Report dated December 11, 1941, from the Reich Association of Jews in Germany to Eichmann’s department, containing updated figures on the Jews in France, with a division between the occupied and unoccupied parts, and in French North Africa.
Dan Michman
TO WHAT EXTENT were the Jews of North Africa included in the practical planning for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” that is, of Nazi Germany’s extermination policy as it developed from 1941 onward? On one hand, historians have reflected on this issue only in general terms, when contemplating the overall contours of the Nazi enterprise. In the twin areas of Jewish survivor discourses and debates on restitution, on the other hand, it has been a point of intense dispute. Therefore, a systematic analysis is a desideratum. In this chapter, I will try to answer this question on the basis of our current understanding of the evolution of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question and a close reading and analysis of the so-called Protocol of the Wannsee Conference. I will also try to answer this question by introducing unstudied and unnoticed archival material.
In the study of the foundations, development, and consolidation of the master plan for the mass murder of the Jews, a study in which extensive energies have been invested over the past few decades, scholars in the last decade have arrived at a broad consensus concerning certain essential points, even though many details are still disputed. In contrast with the scholarly conceptions proposed in the initial stages of research immediately following the end of World War II, the basic and highly significant consensus is that the Nazis’ operation of mass murder developed not in accordance with any organized plan but rather in a gradual, constantly expanding fashion.1 Initially, there were the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union (beginning in 1940) and there was a gradual crystallization of an approach that was based on various components in Adolf Hitler’s worldview, which he first formulated immediately after World War I (in his so-called first political writing of September 1919, in Mein Kampf and in his unpublished second book). In accordance with that worldview, the invasion of Soviet Russia (Operation Barbarossa) was not simply a military campaign aimed at territorial expansion or at the attainment of influence but rather a military operation with ideological dimensions, with the Soviet Union symbolizing the fortress of Judeo-Bolshevism. Thus, in preparation for this new war, special ideological fighting units were set up: the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service of the Schutzstaffel (SS), which were first created in 1938. In the first weeks of Operation Barbarossa, which was launched on June 22, 1941, the mode of action for the large-scale elimination of actual or suspected political enemies, many of whom were Jews and most of whom were men, gradually established itself. In mid-July 1941, in the wake of the repeated successes of the German forces, Hitler apparently instructed those in his immediate circle, including Heinrich Himmler, to step up the confrontation with the Jews and to explore the possibility of extensive operations against them. This instruction led to the document dated July 31, 1941, in which Hermann Göring officially authorized Reinhard Heydrich to investigate the possibility of carrying out a “comprehensive solution” (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in Europe.2 From reports compiled by the Einsatzgruppen and from other sources, it seems clear that, by mid-August 1941, a change had already taken place in the dimensions and systematic nature of the murders. From mid-August 1941, and in some places earlier, massive numbers of men, women, and children were massacred and entire areas were “mopped up”; similarly, the number of Jews murdered and recorded by the Einsatzgruppen increased astronomically. One of the low points in this period was the massacre at Babi Yar, near Kiev, on September 29–30, 1941, when 33,771 Jews were murdered. That same month, the initial plans for the construction of the first extermination camp at Chelmno were drafted and work began on the planned deportation of Germany’s Jews, against whom severe policy measures were already being undertaken. In the meantime, the scope of massacres throughout the occupied areas of the Soviet Union widened. On November 28, Hitler held a meeting with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini. In their conversation, Hitler hinted that, if German forces managed to advance through the Caucasus Mountains, actions against the Jews would extend to that region as well. In a meeting with Nazi Party leaders on December 12, Hitler told this broadly based group that, “with regard to the Jewish question” (bezüglich der Judenfrage), he intended to “clean the table” (reinen Tisch zu machen).3 In the first half of 1942, the plan to exterminate the Jews was expanded and began to include other parts of Europe, initially Poland, then Western Europe and, in the end, the rest of the continent.
In the context of these events, a discussion (Besprechung) was held on January 20, 1942, in a villa on the shores of Lake Wannsee, on the outskirts of Berlin; the meeting was attended by senior officials representing various SS departments and government ministries in the Third Reich and the subject under discussion was the “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” In post-Holocaust discourse and writings, this gathering is invariably referred to as “the Wannsee Conference” (Wannseekonferenz),4 a label that assigns to this meeting an image that greatly exceeds its true importance.5 The document that records the proceedings of this meeting and which Adolf Eichmann worded, is termed the “minutes” (Protokoll) of the Wannsee Conference, although it is not a faithful record—Protokoll—of what actually transpired at that gathering, because the minutes were repeatedly reworked by Eichmann.6 During the first decades of Holocaust research, the document was regarded by many as the smoking gun attesting to the existence of a carefully worked out plan for the execution of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. This mistaken approach is still commonly encountered outside the community of Holocaust scholars.
Ever since the early 1990s, especially after the opening of research opportunities in the former Eastern European communist countries and in the wake of new research by many Holocaust scholars, a major change has occurred in the study of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies in general, and the crystallization of the Final Solution in particular. As a result, the meeting at Wannsee has undergone various reevaluations and its precise place in the development of those policies has become an issue of serious debate among senior scholars of the Final Solution. Today it is clear that, with regard to the Final Solution, no organized and orderly decision-making process took place under Hitler’s direction, although it is absolutely clear that he set the goal and provided the guidelines for the launching of actions that led to the extermination of the Jews, as Heydrich explicitly pointed out at the Wannsee meeting with the words “Following the Führer’s initial consent” (nach entsprechender vorheriger Genehmigung durch den Führer).7 The so-called minutes were an internal document, not one intended for the general public. The very fact that terms such as “extermination” or even “shooting” or “liquidation” are not used in such an internal document arouse questions and have sparked vigorous debates regarding the issue as to whether the systematic murder of all Jews was indeed the clear-cut meaning of the Final Solution, as understood at that moment by all participants. The absence of these terms is particularly blatant, when one compares the explicit and unambiguous terms used not only in reports filed by Einsatzgruppen commanders in the various regions of the Soviet Union but also in certain statements made by Hitler himself.8 Nonetheless, there is a consensus among most Holocaust scholars that Heydrich convened the meeting in order to establish both his authority to implement the operation aimed in fact at the liquidation of the Jews and the need for coordination between all those involved in this operation, namely, the representatives of all the government ministries and nongovernment agencies participating in one or the other capacity in the execution of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” which was gradually evolving.9
One of the more familiar parts of the aforementioned “minutes” is especially important for any discussion of North African Jewry and the Holocaust: the table listing the number of Jews in the various countries destined to be included in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” The table, which has become iconic in popular Holocaust representations, is divided into two sections: Germany proper and all countries under direct German rule, and allies or satellites of Germany, and countries that were not (apparently: not yet) occupied (such as England, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland). The second section lists both parts of France: “Occupied France” with 165,000 Jews, which was under German control and the “unoccupied part of France,” that is, Vichy France, with seven hundred thousand Jews.10
The latter figure of 700,000 is an exaggerated one for the number of Jews in unoccupied continental France and therefore raises serious questions. Some scholars have suggested that the figure also includes the Jews of North Africa. German historian Peter Longerich, who has made the inquiry into the evolution of the Final Solution one of his major research goals, insists that it includes Jews in the French colonies in North Africa.11 However, following that statement, Longerich does not offer any referral or any arithmetical explanation. Moreover, his 772-page book refers to French African Jews in only two paragraphs, where he presents other factual information without making any mention of Wannsee or the question of French African Jewry’s inclusion in the Final Solution.12 Thus, it would appear that Longerich in fact does not believe that the Jews of North Africa were actually included in the planning of the Final Solution. Similarly, although not as insistently, Saul Friedländer writes in his book, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, that “regarding France, Heydrich, in his initial listing, had mentioned seven hundred thousand Jews from the Vichy zone, which probably meant the inclusion of the Jews of French North Africa” (my emphasis).13 However, in his book, Friedländer makes no reference to Tunisia or Algeria, and Moroccan Jews are mentioned only once—in a citation of Heydrich’s comments in October 1941: Friedländer quotes Heydrich as saying that “these Jews” (Spanish Jews in France, whom Spain proposed transferring to Morocco) “would also be too far out of the direct reach of measures for a basic solution to the Jewish question to be enacted after the war.” These comments indicate that the Final Solution (to be carried out after the war!) was defined as solely pertaining to Europe.14 These two historians and other scholars who tend to interpret the figure of seven hundred thousand as including the Jews of French North Africa (significantly, Michel Abitbol, the leading scholar of the fate of North African Jewry during World War II, is not included in this group)15 do not back up their interpretation with any evidence from the period immediately preceding the preparation of background material for the Wannsee meeting.16
In contrast, another important group of historians argues explicitly that the Jews of North Africa were not included in the planning of the Final Solution. Raul Hilberg, one of the most prominent of Holocaust scholars, stated in the first edition of The Destruction of the European Jews, with reference to the German presence in Tunisia in 1942 and 1943, that “Tunisia was in Africa, and that the ‘final solution’ by its very definition was applicable only to the European continent.”17 In his discussion of the Wannsee Conference, he does not mention North African Jews.18 Similarly, Leni Yahil, when discussing the Wannsee Conference, does not make any reference to North African Jewry, although she does say that the figures of Jews in Europe as listed in the aforementioned table are “problematic.”19 Moreover, in her book, North African Jews are mentioned only incidentally.20 According to highly respected scholars of the Holocaust in France, the figure of the Jews in Vichy France does not include the Jews of North Africa. Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, who discuss the minutes of the Wannsee Conference in their groundbreaking book on the Vichy government and the Jews, briefly comment that the minutes include an absurdly high figure for the number of Jews in unoccupied France.21 Asher Cohen, in his comprehensive book on the Holocaust in France, and Daniel Carpi, in his study on the Italian authorities and the Jews of France and Tunisia during World War II, extensively discuss the number of Jews in wartime France. According to those two scholars, the citing of this high figure in the minutes apparently (Carpi stresses this adverb) stemmed from the exaggerated estimates of the number of Jews in Vichy France that were current during the first months of 1941 among experts on Jewish affairs in the General Commissariat on Jewish Questions (Commissariat Générale aux Questions Juives). On the basis of these estimates, Eichmann’s aide in France, Theodor Dannecker, stated in a report dated July 1, 1941, that “estimates of the number of Jews range from four hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand.”22 A detailed discussion of Dannecker’s figures can be found in Ahlrich Meyer’s book on the Final Solution in France. According to Meyer, the figure of seven hundred thousand refers only to the Jews in southern France and does not include the Jews of North Africa. He believes that the figure is an average (Mittelwert) that emerged from Dannecker’s calculations and he adds that the latter’s report reached the desk of Franz Rademacher, the official in the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was responsible for Jewish affairs (Section D III) and who was Eichmann’s counterpart. Meyer notes that it is impossible to find any additional route for the delivery or direct transmission of Dannecker’s figures to Eichmann.23
In research on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policy in general, immense importance is attached to the minutes of the Wannsee meeting, and, since the mid-1990s, great interest has been shown in the role that the meeting at Wannsee played in the crystallization of the Final Solution. It is therefore very surprising that, despite this fact, scholars have paid scant attention to the manner in which the figures on the various countries were compiled by Eichmann and his aides. The manner of compilation, not the de facto assumptions of Holocaust researchers, is the key to our explanation. A notable exception is the highly significant chapter by Christoph Kreutzmüller on the figure for the Jews of the Netherlands that appears in the minutes.24 If we want to measure the validity of the figures in the Wannsee table, we must note the following. On the one hand, the table presents countries with very exact figures for the Jewish population, such as Germany, Austria, the Netherlands (the figure for the Jews there includes Jews of mixed race), and Estonia (which is labeled “free of Jews”).25 On the other hand, the figures for some of the other countries are highly exaggerated, especially for territories in the Soviet Union that were not yet occupied: five million. For the hitherto occupied areas of the Soviet Union, where tens of thousands of Jews had already been murdered (a fact that the Einsatzgruppen reported and which Eichmann knew about), 857,500 Jews are still listed—which means that altogether the number of Jews in pre-June 1941, would have had to be about six million!26 It can thus be concluded that there is a need for carefully examining each of the figures appearing in the Wannsee table. Moreover, in the table presented to the participants at the meeting, there is a blatant error, which no doubt caused the participants to grimace (as Kreutzmüller has already pointed out): In the table, in the category of countries that had not yet been occupied, Serbia is included, although it had been placed under German occupation nine months earlier.27
How were the figures presented at the meeting compiled? On August 6, 1941, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) in Berlin, which was part of the network of branches of Eichmann’s office (Section IV B4), ordered the heads of the Jewish umbrella organization in Germany, the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) to quickly compile precise figures on the size of each Jewish community in the world.28 The Jewish leaders were given this command three weeks after Hitler’s meeting with a number of high-ranking officials in the Nazi regime on July 16 (Hermann Göring, Hans-Heinrich Lammers, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, and Wilhelm Keitel), which, according to many leading Holocaust scholars, marked the beginning of the process that led to the Final Solution, and only a few days after Göring’s letter to Heydrich of July 31.29 (The letter was apparently written jointly by Heydrich and Eichmann and, for official reasons, was presented to Göring simply so that he could sign it; as noted at the beginning of this chapter, the letter authorized Heydrich to explore the possibilities for a “comprehensive solution to the Jewish question in the areas of German influence in Europe.”)30
The instructions issued by Eichmann’s Central Office to the Reich Association of Jews in Germany on August 6 were apparently part and parcel of the endeavor to clarify how the term Jew (Judenbegriff) was defined in different countries throughout the world with the goal to create uniformity in the term, in order to be able to have all relevant Jews included in the comprehensive policy that was now being developed. This is how some Holocaust scholars interpret the Central Office’s directive.31 Although this interpretation is not misguided as such, it does not tell the whole story. Indeed, the subject of the letter that the Reich Association sent in reply to the directive the following day, on August 7, is “Definition of the term ‘Jew’ in those countries where there are Jewish laws” (Begriffsbestimmung des “Juden” in Ländern mit Judengesetzen).32 The letter’s appendix—which is really the most important part of the letter—is entitled “The number of Jews, in absolute terms and as a percentage of the general population, in certain countries by region [continents], in alphabetical order, with an appendix on the definition of the term ‘Jews’ in those countries that have Jewish laws, in accordance with the regulations that have been published.”33 In other words, the statistics had become the principal element and the figures that were submitted referred to the entire world, not just to Europe! Apparently, the only explanation is that oral instructions (perhaps transmitted by telephone?) accompanied the written ones; this was a common practice in the Nazi regime. This initiative demonstrates the swift response and creativity of the Eichmann-Männer vis-à-vis the new winds blowing from Hitler’s direction, as well as their more distant perspective, which went beyond the immediate target (the European continent). Six days after their initial response had been sent, an additional letter was submitted by the Reich Association to the Central Office together with a long appendix that supplemented both the statistics and the sources. The two statistical lists (dated August 7 and 13, respectively) are very detailed. Some of them are handwritten and include most of the countries and continents in the world, providing considerable detail on the United States (with the figures given for major metropolitan centers) and even on Palestine (with the Jewish population broken down by region, including, for example, the Negev region in southern Palestine).34
The figures submitted for the Jews of the countries of North Africa in the first list were as follows: Egypt—70,000, Ethiopia—80,000, Algeria—115,000, Morocco— 181,000, and Tunisia—66,000. For some reason, Libya is not included, although there is a figure for “the rest of Africa”—1,000, a remarkably low figure, which is hard to explain (South Africa is mentioned separately with a Jewish population of 95,000; this figure could, perhaps, relate to tiny Jewish communities, such as in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe] to which some German Jews fled toward the end of the 1930s).35 The second list repeats the figures but provides details under the rubric “Miscellaneous”: “Various British [territorial] possessions—3[,000], Various Italian [territorial] possessions—43[,000; apparently, the reference here is to Libya], Tangier—12[,000].”36 With regard to the countries that are the subject of the present discussion, there is no difference between the two lists. If we add the figure given for both the occupied and unoccupied parts of France—280,000—to the figure for the Jews of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, we arrive at a total of 643,000, a number that does not fit with the totals supplied in the table in the Wannsee meeting minutes (where the figures are seven hundred thousand plus 165,000). Moreover, in the two lists, no distinction is made between the occupied and unoccupied parts of France; this fact is important, as will be explained below.
Eichmann continued to gather and update the figures. As he testified at his trial in Jerusalem, the compilation of figures was completed by late November or early December 1941,37 because the meeting was originally scheduled for December 9 but was postponed due to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Eichmann therefore had additional time to update the figures. However, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, a demand (Anforderung) was issued to the Reich Association to submit additional figures. On December 11, 1941, an amendment was received for the figures on France. Those figures were based on the statement made by the Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs (Commissaire Général aux Questions Juives) in France, Xavier Vallat, following the founding of an obligatory organization for all French Jews (UGIF—Union Général des Israélites de France). His statement was published, it was noted, in the German newspaper, Frankfurter Zeitung, on December 4 and brought to Eichmann’s attention.38 The Frankfurter Zeitung reported:
The French homeland (i.e., Continental France) has 335,000 Jews
This figure breaks down into two almost-equal parts:
Occupied France—165,000
Unoccupied France—170,000.
In France’s North African possessions
Approximately 360,000 Jews reside, according to the following breakdown:
Morocco—160,000
Algeria—150,000
Tunisia—50,00039
Both the figures and the way they are presented are important for the present discussion. The figure for the Jews in the unoccupied parts of France plus the figure for the Jews in France’s North African possessions total 530,000, a figure that is very different from the figure submitted six weeks later at Wannsee (but close to the number given in the August lists, if we deduct the figure for the Jews in occupied France). However, the phrasing of the text, including the distinction between the two parts of France (occupied and unoccupied) that appears in the opening part of the statement is identical with that which appears in the Wannsee minutes, and the same is true for the figure given for the number of Jews in occupied France: 165,000. The only difference between the texts in this particular section concerns the figure for the Jews in unoccupied France: 170,000 in the newspaper report as opposed to seven hundred thousand in the Wannsee minutes. As noted above, in accordance with the figures in Eichmann’s possession, the latter figure does not represent the addition of the Jews in France’s North African possessions. What happened here?
In order to solve the problem of the unreasonable figure, we must first of all take into account the entire document’s phrasing and logic. Throughout the Wannsee minutes, the emphasis is on a Final Solution of the Jews solely in Europe (Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage). This emphasis appears in Heydrich’s introductory remarks and is repeated verbatim four times in the minutes. Even in the verbatim comments on the implementation of the Final Solution, only the countries of Europe are mentioned and, when the Soviet Union is referred to, the following statement is made: “The influence of the Jews in the Soviet Union in all spheres of life is a well-known fact. Approximately five million Jews live in the European part of the Soviet Union, and nearly a quarter of a million Jews live in the Asian part.” In the table of figures, the emphasis on Europe appears whenever there is the possibility of any doubt. For example: “Turkey (the European part).” Nevertheless, with regard to each country with possessions beyond its original territory, those possessions are specified. Thus, it is explicitly stated that the Jews of Sardinia are included in the figure for the Jews of Italy and, with regard to Albania, details are given under the rubric “Italy” too.40 With regard to the Jews of Romania, it is stated that the figure includes the Jews of Bessarabia. In other words, the Wannsee table does not include any country that has territories outside Europe, while territories that do not naturally belong to a given country are mentioned explicitly. One might argue that, at the time, the French colonies in North Africa were perceived as an integral part of France and were automatically included in the figure for France. However, that argument can be refuted by reference to the figure for the Netherlands—which at the time possessed East India (Indonesia), Surinam, Curaçao, and Aruba—and by the figures for England, Portugal, and Spain, which all had numerous colonies all over the world (including in North Africa). With regard to these four European countries, the figure clearly and explicitly refers only to the Jews living in their European territories. Furthermore, one might also seek to argue that the North African territories controlled by the Vichy regime were an integral part of France in the eyes of its citizens. However, such an argument is imprecise. Not all of France’s colonies enjoyed an equal status. While Algeria was considered a province or département (or actually had three provinces), Tunisia and Morocco both had the status of a protectorate.
The limiting of the figures to Europe should come as no surprise. All of the documentation prior to the Wannsee meeting is saturated with the emphasis that the Nazis wanted—at least in this period—a comprehensive or final solution of the Jewish question in Europe. The major change that took place in the latter half of 1941 was the fact that the idea of the systematic murder of the Jews throughout Europe gradually coalesced in the wake, and on the basis, of Nazi Germany’s experience in the territories of the Soviet Union, when Germany introduced systematic organizational and technical methods in its operations in those territories. During that period, the vision that Hitler presented in his famous speech in the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, began to be realized. In that speech, he declared: “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”41
Indeed, the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” was the known vision that went into effect in 1941 and 1942. It should be pointed out that Hitler repeated what he had said in his January 1939 speech on various occasions in the following years.42 Moreover, in the second week of September 1941, those words were the Nazi Party’s “slogan of the week” and they appeared in posters in all of the Party’s branches.43 Earlier that year, on January 21, 1941, Eichmann’s representative in France, Theodor Dannecker, had written in a memorandum to all the departments of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt—RSHA) of the SS that, “in accordance with the will of the Führer, there will be a need, when the war is over, to bring about a final solution of the Jewish question in all the European territories under Germany’s rule or supervision.”44 Similarly, Paul Zapp, speechwriter for Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, wrote: “The political and diplomatic leadership of Adolf Hitler has laid the foundations for the European solution of the Jewish question.”45 In late 1941, five days before the original date of the Wannsee meeting, the aforementioned Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish desk (Judenreferat) in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was the counterpart of Eichmann’s department in the RSHA, prepared the draft of a speech for the permanent secretary in the Foreign Ministry, Ernst von Weizsäcker; the speech was signed by his deputy, Martin Luther. Rademacher wrote that “we must utilize the opportunity offered by this war in order to completely cleanse Europe of the Jewish question.”46
If the Wannsee meeting’s minutes discuss the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe alone, one cannot read into the strange figure for the Jews of unoccupied France a message that contradicts the spirit of the minutes. Is it at all possible that there was a typing error in this document? Such a possibility is regarded sometimes by scholars as illogical. Could an error have been made in a German administrative document, especially in the case of the minutes of such an important conference, on which, in the eyes of many, the entire plan of the Final Solution hinges!? The answer, of course, is yes. It is possible that mistakes slipped into official German documents and there are many instances of such mistakes, just as there are instances of mistakes in all documents, whether private or administrative. However, in the particular case of the Wannsee meeting’s minutes, we have already pointed out errors—that is, we have shown that the preparation of the figures was imprecise. Moreover, as we have seen, the Wannsee meeting was a gathering of senior officials but not those at the highest level, and its participants did not decide on the execution of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. The purpose of the gathering was quite different; the meeting was convened in order to ensure that Heydrich had the authority he required and that there was sufficient coordination between the various agencies involved. It is interesting to note that, with regard to the Wannsee meeting’s minutes, we do have the testimony of the person who drafted them—although it was delivered nineteen years after the minutes were written up. Eichmann himself admitted that the minutes contained errors, especially with regard to the subject of the present discussion. At his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann was asked to comment on the minutes and he was asked numerous questions about them. When the prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, asked him about the table of figures, Eichmann replied, “With regard to the figures, I only now—that is, only recently—discovered that the figures were not quite right. For instance, regarding France. But I do not know—perhaps it is also possible that I erred when I recorded the figures.”47 This is, in fact, the most reasonable and logical explanation, especially since, in the Reich Association’s “amendment letter” of December 11, 1941, one can see a dash and a dot above it after the figure of 170,000. At first glance, the dash and the dot seem to imply the insertion of an additional digit; a zero might thus have been added at the end of the figure during a first round of copying, which then creates the number 1,700,000. Since the Wannsee document was typed, that is, there was at least one additional stage of manual copying, it is quite possible that the copier—when seeing the unreasonable number 1,700,000—deliberately left out the first digit—1. This is one possible—indeed, hypothetical—explanation, although there might be another reason; in any event, it is quite clear that an error was made.
Can it be understood from the above discussion that the Final Solution would not have been applied to the Jews of North Africa if they had come under firm Nazi control? Clearly, historians cannot provide unambiguous answers when they are asked to speculate. Nevertheless, in light of the scant data in our possession and the manner in which the Final Solution plan developed, one can hazard a guess. A few years ago, German scholars Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers uncovered evidence for the existence of a special SS unit, the Task Force Egypt (Einsatzkommando Ägypten), headed by SS officer Walter Rauff. This unit was to operate behind the regular forces of Erwin Rommel in Egypt and then proceed to Palestine. When Rommel failed to invade Egypt and Palestine and was forced to retreat, Rauff was assigned to Tunisia. While there, first anti-Jewish measures were implemented along the lines that had become common in anti-Jewish policies immediately after the occupation of other countries.48 Additionally, we are in possession of a statement made by Dr. Gebhardt von Walther, who was attached to the German consulate in Tripoli and who wrote in a May 12, 1942, report on the “Jewish question in Libya” that “there is no doubt that, when the time comes, the Jewish question will also be solved in Tripolitania.”49 Moreover, we know today that the master plans for the Final Solution were neither clear nor organized and that the Final Solution instead developed as a result of internal dynamics from the moment that Hitler gave the green light, as the circles of killing gradually widened. The first indications that we have pointed out hint at the high probability that the Nazi regime would have applied the policies that developed in Europe beyond its borders, had it succeeded in establishing a solid presence outside the continent. The first indication of such a probability can be found in the implementation of the Final Solution in the Crimea and the North Caucasus.50 After all, Hitler’s struggle was in the final analysis a war against world Jewry (das Weltjudentum) and not just against European Jewry.51 Moreover, we have seen that figures were gathered on Jews throughout the world for Eichmann’s office. However, this scenario never occurred. The discussion at Wannsee, as Ian Kershaw explains, was an interim stage in the coalescence of the Final Solution. In January 1942, only preliminary preparations for the execution of the Final Solution had been made; however, the decision to kill Europe’s Jews had already been taken.52 This stage referred solely to Europe’s Jews; even though the vision of a “global solution to the Jewish question” was there, Jews in areas beyond the perimeter of the European continent, including the Jews of North Africa, had not been included at this point in time in the practical implementation of the campaign and were therefore not included in the Wannsee meeting discussion.
DAN MICHMAN is Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University, and also serves as Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Israel. Among his recent books are Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective. Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches and Fundamental Issues (2003) and The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust (2011).
Table 3.1. The numbers of Jews in Europe and Africa, as presented in the reports of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Berlin, August 7 and 13, 1941.
| EUROPA [EUROPE] | |
| Deutschland [Germany] | |
| Altreich [Old Reich] | 167,245 |
| Ostmark [Austria] | 52,549/(44,000) |
| Protektorat [Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia] | 75,000 |
| Ost-Oberschlesien [East Upper Silesia] | 115,000 |
| Wartheland | 360,000 |
| Generalgouvernement [Government General] | 1,500,000 |
| Estland [Estonia] | 4,500 |
| Lettland [Latvia] | 96,000 |
| Litauen mit Wilna [Lithuania with Vilnius] | 300,000 |
| Belgien [Belgium] | 80,000 |
| Denemark [Denmark] | 7,000 |
| Griechenland [Greece] | 90,000 |
| Luxemburg [Luxembourg] | 900/(945) |
| Niederlande [Netherlands] | 135,000 |
| Norwegen [Norway] | 1,500 |
| Russland (ehemals polnischer Teil) [Russia (former Polish part)] | 1,200,000 |
| Bessarabien und Nordbukowina [Bessarabia and North Bukovina] | 500,000 |
| Bulgarien [Bulgaria] | 50,000 |
| England | 340,000 |
| Irland [Ireland] | 3,700 |
| Finnland [Finland] | 1,800 |
| Frankreich [France] | 280,000 |
| Italien [Italy] | 52,000 |
| Albanien [Albania] | 200 |
| Jugoslawien [Yugoslavia] | 68,000 |
| Kroatien [Croatia] | 29,000 |
| Montenegro und Serbien [Montenegro and Serbia] | 39,000 |
| Portugal | 2,500 |
| Rumanien (ohne Bessarabien) [Romania (without Bessarabia)] | 275,000 |
| Rusland (UdSSR) [Russia (USSR)] | 3,020,000 |
| Schweden [Sweden] | 8,000 |
| Schweiz [Switzerland] | 18,000 |
| Slowakei [Slovakia] | 89,900 |
| Spanien [Spain] | 4,500 |
| Turkei (europaischer Teil) [Turkey (European Part)] | 60,000 |
| Ungarn (mit Karparto-Ukraine, Siebenburgen und Teilen der Slowakei) [Hungary (with Carpatho–Ukraine, Transylvania and parts of Slovakia)] | 750,000 |
| Europa insgesamt [Total for Europe] | 9,707,394 |
| AFRIKA [AFRICA] | |
| Ägypten [Egypt] | 70,000 |
| Äthiopien [Ethiopia] | 80,000 |
| Algier [Algiers] | 115,000 |
| Marokko [Morocco] | 181,000 |
| Sudafr. Union [South African Union] | 95,000 |
| Tunis [Tunisia] | 66,000 |
| Sonst. Britische Besitzungen [Other British territories] | 3,000 |
| Sonst. Italienische Besitzungen [Other Italian territories] | 43,000 |
| Tanger [Tangiers] | 12,000 |
| Übrige Länder [Remaining countries] | 9,000/1,000 |
| Afrika insgesamt [Total for Africa] | 666,000 |
Report dated December 11, 1941, from the Reich Association of Jews in Germany to Eichmann’s department, containing updated figures on the Jews in France, with a division between the occupied and unoccupied parts, and in French North Africa.
1. For summaries of the dominant approaches today, see Christopher Browning (with contributions by Jürgen Matthäus), The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, NE/Jerusalem: University of Nebraska and Yad Vashem, 2004); Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941 (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 431–470 and 569–575; Dan Michman, “The ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question,’ its Emergence and Implementation: The State of Research and its Implications for Other Issues in Holocaust Research,” in Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective—Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches and Fundamental Issues (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), 91–126; Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 257–421.
2. The document was drafted by Heydrich, who submitted it to Hermann Göring for his signature. A photograph of the document is presented in Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, ed., Villenkolonien in Wannsee 1870–1945: Großbürgerliche Lebenswelt und Ort der Wannsee-Konferenz (Berlin: Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, 2000), 113.
3. According to Joseph Goebbels’s diary: Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 2 (Munich: Saur, 1996), 498.
4. In a letter dated January 19, 1992, that Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner wrote to the team of the memorial site, House of the Wannsee Conference (Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz), he described the manner in which the minutes were found during the preparation of the documentation for the so-called Ministries Case, the 1947 trial at Nuremberg of members of the German ministerial bureaucracy. He depicted how he and his colleagues were so excited when they discovered the “Minutes of the meeting on the Final Solution of the Jewish Question from January 20, 1942, which afterwards became known throughout the world as the Wannsee Conference” (“Wir waren aufgeregt, als wir ein Protokoll über die später als Wannseekonferenz weltbekannt gewordene Sitzung über die Endlösung der Judenfrage vom 20. Januar 1942 entdeckten”). For a photograph of the letter see the website of Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz.
5. Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1995), 60, state that the term “conference” was already used in German bureaucratic internal discourse before the end of the war (“Im amtsinternen Sprachgebrauch wurde dieses Treffen als ‘Konferenz der Staatssekretäre’ bezeichnet”), but do not provide any source; in any case, there is no evidence to suggest that this was the term used at the time, in 1942.
6. A photograph of the minutes has been printed in many places and the minutes have also been translated into several languages. A high-quality reproduction of the document can be found in the catalog published by the museum of Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz: Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden. Katalog der ständigen Ausstellung (Berlin: Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, 2006), 199–213. At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Eichmann gave testimony concerning the meeting and made a number of comments on the minutes themselves.
7. Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, ed., Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden. Katalog, 203 (p. 5 of the original minutes).
8. For different interpretations of the venue and significance of the meeting and for discussions of these interpretations (as well as bibliographical references regarding the participants), see especially Mark Roseman, The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (London: Penguin, 2002), 1–6 and 55–96.
9. In a recent chapter, Gerhard Wolf proposed viewing this meeting also in another context, that of Heydrich attempting “to reclaim lost influence in the broader field of Nazi population policies by aligning the treatment of ‘enemy populations’ with the grander vision of a ‘German East’. This Nazi dystopia not only called for destroying Jewish existence in Europe, but demanded that even the way in which Jews were killed would serve the Nazi cause.” This possible additional dimension does not undermine the question of the geographical limits of the planning as discussed at Wannsee. See: Gerhard Wolf, “The Wannsee Conference in 1942 and the National Socialist living space dystopia,” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 2 (2015): 153–175; the quote is from page 153.
10. Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden. Katalog, 204.
11. Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich-Zürich: Piper, 1998), 469. Longerich repeats this argument in a more incisive manner in The Unwritten Order: Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution (London: Tempus, 2002), 96: “Included in the 700,000 Jews for unoccupied France are those of the North African colonies.” He repeats this argument word for word in Holocaust, 307.
12. Longerich, The Unwritten Order: Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution, 545.
13. Friedländer, The Years of Extermination, 340.
14. Friedländer, The Years of Extermination, 285.
15. Michel Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1983); Michel Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy (Paris: Riveneuve éditions, 2008).
16. Edith Shaked, who teaches the Holocaust at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, argues that the Jews of North Africa were included in the figure of 700,000 and presents as the main document proving this point an entry in Himmler’s appointments diary, dated December 10, 1942: “Juden in Frankreich 600–700,000 abschaffen” (“dispose of 600,000 to 700,000 Jews in France”). The entry has a checkmark appearing alongside it, signifying Himmlers’s authorization of this plan. In my opinion, this diary entry cannot be offered as evidence, because it was written eleven months after the Wannsee meeting and refers to a document he apparently received from Heydrich or from his own aides (it can be assumed that the Jews who had already been deported from France in 1942 were deducted from that figure). See Edith Shaked, “The Holocaust: Reexamining the Wannsee Conference, Himmler’s Appointment Book, and Tunisian Jews,” The Nizkor Project, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/s/shaked-edith/re-examining-wannsee.html. It should also be noted that Shaked primarily focuses on the fate of Tunisian Jewry and she makes no mention of Algerian or Moroccan Jewry or of the differences between the various colonies of North Africa. On Himmler’s diary, see Peter Witte, Michael Wildt, Martina Voigt, Dieter Pohl, Peter Klein, Christian Gerlach, Christoph Dieckmann, and Andrej Angrick, eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (Hamburg: Christians, 1999).
17. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), 411.
18. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 264–265. Hilberg did not change his phrasing in the later editions—see the third edition: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2003), vol. II, 687.
19. Leni Yahil, Die Shoah: Überlebenskampf und Vernichtung der europäischen Juden (Munich: Luchtehand, 1998), 436.
20. See the index in Yahil, Die Shoah: Überlebenskampf und Vernichtung der europäischen Juden.
21. Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, The Vichy Regime in France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 222.
22. Asher Cohen, Persécutions et sauvetages: Juifs et Français sous l’Occupation et sous Vichy (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 132–133; Daniel Carpi, Bein Shevet le-Hessed. Ha-Shiltonot ha-Italkiyim vihudei Tzarefat ve-Tunisiya be-Milhemet ha-Olam ha-Sheniya (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1993), 23n31 (Hebrew).
23. “Ohne daβ sich der weitere Übermittlungsweg oder eine direkte Weitergabe der Statistik von Dannecker and Eichmann nachwiesen lieβe”; Ahlrich Meyer, Täter im Verhör: Die “Endlösung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich 1940–1944 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 86–88.
24. Christoph Kreutzmüller, “Die Erfassung der Juden im Reichskommissariat der besetzten niederländischen Gebiete,” in Besatzung, Kollaboration und Holocaust: Neue Studien zu Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, ed. Johannes Hürter und Jürgen Zarusky (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008), 21–44.
25. Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden. Katalog, 204 (p. 6 of the original minutes).
26. In Soviet Russia’s census for 1937, 2,715,108 Jews were listed for the entire Soviet Union. See Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust: A Social and Demographic Profile (Jerusalem: Centre for Research of East European Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998), 2. Peter-Heinz Seraphim’s book on the Jews of Eastern Europe, which was published in 1938 and was a basic source for the experts on Jewish affairs in the SS, notes that in 1926 there were 2,476,000 Jews in the European part of Soviet Russia. See Peter-Heinz Seraphim, Das Judentum im osteuropäischen Raum (Essen: Essener Verlag, 1938), 290.
27. Kreutzmüller, “Die Erfassung der Juden,” 41.
28. Letter from Reichvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland to Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung, August 7, 1941, in Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 8150, 25, 1. My thanks to Dr. Wolf Kaiser from the memorial and educational site, Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, for giving me a copy of this document. The appendix to the letter appears on 2–20.
29. Browning, Origins of the Final Solution, 281–312 and 353–423; Gerhard Weinberg, Germany’s War for World Conquest and the Extermination of Jews (Washington, DC: USHMM/Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, 1995), 10.
30. This famous letter has been published in many places since its submission as document 710-PS at the Trial of the Major War Criminals at Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, vol. 26, 266–267.
31. Cornelia Essner, Die “Nürnberger Gesetze” oder die Verwaltung des Rassenwahns 1933–1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000), 335–341; Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), 607–617; Gideon Botsch, “Der Weg zum Massenmord an den Juden Europas,” in Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden. Katalog, ed. Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, 72–86.
32. See note 25.
33. See note 25.
34. Letters from Reichvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland to Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung, August 7 and 13, 1941, in Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 8150, 25; for the specifications mentioned here see the second report, 21–65.
35. Letters from Reichvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland to Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung, Letter from the Reich Association to the Central Office, August 7, 1941, 8. For the Jewish population in Rhodesia see: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zimbabwe-virtual-jewish-history-tour.
36. Aforementioned letter from the Reich Association to the Central Office, August 13, 1941 (see note 28), 25.
37. Eichmann’s response to Judge Yitzhak Raveh, Session 106, July 21, 1961. The German version appears in Kurt Pätzold and Erika Schwarz, Tagesordnung. Judenmord: Die Wannsee-Konferenz am 20. Januar 1942 (Berlin: Metropol, 1992), 196.
38. Unfortunately, we could not find the issue of this newspaper where this information was published. However, this does not change the fact that it was quoted and used by Eichmann’s office.
39. Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 8150, Bd. 28, 11.
40. Quotes from Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden. Katalog, 204–205 (pp. 6–7 of the original minutes).
41. The original German text reads: “Ich will heute wieder ein Prophet sein: Wenn es dem internationalen Finanzjudentum in und außerhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Völker noch einmal in einen Weltkrieg zu stürzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die Bolschewisierung der Erde und damit der Sieg des Judentums sein, sondern die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa”; see Max Domarus, Hitler—Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. II (Munich: Suddeutscher, 1965), 1057. For the English translation see: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988), 1049.
42. On this point, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: Allen Lane, 2000), specifically, the index, under “Hitler” and “Prophecy.”
43. Peter Witte, “Zwei Entscheidungen in der ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’: Deportationen nach Lodz und Vernichtung in Chelmno,” in Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 1995, ed. Miroslav Karny, Jaroslava Milotova, Raimund Kemper, and Michael Wögerbauer (Prague: Theresienstädter Intiative/Academia, 1995), 46.
44. “Gemäß dem Willen des Führers soll nach dem Kriege die Judenfrage innerhalb des von Deutschland beherrschten oder kontrollierten Teiles Europas einer endgültigen Lösung zugeführt werde”; cited in Browning, Origins of the Final Solution, 114–115.
45. “Die politische und diplomatische Führung Adolf Hitlers hat die Grundlagen für die europäische Lösung der Judenfrage geschaffen”; cited in Wolfram Meyer zu Utrup, Kampf gegen die “jüdische Weltverschwörung.” Propaganda und Antisemitismus der Nationalsozialisten 1919 bis 1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2003), 449n120.
46. “Die Gelegenheit dieses Krieges muss benutzt werden, in Europa die Judenfrage endgültig zu bereinigen”; Luther to Weizsäcker, December 4, 1941, in Yad Vashem Archives (hereafter YVA), 051.463, and cited in Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, and Moshe Zimmermann, Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik (Munich: Blessing, 2010), 186.
47. Eichmann’s response to prosecutor Gideon Hausner, at the session that took place on July 18, 1961. Cited in German in Pätzold and Schwarz, Tagesordnung, 194.
48. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, “‘Beseitigung der jüdisch-nationalen Heimstätte in Palästina’: Das Einsatzkommando bei der Panzerarmee Afrika 1942”, in Deutsche, Juden, Völkermord. Der Holocaust als Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Jürgen Matthäus and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), 153–176; and Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Halbmond und Hakenkreuz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006); Peter Lieb, “Erwin Rommel. Widerstandskämpfer oder Nationalsozialist?,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 61, no. 3 (2013): 303–343. Several memoires and diaries shed light on German anti-Jewish policies from the perspective of the persecuted Jews: Robert Borgel, Étoile jaune et croix gammée (Paris: Le Manuscrit, 2007); Paul Ghez, Six mois sous la botte (Paris: Le Manuscrit, 2009); Jacob-André Guez, Au camp de Bizerte. Journal d’un Juif tunisien interné sous l’occupation allemande, 1942–1943 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001); Clément Houri, L’Occupation de la Tunisie par les armeés de l’axe, 20 novembre 1942–1947 mai 1943: Vue de Cremieuxville (banlieue de Tunis)—Journal (Jerusalem: Institut Ben-Zvi and Yad Vashem, 2013) (Hebrew).
49. Rauff to the German Embassy in Rome, May 12, 1942, in YVA, JM/2213.
50. Kiril Feferman, The Holocaust in the Crimea and the North Caucasus (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2016).
51. The continuation of the citation presented above from Zapp’s draft of Himmler’s speech (see note 40), speaks of the beginning of a solution to the global Jewish question (Lösung der Weltjudenfrage). In the summer semester of 1943, Theodor Scheffer organized a scholarly conference on the Jewish Question at the pedagogical-political department of the University of Jena. At the conference, Scheffer stated that, “as far as we are concerned, the matter does not end with our having solved the Jewish Question in the Reich in an extensive manner. This is a global question that is closely connected to the unique nature of both the current war and the continual intensification of the battles in the course of the war” (“Es ist für uns nicht damit abgetan, daß wir die Judenfrage im Reich weitgehend gelöst haben. Sie ist eine Weltfrage, mit der dieser Krieg und seine immer heftiger werdenden Kämpfe zusammenhangen”). Cited in Uwe Hoßfeld, Jürgen John, Oliver Lemuth, and Rüdiger Stutz, eds., Kämpferische Wissenschaft. Studien zur Universität Jena im Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Böhlau, 2003), 530–531. In other words, in terms of the Nazis’ “vision,” a wide range of persons who believed in that vision ideologically spread the idea of the Final Solution beyond Europe’s borders even before Germany was in a position to implement it.
52. Kershaw, Fateful Choices, Chapter 10.
53. The documents are presented in their entirety in Norbert Kampe and Peter Klein, eds., Die Wannsee-Konferenz am 20. Januar 1942. Dokumente, Forschungsstand, Kontroversen (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), 20–24.