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

presentation by the Propaganda department of Goebbels’s ministry dated 17 August 1941, which—clearly in connection with Hitler’s speech the same day—

lists the arguments for a marking of the Jews (MA 423, in H. G. Adler, Der Verwaltete

Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974), 50–1).

42. On the history of this: on 21 April Goebbels had commissioned his Secretary of State, Leopold Gutterer, to prepare for the marking of the Berlin Jews: Kriegspropaganda

(Boelcke) and Akten der Parteikanzlei, 2 parts, ed. Helmuth Heiber et al. (Munich 1983

and 1991), Mikrofiches, vol. 4, 76074, memo Tießler, 21 Apr. 1941. It was subsequently

established in the Propaganda Ministry that a proposal for cross-Reich identification of

the Jews had already been proposed by Himmler or Heydrich (IfZ, MA 423, Taubert to

Tießler 22 Apr. 1941 and memo of Tießler, 25 Apr. 1941). Goering had received such a

proposal from the Führer’s Deputy (StdF) and the SD the previous year, when

Heydrich had first suggested the marking of Jews after Kristallnacht (ibid., 76069,

from BAB, NS 18alt/842, memo from Reischauer to Tießler, 24 May 1941.

43. On 14 August the State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, Wilhelm Stuckart, in a memo to Lammers, had supported Karl Hermann Frank’s suggestion that marking

should be introduced in the Protectorate (ND NG 1111). Heydrich too had asked

Bormann—after consulting Goering—in a memo of 17 August 1941 to urge Hitler to

agree to the marking of the Jews, as the draft from the Propaganda Department for

Goebbels of 17 August 1941 makes plain (IfZ, MA 423). With his initiative Goebbels thus

came just ahead of other offices.

44. See p. 266 on the propaganda campaign.

45. In Walter Strauß, ed., ‘Bernhard Lösener, “Als Rassenreferent im Reichsministerium

des Innern” ’, VfZ 9 (1961), 262–313, 302 ff.

46. Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher, Teil II, vol. ii, 19 Aug. 1941, p. 265. Goebbels had already recorded his intention to mark the Jews in his diary entry for 12 Aug. 1941, p. 218.

47. Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl) 1941, I, p. 547; See express letter from the Reich Interior

Ministry, 15 Sept. 1941, with guidelines for the implementation of the police regulation

of 1 Sept. 1941. See Paul Sauer, ed., Dokumente über die Verfolgung der Judischen Bürger

in Baden-Württemberg durch das nationalsozialistische Regime, vol. ii (Stuttgart, 1966),

207 ff. Cf. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 47 ff.

48. RGBl, 1941, I, p. 675.

49. RGBl 1941, I, pp. 681–2.

50. See Longerich, Vernichtung, 446.

51. Decree, 4 November 1941; see Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-

Staat. Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien—Inhalt und

Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1981), iv. 261.

52. RGBl, 1941, I, pp. 722 ff.

53. Order from the Reich Minister of the Interior of 3 December, ND NO 5336, in Adler,

Verwaltete Mensch, 503–4, and commentary, ibid. 491 ff.

534

Notes to pages 285–286

54. BAB, NS 19/1438.

55. CDJC, XXVb-7.

56. Cf. in general Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 29 ff.

57. PAA, Pol Abt. III 245; See Christopher Browning, The Final Solution and the German

Foreign Office (New York, 1978), 66.

58. Cf. PAA Inland II g 174: Luther’s request via the German embassies in the three

countries, 10 November. Agreement from the Romanian, Croatian, and Slovakian

governments was conveyed by telegram from the German embassy heads in Bucharest,

Agram, and Pressburg on 13 November 1941, 20 November 1941, and 4 December 1941;

Luther informed Eichmann about the result of his efforts on 10 January 1942. Cf.

Browning, Final Solution, 67–8.

59. Heydrich to Himmler, 19 October, Eichmann Trial, Doc. 1544. The best overview

of the first two deportation waves is now contained in the book by Alfred

Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle, Die ‘Judendeportationen’ aus dem Deutschen Reich,

1941–1945. Eine kommentierte Chronologie (Wiesbaden, 2005). Less recent litera-

ture includes, alongside the groundbreaking work by H. G. Adler, Verwaltete

Mensch, the essays by Ino Arndt and Heinz Boberach on the German Reich,

Ino Arndt on Luxembourg, Jonny Moser on Austria, and Eva Schmidt-Hartmann

on Czechoslovakia, all in the collected volume Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des

Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991).

On the deportation of the Burgenland Gypsies, see Michael Zimmermann, Rasse-

nutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsoialsozialistische Lösung der ‘Zigeuerfrage’

(Hamburg, 1996), 223 ff.

60. On the deportations to Riga, see Wolfgang Scheffler, ‘Das Schicksal der in die

baltischen Staaten deportierten deutschen, österreichischen und tschechoslowakischen

Juden 1941–1945’, in Wolfgang Scheffler and Diana Schulle, eds, Buch der Erinnerung.

Die ins Baltikum deportierten deutschen, österreichischen und tschechoslowakischen

Juden, vol. i (Munich, 2003), 1–43; Gottwaldt and Schulle, ‘Judendeportationen’, 110 ff.

A total of 19,283 people were deported to Riga in twenty transports between 27

November 1941 and 6 February 1942.

61. The transports originally meant for Riga had been diverted to Kovno. Without excep-

tion, the 5,006 people deported there in those five trains between 17 and 25 November

1941 were shot, as were the inmates of the first Riga transport: Wolfgang Scheffler,

‘Massenmord in Kowno’, in Scheffler and Schulle, eds, Buch der Erinnerung, i. 83–7;

Gottwaldt and Schulle, ‘Judendeportationen’, 98 ff.

62. On the seven deportations to Minsk that took place between 11 November and 5

December 1941, see Gottwaldt and Schulle, ‘Judendeportationen’, 84 ff.

63. IfZ, Fb 95, 27, note from Gotenhafen, 24 Oct. 1941, summary of a discussion with

Eichmann.

64. Fröhlich, Die Tagebücher, Teil II, vol. ii, 18 November 1941, p. 309.

65. Browning, Origins, 378. At the time Eichmann’s office was still called the ‘Special

Department for Jewish matters and Evacuation Affairs’.

66. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 354 ff. Adler still provides the most detailed overview of the deportations.

67. Details ibid. passim.

Notes to pages 287–288

535

68. This collaboration is described in Raul Hilberg, Sonderzüge nach Auschwitz

(Mainz, 1981).

69. Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 450 ff.

70. Ibid. 499 ff.

71. Ibid. 380 ff.

72. That the deportations occurred openly in many places and were observed by the

population is documented in many local studies; see e.g. Michael Zimmermann, ‘Die

Deportation der Juden aus Essen und dem Regierungsbezirk Düsseldorf’, in Ulrich

Borsdorf und Mathilde Jamin, eds, Über Leben im Krieg. Kriegserfahrungen in einer

Industrieregion, 1939–1945 (Reinbek b. Hamburg, 1989), 126–42, on the deportation of

the Jews of Essen, as well as Zimmermann, ‘Die Gestapo und die regionale Organisation

der Judendeportation. Das Beispiel der Stapo-Leitstelle Düsseldorf’, in Gerhard Paul

und Klaus-Michael Mallmann, eds, Die Gestapo. Mythos und Realität (Darmstadt,

1995), 357–72; Frank Bajohr, ‘ “damit bitte keine Gefühlsduseleien”. Die Hamburger

und die Deportationen’, in Die Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte und das Institut für

die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, eds,