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

the concentration’ of Jews in large cities, in many

places special Jewish quarters were designated. Closed ghettos were only

introduced gradually, however, and on the basis of local initiatives. 68 Preparations for the first large ghetto began in December 1939 in Lodz, but it was only

actually established by an order of 8 February 1940.69 In the rest of the Warthegau further ghettos were set up in the first six months of 1940, Brzeziny

in April, Kutno in June, for example. In the district of Zichenau, the annexed

area that bordered directly onto East Prussia, the first ghetto was established at

the beginning of 1940. 70

Deportations

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The establishment of ghettos in the General Government seems to have

begun in the district of Radom, where the first ghettos appeared at the end of

1939.71 The first ghetto in Pulawy in the district of Lublin was established in December 1939, and Krasnystaw followed in August 1940.72 The preparations for a ghetto in Warsaw began in February 1940, but as has already been

described, the plan was put back at the beginning of March and work begun

only in April. 73

The 60,000–80,000 Jews living in Cracow, the capital of the General Govern-

ment in whose deportation Frank was particularly interested, were given permis-

sion in spring 1940 to leave the city ‘voluntarily’ by 15 August 1940; otherwise they

would have to count on being expelled by force. 74 After this deadline those Cracow Jews who could not prove they were in work were gradually expelled; in

this manner all the Cracow Jews except some 15,000 people were driven out by

March 1941; it was only then that a walled ghetto was established for these people

in the Podgorze part of the city. 75

The occupying powers made formal provision for the establishment of Jewish

councils in November 1939, and these were made responsible for implementing

German regulations, 76 whether they applied to handing over money and goods or organizing gangs of forced labourers. The Jewish councils, which were usually set

up by the German authorities, were also responsible in particular for providing

accommodation and nourishment for the Jewish population and they organized

cultural and educational activities within the ghettos. 77 The Jewish councils had their own ‘police force’ with which to assert their authority.

The situation of the Polish Jews was characterized by the systematic under-

provision of goods necessary for survival78 and the permanent terror to which the German occupiers subjected them: mistreatment, raids, organized shootings by

the gendarmerie, the Gestapo and the SS were commonplace, but so were attacks

by members of the German civilian administration and the army. A regime of

terror was the norm in the forced labour camps and the death rates were high. 79

Anti-Jewish policies were accompanied by parallel campaigns of systematic anti-

Semitic propaganda. 80

German Judenpolitik from Spring 1940 to mid-1941:

Comprehensive Resettlement Plans

The Madagascar Plan

In the early summer of 1940 plans for a ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jewish question’ via

mass deportations were once more making headway within the National Socialist

government. Now, after the victory in the West, the French colony of Madagascar

began to look like a suitable target destination. 81

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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

The idea that it would be possible to ‘export’ large numbers of European

Jews to Madagascar of all places had enjoyed a certain resonance in the anti-

Semitic circles of various European countries since the end of the nineteenth

century. Such ‘Madagascar Projects’ were combined with various other ambi-

tions and were vigorously revived after 1937/8 not only by leading National

Socialist functionaries, 82 but by politicians of other countries, too, and by the speculations of the international press. 83 On the German side these utopian, impracticable notions were to some extent turned into concrete plans in early

summer 1940.

An important stimulus evidently derived from Himmler, who presented a

memorandum to Hitler on 25 May 1940 in which he set out his intention of

‘seeing the concept “Jew” . . . completely extinguished by the possibility of a huge

emigration of all the Jews to Africa or one of the colonies’. 84 Interestingly, in this memorandum the Reichsführer SS had mentioned a radical alternative to his

resettlement plans, namely the ‘Bolshevist method of the physical extermination

of a people’, but for reasons of personal conviction he had rejected this as

‘un-Germanic and impossible’.

After Hitler had approved the basic principle underlying this memoran-

dum, 85 the idea of a ‘colonial’ solution was taken up by the Foreign Ministry, too. On 3 June Franz Rademacher, who had just been named Director of

the new ‘Department of Jewish Affairs’, presented a memorandum to the

Director of the Department for German Affairs, Hans Luther, in which he

asked for ‘a fundamental definition of German war aims in the matter of

the Jewish question by the Reich Foreign Minister’. Rademacher saw three

possibilities:

(a) ‘all Jews out of Europe’;

(b) a ‘separation of Eastern and Western Jews’, the Eastern Jews, who

were considered to be ‘the future Jewish intelligentsia, potent and well

grounded in the Talmud’, would remain ‘in German hands (Lublin?)

as a bargaining counter (Faustpfand)’ in order to ‘paralyse the

American Jews’, whilst the Western Jews would be deported ‘out of

Europe’, possibly to Madagascar;

(c) a ‘Jewish national homeland in Palestine’ (where Rademacher

immediately committed his doubts to paper with the note ‘danger of a

second Rome!’). 86

Within a short time Rademacher was given the task of writing a first draft of a

comprehensive deportation plan, 87 and began his work at a point where the Madagascar Project enjoyed a high level of support among the National Socialist

leadership: Hitler and Ribbentrop explained the plan to Mussolini and Ciano on

17 and 18 June; 88 Hitler mentioned it on 20 June to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Erich Raeder; 89 at the beginning of July Frank informed his colleagues of Deportations

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the Madagascar Plan; 90 at the beginning of August Hitler mentioned the plan to drive all the Jews out of Europe to the German ambassador in Paris, Otto

Abetz;91and in mid-August he spoke of it to Goebbels. 92 Even representatives of the Jewish communities were semi-officially informed about the Madagascar Plan,

including those from the Reich Association, who were told at the end of July 1940,

and the Chair of the Warsaw Jewish Council, Adam Czerniakow, who learned of it

on 1 July. 93

By 24 June Heydrich had