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

the Security Police and the Higher SS and Police Commanders to

deport Jews from Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Finland,

Hungary, Romania, and Turkey—divided by sex—to Buchenwald and Ravens-

brück concentration camps. 97

The German Policy of Extending the Deportations after

the Allied Landing in North Africa (Late 1942

until Summer 1943)

Even after the turn of the war in winter 1942/3, the RSHA tried to extend

deportations to a series of other countries or regions: Greece, Bulgaria, and the

Italian-occupied zones in Greece, Yugoslavia, and the southern zone of France

(where deportations had occurred temporarily in the summer of 1942). In these

areas the ‘Jewish question’ was plainly to be radically solved early in 1943.

With the ceasefire between Italy and the Allies in September 1943, new

conditions were to be set once again for Judenpolitik within the block under

German rule.

The direct consequence of the geographical extension of the war after the

Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria in October 1942 was that a further

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

391

large Jewish group was exposed to German attack: the Jews of French North

Africa, who had already been included among the victims of the coming

‘Final Solution’ envisaged at the Wannsee Conference. 98 With the occupation of Tunisia in November 1942 some 85,000 Jews came under German control.

The German occupiers introduced forced labour for Jews; some 5,000 Jews

were affected by these measures, but most of them managed to escape the

camps set up for this purpose. The German occupying forces had also sent

around twenty arrested Jewish activists to the extermination camps. In add-

ition, there were large-scale confiscations of Jewish property, and large sums

of money were extorted.

In the spring of 1943, the concrete deportation preparations under discussion

reveal that in Fortress Europe the RSHA was clearly planning a radical ‘solution’

of the ‘Jewish question’ in Greece, Bulgaria, and France.

Greece

After all efforts to reach a common approach towards the ‘Jewish question’ with

the Italian occupying forces had collapsed the previous year, towards the end of

1942/beginning of 1943 the Foreign Ministry and the RSHA resolved to act

independently in the German-occupied zone. 99

On 7 January Luther informed the ambassador in Athens, Günther

Altenburg, that the Foreign Ministry was interested in the quickest possible

introduction of anti-Jewish measures in Greece. 100 At the beginning of February 1943 Alois Brunner of the RSHA’s Jewish desk joined Dieter

Wisliceny (who had been temporarily removed from his post as Jewish

adviser in Pressburg (Bratislava)) at the head of a Sonderkommando sent to

Thessaloniki to prepare the deportation. Already in February, the marking

and ghettoizing of the Jews of Thessaloniki had been introduced together with

further restrictions.

Between mid-March and mid-May 1943, the Jews of Thessaloniki and the

surrounding Macedonian communities were deported, in some sixteen transports,

and two more followed in mid-August. Almost all of these 45,000 people were

murdered in Auschwitz. In August a small transport of a total of 441 Jews went to

the ‘exchange camp’ of Bergen-Belsen: these were either Jews with Spanish

citizenship, high-ranking representatives of the Jewish community of Thessalo-

niki, or collaborators who had assisted the SD. 101 When the Germans once again requested an extension of the deportations to the Italian-occupied zone, the

Foreign Ministry in Rome suggested in March that the Italian Jews in Greece be

excluded from the persecutory measures, and the Greek Jews be interned.

But both the Jewish desk of the Foreign Ministry and Eichmann, the individual

within the RSHA responsible for the deportations, considered these suggestions

inadequate. 102

392

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

Bulgaria

Shortly before Brunner and Wisliceny arrived in Greece, in January 1943 Theodor

Dannecker had taken up his role as ‘Jewish adviser’ at the German embassy in

Sofia. 103 On 22 February 1943, the Bulgarian Commissar for the Jews and Dannecker had reached an agreement for the deportation of 20,000 Jews by May

1943. 104 Those affected were all the Jews from the Bulgarian-occupied zones of Thrace (Greece) and Macedonia (Yugoslavia), as well as around 6,000–8,000 Jews

from Old Bulgaria. In fact, in March 1943, the Jews living in Thrace—over 4,000—

and those living in Macedonia—over 7,000—were arrested by the Bulgarians and

deported to the General Government, where most of them were murdered in

Treblinka. 105

However, the preparatory measures for the deportation of the Jews of Old

Bulgaria, for which work had begun in March, had to be interrupted and post-

poned because of massive protests, especially by a group of deputies around the

parliamentary vice president, Dimiter Peshev. 106 In April 1943, Tsar Boris stressed to Ribbentrop that only ‘Communist elements’ among the Jews of Old Bulgaria

should be deported. In contrast, the German Foreign Minister insisted on a radical

solution. 107

In May 1943 the Jews of Sofia were resettled, amidst high levels of protest in the

capital, to surrounding provincial towns. 108 But the Bulgarians were not ready for the next step, expected by the Germans, the deportation of the Jews to Poland. 109

France

After the occupation of southern France by German and Italian troops on

11 November 1942, the Jews in this area were also exposed to direct German

action. 110 The Vichy government had already agreed to the deportation of foreign and stateless Jews in the summer of 1942, but had interrupted this in September

1942 in the face of strong public protest. 111

In January and February 1943, at the instigation of the German Security Police

in Paris, predominantly foreign and stateless Jews, but also those of French

citizenship living in Marseilles (where the old harbour district was completely

destroyed) and in other places across France were arrested and placed in the

camps of Drancy and Compiègne along with the Jews already interned there. 112

On 9 February the deportations resumed: by early March four transports had gone

from Drancy collection camp to Auschwitz, and four more to Sobibor. 113

On 10 or 11 February 1943 in Paris, Eichmann presented a maximum pro-

gramme for the deportation of all Jews living in France, including French nation-

als. This plainly coincided with the concrete preparations for deportation in

Greece and Bulgaria.

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393

But the commander of the Security Police in France, Helmut Knochen, resisted

Eichmann’s suggestion in a letter to Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, on

12 February 1943: if ‘large-scale measures were to be taken against all Jews

with French citizenship at this time’ they could ‘expect political setbacks’. In

France an imminent Allied victory was generally expected, and they