The documents that follow, selected from tens of thousands of possibilities, represent a snapshot of some of the expressions of perpetration during the Holocaust. The exact time line of the Holocaust remains contested, and as a result, the documents included here have been introduced from across the entire period of the Third Reich, as the many examples shown in this book demonstrate. Indeed, the first documents predate the Nazi period itself, but they are crucial to any understanding of what was to come after 1933.
Many of the documents in this short collection have been taken from the voluminous record of the trials conducted at Nuremberg shortly after World War II. They reveal nothing less than the extremes of human nature, exposing both the savagery of the perpetrators and the suffering of the victims. An attempt has been made in this section to provide a varied range of sources that will give readers an idea of the types of documents available that illustrate Holocaust perpetration, whether from leaders, enablers, or collaborators.
1. Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 1920
The Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, also referred to as the “25 Point Program,” was initially the Party platform of German Workers’ Party. When it was announced on February 24, 1920, however, Adolf Hitler took the opportunity to proclaim the new name of the Party he would henceforth shape. As the Party’s official program, the intention was that it would remain unchanged until all its goals had been realized.
1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-determination.
2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population.
4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.
5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens.
6. The right to vote on the State’s government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens.
7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.
8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich forthwith.
9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good.
We demand therefore:
11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work.
The breaking of slavery of interest
12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.
15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in placing of State and municipal orders.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race.
19. We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law.
20. The State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education (with the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement). The curricula of all educational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the school must be to give the pupil, beginning with the first sign of intelligence, a grasp of the notion of the State (through the study of civic affairs). We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.
21. The State must ensure that the nation’s health standards are raised by protecting mothers and infants, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and by the extensive support of clubs engaged in the physical training of youth.
22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the formation of a people’s army.
23. We demand legal warfare on deliberate political mendacity and its dissemination in the press. To facilitate the creation of a German national press we demand:
a. That all editors of, and contributors to newspapers appearing in the German language must be members of the nation;
b. That no non-German newspapers may appear without the express permission of the State. They must not be printed in the German language;
c. That non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty for contravening such a law shall be the suppression of any such newspaper, and the immediate deportation of the non-Germans involved.
The publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden. We demand the legal prosecution of all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.
24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the State, provided they do not threaten its existence nor offend the moral feelings of the German race.
The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not commit itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health only from within on the basis of the principle: The common interest before self-interest.
25. To put the whole of this program into effect, we demand the creation of a strong central state power for the Reich; the unconditional authority of the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and its organizations; and the formation of Corporations based on estate and occupation for the purpose of carrying out the general legislation passed by the Reich in the various German states.
The leaders of the Party promise to work ruthlessly—if need be to sacrifice their very lives—to translate this program into action.
Source: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds. Documents on Nazism, 1919–1945. London: Jonathan Cape, 1974, pp. 37–40.
Commentary
The 25 points comprising the National Socialist German Workers’ Party Program were composed by Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler and were formally unveiled on February 24, 1920.
In the second volume of his book, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler explained the purpose of the program as being to give “a rough picture of the movement’s aims,” which formed “a political creed” intended to recruit new members and reinforce membership of those already in the party. Hitler made it clear that his thoughts would be translated into a plan of action. Although he declared that the program was designed to be “of limited duration” and that party leaders had no intention of establishing any new principles, subsequent events would demonstrate that the program was set in place to stay.
The first principle was to set the tone for all the others. A nationalistic statement, it left no room for doubt as to the Nazis’ desire to expand Germany’s current borders and define who could be classed as a German. Given that, point two demanded an overthrow of the post–World War I peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain, something from which Hitler never retreated and which was to characterize his entire foreign policy down to 1939.
The program demanded control over all areas of public discourse. These included administration, law, economy, education, and government. With regard to national self-identification, perhaps of greatest importance were the points relating to race. Here, Hitler spelled out his objectives regarding Germany’s Jews, leaving no possibility for them to be included in the national community (Volksgemeinschaft) in a future National Socialist state.
Overall, the 25-point program of the NSDAP showed Hitler’s determination to establish a Germany built on racial purity that would be governed by a strong central authority unhampered by parliamentary procedures, rather than one that was divided over differing values or as a result of diverse national backgrounds or religious beliefs.
2. Adolf Hitler: Extracts From Mein Kampf, 1923
Adolf Hitler was incarcerated in Landsberg prison in 1923 following his failed attempt to overthrow the Weimar government. It was during his surprisingly short prison term that Hitler dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Both an autobiography and an elaboration of his worldview, it serves as a disturbing harbinger of what was to come and provides some insight into the early thinking of the man most responsible for the Holocaust. Published in 1925, it became required reading during the Third Reich.
Today it is difficult, if not impossible to say, for me to say when the word “Jew” first gave me ground for special thoughts. At home I do not remember having heard the word during my father’s lifetime. I believe that the old gentleman would have regarded any special emphasis on this term as cultural backwardness. In the course of his life he had arrived at more or less cosmopolitan views which, despite his pronounced national sentiments, not only remained intact, but also affected me to some extent.
Likewise at school I found no occasion which could have led me to change this inherited picture. . . .
Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word “Jew,” with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions. This filled me with a mild distaste, and I could not rid myself of an unpleasant feeling that always came over me whenever religious quarrels occurred in my presence.
At that time I did not think anything else of the question.
There were few Jews in Linz. In the course of the centuries their outward appearance had become Europeanized and had taken on a human look; in fact, I even took them for Germans. The absurdity of this idea did not dawn on me because I saw no distinguishing feature but the strange religion. The fact that they had, as I believed, been persecuted on this account sometimes almost turned my distaste at unfavourable remarks about them into horror. . . . Then I came to Vienna. . . .
My views with regard to antisemitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all.
It cost me the greatest inner soul struggles and only after months of battle between my reason and my sentiments did my reason begin to emerge victorious. Two years later, my sentiment had followed my reason, and from then on became its most loyal guardian and sentinel.
At the time of this bitter struggle between spiritual education and cold reason, the visual instruction of the Vienna streets had performed invaluable services. There came a time when I no longer, as in the first days, wandered blindly through the mighty city; now with open eyes I saw not only the buildings but also the people.
Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought.
For, to be sure, they had not looked like this in Linz. I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form: Is this a German?
As always in such cases, I now began to try to relieve my doubts by books. . . .
I could no longer very well doubt that the objects of my study were not Germans of a special religion, but a people in themselves; for since I had begun to concern myself with this question and to take cognizance of the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in a different light than before. Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished from the rest of humanity. . . .
The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, I must say, is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these were no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with your eyes closed. Later I often grew sick to my stomach from the smell of these caftan-wearers. Added to this, there was their unclean dress and generally unheroic appearance.
All this could scarcely be called very attractive; but it became positively repulsive when, in addition to their physical uncleanliness, you discovered the moral stains on this “chosen people.”
In a short time I was made more thoughtful than ever by my slowly rising insight into the type of activity carried on by the Jews in certain fields.
Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?
If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light—a kike!
What had to be reckoned heavily against the Jews in my eyes was when I became acquainted with their activity in the press, art, literature and the theatre. All the unctuous reassurances helped little or nothing. It sufficed to look at a billboard, to study the names of the men behind the horrible trash they advertised, to make you hard for a long time to come. This was pestilence, spiritual pestilence, worse than the Black Death of olden times, and the people was being infected with it! . . .
And now I began to examine my beloved “world press” from this point of view.
And the deeper I probed, the more the object of my former admiration shrivelled. The style became more and more unbearable; I could not help rejecting the content as inwardly shallow and banal; the objectivity of exposition now seemed to me more akin to lies than honest truth; and the writers were—Jews.
The relation of the Jews to prostitution and, even more, to the white-slave traffic, could be studied in Vienna as perhaps in no other city of Western Europe, with the possible exception of the southern French ports. If you walked at night through the streets and alleys of Leopoldstadt, at every step you witnessed proceedings which remained concealed from the majority of the German people until the War gave the soldiers on the eastern front occasion to see similar things, or, better expressed, forced them to see them.
When for the first time I recognized the Jew as the cold-hearted, shameless and calculating director of this revolting vice traffic in the scum of the big city, a cold shudder ran down my back.
But then a flame flared up within me. I no longer avoided discussion of the Jewish question; no, now I sought it. And when I learned to look for the Jew in all branches of cultural and artistic life and its various manifestations, I suddenly encountered him in a place where I would least have expected to find him.
When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes. A long soul struggle had reached its conclusion. . . .
Only now did I become thoroughly acquainted with the seducer of our people. . . .
The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premiss of its existence and its culture. As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet.
If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.
Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. . . .
His unfailing instinct in such things scents the original soul in everyone, and his hostility is assured to anyone who is not spirit of his spirit. Since the Jew is not the attacked but the attacker not only anyone who attacks passes as his enemy, but also anyone who resists him. But the means with which he seeks to break such reckless but upright souls is not honest warfare, but lies and slander.
Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of the Jew, the lack of instinct and narrow-mindedness of our upper classes, make the people an easy victim for this campaign of lies. . . .
They begin to tremble before the terrible enemy and thus have become his final victim.
The Jew’s domination in the state seems so assured that now not only can he call himself a Jew again, but he ruthlessly admits his ultimate national and political designs. A section of his race openly owns itself to be a foreign people, yet even they lie. For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states; a haven for convicted criminals and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, Frenchman or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.
How close they see approaching victory can be seen by the hideous aspect which their relations with the members of other peoples takes on.
With Satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.
For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards and bastards alone.
And so he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a continuous poisoning of individuals.
And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.
He works systematically for revolutionization in a two-fold sense: economic and political.
Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary, plants a flag of revolution on the very battlefields.
In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his financial control.
In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the foundations of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter.
Culturally, he contaminates art, literature, the theatre, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature.
Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen.
Now begins the great revolution. In gaining political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears. The democratic people’s Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over peoples. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave’s lot of permanent subjugation.
The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where he killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people.
The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too.
Source: Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. London: Hutchinson, 1974, passim.
Commentary
Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is a work in which Adolf Hitler set out his philosophy and his vision for Germany. It was published in two volumes, the first on July 19, 1925, and the second on December 11, 1926. By the end of 1933, more than 1.5 million copies had been sold. From 1934, the book was figuring in school primers, and in 1936, the Ministry of the Interior recommended that registrars present a copy to every bridal couple. The first complete text in English translation did not become available until 1938.
The book consisted of autobiographical recollections intermingled with reflections on political and social principles. Right from the start, Hitler noted the significance of his birthplace, Braunau-am-Inn, on the boundary between Germany and Austria. With this, he highlighted the necessity for the two countries to be joined together as one nation.
He then explained how his time in Vienna converted him to antisemitism, as he witnessed what seemed to him to be Jewish control of Social Democratic parties, the press, and immorality. Germany’s defeat in World War I reinforced his beliefs in the notion of national betrayal by Jews, who sapped the will of the government and the middle classes to continue the war.
The extracts here show how the Jews, as a racial enemy, can simply never become Germans. Much of Mein Kampf, indeed, focused on Hitler’s views on the centrality of race thinking as the answer to all national questions. Thus, he argued, a superior race that allowed itself to interbreed would decay, and the preservation of the purity of the German race was the prime responsibility of all Germans and of the state. Racial theory must be the foundation of a new political order.
3. Decree for the Protection of the People and the State, February 28, 1933
On February 28, 1933—one day after a fire had destroyed the Reichstag—Adolf Hitler, on the pretext that communist revolution was imminent, persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to sign a decree that would suspend all the basic civil and individual liberties guaranteed under the constitution. As an emergency decree, it gave the government wide powers to ensure that threats to German society were removed. Significantly, it made no specific references to definite adversaries; while directing itself in this instance toward communism, it contained the menacing portent of later restrictions which might be applied toward other “enemies.” Its terms enabled the new regime to begin to entrench itself in office, paving the way for the Nazi dictatorship and dismantling Germany’s Weimar Republic.
On the basis of Article 48, Section 2, of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against Communist acts of violence that endanger the state:
§ 1
Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
§ 2
If any state fails to take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, the Reich government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.
State and local authorities must obey the orders decreed by the Reich government on the basis of § 2.
§ 4
Whoever provokes, appeals for, or incites the disobedience of the orders given out by the supreme state authorities or the authorities subject to them for the execution of this decree, or the orders given by the Reich government according to § 2, can be punished—insofar as the deed is not covered by other decrees with more severe punishments—with imprisonment of not less than one month, or with a fine from 150 to 15,000 reichsmarks.
Whoever endangers human life by violating § 1 is to be punished by sentence to a penitentiary, under mitigating circumstances with imprisonment of not less than six months and, when the violation causes the death of a person, with death, under mitigating circumstances with a penitentiary sentence of not less than two years. In addition, the sentence may include the confiscation of property.
Whoever provokes or incites an act contrary to the public welfare is to be punished with a penitentiary sentence, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than three months.
§ 5
The crimes which under the Criminal Code are punishable with life in a penitentiary are to be punished with death: i.e., in Sections 81 (high treason), 229 (poisoning), 306 (arson), 311 (explosion), 312 (flooding), 315, paragraph 2 (damage to railways), 324 (general public endangerment through poison).
Insofar as a more severe punishment has not been previously provided for, the following are punishable with death or with life imprisonment or with imprisonment not to exceed 15 years:
1. Anyone who undertakes to kill the Reich President or a member or a commissioner of the Reich government or of a state government, or provokes such a killing, or agrees to commit it, or accepts such an offer, or conspires with another for such a murder;
2. Anyone who under Section 115, paragraph 2, of the Criminal Code (serious rioting) or of Section 125, paragraph 2, of the Criminal Code (serious disturbance of the peace) commits these acts with arms or cooperates consciously and intentionally with an armed person;
3. Anyone who commits a kidnapping under Section 239 of the Criminal Code with the intention of making use of the kidnapped person as a hostage in the political struggle.
§ 6
This decree enters into force on the day of its promulgation.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Vol. 3. Document 1390-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 968–70.
The first step on the road to the Holocaust can be said to have taken place on the night of February 27, 1933, when the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire. The day after, on the pretext that it had been set by communists and that a left-wing revolution was imminent, the newly appointed chancellor, Adolf Hitler, persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to sign a Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. Employing the decree as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be an opponent of the Nazis, the government detained hundreds of people in the first few days, and tens of thousands more in succeeding weeks.
The Reichstag Fire Decree, so called, was also used to suppress anti-Nazi publications. As the decree was not accompanied by any written guidelines regarding implementation, wide latitude was given to local authorities when carrying out its requirements. The decree would remain in force for the duration of the Nazi era and was an important element in establishing the one-party state of the Nazis. Together with an Enabling Act of March 24, 1933, it formed the legal basis for Hitler’s dictatorship. Under its terms, the first concentration camps were established; within days, it became apparent that Jews (as political enemies) were also being targeted by the regime.
4. Article in Der Stürmer on the Hebrew Bible, January 1935
Published by the rabid antisemite Julius Streicher, Der Stürmer was newspaper replete with antisemitic rants and crude, sometimes pornographic renderings of stereotypical Jewish males ravishing innocent Aryan girls and women. Its purpose was undeniable: to arouse in its readers a visceral anti-Jewish response that would eventually—and inevitably—spill over into violence. A leitmotif of the paper was the blood libel, the charge from the Middle Ages that Jews killed Christian children to make use of their blood for the preparation of matzah, the unleavened bread eaten during the Passover festival. This short extract from 1935 reflects the attitude often expressed in Der Stürmer regarding the Hebrew Bible.
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OF THE CRIMINALS
The history book of the Jews which is usually called the “Holy Scriptures” impresses us as a horrible criminal romance . . .
This “holy” book abounds in murder, incest, fraud, theft, and indecency.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 5. Document 2697-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, p. 372.
Commentary
Undermining the authority and divinity of the Hebrew Bible related directly to the Nazi view of the Jews as inheritors of a tradition that threatened the Aryan race. The Bible was viewed by the Nazis as the founding document of the Jews’ attempt to dominate the world. Therefore, disparaging the Hebrew Bible was a means of destroying Jewish claims to an overarching morality for all humanity and, as such, provided the Nazis with a way to elevate the building of their alternative: a racial civilization built on hierarchy and dominance.
This short extract from Der Stürmer further undercuts the scriptural basis of the Bible through its reference to it as a “history book,” thereby removing it from any sort of divine authority and replacing it as a work created by humans (or, rather, subhumans). This made tangible a notion of “the Jewish enemy” so that readers could see that the Bible is in fact not divine but decadent. This is underscored through the addition of quotation marks when describing the Bible as a “holy” book.
Moreover, Streicher was happy to denigrate the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. Anyone who agrees with him that the Hebrew Bible “abounds in murder, incest, fraud, theft, and indecency” becomes complicit in the denigration; by implication, all people holding to their Christian beliefs must ipso facto stand against Nazism.
5. The Nuremberg Laws, 1935
The Nuremberg Laws were two constitutional laws issued by a special session of the Reichstag on September 15, 1935, at the annual Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg. Both were designed to further exclude Jews from public life. The first, the Reich Citizenship Law, stated that only Germans or those related by blood could be citizens of Germany, thus excluding Jews from citizenship and in so doing further defining Aryans, Jews, and Mischlinge (that is, persons of “mixed race”). The second, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, prohibited Jews from marriage with other Germans, extramarital affairs, the employment of German female domestic servants under the age of 45 in Jewish households, and the raising of the German flag by Jews. Any previous exclusions in effect for Jewish veterans of World War I were nullified. Ultimately, these laws paved the way for further exclusion of Jews and the expansion of additional antisemitic measures.
I. THE REICH CITIZENSHIP LAW OF SEPTEMBER 15, 1935
The Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is herewith promulgated.
§ 1.
(1) A subject of the State is a person who belongs to the protective union of the German Reich, and who therefore has particular obligations towards the Reich.
(2) The status of subject is acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Reich and State Law of Citizenship.
§ 2.
(1) A citizen of the Reich is only that subject who is of German or kindred blood and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both willing and able to faithfully serve the German people and Reich.
(2) The right to citizenship is acquired by the granting of Reich citizenship papers.
(3) Only the citizen of the Reich enjoys full political rights in accordance with the provision of the law.
§ 3.
The Reich Minister of the Interior in conjunction with the Deputy of the Führer will issue the necessary legal and administrative decrees for implementing and supplementing this law.
II. FIRST REGULATION TO THE REICH CITIZENSHIP LAW OF NOVEMBER 14, 1935
On the basis of § 3, Reich Citizenship Law, of September 15, 1935 (RGBl [Reich Law Gazette] I, p. 1146) the following is ordered:
§ 1.
(1) Until further regulations regarding citizenship papers are issued, all subjects of German or kindred blood who possessed the right to vote in Reichstag elections at the time the Citizenship Law came into effect shall, for the time being, possess the rights of Reich citizens. The same shall be true of those to whom the Reich Minister of the Interior, in conjunction with the Deputy of the Führer, has given preliminary citizenship.
(2) The Reich Minister of the Interior, in conjunction with the Deputy of the Führer, can withdraw preliminary citizenship.
§ 2.
(1) The regulations in § I are also valid for Reich subjects of mixed Jewish blood.
(2) An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended from one or two grandparents who were fully Jewish by race, insofar as he or she does not count as a Jew according to § 5, Paragraph 2. One grandparent shall be considered as full-blooded if he or she belonged to the Jewish religious community.
§ 3.
Only the Reich citizen, as bearer of full political rights, exercises the right to vote in political affairs or can hold public office. The Reich Minister of the Interior, or any agency empowered by him, can make exceptions during the transition period, with regard to occupying public offices. The affairs of religious organizations will not be affected.
§ 4.
(1) A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He has no right to vote in political affairs, he cannot occupy a public office.
(2) Jewish civil servants will retire as of 31 December 1935. If these civil servants served at the front in the World War, either for Germany or her allies, they will receive in full, until they reach the age limit, full pension to which they were entitled according to the last salary they received; they will, however, not advance in seniority. After reaching the age limit, their pensions will be calculated anew, according to the last salary they received, on the basis of which their pension was calculated.
(3) The affairs of religious organizations will not be affected.
(4) The employment status of teachers in Jewish public schools remains unchanged until new regulations for the Jewish school systems are issued.
§ 5.
(1) A Jew is anyone who descended from at least three grandparents who were fully Jewish by race. § 2, par. 2, second sentence will apply.
(2) A Jew is also anyone who descended from two fully Jewish grandparents, if:
(a) he belonged to the Jewish religious community at the time this law was issued or joined the community later;
(b) he was married to a Jewish person at the time the law was issued or married one subsequently;
(c) he is the offspring from a marriage with a Jew, in the sense of Section 1, which was contracted after the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor became effective (RGBl. [Reich Law Gazette] I, page 1146 of September 15, 1935);
(d) he is the offspring of an extramarital relationship with a Jew, according to Section 1, and will be born out of wedlock after July 31, 1936.
§ 6.
(1) In case Reich laws or orders by the NSDAP and its organizations make demands for racial pureness that exceed § 5, they will not be affected.
(2) Any other demands for pureness of blood that exceed § 5 can only be made with permission from the Reich Minister of the Interior and the Deputy of the Führer. If any such demands have been made, they will be void as of January 1, 1936, if they have not been requested from the Reich Minister of the Interior in agreement with the Deputy of the Führer. These requests must be made to the Reich Minister of the Interior.
§ 7.
The Führer and Reich Chancellor can grant exemptions from the regulations laid down in the law.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Vol. 4. Documents 1416-PS and 1417-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 7–10.
Commentary
The collective term “Nuremberg Laws” was the name given to two antisemitic laws presented on September 15, 1935, at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Party Rally. The first of these was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, forbidding intermarriage and extramarital sexual relations between Jews and “citizens of German blood.” It also prohibited the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households. The second was the Reich Citizenship Law, which announced that only those people of “German or kindred blood,” exhibiting appropriate conduct, were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were identified as state subjects, without citizenship rights but with obligations toward the Reich. Further, whatever previous exclusions were in effect for Jewish veterans of World War I were now nullified. A later decree was necessary to clarify or define who was Jewish for the purpose of these laws.
Many non-Jewish Germans henceforth became uncomfortable with their Jewish neighbors and gradually stopped socializing with them or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which were forced to close due to a lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in government service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and teaching, many middle-class business owners and professionals were required to take unskilled and basic employment. Soon after this, additional regulations were introduced that dismissed Jewish children from the state education system, forcing them into Jewish-only schools.
Some German Jews reacted to the Nuremberg Laws with a sense of relief; they thought that the worst was now over and that at least they finally knew where they stood and could get on with their lives, even if they had diminished rights. The Nuremberg Laws were, however, a further step in the removal of Jews from their participation in German life.
6. Article in Der Stürmer on Ritual Murder, April 1937
Der Stürmer, the Nazi Party newspaper published by Julius Streicher, was one of the primary means by which the Party disseminated its propaganda. In addition to antisemitic stereotypes, including hooked noses, obsession with money, and the carnal danger Jewish men represented for Aryan girls and women, Streicher kept alive the “Blood Libel” myth stemming from the Middle Ages – the accusation that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish boys and girls to make unleavened bread (matzah) that is eaten during Passover. The picture that Streicher paints in this article from 1937 is a classic rendering of the accusation, including references to the “Talmud Jew” and supposed prayers from verses of the Hebrew Bible.
RITUAL MURDER
The murder of the 10 years old Gertrud Lenhoff in Quirschied (Saarpfalz) . . . The Jews are our MISFORTUNE! . . .
Also the numerous confessions made by the Jews show that the execution of ritual murders is a law to the Talmud Jew. The former Chief Rabbi (and later monk) Teofiti declares that the ritual murders take place especially on the Jewish Purim (in memory of the Persian murders) and Passover (in memory of the murder of Christ).
The instructions are as follows:
The blood of the victims is to be tapped by force. On Passover, it is to be used in wine and matzos; thus, a small part of the blood is to be poured into the dough of the matzos and into the wine. The mixing is done by the Jewish head of the family.
The procedure is as follows: the family head empties a few drops of the fresh and powdered blood into the glass, wets the fingers of the left hand with it and sprays (blesses) with it everything on the table. The head of the family then says: “Dam Izzardia chynim heroff dever isyn porech harbe hossen maschus pohorus” (Exod. VII, 12) (“Thus we ask God to send the ten plagues to all enemies of the Jewish faith.”) Then they eat, and at the end the head of the family exclaims: “Sfach, chaba, moscho kol hagoym!” (“May all Gentiles perish—as the child whose blood is contained in the bread and wine!”)
The fresh (or dried and powdered) blood of the slaughtered is further used by young married Jewish couples, by pregnant Jewesses, for circumcision and so on. Ritual murder is recognized by all Talmud Jews. The Jew believes he absolves himself thus of his sins.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 5. Document 2699-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 372–73.
Commentary
The accusation that Jews engaged in ritual murder of Christians for religiously prescribed reasons seems to have first emerged in England during the 12th century. The core of the accusation was that Jews murdered Christian children at Easter in emulation of the crucifixion of Jesus; over many centuries, widely spread folktales throughout Europe added that Jews also used the blood of these murdered children for their Passover rituals, most often through mixing the blood into matzah dough so that the Jews would literally devour the Christian life force throughout the Passover festival. The libel of a Jewish quest for Christian blood—often focusing on infants or small children and at other times on virgin girls—became a central charge motivating peasant reprisals in the form of pogroms and other acts of persecution. Given the proximity of Easter and Passover, March and April became months in which anti-Jewish violence often peaked in European countries. As Christians observed the death and resurrection of Jesus (as the Church taught, at the hands of the Jews), stories that Jews were still engaging in horrific practices against the innocents stirred up the most intense antagonism toward them.
In the modern era, blood libels took on an added dimension, with racial antisemites building on the blood libel tradition in Europe in order to harass, kill, and uproot a Jewish presence in lands developing modern forms of national identity and expression. In this extract from Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher presents the classic blood libel accusation, including references to the “Talmud Jew” and fabricated prayers from verses of the Hebrew Bible, which, he writes, are recited by Jews during the Passover service in the home, known as a seder. It was a further reinforcement for readers of the beastliness of the Jews and of the Jewish religious tradition.
7. Adolf Eichmann: Report Issued on His Activities in Vienna, August 22, 1938
Addressed to the Central Security Office by Adolf Eichmann, this document details his attempts to streamline the process of emigration for both “rich and poor Jews” in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, as a result of which the Central Office “prepares 200 Jews for emigration daily by supplying them with passports and supervising their departure.”
On 22 August 1938, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna was established by orders of the Reich Commissioner for reunification of Austria with the Reich. . . .
There were more and more instances in Vienna where Jews, eager to emigrate, had to stand in line for days and weeks to arrange the necessary paperwork for their emigration. Over that time there were many failures because of lack of organization and unqualified officials. This damaged our interest in forcing the Jews to emigrate from Austria. . . .
One of the problems with the emigration of Jews from Vienna is created by the activity of lawyers. Because of the complicated system, obtaining the necessary paperwork for a passport can take up to two or three months. For example, a certificate confirming that one does not have a criminal record may take 6–8 weeks to obtain. Rich Jews therefore employ Aryan lawyers to get the papers.
These lawyers manage to obtain favorable treatment by the authorities. They or their workers will come to an office with 20–30 applications and take up a great deal of the clerks’ time, while poor Jews are standing in the street in a line that hardly moves for days. This has caused only problems. First, it has enabled the rich Jews to leave the country without problem, while the poor Jews stayed behind—this is contrary to our interest. Furthermore, it is already being said abroad that obtaining a passport in Vienna costs RM 1,000. The lawyers take enormous sums for each passport, and the rich Jews pay willingly.
Since obtaining a passport by the Central Office for Emigration takes only up to 8 days (We get the certificate from the police within 48 hours), lawyers have already approached some of the government and party offices. They have lost good business since the creation of the Central Office. Furthermore, the Central Office has not arranged for separate hours for these lawyers—a fact which increases their bitterness.
The aim of the Central Office for Emigration is to force the poor Jews to emigrate and to make the rich ones leave only if a number of poor Jews, proportionate to the rich Jews’ capital, go as well.
Prior to the creation of the Central Office, papers and passports were provided without differentiation. The first Jew to come received documents, regardless of his emigration prospects. The result was that the papers would often expire while the Jews still had no possibility to emigrate. (The police document and the certificate of tax payment is good for only 4 weeks). These Jews had to go through the same process several times until they could emigrate. This caused heavy work loads for the authorities.
The Central Office for Emigration supplies the paperwork and passports only to those Jews who can emigrate. Many Jews hold visas that are valid for a limited time only. To prevent these visas from expiring, they are given top priority. The Jewish political organizations are looking for emigration possibilities for Jews. The period when Jews emigrated in groups is over, one has to concentrate on individual emigration. The Central Office prepares 200 Jews for emigration daily by supplying them with passports and supervising their departure.
Source: Yad Vashem Archive 051/OSO B1/70, http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203297.pdf. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem Publications.
Commentary
One of the problems facing the Nazis in their attempts to force the Jews of Austria to emigrate centered on the fact that in order to do so, Jews would, for the most part, be required to visit several offices to secure a variety of permissions and the coveted document stamps that went with them. The process was unwieldy and frequently lengthy, as Jews would be required to wait for one before being able to proceed to the next.
Given this, a means was developed to streamline the emigration procedure by centralizing all the steps into one location; this became bureaucratized as the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, established by Adolf Eichmann in Vienna in the summer of 1938. Every organization associated with emigration, whether public or private, was required to have a representative at the office, which was, in turn, responsible to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service) in Berlin. One of the features of the office was that the emigration of poorer Jews was facilitated through the office taking money from wealthier Jews and rerouting it to those less well-off; in this way, all were able to leave regardless of status, while the Reich did not have to pay anything at all.
In this document, Eichmann provides a summary report of how the Central Office was established and how it operates. He states triumphantly that by focusing on individual rather than group emigration, his office can process some 200 departures per day, which should solve the problem of how to speed up the emigration of Jews. At the same time, ideally, it would make the Jews pay for the process themselves. The success of the Central Office in Vienna, indeed, could even have acted as a precedent for other, similar, offices in other parts of the Reich—an unstated hope embedded in the positive report presented here.
8. Reinhard Heydrich: Instructions, November 10, 1938
Issued by SS-Grüppenführer Reinhard Heydrich during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, this document contains the following explicit instructions: German citizens or property are not to be destroyed, Jewish businesses and apartments are not to be looted, foreign nationals (including Jews) are to be left alone, Jewish archives are to be seized, and as many Jews as possible should be imprisoned. Because of this event, Nazi statistics subsequently listed some 91 Jews killed in the attacks, with 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers destroyed such buildings while avoiding German-owned ones. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned and over 7,000 Jewish businesses damaged or destroyed.
Following the attempt on the life of Secretary of the Legation vom Rath in Paris, demonstrations against the Jews are to be expected in all parts of the Reich in the course of the coming night, November 9/10, 1938. The instructions below are to be applied in dealing with these events:
1. The Chiefs of the State Police, or their deputies, must immediately upon receipt of this telegram contact, by telephone, the political leaders in their areas—Gauleiter or Kreisleiter—who have jurisdiction in their districts and arrange a joint meeting with the inspector or commander of the Order Police to discuss the arrangements for the demonstrations. At these discussions the political leaders will be informed that the German Police has received instructions, detailed below, from the Reichsführer SS and the Chief of the German Police, with which the political leadership is requested to coordinate its own measures:
a) Only such measures are to be taken as do not endanger German lives or property (i.e., synagogues are to be burned down only where there is no danger of fire in neighboring buildings).
b) Places of business and apartments belonging to Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police is instructed to supervise the observance of this order and to arrest looters.
c) In commercial streets particular care is to be taken that non-Jewish businesses are completely protected against damage.
d) Foreign citizens—even if they are Jews—are not to be molested.
2. On the assumption that the guidelines detailed under para. 1 are observed, the demonstrations are not to be prevented by the Police, which is only to supervise the observance of the guidelines.
3. On receipt of this telegram Police will seize all archives to be found in all synagogues and offices of the Jewish communities so as to prevent their destruction during the demonstrations. This refers only to material of historical value, not to contemporary tax records, etc. The archives are to be handed over to the locally responsible officers of the SD.
4. The control of the measures of the Security Police concerning the demonstrations against the Jews is vested in the organs of the State Police, unless inspectors of the Security Police have given their own instructions. Officials of the Criminal Police, members of the SD, of the Reserves and the SS in general may be used to carry out the measures taken by the Security Police.
5. As soon as the course of events during the night permits the release of the officials required, as many Jews in all districts—especially the rich—as can be accommodated in existing prisons are to be arrested. For the time being only healthy male Jews, who are not too old, are to be detained. After the detentions have been carried out the appropriate concentration camps are to be contacted immediately for the prompt accommodation of the Jews in the camps. Special care is to be taken that the Jews arrested in accordance with these instructions are not ill-treated.
Source: Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981, pp. 102–4. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem Publications.
Commentary
The Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass (a sarcastic Nazi term for the largest prewar pogrom against the Jews of Germany), took place on the night of November 9 to 10, 1938. Supposedly conducted in retaliation for the murder of the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by 17-year-old Jewish émigré Hershel Grynszpan, the pogrom was orchestrated behind the scenes by Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler’s apparent consent.
In this document, Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service), issues orders to all state police and SD leaders regarding how they are to proceed during the unfolding events of the night. While the document counsels a number of ways in which the police should be wary of allowing the violence to spread, Heydrich does not balk when it comes to the Jews; hence, while measures are to be taken that do not endanger German lives or property, “synagogues are to be burned down” but “only where there is no danger of fire in neighboring buildings.” The overall result, for the Jews, was catastrophic. Even SS reports on November 11 were damning. Among the Jewish properties either vandalized or totally destroyed were 815 shops, 29 department stores, 171 dwellings, and 267 synagogues.
Further, Heydrich’s instructions to the police were that the anti-Jewish “demonstrations”—presumably demonstrations of popular wrath against the Jews for vom Rath’s murder—should not be prevented. The police were only to serve in a supervisory capacity for the sake of maintaining good order.
Nazi figures gave 91 Jews officially listed as killed during the demonstrations, although this is unquestionably an underestimation. Certainly, more than 30,000 Jews were arrested on the night and in the days immediately following, with tens of thousands more subsequently. Many were imprisoned in the concentration camps at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald, and perhaps up to 1,000 lost their lives in the weeks that followed. The events of the Kristallnacht are now understood to have been a harbinger for the Holocaust, which was to come within a few years.
9. Extracts from a Conference on the Jewish Question Chaired by Hermann Göring, November 12, 1938
In a three-and-a-half-hour conference led by Hermann Göring, head of the Four-Year Plan and Number Two man in the Third Reich, discussion was held in response to Hitler’s request that “the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another.” The intention was to further isolate the Jewish community economically, in an effort to hasten Jewish emigration. One of the principal concerns of the meeting was to ensure that German insurance companies would not pay members of the Jewish community for the extensive destruction done to their homes, businesses, and synagogues that had occurred during the Kristallnacht of two days earlier. Another area of significant discussion was the “aryanizing” of Jewish stores, factories, and large industrial concerns, as well as the imposition of various restrictions to be imposed on Jews in public life.
Gentlemen! Today’s meeting is of a decisive nature. I have received a letter written on the Führer’s orders by the Stabsleiter of the Führer’s deputy Bormann, requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another. And yesterday once again did the Führer request by phone for me to take coordinated action in the matter.
Since the problem is mainly an economic one, it is from the economic angle that it shall have to be tackled. Naturally a number of legal measures shall have to be taken which fall into the sphere of the Minister for Justice and into that of the Minister of the Interior; and certain propaganda measures shall be taken care of by the Minister for Propaganda. The Minister for Finance and the Minister for Economic Affairs shall take care of problems falling in their respective resorts.
In the meeting, in which we first talked about this question and came to the decision to aryanize the German economy, to take the Jew out of it, and put him into our debit ledger, was one in which, to our shame, we only made pretty plans, which were executed very slowly. We then had a demonstration, right here in Berlin, we told the people that something decisive would be done, but again nothing happened. We have had this affair in Paris now, more demonstrations followed and this time something decisive must be done!
Because, gentlemen, I have had enough of these demonstrations! They don’t harm the Jew but me, who is the last authority for coordinating the German economy.
If today, a Jewish shop is destroyed, if goods are thrown into the street, the insurance company will pay for the damages, which the Jew does not even have; and furthermore goods of the consumer goods belonging to the people, are destroyed. If in the future, demonstrations which are necessary, occur, then, I pray, that they be directed, so as not to hurt us.
Because it’s insane to clean out and burn a Jewish warehouse then have a German insurance company make good the loss. And the goods which I need desperately, whole bales of clothing and what-not, are being burned; and I miss them everywhere.
I may as well burn the raw materials before they arrive. The people of course, do not understand that; therefore we must make laws which will show the people once and for all, that something is being done.
I should appreciate it very much if for once, our propaganda would make it clear that it is unfortunately not the Jew who has to suffer in all this, but the German insurance companies.
I am not going to tolerate a situation in which the insurance companies are the ones who suffer. Under the authority invested in me, I shall issue a decree, and I am, of course, requesting the support of the competent Government agencies, so that everything shall be processed through the right channels and the insurance companies will not be the ones who suffer.
It may be, though, that these insurance companies may have insurance in foreign countries. If that is the case, foreign bills of exchange would be available which I would not want to lose. That shall have to be checked. For that reason, I have asked Mr. Hilgard of the insurance company, to attend, since he is best qualified to tell us to what extent the insurance companies are protected against damage, by having taken out insurance with other companies. I would not want to miss this, under any circumstances.
I should not want to leave any doubt, gentlemen, as to the aim of today’s meeting. We have not come together merely to talk again, but to make decisions, and I implore the competent agencies to take all measures for the elimination of the Jew from German economy and to submit them to me, as far as it is necessary.
The fundamental idea in this program of elimination of the Jew from German economy is first, the Jew being ejected from the Economy transfers his property to the State. He will be compensated. The compensation is to be listed in the debit ledger and shall bring a certain percentage of interest. The Jew shall have to live out of this interest. It is a foregone conclusion that this aryanizing, if it is to be done quickly, cannot be made in the Ministry for Economy in Berlin. That way, we would never finish.
On the other hand, it is very necessary to have safety precautions so that the lower echelons, Statthalter, and Gauleiter will not do things unreasonably. One must issue correction directives, immediately.
The aryanizing of all the larger establishments, naturally, is to be my lot—the Ministry for Economy will designate, which and how many there are—it must not be done by a Statthalter or his lower echelons, since these things reach into the export trade, and cause great problems, which the Statthalter can neither observe, nor solve from his place.
It is my lot, so that the damage will not be greater than the profit, which we are striving for.
It is obvious gentlemen that the Jewish stores are for the people, and not the stores. Therefore, we must begin here, according to the rules previously laid down.
The Minister for Economic Affairs shall announce which stores he’ll want to close altogether. These stores are excluded from aryanizing at once. Their stocks are to be made available for sale in other stores; what cannot be sold, shall be processed through the “Winterhilfe” or taken care of otherwise. However, the sales values of these articles shall always be considered, since the State is not to suffer but should profit through this transformation. For the chain and department stores—I speak now only of that, what can be seen, certain categories have to be established, according to the importance of the various branches.
The trustee of the State will estimate the value of the property and decide what amount the Jew shall receive. Naturally, this amount is to be set as low as possible. The representative of the State shall then turn the establishment over to the “Aryan” proprietor, that is, the property shall be sold according to its real value.
There begins the difficulties. It is easily understood that strong attempts will be made to get all these stores to party-members and to let them have some kind of compensations. I have witnessed terrible things in the past; little chauffeurs of Gauleiters have profited so much by these transactions that they have now about half a million. You, gentlemen, know it. Is that correct?
(Assent)
Of course, things like that are impossible. I shall not hesitate to act ruthlessly in any case where such a trick is played. If the individual involved is prominent, I shall see the Führer within two hours and report to him.
We shall have to insist upon it, that the Aryan taking over the establishment is of the branch and knows his job. Generally speaking he is the one who must pay for the store with his own money. In other words, an ordinary business transaction is to be sought—one merchant selling, the other one buying a business. If there are party members among the contenders, they are to be preferred, that is if they have the same qualifications: first shall come the one who had the most damage, and secondly, selection should be according to length of Party membership.
Of course, there may be exceptions. There are party-members who, as may be proven, lost their business concessions by action of the Schuschnigg or Prague Government, and so went bankrupt. Such a man has naturally first option on a store for sale, and he shall receive help if he does not have the means to help himself. The trustee of the State can justify this help, if he is more business like in the transfer. This party-member should have the chance to buy the store for as cheap a price as possible. In such a case the State will not receive the full price, but only the amount the Jew received. Such a buyer may even receive a loan besides, so that he will get off to a good start.
I wish to make it clear that such a proceeding shall only be legal if the party-member has once owned such a store. For example, a party-member was the owner of a stationery store, and Schuschnigg took away the concession to operate it so that the man lost the store and went bankrupt. Now, if a Jewish stationery store is being aryanized, this party-member should get the store on conditions which he’ll be able to fulfill. Such a case shall be the only exception though, in all other cases the procedure shall be of a strictly businesslike nature whereby the party-member, like I said before, shall have the preference, if he has the same qualifications as any other candidate, who is not a member of the party.
When selling for the actual value we shall find only about 60 Aryans ready to take over 100 Jewish stores. I don’t think that we have a German for every Jewish store. You must not forget that the Jew sees his main activity in the field of trade, and that he owns 90% of it. I doubt that we’d have a demand big enough. I even doubt that we’d have enough people, particularly now since everybody has found his field of work.
Therefore, I ask the Minister for Economy to go beyond what we think ought to be done for the sake of the principle, in liquidating the establishments. I ask him to go further, even though there won’t be any candidates. That’ll be perfectly alright.
The transfer of stores and establishments shall have to be executed by the lower echelons, not through Berlin but through the Gaue and through the Reichstatthalterschaft. Therein shall be the seat of the members of the Board of Trustees, even if it consists of a few people only. The Statthalter and his people cannot do this job; the trustees will have to tackle it. But the Statthalter shall be the authority which supervises, according to the regulations given him, the trustees, particularly in dealings such as the transfer to party-members.
Naturally, these establishments cannot disappear all at once but we’ll have to start by Monday, in a manner that shall make it obvious that a change has begun to materialize. Besides that, certain stores could be closed which will make things here easier.
Another point! I have noticed that Aryans took over a Jewish store and were then so clever to keep the name of the Jewish store as “formerly,” or kept it altogether. That must not be; I cannot permit it. Because it may happen—what has just happened—stores were looted because their signboards bore Jewish names—because they had once been Jewish, but had been “aryanized” a long time ago. Names of former Jewish firms shall have to disappear completely, and the German shall have to come forward with his or his firm’s name. I ask you to carry this out quite definitely. That much then regarding aryanizing of stores and wholesale establishments, particularly in regard to signboards and of all that is obvious!
Of the consequences resulting from this for the Jew, I shall speak later, because this is connected with other things.
Now for the factories. As for the smaller and medium ones, two things shall have to be made clear.
1. Which factories do I not need at all—which are the ones where productions could be suspended? Could they not be put to another use? If not, the factories will be razed immediately.
2. In case the factory should be needed, it will be turned over to Aryans in the same manner as the stores. All these measures have to be taken quickly, since Aryan employees are concerned everywhere. I’d like to say right now that Aryan employees shall have to be given employment immediately after the Jewish factory is closed. Considering the amount of labor we need these days, it should be a trifle to keep these people, even in their own branches. As I have just said; if the factory is necessary, it will be aryanized. If there is no need for it, it being abandoned shall be part of the procedure of transforming establishments not essential, for our national welfare into one that is essential for it—a procedure that shall take place within the next few weeks. For it, I shall still need very much space and very many factories.
If such a factory is to be transformed or razed, the first thing to be done is check the equipment. The questions arising will be: Where can this equipment be used? Could it be used after the place is transformed? Where else might it be needed badly? Where could the machinery be set up again? It follows that aryanizing factories will be an even more difficult task than the aryanizing of stores.
Take now the larger factories which are run solely by a Jewish owner, without control by a Board of Directors; or take corporations where the Jews might be in the Supervisory Council or Board of Directors. There the solution is very simple: the factory can be compensated in the same manner as in the sale of stores and factories; that is, at a rate which we shall determine, and the trustee shall take over the Jew’s interest as well as his shares, which he in turn may sell or transfer to the State, which will then dispose of them. So, if I have a big factory, which belonged to a Jew or a Jewish corporation, and the Jew leaves, perhaps with his sons who were employed there, the factory will still continue to operate. Maybe a director will have to be appointed because the Jew has run the factory himself. But otherwise, particularly if the maintenance of the establishment is very essential everything will run smoothly.
Everything is very simple. I now have his shares. I may give them to some Aryan or to another group or I may keep them. The State takes them over and offers them at the stock market, if they are acceptable there and if it so desires, or it makes use of them in some other way.
Now, I shall talk of the very big establishments, those in which the Jew is in the Board of Directors, in which he holds shares etc., and so is either the owner or one of the co-owners; in any case in which he is greatly interested. There too, things are comparatively simple; he delivers all of his shares which shall be bought at a price fixed by the trustee. So the Jew gets into the account book. The shares shall be handled like I’ve just explained. These cases cannot be taken care of by the Gaue and Reichsstatthalter, but only by us here on top; because we are the only ones to decide where these factories are to be transferred to, how they may be affiliated with other establishments or to what an extent the State shall keep them or hand them over to another establishment belonging to the State. All this can only be decided here. Of course, the Gauleiter and Statthalter will be glad to get hold of the shares, and they’ll make great promises to beautify our capital cities, etc. I know it all! It won’t go! We must agree on a clear action that shall be profitable to the Reich.
The same procedure shall be applied where the Jew has a share in, or owns property of German economy. I am not competent enough to tell off hand in what forms that might be the case, and to what an extent he’ll have to lose it. Anyway, the Jew must be evicted pretty fast from German economy.
Now, the foreign Jews. There we’ll have to make distinctions between the Jews who have always been foreigners—and who shall have to be treated according to the laws we arranged with their respective countries. But regarding those Jews who were Germans, have always lived in Germany and have acquired foreign citizenship during the last year, only because they wanted to play safe. I ask you not to give them any consideration. We’ll finish with these. Or have you any misgivings? We shall try to induce them through slight, and then through stronger pressure, and through clever maneuvering—to let themselves be pushed out voluntarily. . . .
Goebbels: In almost all German cities synagogues are burned. New, various possibilities exist to utilize the space where the synagogues stood. Some cities want to build parks in their place, others want to put up new buildings.
Goering: How many synagogues were actually burned?
Heydrich: Altogether there are 101 synagogues destroyed by fire; 76 synagogues demolished; and 7,500 stores ruined in the Reich.
Goering: What do you mean “destroyed by fire”?
Heydrich: Partly, they are razed, and partly gutted.
Goebbels: I am of the opinion that this is our chance to dissolve the synagogues. All these not completely intact, shall be razed by the Jews. The Jews shall pay for it. There in Berlin, the Jews are ready to do that. The synagogues which burned in Berlin are being leveled by the Jews themselves. We shall build parking lots in their places or new buildings. That ought to be the criterion for the whole country, the Jews shall have to remove the damaged or burned synagogues, and shall have to provide us with ready free space. . . .
I deem it necessary to issue a decree forbidding the Jews to enter German theaters, movie houses, and circuses. I have already issued such a decree under the authority of the law of the chamber for culture. Considering the present situation of the theaters, I believe we can afford that. Our theaters are overcrowded, we have hardly any room. I am of the opinion that it is not possible to have Jews sitting next to Germans in movies and theaters. One might consider, later on, to let the Jews have one or two movie houses here in Berlin, where they may see Jewish movies. But in German theaters they have no business anymore.
Furthermore, I advocate that the Jews be eliminated from all positions in public life in which they may prove to be provocative. It is still possible today that a Jew shares a compartment in a sleeping car with a German. Therefore, we need a decree by the Reich Ministry for Communications stating that separate compartments for Jews shall be available; in cases where compartments are filled up, Jews cannot claim a seat. They shall be given a separate compartment only after all Germans have secured seats. They shall not mix with Germans, and if there is no more room, they shall have to stand in the corridor.
Goering: In that case, I think it would make more sense to give them separate compartments.
Goebbels: Not if the train is overcrowded!
Goering: Just a moment. There’ll be only one Jewish coach. If that is filled up, the other Jews will have to stay at home.
Goebbels: Suppose, though, there won’t be many Jews going on the express train to Munich, suppose there would be two Jews in the train and the other compartments would be overcrowded. These two Jews would then have a compartment all themselves. Therefore, Jews may claim a seat only after all Germans have secured a seat.
Goering: I’d give the Jews one coach or one compartment. And should a case like you mention arise and the train be overcrowded, believe me, we won’t need a law. We’ll kick him out and he’ll have to sit all alone in the toilet all the way!
Goebbels: I don’t agree. I don’t believe in this. There ought to be a law. Furthermore, there ought to be a decree barring Jews from German beaches and resorts. . . .
Goering: Particularly here in the Admiralspalast very disgusting things have happened lately.
Goebbels: Also at the Wannsee beach. A law which definitely forbids the Jews to visit German resorts!
Goering: We could give them their own.
Goebbels: It would have to be considered whether we’d give them their own or whether we should turn a few German resorts over to them, but not the finest and best, so we cannot say the Jews go there for recreation.
It’ll also have to be considered if it might not become necessary to forbid the Jews to enter the German forests. In the Grunewald, whole herds of them are running around. It is a constant provocation and we are having incidents all the time. The behavior of the Jews is so inciting and provocative that brawls are a daily routine.
Goering: We shall give the Jews a certain part of the forest, and the Alpers shall take care of it that various animals that look damned much like Jews, – the Elk has such a crooked nose, – get there also and become acclimated.
Goebbels: I think this behavior is provocative. Furthermore, Jews should not be allowed to sit around in German parks. I am thinking of the whispering campaign on the part of Jewish women in the public gardens at Fehrbelliner Platz. They go and sit with German mothers and their children and begin to gossip and incite.
Goebbels: I see in this a particularly grave danger. I think it is imperative to give the Jews certain public parks, not the best ones—and tell them: “You may sit on these benches” these benches shall be marked “For Jews only.” Besides that they have no business in German parks. Furthermore, Jewish children are still allowed in German schools. That’s impossible. It is out of the question that any boy should sit beside a Jewish boy in a German gymnasium and receive lessons in German history. Jews ought to be eliminated completely from German schools; they may take care of their own education in their own communities.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 4. Document 1816-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 425–57.
Commentary
Immediately after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9 to 10, 1938, Hermann Göring convened a meeting, the intention of which was to discuss what should happen next. The most pressing matter related to the economy, which was not surprising, given that Göring was head of the Four-Year Plan and that Germany was suffering from an acute shortage of foreign exchange. The fear of a flight of Jewish capital, linked to the added concern that there would be massive insurance claims stemming from the pogrom, led to the decision to hasten the program of Aryanizing the economy—that is, transferring all Jewish assets to non-Jewish or state control.
The extracts here, taken from the record of meeting, not only contain Göring’s lengthy address to those present but also a discussion that includes Göring, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels. Of particular importance is that part of the dialogue that moves beyond economic matters and considers discriminatory measures that can be introduced to cut Jews out of German life altogether: from separate carriages for Jews on trains, to distinctive park benches, to forbidding Jews to use theaters, beaches, and resorts, and to stop them from even entering forests.
The wide-ranging considerations that took place at this meeting were a taste of worse to come for the Jews, as they reinforced Nazi thoughts on the best ways to make Jewish lives so intolerable that the Jews would want to leave on their own accord. At this stage, there was no discussion of driving the Jews out; rather, the focus was on splitting the Jews off from any form of participation in German daily life. Henceforth, separate and thoroughly unequal existences would characterize the Aryan and Jewish populations in Germany, and if any should wish to leave as a result, so much the better. Eventually, it was hoped, the Jews would see that remaining in Germany was a thoroughly unviable proposition.
10. Regulation for the Elimination of Jews from the Economic Life of Germany, November 12, 1938
This document, issued by Hermann Göring and consisting of four regulations, relates to the implementation of the Four-Year Plan of October 18, 1936. In it, Jews are forbidden to operate and advertise retail stores, mail-order houses or sales agencies, run such enterprises, or be employed in any executive capacity in commercial venues.
On the basis of the regulation for the implementation of the Four-Year Plan of October 18, 1936 (Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 887), the following is decreed:
§ 1
(1) From January 1, 1939, Jews (§ 5 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law of November 14, 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 1333) are forbidden to operate retail stores, mail-order houses, or sales agencies, or to carry on a trade [craft] independently.
(2) They are further forbidden, from the same day on, to offer for sale goods or services, to advertise these, or to accept orders at markets of all sorts, fairs or exhibitions.
(3) Jewish trade enterprises (Third Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law of June 14, 1938—Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 627) which violate this decree will be closed by police.
§ 2
(1) From January 1, 1939, a Jew can no longer be the head of an enterprise within the meaning of the Law of January 20, 1934, for the Regulation of National Work (Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 45).
(2) Where a Jew is employed in an executive position in a commercial enterprise he may be given notice to leave in six weeks. At the expiration of the term of the notice all claims of the employee based on his contract, especially those concerning pension and compensation rights, become invalid.
(1) A Jew cannot be a member of a cooperative.
(2) The membership of Jews in cooperatives expires on December 31, 1938. No special notice is required.
§ 4
The Reich Minister of Economy, in coordination with the Ministers concerned, is empowered to publish regulations for the implementation of this decree. He may permit exceptions under the Law if these are required as the result of the transfer of a Jewish enterprise to non-Jewish ownership, for the liquidation of a Jewish enterprise or, in special cases, to ensure essential supplies.
Source: Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981, pp. 115–6. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem Publications.
Commentary
Proceeding from Göring’s conference of the same day (see Document 9, above), this document is a regulation dated November 12, 1938, issued in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht. It embodies some of the preferences for Aryanization articulated by Göring at his meeting, specifically, in this case, the exclusion of Jews from all forms of economic enterprise, such as retail or other commercial activities. In addition, Jews were forbidden from serving in executive roles in any business-related enterprises.
The impact of this regulation for many German Jews was both profound and catastrophic. While large numbers of Jews were engaged in the professions, many others were merchants or otherwise occupied in commercial activities. Throwing them out of their means of earning a livelihood was a further reinforcement for them—if one was needed—that they no longer had a future in Germany and should immediately try to find a way to leave. Moreover, that this regulation should be handed down while they were still trying to absorb the shocks of Kristallnacht was a double blow. The “crystals,” indeed, were all too frequently shards of glass from shattered windows of Jewish stores and other commercial enterprises.
This regulation, therefore, was a major prewar antisemitic measure. Its intention was twofold: to grab Jewish wealth for the Nazi state and, by doing so, to render Jewish life in Germany that much less sustainable.
11. Circular on “The Jewish Question as a Factor in German Foreign Policy in the Year 1938,” January 25, 1939
In the year 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria, was handed the Sudetenland, and initiated the Kristallnacht pogrom. In addition, the Evian Conference was held, at which no country expressed willingness to take in additional Jewish refugees. This document provides an overview of German foreign policy in 1938 as it was impacted by the Reich’s desire to force the emigration of Jews to countries outside the Reich. Much of it focuses on the disposition of Jewish property upon emigration. The question of a Jewish state in Palestine is also referenced and found to be unacceptable, while noting the rise of antisemitism wherever Jewish immigrants have relocated outside of the Reich.
It is certainly no co-incidence that the fateful year 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the “idea of Greater Germany,” since the Jewish policy was both the basis and consequence of the events of the year 1938. The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy and culture paralyzed the power and will of the German people to rise again more perhaps even than the power-policy opposition of the former enemy allied powers of the World War. The healing of this sickness among the people was therefore certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which in the year 1938 resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany, in defiance of the world. . . .
The necessity for a radical solution of the Jewish question arose however also as a consequence of the foreign political development, which resulted in a further 200,000 Jews in Austria in addition to the 500,000 of the Jewish Faith living in the Old Reich. The influence of Jewry on Austrian economy which had grown to enormous proportions under the Schuschnigg Regime, made immediate measures necessary, with the aim of excluding Jewry from German economy and utilizing Jewish property in the interests of the community. The action carried out as reprisal for the murder of Legation Counsellor vom Rath accelerated this process to such an extent that Jewish shops—till then with the exception of foreign business—disappeared from the streets completely. The liquidation of the Jewish wholesale trade, manufacturing trade, and of houses and real estate in the hands of Jews, will gradually reach a point where in a conceivable time there will no longer be any talk of Jewish property in Germany. Nevertheless it must be emphasized that this is no seizure of Jewish property without compensation, as for instance the confiscation of Church Property during the French revolution. On the contrary the dispossessed Jew receives Reich Bonds for his goods, and the interest is credited to him.
The final goal of German Jewish Policy is the emigration of all the Jews living in Reich territory. It is foreseen that already the thorough measures in the economic sphere, which have prevented the Jew from earning and made him live on his dividends, will further the desire to emigrate. Looking back on the last 5 years since the assumption of power, it is, however, obvious that neither the Law for the Reestablishing of the Professional Character of the Civil Service nor the Nurnberg Jewish laws with their executive regulations, which prevented any tendency of Jewry being assimilated, contributed to any extent to the emigration of German Jews. On the contrary every period of domestic political tranquility has resulted in such a stream of Jewish immigrants returning, that the Gestapo has been obliged to put Jewish immigrants with German passports into a training camp for political supervision.
The Jew was excluded from politics and culture. But until 1938 his powerful economic position in Germany was unbroken, and thereby his obstinate resolve to hold out until “better times” came. Indicative of the tactics of this “delaying” resistance is the programme of a Jewish Party recently formed in Poland, to fight against all Polish measures aimed at Jewish emigration. As long as the Jew can earn money in Germany, then in the opinion of World Jewry the Jewish bastion in Germany need not be given up.
But the Jew has underestimated the consequences and the strength of the National Socialist purpose. The powerful Jewish positions in Vienna and Prague collapsed in 1938 at the same time as the system of states in Central Europe created at Versailles to keep Germany down. Italy stood at Germany’s side, with her racial Laws in the fight against Jewry. An expert on the Jewish question, Prof. Goga took over the Government in Bukarest with a programme aimed against Jewry, without however being able to carry it out because of overwhelming international pressure from Paris and London. Jewry in Hungary and Poland was subjected to special laws. Everywhere the success of German foreign policy now begins to shake Jewish strongholds which have been established for hundreds of years from Munich and in far off States, like the tremours of an earthquake.
It is also understandable that World Jewry, “which has selected America as its Headquarters” regards as its own downfall the Munich Agreement, which in American opinion signifies the collapse of the democratic front in Europe. For the system of parliamentary democracy has always, as experience proves, helped the Jews to wealth and political power at the expense of the people in whose country they live. It is certainly the first time in history that Jewry must evacuate a secure position.
This resolution was first formed in 1938. It showed itself in the efforts of the western democracies particularly those of the United States of America, to put the now finally determined Jewish withdrawal from Germany, in other words Jewish emigration, under international control and protection. The American president Roosevelt “who it is well known is surrounded by a whole row of exponents of Jewry among his closest confidants” called a State Conference as early as the middle of 1938 to discuss the refugee questions, which was held in Evian without any particular results. Both of the questions, the answering of which is the first essential for organized Jewish emigration remained unanswered: firstly the question of how this emigration should be organized and financed and secondly the question: emigrate to where?
In answer to the first question, International Jewry in particular did not appear willing to contribute. On the contrary the Conference—and later the Committee formed by it in London under the direction of Rublee, an American—regarded its main task as that of forcing Germany by international pressure to release Jewish property to the greatest possible extent. In other words Germany was to pay for the emigration of her 700,000 Jews with German national property. It is at the same time to be doubted whether International Jewry ever seriously desired the mass emigration of their fellow Jews from Germany and other states at all, unless there was an equivalent of a Jewish State. The tactics hitherto employed in Jewish proposals, were in every case aimed less at mass emigration of Jews than at the transfer of Jewish property.
It goes without saying, that the transfer of even a fraction of Jewish property, would be impossible from the point of view of foreign exchange. The financing of a mass emigration of German Jews is therefore still obscure. Questions could be answered casually thus, that Germany for her part reckoned that International Jewry—particularly relatives of Jews who have emigrated—would support this emigration as vigorously as it made it possible for its destitute fellow Jews to immigrate to Germany, at a time when Germany was so weak that she could not stop the stream of Jews from the East. It should be emphasized, however, that according to police and taxation records, the greater proportion of Jews immigrated to Germany without means and made money in a few years or decades, while the German people lost their possessions as a result of the reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles or joined the ranks of the unemployed. Consequently Germany for her part had no sympathy for the compassion, with which an ostensibly humanitarian world accuses Germany of illegally appropriating property which was taken away from the German people by Jewish business methods.
The second question, to what country should an organized Jewish emigration be directed, could similarly not be answered by the Evian Conference, as each of the countries taking part having announced that they were fundamentally concerned with the refugee problem, declared that they were not in a position to take large numbers of Jewish emigrants into their territory. After over 100,000 Jews even in 1933/34 had succeeded either legally or illegally in escaping abroad and establishing themselves in someone else’s country either with the help of their Jewish relatives living abroad or circles sympathetically disposed from a humanitarian point of view, almost every State in the World has in the meantime hermetically sealed its borders against these parasitical Jewish intruders. The problem of Jewish emigration is therefore for all practical purposes at a standstill. Many States have already become so cautious, that they demand a permit made out by German authorities from Jews travelling in the ordinary way with German passports, saying that there is nothing against them returning.
The emigration movement of only about 100,000 Jews has already sufficed to awaken the interest if not the understanding of many countries in the Jewish danger. We can estimate that here the Jewish question will extend to a problem of international politics when large numbers of Jews from Germany, Poland, Hungary and Rumania are put on the move as a result of increasing pressure from the people of the countries where they are living. Even for Germany the Jewish problem will not be solved when the last Jew has left German soil.
It is even today an important duty of German policy to control and when possible direct the flow of Jewish emigration to be sure there is no incentive to cooperate with other countries such as Poland, Hungary and Rumania, who themselves are striving for the emigration of the Jewish sections of their population, in an attempt to solve this problem. From experience with this procedure interests clash, although directed towards the same goal, and retard the realization of Germany’s urgent claim for German Jews to be admitted into other particular countries.
It is true that the Rumanian Government sent an official appeal to the Reich Government in the name of human ethics and justice, to join with them in an international action to solve the Jewish question. On the other hand, Poland at the end of October last year issued a decree, the execution of which has made it practically impossible for 60,000 Jews of Polish Nationality residing in Germany to return to Poland. As is well known, the Reich Government had then to decide to deport to Poland 60,000 Jews of Polish Nationality who will be followed by their families, shortly before the Polish Decree came into force. The Hungarian Government, it is true, appreciates the German Jewish policy in so far as they themselves have in mind the “Aryanization” of Hungarian-Jewish businesses in Germany, that is, Jewish owners of firms will be replaced by Hungarians. In general, however, it is apparent that the States concerned are more egotistically interested in deporting their own Jewish elements than in any international solution. Germany will therefore take the initiative herself, in order next of all to find ways, means and destination for Jewish emigration from Germany.
Palestine—which has already become the slogan of world opinion, as the land for the emigrants—cannot be considered as the target for Jewish emigration, because it is incapable of absorbing a mass influx of Jews. Under the pressure of Arab resistance, the British Mandatory Government has restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine to the minimum. For the time being Jewish emigration to Palestine was helped to a great extent, as far as Germany was concerned, by the signing of an agreement with the representatives of Jewry in Palestine, which made it possible to transfer Jewish property in the form of additional exports (Haavara-Agreement). Apart from the fact that emigration was made possible by this method for a small number of wealthy Jews only, but not for the mass of Jews without means, [Pencil note: Are there such people?] there were fundamental considerations of foreign policy against this type of emigration: the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany, contributed to no small extent to the building of a Jewish State in Palestine. Germany must regard the forming of a Jewish State, as dangerous, which even in miniature would form just such an operational base as the Vatican for political Catholicism. The realization that World Jewry will always be the irreconcilable enemy of the Third Reich, forces the decision to prevent any strengthening of the Jewish position. A Jewish State however would bring an international increase in power to World Jewry. Alfred Rosenberg expressed this idea in his speech in Detmold on 15 January this year as follows:
“Jewry is striving today for a Jewish State in Palestine. Not to give Jews all over the world a homeland but for other reasons: World Jewry must have a miniature State, from which to send exterritorial ambassadors and representatives to all countries of the world and through these be able to further their lust for power. But more than anything else they want a Jewish centre, a Jewish State in which they can house the Jewish swindlers from all parts of the world, who are hunted by the Police of other countries, issue them new passports and then send them to other parts of the world. It is to be desired, that those people who are friendly disposed to Jews, above all the Western Democracies who have so much space in all parts of the world at their disposal, place an area outside Palestine for the Jews, of course in order to establish a Jewish Reserve and not a Jewish State.”
That is the programme expressing the foreign policy attitude of Germany towards the Jewish question. Germany is very interested in maintaining the dispersal of Jewry. The calculation, that as a consequence boycott groups and anti-German centres would be formed all over the world, disregards the following fact which is already apparent, the influx of Jews in all parts of the world invokes the opposition of the native population and thereby forms the best propaganda for the German Jewish policy.
In North America, in South America, in France, in Holland, Scandinavia and Greece, everywhere, wherever the flood of Jewish immigrants reaches, there is today already a visible increase in anti-semitism. A task of the German foreign policy must be to further this wave of anti-semitism. This will be achieved less by German propaganda abroad, than by the propaganda which the Jew is forced to circulate in his defense. In the end, its effects will recoil on themselves. The reports from German authorities abroad, emphasize the correctness of this interpretation.
The press and official correspondents continually report antisemitic demonstrations by the population of North America. It is perhaps indicative of the domestic political development in USA, that the listening-audience of the “Radio Priest” Coughlin, who is well known to be Anti-Jewish, has grown to over 20 millions. The Embassy in Montevideo reported on 12 December last year “that the Jewish influx continues for months, week by week. It goes without saying, that anti-semitism is growing”—Salonica reported on 30 November 1938: “that forces are at work to stir up the hate against the Jews” and that at the same time Greek Freemasonry is endeavoring to stem the anti-semitic movement. In France, the Paris Town Council (Stadtversammlung) was in April of this year to discuss a proposal, by which the naturalization of Jews was in future to be refused. The meeting on the Jewish question ended with the speaker being beaten up—Lyon reported on 20 December last year: “The immigration of Jewish refugees has lately led to undesirable occurrences. The antipathy towards the new intruders based on business and competitive grounds, which is general throughout France, is unmistakable.” This aversion has grown to such an extent meantime that a Jewish defense has already been organized against the anti-semitism in France (Report Paris dated 19 November last year).—The Embassy at The Hague reported on 30 December last year: “Under the pressure of countless immigrants from Germany, who make themselves objectionable particularly in Amsterdam antisemitism is growing very much in Holland. And if this continues, it can easily come to pass that Dutchmen will not only appreciate Germany’s action against the Jews but will also find themselves wishing to do the same as we.”—The embassy at Oslo reported on 8th April last year: “While only a few years ago, the streets of Oslo were hardly marred by Jews at all, lately a great change has come about here. On the streets, in restaurants and above all in the coffee houses, Jews sit around in hideous cluster. The Norwegians are being crowded out, more and more. The Norwegian Press, which formerly did not understand the Jewish question at all, suddenly realized what it meant to have the Children of Israel invade the country like a swarm of locusts. It will be a very salutary lesson, which is being meted out to the Norwegians.”
These examples from reports from authorities abroad, can, if desired, be amplified. They confirm the correctness of the expectation, that criticism of the measures for excluding Jews from German Lebensraum which were misunderstood in many countries for lack of evidence would only be temporary and would swing in the other direction the moment the population saw with its own eyes and thus learned, what the Jewish danger was to them. The poorer and therefore the more burdensome the immigrant Jew is to the country absorbing him, the stronger this country will react and the more desirable is this effect in the interests of German propaganda. The object of this German action is to be the future international solution of the Jewish question, dictated not by false compassion for the “United Religious Jewish minority” but by the full consciousness of all peoples of the danger which it represents to the racial composition of the nations.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 6. Document 3358-PS, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 87–95.
Commentary
This document is a summary of progress made regarding Jewish matters in 1938, as understood by the German Foreign Ministry. Issued on January 25, 1939, it notes a direct relationship between “the solution of the Jewish question” and “the realization of the ‘idea of Greater Germany.’” It is clear in its conclusion that one was contingent upon the other.
These developments came about because of the Anschluss between Germany and Austria back in March. The addition of up to 200,000 more Jews into the Reich at a time when those in Germany were even then not yet leaving in sufficient numbers led to an urgent need to rethink the management of the Jewish issue. For the Foreign Office, this translated into the international implications of Nazi antisemitic policy; thus, the statement discusses the Evian refugee conference, the position of the United States toward the reception of Germany’s Jews, and the attitude of other European countries with large Jewish populations.
Important in this context is the position of Palestine. This is something of which the Foreign Office was particularly aware, and while reference is made to the August 1933 Haavara Agreement between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency, the conclusion is drawn that too many Jews in Palestine—an unviable proposition in view of the fact that “it is incapable of absorbing a mass influx of Jews”—would be a “dangerous” proposition because it could lead to the formation of a Jewish state.
Finally, the document concludes that the Western world’s criticism of German measures is unfounded owing to the “danger” presented by Jews internationally, a danger “to the racial composition of the nations” of the world.
12. Adolf Hitler: Extract from a Speech to the Reichstag, January 30, 1939
In its entirely, this speech was primarily concerned with the economic, political, military, and diplomatic recovery of Germany in the aftermath of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 after World War I. Hitler’s antisemitism was reflected throughout the speech, but three-quarters of the way into it he made an important and often-quoted prophecy that if there should be another war (which, in his view, would have been caused by “international Jewish financiers”), it would not result in a Jewish victory but, rather, “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”
I believe that this problem will be solved—the sooner the better—for Europe cannot rest again before the Jewish problem has been eliminated. . . .
Once more I will assume the part of a prophet:
If the international Jewish financiers within and without Europe, succeeded in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will be not the Bolshevization of the world and thereby the victory of Jewry—but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 5. Document 2663-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 367.
Commentary
On January 30, 1939, the sixth anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship of Germany, he delivered a speech to the Reichstag lasting over two hours. The majority of the speech was not devoted to the subject of the Jews; instead, it recounted the history of the Nazi Party and its many successes.
Perhaps the lines most remembered, however, relate to a few comments he made toward the end of the speech, where he spoke unambiguously about the likely annihilation of European Jewry. If, he said, “the international Jewish financiers within and without Europe, succeeded in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will be not the Bolshevization of the world and thereby the victory of Jewry—but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” While this was not the first time there had been exterminatory invective thrown at the Jews, it was unquestionably the clearest statement yet made by Hitler himself in a public setting. Nor was it a slip of the tongue. Hitler was pleased with the words he said here and repeated his threat about the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” in a number of additional speeches in the years that followed.
Moreover, not only did he repeat the words in other contexts; he also referred often to the speech’s very existence. During these wartime addresses, interestingly, he would often erroneously and deliberately give the date of his speech as September 1, 1939, the day on which Germany invaded Poland and World War II was precipitated. This way, he was able to demonstrate how the destiny for the Jews he foresaw was being fulfilled at his command.
13. Hans Frank: Speech to His Cabinet, Kraków, December 16, 1941
Hans Frank was the Governor-General of the Generalgouvernement, that portion of German-occupied Poland not incorporated into the Reich. Its Jewish population, as Frank observes in this extract, comprised more than two and a half million Jews. This speech is particularly significant in that it represents one of the first occasions in which extermination—not just relocation or ghettoization—of the Jews is discussed in such straightforward language, making it clear that annihilation is now the policy of the Reich. An interesting reference is made by Frank to a forthcoming conference that will take place in Berlin to discuss the extermination process. That conference is the Wannsee Conference, which would be held on January 20, 1942, as confirmed by Frank’s statements that Dr. Bühler would attend and Reinhard Heydrich would chair the conference (as subsequent events would bear out).
As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell you quite frankly that they must be done away with in one way or another. The Führer said once: should united Jewry again succeed in provoking a world war, the blood of not only the nations, which have been forced into the war by them, will be shed, but the Jew will have found his end in Europe. I know that many of the measures carried out against the Jews in the Reich at present are being criticized. It is being tried intentionally, as is obvious from the reports on morale, to talk about cruelty, harshness, etc. Before I continue, I want to beg you to agree with me on the following formula: We will principally have pity on the German people only, and nobody else in the whole world. The others, too, had no pity on us. As an old National Socialist, I must say: This war would only be a partial success if the whole lot of Jewry should survive it, while we would have shed our best blood in order to save Europe. My attitude towards the Jews will, therefore, be based only on the expectation that they must disappear. They must be done away with. I have entered negotiations to have them deported to the East. A great discussion concerning that question will take place in Berlin in January to which I am going to delegate the State-Secretary Dr. Bühler. That discussion is to take place in the Reich Security Main Office with SS-Lt. General Heydrich. A great Jewish migration will begin in any case.
But what should be done with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled down in the “Ostland,” in villages? This is what we were told in Berlin: Why all the bother? We can do nothing with them either in the “Ostland” nor in the “Reichkommissariat.” So, liquidate them yourself.
Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible, in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole. This will, naturally, be achieved by other methods, than those pointed out by Bureau Chief Dr. Hummel. Nor can the judges of the Special Courts be made responsible for it, because of the limitations of the framework of the legal procedure. Such outdated views cannot be applied to such gigantic and unique events. We must find at any rate a way which leads to the goal, and my thoughts are working in that direction.
The Jews represent for us also extraordinarily malignant gluttons. We have now approximately 2,500,000 of them in the General Government, perhaps with the Jewish mixtures and everything that goes with it, 3,500,000 Jews. We cannot shoot or poison those 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation, and this in connection with the gigantic measures to be determined in discussions in the Reich. The General Government must become free of Jews, the same as the Reich. Where and how this is to be achieved is a matter for the offices which we must appoint and create here. Their activities will be brought to your attention in due course.
Source: Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Red Series, vol. 4. Document 2233-D-PS. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 891–92.
Commentary
The year 1941 saw the start of the annihilation of the Jews, the process that was to become the Holocaust. With the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the mass killing began, and soon thereafter, experiments in how to perfect the murder process started.
For Hans Frank, however, the issue was not one to be found in the Soviet Union; the urgency was to dispose of the large and, despite the authorities’ best efforts, growing Jewish population in the Generalgouvernement.
The core of Frank’s position is to be found in his second paragraph. For Frank, there is no doubt that the Jews will not be “resettled,” as was often stated in the coded language characterizing Nazi statements. Proceeding from the discretionary powers delegated from Berlin, Frank knew instinctively that it was within his remit to “liquidate” (his term) the Jews, as a result of which he instructs those assembled before him to “rid yourself of all feeling of pity,” comfortable in the knowledge that they “must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible.” He realizes that the task will be a difficult one given the millions of people involved and that “We cannot shoot or poison” them all. Nonetheless, he asserts, measures can be taken “which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation.”
This is a document extraordinary for its unguarded bluntness, particularly in the Third Reich, where euphemistic language was the norm and matters relating to the mass murder of the Jews were rarely discussed overtly. The date of the meeting is also worth noting; it comes within days of Germany’s declaration of war against the United States and the failure of the German army to take Moscow. From this point on, total war would have to be waged, and this applied also to the war against the Jews.
14. The Wannsee Protocol, January 20, 1942
Often misunderstood as the meeting where the Holocaust was decided, this record of the conference held at a villa on Lake Wannsee, Berlin, in January 1942 is a summary of events already in place. Convened by SS-Obergruppenführer and Chief of the Security Police Reinhard Heydrich, the minutes were taken by SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann. Basing itself upon a presumption of 11,000,000 Jews still alive in Europe, the core of the discussion was focused on “preparations for the final solution of the Jewish question.” While considerations of mass murder were not specifically recorded, there is little doubt that this was the primary matter of discussion at this meeting to coordinate the implementation of a decision that had already been taken to destroy the Jewish population of Europe.
I. The following persons took part in the discussion about the final solution of the Jewish question which took place in Berlin, am Grossen Wannsee No. 56/58 on January 20, 1942. Gauleiter Dr. Meyer and Reichsamtsleiter Dr. Leibbrandt (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories); Secretary of State Dr. Stuckardt (Reich Ministry for the Interior); Secretary of State Neumann (Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan); Secretary of State Dr. Freisler (Reich Ministry of Justice); Secretary of State Dr. Bühler (Office of the Government General); Under Secretary of State Luther (Foreign Office); SS-Oberführer Klopfer (Party Chancellery); Ministerialdirektor Kritzinger (Reich Chancellery); SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann (Race and Settlement Main Office); SS-Gruppenführer Müller and SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann (Reich Main Security Office); SS-Oberführer Dr. Schöngarth (Chief of the Security Police and the SD in the Government General Security Police and SD); SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Lange (Commander of the Security Police and the SD for the General district Latvia, as deputy of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD for the Reich Commissariat “Eastland”).
Security Police and SD
II. At the beginning of the discussion SS-Obergruppenführer HEYDRICH gave information that the Reich Marshal had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Jewish problem in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions. The wish of the Reich Marshal to have a draft sent to him concerning organisatory, factual and material interests in relation to the final solution of the Jewish problem in Europe, makes necessary an initial common action of all Central Offices immediately concerned with these questions in order to bring their general activities into line.
He said that the Reich Führer-SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD) was entrusted with the official handling of the final solution of the Jewish problem centrally without regard to geographic borders.
The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on against this enemy, the essential points being the following:
a) the expulsion of the Jews from every particular sphere of life of the German people,
b) the expulsion of the Jews from the Lebensraum of the German people.
In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of Jews from the Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution.
By order of the Reich Marshal a Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in January 1939 and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with the management. Its most important tasks were
a) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Jews,
b) to direct the flow of immigration,
c) to hurry up the procedure of emigration in each individual case.
The aim of all this being that of clearing the German Lebensraum of Jews in a legal way.
All the Offices realized the drawbacks of such enforced accelerated emigration. For the time being they had, however, tolerated it on account of the lack of other possible solutions of the problem.
The work concerned with emigration was, later on, not only a German problem, but also a problem with which the authorities of the countries to which the flow of emigrants was being directed would have to deal. Financial difficulties, such as the demand for increasing sums of money to be presented at the time of the landing on the part of various foreign governments, lack of shipping space, increasing restriction of entry permits, or canceling of such, extraordinarily increased the difficulties of emigration. In spite of these difficulties 537,000 Jews were sent out of the country between the day of the seizure of power and the deadline 31 October 1941. Of these as from 30 January from Germany proper approx. 360,000 Jews themselves, or rather their Jewish political organizations, financed the emigration.
In order to avoid the possibility of the impoverished Jews staying behind, action was taken to make the wealthy Jews finance the evacuation of the needy Jews, this was arranged by imposing a suitable tax, i.e. an emigration tax which was used for the financial arrangements in connection with the emigration of poor Jews, and was worked according to a ladder system.
Apart from the necessary Reichmark-exchange, foreign currency had to be presented at the time of the landing. In order to save foreign exchange held by Germany, the Jewish financial establishments in foreign countries were—with the help of Jewish organizations in Germany—made responsible for arranging for an adequate amount of foreign currency. Up to 30 October 1941, the foreign Jews donated approx. $9,500,000.
In the meantime the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Jews for reasons of the dangers of an emigration during wartime and consideration of the possibilities in the East.
III. Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided the Führer agrees to this plan.
Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.
from 15 March 1938 from Austria (Ostmark) appr. 147,000
from 15 March 1939 from the Protectorate, Bohemia and Moravia appr. 30,000.
Approx. 11,000,000 Jews will be involved in this final solution of the European problem, they are distributed as follows among the countries:
Germany proper 131,800
Austria 43,700
Eastern territories 420,000
General Government 2,284,000
Bialystok 400,000
Protectorate Bohemia & Moravia 74,200
Estonia free of Jews
Latvia 3,500
Lithuania 34,000
Belgium 43,000
Denmark 5,600
France/occupied territory 165,000
Unoccupied territory 700,000
Greece 69,600
Netherlands 160,800
Norway 1,300
B
Bulgaria 48,000
England 330,000
Finland 2,300
Ireland 4,000
Italy including Sardinia 58,000
Albania 200
Croatia 40,000
Portugal 3,000
Rumania including Bessarabia 342,000
Sweden 8,000
Switzerland 18,000
Serbia 10,000
Slovakia 88,000
Spain 6,000
Turkey (European Turkey) 55,500
Hungary 742,800
USSR 5,000,000
Ukraine 2,994,684
White Russia with exception of Bialystok 446,484
Total over
11,000,000
The number of Jews given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Jews who still adhere to the Jewish faith as the definition of the term “Jew” according to racial principles is still partially missing there. The handling of the problem in the individual countries will meet with difficulties due to the attitude and conception of the people there, especially in Hungary and Rumania. Thus, even today a Jew can buy documents in Hungary which will officially prove his foreign citizenship.
The influence of the Jews in all walks of life in the USSR is well known. Approximately 5 million Jews are living in the European Russia, and in Asiatic Russia scarcely 1/4 million. The breakdown of Jews residing in the European part of the USSR, according to trades, was approximately as follows:
in agriculture 9.1%
communal workers 14.8%
in trade 20.0%
employed by the state 23.4%
in private occupations such as medical profession, newspapers, theater, etc. 32.7%
Under proper guidance the Jews are now to be allocated for labor to the East in the course of the final solution. Able-bodied Jews will be taken in large labor columns to these districts for work on roads, separated according to sexes, in the course of which action a great part will undoubtedly be eliminated by natural causes.
The possible final remnant will, as it must undoubtedly consist of the toughest, have to be treated accordingly, as it is the product of natural selection, and would, if liberated, act as a bud cell of a Jewish reconstruction (see historical experience).
In the course of the practical execution of this final settlement of the problem, Europe will be cleaned up from the West to the East. Germany proper, including the protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first because of reasons of housing and other sociopolitical necessities.
The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, into so-called transit-ghettos from which they will be taken to the East.
SS-Obergruppenführer HEYDRICH went on to say that an important provision for the evacuation as such is the exact definition of the group of persons concerned in the matter.
It is intended not to evacuate Jews of more than 65 years of age but to send them to an old age-ghetto—Theresienstadt is being considered for this purpose.
Next to these age-groups—of the 280,000 Jews still in Germany proper and Austria on 31 October 1941, approximately 30% are over 65; Jews disabled on active duty and Jews with war decorations (Iron Cross I) will be accepted in the Jewish old-age-ghettos.
Through such expedient solution the numerous interventions will be eliminated with one blow.
The carrying out of each single evacuation project of a larger extent will start at a time to be determined chiefly by the military development. Regarding the handling of the final solution in the European territories occupied and influenced by us it was suggested that the competent officials of the Foreign Office working on these questions confer with the competent “Referenten” from the Security Police and the SD.
In Slovakia and Croatia the difficulties arising from this question have been considerably reduced, as the most essential problems in this field have already been brought near to a solution. In Rumania the Government in the meantime has also appointed a commissioner for Jewish questions. In order to settle the question in Hungary it is imperative that an adviser in Jewish questions be pressed upon the Hungarian government without too much delay.
As regards the taking of preparatory steps to settle the question in Italy SS Obergruppenführer HEYDRICH considers it opportune to contact the chief of the police with a view to these problems.
In the occupied and unoccupied parts of France the registration of the Jews for evacuation can in all probability be expected to take place without great difficulties.
Assistant Under-Secretary of State LUTHER in this connection calls attention to the fact that in some countries, such as the Scandinavian states, difficulties will arise if these problems are dealt with thoroughly and that it will be therefore advisable to defer action in these countries. Besides, considering the small numbers of Jews to be evacuated from these countries this deferment means not essential limitation.
On the other hand, the Foreign Office anticipates no great difficulties as far as the South-East and the West of Europe are concerned.
SS-Gruppenführer HOFMANN intends to send an official from the Main Race and Settlement Office to Hungary for general orientation at the time when the first active steps to bring up the question in this country will be taken by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD. It was determined officially to detail this official, who is not supposed to work actively, temporarily from the Main Race and Settlement Office as assistant to the police attaché.
IV. The implementation of the final solution-problem is supposed to a certain extent to be based on the Nuremberg Laws, in which connection also the solution of the problems presented by the mixed-marriages and the persons of mixed blood is seen to be conditional to an absolutely final clarification of the question.
The chief of the Security Police and the SD first discussed, with reference to a letter from the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, the following points theoretically: