The Jewish Evacuation

T he snow fell soft and silent around the shores of the lake. It was the morning of January 20, 1942, and a steady stream of chauffeur driven cars arrived at the villa. A succession of the most senior members of the Nazi government and elite SS armed forces arrived and entered the marble entrance hall. Their coats were swept off their shoulders from their aides, and their arrival was silently noted.

There were representatives from the Ministry of Foreign and Eastern territories, the Justice Ministry, the Gestapo the SS, and the Race and Resettlement Office. Most of the representatives had come from nearby Berlin.

Some of the army men were called in from the chaos and horror of the Eastern Front, or from other conquered territory. This tranquil winter scene at the lake must’ve seemed to belong in some strange parallel universe. The villa where we assembled had marbled staircases and rooms aligned with wooden panels. It was a three-floored mansion that had once belonged to a Jewish businessman. But long since taken over by our government. Looking back, this was to be one of the most sickening conferences in human history.

I oversaw the organization and preparation for the conference. I coordinated the delegates arrival and the staff who attended them. I stood in the doorway as Adolf Eichmann arrived, he was a Nazi in his late 30s, and head of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs section. He was quiet, anonymous, and had the look of a bookkeeper. He didn’t radiate the usual charisma and spark of some of his colleagues. He had a reputation for carrying out orders with great efficiency. As the morning progressed, I noted how well our conference was proceeding.

The last to arrive was Eichmann's boss, the SS general Reinhard Heydrich. He was head of the Reich security main office and was one of the most powerful men in the Nazi government. He was tall, blond, handsome, and everything Eichmann was not. He was a former international level fencer and naval officer. He was precisely the Aryan Superman from a Nazi propaganda film. In one of his most famous photographs, Heydrich stares out into the distance with a cruel mouth and fierce eyes. He looks to me like a stern headmaster about to administer a severe beating to a gaggle of rebellious students.

There was no doubt that was the image he wanted to project to the world. But in person, Heydrich seemed brisk, efficient, and oozing with charm. Not so for those who crossed him. I heard they found themselves subject to chilling threats made in the casual manner of a Roman Emperor who was secure in his power of life and death over those around him.

As the conference continued, there was a haze of cigarette smoke and the cheerful atmosphere of men who'd had a couple of glasses of wine before lunch. The purpose of the meeting was plain, Heydrich announced that he'd been charged by Hitler's deputy Hermann Göring with the responsibility for finding a solution to the Jewish problem. All the representatives around him were there to ensure the government cooperated effectively with this venture.

All the Nazis at this meeting were distinguished and highly educated men. They were broadly sympathetic to Hitler's corrosive hatred of the Jews. During the several years of Nazi rule, their views were reinforced by a constant barrage of anti-Jewish propaganda. These men had grown to think of all Jews with repugnance and fear. They’d compare the suffering of the Jewish people as one would think of a swarm of diseased rats or even a cancerous virus.

What Heydrich had to report was monstrous. It was so barbaric that he softened his words to the hardline Nazis and used innocent phrases to lessen the impact of what he had to say. He explained to the assembled members with statistics gathered by directly by Eichmann that the German government had a storage problem with the eight million Jews in Nazi territory.

Initially, the Nazi plan was to expel them, but when the war closed the borders, this became impossible. Heydrich led the delegates to the view that the only possible option left to the Nazi government regarding the Jews was evacuation . As the conference continued, it dawned on those assembled what evacuation meant. They discussed the cold-blooded murder of over eight million people, even 12 million if Germany succeeded in conquering all of Europe.

There were a few objections, even among these types of men. The idea of murder on this scale was too horrific to contemplate. Once Heydrich gained the approval of all the men assembled and his solution was accepted. The delegates in their customary efficiency decided that it would be economically viable to store the Jews in concentration camps. They’d put the men to work on road and factory building projects where natural death from exhaustion and illness would gradually reduce their numbers.

Children, the elderly, and the sick wouldn't be suitable for such projects, and they'd be disposed of as soon as possible. Since the beginning of the war, SS troops in Russia and Poland had been systematically killing Jews by the thousands. Officers reported that their task was unpleasant and demoralizing, especially killing women and children. They decided the most efficient way to murder Jews that couldn't be used for work would be gas. They’d use special camps where hundreds at a time would be herded into gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Life would be choked out of them efficiently and quickly.

These chambers could dispose of over 700 people an hour, and if they worked around the clock, they’d evacuate thousands of Jews a day. The thinking was within a year if everything went to plan. Europe would be Jew-free .

After the delegates had all left. Heydrich and Eichmann sat down by the fireplace. They smoked a celebratory cigar and toasted to a job well done. The drink flowed. They sang and danced arm in arm in a jig around the plush chairs and the oak table of the lake house villa.

Four months later, I heard Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague when he was killed by two Czech soldiers. On June 4, in retaliation, German troops murdered over 1,500 Czechs loosely accused of helping take part in the assassination. They destroyed the Czech village of Lidice, massacred all the males, and sent the women and children to concentration camps.

Immediately following the conference at the lake house, the Jewish evacuation was in full swing. From the Gulf of Finland to France's Atlantic coast, all the way to the island of Crete, even into the African shores of Libya—all areas controlled by the Nazis—the Jews were rounded up. Some were shot where they stood or gassed in special vans designed for the process. Most were placed on freight trains packed in the hundreds and thousands into cattle wagons and transported to death camps.

Auschwitz, Belzec, Majdanek, and Treblinka. These names would haunt the lives of generations to come and forever be remembered in infamy.