Extermination and Labour
Not content
with misunderstanding the origins of Aktion Reinhard, Mattogno also fails to
grasp the intentions and motivations of the civil administration and SS in the
Generalgouvernement. Literally almost every statement that indicates the
emergence of a genocidal mentality in occupied Poland, and every statement that
confirms that genocide was in fact resolved upon and carried out, is omitted
from the ‘trilogy’. Instead of confronting and properly dealing with this
evidence, Mattogno opts to substitute a strawman version of Nazi policy, an
all-or-nothing caricature whereby either the Nazis implemented virtually instantaneous
100% extermination, or they did not do this at all. Yet this strawman is flatly
contradicted by the extant paper trail, which makes it perfectly clear, as we
have seen above, that the Nazis carried out their extermination policy in
tandem with a policy of selecting and sparing an ever decreasing minority of
Jews for use as forced labourers.[197]
Ignorant as he is of recent historiography, Mattogno does not seem to realise
that there were three distinct phases to Aktion Reinhard: a first phase from March
to June 1942 in which the system was tested in the Lublin and Galicia districts
while preparations were undertaken in other districts; a second phase of
accelerated deportation and mass murder from late June to December 1942 in
which every district was targeted, and a third phase from January 1943 onwards,
where the surviving Jews, now reduced down to around 20% of their number at the
start of 1942, were decimated piecemeal, as ghettos were reduced in districts
which had fallen behind others were eliminated (e.g. in the Galicia and
Bialystok districts), and other ghettos were converted to labour and
concentration camps. The evolution from phase to phase, moreover, was
influenced by two key variables – food and labour. Priorities demonstrably
shifted over the course of 1942, decisively shaping the course of Aktion
Reinhard.
From his constant repetition of the
strawman of 100% extermination, it appears that Mattogno believes there is
somehow a major contradiction between Nazi pronouncements wishing for the total
extermination of the Jews and statements which indicate that some Jews were to
be kept alive for work. Yet this contradiction exists only in his head. Had
Mattogno examined the paper trail more thoroughly, he would have noted many
statements from 1939 to 1941 wishing for the death of the Jews in Poland or
contemplating their extermination. It is quite apparent that many Nazis in
occupied Poland wanted the Jews to die long before mass extermination
began. Others recoiled from this step for primarily practical reasons. Until
early 1942, it was clear that the civil administration in particular could not
quite imagine how the Jews would die; since starvation in ghettos and
decimatory mass shootings did not seem enough to cope with the sheer number of
Jews in the Generalgouvernement. Other Nazis, meanwhile, insisted that it was
necessary to preserve at least some Jews for labour purposes, since Nazi policy
had drained the Generalgouvernement of many Poles who had been deported to
Germany as forced labourers. The “contradictions” are thus evidence of a
compromise between two competing positions. They also reflect the fact that the
underlying desire was total extermination – but this still does not preclude
the preservation of a minority for labour purposes. Nor do many statements even
refer to ‘total extermination’. The retrospective statements that recur in 1943
regarding ‘the destruction of the Jews’ refer to the fact that the Nazis had
indeed killed close to 1.5 million Jews in the preceding year in this region.
Evidently historical usage of extermination was no different to how
extermination is used by everyone other than Mattogno and some of his acolytes:
if 80 or 90% of a population is killed, that is extermination, bust.
If Mattogno has evident cognitive
problems coping with the meaning of ‘extermination’, then it is also clear that
he simply does not grasp that Nazi intentions towards Polish Jews were
genocidal from the outset. As it is a virtual certainty that Mattogno has never
looked at the UN Convention on Genocide or comprehended its definition of this
crime, it might be an idea for him to look it up now before we go any further.[198]
Thus, whereas Mattogno seems to
think that the ‘Lublin reservation’ plan was a comparatively benign measure[199], if
one examines the actual rhetoric used by Nazi leaders when contemplating this
plan – drawn up already in 1939 – then we find copious evidence of the
emergence of genocidal intent and a genocidal mentality. In keeping with the
strategy of the SS, in particular the SD, towards Jewish policy developed
during the pre-war years[200], from
the outset of the Nazi occupation of Poland, Heydrich foresaw a more systematic
solution to the ‘Jewish Question’ than could be offered by random violence and
pogroms. On September 14, 1939, he told his department heads that Himmler would
be presenting Hitler “with suggestions that only the Führer can decide upon
since they had important foreign policy ramifications.”[201] On
September 20, Hitler informed the commander in chief of the Army, Walter
Brauchitsch, that “the general idea of ghettos exists, though the details were
not yet cleared up. Consideration of economic interests from the beginning.”[202] The
following day, Heydrich convened another meeting of department heads, also
attended by the desk referent for the Jewish question, Adolf Eichmann, and
presented the first outline of a plan: “Jews into the cities as quickly as
possible, Jews out of the Reich into Poland, the rest of the 30,000 Gypsies
also into Poland, systematic expulsion of the Jews from German areas in goods
trains.” Polish Jews would be expelled from territories to be annexed into
Germany into the “foreign-speaking Gau”, in other words the future
Generalgouvernement, or across the Nazi-Soviet demarcation line.[203] An
express letter went out to the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, informing them
of the outlines of Nazi Judenpolitik in occupied Poland, and emphasised the
difference between “the final goal (which will take a long time)” and “the
stages by which this final goal will be reached (which can be undertaken in
shorter periods of time.” The Endziel was to be kept “strictly secret.”[204] The
next day, Heydrich informed Brauchitsch, that a “Jewish state under German
administration near Krakow” was envisaged inside Poland.[205] By
September 29, Heydrich was speaking derisively of a “nature reserve” or “Reich
ghetto” located “beyond Warsaw around Lublin.”[206] On the
same day, Nazi Party theoretician Alfred Rosenberg discussed with Hitler both
the location “between Vistula and Bug” as well as its future inhabitants: “the
entirety of Jewry (also from the Reich), as well as all otherwise undesirable
elements.”[207]
The ‘ethnic cleansing’ (völkische
Flurbereinigung) of Poland would thus be carried out through a domino
effect of expelling Jews as well as Poles from the annexed territories and the
Reich into rump Poland, and within rump Poland into the ‘Lublin reservation’.
To oversee the entire process, on October 7, Himmler was appointed Reich
Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom (Reichskommissar für die
Festigung deustchen Volkstums, RKFDV)[208], a
task he divided between several SS main offices.[209] On
October 30, Himmler issued his first proper ordinance as RKF, demanding that
“all Jews” and various categories of Poles were to be resettled out of the
annexed territories.[210] The
expulsions from the incorporated territories began not long afterwards,
exacerbating an existing west-east flight of Polish Jews.[211]
Declarations by Nazi leaders and
planners concerning the ‘Lublin reservation’ make it clear that this
resettlement scheme was conceived virtually from the outset in a genocidal
mindset. To outside observers, fully familiar with the much discussed idea, the
conclusion was that the ‘reservation’ plan would lead to a massive loss of
life:
In well-informed quarters in this country the German Government’s apparent intention to form a Jewish State in Poland is regarded as a remarkable example of political cynicism... Herr Hitler now proposes to concentrate the 3,000,000 Jews of Poland in a State which is to be cut out of the body of Poland and will have Lublin for its centre.... To thrust 3,000,000 Jews, relatively few of whom are agriculturalists, into the Lublin region and to force them to settle there would doom them to famine. That, perhaps, is the intention.[212]
This deduction can be fully
confirmed from contemporary documents. Some Nazis, such as Joseph Goebbels,
were already coming to the conclusion that “this Jewry must be destroyed” after
seeing scenes filmed inside Polish ghettos.[213] After
visiting Lodz, Goebbels wrote in his diary that “these are no longer people,
these are animals. That is therefore also no humanitarian but a surgical task.
One must make cuts here, and indeed radical ones. Otherwise Europe will go to
ground from the Jewish sickness.”[214] Arthur
Seyss-Inquart, the deputy governor of the Generalgouvernement, expected that
the Lublin reservation would lead to a “strong decimation of the Jews.”[215] The
Generalgouverneur himself, Hans Frank, stated shortly afterwards that “the more
die, the better.”[216]
A planning expert from the German
Foreign Institute in Stuttgart, Könekamp, stated after an inspection tour of
the GG at the end of November and start of December 1939 that “the destruction
of this sub-humanity would be in the interests of the entire world. This
extermination is however one of the most difficult problems. One cannot see it
through with shootings. One cannot also shoot women and children. One reckons
here and there also with losses from evacuation transports.”[217]
Albrecht Haushofer, working in the Foreign Office publicity department, noted
in December 1939 of a lunchtime encounter “with the man whose systematic task
it will be to leave a substantial number of the Jews who are to be freighted
out into the Lublin ghetto to freeze to death and starve there.”[218]
Himmler declared that “it is high time that this scum is concentrated into
ghettos and then diseases are brought in to leave them to croak.”[219]
Himmler’s appointed representative in Lublin, the SS- and Police Leader (SS-
und Polizeiführer, SSPF) Odilo Globocnik, foresaw instead famine as the weapon
of mass destruction: “the evacuated Jews
and Poles... should feed themselves and obtain support from their people
because those Jews have plenty. If this should not succeed, they should be left
to starve.”[220]
Similar sentiments were also heard from Hans Frank, discussing the food
situation with the state secretary of the Agriculture Ministry, Herbert Backe,
in April 1940: “I’m not remotely
interested in the Jews. Whether they have something to eat or not is the last
thing on earth I care about.”[221]
The Lublin reservation plan,
however, ended up as a miserable failure. Although clung to into the spring of
1940, causing a delay to proposals to establish a ghetto in Warsaw[222], the
sheer disruption caused by ‘wild’ deportations was immense. Moreover, the intention to deport Jews from
the Reich to the Lublin ‘reservation’ was an even more drastic failure. The
so-called ‘Nisko plan’, organised and supervised by Adolf Eichmann, never
succeeded in bringing more than a few thousand Austrian and Czech Jews to
Lublin. After some of the deportees had been expelled across the Nazi-Soviet
demarcation line and many hundreds had died of malnutrition and disease, the
few remaining survivors were uniquely allowed to return home in early 1940.[223]
Nor was the ‘Lublin reservation’
plan the last time that the Nazis found themselves contemplating genocide and
extermination in the early years of the occupation. Over the course of 1940-41,
Nazi policies of expropriation, racist food rationing, forced labour,
maltreatment, and local expulsions battered the Jewish community in the
Generalgouvernement continuously and began to decimate it. Nowhere was this
process more visible than in the Warsaw ghetto. After food supplies were suspended
in early 1941, the GG administration commissioned a report on the economic
future of the ghetto, which was drafted by Dr. Rudolf Gater, the head of the
Reich Board for Economic Efficiency, at the behest of Dr. Walter Emmerich, the
head of the economics department of the GG administration.[224]
Recognising clearly that the ghetto consumed more than it produced, Gater
spelled out the choices: to subsidize the ghetto, to harness the Jews to
productive labour, to loosen restrictions on movement and allow the Jews to
resume normal commercial contacts, or to accept the consequences of sealing off
the ghetto and undersupplying it. The ghetto could either be “a means... to
liquidate the Jews” or a source of labour.
The crisis of the Warsaw ghetto
revealed a conflict between ‘attritionists’ and ‘productionists’ inside the
German administration.[225] The
men directly assigned to supervise the Warsaw ghetto, Waldemar Schön and Adam
Palfinger, belonged to the first camp, blithely insisting that further wealth
could be drained out of the ghetto by suspending food supplies and forcing the
Jews to turn to the black market. The district governor, Ludwig Fischer, took a
rosy line that virtually ignored reality, declaring that there were 40,000 Jews
employed inside or outside the ghetto, and that epidemics had been cut in half.[226] In
April 1941, the factions clashed at a meeting chaired by Hans Frank. Rather
than 40,000 ghetto inhabitants in employment, the real number was just 19,000,
of whom 12,000 worked in labour camps outside the ghetto and 7,000 in workshops
inside it, versus a total of 185,000 men and women deemed fit for work (arbeitsfähig).[227] After
much mutual recrimination, the argument went against the ‘attritionists’. For
Frank, maintaining the productivity of the ghetto was the “lesser evil”,
especially since he had been told in March 1941 that the Generalgouvernement
would be the first territory to be freed of Jews.[228] Schön
and Palfinger were transferred and replaced by Max Bischof as head of the
Transferstelle and Heinz Auerswald as commissar of the Jewish district, who
immediately began to institute somewhat more rational economic policies towards
the ghetto, as the head of the Jewish Council, Adam Czerniaków, quickly noted.[229] This
“turnabout” was, however, entirely relative. Although the “cultural scandal” of
bodies littering the streets noted by the Wehrmacht commandant of Warsaw was
tidied up[230],
the spectacle of emaciated corpses was really only shoved under the carpet, not
done away with: mortality remained high through the remainder of 1941, and a
total of 43,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto during that year.
By the autumn of 1941, despite high
hopes, as no sign emerged of the promised removal of the Jews[231], and
as sanitary conditions in the ghettos worsened, leading officials in the GG
returned to the old theme of destroying them. At a conference in Warsaw from
October 14-16, 1941, the governor of the Warsaw district, Ludwig Fischer,
demanded that the ghetto be sealed completely to prevent the spread of typhus
and declared that “this war is about a confrontation with Jewry in its
totality... I believe that threat is answered when we annihilate the breeding
ground of Jewry, from which the entire World Jewry renews itself.”[232] At
another conference, this time of health officials, held at the spa resort town
of Bad Krynica, a medical expert opined that the control of typhus was
impossible when “without doubt the Jewish population simply broke out of the
ghettos in which there was nothing to eat”, recommending that there be an increased
food supply for the ghettos to solve the problem. Dr. Jost Walbaum, head of the
public health department of the GG administration, replied:
You are completely right. Naturally it would be the best and simplest to give the people sufficient provisioning possibilities, but that cannot be done. That is connected to the food situation and the war situation in general. Thus shooting will be employed when one comes across a Jew outside the ghetto without permission. One must, I can say it quite openly in this circle, be clear about it. There are only two ways. We sentence the Jews in the ghetto to death by hunger or we shoot them. Even if the end result is the same, the latter is more intimidating. We cannot do otherwise, even if we want to. We have one and only one responsibility, that the German people are not infected and endangered by these parasites. For that any means must be right.
According to the extant protocol of
the meeting, Walbaum’s words provoked “applause, clapping”.[233]
It is important to note that these
blood-curdling musings took place against the backdrop of a new harvest year
and the results of negotiations with Göring’s Four Year Plan over agricultural
requisitioning and rationing. In the 1940/41 harvest year, the GG had not been
called upon to supply food to the Reich, but this was about to change. A
high-level conference between Göring and Backe on September 15, 1941 had
resolved that the newly conquered occupied Soviet territories would be
ruthlessly exploited for foodstuffs, even if this came at the expense of the
Soviet civilian population or Soviet prisoners of war.[234] A
follow-up conference the next day involving the Wehrmacht reiterated Göring’s
and Backe’s demands.[235]
Immediately after the second meeting, Göring send a telegram to the GG in
Cracow concerning the need to export food supplies to Poland. This was done
after Backe had reported that Frank had refused to cooperate with the Agriculture Ministry. Frank’s
response was to insist that he had done “the most humanly possible” and that
surpluses for export were simply not available.[236]
The food situation in occupied Poland, both
in the Government-General and in the ‘incorporated territories’, had long been regarded as
catastrophic.[237] In rejecting
the demands for exports to Germany made by Göring and Backe, Frank emphasised the fact that his regime was already supplying the
majority of the food needed to provision the Wehrmacht garrison of some 400,000
soldiers. Negotiations to agree upon the requisitions needed for the third war
year had in fact just taken place in the week before Göring’s telegram of
September 16.[238] A
series of meetings on September 11, 12, 15 and 16 ensued, which revealed that
in order to meet the full demands of the Wehrmacht, rations for the civilian
population would have to be cut, even though cases of typhus and tuberculosis had risen by 120% in the preceding year because of
malnourishment. The civilian potato ration would be reduced from 150 kg/year to
100 kg/year, the meat ration from 100g/week to 75g/week. Rations for the
projected 400,000 Soviet POWs who were to be accommodated in the Stalags of the
Government-General would simply be cut in half, reducing the potato ration for
prisoners of war from 9 kg/week to 4.5 kg/week. These cuts were made without
reference to any overt decision from the Four Year Plan, Agriculture Ministry,
OKW or the Replacement Army of OKH.[239] According
to the postwar memoirs of Eberhard Westerkamp, the chief of internal
administration in the GG, the representatives of OKW spelled out “their
calculations according to an ice-cold rationale.”[240]
The consequences of the decisions taken in September 1941 for the fate of
Soviet POWs in the camps of the GG were drastic. Between June 1941 and April
15, 1942, a total of 292,560 prisoners of war died. Of the 44,000 prisoners
remaining , only 3,596 were fit enough to be employed as labourers.[241]
The decision to starve Soviet POWs to death
– for that is what was involved in the September negotiations – represented the
crossing of yet another moral and psychological threshold for the GG
administration, but it was the cuts in civilian rations and general decline in
the overall food situation that undoubtedly prompted Hans Frank to accede to
the wishes of subordinates such as Fischer and Walbaum by decreeing on October
15, 1941 that Jews caught leaving their assigned residences (ghettos or urban
quarters) would be shot, as would anyone found assisting them, after a trial by
the Special Courts (Sondergerichte).[242]
This decree eventually modulated into a standard shoot-to-kill order (Schiessbefehl)
which provided a hunting license for the SS and Police to capture and kill any
Jews fleeing deportations in 1942. The rigorous enforcement of the Schiessbefehl, however, took time to be
instituted properly[243];
it was not until 1942 that significant numbers of Polish Jews began to be
captured and killed under the auspices of this order.[244]
Increasingly trapped in the ghettos and Jewish quarters by the threat of
summary execution if caught outside these spaces, the Jews of the GG were also
hit hard by the decreased availability of food supplies that followed on from
the September 1941 requisitioning demands, and by the outbreaks of numerous
epidemics.[245]
October 1941 also saw a last bid by Hans
Frank to remove the Jews of the GG by expulsion. On October 13, Frank met
Alfred Rosenberg, and asked about the “possibility of deporting the Jewish population
of the Generalgouvernement into the occupied eastern territories.” The Eastern
Ministry was unable to help, as Rosenberg could see “no possibility for the
carrying out of such resettlement plans.” But Rosenberg promised to let Frank
know if things changed.[246]
Just over a week later, on October 21, Hans Frank along with his interior
administration chief Eberhard Westerkamp visited Lwow, and repeated the
prohibition against ghetto building decreed in July, “because the hope exists,
that in the near future, the Jews can be deported out of the GG.”[247]
This was the last time that such a hope was ever expressed in the records of
the Generalgouvernement administration. Plans were taking shape in Berlin as a
result of the escalation to mass murder in the occupied Soviet Union for a more
general solution.[248]
When the HSSPF Ost, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, met with Himmler on November 28,
1941, to complain about Hans Frank’s desire to control Jewish policy perfectly,
this prompted Reinhard Heydrich to extend an invitation to Frank’s state
secretary Josef Bühler to attend a conference scheduled for December 9, 1941 at
Wannsee in Berlin.[249]
The postponement of the conference to January 20, 1942, meant that in the
meantime, Frank was present to hear Hitler make his announcement to the Reichs-
and Gauleiter on December 12, 1941 that the Jews would be exterminated.
Concerning the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they were once again to cause a world war, the result would be their own destruction. That was no figure of speech. The world war is here, the destruction of the Jews must be the inevitable consequence. This question is to be viewed without sentimentality. It is our duty to have sympathy not for the Jews but only for our own German people. If the German people have now again sacrificed 160,000 dead on the eastern front, then the authors of this bloody conflict must pay for it with their lives.[250]
Frank was in Berlin from December 10 to 13
and may also have met with Hitler privately. It is certain that he correctly
understood the message conveyed by Hitler’s speech to the Reichs- and Gauleiter
on December 12, as on his return to Cracow, he addressed a gathering of
department heads and district governors on December 16, 1941 with the following
words:
We must put an end to the Jews, that I want to say quite openly. The Führer once spoke these words: if united Jewry should once more succeed in unleashing a world war, then the peoples who have been incited to this war will not be its only victims, because the Jew in Europe will also have found his end... Before I continue to speak I would ask you to agree with me on the following principle: we want to have compassion only for the German people, otherwise for no one in the whole world. Others have had no compassion for us. As an old National Socialist, I must also say: if the Jewish tribe were to survive the war in Europe, while we had sacrificed our best blood for Europe’s preservation, then this war would be only a partial success. Thus vis-a-vis the Jews I will in principle proceed only on the assumption that they will disappear. They must go. I have entered into negotiations for the purpose of deporting them to the east. In January a large meeting will take place in Berlin on this topic, to which I will send State Secretary Dr. Bühler. This meeting will be convened in the RSHA by SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich. In any case a large migration of Jews will be set in motion.But what is to happen to the Jews? Do you believe that they will be lodged in settlements in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: why all this trouble, we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat [Ukraine] either, liquidate them yourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you, arm yourselves against any thoughts of compassion. We must destroy the Jews, wherever we encounter them and wherever it is possible, in order to preserve the entire structure of the Reich.... One cannot apply previous conceptions to such a gigantic, unique event. In any case we must find a way to achieve our goal... The Jews represent for us also extraordinarily malignant gluttons. We have an estimated 2.5 million Jews in the GG, perhaps with the half-Jews and all that that entails some 3.5 million. We cannot shoot these 3.5 million, we cannot poison them, but nonetheless we will take some kind of action that will lead to a successful destruction, and indeed in conjunction with the important measures to be discussed in the Reich. The GG must become just as free of the Jews as the Reich.[251]
Frank’s words were very clearly understood
by those present as signalling that the Jews of the Generalgouvernement would
now be exterminated. Indeed, the penny dropped with a loud clang for Eberhard
Westerkamp, Frank’s chief of interior administration, who took the opportunity
to request a transfer out of Poland to serve in the Army. Before he left,
however, Westerkamp had a meeting with the HSSPF, Krüger, in which Westerkamp
complained that “certain methods and outgrowths in the treatment of the Jewish
problem” caused him “headaches”. Krüger responded by trying to convince
Westerkamp of the necessity of the measures. Krüger later wrote to State
Secretary Stuckart of the Interior Ministry declaring that both the HSSPF as
well as Heydrich retained a good opinion of Westerkamp, despite the
obvious reasons for his request for
transfer to the Army.[252]
With good reason, Frank’s speech of
December 16, 1941 is considered prima facie evidence of the emergence of a
policy of extermination. However it is spun, the text of the speech cannot be
read as indicating anything else than the enunciation of a firm commitment to
do away with the Jews of the GG. The speech represented the moment when the global,
geopolitical justifications for genocide articulated by Hitler – the escalation
to a world war after Nazi Germany’s declaration of war on the US, the heavy
losses on the Eastern front – converged with the regional pressures and
dynamics which were leading the GG administration to the conclusion that
genocide was necessary to solve their local problems. The ‘why’ was
utterly clear: ideological ‘rationales’, the impossibility of deporting the
Jews to the occupied eastern territories, and the prospect of solving the food
situation by eliminating “extraordinarily malignant gluttons.” The only
uncertainties in Frank’s words relate to the ‘how’. Although he had absorbed
the implications of Hitler’s announcement of December 12, 1941 and conveyed the
full meaning of this signal from above to his subordinates, it is clear from
Frank’s words that he could not as yet imagine how they would
exterminate the Jews – ‘we cannot shoot them, we cannot poison them.’[253]
Although Mattogno is perfectly
aware of this source, he manages to omit it from all three volumes of the
‘trilogy’, even though it is routinely quoted in comparable mainstream works on
the Reinhard camps.[254] His
frantic handwave in an older brochure that “Hans Frank did nothing but emulate
Hitler’s ‘annihilation’ rhetoric with the same meaning”[255] is not
only contradicted by the actual texts – Frank made little reference to the role
of ‘world Jewry’ in bringing about a world war, but instead emphasised that
Jews were “extraordinarily dangerous gluttons” – but is also refuted by the
reactions of contemporaries who, unlike Mattogno, were actually there and heard
the speech, who clearly understood its meaning. Henceforth, the GG
administration would work towards the goal of killing the Jews.
Mattogno has more to say about the
Wannsee protocol, but as we saw in Chapter 2, his misunderstandings are
copious. His main gambit to try and handwave Wannsee’s significance for the GG
has already been dealt with: Belzec was a pilot camp to test the feasibility of
the methods, and was joined within four months of its opening by two other camps.
At Wannsee, Frank’s state secretary Josef Bühler declared that the Final
Solution could start in the GG
since on the one hand transportation does not play such a large role here nor would problems of labor supply hamper this action. Jews must be removed from the territory of the General Government as quickly as possible, since it is especially here that the Jew as an epidemic carrier represents an extreme danger and on the other hand he is causing permanent chaos in the economic structure of the country through continued black market dealings. Moreover, of the approximately 2 1/2 million Jews concerned, the majority is unfit for work.[256]
Reiterating
the arguments advanced by Frank on 16 December 1941, Bühler’s words are in fact
incompatible with the well known phraseology of ‘the Jews are to be utilised
for work in the East’, since his demand was for the ‘removal’ of the unfit
Jews. Eichmann’s sanitisation of the protocol was far from perfect; and thus
this document can no more be spun for Revisionist ‘resettlement’ fantasies than
any other source they try and mutilate.
That is an assessment which also
applies to another source that Mattogno manages to bollix up repeatedly. On
March 16, Fritz Reuter, an official in the BuF department of the Lublin
district administration, held a meeting with SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann Höfle,
regarding the deportations now beginning in the district, including both the
arrival of transports from the Reich and Slovakia as well as the deportations
of Polish Jews. According to his memorandum for Dr. Richard Türk, head of the
BuF desk, the following concerns were raised:
It would be appropriate if the transport of Jews that arrive in the Lublin district were split in the departure stations into those who are able to work and those who are not. If this division is impossible in the departure stations, eventually it should be considered to divide the transports in Lublin, according to the aforementioned point of view.All the Jews incapable of work would arrive in Belzec, the final border station in the Zamosc county.Hauptsturmführer Höfle is preparing the erection of a big camp, where the Jews capable of work will be held and divided according to their professions and from where they will be requested.Piaski will be cleared of Polish Jews and will become a concentration point for Jews arriving from the Reich.
In the meantime Trawniki will not be populated by JewsThe Hauptsturmführer asks whether along the train line Deblin-Trawniki 60,000 Jews can be disembarked. After having been informed about the transports of Jews dispatched by us, Höfle announced that out of the 500 Jews who arrived from Suziec, those unable to work can be sorted out and sent to Belzec. According to a telex of 4 March 1942, a Jewish transport from the Protectorate with destination Trawniki is being run. These Jews have not been disembarked at Trawniki, but have been taken to Izbica....In conclusion, he announced that every day he can receive four to five transports with 1,000 Jews each for the destination of Belzec station. These Jews would cross the border and never return to the Generalgouvernement.[257]
Mattogno’s ever shifting comments
on this document are a source of considerable amusement. In Treblinka
and Bełżec, he misreads the document and asserts that “Belzec was
supposed to become a camp in which Jews were ‘registered in a file system
according to their occupation’. This does not conform in the least to a ‘pure
extermination camp’.”[258] Yet it
is quite clear from the fact that Höfle was supposedly “preparing the erection
of a big camp” that he was not referring to Belzec at all, but rather to
Majdanek. Höfle wanted to select the foreign Jews upon arrival in Lublin, and
would intern the able-bodied foreign Jews in “a large camp”, namely Majdanek.
This was the genesis of the idea and practice of selection, first pioneered on
the ‘ramp’ at Lublin, not Auschwitz, and applied to incoming transports
from the Reich and Slovakia in the ensuing months.
When called on this nonsensical
misreading of the document by Roberto Muehlenkamp, Mattogno did little more
than repeat the claim and retreat behind a cloud of octopus-ink obfuscation
about ‘total extermination’[259], which
can be ignored for the reasons previously given – not only was Belzec a test
bed camp in March 1942[260], but
there is no incompatibility between exterminating one group of Jews and
preserving another group for labour. Reuter’s file note makes this especially
clear. By the time of Sobibor, however, it seems that Mattogno had silently
dropped his claim that Höfle was discussing Belzec, and now claims that “the
task of the labour camp for able bodied Jews was probably the supply of
manpower for the Durchgangsstrasse IV (transit road IV) in nearby Galicia.”[261] This
assertion makes even less sense, since it ignores the fact that Höfle had
nothing to do with the DG IV construction project, whereas the correct answer –
Majdanek – is staring at Mattogno right under his freaking nose. Selection on
the Lublin ‘ramp’ was applied to transports arriving from Germany, Austria and
the Protectorate from late April onwards, as well as to at least six of 24
transports arriving from Slovakia.[262] One of
the first to be so treated left Theresienstadt with 1,000 passengers on April
23, arriving in Piaski on April 25, minus 400 men adjudged to be arbeitsfähig
– fit for work – who had been pulled out of the train at Lublin.[263] Radio
signals from KL Lublin to Berlin intercepted by Bletchley Park indicate that on
April 30, there were 6,369 Jews interned in Majdanek, while two months later,
on June 30, there were 9,779.[264]
Nonetheless, as projected in Reuter’s protocol of his meeting with Höfle, the
majority of new arrivals went to the so-called ‘transit ghettos’, from where
they were deported onwards to the Reinhard camps over the course of the spring,
summer and autumn of 1942, with few surviving the ordeal.[265] For
example, another Theresienstadt transport, departing on May 9, arrived in
Siedliszcze, Chelm county on May 11/12. En route, 200-220 were pulled off the
train at Lublin and sent to Majdanek. The remaining deportees were left alone
for just one week before half the transport was caught up in a deportation to
Sobibor on May 18. The survivors followed on October 22, with a tiny number
selected for the forced labour camp (Zwangsarbeitslager, ZAL) at Osowa.[266]
Mattogno further compounds his
errors over the Reuter file note by confusing himself over Höfle’s prior
tasking to the Strongpoints project.[267] But as
we have seen above, the involvement of SSPF Lublin in the SS and Police
Strongpoints in the occupied eastern territories was ended at the start of
March 1942, several weeks before this important meeting. And needless to say,
Mattogno’s interpretation still manages to ignore multiple sources which make
it perfectly clear what was intended. Jews not fit for work would be taken to
Belzec. That they would be killed there follows from (1) the simultaneous
deportations from Lwow and the Galicia district and the documented Nazi lie
that the Jews of Lwow were being taken to the Lublin district[268], (2)
the Polish underground report of April 1942 specifying that no Jews ever left
Belzec[269], (3) a
follow up note of the BuF desk on the deportations as well as (4) the well
known diary entry of Joseph Goebbels of March 27, 1942.
The follow-up note, dated March 20,
1942 and compiled by the head of the BuF desk, Dr. Richard Türk, records a
conversation between Höfle and two county captains, Weienmeyer of Zamosc and
Dr. Schmidt of Krasnystaw, on the deportations:
Kreishauptmann Weienmeyer has as yet been able to learn nothing about final outcome of the deportation; all that is known is the existence of a collection camp some distance from the Belzec train station on the district border that is entirely closed off and the arrival of a SS-commando of some 60 men.[270]
From this note it is clear that
Höfle was being less than forthcoming about the exact fate of the deportees
once they reached Belzec. This was spelled out more clearly a week later in
Goebbels’ diary:
Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.
The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention. A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophesy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question. Here, too, the Führer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.
The ghettoes that will be emptied in the cities of the General Government now will be refilled with Jews thrown out of the Reich. This process is to be repeated from time to time. There is nothing funny in it for the Jews, and the fact that Jewry's representatives in England and America are today organizing and sponsoring the war against Germany must be paid for dearly by its representatives in Europe - and that's only right.[271]
In previous exchanges, Mattogno has
tried to claim that ‘liquidate’ here only means ‘resettle’, a gambit whose
desperation is so transparent it could be photographed and placed next to the
thesaurus definition of ‘child caught with his hand in the cookie jar’.[272]
As is so often the case, Mattogno’s
exotic hermeneutics of the Reuter file note and Goebbels diary from March 1942
founder on his predilection for ignoring other sources and misunderstanding the
actual context in which documents were produced. But the hole he has dug for
himself only deepens when we consider a range of sources which record an
escalation of Nazi extermination policy in the summer of 1942. The background
to this acceleration has been well portrayed by Christian Gerlach in an
important essay on the significance of food policy for the extermination of the
Jews in Poland and Ukraine during 1942.[273]
Meanwhile, Christopher Browning re-examined the other side to the same coin in
the light of Gerlach’s findings, in an essay outlining the development of Nazi
Jewish forced labour policy in the Generalgouvernement.[274] Both
authors refer back to a core chain of documents which have been repeatedly
examined by several generations of historians starting with Raul Hilberg and
Hanns von Krannhals in the early 1960s and continuing through the work of
Ulrich Herbert and Bogdan Musial through to the current younger generation of
researchers.[275]
Some of the documents have not only been cited a dozen times or more in the
literature, but even appear in some of Mattogno’s acknowledged sources, such as
the Faschismus-Getto-Massenmord
collection. Yet all are ignored.
The second phase of Aktion Reinhard
took place against the backdrop of a major internal debate with the occupation
authorities, between the SS, civil administration and Wehrmacht, regarding the conflicting
priorities of food and labour. The GG was put under pressure by both the
agricultural and armaments ministries at this time, so that the debate often
extended beyond the confines of the Generalgouvernement itself. The State
Secretary for Agriculture, Herbert Backe, who had not only Göring’s but
Hitler’s ear, declared in June 1942 that “in the GG there are still 3.5 million
Jews. Poland should already be sanitised this year.” [276]
The problem
that such a remark poses for Mattogno’s “resettlement thesis” lies in the fact
that Backe was intensely concerned with the exploitation of agriculture in the
occupied Soviet territories, and had been one of the architects of the ‘Hunger
Plan’ as well as one of the Nazi civil servants most implacably opposed to feeding
Soviet POWs in 1941.[277]
Despite the mass starvation of more than 2 million POWs in the winter of
1941-2, rations for labouring prisoners of war in the Reich were only
grudgingly raised, and the scales fixed for the newly arriving Ostarbeiter
deported from the occupied Soviet Union were also miserly.[278]
Both German civilian and military rations were cut in May 1942. “Before we starve,” Goebbels had noted in May after a meeting with
Backe and Himmler, “a series of other peoples will be first, and indeed those
whose governments forced us into this war.” This principle was rigorously
applied. “If there must be hunger, then first the foreigners will starve,” an
army official noted Göring saying on August 6.[279]
Göring’s pronouncement was made at
two major meetings involving representatives from all of the occupied
territories as well as the Gauleiter in the Reich.[280] The
immediate outcome was the raising of agricultural requisitioning quotas
everywhere in Eastern Europe, including the Generalgouvernement. The Nazis were
quite clear that they could not raise rations for the labouring population in
the occupied Soviet territories.[281]
Extreme difficulties also accompanied the feeding of the armaments workforce in
the Generalgouvernement.[282] Thus
when Göring’s quotas arrived in August 1942, they led the civil administration
of the Generalgouvernement to decide to exclude all but labouring Jews from the
meagre ration scales. As Hans Frank declared on August 24:[283]
The feeding of a Jewish population component, estimated heretofore at 1.6 million, drops off to an estimated total of 300,000 Jews, who still work for German interests as craftsmen or otherwise. For these the Jewish rations, including certain special allotments which have proved necessary for the maintenance of working capacity, will be retained. The other Jews, a total of 1.2 million, will no longer be provided with foodstuffs.
Confirmation of this decision can
be found in the revealing reports of a representative of the Party Chancellery
attached to a manpower comb-out commission that was touring the
Generalgouvernement at this time. “It is planned from 1 January to give the
Jews no more food at all and to reduce the rations for Poles considerably, and
no longer to allot any increases for armaments workers.”[284] In the
1942/3 harvest year, the GG delivered its largest ever quotas of agricultural
requisitions:[285]
Grain
|
Potatoes
|
Meat
|
|
Deliveries
to Reich
|
600,000
tons
|
280,000
tons
|
35,000
tons
|
Deliveries
to Wehrmacht
|
150,000
tons
|
244,000
tons
|
26,460
tons
|
Priority
Workers
|
200,000
tons
|
813,000
tons
|
30,000
tons
|
Rest of
Population
|
230,000
tons
|
246,000
tons
|
none
|
In the wake of the deportation and
mass murder of the Jews, the food situation continued to be so poor that the
Nazi authorities contemplated excluding hundreds of thousands of Poles from the
ration lists, a plan which was only abandoned because of the realisation that
the numerically dominant Polish civilian population would probably revolt if it
were enforced.[286]
Let us be quite clear on the
implications of these documents. They utterly refute the ‘Revisionist’
contention that Nazi policy intended only to ‘resettle’ Jews to the occupied
Soviet territories by making it perfectly obvious that any such ‘resettlement’
deportations would have resulted in fifty Belsens, as the mass starvation of
Soviet POWs in the winter of 1941-2 was repeated. The declaration that
non-working Jews would no longer be fed spelled out a death sentence for over
1.2 million Jews come what may. That Mattogno and his cohorts have hitherto
utterly ignored these sources goes without saying; the only question is whether
they possess even a residual amount of honesty and can acknowledge that
genocide was the inevitable outcome of Nazi Jewish policy in Poland. For it
makes absolutely no difference morally or historically whether Polish Jews died
in gas chambers or because of deliberate starvation. Therefore, the Revisionist
“resettlement thesis”, as we will explain further in Chapter 4, drives the
Holocaust deniers into a cul-de-sac from which there is no logical escape.
At the same time as the food
situation made itself felt on Nazi Jewish policy, the Generalgouvernement was
placed under pressure from the Armaments Ministry to increase munitions
production. From July 1942 onwards, the ‘armaments border’ for investment of
capital and plant was extended to include the GG.[287] The
planning calculations of both the Wehrmacht’s Armaments Inspectorate under
Lieutenant-General Maximilian Schindler as well as the civil administration had
since the spring of 1942 rested on the assumption that Jews fit for work would
be retained and not deported. In May 1942, the military authorities had even
hoped to replace Polish and Ukrainian workers deported to Germany with Jewish
workers.[288]
The drive to deport the Jews which began in its full fury during July 1942 with
the Warsaw ghetto action and the subsequent actions in the provincial districts
threatened to upset the calculations of the military planners. In the course of
negotiations between the Wehrmacht and SS, the military was told in mid-August
that:[289]
No commitment can be given to leave the Jews working for the Wehrmacht until the end of the war. According to the opinion of the Reichsmarschall, the idea that the Jews are irreplaceable should be got away from. Neither the Armaments Inspectorate nor the other departments will keep their Jews until the end of the war. The orders are clear and hard. They were valid not only for the Generalgouvernement, but for all occupied territories.
The clash of interests between the
Wehrmacht and the SS had already led to open conflicts between Army officers
and representatives of SSPF Krakau, as occurred when Captain Battel barred the
way to an SS detachment seeking to begin deportations from the ghetto in
Przemysl in July 1942.[290]
Continued protests saw the Wehrmacht commander in the Generalgouvernement,
General von Gienanth, forcibly retired at the start of October 1942.[291]
Immediately afterwards, OKW issued an order regarding the ‘replacement of
Jewish labour by Aryan labour in the Generalgouvernement and occupied eastern
territories’, in other words applying not only to the GG but also to the
occupied Soviet Union. In this directive, the Wehrmacht was informed that
henceforth, labouring Jews could only be tolerated in camps under the control
of the SS, “yet, there, too, one day the Jews are to disappear in accordance
with the Führer’s wish.”[292] In a
parallel directive to Globocnik, Krüger and Oswald Pohl, Himmler used identical
language. To give the German version: “auch dort sollen eines Tages dem Wunsche
des Führers entsprechend die Juden verschwinden.”[293]
It is thus instructive that the
director of agriculture for the Generalgouvernement, Neumann, protocolled a
meeting with SS-Brigadeführer Katzmann, SSPF Galizien, in early August 1942
which demonstrated how the Nazi authorities intended to balance the competing
demands of food and labour requirements. According to Neumann, “within half a
year there would be no more free Jews in the Generalgouvernement. The people
will be partly out-settled (ausgesiedelt), partly brought to camps. The
few Jews living in the countryside would be killed (umgebracht) by
detachments. The Jews concentrated in the towns would be partly liquidated,
partly out-settled and partly in labour camps.”[294] The
fiction of ‘resettlement’ is already exposed by the fact that Jews in rural
areas were to be “killed” and that part of the urban Jewish population was to
be “liquidated”. Pace Mattogno, this document cannot be used as proof of his
‘resettlement’ thesis.[295] The
selection process was even more clearly spelled out by none other than Adolf
Eichmann during the abortive planning of the deportation of Romanian Jews to
the Lublin district. “It is planned to bring the Jews from Romania, beginning
around September 10 1942, in ongoing transports to the Lublin district, where
the able-bodied part will be set to work, and the rest subjected to special
treatment (Sonderbehandlung).”[296]
Having demonstrated that the paper
trail for both food and labour policy contains unmistakeably genocidal
utterances, it remains only to present documents which confirm this and link
the motivations to the methods. One such document, a letter from Victor Brack,
head of T4, to Heinrich Himmler on 23 June 1942, has long been regarded as a
smoking gun proving both intentions and methods.[297] Until Sobibór,
Mattogno had more or less shied away from confronting this particular hot
potato; it almost goes without saying that his acknowledgement in his latest
work on the Reinhard camps is half-hearted, with the letter selectively cited.
Rather than offer his disciples a badly needed explanation of the whole of the
document, Mattogno chooses to cite only the first two lines.[298]
On instruction from Reichsleiter Bouhler I placed a part of my men at the disposal of Brigadeführer Globocnik some considerable time ago for his special task. Following a further request from him, I have now made available more personnel. On this occasion Brigadeführer Globocnik pressed the view that the whole action against the Jews should be carried out as quickly as it is in any way possible, so that we will not some day be stuck in the middle should any kind of difficulty make it necessary to stop the action. you yourself, Herr Reichsführer, expressed the view to me at an earlier time that one must work as fast as possible, if only for reasons of concealment. Both views are more than justified according to my own experience, and basically they produce the same results. Nevertheless I beg to be permitted to present the following consideration of my own in this connection:According to my impression there are at least 2-3 million men and women well fit for work among the approx. 10 million European Jews. In consideration of the exceptional difficulties posed for us by the question of labor, I am of the opinion that these 2-3 million should in any case be taken out and kept alive. Of course this can only be done if they are in the same time rendered incapable of reproduction. I reported to you about a year ago that persons under my instruction have completed the necessary experiments for this purpose. I wish to bring up these facts again. The type of sterilization which is normally carried out on persons with genetic disease is out of the question in this case, as it takes too much time and is expensive. Castration by means of X-rays, however, is not only relatively cheap, but can be carried out on many thousands in a very short time. I believe that it has become unimportant at the present time whether those affected will then in the course of a few weeks or months realize by the effects that they are castrated.
As with so many other sources, the
document cannot be read as indicating anything other than a plan of mass
murder, a plan which Brack was vainly hoping he could modify by recommending
the sterilisation of 2-3 million Jews who were to be kept alive as labourers.
That Brack also refers to the urgency of a rapid implementation “if only for
reasons of concealment” is also highly revealing of the motivations behind the
acceleration of extermination in the early summer of 1942. The fact that Brack
had placed men from T4 “at the disposal” of Globocnik for “his special task”
which was “the whole action against the Jews” cannot be read, as Mattogno would
have us believe, as indicating that the ‘resettlement’ deportations would be
accompanied by a handful of mercy killings.[299] Not
when the document you so shamelessly selectively cited refers unmistakeably to
the planned deaths of up to 10 million Jews.
We anticipate that now that
Mattogno has been caught out yet again, he will invent a further fanciful
explanation or simply reiterate his previous argument, despite the fact that it
has just been blown out of the water. But as is so often the case, Mattogno is
evidently unaware that there is another source, discovered by Christian
Gerlach, which argues along extremely similar lines. On July 10, 1942, Philipp
Bouhler, another key figure in the T4 euthanasia program, wrote to Martin
Bormann and stated that he had made available personnel to Himmler “for a
solution of the Jewish question going down to the final consequence” (für
eine bis in die letzte Konsequenz gehende Lösung der Judenfrage).[300] Once
again, the negationists are faced with a source which makes it clear that the
Final Solution was meant to be just that.
Whereas during the deportations,
Nazi authorities tended to euphemise their actions somewhat more, towards the
end of 1942, as the second phase of Aktion Reinhard drew to a close, a number
of civilian officials and SS officers dropped all pretenses towards
camouflaging their intentions. In November 1942, the county captain of
Stanislawow, Albrecht, announced in a speech that “Jewry in Europe has been
largely destroyed in the course of this year while defending the life of Aryan
peoples. The last remnants will also disappear in the near future.”[301] On
December 1, 1942, the chief medical officer of Warsaw, Dr Wilhelm Hagen, wrote
a personal letter to Hitler protesting against the resettlements of Poles in
the Zamosc region, stating that the deportations appeared to “proceed as with
the Jews, that is, to kill them.”[302] This
was ironically and laconically answered in roundabout form when
SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Kinna, accompanying a deportation transport from
Zamosc that reached Auschwitz on December 10, 1942, was told by SS-Hauptsturmführer
Aumeier that “according to the guideline of the RSHA, in contrast to the
measures applied to the Jews, Poles must die a natural death.”[303] The
day before, Hans Frank declared to a cabinet meeting that:[304]
It is clear that the work process is made more difficult when in the midst of this labour program, the order comes, leave all Jews to annihilation. The responsibility for this does not belong with the government of the Generalgouvernement. The directive for the annihilation of the Jews comes from a higher authority.
These sources alone make a mockery
of Mattogno’s torturous attempt to explain away the deeply inconvenient
reference to Sonderbehandlung which was partially edited out of the famous
Korherr report at Himmler’s behest.[305] This
exegesis is sufficiently tedious that readers are invited to look it up for
themselves to experience the full joy of watching Mattogno flail around with
statistics while failing to notice that his argument rests on a flawed premise.
For the statistics in the Korherr report are manifestly a compilation of
materials gathered from separate agencies then synthesised into one document.
The most salient figure for our purposes is, of course, the statistic of
1,274,166 Jews who were “sluiced through the camps in the Generalgouvernement”
in the process of being transported to “the Russian east”.[306] As
however we possess a letter from Himmler to Korherr telling him to replace
‘Sonderbehandlung of the Jews’ with the cover-phrase, the document is
considered an unmistakeable example of Nazi attempts to camouflage and
euphemise their crimes; doubly so, as ‘special treatment’ is itself a
euphemism.[307]
Naturally, Mattogno soon finds a way to mistake this example for something else
entirely, ignoring the fundamental logical problem that if Sonderbehandlung is
as he believes, a benign term, then why is it being covered up?[308]
The provenance of the statistic of
1,274,166 Jews has for some time been quite clear: it was radioed from SSPF
Lublin to the BdS in Krakow and also copied to Eichmann at the RSHA IV B 4
office.[309]
This signal, the so-called Höfle telegram, identified the ‘intake’ or
‘increase’ (Zugang) of “Einsatz Reinhart” for the last fortnight of 1942 and
for the whole year:
Betr: 14-tägige Meldung Einsatz Reinhart. Bezug: dort. FS. Zugang bis 31.12.41: L 12761, B 0, S 515, T 10355 zusammen 23611. Stand… 31.12.42, L 24733, B 434508, S 101370, T 71355, Zusammen 1274166
The signal’s reference to ‘L’, ‘B’,
‘S’ and ‘T’ are unmistakeably references to Majdanek (Lublin), Belzec, Sobibor
and Treblinka, a logical interpretation to which Mattogno, Graf and Kues have
given their assent. Yet the fact that the signal speaks only of a ‘Zugang’ and
not a ‘Durchgang’ – transit – does not faze them. Mattogno’s chief line of
attack is to query the significance of the inclusion of Majdanek in the signal
and then to speculate wildly about the implications. Contrary to the initial
interpretation of Stephen Tyas and Peter Witte, the most reasonable inference
is that that the fortnightly report of 12,761 does not refer to any kind of
transports arriving at Majdanek at all, but is simply a retrospective report of
earlier arrivals.[310] A
probable interpretation is that the figure of 12,761 refers to the number of
Polish Jews deported to Majdanek, while 11,972 Jews from the Reich and Slovakia
were deported, for a total of 24,733 Jews taken into the camp. No amount of
contortions or gyrations can magic up a significantly higher total for
the number of Jews deported to Majdanek in 1942.
However, it is clear that the total
was somewhat higher. The Korherr report also contains a separate set of
statistics evidently provided by the WVHA for the number of Jews taken into the
concentration camp system, figures which manifestly exclude the ‘special
transports’ to Auschwitz and are also claimed to exclude the similar transports
to Majdanek.[311]
This statistic gives a figure of 26,528 Jews deported to Majdanek, 1,525 higher
than the figure in the Höfle telegram. But it is quite obvious that the two
figures originated from different agencies, one from SSPF Lublin, and one from
KL Lublin passed on via the WVHA. We also don’t know when the WVHA
passed on its statistics to IV B 4 to give to Korherr. Given that there is a
manifestly belated report of 12,761 Jews for a fortnight in which no Jews are
recorded as arriving at Majdanek at all, it is quite probable that the WVHA
figure of 26,528 is a corrected figure compiled in the weeks or even months
after the Höfle telegram was sent on January 11, 1943. The claim in the Korherr
report that the statistics for Jews in the concentration camps exclude “Jews
sheltered in the course of the evacuation actions” at Majdanek is evidently
false.
Paying attention to the reporting
mechanisms allows us to ignore Mattogno’s main gambit of kicking up a fuss over
the inclusion of Jews deported to Majdanek who were evidently registered in a
statistic relating to their ‘special treatment’.[312] But
this fuss-making ignores the fact that the Höfle telegram said nothing about
Sonderbehandlung, only about ‘Zugang’. By the time this information reached
Korherr’s desk, all context was lost. As far as Korherr and his masters at RSHA
IV B 4 were concerned, the Jews had been Sonderbehandelt. It was evidently a
matter of indifference to them that the majority of the ‘intake’ at Majdanek
had not been killed on arrival, just as it was probably wholly unknown to IV B
that a certain proportion of the deportees to Treblinka and Sobibor had been
selected for labour in Treblinka I and for the labour camps orbiting Sobibor.
Indeed, much the same slippage can
be demonstrated for another ‘inconvenient’ balance sheet, the well known Report
No 51 on Antipartisan Warfare submitted by Himmler for Hitler’s attention
during December 1942. This report accounted for SS and Police operations in the
regions of Russia-South, Ukraine and Bialystok, the territories controlled by
Adolf Prützmann, HSSPF in both Königsberg (covering the Bialystok district) and
Kiev (covering both the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the rear areas of Army
Group B, formerly South) from August through November 1942, a period of four
months.[313]
Alongside reporting bodycounts of 1,337 partisans killed in action and 22,822
partisans and partisans suspects executed after capture or arrest, the
so-called Meldung 51 also baldly recorded that 363,211 Jews had been “executed”
(Juden exekutiert). As we have seen in Chapter 2, the killings that took
place during this period largely encompassed the slaughter of Jews in Volhynia
and the Polesie, regions of eastern Poland which both came under the Generalkommissariat
Wolhynien-Podolien. However, the month by month statistics as well as the known
actions in the individual shtetls and towns of this region make it clear that
the figure of 363,211 Jews also includes many Jews who were deported from the Bialystok
district to Treblinka and Auschwitz starting in November 1942.[314] In
both of these statistical documents, therefore, the Nazis explicitly wrote off
‘deported’ Jews as dead, regardless of whether they were killed immediately on
arrival or not.
The reactions of the leading Nazis
to the progression of their Jewish policy and its results by 1943 confirms that
Mattogno’s wayward interpretation is nonsense. On March 2, 1943, Goebbels noted
in his diary that it was “perfectly clear as to what would threaten us if we
were to become weak in this war... especially in the Jewish question, we are so
determined that there is no way back. And that’s a good thing. A movement and a
people which have burnt its bridges behind itself, fights according to
experience more unconditionally than those who still have the possibility of
retreat.” [315]
Hitler similarly informed the Romanian dictator Marshal Antonescu on April 16,
1943 that he “preferred to burn all bridges behind himself, as the hatred of
the Jews was gigantic anyway.” There was “no going back on this path once it
was chosen”.[316] To Admiral Horthy, Hitler opined shortly
thereafter that:[317]
Where the Jews were left to themselves, as for example in Poland, gruesome poverty and degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in Poland. If the Jews there didn't want to work, they were shot. If they couldn't work, they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body could be infected. That was not cruel, if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished.
On the ground in Galicia, the
results of treating Jews “like tuberculosis bacilli” were all too apparent to
the local Ukrainian and Polish populations. In February 1943, the head of the Ukrainian
Main Committee in the Generalgouvernement, Professor Kubijowtsch complained to
Frank that "the view is current that now the shootings of the Jews come to
an end those of the Ukrainians begin."[318]
Kreishauptmann Dewitz, the county captain of Stryj in Galicia, reported in June
1943 that:[319]
The expulsion of the Jews has so far led to a concern among the Polish population that after the cleaning up of the Jewish question the Poles will be next, as a rumour spread by the Ukrainian side has it. From the [Ukrainian] population itself complains have arisen about the inadequate burial of the Jews. Checks by the county medical officer have revealed that some mass graves (einige Massengräber) were not actually prepared efficiently, so that due to limited soil covering they present a danger for public health.
By November 1943, complaints about
the proliferating mass graves of Galicia were also noted because of the
curiosity of officers of the Hungarian Royal Honved. As the liaison officer of
the Foreign Office wrote, “constantly one encounters a strong interest in the
Jewish question and/or its solution in the area of Galicia. It has been
established that Hungarian officers take photos of Jewish mass graves to be
found in the vicinity of Stanislawow.”[320] Thus
had Katzmann’s men carried out the ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’ in
Galicia, in order to “master this pest in the shortest possible time.”[321]
The ongoing decimations of the
300,000 Jews who remained alive in the Generalgouvernement at the start of 1943
prompted further unrest from the civil administration. On May 31, 1943, the
HSSPF, Krüger, indicated that he had ‘recently again received an order to carry
out the dejudaisation in a very short time.” Acknowledging that many Jews were
employed in important armaments work, Krüger replied to his civilian counterparts
that “the Reichsführer-SS wished however, that the employment of these Jews
also ceases.” [322]
Just under a month later, Hans Frank plaintively asked aloud how he was to
solve the fundamental contradictions between Nazi ideological goals and
economic imperatives: [323]
How, it is often asked, can the need to cooperate with an alien culture be reconciled with the ideological aim of - say - wiping out the Polish people (Volkstum)? How is the need to maintain industrial output compatible with the need, for example, to annihilate the Jews?
Frank’s audience had no clear
answer to this. The Nazi drive to exterminate the Jews in Poland was only ever
partially “rationalised” by the appeals to pragmatic, economic arguments. As
the war progressed, many Nazi ideologists appealed more and more to the goal of
destroying the ‘breeding ground’ (Keimzelle) of ‘world Jewry’.[324] In
March 1944, a conference of Jewish referents and Aryanisation advisors convened
by the Foreign Office was told that “the physical elimination of Eastern Jewry
deprives Jewry of its biological reserves” (Die physische Beseitigung des
Ostjudentums entziehe dem Judentum die biologischen Reserven.)[325]
For Himmler, too, the ultimate goal
was achieving a biological solution to a racial question. His justification of
the almost completed genocide at conferences in Posen during October 1943 is
sufficiently well known not to need further elaboration here.[326] Less
well known, however, is the reaction of Josef Goebbels to hearing Himmler’s
speech at Posen, which the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda summarised in his diary as follows: [327]
As far as the Jewish question is concerned, he [Himmler] gives a very unvarnished and frank presentation. He is convinced that we can solve the Jewish question throughout Europe by the end of this year. He proposes the harshest and most radical solution: to exterminate the Jews root and branch [Kind und Kegel]. It is certainly a logical solution, even if it is a brutal one. We have to take responsibility of completely solving this issue in our time.
Nine months later, Himmler further
justified the extermination of the Jews in a speech to Wehrmacht generals at
Sonthofen on June 21, 1944. His words are once again, unmistakeable:[328]
It was necessary to resolve another big question. It was the most horrible task and the most awful assignment that any organization could receive: the solution of the Jewish question. I want to say a few words on the matter to this group with complete candor. It's good that we had the hardness to exterminate the Jews in our territory. Don't ask yourselves how difficult it would have been to carry out such an order, even though, as soldiers, I might say you would understand. But thinking critically as German soldiers, you can see that the order was essential. Because we wouldn't have been able to withstand the aerial bombing if we had had the Jews in our cities. I am also convinced we would not have been able to hold the Lemberg front of the Generalgouvernement if the big ghettos in Lemberg, Krakau, Lublin, and Warsaw had still been there. We cleaned out the last one, the big ghetto in Warsaw, in summer 1943. In Warsaw there were 500,000 Jews. I tell you this number confidentially. It took us five weeks of street fighting. Just the same, I want to answer a little question that surely you must have. The question is, of course you had to kill the adult Jews, I understand that, but how could you do the same to the women and children? So I have to tell you something: The children will be grown one day. Do we want to be so improper that we say, no, no, we're too weak to kill children. Our children can deal with them. Our children will fight that one out. But the Jewish hate, small today, will be big tomorrow, and the grown avengers will attack our children and grandchildren, who will then have to deal with them. I am convinced that this will be the case even if Adolf Hitler does not survive. No, we cannot shirk our responsibility to kill all the Jews. That would have been cowardly and therefore we adopted a clear solution to the problem, as difficult as it was.
Further commentary is superfluous.
[197] On Jewish forced labour in the Generalgouvernement, see Josef
Marszalek, Obozy pracy w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie w latach 1939-1945,
Lublin, 1998; Dieter Pohl, ‘Die großen Zwangsarbeitslager der SS- und
Polizeiführer für Juden im Generalgouvernement 1942-1945’, in: Ulrich Herbert,
Karin Orth, Christoph Dieckmann (eds), Die nationalsozialistischen
Konzentrationslager - Entwicklung und Struktur, Bd. I, Göttingen 1998, pp.
415-438; Gruner, Jewish Forced Labor, passim.
[198] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, adopted by
UN Resolution 260 (III) A of 9.12.1948, online at http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html.
[199] M&G, Treblinka, pp.233-4.
[200] See Michael Wildt (ed), Die Judenpolitik des SD 1935-1938,
Munich, 1995.
[201] Protokoll der Amtschefbesprechung am 14.9.1939, BA R58/825,
pp.10-12.
[202] KTB Halder, I, p.82 (20.9.1939).
[203] Protokoll der Amtschefbesprechung am 21.9.1939, BA R58/825,
pp.26-30.
[204] Heydrich an die Chefs der Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei,
21.9.1939, BA R58/954, pp.181-185. On this document see also Dan Michman, ‘Why Did Heydrich
Write the Schnellbrief? A Remark on the Reason and on Its Significance,’
Yad Vashem Studies 32, 2004, pp.433-47.
[205] Aufzeichnung über eine mündliche Orientierung durch Major Radtke am
22.9.1939, published in Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers,
Stuttgart, 1970, p.361-2.
[206] Protokoll der Amtschefbesprechung am 29.9.1939, BA R58/825,
p.36-37.
[207] Hans-Günther Seraphim (ed), Das Politische Tagebuch Alfred
Rosenbergs aus den Jahren 1933/35 und 1939/40, Göttingen, 1956, p.81. Although
Heydrich’s Endziel was supposed to be kept secret, Hitler entirely open about
the ‘Lublin reservation’ plan, and even discussed it with the Swedish
industrialist Birgit Dahlerus on September 26 and explained his concept of
‘ethnic cleansing’ to the Italian foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano not long
afterwards. Andreas Hillgruber (ed), Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler.
Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslands, Bd.
1, Frankfurt am Main, 1970, pp.29-30 (26.9.1939); ADAP Serie D, Bd.
7, Nr. 176, (2.10.1939).
[208] Erlass des Führers über die Festigung deutschen Volkstums,
7.10.1939, 686-PS, IMT XXVI, pp.255-7; cf. Robert L. Koehl, RKFDV: German
Resettlement and Population Policy, 1939–1945: A History of the Reich
Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom , Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1957.
[209] Respectively, the Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA), a new
main office for the RKFDV, and the newly formed Reich Security Main Office
(RSHA) under Heydrich.
[210] Anordnung I/II, 30.10.1939, published in FGM, pp.42-3.
[211] For a short summary, see Golczewski, ‘Polen’, pp.426-432.
[212] ‘New Jewish State in Poland’, The Times, 24.10.1939.
[213] TBJG I/7, p.177 (31.10.1939).
[214] TBJG I/3, p.612.
[215] Bericht über die Dienstreise, 22.11.1939, 2278-PS, IMT XXX, p.95;
cf. Safrian, Eichmann-Männer, p.88, Aly, Endlösung, p.34.
[216] Protokoll einer Rede in Radom, FGM, p.46.
[217] Bericht Könekamp über Polenfahrt, cited in Götz Aly and Susanne Heim,
‘Die Oekonomie der ‘Endlösung’: Menschenverwaltung und wirtschaftliche
Neuordnung’, Beiträge zur Nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und
Sozialpolitik 5: Sozialpolitik und Juenvernichtung: Gibt es eine Oekonomie der
Endlösung?, Berlin, 1987, pp.7-90, here p.48.
[218] Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (ed), Karl Haushofer: Leben und Werk, Bd. 2:
Ausgewählter Schriftwechsel, 1917-1946, Boppard am Rhein, 1979, nr. 226.
[219] Dieter Pohl, Von der ‘Judenpolitik’ zum Judenmord. Der Distrikt
Lublin des Generalgouvernements 1939-1944, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, p.49.
[220] Pohl, Judenpolitik, p.52, citing Protokoll der Distriktsitzung,
16.2.1940, APL GDL/61, p.17.
[221] Diensttagebuch, p.186 (23.4.1940).
[222] Rückblick des Umsiedlungsreferenten im Distrikt Warschau, Waldemar
Schön, 21.1.1941, FGM, p.108ff
[223] On the Nisko action see Seev Goshen, ‘Eichmann und die Nisko-Aktion
im Oktober 1939: Eine Fallstudie zur NS Judenpolitik in der letzten Etappe vor
der Endlösung’, VfZ 29/1, 1981, pp.74-96; ‘Nisko – Eine Ausnahmefall unter den
Judenlagern der SS’, VfZ 40/1, 1992, pp.95-106; Jonny Moser, ’Nisko: The
First Experiment in Deportation’, SWC 2, 1985, pp.1-30.
[224] Die Wirtschaftsbilanz des jüdischen Wohnbezirks in Warschau, März
1941, published in Götz Aly and Susanne Heim (eds), Bevölkerungsstruktur und
Massenmord. Neue Dokumente zur deutschen Politik der Jahre 1938-1945,
Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991, pp.74-138.
[225] See Christopher Browning, ‘German Technocrats, Jewish Labor, and
the Final Solution’ in The Path to Genocide, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992, pp.59-76; Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der
Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische
Ordnung, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1991, p.312-310.
[226] Diensttagebuch, p.337 (25.3.1941).
[227] Diensttagebuch, pp.343-6 (3.4.1941); cf. Browning, Origins,
pp.127-9.
[228] Diensttagebuch, pp.359-362 (19.4.1941).
[229] Czerniaków, pp.230-246 (5.5-3.6.1941).
[230] Kommandantur Warschau Qu/Ib, Monatsbericht 15.4-15.5.41, 20.5.1941,
NARA T501/214/269.
[231] See section ‘Mattogno’s ‘Resettlement’ Shell Game’ below
[232] Quoted in David Furber and Wendy Lower, ‘Colonialism and Genocide
in Nazi-Occupied Poland and Ukraine’ in A. Dirk Moses (ed), Empire, Colony,
Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History,
Oxford: Berghahn, 2008, pp.372-400, here p.383.
[233] Cited in Christopher R. Browning, ‘Genocide and Public Health:
German Doctors and Polish Jews, 1939-1941’, HGS 3/1, 1988, pp.21-36,
here p.27.
[234] Ministerialrat Dr.-Ing. Görnnert, Besprechungsnotiz vom 15.9.41
anlässlich der Besprechung des Herrn Reichsmarschall mit Staatssekretär Backe, 16.9.41, RGVA 700-1-31, pp.7-9.
[235] Ministerialrat Dr.-Ing. Görnnert, Zusatz zur Besprechungsnotiz vom
15.9.41 über die Besprechung bei den Herrn Reichsmarschall vom 16.9.41,
18.9.41, RGVA 700-1-31, pp.1-5; Verb.St. d. WiRüAmt beim Reichsmarschall, Wirtschaftsaufzeichnungen für die
Berichtszeit vom 15.8. bis 16.9.1941, EC-003, IMT XXXVI, pp.105-109.
[236] Diensttagebuch, p.409 (20.9.41).
[237] For contemporary references to the food situation, see Moltke, Briefe
an Freya 1939-1945, pp.270-1 (17.7.41); Halder, KTB III, pp.142-3 (2.8.41);
Diensttagebuch, pp. 399-400 (Regierungssitzung of 5.9.41).
[239] MiG IVa, Vermerk über die Besprechungen am 11-12.9.41 in Lemberg
bezw Krakau; Ausnutzung des Landes, n.d [after 16.9.41], NARA T501/220/236-8,
229-32; Diensttagebuch, pp.405-7
(12.9.41).
[240] Cited in Musial, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung, p.198.
[241] MiG OQu, Kriegsgefangene im Generalgouvernement, Stand am 27.11.41,
2.12.41, 16.12.41, 15.4.42, NARA T501/221/967-8, 1115, /220/923. Cf. Streit, Keine
Kameraden, p.134. 26,068 had been released and 8,169 sent to SS, Luftwaffe
and Reichsautobahn labour camps.17,256 were “handed over to the SD”, ie shot, while 7,559 escaped. An additional 263,587 POWs were transported
from Poland to camps in Germany, where many tens of thousands more undoubtedly
perished. The OKW POW Department had planned in November 1941 to transport 660,000
prisoners from Poland to Germany, as there was only food available for 300,000.
Cf. MiG OQu/Qu.2, Für KTB,
20.10.41, NARA T501/229/9.
[242] VOBlGG, 1941, p.595 (15.10.1941), also published in FGM,
pp.128-9.
[243] Early enforcement is noted in Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary,
pp.296-300 (6-17.11.1941), p.304 (14-15.12.41, execution of 15 out f 17 Jews
caught outside the ghetto), but other cases were not necessarily punished with
death. On the treatment of Jews in the Sondergericht system in the Warsaw
district, see Jan Grabowski, ‘Zydzi przed obliczem niemieckich i polskich sadow
w dystrykcie warszawskim Generalnego Gubernatorstwa, 1939-1942, in Barbara
Engelking, Jacek Leociak, Darius Libionka (eds), Prowincja Noc. Zycie i
zagłada Zydow w dystrykcie warszawskim, Warsaw, 2007, pp.75-118.
[244] The Schiessbefehl really began to make itself felt from the
start of 1942, as numerous reports from Kreishauptmänner and Police commands
indicate. The county captain of Tomaszow reported that “the drive of the Jews
to escape death from hunger in the ghetto and continue their lives on the
outside is once again noticeable. In the past month around 30 Jews, who had
left the ghetto without permission and wanted to escape, were shot.” By March 1942, KdO Lublin recorded the
execution of 215 Jews over the course of the month “in order to prevent the
spread of infectious diseases”. Cf. excerpt from monthly report for March 1942
of Kreishauptmann Tomaschow, FGM, p.133; KdO Lublin Halbjahresbericht
1-6.42, AIPN CA 156/44, p.78.
[245] Of 72,000 cases of typhus recorded in 1941, 46,000 were diagnosed
in the last quarter of the year, largely because of the movement of Soviet
POWs. These figures seem to exclude epidemics in the ghettos and pertain
primarily to the Polish civilian population. Cf. MiG, Leitender San. Offizier,
Tätigkeitsbericht, 19.2.42, NA T501/220/1213-5. On the German fear of typhus
and measures organised in response to outbreaks in the GG, see also Paul Weindling,
Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1880-1945, Oxford: OUP, 1999.
[246] Diensttagebuch, p.413 (13.10.1941).
[247] Diensttagebuch, p.441 (21.10.1941).
[248] See Chapter 2.
[249] For a facsimile of Heydrich’s invite to Bühler as well as the
context of the letter, see Yehoushua Büchler and Richard Breitman, ‘A
Preparatory Document for the Wansee ‘Conference’, HGS 9/1, 1995, pp.121-9; for Krüger’s meeting
with Himmler, see Dienstkalender, p.277 (28.11.1941).
[250] TBJG II/2, pp.498-499 (entry of 13.12.1941); cf. Gerlach,
‘Wannsee Conference’, and the discussion in Chapter 2 of this critique.
[251] Diensttagebuch, pp.457-8 (Regierungssitzung of 16.12.1941).
[252] Musial, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung, pp.212-5, esp p.212,
citing Westerkamp an Stuckart, 14.4.1942 and Krüger an Stuckart, 21.4.1942, BA
DH ZA/VI, 304/A.2.
[253] The statement ‘we cannot poison them’ seems to refer to the act of
individually administering a dose of poison, rather than the method of mass
gassing that was actually adopted.
[254] E.g. in Arad, Belzec Sobibor Treblinka, p.12.
[255] Mattogno, ‘Denying Evidence’, p.199. This is, surely, the most
ironically titled of all of his brochures.
[256] Wannsee-Protokoll, 20.1.1942, NG-2586-G.
[257] Vemerk, Lublin, den 17.III.1942, gez. Reuter, APL GDL 273,
pp.33-34, also FGM, pp.269-70.
[258] M&G, Treblinka, p.237 (citation); virtually identical
wording in Mattogno, Belzec, p.104.
[259] Mattogno, Belzec e le controversie olocaustiche, pp.13,
58-59.
[260] Shortly after the completion of the first wave of deportations from
the Lublin district, the propaganda office declared that “the Jewish
out-settlement (Judenaussiedlung) has shown that the action can also be carried
out on a grand scale for the entire GG”. Pohl, Judenpolitik, p.115.
[261] MGK, Sobibor, p.297.
[262] Büchler, ‘Deportation of Slovak Jews’,
pp.154, 166; Zofia Leszczynska, ‘Transporty wiezniow’ in Tadeusz Mencel (ed), Majdanek
1941-1944, Lublin, 1991, p.438. On transports to Majdanek from
Theresienstadt, see also Miroslav Kryl, ‘Deportationen von Theresienstadt nach
Majdanek’, TSD 1994, pp.74-89
[263] Gendarmerie-Posten Piaski an Gendarmeriezug in Lublin, betr,
Meldung über Eintreffung von ca. 600 Juden aus der Tschechoslowakei in das
Ghetto in Piaski, Kreis loublin, 25.4.42, gez. Kresse, BA R102 II/27, Bl. 35;
cf. Gottwaldt/Schulle, Judendeportationen, p.196.
[264] PRO HW16/10. For an analysis of these signals see Tomasz Kranz, Robert Kuwałek, Beata Siwek-Ciupak, ‘Odszyfrowane radiotelegramy
ze stanami dziennymi obozu koncentracyjnego na Majdanku (styczeń 1942 – styczeń
1943 r.)’, Zeszyty Majdanka 2008, t. XXIV, pp.201-232.
[265] For an overview of deportations from ‘Greater Germany’ to the
Lublin district at this time, see Gottwaldt/Schulle, Judendeportationen,
pp.137-219. On the ‘transit ghettos’ see On the ‘transit ghettos’, see two
articles by Robert Kuwałek, ‘Die Durchgangsghettos im Distrikt Lublin’ in
Musial (ed), Aktion Reinhard, pp.197-232 and ‘Das kurze Leben “im Osten”.
Jüdische Deutsche im Distrikt Lublin aus polnisch-jüdischer Sicht’, in Beate
Meyer and Beate Kosmala (eds), Die Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland.
Pläne – Praxis – Reaktionen 1938-1945. Göttingen, 2004, pp.112-134; also
the same author’s article ‘Das Durchgangsghetto in Izbica’, TSD 12,
2003, pp.321-351. The sourcing for these transports is variable; in many cases
we have surviving reports, eg of the deportation of 955 Jews from Würzburg to Krasnystaw;
cf. Reisebericht des Kriminaloberassistenten Gundelach, 4.5.42, facsimile in Herbert
Schott, ‘Die ersten drei Deportationen mainfränkischer Juden 1941/42’ in
Staatsarchiv Würzburg (ed), Wege in die Vernichtung. Die Deportation der
Juden aus Mainfranken 1941-1945, Munich, 2003, pp.73-166, here pp.136-7.
The transport was originally intended for Izbica, cf. FS Stapostelle Würzburg
an RSHA IV B 4, BdS Krakau, SSPF Lublin, 27.4.1942, T/740. Also available are
contemporary letters, for example Max and Martha Bauchwitz, German Jews from
Stettin deported to the Lublin district in 1940, wrote on March 25 that “we are
still 150 of about 700 here... we are still in shock from the last few days. It
is desolately empty. The 1,500 from Mainz, Worms and Darmstadt have arrived in
the homes of those who have departed. They have not a penny on them! It is said
many people died on the way.” Else Rosenfeld and Gertrud Luckner (eds), Lebenszeichen
aus Piaski. Briefe Deportierter aus dem Distrikt Lublin, 1940-1943, Munich,
1968, p.91.
[266] Peter Witte, ‘Letzte Nachrichten aus Siedliszcze. Der Transport Ax
aus Theresienstadt in den Distrikt Lublin’, TSD 1996, pp.98-113.
[267] MGK, Sobibor, p.297.
[268] See section ‘Mattogno’s ‘Resettlement’ Shell Game’ below
[269] See Chapter 1.
[270] Innere Verwaltung, U.Abt BuF, Vermerk, 20.3.1942, gez. Türk, APL
GDL 273, p.35.
[271] TBJG II/3, p.561 (27.3.1942). In all likelihood, Goebbels
learned of the plans for the Lublin district from the governor, Zörner, an old
acquaintance of his. Cf. Czeslaw Madajczyk, ‘Hitler’s Direct Influence on
Decisions Affecting Jews During World War II’, YVS 20, 1990, pp.53-68,
here p.59.
[272] Mattogno, Belzec e le controversie olocaustiche, pp.59-60,
here citing back to Mattogno, Hilberg, pp.38-39. His other obfuscations
of this diary entry, as seen for example in Mattogno, ‘Denying Evidence’,
p.259, have been dealt with in Chapter 2.
[273] Christian Gerlach, ‘Die Bedeutung der deutscher Ernährungspolitik
für die Beschleunigung des Mordes an den Juden 1942. Das Generalgouvernement
und die Westukraine’ in: Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord. Forschungen zur
deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Hamburg: Hamburger
Edition, 1998.
[274] Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German
Killers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.75ff.
[275] Hilberg, Vernichtung, Bd.2, pp.550-570; Hanns von Krannhals,
‘Die Judenvernichtung in Polen und der Wehrmacht’, Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau
15, 1965, pp.571-81; Herbert, ‘Labour and Extermination’; Musial, Deutsche
Zivilverwaltung, pp. 273-280; Schwindt, Konzentrations- und
Vernichtungslager Majdanek, pp.122-144; Seidel, Deutsche
Besatzungspolitik, pp.333-6.
[276] Chef Wi Z, Aktenvermerk über die Besprechung bei Staatssekretär
Backe am 23.6.42 mit den landwirtschaftlichen Sachbearbeitern der besetzten
Gebiete, 24.6.42, NARA T77/419/1689242, also NI-6194.
[277] See Chapters 2 and 4.
[278] See the paper trail documenting a litany of complaints from
production side officials and officers in Rü III, Vortrag von Min.Dir.
Mansfeld, GBA, über allgemeine Fragen des Arbeitseinsatzes, 20.2.42, NARA
T77/1059/1123, also 1201-PS. Cf. Rosenberg an Keitel, Betr: Kriegsgefangene,
28.2.42, 081-PS; Rü IV(d), Vermerk betr. Ernährung der russischen Kriegsgef.
und Zivilarbeiter, 10.3.42 (Entwurf), NARA T77/1059/1090-1; cf. Herbert, Hitler’s
Foreign Workers, p.173.
[279] TBJG II/4, 24.5.42, p.353ff; OKW/Chef WR, Vermerk, 7.8.42,
gez. Lehmann, T77/519/1689451-2. Backe also met with Hitler in May and July
1942 to discuss the food situation. Cf. Vermerk Ministerialdirektors Riecke für
Herrn Staatssekretär Backe zum Vortrag beim Führer, 3.5.42, T77/1170/783-5;
Bormann-Tagebuch, 8-9.5.42, 5.7.42, IWM AL 1488/2, pp.84, 87.
[280] Stenographischer Bericht über die Besprechung des Reichsmarschalls
Göring mit den Reichskommissaren für die besetzten Gebiete und den
Militärbefehlshabern über die Ernährunglage, 6.8.42, USSR-170, IMT 39,
pp. 384-412; OKW/Chef WR, Vermerk, 7.8.42, gez Lehmann, T77/519/1689451-2;
Halder, KTB III, p.503 (11.8.42); on the former TBJG II/5, 6.8.42,
pp.257ff; Speer-Chronik, 5.8.42, p.60, BA 3/1736; Bormann-Tagebuch, 5-6.8.42,
p.87, IWM AL 1488/2.
[281] OKH/GenStdH/GenQu I/IVa, Ernährung der Zivilbevölkerung in den
besetzten Ostgebieten, 3.8.42, gez. Wagner, NA T77/1196/627-8; this was
reiterated in later directives ordering that seedstocks, Wehrmacht deliveries
took priority over the feeding of the civilian population. Der Reichsmarschall
des Grossdeutschen Reiches Beauftr, VJP VP 18717/3/6g, Verteilung
landwirtschaftlicher Erzeugnisse in den besetzten Ostgebieten, 1.12.42, NA
T77/1170/874.
[282] Diensttagebuch, pp.524-5 (15.7.42)
[283] Diensttagebuch, p.549 (Regierungssitzung of 24.8.42).
[284] Beauftragter des Reichsleiters Bormann im OKW-Stab zbV, Bericht Nr.
4 (Distrikt Krakau), 27.8.42, BA NS 6/795, pp.155-6; further confirmation of
the reduction in rations and the worries of the Nazi authorities over the black
market can be found in Bericht über die Sitzung des Verwaltungsrats der
Reichskreditkassen am 5.10.42, 7.10.42, BA R29/4, p.160ff.
[285] Der Beauftragte für den Vierjahresplan Geschäftsgruppe Ernährung,
Lieferverpflichtungen des Generalgouvernements im IV. Kriegswirtschaftsjahr,
12.12.42, BA NS 19/1995, pp.176-7.
[286] Besprechung mit Herrn Müller, Stubaf Pehle, Bevollmächtigte des REM
und dem Leiter der Hauptabteilung EuL in der Regierung des GG, Herrn
Präsidenten Naumann, am 13.1.43, 15.1.43, gez. SS-Ogruf Krüger, BA NS19/2648,
pp.98-9; Diensttagebuch, pp.573-4, 592, 598-9 (20.11.42, 14.12.42,
25.1.43); cf. Gerlach, ‘Bedeutung des deutschen Ernährungspolitik’, pp. 247-8.
[287] Der Führer und Reichskanzler, Erlass betr.: Industrieverlagerung
nach dem Protektorat, dem Generalgouvernement, und den besetzten Ostgebieten
unter Federführung des Reichsministers Speer, 28.6.1942, BA R43 II/655a; cf. Diensttagebuch,
pp.524-5 (15.7.42).
[288] MiG OQu/Qu.2, Einsatz jüdischer Facharbeiter, 9.5.42, NA
T501/220/843. On the deportation of Polish workers to Germany, see Czeslaw
Luczak, Polscy robotnicy przymusowi w Treciej Rzeszy podczas II wojny
swiatowej, Poznan 1974.
[289] Vermerk MiG/OQu, 15.8.42, NARA T501/216/923-6, also in
Grabitz/Scheffler, Letzte Spuren, p.308ff.
[290] Aktenvermerk Stabsführer SSPF Krakau, Fellenz, 27.7.42, BA
NS19/1765, also published in Longerich (ed), Ermordung, p.202ff; cf. Kommander
des OKW-Stabes zbV/Sonderbeauftragter des Führers, Bericht Nr 8 Przemysl,
25.8.42, BA NS6/794, p.32ff; on Battel’s resistance see also Seev Goshen,
‘Albert Battels Widerstand gegen die Judenvernichtung in Przemysl’, VfZ
33, 1985, pp. 478-488; Norbert Haas, ‘Oberleutnant Dr. Albert Battel und Major
Max Liedtke. Konfrontation mit der SS im polnischen Przemysl im Juli 1942’ in
Wette (ed), Retter im Uniform, pp.188-190.
[291] For the letter of protest, see Gienanth an Keitel, 18.9.42, NARA
T501/216/350-2, also in FGM, pp.44-6; for his retirement, see KTB MiG OQu/Qu.2,
1.10.1942, NARA T501/219/452.
[292] OKW, WFSt/Qu (II), Nr 02847/42 geh., Replacement of Jewish Labour
by Aryan Labour in the Government General and the Occupied Eastern Territories,
10.10.42, NOKW-134, Case 12, PDB 9C, pp.246-7.
[293] Himmler an Krüger, Globocnik, Pohl, 9.10.42, BA NS19/352, pp.11-12,
also NO-1611.
[294] Pohl, Ostgalizien, p.212, citing DALO R-35-12-42, p.70,
Vermerk Neumann, 6.8.42.
[295] M&G, Treblinka, pp.265-66, especially p.266.
‘Out-settlement’ (Aussiedlung) in the evolving Nazi jargon referred to
deportations out of a district or to the extermination camps. ‘Resettlement’ (Umsiedlung)
could be used as a euphemism to paper over mass shootings, as we have seen with
an order for the ‘resettlement’ of the Slutsk ghetto whose inmates were
apparently ‘resettled’ into ‘graves’ alongside which SS detachments were to work while bein supplied by ‘givers
out of rounds’ responsible for ‘supplying ammunition’. Thus, the Katzmann
report’s well known reference to the ‘out- or resettlement’ of 434,000 Jews refers
to deportations (outsettlements) and shootings (resettlements). Cf.
Katzmann-Bericht, 30.6.1943, L-18.
[296] Rinteln to
Luther, 19.8.42, in Anlage Eichmann report of 26.7.42, NG-3985, also T/1023; cf.
Hilberg Vernichtung, p.845; Longerich, Holocaust, p.366.
[297] Brack an Himmler, 23.6.1942, BA NS19/1583, p.16, also NO-205.
[298] MGK, Sobibor, p.271.
[299] MGK, Sobibor, pp.268-281.
[300] Gerlach, ‘Bedeutung der deutschen Ernährungspolitik’, p.214, citing
Bormann an Bouhler, 10.7.1941, BA 62 Ka 1, Nr.83, Bl. 109.
[301] Pohl, Ostgalizien, p.233, citing DAIFO R-36-1-17, pp.24-32,
Rede Albrechts an die Arbeitseinsatzstaebe im Kreis Stanislau, 2.11.42.
[302] Stadtarzt Warschau an Hitler, 7.12.1942, BA NS19/1210, also AIPN
NTN 412, p.3l cf. Aly/Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, p.217. Hagen was,
of course, sacked for daring to make such a protest to Hitler himself.
[303] SS-Ustuf
Heinrich Kinna, Bericht zu dem Transport von 644 Polen nach dem Arbeitslager
Auschwitz am 10.12.42, Zamosc, den 16.12.42, AIPN NTN 131, p.210, also T/382.
On the context of the Zamosc deportations, and also for a further facsimile of
the document, see Helena Kubica, The Extermination at KL Auschwitz of Poles
Evicted from the Zamosc Region in the Years 1942-43. Oswiecim, 2006 (Polish
original: 2004)
[304] Diensttagebuch, p.137 (9.12.42).
[305] MGK, Sobibor, pp.311-330.
[306] Korherr-Bericht, 19.4.43, NO-5193, online at http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/korherr/korherr-lang.php
[307] Der Reichsführer-SS an den Inspekteur für Statisik, PG. Korherr,
10.4.43, NO-5197.
[308] We leave aside for later sport and amusement the other problem with
Mattogno’s gibberish on special treatment, namely the remarkable capacity for
the term Sonderbehandlung to mutate at will according to his peculiar needs, as
it appears in his eyes to mean sometimes ‘resettlement’ and sometimes
‘delousing’, interpretations which end up being mutually incompatible and
logically incoherent.
[309] SSPF Lublin an BdS Krakau, 11.1.43, GPDD 355a, items 13/15, PRO HW
16/22. Item 13 of same GPDD was addressed ‘Geheime Reichssache! An das
Reichssicherheitshauptamt, zu Händen SS Obersturmführer Eichmann, Berlin…rest
missed!!!’. For the context, see Witte/Tyas, ‘New Document’, further also
Nicholas Terry,‘Conflicting Signals: British Intelligence on the ‘Final
Solution’ through Radio Intercepts and Other Sources, 1941-1942’, YVS
XXXII, 2004, pp. 351-396, esp. pp.391-3, discussing the Bletchley Park analysis
of the signal.
[310] Cf. Tomasz Kranz, ‘Eksterminacja Żydów na Majdanku i rola obozu w
realizacji „Akcji Reinhardt”,’, Zeszyty Majdanka 2003, t.XXIII, pp.7-56;
even more explicitly Schwindt, Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager
Majdanek, pp.183-6.
[311] Korherr-Bericht, 19.4.43, NO-5193
[312] MGK, Sobibor, p.319ff.
[313] Der Reichsführer-SS, Meldungen an den Führer über Bandenbekämpfung,
Meldung Nr. 51 Russland-Süd, Ukraine, Białystok. Bandenbekämpfungserfolge vom
1.9 bis 1.12.42, 23.12.42, NO-511.
[314] Kruglov, ‘Jewish Losses in Ukraine, 1941-1944’ comes to a similar
conclusion.
[315] TBJG II/7, p.454 (2.3.43).
[316] Hillgruber (ed), Staatsmänner und Diplomaten, p.233
(16.4.43).
[317] Hillgruber (ed), Staatsmänner und Diplomaten, p.256; also
ADAP, Ser. E, Bd. 5, p.632.
[318] Kubijowytsch an Frank, 25.2.43, 1526-PS, NCA IV, pp.79-95.
[319] Pohl, Ostgalizien, p.260 and 320, citing DALO R-1952-1-172,
p.83, Lagebericht Kreishauptmann Stryj fuer Mai/Juni 1943, 2.7.43,
[320] Bericht des Vertreter des Auswaertigen Amtes beim
Generalgouvernement, 23.11.43, NG-3522.
[321] Katzmann-Bericht, 30.6.43, L-18, p.64. Emphasis in the original.
[322] Diensttagebuch, p.682 (31.5.43); cf. Pohl, Judenpolitik,
pp.166-7.
[323] Diensttagebuch, p.697 (22.6.43); cf. Herbert, ‘Labour and
Extermination’, p.144; Pohl, Ostgalizien, p.264.
[324] Cf. Furber/Lower, ‘Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-Occupied Poland
and Ukraine’, p.384.
[325] Auswartiges Amt Inf. XIV Antijiidische Auslandsaktion, Betreff:
Arbeitstagung der Judenreferenten und Arisierungsberater, 4. Marz 1944, 3319-PS,
IMT XXXII, p.166.
[326] 1919-PS.
[327] TBJG II/10, p.72; cf. Saul Friedländer, The Years of
Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. New York: HarperCollins,
2008, p.543.
[328] Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (eds), Heinrich Himmler.
Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945. Frankfurt am Main, 1974, p.203.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please read our Comments Policy