One Hundred Nazi Extermination Remarks, 1939-1944 (Part Four: 52-65)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

52) Wetzel and Hecht, 25.11.39: "We are indifferent to the hygienic fate of the Jews. Also for the Jews the basic principle is valid, that their propagation must be curtailed in every possible way." [Die Frage der Behandlung der Bevoelkerung der ehemaligen polnischen Gebiete nach rassenpolitischen Gesichtspunkten, 25.11.39, NO-3732].

53) Hitler, 16.7.41: "Nobody shall be able to recognize that it initiates a final settlement. This need not prevent our taking all necessary measures - shooting, resettling, etc. - and we shall take them.

But we do not want to make any people into enemies prematurely and unnecessarily. Therefore we shall act as though we wanted to exercise a mandate only. At the same time we must know clearly that we shall never leave those countries" [Vermerk über die Besprechung am 16.7.1941, L-221, IMT XXXVIII, pp.86-94, here p.87; English translation NCA VII, pp.1086-1093, here pp.1086-1087].

54) Höppner 16.7.41:

4. This winter there is a danger that not all of the Jews can be fed anymore. One should weigh honestly, if the most humane solution might not be to finish off those of the Jews who are not employable by means of some quickworking device. At any rate, that would be more pleasant than to let them starve to death.

5. For the rest, the proposal was made that in this camp all the Jewish women, from whom one could still expect children, should be sterilized so that the Jewish problem may actually be solved completely with this generation [source and German scan].

55) Himmler, 27.10.42: "Therefore I order, in spite of economic considerations, the destruction and obliteration of the Ghetto of Pinsk. 1000 male workers may be spared, in the event that the operation allows for this, to be made available to the Wehrmacht, for the production of wooden prefabricated huts. These 1000 men must be kept in a well-guarded camp, and if security not be maintained, these 1000 are to be destroyed [source and source]."

56) Goebbels, 14.12.42: "Jewry must pay for its crime just as our Fuehrer prophesied in his speech in the Reichstag; namely, by the wiping out of the Jewish race in Europe and possibly in the entire world [source]."

57) Goebbels, 2.3.43: "Goering realizes perfectly what is in store for all of us if we show any weakness in this war. He has no illusions about that. On the Jewish question, especially, we have taken a position from which there is no escape. That is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with much greater determination than those who are still able to retreat" [source].

58) Strauch, 8-10.4.43: "When the civil administration arrived it already found economic enterprises operated by the Wehrmacht aided by Jews. At a time when the Bielorussians wanted to murder the Jews, the Wehrmacht cultivated them. In that way Jews reached key positions and it is difficult today to remove them completely, for then the enterprises are liable to be destroyed, something we cannot allow ourselves. I am of the opinion that we can confidently say that of the 150,000, 130,000 have already disappeared. 22,000 are still alive in the area of the Gebietskommissariat." [Shalom Cholawsky, The Jews of Bielorussia during World War II, Amsterdam, 1998, p.64, citing Protokoll über die Tagung der Gebietskommissare, Hauptabteilungsleiter und Abteilungsleiter des. Generalkommissars in Minsk vom 8.April bis 10.April 1943. YV TR-10/808; also in Erich Haberer, ‘The German police and genocide in Belorussia, 1941-1944. Part I: Police deployment and Nazi genocidal directives’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2001, 3 (1), p.13, citing CSA-Minsk 370/1/1263/126-45].

59) Hitler, 17.4.43: "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" [source].

60) Berger, 19.4.43, NO-628: "In Hungarian Government circles there exists a well-founded fear that the accession to the confederation will be tied up with compulsion to liquidate the Jews [source]."

61) Brandt, 20.4.43: "The Reichsführer-SS has received your report on "The Final Solution of the European Jewish Question". He wishes that "special treatment of the Jews" not be mentioned anywhere [Brandt an Korherr, 20.4.43, BA NS19/1570, also NO-5196]

62) Goebbels, 13.5.43: "At noon I mentioned this to the Fuehrer. He believed the Protocols were absolutely geniune.... The Jewish question, in the Fuehrer's opinion, will play a decisive role in England.... In all the world, he said, the Jews are alike. Whether they live in a ghetto of the East or in the bankers' palaces of the City or Wall Street, they will always pursue the same aims and without previous agreement even use the same means. Once might well ask why are there any Jews in the world order? That would be exactly like asking why are there potato bugs? Nature is dominated by the law of struggle. There will always be parasites who will spur this struggle on and intensify the process of selection between the strong and the weak. The principle of struggle dominates also in human life. One must merely know the laws of this struggle to be able to face it. The intellectual does not have the natural means of resisting the Jewish peril because his instincts have been badly blunted. Because of this fact the nations with a high standard of civilization are exposed to this peril first and foremost. In nature life always takes measures against parasites; in the life of nations that is not always the case. From this fact the Jewish peril actually stems. There is therefore no other recourse left for modern nations except to exterminate the Jew...." [source].

63) Guenther, 31.5.43:

On 13th April, 1943, the former German dentist Ernst Israel Tichauer and his wife, Elisa Sara Tichauer, nee Rosenthal, were committed to the court prison by the Security Service. Since that time all German and Russian Jews who were turned over to us had their golden bridgework, crowns, and fillings pulled or broken out. This happens always one to two hours before the respective action. Since 13th April, 1943, 516 German and Russian Jews have been finished off. On the basis of a definite investigation gold was taken in only two actions - on 14th April, 1943, from 172, and on 27th April, 1943, from 164 Jews. About 50 per cent. of the Jews had gold teeth, bridgework, or fillings. Hauptscharfuehrer Rube of the Security Service was always personally present, and he took the gold along, too. Before 13th April, 1943, this was not done [source].

64) Himmler, 6.10.43: "I ask you that what I tell you in this circle you will really only hear and never talk about it. The question came up to us: What do to with the women and children? I decided to find a very clear solution also in this respect. This because I didn’t consider myself entitled to exterminate the men, that is, to kill them or to have them killed, and to let the children grow up as avengers against our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth. For the organization that had to carry out the task if was the most difficult we had so far. It has been carried out without, as I consider myself entitled to say, our men and our leaders having taken harm to their spirit and soul. The path between the possibilities existing here, to either become crude and heartless and no longer to respect human life or to become weak and collapse to the point of nervous breakdowns, the path between this Scylla and Charybdis is horrendously narrow" [source and source].

65) Himmler, 21.6.44:

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 [source].