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

police attaché in Zagreb was commissioned by the

RSHA to prepare the ‘resettlement’ of the Croatian Jews to the ‘German Eastern

territories’. At this point over half of the more than 30,000 Jews living in the

country had been interned in camps by the Ustasha regime. 286

The Croatian government formed after the occupation of the country, which

was based on the Fascist Ustasha movement, had already passed its first anti-

Jewish law on 30 April 1941 according to which the approximately 30,000 Jews in

the country were defined on the model of the Nuremberg Laws. A wave of anti-

Jewish legislation followed on the German model: ‘mixed marriages’ were

forbidden, the Jews were to be labelled, their property confiscated. This policy

must be seen in the context of the policy of the Ustasha regime to create a

homogeneous Croatian nation and systematically exclude Serbs (who consti-

tuted 30 per cent of the population), Jews, and Gypsies from citizens’ rights.

This mass murder of the Jews must in turn be seen in the context of the mass

murders of Serbs and Gypsies. A few weeks after the foundation of the Ustasha

state, the displacement of Serbs resident in Croatia to German-occupied Serbia

began, while the Ustasha were already organizing various massacres. After Hitler

had encouraged the new Croatian head of state, Ante Pavelic, in his policy of

‘ethnic corridor cleansing’ on his visit to Berlin, 287 and in a German-Croatian treaty an exchange of 170,000 Slovenians from Serbia had been agreed against the

corresponding number of Serbs from Croatia, a massive wave of displacement and

flight began, in the course of which possibly as many as 200,000 Serbs reached

Croatia. Around 200,000 Serbs were forced to convert to Catholicism. In addition

to this, however, Ustasha units began large-scale massacres of Serbs and interned

Serbs in concentration camps built on the German model, in which a large

number were murdered. Most of the prisoners were interned in the notorious

camp complex at Jasenovac. The number of victims in this camp alone is

estimated as 60,000–80,000; we may assume a total number of far more than

200,000 victims. 288

In parallel with the anti-Serbian policy, the persecution of the 30,000 to 40,000

Jews in Croatia also escalated. From May 1941 onwards more than half of the

Jewish population was interned in such camps; the majority of the Jewish

prisoners lost their lives in these camps. A large number of the Jewish prisoners

were executed immediately after entering the camp; the survivors were exposed to

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

constant ‘murder actions’ by the guards or lost their lives because of the terrible

conditions or as the result of epidemics. 289

On 31 July 1942 all Croatian Jews were summoned for registration. In those

parts of Croatia occupied by German troops (there was also an Italian zone of

occupation) further Jews were arrested in addition to the large number already

interned. On 13 August the first deportation train left Zagreb for Auschwitz

containing 1,200 Croatian Jews. 290 Seven railway transports to Auschwitz had already been specified for the month of August; 291 in fact four trains can be shown to have arrived in Auschwitz that month. 292 Thus, in the summer of 1942, 4,927

Jews were deported from Croatia and murdered in Auschwitz almost without

exception. 293

In July 1942, German efforts to extend the deportations were also directed

towards Romania. Romania had taken an active part in the German extermination

policy towards the Jews in the newly conquered Eastern territories. In the newly

conquered territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina an estimated 50,000 people lost

their lives in massacres; the surviving Jewish population of that territory, around

150,000 Jews, had been deported to the area between Dnjestr and Bug, where at

least 65,000 more people perished through hunger, epidemics, and shootings; in

the Ukraine Romanian forces had also taken an active part in the German

extermination policy, particularly in the massacre in Odessa. 294

The approximately 320,000 Jews living in Romania itself had been subject to

constantly tightened anti-Semitic special legislation since 1938. From early 1942

onwards they were registered by a newly created compulsory body, the Centrala

Evreilor din Romania. 295 The deportation of 60,000 Jewish men to Bessarabia in August 1941 as forced labourers had only failed because of a German intervention

that sought at all costs to prevent further mass deportations to German-occupied

Ukraine while the war was going on. 296

In July 1942 the adviser on ‘Jewish questions’ at the German embassy in

Bucharest, Gustav Richter, and the deputy Prime Minister, Mihai Antonescu,

agreed to the deportation of the Romanian Jews authorized by Marshal Anto-

nescu, which was to begin around 10 September 1942. The transports were to go to

the district of Lublin where, as the German plenipotentiary Manfred Killinger

reported to the Foreign Ministry ‘the part that was fit for work will be deployed

in a work programme, and the rest subjected to special treatment’. 297 The immediately imminent deportations were already being publicly announced. 298

However, the fact that this agreement was reached behind the back of the

Foreign Ministry greatly annoyed Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. He demanded

that the director of the German department, Martin Luther, explain his previous

measures in the area of Judenpolitik299 and, on 25 August, issued a directive that the measures agreed with the Romanians were to be continued, but that no

further initiatives were to be developed with regard to Hungary, Bulgaria, and the

Italian-occupied zone of Croatia. 300

Extermination on a European Scale, 1942

367

In issuing this directive Ribbentrop, concerned about his authority, found

himself in complete agreement with the RSHA. For it too did not consider that,

in summer 1942, the preconditions yet existed for deportations from Hungary,

Bulgaria, and the Italian-occupied zone of Croatia.

Thus, on 21 August, Luther had already recorded in a note that the Hungarian

government had not yet been approached because ‘the Hungarian legislation

concerning the Jews does not yet promise sufficient success’. 301 In fact the people of Jewish descent living in Hungary (including the annexed former Czechoslovak,

Romanian, and Yugoslavian territories), over 800,000 in number, were at this

point subject to anti-Semitic laws that corresponded more or less to the Nuremberg

Laws. 302 In August 1941, admittedly, 16,000–18,000 ‘foreign’ Jews (Jews who had lost their Hungarian citizenship because of the anti-Semitic legislation) had been

deported to the newly occupied Eastern territories, the great majority of them

being killed in the massacre of Kamenetsk-Podolsk.