrenowned and distinguished

Jewish figures - artists, musicians,scientists - living in Germany.Himmler was conscious that their

sudden disappearance from the scene

would have left too noticeable a gap.

The disappearance of Jews with highwar decorations, would also be em-barrassing, notwithstanding Hitler's

102

pronouncement that 'the swine got

their decorations fraudulently any-

way,' and for such men a special

ghetto or reserve was earmarked. It

was the fortress town of Theresien-

stadt in Bohemia, whose populationhad been evacuated by Heydrich as

one of his first acts as Protector. Thetown had had a population of 7,000; it

would soon have to accommodate30,000 people.

Conversions and preparations werecarried out and it was opened after a

muted fanfare which included showingit off to representatives of the Germanand International Red Cross and to

Danish officials. Himmler was even to

boast, sanctimoniously, to a repre-

sentative ofthe World Jewish Congresslater: 'This type of camp was designedby me and my friend Heydrich and so

we intended all camps to be.'

The mere existence of such a place,

where despite overcrowding, there

seemed to be a measure of security,

would itself create a demand for places

in it. This could easily be used by theGestapo for a lucrative trade andthousands of Jews passed through its

portals, believing they had boughttheir lives, only to go on to the deathcamps further east. At the same timecrowding remained so intolerable thatmany even 'exempted' Jews werefinally deported. Labour was com-

pulsory and harsh. Rations were at

bare subsistence level and someinternees found they were hungrierthan at the more notorious con-centration camps. The most generouswere those giyen to farm and micaworkers: nine ounces of bread per day,

with two ounces of potatoes andwatery gruel. Sometimes as many as

130 people a day died from starvationalone.

A further lucrative racket for theSS lay in a 'home purchase scheme'thought up by Eichmann. Under this

scheme, those to be sent to Theresien-stadt had before departure to

surrender all their assets. The excusefor thus stripping them was that thesewere to be used as security for housepurchase and what remained of their

money after this transaction was to

be devoted to providing accommoda-tion for those without means. Such ascheme was not without attractionsince before emigration Jews had to

declare any remaining assets whichwere then automatically confiscated

by the government. In this way theyappeared to be devoting them entirely

to 'Jewish' causes (actually of coursethey were handing them over to the

funds of the SS). On arrival at the

ghetto they would discover what their

Camp money from Theresienstadt

103

Molotov

purchase amounted to: a bunk in ateeming hut - if they were lucky, for

only sixty per cent of internees hadeven that luxury.

In Himmler's eyes, beside its othervirtues, Theresienstadt was a useful

means of countering atrocity propa-ganda, as whenever questions wereraised about a famous Jew who hadvanished he could be produced. Andperhaps sensing that victory was nolonger the inevitable reward of

German arms both Himmler andHeydrich had been increasingly pre-

occupied with the possibility of their

deeds being revealed. Stories of

German massacres in Russia hadbeen reaching the Soviet govern-ment through survivors andpartisans and had drawn an angrydenunciation from Molotov, the

Russian Foreign Minister. A success-

ful Russian offensive, even if finally

checked, could lead to actual dis-

coveries that would be more difficult

to dismiss as propaganda thansurvivors' accounts.

Just before his departure for Praguein May 1942, Heydrich summonedBlobel of Babi Yar fame and assignedhim the job of exhuming and utterlydestroying the corpses in the mass-burial grounds. He was also to carryout the same functions at theextermination camps as they cameinto operation, advising their adminis-tration on methods of destroying thebones of the dead.

Blobel was to find himself fully

occupied, for the massacres were still

going on. On the last day of January,for example, eleven days after GrossWannsee, Franz Stahlecker, the manwho had instigated the pogroms inLithuania, reported to Heydrich that229,052 Jews had been executed in theBaltic States. In February and Marchit was the turn of Russia once more,where in Kharkov, the most easterlyof the Ukrainian cities, lived some81,000 Jews. Of these some 20,000 hadbeen caught by the German occupa-tion. In December they were movedinto a 'ghetto', actually the disusedhuts of a tractor factory. From herethey were taken in batches of a fewhundred a time to be shot. Finally thehuts, containing the bodies of manywho had died of cold or hunger, wereburned.Thus the Einsatzgruppen, following

so closely on the heels of the armythat they sometimes became a threatto security, continued to reap freshharvests. By September 1942 they hadpenetrated to their most easterlypoint: Kislovodsk, in the NorthCaucasus, where some 2,000 Jews fromthe town itself and several thousandothers from Piatygorsk and Essentukiwere shot. When the Red Army sweptforward this was the first mass-buriaplace to be discovered. On 29th October1942 the surviving Jews of Pinsk,totalling about 16,000 were liquidated.

But it was in Poland and particu-

larly the eastern provinces of theGeneral Government that the FinalSolution was being most methodicallyapplied. The Jews of Eastern Galicia

had temporarily escaped the fate of

104

others caught by the advancingGermans, because on 1st August 1941

the province was brought underFrank's administration as part of the

General Government and thus wasoutside the operational area of the

Einsatzgruppen. However, in Decemberthat year in a speech to his cabinet

Frank announced that his domain'must become free of Jews, the sameas the Reich'. There is some evidencethat he was preparing his own FinalSolution, but this would not fit in

with Himmler's plans at all, if onlybecause the Reichsftihrer-SS and thehead of the General Governmentrarely saw eye to eye, and in fact

Himmler had already entrusted OdiloGlobocnik with the task of carryingout 'phase four' of the operation to

destroy all the Polish ghettoes andreserves. This was the planned reduc-tion of the ghettoes by the expedientof liquidating those members of their

population not essential in employ-ment and thus not protected by workpermits.

To this the code-name AktionReinhard was attached, fitly com-memorating the memory of a manwhose malign genius had been behindthe Final Solution, the now deadReinhard Heydrich. The consumma-tion of his plans became possible asthe mass-gassing installations atexisting camps and at new extermina-tion camps came into operationthrough the spring of 1942, though in

fact at the first place selected theonly means of execution were thegassing-vans used in Russia. Thesewere diverted to Chelmno, a con-centration camp centering round aderelict chateau ironically called 'ThePalace', and intended for use as theLodz ghetto. The gassing-vans con-tinued to be used throughout the life

of the camp, victims either beingtricked into going into them or drivenwith whips, and altogether 152,000

Jews were murdered here.

In Lodz ghetto were some 30,000

people and a start in resettlement wasmade with Reich deportees and mem-

bers of some of the smaller outlyingcommunities. Between January andSeptember 1942, 55,000 victims weremoved from Lodz to Chelmno. Thoughthe death-rate was high, the gassing-vans could only deal slowly with large

numbers, and it was disease, hungerand overwork which accounted for

most of the deaths. Indeed, the in-

habitants of the ghetto were in suchpoor physical condition that thoseneeded for forced labour had to betaken from other places.

Lodz, of course, was on the extre-

mity of the Reich-incorporatedterritories and of the General Govern-ment, and one must remember thatone purpose of this slaughter was to

provide Lebensraum, under the termsof Himmler's brief as Commissar for

the Strengthening of German Folk-dom, for Germans brought back fromabroad. By the end of 1941 a total of

497,000 including those from the

Baltic States and Rumania had movedinto an area formerly occupied byone and a half million Poles andJews. By July 1942, 120,000 of them werestill housed in camps. By August1943, the number had increased to

546,000 and there were about 99,500

in camps and 22,000 near Lodz, all of

them destitute. They were beingclothed in garments taken fromexterminated Jews.Mid-March saw the opening of

Belsec, the first permanent gassingcamp. It had four gas-chambers eachcapable of holding 750 persons and it

was charged with exhaust fumesfrom a diesel engine. In actual use theengine frequently failed to start andthe victims could be left for hourslocked in the chambers, their moan-ing audible outside. Nevertheless, it

was here that 15,000 victims fromLublin, the 'Jewish reserve' weregassed. The rest, something like

11,000 went to Majdanek, where theysurvived at least until the gas-

chambers there were completed in

the Autumn.During April it was Lwow ghetto

which was resettled, when some

105

^-«i»^

/^

15,000 people were removed duringthe first month and others in Mayand June, though the movementwas delayed because Belsec wasovercrowded.Other actions were at the same time

taking place in the smaller ghettoesand by July 1942, some 250,000 Jewsof the 1,600,000 in the General Govern-ment had been resettled.

And still the shooting continued.During that summer something like

7,000 murders a day were being com-mitted. In the whole of Poland half amillion Jews probably perished. Inone of the biggest massacres, at Lida,

16,000 died. Goring was able to say to

a conference: 'There are only a fewJews alive. Tens of thousands havebeen disposed of.' By the end of thatyear the figure of the slain of 250,000

in the General Government had leapedto 1,274,166.

It was from the scene of one of these

Above /eft : Lodz . Be/ow /e^f .• MajdanekBelow: 'Resettlement'

blood-baths, at Dubno airfield in theUkraine on 5th October, that one ofthe most complete accounts of whatmass-execution meant to its victimscomes to us. Hermann Grabe, aGerman civil .engineer, testified inan affidavit presented at the Nurem-berg War Crimes trials, how he sawa mass of people lining up on oneside of a large mound of earth. Amongthem was an old white-haired womanholding a child of about one, whichshe was crooning to; elsewhere afather was holding the hand of histen-year-old son, stroking his head,while the boy fought back tears; aslim girl with black hair as shepassed Grabe, pointed to herself andsaid: 'Twenty-three years old'.

Grabe, amazed he was not sentaway, went round to the other sideof the mound. There was a tremendouspit already holding perhaps athousand bodies. Nearly all hadblood running from their heads.Many still moved. Some were tryingto show by raised hands that they

IC^^^

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Registration for Treblinka

were still alive so that they coula

be put to death.

At one end of the pit an SS man sat,

his feat dangling into it, a submachinegun across his knees, a cigarette

drooping from his mouth. As the

group of people Grabe had seen onthe far side were brought round hesaw them climb into the pit, under the

direction of the SS man. Then there

was a series of shots. When he lookedagain some bodies still twitched.

Others lay motionless.

He watched another group broughtto the shooting place, includingamong them a paralysed woman,who had to be undressed and carried

by others.

Next morning he returned to thespot. About thirty people had crawledfrom the pit and some had got somedistance away. A few were still alive.

Others had died. While he was therethe SS party arrived. The living wereordered to carry the dead back to the

108

pit and were then executed them-selves.

Grabe saw that all went meekly to

their deaths, obeying orders intendedto facilitate their own execution.None pleaded for life. None sought to

escape. None resisted.

But resistance was to come.The resettlement operations carried

out under the Aktion Reinhard pro-

gramme had still not accounted for

the biggest ghetto in Poland - Warsaw.In this were some 380,000 inhabitantsand in July, Globocnik, among others,

felt that they had delayed overlongin tackling it. For one thing some7,000 surviving Jews from Rownoghetto, all ofwhom had been exemptedbecause they had work-permits, hadbeen killed that month. This was thenearest ghetto to Warsaw and hencethe strictest precautions had beentaken to see that what occurred did

not become known there. These hadlargely been successful, but with everypassing day the possibility of dis-

covery would increase in Warsaw, and

despair might cause its populationto make a stand against resettlement.For the delay, however, there had

been good reasons. One was that therewas a transport shortage caused bypreparations for the Wehrmacht'ssummer offensive in Russia, as Hitlerhad promised that the eastern cam-paign would be decisively endedthat year. Heydrich in fact had beenprevented by the offensive prepara-tions from sending any Jews to theRussian ghettoes from March on-wards. But despite these demandsHimmler was able to procure sometrains from the State Railways. ByJuly, when the offensive was justbeginning there were a sufficient

number to provide one a day to takeJews from Warsaw to Treblinkaextermination camp from the day it

opened. This camp, which went intoaction on the 23rd, was almost thelast of the main death camps. Thevery last, Sobibor, was not openeduntil late October because of a mutinyled by a Pole in which about 150 Jewsattempted a mass break-out. Mostdied in the minefield surroundingthe camp, and only about thirtysurvived the war. It was followedalmost a year later by a similarabortive revolt at Treblinka, againled by a Pole, this time a captainin the army. Jews broke into thearmoury and took weapons, but therevolt failed and the rebels weremassacred. Two months later, how-ever, in November 1943, the wholecamp was emptied, blown up and themass graves cleared, and the areaplanted with pines. Notwithstandingthese troubles, Sobibor and Treblinka,between them, managed to accountfor over a million lives of Jews fromRussia, Czechoslovakia, Austria,Holland and France.The sorting out process which

began the Warsaw resettlement in1942 and sent Treblinka its first andmany subsequent victims, was carriedout according to. the establishedpattern, by picking on those withno work certificates, as well as on

the old, the sick and children. Thelists had to be provided by the ghetto'sJewish Council - thus the Jews here,

as everywhere else, were made accom-plices in their own killing.

America was not yet at war withGermany and for this reason WarsawJews who were US subjects were told

to register and were sent to a prison -

this should have been warning enoughthat something was about to happen,but there was at this time no resist-

ance organisation in the ghetto.

Thousands of Jews were known to

be hiding within the walls, but con-ditions were such that many volun-tarily joined the deportation columnsfor the sake of bread and marmaladetravel-rations.

Although the German documentsspeak of 5,000 a day leaving Warsaw,the Jewish Council had been orderedto provide 6,000 a day and this couldnot go on indefinitely without involv-

ing certificate-holders. Now the

Germans began what they had donein other places. They constantlychanged the certificates, annullingearlier ones. Those not in possessionof valid documents were rounded upand often the wives and children of

certificate-holders would be draggedaway while their husbands were at

work.By 15th August half the ghetto had

gone and its actual area was reduced,

the first of several such reductions.

The next day a new work certificate

was issued. It was limited to 30,000

workers and did not cover their

dependents. Between 5th and 12th

September a fresh round up wasorganised and over this period some100,000 Jews, including Jewish Councilemployees and members of theOrdnungsdienst, the Jewish ghettopolice, were resettled. Again the size

of the ghetto was reduced. By 3rd

October only about 30,000 Jews existed

officially, though actually when thosein hiding were included there weresome 60,000 to 70,000 surviving.

Those Jews who remained, however,were largely unencumbered by de-

109

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Above: A Jew is discovered in hiding in the Warsaw ghetto Below: A Polish

resistance fighter is arrested

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pendents and in this situation wereprepared to accept the orders of the

resistance group which now developed

in the greatest secrecy. In the long

run it was found that by breaking upfamilies as they had the Germanshad made a miscalculation.

The turn of the year found the

Jewish Council, even with the

numbers in the ghetto greatly dimi-

nished and those still there employedin armaments factories, trying to

fulfil the quota of 5,000 a day. In

January 1943 Himmler paid a surprise

visit to Warsaw and was angered to

discover far more people than he hadexpected. Resettlement, he orderedirritably, must be completed by15th February.Some German factory managers,

trying to save their Jewish employees,sent false returns of their numbersand were even hiding them.On 18th January, four days after

Himmler's unscheduled visit, acolumn of deportees was marchingto the transfer point, the Cauldron

as it was called, when several of themdrew guns and opened fire. Their armswere pistols of Italian manufactureand bought through the black marketfor something like £50 each. Thispitiful fusillade was quickly andwitheringly answered and the Jewswithdrew to cover leaving their dead.

For three days a hunt continued buteven after field guns were brought upto demolish the north-eastern cornerof the ghetto where some four resist-

ance groups were holed up, they werenot all destroyed and the Germanscalled off" the action.

Himmler had now ordered that aconcentration camp be built inside

the ghetto and when completed all thebuildings were to be fiattened. Laterboth the Jews and the workshops in

which they laboured would be trans-

ferred to Lublin.

Meanwhile, on 13th March Cracowghetto was resettled. There were only

SS Major-General JiJrgen Stroopinterrogates a prisoner in the ghetto

Inwarn

/

J"

wT.

A J4^:-^

Resistance fighters take to the sewers

some 14,000 Jews involved and the

action was completed in two days, the

inhabitants going to various labour

and extermination camps.The day the Cracow resettlement

began, the Warsaw Jewish Council

was ordered to produce 2,000 people

for a transit camp at Trawniki.Neither the council nor its arm,the Ordnungsdienst, was able to carry

out the orders. The resistance groupswere in control and the council wascaught in a cross-fire. If they disobey-

ed the Germans they went to Treb-

linka; if they obeyed they would be

killed by the resistance. The Germanshad to find their deportees for them-selves.

On 17th April SS Major-GeneralJtirgen Stroop arrived to take over

the duties of Higher SS and Police

Leader in Warsaw. Two days later

he sent two armoured cars, three

artillery pieces and a captured Frenchtank into the ghetto. As a show of

force their efi'ect was nil and he hadto break the ghetto into sectors to

which units were assigned for 'pacifi-

cation'.

Nor did he find cooperation amongthe German factory owners. Bigshelters had been dug in the groundsof many of the factories, ostensibly

against air raids. In these, large

groups of Jews hid with the cognisanceof their employers.On 21st April Stroop was successful

in getting over 5,200 Jews out of thearmy factory and deported. Later,

he found that some still remained.They had disguised themselves in

Germany army uniforms, stolen fromthe factory.

It was at this point that Stroop,under Himmler's orders, decided onthe methodical destruction of theghetto by fire and explosives. Therehad never been enough weapons for

everyone, besides which a high pro-

The clearing of the ghetto

portion, the old and the sick, were in

no .condition to fight. Many of thesegroups, rather than surrender, pre-

ferred to die in the flames, thoughsufficient numbers were rounded upby 25th April -for 25,000 to be sent to

Treblinka over the ensuing days.

The battle was far from over,

however. The resistance fighters tookto the sewers and by this means madecontacts with Polish partisans, whosupplied weapons and sent fighters

into the ghetto. In the end thosehiding in the sewers were driven outby the use of smoke candles. Theythought they were being gassed.

On 28th April a bunker in whichsome of the wealthiest and mostimportant members of the ghetto hadbeen living was captured. Hitherto,

Stroop had avoided actually blowingup the bunkers for fear of damagingthe factories and their tools. But nowhis policy began to' change and several

factories were dynamited. Thebunker-dwellers, like others, choseto die where they were.

Some 1,100 troops were by this timeengaged in the ghetto-clearance, nota large number in comparison withsome partisan actions in which theGermans became involved, buthumiliatingly disproportionate to

the task. On 9th May, Stroop cap-

tured what he believed was the head-quarters dugout and with it the

deputy leader and the resistance

committee. Even so resistance wenton, though on 11th May he was told

by a prisoner that the leaders had all

committed suicide. Stroop according-

ly decided to call off" the action onthe 16th.

Small numbers of prisoners fell

into his hands, and though he haddiscovered that the remaining Jewsexpected to be able to come out of

hiding and continue their lives whenhe withdrew, he stuck to his decision

to wind up the battle. On 16th May,the day it officially ended, a synagogueand a Jewish cemetery were blown up.

In the ghetto itself 7,000 Jews were

113

said to have been killed and a large

number had gone to Treblinka andother camps. But for months after-

wards surviving resisters Were beingrooted out.

Himmler, when he heard of theaction, commemorated by Stroop ina lavishly illustrated leather-boundreport, ordered the whole ghetto areato be totally erased, all cellars andsewers to be filled in and the reclaimedland to be turned into a public garden.Work for this was to continue untilthe Warsaw Rising of the followingyear when the Red Army was notmore than fifteen miles away.Aktion Reinhard officially ended in

October 1943, and that DecemberGlobocnik presented his 'profit andloss' account. It included not onlylists of the numbers dead, but alsoof their possessions. Among themwere, besides such items as clinical

thermometers and alarm clocks, thosegifts which people present to oneanother as marks of love or esteem:gold and silver propelling pencils,

bits of jewellery, watches, cigarettecases, lighters. The value of theseitems amounted to 178,745,000 Reich-marks.In the meantime Himmler was still

involved in his business ventures.On 12th March 1943 the SS had foundedtheir own company, Osti (East)

Industries GmbH, with Oswald Pohlas chairman and Odilo Globocnik asmanaging director. Its purpose wasto take over some of the factories

being completed or already built in

Lublin. Now that the exemptions of

Jews working in the armamentsindustry had been revoked they wouldfall totally under the control of the

SS. These included not only those in

factories in Poland and elsewhere,

but also those in the Reich itself

whose deportation Goring had beenforced to halt the previous year.

Every endeavour was at once madeto move these Jews east and threedeportation trains left Berlin takingmunitions workers between January

and the end of February 1943, withoutattracting attention. But a fourth,

on 27th February, was scheduled totransport many well-known ReichJews and though the Wehrmachtfactories were surrounded by units of

the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler., thepicked bodyguard formations, theround up largely failed. The Jews hadbeen warned. Four days later anothereffort was made and this time wasinterrupted by a tremendous RAFraid on the capital. Then there was ademonstration from an angry crowdafter an attempt to drag off" peoplefrom a home for the aged. The wholeaction had to be stopped and it is

worth noting that the proportion of

Reich Jews, as a whole, sent to thedeath camps was well below that fromelsewhere. From a 1933 census figure

of 499,682 Jews in pre-war Germany123,000 are estimated as killed. Some180,000 Jews were deported by May1943 of which 100,000 were sent to

Theresienstadt, where about 60,000

died. There were always large num-bers in hiding; in 1943 probably about40,000.

Nevertheless, Globocnik was able

to boast that with the Jews from all

sources, there were 45,000 slaves

employed by Osti. At the same timehe was complaining that they werefailing to get orders. Himmler hatedto hear of failure and Globocnik wasalready falling out of favour after

some dubious exchange dealings, andhe was shortly to be relieved andposted to his home town, Trieste. Heis said to have committed suicide

in June 1945.

In June 1943, he had a further

proposal, for which in the end nocredit was to redound to him. Thiswas to move Jews from Litzmannstadt,near Lodz, to Lublin and to close the

Litzmannstadt camp. In Litzmann-stadt there were still people workingin exempted industries and at once

these were inundated with orders - to

save them from 'resettlement'.

Himmler had had enough of Globoc-

114

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Inik's maladroitness and cupidity. Inearly September, Oswald Pohl tookover his functions as managingdirector of the ten Osti camps. ButHimmler was tired of these as well.

On 3rd November five of them wereclosed down. Without any of theOsti executives being told, a massiveselection was made and in the mostintensive single massacre of the

Stroop's report confirms the

destruction of the ghetto

Final Solution a total of 16,000 Jewswere machine gunned in pits in a

matter of hours, then cremated. Thefigure has even been put as high as

40,000. During the mass-burning the

whole town of Lublin was covered withdust.

115

^

AuschwitzThe spring of 1942 had seen anotherlandmark in the completion of the

Final Solution. This was the cominginto operation of the huge gas-

chambers at Auschwitz, each onecapable of taking 2,000 victims at atime. This camp more than anyother has come to be synonymouswith extermination so that to saysomeone had 'gone to Auschwitz'automatically implied his death. Thiswas true even among the other con-

tration camps, for Jewish Internees

were moved from the German campsto Auschwitz during the October of

1943 and only a small minority of

these were expected to be capable of

work.Himmler himself preferred Ausch-

witz to any of his other camps. Hetold Rudolf Hoss, when he com-missioned him to enlarge the campto include extermination facilities,

that it was 'favourably placed as

regards technical communicationsand ... it will be easy to close off andcamouflage the area.' The camouflageof which he spoke was an I G Farbensynthetic rubber factory, employingcamp labour, though this was sited at

Monowitz, some distance away.Auschwitz was actually three quite

separate camps, of which Monowitzwas one. The concentration campproper was simply called Auschwitzor Auschwitz I. and the extermination

camp, about three kilometres from it,

in the Birkenwald, was called Ausch-witz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau.For this some 20,000 acres of

countryside had been cleared of

habitation. Only SS men or civilian

employees with special passes wereallowed into the area. All the equip-

ment of mass-death was hidden deep

in the woods and in the words of

Hoss 'could nowhere be detected bythe eye'. This was not strictly true.

116

It jcould be seen from the railway andpassengers crowded to the windowsto look at the high chimneys, knowing,apparently, perfectly well what theywere for.

Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau were, individually, thebiggest camps in Germany. Thus,as commandant of this complexHoss could feel himself a person of

some consequence. Hoss was theforty-two year old son of a Baden-Baden shopkeeper, destined to becomea priest. He broke with the churchat the age of twenty-two and joined

the NSDAP. In 1923 he had received

a life sentence for his part in killing

a schoolmaster said to have denouncedan early Nazi to the occupying French.In prison he met Martin Bormann,

who was to head Hitler's PartyChancellery. The Nazi takeover in

1933 found him still in prison, but in

1934 he became a blockleader in

Dachau Concentration Camp, aposition accorded to trusted prisoners.

In 1936 he became a second lieutenant

in the Totenkopf Verbdnde, the con-

centration camp guard units. Thus,this convict and concentration campinmate crossed the seemingly impass-

able divide between guarded and guardand, having made the leap, rose to the

rank of lieutenant colonel of the SS.

A photograph taken of him at his trial

in Warsaw shows a man with sensitive

and anxious eyes, in many ways the

expression of a conscientious priest,

who despite outward piety is prey to

doubts. 'A personality,' Dr G MGilbert, the Nuremberg psychiatrist

said, 'not entirely of this world.'

Hoss acknowledges that though hecarried out the Fiihrer Order onexterminations he sufl'ered grave

misgivings.

The area under his command, the

concentration camp group called

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Auschwitz, lay just outside theGeneral Government in an area of

southern Poland which had beenabsorbed into Silesia. Thus, this

the biggest of the death camps wasgeographically within the Reich as

defined after the fall of Poland.Efi'orts to disguise the function of

Auschwitz-Birkenau were not limitedto external 'camouflage'. As at othercamps (Treblinka, for example, hadits mock railway station), painshad been taken to allay the sus-

picions of new arrivals. Some of thegas-chambers were underground,others on a level with the crema-torium. All were fitted inside withshower-douches. The ground over thegas-chambers had been laid out as

lawn and here the Birkenau gipsy-

orchestra serenaded the condemnedwith selections from Franz Leharand Strauss. The grass expanseswere broken only by the tops of thetubular ventilators, down which the

Victims of Auschwitz are burned

118

Women and children arrive at

Auschwitz

Zyklon B crystals were thrown.Both the grass and the ventilatorswere quite common in German mili-

tary practice and would not havearoused suspicions, though later thefunction of the bunkers was fully

known to all, including those aboutto enter them.Even the buildings of the crema-

toria were not outwardly unpleasant,though the size of the chimneysmight have seemed disproportionate

to their purpose.

On a normal day this tranquil

aspect would hardly be disturbed,

except for the smoke coming fromthose very chimneys, for everything,

including the lilting strains of the

tzigane orchestra was designed for

the smooth, uninterrupted destruc-

tion of men, women and children.

The picture built up in the postwarworld of Auschwitz is of a continuous

Martin Bormann

flow of transports bringing fodder for

the gas-chambers. In fact, there werekilling seasons, which correspondedwith the round-ups being carried outthrough Eichmann's DepartmentIVA4b of RSHA. During the 'season'

which lasted from four to six weeks,two or three trains a day each broughtan average of 2,000 people - enoughfor a single filling of the chambers.Before each consignment left for

Auschwitz a teletype would be sentfrom 116, Kurfurstenstrasse giving

the numbers to be expected andincorporating the formula 'to betreated according to the directives

for special treatment'. On arrival the

train would be shunted into the

Birkenau siding. As a security pre-

caution not only was the locomotivedetached and the railway personnelordered out of the area, but also the

guards who had accompanied the

train. Camp guards now took over.

Such devices largely failed as the

railwaymen managed to get photo-graphs of Auschwitz and Treblinka'bath houses' and sold them, knowing

perfectly well what they were. Someeven found their way back to theWarsaw ghetto.

For the passengers the next stagewas the process of selection by SSdoctors. Over the whole two and halfyears these were made ^ they werealways carried out on the spot andfor the same reasons: anyone liable

to become an encumbrance - youngchildren, mothers with babies, preg-nant women, the sick and the aged,were automatically moved from thecolumn of the living to the column of

the moribund, often with no morethan a cursory wave of a walking-stick.

Those temporarily reprieved wouldthen be marched away to the work-area of Birkenau or to Auschwitzmain camp.Those chosen for death, who were

sometimes joined by others broughtfrom the camps themselves, werethen led to a group of buildings in

which they were told to strip for

showering or 'delousing', then theywent down the ramp into the gas-

chamber, if it was below ground, or

along a corridor in the open which hadbarbed wire fences along either side,

if it was above ground. Once inside

the great iron doors clanged echo-ingly shut and they waited for the

water to flow from the douches abovetheir heads.

Above, on the grass, the mushroomcaps of the ventilators would be

unscrewed and on the order, 'Give

'em their feed', the cyanide crystals

were dropped down the shafts. Theseterminated inside the chamber in

perforated metal pillars. After a timethe eff'ects of the gas would be felt

within and there would be a rushto get out, people hurling themselvesat the door, scratching at it, tearing

at one another. Death took betweenfive and fifteen minutes, depending onthe weather.The only way that those waiting

outside could tell that this had

Vents on the roof of a gas chamber

120

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happened was because inside all

became silent. The last screamsdied away. Then the exhausterswould be switched on and the SpecialCommando, itself made up of Jews,who would end their own lives in thegas-chambers, dressed in gas-masksand boots reopened the chamber.The dead, now a solid mass, wouldbe separated with ropes and hooks sothat the looting of teeth, hair, andspectacles could be carried out. Thenthe corpses would be conveyed to thecrematorium furnaces by lift or byrail wagon, according to whichchambers had been used. The bodiesdisposed of, the bones (on Blobel'sadvice) would be ground to powder in

a bone-mill.

This was the process to which thename Sonderbehandlung - SpecialTreatment - was given.

It was, however, only the capacityof Auschwitz which helped to makeit the chosen place for the inter-

national application of the FinalSolution. What was happening there

was larger in scale, but in no otherway different from all the otherextermination centres. Its sheer size

has imbedded it in the folk-memoryof Europe.So in Greece, as in the existentialist

poetry of France, the name occurs in

the 'new music' to be sung to houzouki

accompaniment. For here, of anestimated 67,000 Jews before the war,

just over 10,000 survived. FromSalonika alone, where there was the

biggest of the Greek Jewish com-munities something like 45,000 weretaken.In Yugoslavia, not all of which was

under German occupation, some55,000 Jews probably perished. Thecity of Belgrade was declared Jew-free

in July 1941. In Croatia, which hadbeen created an independent state,

some 20,000 Jews took refuge with

the Italians, who had interests in

the area. The Germans began diplo-

matic efforts to get them back, but

The camp orchestra

123

Destination Auschwitz

mi

their hosts introduced all kinds ofdelays and confusions so that, inthe end the Germans had to be contentwith the 21,000 they had managedto lay their hands on.

Hitler's dictate had been quitespecific: every Jew in Europe wasto be annihilated. So not only in theeast, but also in the west the nameAuschwitz resonates like a terrifying

shriek out of a dark forest.

Foremost among the nations of

the west was, of course, France andin 1942 there was still concern at116 Kurfurstenstrasse at the lackof enthusiasm shown there for theFinal Solution. The RSHA wereinclined to blame themselves for

not having insisted in May 1940 onthe kind of deal which had worked so

admirably in Russia where their

Einstasgruppen were independent of

the army and solved the Jewishproblem ad hoc. It was difficult in

France and Belgium to introduce

even the star of David and this wasnot done until June 1942 and then in

the face of opposition.

To try to get things going on the

right footing in October 1941 a bungledattempt had been made to destroy

two synagogues so that it wouldappear as if the French wanted to be

rid of their Jews. No one was deceived

and the attempt was traced back to

a French Gestapo informer. This

nearly became an international

incident.

When, however, there was a series of

attacks on German soldiers this wasused to better eff"ect; 1,000 Jewsand 500 Communists were ordered to

be deported for 'forced labour' in

the east.

In the west the Germans had not

established ghettoes. They persuaded

the governments of the countries

under their dominion to open local

'internment camps'. These were useful

in several ways, one of which was in

easing the consciences of those col-

laborationists who at the same time

Before the shower

127

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did not wholly support the excessesof Nazi antisemitism. As long as theinterned Jews were on national soil,

they could feel that everything wasall right and even Jews themselves,free and interned, shared this delusion.

Because of it the Germans weresuccessful, until their true plansbecame known, in having large

numbers rounded up and incarceratedin the camps, whence they could bequietly removed for exterminationconveniently.In Occupied France there was such

a camp at Drancy and from herebetween April and June five trainsleft for Auschwitz, each carryingabout 5,000 peoole.

German report on the seizure of a

Jewish children's home at Izieu-Ain

and the dispersal of its inmates and

staff

Eichmann had had his eyes on bigger

hauls than this, however, and on16th July a great round-up into whichmuch planning had gone, took place.

In this it was hoped that at least

22,000 stateless Jews in Paris would

be brought in. Actually the operation

netted just under 13,000 including

some 4,000 children. Of this 13,000,

6,000 were sent straight to Drancy,

the rest, including all the children,

spent five days in a sports stadium,

the Velodrome d'Hiver. The adults

129

1,

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King Christian of Denmark

Departure to Drancy

were then sent to Auschwitz and thechildren to Drancy. From here theywere consigned to Auschwitz in duetime with French gendarmes, to their

immortal shame, helping to drag thescreaming little ones to the trains of

death. In November, Belgian railway-men going through box-cars returnedempty from the east, found the bodiesof twenty-five children, aged betweentwo and four.

These were Jews in the world'smost civilised city under Hitler's

Third Reich.

By the end of the summer 25,000

Jews had been deported from OccupiedFrance, though not one had left

Vichy Territory. Efforts to persuadethe Petain government, through its

foreign minister Laval, to revokenaturalisations which made JewsFrench citizens proved, in general,

useless. Eichmann could fume as

much as he liked as the trains cameback unfilled or were cancelled

for lack of freight.

Even after the occupation of the

whole of France in November 1942

Jews were still able to find sanctuaryin the Italian zone in the south. Forthough Mussolini had brought in

anti-Jewish measures of his ownas early as 1938 these gained so little

public support that they could never

be enforced.

In the country of France's neigh-

bour, Belgium, the internment campwas Caserne Dossin in Malines. From4th August 1942 a train service in-

tended to take Jews to Auschwitzwas running, but attempts to round upJews were proving difficult with the

Belgians showing an active sympathytowards them. Saws with which their

prisoners cut their way out weresmuggled into trains; railwaymenmanaged to leave the doors of sometrucks open; and once a train wascaught in an ambush they had or-

ganised and from which 150 Jewsescaped. Nevertheless, some 25,000

Jews were deported.

Across the border in Holland in

the second half of July 1942 5,742 Jews

were taken via a camp at Westbork to

Auschwitz. However, as in Belgium,deportation was proving uphill work.Many Jews began to go into hidingwith Dutch Gentile families (best

known among these is the teenagediarist, Anne Frank, hidden in awarehouse). Unable to find their

quota of Jews elsewhere, the Germansturned upon the helpless, on oldpeoples' homes, orphanages, mentalinstitutions. The only requirementwas that the transport trains did

not go back empty. This demandwas met even when, as in one case,

mentally-sick children were packedso tight in a cattle-truck that attend-ants could not reach them. It tookthem four days to get to Auschwitzwhence neither children nor attend-

ants were ever seen again. But these,

too, were Jews in Hitler's ThirdReich.Attempts were also made to impose

the Final Solution on OccupiedScandinavia. In Norway some 725

Jews were rounded up by Germanpolice and Quisling militia in Novem-ber 1942. All but twenty-six weredeported and a further 158 followed

in March 1943. Only thirteen survived

the war. A larger number, however,

some 900, were slipped across the

border into neutral Sweden by the

Norwegian underground.In Denmark, where the Germans

were in occupation of a neutral

country, eff'orts to use diplomatic

as well as other pressures to imposethe Final Solution failed almosttotally. There were two primereasons: one was King Christian's

brave stand - he said that if the Star

of David was introduced, for example,

he and his court would be the first to

wear it, and he made a show of attend-

ing Jewish feasts at Copenhagensynagogues. The second reason for

failure was the fact that, as inNorway,the Danes managed to slip manyJews out of the country.

A gas generator at Struthof

concentration camp

132

^^

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M:^'

Eichmann's efforts were not limitedto the countries Germany held in

subjection. Through DepartmentDeutschland III of Ribbentrop'sForeign Ministry pressure wasbrought upon Germany's allies inits war with Russia and even uponneutrals like Spain and Portugal -

unsuccessfully in both cases. At GrossWannsee it had been agreed that theSlovak, Croatian, Bulgarian andHungarian governments were all to

be approached and told that theGermans were willing to rid them oftheir Jews. In Hungary, a countryallied with Germany against Russia,an estimated 180,000 Jews perishedout of the large numbers deported toeastern Europe. Even in late 1944 andearly 1945 some 30,000 to 40,000 Jewsfrom Hungary, including women andchildren and the old, were deported,some to help in the building of theSouth East Wall intended to keep theRussians out of Vienna. Only a smallproportion ever returned. Negotia-tions to gather in still more werecontinuing to the moriient of Hun-gary's surrender to the Russiansand Eichmann, who was in the city,

escaped from Budapest only at thelast moment.In Rumania, another of Germany's

allies, with a population of 692,000

Jews, as many as 220,000 may havedied. Bulgarian Jews were rathermore fortunate. Out of a 1939 Jewishpopulation of 50,000, 46,500 had sur-

vived till the end of the war. Attemptsto impose the Final Solution came upagainst every sort of obstacle, notleast public demonstrations whenJews were deported. The Rabbi of

Sofia was even supposed to have beenhidden in the home of the OrthodoxMetropolitan, Stefan.

Diplomatic representations weremade through Ribbentrop to Slo-

vakia, the satellite produced by the

dismemberment of Czechoslovakiaafter the Munich agreement. Some17,000 male Jews were deported to

Auschwitz in March 1942 - allegedly

for labour, as well as 10,000 others

134

later, of which 7,000 were children.So totally were the authorities andJews themselves taken in by the storythat they were to be used for labourthat in due course the families of thedeported men applied to follow them.By the end of June 52,000 people hadleft but at the end of the war only 284survivors were found. After makingrepeated requests to visit the workcamps, the Slovak government, whichwas predominantly Roman Catholic,were warned through the PapalNuncio what was happening to de-

portees. The movements were thenbrought to an end but the Germanshad to be bought off. Wisliceny,Eichmann's representative, waspromised 55,000 dollars if he went toBerlin to get the transportationsstopped. Just to make sure the moneywas forthcoming another 3,000 Jewswere sneaked out of the country.In Italy, offers to take care of the

country's Jews were made, but gainedno response and it was not until

1943, when the Germans took overafter the armistice that they had afree hand. Then something approach-ing 10,000 were deported and evenRome, the eternal city, was not spared.

Under the nose of the Vatican, whichraised not a finger to save them, 615

were rounded up for Auschwitz.And as these hundreds of thousands

from all over Europe travelled to the

gas-chambers of Treblinka, Sobibor,

Majdanek, Belsec, Chelmno and mostof all Auschwitz-Birkenau, it is nowonder that there were times whenthe victims entering the famous2,000-person gas-chamber had to doso with their arms raised above their

heads, so that more could be packedin; so that children had to be thrownin to die on the heads of adults ; andso that those for whom there was noroom had to be shot in the neckoutside. Then everything would bedone at frenzied speed, the Special

Commando working under the blowsof rubber truncheons and whips.

At such times the output of corpses

would be too great for the crematoria.

^

j'Ja^v

It was found that the best method of

disposing of them was by burningthem in pits into which petrol hadbeen poured.These were the occasions when the

order on which Hoss prided himself,the systematic disposal of humans,broke down. Even in conditions morenearly normal the process was onewhich the man with troubled eyescould not bear to watch. He generallyleft it to his camp security chief.

Captain Fritzsch. Sometimes, how-ever, he was compelled to be presentin person. Then: 'I had to watch coldlywhile mothers with laughing orcrying children went into the gas-chambers. . . . My pity was so greatthat I longed to vanish from the scene

:

yet I might not show the slightesttrace of emotion.'During his examination at Nurem-

berg he was asked about his pity:'How was it possible to carry outthese actions in spite of this?'

'In view of the doubts which I had,the only one and decisive argumentwas the strict order and the reason

'Most of you knoNA/ what it meanswhen a hundred corpses are lying side

by side . . .

'

given for it by the Reichsfiihrer

Himmler'.If perhaps sympathy fails when we

compare the lot of Hoss with that of

those at his mercy, then we can con-

sole ourselves with the thought thatHimmler was always deeply com-passionate towards Hoss and his kindin the terrible task he had asked themto undertake. So he speaks to ameeting of Higher SS and Police

Leaders in 1943: 'Most of you knowwhat it means when a hundred corpses

are lying side by side or five hundredor a thousand. To have stuck it out

and at the same time - apart fromexceptions caused by human weak-ness - to have remained decent men . .

.

This is a page of glory in our history

which has never been written and is

never to be written.'

But with the establishment of the

extermination camps, with Eich-

mann's Europe-wide railway system

135

r

Auschwitz SS men on trial

^t msmm

1

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•*<•!.

of death running to schedule, thestory is still not finished. In someeight major Russian and Polishghettoes liquidation was beijig carriedout.

The first to be tackled was Lwowwhere 'resettlement' began on 21stJune and ended six days later. TheLwow Jews did not give in withouta fight and here the weapons weremore terrible than the pistols of theWarsaw resistors. Lice infected withspotted typhus had been bred in theghetto and some 120 of the SS mencarrying out the action were aff'ected

with the disease.

It did little to prolong the lives ofLwow Jews. At a shooting site out oftown, the 'Sand Hiir, save for a fewsurvivors ultimately found by theRed Army, nearly the whole ghettopopulation of 20,000 met their deaths.From Sosnowiece, the next ghetto

to be cleared, some 25,000 - virtuallyall the Jews there - were sent to

Auschwitz. All but 500 were gassedimmediately. The action lasted aweek.At Bialystok, where the next action

began on 21st August, progress wasslower. The extermination campswere choked, besides which many of

the Jews were employed in textile

factories in the town regarded asessential. When they were finally

rounded up an attempt at a break-outwas made. It failed with heavy casual-

ties among the Jews. Those whosurvived - some 25,000 - were all sentto Treblinka.Of the Polish ghettoes only Lodz

with a population of 85,000, was left.

Of the communities in Russia and theBaltic States the first to meet its

fate was Minsk on 14th September.Here had lived the 8,500 survivors of

the Einsatzgruppe massacre, their

numbers having been whittled downover the succeeding months by gas-

van killings. The remainder, whichincluded many Reich Jews, werekilled in the same way.In Vilna, Lithuania, were about

20,000 of which some had been tricked

into going to the Ponary death pits

already used by being told they wereto be resettled at Kovno ghetto,supposedly better ofi". An attempt atresistance as the resettlement pro-

gramme got under way producedonly a fracas at the railway station

and most went to the camps. When theRussians overran the town they foundsome 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.

In Riga resistance never wentbeyond the talking stage and thetown's 15,000 Jews were reduced to

4,000. About half went to labour camps.The rest were put on trains whichshunted round the railway systemuntil about a quarter had died of cold

and starvation. The remainder wentto Auschwitz.Kovno ghetto contained about 20,000

people of which some 7,000 were fromGermany and Lithuania. When this

number had been reduced to a fewthousand the president of the Jewish

138

Council begged that they might beallowed to wait for liberation by theRussians. This the Gestapo at first

seemed disposed to allow, but at thelast moment all were sent toGermany.

It was now the turn of the reprievedLodz where mass-evacuation wasstarted in the August of 1944. By themiddle of the month, the population,starving and terrified, had beenreduced from 85,000 to 61,000. Duringthe succeeding weeks they too, weredistributed among the camps.On 17th December 1942, the United

Nations declaration that those whopractised extermination on the Jewswere to be punished had been readto the British House of Commons.Members stood in silence. The gesture,if touching was totally empty, for

almost a year before to the day asteamer left the Rumanian port of

Constanza, with 769 Jewish refugees.

The massacre at Minsk

among them seventy children, boundfor Haifa in Palestine. They werewithout immigration permits. Thevessel broke down off Instanbul. TheTurkish authorities refused to allowits passengers to land until theBritish gave permission for them to

proceed at once to Palestine. Thiswas categorically refused. After tenweeks the ship was towed out to sea

by Turkish tugs where it broke upand sank. Two people reached shore,

the rest were drowned.After well over a year of massive

genocide, details of which were per-

fectly well known to the government,there was no sign that the callous

policy laid down by the 1939 British

White Paper of restricting Jewishentry to Palestine was in any waychanged.

139

J

Out of the chaos

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The possibility of German defeat

which had loomed in 1942 had, bythe autumn of 1944, come to look moreand more inevitable. Hopes for anAllied victory increased after the

D-Day landings of 6th June hadinstalled Allied armies on the Europ-

ean continent.

The extermination camps had nowbeen functioning for two years,

causing the deaths of untold numbers.While, at the same time the RedArmy had been advancing steadily,

pushing the Germans out of their

most recent gains, out of Russiaaltogether and backwards throughPoland and the countries of Hitler's

allies, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria.

On 24th July they were in Lublin -

where there were no longer any Jews -

and the Allied press carried its first

stories of the concentration campsand exterminations, for war corres-pondents were shown the small gas-chambers (Majdanek, the Lublincamp, was never a mass-extermina-tion centre in the full sense), thecrematoria, cans of Zyklon B andsamples of human bones.What remained of Jewish popula-

tions in the line of their advance wasnot, so far as lay in Hitler's power,suffered to fall into Russian hands.They were driven out of the reachof liberation into Germany. Wherethis could be not done they were

.'^

Auschwitz inmates liberated by the Russians

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MP*

The 'hospital' at Buchenwald

summarily executed. The movementswestward had begun as early as the

summer when 27,000 Jews were evacu-

ated in July from nine camps in

Radom and Cracow and nearly 4,000

from the camp in the former Warsawghetto, as well as from other camps.On the march hundreds were machinegunned and those who survived weresent straight to Auschwitz.When this was not possible the

migrants were simply packed into the

German concentration camps. Therewere now 500,000 people in these - a

number which of course the selections

and 'natural diminution' were, andvery effectively, reducing. It wasthought by the mid-summer of 1944,

nevertheless, that twice this numbercould be brought into the camps, butonly about 100,000 more Jews wereadmitted, mainly because the

Germans were fearful of epidemics

if greater numbers were crowded in.

In the minds of the captives therewas by now a clear understanding of

what their fate would be. If they didnot die of hunger, overwork or disease,

or fall out on some route march to beshot by their guards, they wouldfinally be exterminated en masse.

Auschwitz was, after all, working atits greatest pressure at this time andit was in May (admittedly before

D-Day had changed the look of thewar) that Himmler had spoken withunusual candour about the Jewishquestion. The Jews, he told a meetingof Nazi officials at Posen, were to

be rooted out, killed - he actuallybrought himself to use the word -

men, women and children. 'We wereforced to come to the grim decision

that this people must be made to

disappear from the face of the earth,'

he told them, as if he were announcingnew measures against fowl pest.

Washing facilities at Dachau, intended

for up to 800 people

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Yet things were not as theyseemed.Himmler had had some profound

thoughts about his own future in adefeated Germany subject to the

United Nations. In particular, hethought of his hostages. Already anexchange camp had been opened at

Bergen-Belsen concentration campand in May, the month of his speech,

Eichman had had a meeting with Joel

Brand, of the Budapest Zionist Relief

Committee, during which a deal to

barter the lives of 700,000 HungarianJews for 10,000 heavy lorries for theGerman war machine was discussed.

These were to be supplied by the Allies

through Salonika, but the whole thingcame to nothing after the story hadbroken in the Allied press.

Then, in July, another proposal wasput forward, this time by anotherBudapest Zionist, Dr Reszoe Kastner.This was for 100,000 Jewish lives in anoutright deal for five million Swissfrancs. Himmler looked at the termsand came up with his own proposition

:

30,000 physically fit Jews for six

million US dollars. They were not to

be handed over, but to be kept 'on ice'

at the Austrian labour camp, Strass-

hof. Only 1,800,000 dollars was raised

and for this price 9,000 Jews were'put on ice'.

Negotiations again broke downaltogether when Kastner was told

that Himmler was determined notto let a single Jew leave Europe,though on the question of the Bergen-Belsen Jews, among whom was a groupof 1,684 Budapest Jews, there mightbe room for manoeuvre. Talks re-

opened, this time in Switzerland andas a display of good faith on theGerman side some 318 of this groupof Budapest Jews were pushed acrossthe border at Basel. The Germansnow formulated a proposal to stopnot only the deportations, but also

the gassings in exchange for deliveries

German civilians are expected to

observe exhumed bodies of victims of

a route march across Czechoslovakia

of materiel. But this the Jewishnegotiator was in no position to off'er.

Instead he returned with an offer of15,000,000 Swiss francs as the pricefor calling ,off deportations fromCzechoslovakia and Hungary, to befollowed by the release to Switzerlandof the remaining Bergen-Belsen Jews.The money for this purpose (in all

20,000,000 Swiss francs) was collectedin the US through charities and thetransaction might have been success-fully completed, but that CordellHull, the US Foreign Secretary,would only allow five million of thesum to be transferred to Switzerland.Edward Stettinius, jr, who succeededHull very shortly afterwards, cancell-

ed even the transfer of the five millionand not until 6th February did

Himmler receive it, through thepresident of Switzerland Jean-MarieMusi. A total of 2,684 Jews were thenmoved to Switzerland. During thewinter an actual meeting betweenHimmler and Musi was arranged.

This time in exchange for money,instead of equipment and medicalsupplies, which Himmler had origin-

ally demanded, 1,200 Jews were to be

sent by train to Switzerland every

fortnight. One of the terms of the deal

was that a new propaganda climate

was to be created in the rest of

Europe in which Germany should

cease to be regarded as the murdererof Jewry.The plan reached the ears of an

enraged and outraged Hitler, whotold Himmler to issue an order that all

camps were to be destroyed andtheir inmates killed if they were in

danger of being overrun.

Some good had, however, already

come from the inconclusive negotia-

tions and particularly from Himmler'sanxiety to 'change his image'. In

October of 1944 gas-chamber selec-

tions at Auschwitz stopped. In Sep-

tember, in fact, a mission from the

International Red Cross had actually

been allowed into the camp, thoughonly for an interview with Baer, the

commandant who had succeeded

147

i>^-li;^

^.y.-v.

""^

Cordell Hull and Edward Stettinius

Hoss. But British POWs working at

the synthetic rubber factory, whowere interviewed, drew the mission's

attention to the gassings. This in-

formation was second-hand and whenthey tried to get it first hand frominternees they refused to talk. Follow-

ing the mission's visit, however, there

was an improvement in campconditions.

Then, in November, an order wentout from Himmler for the crematoriato be dismantled. Auschwitz was at

the end of its two-and-a-half year life

of murder. Hoss had boasted of killing

2. 500,000 Jews. But the most reliable

figure, horrific enough in all con-

science, is 840,000. They came fromBelgium, Croatia, France, Germany,Czechoslovakia, Greece, Holland,Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway,Poland, the Baltic and Slovakia, thebiggest total, 380,000, coming fromHungary, and about 180,000 othersfrom Poland and the Baltic. Of this

the great majority, between 550,000

and 600,000 were probably gassed onarrival, 'selected' from the transportsas they came into Birkenau siding.

But there were in addition to the total

a large number from the camp itself,

probably numbering hundreds of

thousands, who were gassed, beingtermed 'no longer fit for work'.The Jews of the Special Commando,

which handled the corpses at Ausch-witz after gassing, knew perfectly

well what fate awaited them withHimmler's new order, and attemptedan abortive revolt. Late in Novemberthey were taken out into the Birken-wald and shot.

As the Russian advance approachedthe camp inmates began to be dis-

tributed through the other campsin Germany. These first movementswere comparatively orderly, a numberof women at Birkenau going to

Bergen-Belsen, which Josef Kramer,

Josef Kramer and Irma Grese, in

command at Bergen-Belsen

commandant at Birkenau in its

heyday as the principal exterminationcentre, had been sent to organise.Later, with 64,000 people still in the

camp and Russian guns within ear-

shot, evacuation became chaotic.

Thousands travelled only in their

striped prison uniform in open rail

wagons and in winter weather. Otherstravelled on foot. They were distri-

buted to Dachau, Dora, Mauthausen,Ravensbrtick, and Sachsenhausen,with the largest number of all, 13,886,

going to Buchenwald.When the Russians arrived at

Auschwitz on 26th January they foundonly 2,819 invalids in the three campsmost of whom they were able to nurseback to health.

There were now, in the encircled

Reich, some 700,000 concentrationcamp inmates. The lives of all of

them were deteriorating daily andin proportion to the deterioration

of conditions within Germany. Thiswas not in the least helped by the

fact that not only Himmler, butalso other SS leaders were planning,

in secret, ways of saving their ownskins with the Allies. Often these

covert activities came into conflict

with each other or with those of

some super-idealist of the FinalSolution, like Eichmann, who woulddo his utmost to sabotage his col-

leagues' schemes.Himmler himself was currently

engaged in a fresh round of negotia-

tions aimed at circumventing the

order to destroy the camps and their

populations. On 12th March he agreed

to hand over the camps intact andto stop all executions of Jews. On19th April Dr Norbert Masur, director

of the Swedish section of the WorldJewish Congress, arrived in Berlin,

met and had talks with the arch-

enemy of the Jews. Himmler, still

terrified that Hitler might discover

what he had done, could not be tied

down to specifics, but some sort of

agreement was worked out with the

assistance of Kersten, Himmler'smasseur, who had done much already

*

to advance these life-saving- negotia-tions.

Yet still a chess-game with humanlives went on. The Swiss Red Crossrepresentatives were trying vainlyto get into the camps, to talk openlywith internees and form someestimate of the sort of aid that wasgoing to be necessary. The SwedishRed Cross representative, CountFolke Bernardotte, managed to pene-trate Neuengamme, near Hamburg,but the best the Swiss had been able

to do was to talk to an Oranienburginternee in the presence of his keepersand of leading SS officers.

The first concentration camp dis-

covery had, of course, been Russianand this the Germans tried to sloughoff as Communist propaganda, ananswer to their own Katyn wooddiscoveries of the year before. Now,however, another Allied force wasnearing Buchenwald. These were theAmericans and on 3rd April a mass-evacuation began. More than half the48,000 people of the main camp weresent to south Germany by train. Afew days later 4,500 Jews in one of

the satellite camps followed; 1,500

were dead on arrival at Dachau. All

this was despite Himmler's promisethat the camp would be handed overintact.

At about the same time Britishtroops closed in on Bergen-Belsen.The discoveries there have becomefamous. In Camp I 40,000 people werefound living among 13,000 unburiedcorpses. Their condition was suchthat some 13,000 of those living diedafter liberation. The place was riddledwith typhus; probably as many as40,000 people, mainly Jews from Hun-gary and Poland, had succumbed tothe disease.

All the Allies have since beencriticised and in many ways justifi-

ably, for making such enormous andspeedy propaganda capital out of

their concentration camp discoveries.By what they did they ensured that

Starvation

-^^..

tCount Folke Bernadotte

the Germans would see to it that nomore were handed over unevacuatedif it could possibly be helped. And the

matter was now taken out of

Himmler's hands. Hitler ordered that

every camp inmate who could walkmust be driven from the camps.When the point was reached that

no further evacuation was possible

they were to be slaughtered. This

almost came to be realised in the case

of Dachau where there was a plan to

put those from the surrounding campsin it and then bomb it from the air.

In fact, events moved too swiftly andit was handed over to the Americanswith only part of its population

evacuated on 24th April.

At Theresienstadt, where the RedCross representative had been pro-

mised by Eichmann there would not

be a single deportation, it was learned

on 12th April that all camp records

had been destroyed. This made it

look as if a massacre was envisaged.

The camp was now sufi'ocatingly

overcrowded with evacuees from four

other camps squeezed in with its

normal population. However, by

151

Above: German red cross official identifies evidence at Katyn. Below : Eisenhower,Bradley, Patton and other US generals watch a reconstruction of concentrationcamp torture. /.eff; Women's quarters at Bergen-Belsen

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Buchenwald, seized by Patton's Third

Army, is visited by German civilians

prompt measures by the Red Crosstheir flag was flown from the campand all within were saved from theperils of execution or evacuation.

All over Germany the Red Crossdelegates- were now fighting to savewhat was left of the concentrationcamp populations. At Mauthausen,swelled like all the others by peopleevacuated from other camps, theywere successful in stopping a planto put the prisoners in an undergroundaircraft factory and blow them up.

On 8th May the camp was handed overto Patton's troops.

Even now and with the end daysaway the evacuations did not stop.

At Oranienburg the prisoners weremoved almost within sight of theRussians and with the Swedish RedCross officials powerless to help.

All they could do was follow thecolumn, bringing up food and takingthe sick back to the Allied lines. Atthe same time from Sachsenhausenand Ravensbrtick similar columns of

starving, worn out, hopeless men andwomen were being marched towardsthe last pockets of Nazi resistance.

An order had, however, been givenwhich broke established practice onthese occasions: stragglers were notto be shot. They were picked up in

Red Cross lorries.

As their saviours bent down to lift

them up, from sheer habit the prison-ers begged not be to shot.

The progress continued to the last

days of April - to the very days whenHitler was writing his will and bindinghis successors to the continuance of

the policies he had followed.

It was only a few days later that thewar in Europe ended.Hitler was dead. Dead, too,

were Heydrich and Himmler.Kaltenbrunner was soon to be broughtto trial and subsequently hanged.Eichmann had vanished. So also, for

Exodus to Israel

the time being, had Hoss. Manyothers were to be unearthed in theyears that followed ; some have neverbeen discovered.But also numbered among the dead

were . untold Ijosts of the Jews ofEurope. In 1939, according to figurescomputed by the American Jewishyearbook for 1946-47, the Jewishpopulations of Germany, its allies,

satellites and subject nations, was9,282,500. By 1946 it was 3,169,000, adrop of nearly two-thirds. The twocountries which suffered the greatestloss were, as might be expected,Austria and Germany. The German1939 Jewish population of 240,000 hadfallen to one-twentieth of thatnumber; the Austrian population of60,000 to one-twelfth. By no meansall of this can, of course, be attributedto the Final Solution. As far asGermany and Austria were concernedmuch of it is accountable to themassive exodus after the war. It is

not necessary that we should look in

detail at the figures, nation by nation,

they are, in any case, speculative,

and even the total death-roll is putvariously at six million and aboutfour and a quarter millions, with four

and a half millions now most common-ly accepted as the most accurate.

But even for those who survivedthe holocaust, unconditional sur-

render brought no solution to the vast

problems, physical and psychological,

that the Nazi regime and the Final

Solution had created.

It was to be almost two decades

before the 'Displaced Persons' campsemptied while an oblivious world,

the same oblivious world which hadallowed the Final Solution to come to

fruition, went about its business.

And it is a mere platitude to say that,

veiled behind human apathy, whathad taken place was the most frightful

crime ever committed in the bloody

history of man. Its enormity, andthe complexity which sprang fromthat enormity were such that they

defy coherent or complete telling. It

was, in every respect, the acting out

155

- > f:'^\^:.

of a psychosis on a national scale. Andit is perhaps because of this that,

highly documentated as it is - thankslargely to its perpetrators' devotionto order and procedure -it is still

surrounded by mysteries which arise

from the intrigues and the need for

secrecy among the men who, for all

the excuses of their racial theories,

knew they were committing a crime.

Already there exist libraries of booksupon it and none tells all there is to

be told; many treat only a single

facet or incident, the story of onecamp or one massacre.

It is yet another platitude to saythat for all its enormity it was utterly

and wholly useless. It gained for theNazis not the slightest advantage.

For all the fulminating about Zionistplots, the rehashed lies from 'TheProtocols of the Elders of Zion\ thesupposed financial conspiracies oi

international Jewry, in twelve yearsof persecution with millions of wordsof Jewish documents passing throughtheir hands, they extracted very little

useful propaganda material fromthem. The Jews were not the all-

powerful force of Hitler's imagina-tion ; neither in Britain nor in Americawere they able to muster the supportwhich could have saved at least alarge percentage of them, while suchevidence as the Nazis found tendedonly to show Jews as men and womenwho thought themselves no less

German than their persecutors. In

156

*^

/Jb^-^

X

the synagogues the majority prayednot for the success of apocryphalconspiracies but for their countryand its rulers, as in British synago-gues today they pray for the Queenand the nation, using the forms of

the Book of Common Prayer. Suchwas their patriotism that old establi-

shed families of German Jews refusedto leave the country and awaited'resettlement' with their bags packed,in their homes.Far from gaining by it, the Germans

contributed to their own downfallwith the Final Solution. It ultimatelyturned the world against them, of

course, but it led them to a suicidal

waste of talent, skill and labour.

There was, too, the vast misapplica-

Hungarian Jews released from campsreturn to their homeland

tion of limited technical resources,

such as the tying up of a transport

system already under pressure fromAllied air raids. Because of this,

vital supplies often failed to reach

the front. There was the blocking of

roads when thousands of prisoners

were evacuated, all at a time whenthe nation was fighting for its sur-

vival. Eichmann would laugh glee-

fully if the last train to leave a city

before its fall was one bringing con-

demned humans to the death camps.

The adherence to the schedules

of the Final Solution must have

increased communication difficulties

157

JAMAIS

'^^^

for the fighting forces far moreefifectively than any resistance move-ment could have done. And it didgreater damage than this to theGerman cause. It has been cogentlyargued that had the Germans con-ducted themselves differently duringthe Russian campaign, had Hitler

not issued his notorious orders whichmade it 'a war without chivalry',

the outcome might have been quitedifferent. The Baltic States werefretting under the Stalinist yoke.Thousands had been deported to try

to break their nationalist and in-

dependent spirit. There were othersuch groups in Russia itself, whichcould, and in some cases did, throwthemselves in on the German side,

for it is sometimes forgotten thatmodern Russia is still an empire of

independent nations gathered undera central government by despoticand brutal tsars. If Hitler wanted to

destroy Bolshevism this could well

have been his means of doing it. Hisbarbarities made it possible for Stalin

to demand of his people that theyfight a 'patriotic war'. And in this theEinsatzgruppen played no inconsider-

able role, for whatever a populationmay feel about a minority withinits borders, the sight of its destructionat the hands of an occupier, even onehe is prepared to regard as a liberator,

is not one in which the principle of

'mine enemy's enemy is my friend' is

likely to apply. Particularly when,as happened with the Einsatzgruppenso little care was taken to see theywere executing the right people.

German administrators, like WilhelmKube, were led to protest that notonly Jews, but ordinary Gentileinhabitants with no Communist con-

nexions were being plundered andshot. And even had they been morescrupulous they would have donewell to remember that such displays

of naked violence do nothing to build

confidence among the 'liberated'.

Belsen today. German youths on anouting

There is always the uncomfortablefeeling that they too may go the sameway.The Final Solution was not just one

crime of an immensity previouslyunimaginable ' and with one singlevictim multiplied infinitely. It wasthree vast crimes of which thatcommitted upon the Jews was onlythe first. The second was that whichcould bring men, otherwise no morewicked than their fellows, to soabandon the innate decencies that theycould lend themselves to it as accom-plices. It is merely futile self-decep-

tion to try to believe it was all thefault of the system. Men pre-datedthe system; but for them it couldnot have been inaugurated. If therewas a system at fault it was oneolder than the Nazis. It was theancient human system of complac-ency, apathy, moral cowardice, of

taking the line of least resistance.

The third great crime was oneperpetrated against the totality of

the human race. Before the seconddecade of this century the best thatmen could do in portraying Hell wasto be found in Dante's 'Inferno' orin the paintings of Bosch or Durer.We now have some excellent real-life

analogies: Flanders, Hiroshima andthe Final Solution. And of the threethe Final Solution is the one mostclosely corresponding to the classical

image of Hell.

Furthermore, what men had done,

what they had been once, they coulddo and be again. The first crimealways makes the subsequent onesmore probable. One has only to thinkof Europe before 1914 to see what three

decades and three visions of Hell havedone to what was once a belief in the

ultimate goodwill even of enemies.

The Final Solution has left us per-

manently suspicious and fearful, for

the racial theories which could lead

to the Jew being the chosen victim

of one persecution could lead to

another group being selected for the

next.

159

BhOographyHitlers Europe edited by Arnold and Veronica Toynbee (OUP, London)Scroll of Agony by Chaim Kaplan (Hamish Hamilton, London)Heinrich Himmler by Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel (Heinemann, London)Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny by Edward Crankshaw (Putnam, London)The Final Solution by Gerald Reitlinger (Vallentine, Mitchell, London)Anatomie des SS-Staates by Helmut Krausnick and Martin Borszat(Walter-Verlag A.G., West Germany). Published in English, in abridged form,as 'Anatomy of the SS State' by Paladin, London.Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock (Odhams, London. Harper-Row, USA)God's First Love by Friedrich Heer (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London)

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Above, on the grass, the mushroom caps of

the venlilMors were unscrewed and the

cyanide ctystals dropped down the shafts.

After a time the effects of the gas were feit

within, ahd there wouid be a rush to get out,

peopie huriing themselves at the door,

scratching at it, tearing at one another. Death

took between Ave and fifteen minutes,

depending on the weather. 0...

A*.*: •^-

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