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

and Antwerp. On 20 September 1943 the first transport train carrying

only Belgian Jews left the country. 81 In 1943 a total of six deportations occurred, involving almost 6,000 people. In 1944 there were four further transports with

over 2,300 people. 82 All trains went to Auschwitz.

However, these deportations did not go completely smoothly. One of the trains,

the twentieth RSHA transport from Belgium, was the target of a unique rescue

action. On 19 April 1943, the day the ghetto uprising in Warsaw began, three

members of the Belgian resistance stopped the train and freed seventeen prisoners

from a wagon. More than 200 other deportees managed to jump off the train as it

continued on its journey, and found refuge with Belgian citizens. 83

The number of Jews deported from Belgium and murdered is estimated at

around 28,500, which is to say that about 32 per cent of the pre-war Jewish

population had been killed. 84 Around 1,000 of these were Belgian nationals. 85

In spite of this shockingly high death toll, the Jews in Belgium had better

chances of survival than those in the neighbouring Netherlands, where about

102,000, or 73 per cent of the entire Jewish population of around 140,000 people

were murdered. In Belgium as many as 25,000 Jews, or almost 50 per cent of the

Jews resident in Belgium, managed to survive in the underground. There are a

variety of reasons for their superior chances of survival. On the one hand, in

Belgium the SS played a relatively small part in the military administration; the

military was primarily concerned with the security situation, and set in motion the

anti-Jewish measures preceding the deportations at a relatively slow pace.

In Belgium—unlike the Netherlands—the government apparatus was not actively

involved in the persecution of the Jews, and the subordinate administrative

organizations carried out the German instructions relatively carelessly. Not least

for that reason, it proved impossible to construct a system of arrest and deport-

ation in Belgium similar to that in the Netherlands. Instead, attempts were made

to arrest the Jews in raids, a process that prompted panic and encouraged flight

into illegality. One final significant factor in the survival of the Jews was that, by

virtue of the fact that the large majority of them were not integrated into Belgian

society, they had maintained a healthy suspicion of the adminsitrative measures

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preceding the deportations. Last of all, the Jews in Belgium benefited from the fact

that there was a stronger national resistance movement than there was in the

Netherlands, and that there were more specifically Jewish resistance organizations

working closely with the general resistance movement. 86

Croatia

The deportations also continued in the zone of Croatia occupied by the Wehr-

macht: in May 1943, some 2,000 people were deported to Auschwitz in two further

transports. 87 If the deportations of August 1943 are included, more than 7,000 Jews were deported from the German-occupied zone of Croatia to Auschwitz.

In the spring of 1944 Himmler ordered Hans Helm, the police attaché in

Belgrade, to ‘sort out the Jewish question in Croatia as quickly as possible’.

Himmler’s order documents the determination on the part of the Germans to

track down small groups of Jews, even in the most remote corner of their

occupied territory and in what was a very critical phase of the war, and murder

them. However, Helm had to report that a few hundred Jews still lived in

Croatia, but they were claimed for urgent work by the Ustasha state, or shielded

against persecution by Ustasha functionaries. 88 Thousands of Jews had escaped to the Italian-occupied zone, and most of them were able to escape the German

occupation there even after the collapse of Italy—we will explore this in greater

detail below. 89 Many Croatian Jews had also escaped the German occupation zone to join Tito’s Partisans. Overall, however, only around 7,000 of the

originally 30,000–40,000-strong Jewish minority were to survive the Holocaust

in Croatia. 90

Intensified Efforts to Deport Jews from Third-Party

States within the German Sphere of Influence in 1943

In 1943 the Foreign Ministry continued its efforts to include in the deportations

the Jews from occupied, allied but also neutral states, who lived outside their

native lands, but within the German sphere of influence. While the Swiss had

agreed early in 1943 to the German proposal that Jews of Swiss citizenship be

requested to return to Switzerland, 91 on 22 January the Foreign Ministry also turned to the governments of Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden,

and requested them to fetch their Jewish nationals back from occupied Western

Europe by the end of March. 92 The deportation of those 2,400 Turkish Jews who had not been expressly protected by the government in Ankara, for which

reminders had been issued since early 1943 by the Security Police, was postponed

several times by the Foreign Ministry until September 1943, when the Turkish

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

government finally declared itself willing to request these people to return to

Turkey. 93

With its decree of 24 February 1943 the Foreign Ministry established that Jews

from a total of fifteen countries as well as stateless Jews were ‘to be included in any

measures generally made against Jews in that sphere or in such measures yet to be

made’. This included Jews from Poland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia,

Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Estonia, Latvia,

Lithuania, and Norway. Jews of Italian, Finnish, Swiss, Spanish, Portuguese,

Danish, and Swedish citizenship were to be ‘given the opportunity to “return”

to their so-called “home-lands” ’ by 31 March 1943, while Jews from other states

were to be left unharmed. 94 These deadlines, however, were postponed in varying degrees. Thus the deadline set for the Italians, 31 March 1943, was extended several

times, and the date fixed for Hungary during 1942 (31 December 1942) was also

extended several times.

In July 1943 the RSHA turned to the Foreign Ministry with the request that a

total of ten states ‘be given a definitive final date of 31 July, and thus declare their

agreement that after that deadline the general anti-Jewish measures be also

applied to all foreign Jews remaining within the German sphere of influence,

with the exception of Jews from hostile states and Argentina’. 95 After the Foreign Ministry had declared its agreement and informed the states in question, 96 on 23

September 1943—after Italy seceded from the Axis alliance—the RSHA instructed

the offices of