Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews by Peter Longerich (booksvooks TXT) 📕

idea of work deployment was very much a central pillar of Judenpolitik in

eastern Upper Silesia at this time. In October 1940 Albrecht Schmelt, the Police

President of Breslau (also president of the district (Regierungspräsident) since May

1941) had received a special commission from Himmler to organize the work

deployment of the ‘ethnic aliens’ (meaning Jews) in eastern Upper Silesia. A

priority of this was work on the Silesian section of the Berlin–Cracow autobahn

as well as deployment in the munitions industry and in Wehrmacht manufactur-

ing plants. In autumn 1941 Schmelt had 17,000 Jewish forced labourers under him,

most of them in camps. 96

The priority given to work deployment had an ambivalent effect on Judenpolitik

in eastern Upper Silesia: the aim of intensively exploiting the prisoners did initially

protect those Jews who were ‘fit for work’—but only until their remaining energy

had been exhausted by disastrous accommodation, undernourishment, overexer-

tion, and so on. The fact that only Jews who were ‘fit for work’ were needed gave

those responsible a ‘rational’ reason for the removal of those who were not. From

mid-November 1941 the Schmelt Organization proceeded to separate out those

prisoners in the camps who could not be used for work, sporadically at first but

then systematically, to transport them to Auschwitz, and have them killed there in

Krematorium I. So these murders began in that crucial part of the history of the

camp, when mass murders with Zyklon B were beginning there. 97 The ‘work deployment’ of the Jews thus created the reason for the selection of those ‘fit for

work’ and those ‘unfit for work’, and that distinction was an important step in the

transition to the policy of systematic extermination. At the same time, however, it

is completely unclear whether the murder of prisoners who were no longer fit for

work derived from an initiative from the Schmelt Organization, whether those

responsible were acting on instructions from above, or whether those at the centre

of the decision-making process and those at the periphery encouraged one another.

At any rate, the exploitation of the Jewish workforce was not the opposite pole of

extermination policy, but an integral component of it.

The General Government: Escalation of the Murders

in Galicia and Preparation of ‘Aktion Reinhard’ in

the District of Lublin

From the spring of 1941 the government of the General Government had

worked on the basis that the Jews living there would be expelled to the

Autumn 1941: Deportation and Mass Murders

293

conquered Soviet territories. On 13 October, in a personal conversation, Frank

once again suggested to Rosenberg that the ‘Jewish population of the General

Government be [deported] to the occupied Eastern territories’. Rosenberg

replied that at that time there was no possibility ‘for the implementation of

resettlement plans of this kind’. However Rosenberg did declare himself willing

in future ‘to encourage Jewish emigration to the East, particularly since the

intention existed to send asocial elements within the Reich to the thinly

inhabited Eastern regions’. 98 From that point onwards the government of the General Government began to think about a ‘final solution’ of the ‘Jewish

question’ in their own territory.

One important factor in the general radicalization of Judenpolitik in the Gen-

eral Government was a series of sessions of the region’s administration which

Frank held in the district capitals after his return from the Reich (14–16 October in

Warsaw, 17 October in Globocnik’s district of Lublin, 18 October in Radom,

20 October in Cracow and in Lvov (Lemberg) for the first time on 21 October).

The session in Lublin on 17 October discussed the ‘third decree’ on residence

restrictions in the General Government, which was issued a few days later and

introduced the death penalty for those who left the ghetto. 99 This effectively launched a manhunt for those Jews living outside the ghetto. The impending

‘evacuation’ of the Jews from the city of Lublin was also discussed; initially ‘1,000

Jews [were to be] moved across the Bug’. 100 On 20 October, at the government meeting in Cracow, Governor Wächter indicated ‘that an ultimately radical

solution to the Jewish Question was unavoidable, and that no allowances of any

kind—such as special exemptions for craftsmen—could be made’. 101 At the meeting on 12 October in Lvov, Eberhard Westerkamp, the Head of the Department for

the Interior of the General Government, announced that ‘the isolation of the Jews

from the rest of the population’ should be enforced as soon and as thoroughly as

possible. On the other hand, however, Westerkamp pointed out that ‘a govern-

ment order has prohibited the establishment of new ghettos, since there was hope

that the Jews would be deported from the General Government in the near future’,

even though a few days previously Rosenberg had declared that ‘hope’ to be an

illusion. 102

The attitude prevailing amongst the German ruling class in occupied Poland

may be fairly represented by statements made by the head of the office of health of

the government of the General Government, Jost Walbaum, at a doctors’ confer-

ence held between 13 and 16 October: ‘There are only two ways: we condemn the

Jews in the ghetto to death by starvation or we shoot them. ’103

While the treatment of the ‘Jewish question’ at these meetings suggests that the

government of the General Government pursued a uniform anti-Jewish policy

throughout the whole of the territory under its control, two districts played a

pioneering part in the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ in the General

Government.

294

Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941

An important factor in the preparations for the ‘Final Solution’ in the General

Government was the incorporation of Galicia, a territory where large-scale

executions had already been carried out and continued to take place, into the

General Government on 1 August 1941. Until September, the Special Purpose

Einsatzkommando operating in this territory was exclusively directed against a

vaguely defined Jewish upper class. This unit was to form the office of the

Commander of the Security Police in the district of Galicia, after its incorporation

into the General Government on 1 August 1941. 104 From early October, however, the Security Police in Galicia began murdering members of the Jewish population

indiscriminately. In Nadworna on 6 October, for example, 2,000 women, men,

and children were murdered by members of the Stanislau branch of the Security

Police. 105 According to the head of the Security Police in Stanislau, Krüger, this

‘action’ had been previously planned down to the smallest details at a meeting

with