Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (29 page)

their civilian jobs in war without any significant change in their living conditions,

while the German-blooded compatriots performed their military duties at the

front and at home.’

chapter 6

THE POLITICS OF ORGANIZED EXPULSION

The Extermination Announcements at the Turn

of the Year 1938–1939

Still under the immediate effect of the eruption of violence of the November

pogrom, towards the end of 1938/beginning of 1939, the declarations of leading

National Socialists and the commentaries of the Nazi press began to resonate with

threats of the ‘extermination’ of the Jews.

Thus an article in the SS journal, Schwarze Korps, of 24 November 1938 stated:

‘Least of all do we want to see these hundreds of thousands of impoverished Jews

as a breeding-ground for Bolshevism and a recruiting base for the political and

criminal subhumanity that, as a result of the selection process, is disintegrating

on the margins of our own nationhood. . . . In the event of such a development,

we would face the harsh necessity of wiping out the Jewish underworld just as we

are used to wiping out criminals in our orderly state: with fire and sword. The

result would be the actual and definitive end of Jewry in Germany, its total

extermination.’

After Goering had, at the meeting of 12 November, described ‘an important

reckoning with the Jews’ as ‘a foregone conclusion’, Hitler was also heard speaking

in similar terms on various occasions. When the South African Defence and

Economics Minister, Oswald Pirow, visited Hitler at the Berghof on 24 November,

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to offer him, amongst other things, his services as mediator in an international

solution of the German ‘Jewish question’, he learned from his host that the

‘problem of the Jews’ would ‘be solved in the near future’; this was his ‘unshake-

able will’. It was not only a ‘German, but a European problem’.
1
During the conversation, Hitler moved on to an open threat: ‘What do you think, Mr

Pirow, if I were to take my protecting hand away from the Jews, what would

happen in Germany? The world could not imagine it.’

The minutes of the reception of the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Chvalk-

ovsky by Hitler on 21 January 1939 recorded the following statement by the

‘Führer’: ‘The Jews would be exterminated here. The Jews did not carry out 9

November 1918 in vain, that day would be avenged.’
2

In his speech before the Reichstag on the sixth anniversary of the seizure of

power on 30 January 1939, Hitler finally expressed himself in a central, lengthy

passage on the ‘Jewish question’.
3

And there is one thing that I should like to state on this day, memorable perhaps for others as well as us Germans. In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet and was

generally laughed at for it. During my struggle for power it was in the first instance Jewish people who laughed at my prophecies that I would some day assume the leadership of the

state and thereby of the entire nation and then, among many other things, achieve a

solution of the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious but I think that for some

time now the Jews have been laughing on the other side of their faces. Today I will be a

prophet again: if international Jewish financiers within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the nations into a world war, then the consequence will be not the

Bolshevization of the world and therewith a victory of Jewry, but on the contrary, the

annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
4

These extermination declarations, which strikingly accumulate between November

1938 and January 1939, cannot simply be interpreted as a revelation of the

programmatic intention of leading National Socialists, under the effects of the

intoxication of violence unleashed in November 1939. But one must consider

closely the situation of the regime around the turn of the year 1938/9 to recognize

that these declarations were framed in highly ambiguous terms.

The tactical intention of these declarations, particularly Hitler’s speech on 30

January, is clear: by means of the threat of annihilation the pressure of expulsion

upon the German Jews was to be heightened and the willingness of foreign powers

to receive them extorted through a form of blackmail. In this context the contacts

that began in November 1938, leading to negotiations between the Reich govern-

ment and the Intergovernmental Committee created in Evian, are of the greatest

importance; the governments of the potential receiving countries and ‘inter-

national financial Jewry’ were to be forced to agree to an extensive solution

through emigration by threats, with the help of a loan and the facilitation

The Politics of Organized Expulsion

125

of German exports (the final abandonment of the boycott against Germany).
5

Secondly, the declaration of the annihilation of the Jews under German rule in the

event of a world war was intended to prevent the formation of an anti-German

alliance of the Western powers in the event of German military action on the

continent. If a war begun by Germany became a world war through the interven-

tion of the Western powers, the Jews in the German sphere of influence would

automatically assume the role of hostages under the threat of death. But the threat

of extermination contained one further perspective: if it remained ineffective, that

is, if emigration made no significant progress and in the event of war the Western

powers could not be restrained from intervening, the locus of ‘guilt’ for a further

intensification of the German persecution of the Jews was, in the view of leading

National Socialists, already clear.

The Negotiations for an International Solution

through Emigration

The international soundings and negotiations which were to be considerably

influenced by the ‘extermination declarations’ had begun in November 1938.

While the German government had consistently refused over the previous few

months to negotiate with the Intergovernmental Committee formed at the Evian

Conference over a financial agreement concerning the promotion of emigration,

Goering’s instruction of 12 November to encourage emigration ‘with all means’

created a new situation.

Early in December Schacht had proposed that the emigration of German Jews be

financed by an international loan; Schacht was thus picking up the initiative of the

Austrian Economics Minister, Hans Fischböck, who had already proposed and

concretely pursued a similar plan.
6
According to Schacht’s plan, the loan was to be underwritten by foreign Jews and guaranteed by the remaining assets of the

German Jews and paid off, like the Haavara Agreement, through additional

German exports. Jewish assets not transferred in this way were to be used for the

maintenance of Jews unfit for emigration, and would pass to the Reich after their

death. In this way Schacht hoped within three to five years to make emigration

possible for around 400,000 emigrants who were fit for gainful employment and

their families.
7

After Hitler had agreed to these propositions in principle, at the end of

December 1938 Schacht began making the relevant soundings in London.
8
In January he began negotiations with the chairman of the International Committee

for Political Refugees, George Rublee.
9
When Schacht was after a short time relieved of his office as President of the Reichs bank, the negotiations were to be

concluded by Ministerial Director Wohlthat of the Reich Economics Ministry,

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Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

by the end of February. However, the plan was not realized as it was only

half-heartedly pursued both on the German side (refusal of initialling by the

Foreign Ministry) and on the part of the Committee, and rejected both by foreign

governments and by Jewish circles.
10

In the light of these events the question—unanswerable for the time being—

arises whether the negotiations with Rublee were really seriously pursued by the

regime, or whether they were carried out predominantly for reasons of propa-

ganda. For, however they ended, the German side had grist for its propaganda

mill: if agreement was reached, the power of ‘international financial Jewry’, not

leaving its ‘racial comrades’ in the lurch, was proven; if no solution was reached,

this could be seen as proof of a lack of solidarity and ‘typical Jewish’ egoism and

the great influence of the Jews upon governments abroad.

Central Office for Jewish Emigration

In line with the proposals which Heydrich had already made on 12 November, and

which had subsequently been given concrete form by the SD, to ensure both the

‘final emigration of all Jews’ and the ‘care of less well-off Jews and those unfit for

gainful employment’,
11
on 24 January Goering set up a ‘Central Office for Jewish Emigration’ and parallel with this got under way the subsumption of all Jewish

organizations into a single compulsory organization.
12

The decision to set up the Central Office was made in a series of meetings of

government representatives on 18 and 19 January 1939, after the conviction had

been reached that the negotiations between Schacht and Rublee would lead to

concrete results in terms of emigration.
13

The Central Office, which was to operate according to the model of the Vienna

‘Reichszentrale’, employed representatives of the Foreign Office, the Economics

and Finance Ministries, and the Ministry of the Interior.
14
The direction of the Reich Central Office was formally undertaken by Heydrich, the manager was the

Head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller. With the assumption of responsibilities for

the emigration of the German Jews which, in the opinion of all the offices

involved, was the paramount goal of further persecutory measures, the SS/SD

had finally managed to assume a key role in future Judenpolitik.

Parallel with this the regime initiated the establishment of a unified organization

that would independently secure the minimum level of maintenance and care

required for the remaining Jews, and thus make a considerable contribution to the

complete isolation of the German Jews from the rest of the population. By February

1939 the structure of this new organization was already in place; called ‘the Reich

Association of the Jews in Germany’, it was subject to the supervision of the Reich

Ministry of the Interior, and represented the successor to the ‘Reich Board of

Deputies of the Jews in Germany’, formed in 1933. Compulsory subsumption into

The Politics of Organized Expulsion

127

this organization was only put into force, however, on 4 July 1939, by the Tenth

Decree of the Reich Citizenship Law.
15
The Reich Association was not only to encourage emigration, but also to be responsible for the Jewish school system and

Jewish welfare.
16

Even though no agreement had been reached between the Reich government

and the Intergovernmental Committee, after the November pogrom there was

once again increased emigration of Jews from the territory of the ‘Great German

Reich’. Particularly decisive in this was the fact, among other things, that various

states, including in particular Great Britain and the United States, took in a larger

number of refugees.
17

Another stream of refugees was destined for the international zone of Shanghai,

where there were no restrictions on immigration. In August 1939 there were 14,000

Jewish refugees in Shanghai.
18
By the end of 1939 around 250,000 Jews had emigrated from the Old Reich Territory.
19

Summary: The State of Judenpolitik before the

Beginning of the War

Once the third anti-Semitic wave had reached its peak, the National Socialist

policy of total segregation of the German Jews had now been realized by extensive

measures in all spheres of life. The Jews, excluded from economic life, led a

wretched existence in complete social isolation: they lived on savings deposited

in blocked accounts, from which sums for their immediate needs could be

withdrawn only with permission from the Gestapo, Jewish welfare aid, or the

minimal wages from Jewish work deployment. Jews could only be economically

active for other Jews, for example as Rechtskonsulenten (legal advisers), Kranken-

behandler (treaters of the sick), or as hairdressers, lodgers etc.
20

According to the results of the May 1939 census, there were still 213,930 ‘faith

Jews’ (i.e. members of synagogues) living in the Old Reich Territory. The concen-

tration of Jews in cities had intensified. There was a disproportionately high level

of old people among the Jews living in Germany: 53.6 per cent were over 50, 21.6

per cent over 65. Only 12.7 per cent were children and young people under 20. As a

result of emigration there was a considerable surplus of women (57.5 per cent).
21

Only 15.6 per cent of the Jews counted in May were in work, almost 71 per cent of

all Jews over 14 came under the category of the ‘unemployed self-employed’. There

were also 19,716 people who did not belong to the Jewish religious community

(more than half were Protestants), but who were graded as ‘racial Jews’, as well as

52,005 ‘half-breeds grade I’ and 32,669 ‘half-breeds grade II’.
22

At the instigation of the NS state the compulsory ‘self-administration’ of the

Jewish minority had been rendered uniform: the religious associations became

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Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

branches of the Reich Association, the compulsory organization set up in July

1939, which also took over the whole of Jewish care, health, and schooling, as well

as all still existing Jewish organizations. The Reich Association with its local and

branch offices throughout the country thus became the organization that con-

trolled the isolated Jewish sector. Apart from this, the only remaining autonomous

Jewish organization was the Jewish Cultural Association.
23