Notes

Introduction

1. This photograph is reproduced on the cover of “Photography and the Holocaust,” ed. Sybil Milton and Genya Markon, special issue, History of Photography 23, no. 4 (Winter 1999). All details about the individuals depicted are from the caption of the photograph.

2. Ibid.

3. For some reviews (particularly the devastating assessment of Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1989), see Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven, 2001), particularly pp. 70ff.

4. For one of the best examples of this approach see the essays collected in Ulrich Herbert, National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000).

5. Regarding this approach see in particular Götz Aly, Belinda Cooper, and Allison Brown, “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London and New York, 1999); Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat (Munich, 2005).

6. See Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, 1997).

7. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996).

8. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992).

9. Quoted in Ute Deichmann, Biologen unter Hitler: Porträt einer Wissenschaft im NS-Staat (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), p. 372.

10. For a very thorough analysis of the Jewish historiography of the Holocaust, see Dan Michman, Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective (London and Portland, OR, 2003).

11. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, 1963).

12. I do not share Raul Hilberg’s skepticism about diaries as valid sources for our understanding of the events. See Raul Hilberg, Sources of Holocaust Research: An Analysis (Chicago, 2001), mainly pp. 141–42, 155–59, and 161–62. The problems with some of the diaries are easily recognizable when the case arises.

13. Walter Laqueur, “Three Witnesses: The Legacy of Viktor Klemperer, Willy Cohn and Richard Koch,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 10, no. 3 (1996), p. 266.

14. For a very close position, see Tom Laqueur, “The Sound of Voices Intoning Names,” London Review of Books (1997), pp. 3ff.

Chapter 1: September 1939–May 1940

1. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41 (New York, 1998), p. 306.

2. Ibid.

3. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham I. Katsh (Bloomington, 1999), p. 19.

4. Ibid., p. 20.

5. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of David Sierakowiak, ed. Alan Adelson (New York, 1996), p. 36.

6. Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), p. 74.

7. Ibid., p. 76.

8. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 93. For details on Sierakowiak’s background, see Adelson’s “Introduction” to the Diary.

9. There were some Jewish members of several European fascist parties—of course not in the Nazi Party—but it seems that in Italy at least one-fifth of the native population of 47,000 Jews was at one stage or another affiliated with Mussolini’s party.

10. Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York, 1989), pp. 646–47.

11. For an excellent overview of the political scene, see Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington, 1983).

12. Ibid., p. 255.

13. For this analysis see, among many publications, Shmuel Ettinger, “Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern and Central Europe between the World Wars: An Outline,” in Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe, 1918–1945, ed. Bela Vago and George L. Mosse (New York, 1974), pp. 1ff.

14. William W. Hagen, “Before the ‘Final Solution’: Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Germany and Poland,” Journal of Modern History 68, no. 2, (1996), pp. 351ff.

15. For the idealizing trend see Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison, 1982).

16. For the fate of German Jewry see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1.

17. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York, 1958; reprint, 1996), p. 13.

18. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York, 1978), p. 84.

19. Norman Rose, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography (New York, 1986), p. 354.

20. Alfred Rosenberg, Das politische Tagebuch Alfred Rosenbergs, 1934/35 und 1939/40, ed. Hans Günther Seraphim (Munich, 1964), p. 81. (For the translation see Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination (Exeter, UK: 1997), p. 319.

21. For an analysis of Stalin’s policy at this point see Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven, 1999), pp. 5ff.

22. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, vol. 2, part 1 (Munich, 1965), pp. 1377ff, particularly 1391.

23. First called Reichsgau Posen, the area became the Warthegau in January 1940. The region of Lodz, inhabited by some 500,000 Poles and 300,000 Jews, was annexed to the Reichsgau Posen in November 1939, on the assumption that the Poles and the Jews would be transferred to the General Government and that ethnic Germans would occupy the vacated urban area. Cf. Götz Aly, Endlösung: Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), p. 59.

24. See mainly Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch: Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabes des Heeres, 1939–1942, ed. Hans Adolf Jacobsen (Stuttgart, 1962–64) vol. 1, p. 107.

25. For an excellent presentation of the Volkstumskampf as applied to Poland, see Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology and Atrocity (Lawrence, KS, 2003), pp. 1ff.

26. For the preparation of the operation see ibid., pp. 14ff.

27. For the various significations of this code name see Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York, 1991), p. 68.

28. For Heydrich’s letter to Daluege, see Helmut Krausnick, “Hitler und die Morde in Polen,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 11 (1963), pp. 206–9.

29. Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939–1945 (Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, 1965), p. 20.

30. Kurt Pätzold, ed., Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 234.

31. Ibid., p. 239.

32. Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, p. 42. The double Dr. indicates, according to German academic custom, that Rasch had more than one doctoral degree (he had doctorates in law and in political science).

33. Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, UK, 1988). For a more detailed discussion of the German terror measures in Krakow see Czeslaw Madajczyk, Die Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen (1939–45) (Wiesbaden, 1967), pp. 13ff. According to Bogdan Musial, the number of victims was 39,500 Poles and 7,000 Jews; see Bogdan Musial, “Das Schlachtfeld zweier totalitären Systems. Polen unter deutscher und sowjetischer Herrschaft 1939–1941,” in Genesis des Genozids: Polen 1939–1941, ed. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial (Darmstadt, 2004), pp. 13ff, particularly 15. Although I disagree with many of Musial’s interpretations and with those of some contributors to this volume, the factual details contained in several of the essays are useful.

34. Aly estimates the number of these victims at 10,000 to 15,000. Götz Aly, “Judenumsiedlung,” in Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik, 1939–1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, ed. Ulrich Herbert (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), p. 85.

35. Aly, “Judenumsiedlung,” pp. 85–87.

36. Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany c. 1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 131–32. See also an excerpt of the verdict against Kurt Eimann in Ernst Klee, ed., Dokumente zur Euthanasie. (Frankfurt: 1985).

37. Klee, ed., Dokumente zur Euthanasie. p. 112.

38. Ibid. pp. 117ff.

39. Henry Friedlander, Der Weg zum NS-Genozid: Von der Euthanasie zur Endlösung (Berlin, 1997), pp. 431ff.

40. See Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), pp. 260ff; see also Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 (New York, 1990), p. 310.

41. Otto Dietrich, Auf den Strassen des Sieges: Erlebnisse mit dem Führer in Polen: Ein Gemeinschaftsbuch (Munich, 1939), quoted in Breitman, The Architect of Genocide, p. 73.

42. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part 1, vol. 7, (Munich, 1998), p. 141.

43. Ibid., p. 180.

44. Ibid., p. 186.

45. Ibid., p. 250.

46. Hitler, Reden, vol. 2, part 1, p. 1340.

47. Ibid., p. 1342.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1442 and 1443.

50. Ibid., pp. 1465 and 1468.

51. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part 1, vol. 7, (Munich, 1987), p. 180.

52. Felix Moeller, Der Filmminister: Goebbels und der Film im Dritten Reich (Berlin, 1998), p. 240.

53. For indications about the early films and the “coincidence” between the choice of the latter topics with that of the prior ones see Susan Tegel, “The Politics of Censorship: Britain’s ‘Jew Süss’, (1934) in London, New York and Vienna,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television15, no. 2 (1995), pp. 219ff.

54. Ibid., p. 221ff.

55. Ibid., p. 230ff.

56. Ibid., p. 227.

57. Goebbels, Tagebücher part 1, vol. 7, p. 140. Also Moeller, Der Filmminister, p. 239.

58. For the connection between both films see Evelyn Hampicke and Hanno Loewy, “Juden ohne Maske: Vorlüfige Bemerkungen zur Geschichte eines Kompilationsfilms,” in “Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses—”: Antisemitische Forschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut, Jahrbuch 1998/99 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust (Frankfurt, 1999), pp. 259–60.

59. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 7, p. 140.

60. For a summary of the literature about Der Ewige Jude and the main aspects of its production and distribution, see Yizhak Ahren, Stig Hornshøj-Møller, and Christoph B. Melchers, Der ewige Jude: Wie Goebbels hetzte: Untersuchungen zum nationalsozialistischen Propagandafilm(Aachen, 1990).

61. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 7, p. 157.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid., p. 166.

64. Ibid., p. 172.

65. Ibid., p. 177.

66. Ibid., p. 202.

67. Shimon Huberband, “The Destruction of the Synagogues in Lodz,” in Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege, ed. Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides (New York, 1983), p. 70.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid., 70–71.

70. Daniel Uziel, “Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), p. 33.

71. Ibid., p. 34.

72. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, vol. 13, U.S. v. von Weizsäcker: The Ministries Case, (Washington, DC: US GPO., 1952), Nuremberg doc. NG-4699, p. 143. (When quoting original translations from documents presented at the Nuremberg trials, I mostly kept the text as is, despite the poor quality of some of the translations.)

73. Quoted in Josef Wulf, ed., Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation, vol. 5, Kunst und Kultur im Dritten Reich (Gütersloh, 1964), p. 102.

74. Quoted in Ronald M. Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler’s Labor Front Leader (Oxford and New York, 1988), p. 261.

75. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 7, p. 337.

76. Eberhard Röhm and Jörg Thierfelder, Juden, Christen, Deutsche, 1933–1945 vol. 3, part 2 (Stuttgart, 1990—), p. 67.

77. David Vital, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789–1939 (Oxford, 2001), p. 776.

78. Ibid., pp. 776–77.

79. Mendelsohn, The Jews, p. 74.

80. One of the most significant indicators of the cultural autonomy of the Jews of Poland can be found in educational statistics. At the primary-school level, a vast number of Jewish children still attended the traditional religious heder. Moreover, almost 20 percent of Jewish pupils at that level went to either Yiddish or Hebrew schools; about 50 percent of all Jewish pupils at the secondary-school level went to either Yiddish or Hebrew schools, and so did around 60 percent of the pupils in the vocational schools. For these statistics see Salo Baron’s testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. Cf. Adolf Eichmann, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1992–) pp. 176ff.

81. The contrary interpretations of Polish anti-Semitism before and during the Holocaust on the one hand and of Jewish anti-Polish attitudes on the other by Jewish and Polish historians respectively have not lost their pugnacity with the passage of time. On the overall issue see, among others, Michael R. Marries, The Holocaust in History (New York, 1987), pp. 96ff. On a typically mythical rendition of Jewish attitudes see David Engel, “Lwów, 1918: The Transmutation of a Symbol and its Legacy in the Holocaust,” in Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, ed. Joshua D. Zimmerman (New Brunswick, 2003), pp. 32ff.

82. Anna Landau-Czajka, “The Jewish Question in Poland: Views Expressed in the Catholic Press between the Two World Wars,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 11 (1998), p. 263.

83. Ibid., p. 265.

84. Quoted in Brian Porter, “Making a Space for Antisemitism: The Catholic Hierarchy and the Jews in the Early Twentieth Century,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 16 (2003), p. 420. For Hlond’s pastoral letter and other such texts, see also Viktoria Pollmann, Untermieter im Christlichen Haus: Die Kirche und die “jüdische Frage” anhand der Bistumspredigte der Metropolie Krakau 1926–1935 (Wiesbaden, 2001).

85. Porter, “Making a Space for Antisemitism,” p. 420.

86. See in particular Yisrael Gutman, “Polish Antisemitism Between the Wars: An Overview,” in The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, ed. Yisrael Gutman et al. (Hanover, NH, 1989), pp. 97ff. See also the somewhat apologetic article by Roman Wapinski, “The Endecja and the Jewish Question,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 12 (1999), pp. 271ff.

87. See for example the energetic intervention of the Polish government against anti-Semitic rabble-rousing in Lwow, in 1929, in part incited by church authorities and triggered by fictitious Jewish profanation of Catholic rituals. Antony Polonsky, “A Failed Pogrom: The Demonstrations in Lwow, June 1929,” in The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, ed. Yisrael Gutman et al. (Hanover, NH, 1989), pp. 109ff.

88. For a generally much milder view of Polish policies toward its Jewish population and thus a far more positive assessment of the situation of Polish Jewry on the eve of the war, see Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 2 (New York, 1984), pp. 259ff and 407ff.

89. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, pp. 90ff. See also Mallmann and Musial, Genesis des Genozids, and Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt, 2006).

90. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, p. 92.

91. Ibid., p. 99.

92. Ibid., pp. 99–100.

93. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. 1, p. 67.

94. Ibid.

95. Quoted in Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York, 1991), p. 64.

96. Alexander B. Rossino, “Destructive Impulses: German Soldiers and the Conquest of Poland,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7, no. 3 (1997), p. 356.

97. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum-Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944. (Hamburg, 1997), p. 9.

98. Ibid., p. 12.

99. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 54.

100. Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL. 1993), p. 40.

101. Ibid., p. 41.

102. Ibid., p. 42.

103. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 67.

104. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, particularly pp. 227ff.

105. For Blaskowitz’s memorandum, see Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York: 1991), pp. 4–5.

106. Quoted in Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, p. 120.

107. Quoted in Pätzold, Verfolgung, pp. 236ff.

108. Ibid., p. 239.

109. For the full text of Heydrich’s letter see Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents. vol. 11, part 1 (New York, 1992), pp. 132–33.

110. The most encompassing study remains Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards.

111. For the debate on Rothfels, see Joachim Lerchenmüller, “Die “SD-mässige” Bearbeitung der Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Nachrichtendienst, politische Elite, Mordeinheit: Der Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS, ed. Michael Wildt (Hamburg, 2003), pp. 162–63. Two major conferences on Rothfels, one in Berlin and the other in Munich, took place in July 2003. See, among other accounts, Rainer Blasius, “Bis in die Rolle gefärbt: Zwei Tagungen zum Einfluβ von Hans Rothfels auf die deutsche Zeitgeschichtsschreibung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 19, 2003. For more comprehensive assessments of Rothfels’s intellectual impact, see Jan Eckel, Hans Rothfels: Eine intellektuelle Biographie im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2005); Johannes Hürter and Hans Woller, Hans Rothfels und die deutsche Zeitgeschichte (Munich, 2005).

112. Quoted in Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, 1991), pp. 102–3. See also Ingo Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus: Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der “Volkstumskampf” im Osten (Göttingen, 2002); Peter Schöttler, ed., Geschichtsschreibung als Legitimationswissenschaft 1918–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997); Winfried Schulze and Otto Gerhard Oexle, Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1999).

113. For Schieder’s memorandum, as well as for the suggestions of the “Ostforscher” in the 1930s and after the beginning of the war, see Götz Aly, Macht-Geist-Wahn: Kontinuitäten deutschen Denkens (Berlin, 1997), pp. 153ff and particularly pp. 179ff.

114. Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards, p. 165.

115. Michael Burleigh, “Die Stunde der Experten,” in Mechtild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher, and Cordula Tollmien, eds., Der “Generalplan Ost”: Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik (Berlin, 1993), p. 347.

116. Ibid.

117. Ibid., p. 348.

118. Ibid. On the scholars and their ideological commitment, see also Michael Falhlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst nationalsozialistischer Politik: Die “Volksdeutscher Forschungsgemeinschaften” von 1931–1945 (Wiesbaden, 1999).

119. For a thorough study of the “Jewish policies” in East Upper Silesia see Sybille Steinbacher, “In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Murder of the Jews of East Upper Silesia,” in The Holocaust, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), vol. 2, pp. 110ff. See also Sybille Steinbacher, “Musterstadt” Auschwitz: Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich, 2000) p. 138ff.

120. See mainly Gerhard Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1938 bis 1945: Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik (Vienna, 1975), p. 105. On this operation as such see Seev Goshen, “Eichmann und die Nisko-Aktion im Oktober 1939. Eine Fallstudie zur NS-Judenpolitik in der letzten Epoche vor der ‘Endlösung.’” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 29 (1981); see also Seev Goshen, “Nisko-Ein Ausnahmefall unter der Judenlagern der SS,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 40 (1992); Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna, 1992), pp. 76, 78ff.

121. Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer, pp. 76, 78ff.

122. Quoted in Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), p. 52.

123. Quoted in Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges. (East Berlin, 1961), p. 46.

124. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 1 (New Haven 2003), p. 208.

125. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, ed. Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), p. 165.

126. On the wrangling surrounding the expulsions from Kraków, see Christopher R. Browning and Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, Neb., 2004), pp. 131ff.

127. Ibid., pp. 135ff. In Radom and Lublin, the needs for billeting of Wehrmacht units in early 1941, in preparation for the attack against the Soviet Union, added pressure to the expulsion and ghettoization processes. See ibid.

128. For this evolution, with particular emphasis on Lublin, see Pohl, Judenpolitik, pp. 33ff.

129. For the Selbstschutz, see mainly Peter R. Black, “Rehearsal for ‘Reinhard’? Odilo Globocnik and the Lublin Selbstschutz,” Central European History 25, no. 2 (1992) pp. 204ff; see also Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Polen, 1939/40(Munich, 1992).

130. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 96.

131. Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, pp. 55 and 55n.

132. Aly, “Judenumsiedlung,” pp. 79–80.

133. For the specific German measures in Lodz, see in particular Florian Freund, Bertrand Perz, and Karl Stuhlpfarrer, “Das Ghetto in Litzmannstadt (Lodz),” in Unser einziger Weg ist Arbeit [Unzer eyntsiger veg iz arbayt], ed. Hanno Loewy and Gerhard Schoenberner (Vienna, 1990), p. 22.

134. Helma Kaden et al., eds., Dokumente des Verbrechens: Aus Akten des Dritten Reiches, 1933–1945, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1993), pp. 176–77.

135. Quoted in Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, p. 204.

136. See Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York), pp. 11ff.

137. Aharon Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland—Postures and Attitudes,” Yad Vashem Studies 12 (1977), p. 344. The same dual aspect could in fact be noted in the foundation and mainly in the evolution of the representation (then association) of the Jews of Germany (then inGermany).

138. Frank, Diensttagebuch, pp. 215ff.

139. More generally, tension and rivalry would soon develop throughout the General Government between Frank’s administration and the SS apparatus. See Pohl, Judenpolitik, pp. 60–62.

140. Trunk, Judenrat, pp. 21ff.

141. Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland—Postures and Attitudes,” pp. 355–56.

142. Ibid., p. 353.

143. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 85.

144. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony, p. 57.

145. For these measures, see mainly Bernhard Rosenkötter, Treuhandpolitik: Die “Haupttreuhandstelle Ost” und der Raub polnischen Vermögens, 1939–1945 (Essen, 2003).

146. The most thorough studies of corruption in Nazi Germany are Frank Bajohr, “Arisierung” in Hamburg: Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1997), and Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure: Korruption in der NS-Zeit(Frankfurt am Main, 2001).

147. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, ed. Jacob Sloan (New York, 1974), p. 8.

148. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, pp. 90ff.

149. Trunk, Judenrat, p. 244.

150. Joseph Kermish, ed., To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbath”). (Jerusalem, 1986), p. 250.

151. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 69.

152. For most of the details included in this section Antony Polonsky and Norman Davies, eds., Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939–1946 (New York, 1991).

153. Letter of March 12, 1940, from Moshe Kleinbaum to Nahum Goldmann, in Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents. 22 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989–), vol. 8, 1990, [doc. 34], pp. 112–13.

154. Isaiah Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution: Collective and Individual Behavior in Extremis (New York, 1979), p. 44.

155. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony, pp. 49–50.

156. Jan T. Gross, “A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews and Communists,” in The Politics of Retribution, ed. István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton, 2000), pp. 97–98; see also, from a Polish national perspective, Marek Wierzbicki, “Die polnisch-jüdischen Beziehungen unter sowjetischer Herrschaft: Zur Wahrnehmung gesellschaftlicher Realität im Westlichen Weissrussland 1939–1941,” in Genesis des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941, ed. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial (Darmstadt, 2004), pp. 187ff. Wierzbicki repeats the traditional Polish arguments about Jewish disloyalty, and so on.

157. Alexander B. Rossino, “Polish ‘Neighbors’ and German Invaders: Anti-Jewish Violence in the Bialystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 16 (2003), pp. 441–42.

158. Polonsky and Davies, Jews in Eastern Poland, p. 28.

159. Frank, Diensttagebuch, p. 199:

160. Polonsky and Davies, Jews in Eastern Poland, p. 28.

161. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York, 1992), pp. 606–07.

162. The Karski report of February 1940 was first published in David Engel, “An Early Account of Polish Jewry under Nazi and Soviet Occupation Presented to the Polish Government-in-Exile, February 1940,” Jewish Social Studies 45 (1983), pp. 1–16.

163. Ibid., p. 12.

164. Ibid., pp. 12–13. Karski’s comments on the German use of anti-Semitism as a way of gaining support among the Polish population were also confirmed by reports reaching the Foreign Office in London throughout 1940. See Bernard Wasserstein, “Polish Influences on British Policy Regarding Jewish Rescue Efforts in Poland 1939–1945,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 11 (1998), particularly p. 189.

165. Engel, “Early Account,” p. 11.

166. Gross, “A Tangled Web,” pp. 103–4.

167. For the attitude of the Polish government-in-exile and Knoll’s threats, see David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1939–1942 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), pp. 62ff., particularly 64–65.

168. At the beginning of the war the Jewish population of the “Old Reich” included approximately 190,000 “full Jews”; according to the census of May 1939 there were also 46,928 “half-Jews” and 32,669 “quarter-Jews” living in Germany. Cf. Ino Arndt and Heinz Boberach, “Deutsches Reich,” in Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, vol. 33, Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte (Munich, 1991), p. 34. In annexed Austria, the “full Jewish” population at the beginning of the war was 66,260 persons (belonging to the Jewish community) and 8,359 (not belonging to the community). Cf. Jonny Moser in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. (Munich, 1991), p. 69 n. 13.

169. Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung. (Heidelberg, 1981), p. 303.

170. Ibid., p. 305.

171. Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York, 1998), p. 146.

172. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 304.

173. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 408.

174. Ibid. The shopping time for Jews changed from place to place but was usually limited to a maximum of two hours.

175. Pätzold, Verfolgung, p. 235.

176. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 306.

177. Ibid., p. 308.

178. Ibid., p. 310.

179. For the issues raised by the initial order see Paul Sauer, ed., Dokumente über die Verfolgung der jüdischen Bürger in Baden-Württemberg durch das nationalsozialistische Regime 1933–1945, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 179ff.

180. Ibid., p. 181.

181. Ibid., p. 184.

182. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 309.

183. Ibid., p. 312.

184. Ibid., p. 314.

185. Pätzold, Verfolgung, p. 250.

186. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 307.

187. Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, 1938–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS, vol. 4 (Herrsching, 1984), p. 979.

188. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 318.

189. For Kirk’s cable of February 28, 1940, see John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982), pp. 120ff.

190. For some of these phantasmal representations, see Patricia Szobar, “Telling Sexual Stories in the Nazi Courts of Law: Race Defilement in Germany, 1933–1945,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, nos. 1–2 (2002), pp. 131–63.

191. Jochen Klepper, Unter dem Schatten Deiner Flügel: Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, ed. Hildegard Klepper (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 822.

192. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, 2002), pp. 113–14.

193. Helmut Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler (Munich, 1970), p. 75.

194. Ibid., p. 76.

195. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP, vol. 2, part 3, abstract No. 33179.

196. Ringelblum, Notes, p. 181.

197. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 412.

198. Ibid., pp. 407–08.

199. Ibid., p. 411.

200. Boberach, Meldungen, vol. 3, p. 541.

201. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 427.

202. Boberach, Meldungen. Vol. 4, pp. 1317ff.

203. John Connelly, “The Use of Volksgemeinschaft: Letters to the NSDAP Kreisleitung Eisenach 1939–1940,” Journal of Modern History 68, no. 4 (1996): pp. 924–25.

204. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, vol. 1, p. 335.

205. Sauer, Dokumente über die Verfolgung, vol. 2, p. 186.

206. See in particular the diary and documents in Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938–1940: Mit weiteren Dokumenten zur Militäropposition gegen Hitler, ed. Helmut Krausnick and Harold C. Deutsch (Stuttgart, 1970).

207. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss (unter Mitarbeit) and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 167.

208. Ibid., p. 168.

209. Joachim C. Fest, Plotting Hitler’s Death: The Story of the German Resistance (New York, 1996), p. 150.

210. On this issue see Hans Mommsen, “Der Widerstand gegen Hitler und die nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung,” in Alternative zu Hitler: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Widerstandes (Munich, 2000), pp. 388ff.

211. About the percentage of church members, see John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–45 (New York, 1968), p. 232. Two-thirds of all baptized members of Christian churches in Germany were Protestants, and one third were Catholics. These numbers are mentioned in Doris L. Bergen, “Catholics, Protestants, and Christian Antisemitism in Nazi Germany,” in David Cesarani, ed., Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. 6 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2004), vol. 1, p. 342.

212. On the “German Christians,” see in particular Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996).

213. For these attitudes see in particular infra, chapter V, of this book.

214. For this text, see Röhm and Thierfelder, Juden, vol. 3, part 2 (1938–1941), pp. 27–28.

215. For this text see Susannah Heschel, Transforming Jesus from Jew to Aryan: Protestant Theologians in Nazi Germany (Tucson, 1995), p. 4.

216. Susannah Heschel, “Deutsche Theologen für Hitler. Walter Grundmann und das Eisenacher Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des Jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben,” in “Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses—”: AntisemitischeForschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut, Jahrbuch 1998/99 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), p. 151.

217. Ibid., p. 153.

218. Quoted in Röhm and Thierfelder, Juden, vol. 3, part 2, p. 106.

219. Heinz Boberach, ed., Berichte des SD und der Gestapo über Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1934–1944. (Mainz, 1971), p. 365.

220. Ibid., p. 376.

221. Ibid., p. 406.

222. For manifestations of this traditional Catholic anti-Semitism during the thirties see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, pp. 42–60.

223. For details on this controversy see Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York, 1964), pp. 278–79.

224. Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, p. 283. The Paulus Bund was essentially open to Jewish converts who were in line with the “new Germany” (ibid.); it later allowed the SD to find at least one notorious informant among its members. See Wolfgang Benz, Patriot und Paria: Das Leben des Erwin Goldmann zwischen Judentum und Nationalsozialismus: eine Dokumentation (Berlin, 1997).

225. Ibid.

226. For the relations between Bertram and Preysing, see Klaus Schölder, A Requiem for Hitler: And Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle (London, 1989), pp. 157ff.

227. For the transition from Reichsvertretung to Reichsvereinigung see Otto Dov Kulka, “The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of German Jews, 1938/9–1943,” in Arnold Paucker, ed., Die Juden im Nationalsozialistichen Deutschland (Tübingen, 1986), pp. 353ff.

228. See Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, p. 284.

229. For the relations between the Reichsvereinigung and the Berlin community see, among others, Beate Meyer, “Gratwanderung zwischen Verantwortung und Verstrickung—Die Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland und die jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin 1938–1945,” in Beate Meyer and Hermann Simon, eds Juden in Berlin, 1938–1945 (Berlin, 2000), pp. 291ff.

230. Wolf Gruner, “Public Welfare and the German Jews under National Socialism,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. David Bankier (New York, 2000), pp. 78ff.

231. On these issues see Wolf Gruner, “Poverty and Persecution: The Reichsvereinigung, the Jewish Population, and Anti-Jewish Policy in the Nazi State, 1939–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 27 (1999), pp. 23ff.

232. Salomon Adler-Rudel, Jüdische Selbsthilfe unter dem Naziregime 1933–1939, im Spiegel der Berichte der Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974), pp. 31–33.

233. Yfaat Weiss, “The ‘Emigration Effort’ or ‘Repatriation,’” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. David Bankier (New York, 2000), pp. 367–68; See also Arnold Paucker and Konrad Kwiet, “Jewish Leadership and Jewish Resistance,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. David Bankier (New York, 2000), p. 379.

234. Paucker and Kwiet, “Jewish Leadership and Jewish Resistance,” p. 379.

235. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, p. 321.

236. See mainly Raul Hilberg and Stanislaw Staron, introduction to Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, pp. 29–30.

237. Ibid., p. 27.

238. Ibid., p. 144.

239. Ibid., p. 152.

240. Apolinary Hartglas, “How Did Czerniaków Become Head of the Warsaw Judenrat?” Yad Vashem Bulletin 15 (1964), pp. 4–7.

241. Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York, 1980), p. 336.

242. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 191.

243. Ringelblum, Notes, pp. 47–48.

244. For Szulman’s diary and his remarks on Rumkowski, see Robert Moses Shapiro, “Diaries and Memoirs from the Lodz Ghetto in Yiddish and Hebrew,” in Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro (Hoboken, NJ, 1999), pp. 195ff.

245. Israel Gutman, “Debate,” in Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945, ed. Cynthia J. Haft and Yisrael Gutman (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 186.

246. About Kaplan’s life, see Abraham I. Katsh’s introduction to Kaplan’s Diary, pp. 9–17.

247. The details of Ringelblum’s life are taken from Jacob Sloan’s introduction to Ringelblum’s Notes and from a recent analysis: Samuel David Kassow, “Vilna and Warsaw, Two Ghetto Diaries: Herman Kruk and Emanuel Ringelblum,” in Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro (Hoboken, 1999), pp. 171ff.

Chapter 2: May 1940–December 1940

1. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 439.

2. Paul Sauer, ed., Dokumente über die Verfolgung der jüdischen Bürger in Baden-Württemberg durch das nationalsozialistische Regime 1933–1945, vol. 2, (Stuttgart, 1966), p. 240.

3. Ibid., p. 257.

4. Goldman’s letter is reproduced in Abraham J. Peck, ed., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 8 (New York: 1990), pp. 76ff.

5. See most recently Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), pp. 294ff. and 296.

6. For this “antimaterialist” dimension see in particular Zeev Sternhell, La Droite Révolutionnaire 1885–1914: Les Origines françaises du fascisme (Paris, 1978); Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (Berkeley, 1986).

7. John Lukacs, The Duel: Hitler vs. Churchill: 10 May–31 July 1940 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 206ff.

8. Ibid.

9. Emmanuel Mounier, “A Letter from France,” The Commonweal, October 25, 1940, p. 10–11.

10. “Accomodation” was thoroughly described and analyzed in regard to occupied France in Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise (New York, 1996). See in particular pp. 175ff.

11. For this issue see Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, L’Encyclique cachée de Pie XI: Une occasion manquée de l’Église face à l’antisémitisme (Paris, 1995).

12. I shared this misinterpretation. See Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation (New York, 1966).

13. For the most recent publications on the anti-Jewish tradition of the church and the modern papacy, see mainly James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (Boston, 2001), and David I. Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York, 2001).

14. For Pacelli’s personality see in particular John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York, 1999).

15. For both documents, uncovered in 2003, see Laurie Goodstein, “New Look at Pius XII’s Views of Nazis,” New York Times, August 31, 2003, p. 17. On the prewar years see Thomas Brechenmacher, “Teufelspakt, Selbsterhaltung, universale Mission? Leitlinien und Spielräume der Diplomatie des Heiligen Stuhls gegenüber dem nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (1933–1939) im Lichte neu zugänglicher vatikanischer Akten,” Historische Zeitschrift 280, no. 3 (2005), pp. 591ff.

16. See Peter C. Kent, “A Tale of Two Popes: Pius XI, Pius XII and the Rome-Berlin Axis,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 4 (1988), p. 604.

17. For the decision and its context see Eugen Weber, Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France (Stanford, 1962), pp. 251–52.

18. Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 10ff.

19. Regarding Pius XII’s decision to keep German affairs to himself and for Orsenigo’s role, see Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 44–45.

20. For the Encyclical, see Heinz Boberach, ed., Berichte des SD und der Gestapo über Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1934–1944 (Mainz, 1971), p. 382 n. 1; for the Polish demands, see most recently Giovanni Miccoli, Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII: Vatican, Seconde Guerre Mondiale et Shoah (Bruxelles, 2005), pp. 52ff.

21. Burkhart Schneider, Pierre Blet, and Angelo Martini, eds., Die Briefe Pius’ XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe 1939–1944 (Mainz, 1966), pp. 104–11.

22. For the full context of this letter see Eberhard Jäckel, “Zur Politik des Heiligen Stuhls im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (Jan. 1964), translated in Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 55–56.

23. Within Himmler’s empire the “Main Office for the Security of the Reich” (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), established on September 27, 1939, and placed under Heydrich’s command, created a single institutional framework for the security and police agencies (the SD, the Gestapo, and the criminal police) that had already been coordinated since 1936. Heydrich’s (later Kaltenbrunner’s) main office became one of the centers of the planning and implementation of the anti-Jewish measures of the regime, within the general policy framework set up by Hitler. New initiatives were often worked out at the RSHA and submitted for Himmler’s and ultimately Hitler’s approval, although, as we shall see, on many occasions proposals were rejected or sent back for modification, due to political or military constraints. The RSHA delegates, the commanders of the Security Police (Befelshaber der Sicherheitspolizei, or BdS), operated in each occupied country or area throughout the Continent, and at times their relations with the Wehrmacht or with other Nazi agencies were tense, as a result of their independent initiatives and frequent disregard for the established chain of command. In 1940, the basic structure of the RSHA was finalized. Regarding Jewish matters, two offices were of special importance: Amt (office) IV and Amt V. Amt IV—“Research About and Fighting Against Enemies”—was, in fact, the Gestapo, under the command of Heinrich Müller. Subsection IVB4, the Jewish Referat or “desk,” under Eichmann’s authority, became the hub of the administrative and logistic organization of the anti-Jewish policies decided by the higher echelons. Eichmann had direct access to Heydrich and often to Himmler as well. Amt V, the criminal police central office, in charge of all measures against “asocials,” homosexuals, and the “Gypsies” also developed methods, mainly gas installations, for the murder of the mentally ill, later to be adapted to the extermination of the Jews; it worked in close cooperation with the headquarters of the “euthanasia” operation, often identified as T4 (the address of its headquarters, Tiergarten 4). For a thorough study of the RSHA see Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg, 2002). Kurt Daluege’s Order Police, also under Himmler’s command as chief of the German police, soon became an indispensable auxiliary of the Security Police units, mainly in the East. It was from the ranks of the Security Police that most of the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen were chosen. Notwithstanding its crucial role, the RSHA was only one of the agencies within the SS that fulfilled a major function in the terror system. The higher SS and police leaders (Höhere SS und Polizeiführer, or HSSPF) were Himmler’s personal delegates, East and West. They carried the ultimate responsibility for operations against the Jews and the fight against “partisans” or various resistance movements in their country or area. They represented the goals and interests of the SS in any policy debate with local authorities, the Wehrmacht, or party appointees in the occupied countries. The HSSPF commanded a network of district SS and police leaders (SSPF) and were the commanders of the Order Police units in their area. For a thorough study of the HSSPF, see Ruth Bettina Birn, Die höheren SS und Polizeiführer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten (Düsseldorf, 1986). The concentration camps had been one of the main SS instruments of terror from the outset of the regime: The first of these camps, Dachau, was established at the very beginning of the regime, in March 1933. The camps became a single system, from 1934 onward under the command of the SS Concentration Camps Inspectorate (The first inspector, SS general Theodor Eicke, was followed by Richard Glücks). The camps grew from seven in the 1930s to hundreds of main and satellite camps, spread all over occupied Europe at the height of the war; some of them were almost as deadly as the extermination camps set up from the end of 1941 on. In early 1942, the Concentration Camps Inspectorate was integrated into Oswald Pohl’s SS Main Office for Economic Administration (Wirtschaftsverwaltungs-Hauptamt, or WVHA) in charge of the entire SS economic realm. On the WVHA see Erik Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium Oswald Pohls und das SS-Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Paderborn, 2001), and Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: SS, Slave Labor and the Concentration Camp (Chapel Hill, 2002). New SS organizations such as Himmler’s Reich Agency for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV) played a major role after the beginning of the war. The RKFDV ruled over the ethnic reshuffling in Eastern Europe: ingathering, expulsions, deportations. Himmler’s chief of staff at the RKFDV was SS Obergruppenführer Ulrich Greifelt and the ongoing contact with the ethnic Germans, their transportation, and resettlement (or their ever longer waiting in transit camps) was more directly in the hands of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VOMI), headed by an old-timer of Nazi propaganda and incitement operations among German communities in foreign countries, SS Gruppenführer Werner Lorenz. Notwithstanding major achievements in the historiography dealing with the SS, one of the best overviews still remains the two-volume study: Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, 2 vols. (Olten, 1965).

24. For an assessment of Jewish population statistics in 1940, see the studies in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991).

25. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago, 2000), p. 297.

26. For details about Sebastian’s life and work see mainly Radu Ioanid, Introduction to Sebastian, Journal, pp. viiff.

27. See Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), pp. 161ff.

28. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham I. Katsh (Bloomington, 1999), p. 162.

29. Ibid., p. 163.

30. Ibid., p. 164.

31. Ibid., p. 166.

32. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41 (New York, 1998), p. 346.

33. Ibid., p. 349.

34. Ibid.

35. Jochen Klepper, Unter dem Schatten Deiner Flügel: Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, ed. Hildegard Klepper (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 902.

36. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, vol. 2, part 1 (Munich, 1965), p. 1541.

37. Ibid., p. 1580.

38. Ibid., p. 1628.

39. Documents on German Foreign Policy: Series D, 1937–1945, vol. 9 (Washington, DC, 1956), p. 146. (Hereafter cited as DGFP: Series D.)

40. Ibid., vol. 10, (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 316.

41. Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 1939–1945: Politischer Alltag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensinn (Paderborn, 2003), pp. 63 and 137ff.

42. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1967–70), pp. 187ff.

43. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, vol. 8, part 1 (Munich, 1998), p. 103.

44. Helmut Krausnick, ed., “Einige Gedanken über die Behandlung der Fremdvölkischen im Osten,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 5, no. 2 (1957), pp. 194ff.

45. DGFP, Series D, vol. 10, p. 484.

46. For the exchange of views on this issue between Ribbentrop and Bonnet on December 7, 1938, see Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, 1997), p. 301.

47. Galeazzo Ciano, Diary 1937–1943: The Complete Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1936–1943 (London, 2002), p. 363.

48. DGFP: Series D, vol. 11 (Washington, DC, 1960) p. 635.

49. Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna, 1992), p. 94.

50. DGFP: Series D, vol. 10, p. 113.

51. Ibid., p. 95.

52. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 169.

53. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, ed. Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), p. 252.

54. Ibid., p. 258.

55. Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge, 1992), p. 33

56. Safrïan, Die Eichmann-Männer, p. 94.

57. Greiser opened the discussion by mentioning the new plan [Madagascar], which he welcomed, but as far as his Gau was concerned, the Jewish problem had to be solved before the winter. “Obviously this all depended on the duration of the war. If the war were to continue, then one had to find an interim solution” (Frank, Diensttagebuch, p. 261). At that point Greiser became more specific: It had been foreseen, he emphasized, that the 250,000 Jews in the Litzmannstadt (Lodz) ghetto would be transported into the General Government. These Jews could not stay in Litzmannstadt throughout the winter due to the lack of food and the danger of epidemics. Frank was adamant: Hitler had promised him that there would be no further deportations into the General Government, and he had “officially” informed Himmler of the Führer’s decision (ibid., p. 261).

      SS general Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, Himmler’s chief delegate in the General Government, referred to the Madagascar plan and emphasized that the situation in Litzmannstadt should be given priority in all evacuations of Jews overseas…SS general Wilhelm Koppe, Krüger’s counterpart in the Warthegau, brought the discussion back to the immediate situation. The establishment of the ghetto in Litzmannstadt, he argued, had been decided only on the assumption that the evacuation of the Jews into the General Government would start “by the middle of the year, at the latest” (ibid., p. 262). Frank held his ground, and when Greiser stated that he understood from the discussion that the General Government could not take in the 250,000 Jews of Litzmannstadt, even on a temporary basis, Frank concurred that Greiser had correctly assessed the situation (ibid., p. 263). Nothing helped the Warthegau delegation, not even a lurid description of the epidemics that threatened the German citizens who had moved to Litzmannstadt, including members of the Gau administration themselves. At present, Frank reiterated, he could do nothing (ibid., p. 264).

58. A strange epilogue to the Madagascar plan appeared in internal party correspondence on October 30, 1940. Martin Bormann informed Rosenberg that Hitler deemed the publication of Rosenberg’s article “Jews in Madagascar” as inadvisable for the time being, “but it possibly would be so within a few months.” Helmut Heiber, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten., vol. 1, part 2 (München, 1983), abs. no. 24983.

59. Sybil Milton and Frederick D. Bogin, eds., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 10, part 2 (New York: 1995), pp. 649ff.

60. Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1981), p. 320. The interdiction regarding the deportation of Jews into the General Government was reversed a few days later. John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, vol. 6, doc. 150 (New York, 1982), pp. 234–38. In May of the same year, the United States chargé d’affaires in Berlin, Alexander Kirk, informed Washington that according to a high-ranking German official, “It was still Germany’s policy to encourage emigration of German Austrian and Czech Jews respectively from the Old Reich, Austria, and the Protectorate.” In the case of Polish Jews, they would be allowed to leave only if they were not hindering the departure possibilities of Jews from Germany for the Protectorate; mixed areas would be given preference over the General Government.

61. Heydrich’s memorandum is quoted verbatim in a circular sent by Hans Frank’s office on November 23, 1940, to the district governors in the General Government. Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (East Berlin, 1961), p. 59.

62. On French acceptance of the German demands on this issue and the consequences it entailed, see Regina M. Delacor, “Auslieferung auf Verlangen: Der deutsch-französische Waffenstillstandsvertrag 1940 und das Schicksal der sozialdemokratischen Exilpolitiker Rudolf Breitscheid und Rudolf Hilferding,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 30 (1999), pp. 217ff.

63. About the activities of the ERC and the role of Varian Fry, see Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand (New York, 1945); Anne Klein, “Conscience, Conflict and Politics: The Rescue of Political Refugees from Southern France to the United States, 1940–1942,” in Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute (London, 1998), pp. 287ff. See also “The Varian Fry Papers,” in Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, vol. 5 (New York, 1990), pp. 1–76.

64. For Zweig’s letter, see Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, vol. 14 (New York, 1993), p. 111. One of the strangest rescue operations was that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Joseph Schneersohn, and of his extended family, from Warsaw via Berlin, Riga, and Stockholm, to the United States. At one point or another, it led to the involvement of Secretary of State Cordell Hull; one of the leading officials of the Reich’s Four-Year Plan administration, Helmut Wohltat; the chief of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris; of half-Jewish Abwehr officers; and many others on both sides of the Atlantic. Let it be added, to compound the imbroglio, that the Rebbe created some difficulties of his own: He insisted on the rescue of his forty-thousand-volume library. For this operation see Bryan Mark Rigg, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (New Haven, 2004).

65. Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington, 1987), p. 112.

66. Ibid., pp. 126ff. About public opinion on this issue and the attitude of the press, see Deborah E. Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York, 1986), pp. 125ff.

67. Klein, “Conscience, Conflict and Politics,” p. 292.

68. On Long see in particular Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New Brunswick, 1970), pp. 131ff., and Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust (Syracuse, 1995), pp. 86ff.

69. Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, p. 135.

70. In fact, some Jewish refugees became a rather formidable asset to the security of the United States. Albert Einstein was certainly the most famous Jewish emigrant to leave Germany after Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship. When the Nazi leader came to power, Einstein was on his way back to Germany from a visit in the United States. He interrupted his trip in Belgium and, after some hesitation, returned to the United States on the invitation of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. Until then Einstein had been a determined pacifist, but he soon understood that in the face of Nazism such an ideological choice was untenable. For him as for other Jewish refugee physicists, the Nazi danger became overwhelming after the takeover of Czechoslovakia. The Germans now controlled the richest uranium mines in Europe; moreover, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, who had discovered the principle of nuclear fission, continued to work in Germany. Hitler’s Reich could eventually build nuclear weapons.

      In August 1939 Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, all three newly arrived Jewish refugees, asked Einstein to approach the president and draw his attention to the looming threat. Einstein prepared a short draft of a letter to the president (in German), Teller wrote the final English version, and Einstein signed it. After describing the main aspects of the nuclear fission of uranium and of its military significance, and after suggesting a series of measures for taking up the challenge, the letter concluded on an ominous note. “I understand,” Einstein wrote, “that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.”

      Einstein’s letter was delivered to Roosevelt on October 11, 1939; on the nineteenth the president replied and appointed an advisory committee “to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestions regarding the element of uranium.” As the bureaucratic follow-up was slow, Szilard again approached Einstein, and in March 1940 a second letter was sent to Roosevelt. This time more decisive steps were taken: U.S. nuclear weapons research and planning began. Bernard T. Feld, “Einstein and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons,” in Albert Einstein, Historical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Gerald James Holton and Yehuda Elkana (Princeton, 1982), pp. 372–74. In Great Britain other Jewish refugees, among them Rudolf Peierls and Maurice Halban, helped their British counterparts to start on a similar track. Soon the American and the British programs were coordinated.

      While the first meetings of the new, enlarged advisory committee were taking place, Hitler’s victory in Europe seemed plausible and American intervention in the war unlikely. If Hitler alone were to acquire nuclear weapons, Nazi domination of the world would become a nightmarish possibility. About Germany’s progress in the field of nuclear physics and its plans to construct nuclear weapons, mainly between 1939 and 1943, see, among a vast literature, Kristie Macrakis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (New York, 1993), pp. 164ff.

71. Quoted in Guile Ne’eman Arad, America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 211–12.

72. For the unsuccessful attempts of a German Jewish family to reach the United States, then Chile and Brazil, then the United States again, see David Clay Large, And the World Closed Its Doors: The Story of One Family Abandoned to the Holocaust (New York, 2003).

73. On this issue see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven, 2000), pp. 72ff.

74. The Western Hemisphere country possibly most hostile to any Jewish immigration was Canada (despite the favorable attitude of its prime minister, William Mackenzie King), as a result of the (ultra-Catholic) xenophobic and anti-Semitic attitudes of the authorities and the population of Quebec Province. On this subject see Irving M. Abella and Harold Martin Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948 (Toronto, 1982).

75. Milton and Bogin, eds., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 10, part 1, pp. 391ff. Ultimately, in 1940 and 1941, 2,178 Polish Jews reached Japan, among them many rabbis of ultra-Orthodox yeshivas: The majority had to move to Shanghai and remain there throughout the war. Cf. Efraim Zuroff, “Rescue Via the Far East: The Attempt to Save Polish Rabbis and Yeshivah Students, 1939–1941,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Yearbook 1 (1988), pp. 171–72.

76. Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, 1994), p. 50.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. For a detailed study see Dalia Ofer, Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel, 1939–1944 (New York, 1990). For the events described here see mainly pp. 42ff.

80. Ibid., pp. 49ff.

81. Quoted in Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (London, 1979), p. 50.

82. Ibid., pp. 50–51.

83. Ibid., p. 63.

84. Ibid., pp. 64ff.

85. Alfred Fabre-Luce, Journal de la France 1939–1944, vol. 1 (Geneva, 1946), p. 246. (The first edition of volume 1 was published in Paris in 1940 and in Hamburg in 1941.)

86. Haim Avni, Spain, the Jews, and Franco (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 73ff. Spanish policy was apparently more reticent toward Jews carrying Spanish passports and living in German-occupied countries; on this issue see mainly Bernd Rother, “Franco und die deutsche Judenverfolgung,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ) 46y plans saved Gibraltar and helped British operations in North Africa and in the Mediterranean. On October 4, 1940, an incensed Hitler told Mussolini that, in a conversation with Franco, he [Hitler] “was almost represented as if he were a little Jew who was haggling about the most sacred possessions of mankind.” DGFP: Series D, vol. 11 (Washington, D.C., 1960), p. 251.

87. On this subject see Avraham Milgram, “Portugal, the Consuls and the Jewish Refugees, 1938–1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 37 (1999), pp. 123ff.

88. See in particular Rui Alfonso, “Le ‘Wallenberg Portugais’: Aristides de Sousa Mendes,” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah. Le monde juif, no. 165 (1999), pp. 7ff.

89. For a summary about Swiss policy regarding Jewish refugees in the fall of 1938, see Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland—Second World War, Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War (Zurich, 2002), pp. 108–9. About the indelible ink to be used for the red J stamp, see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939, p. 265.

90. See in particular Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism: Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust, 1938–1944 (Uppsala, 1996).

91. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten Deiner Flügel, p. 845.

92. Ibid., p. 843.

93. Ibid., p. 860.

94. Ibid., p. 866.

95. Ibid., p. 874.

96. Ibid., p. 884.

97. Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews, ed. Victoria Barnett (Lincoln, NE, 2000), pp. 155ff.

98. This document was found in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz by Dr. Joseph Henke. The initials at the bottom of the document were identified as those of Adolf Eichmann. The document was published in French (with a photocopy of the German original) in Lucien Steinberg, Un document essentiel qui situe les débuts de la “solution finale de la question juive” (Paris, 1992). See also Götz Aly, Endlösung: Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), pp. 124–26.

99. Memorandum of Department Germany of the Foreign Ministry, October 31, 1940, DGFP: Series D, vol. 11, p. 444.

100. Instructions for the officials in charge of the deportations of the Jews from the Palatinate, n.d., reproduced in Sauer, Dokumente über die Verfolgung, vol. 2, pp. 236–37.

101. Ibid., p. 231.

102. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 (New York, 1990), p. 177.

103. Anne Grynberg, Les Camps de la honte: Les internés juifs des camps français, 1939–1944 (Paris, 1991), p. 142. Tens of thousands of non-Jews considered French nationalists were also expelled from Alsace and Lorraine in the course of the summer and fall of 1940. See Jean-Pierre Azéma, De Munich à la Libération (Paris, 1979), p. 116.

104. Both decrees are quoted in Harold James, Die Deutsche Bank und die “Arisierung” (Munich, 2001), p. 199.

105. Eberhard Röhm and Jörg Thierfelder, Juden, Christen, Deutsche, 1933–1945, vol. 3, part 2, (Stuttgart, 1995), p. 193. On the same day, Gröber asked Prelate Kreutz to intervene with the nuncio, together with Bishop Heinrich Wienken. To the arguments used in his letter to Orsenigo, Gröber added that the deportees for whom he was interceding “were Catholics who had made great sacrifices in separating themselves from the members of their race.” Bernhard Stasiewski and Ludwig Volk, eds., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1933–1945. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte bei der Katholischen Akademie in Bayern. Reihe A: Quellen, Bd. 5; v. 2–6: Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte. Reihe A: Quellen, 6 vols. (Mainz, 1968–1985).

106. Jeremy Noakes, “The Development of Nazi Policy Towards the German-Jewish ‘Mischlinge’ 1933–1945,” in Holocaust, ed. David Cesarani, vol. 2 (London, 2004), p. 280. See also Beate Meyer, “Jüdische Mischlinge”: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1999).

107. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 325.

108. Heiber, Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, vol. 1, Part 2, abs. no. 24935.

109. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 327.

110. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York, 1941; reprint, Boston, 1988), pp. 520–21.

111. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 330.

112. Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York, 1998), p. 153.

113. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 332.

114. Ibid.

115. See Supra, chapter 1, pp. 15ff.

116. Kurt Pätzold, ed., Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942. (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 266; Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 324.

117. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, vol. 1, pp. 345–46.

118. Quoted and summed up in Moshe Ayalon, “Jewish Life in Breslau, 1938–1941,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1996), pp. 327–28. For a considerably abridged version of Cohn’s diary during the year 1941, see Joseph Walk, ed., Als Jude in Breslau 1941: Aus den Tagebüchern von Studienrat a. D. Dr. Willy Israel Cohn (Gerlingen: 1984).

119. Hertha Feiner, Vor der Deportation: Briefe an die Töchter, Januar 1939–Dezember 1942, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), p. 16.

120. Ibid., p. 64.

121. Ibid., p. 77.

122. Quoted in “‘Protocols,’ Nazi Propaganda Ministry,” in Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb, eds., Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs (Baltimore, 1999), p. 76.

123. Ibid., p. 77.

124. Ibid., p. 78.

125. Ibid., p. 79.

126. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1987), part 1, vol. 8, p. 35.

127. Ibid., p. 165.

128. Ibid., p. 279.

129. Juliane Wetzel, “Die Rothschilds,” in Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, eds., Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1997), p. 705.

130. These details about the film were taken from David Culbert, “The Impact of anti-Semitic Film Propaganda on German Audiences: Jew Süss and The Wandering Jew (1940),” in Art, Culture, and Media Under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Chicago, 2002), pp. 139ff.

131. Susan Tegel, “‘The Demonic Effect’: Veit Harlan’s Use of Jewish Extras in Jud Süss,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, no. 2 (2000), pp. 215ff. About further aspects of the film, see also, most recently, Alexandra Przyrembel and Jörg Schönert, eds., Jud Süss: Hofjude, literarische Figur, antisemitisches Zerrbild. (Frankfurt am Main, 2006).

132. Quoted in Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and its After- life (Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 153–54. (Antonioni remains better known as director of L’Avventura and particularly of Blow-Up.)

133. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 8, p. 345.

134. Ibid. p. 346.

135. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 435.

136. Ibid., p. 434.

137. Quoted in Josef Wulf, ed., Theater und Film im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt/am Main, 1989), p. 405.

138. Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, p. 154.

139. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 8, p. 372.

140. Wulf, Theater und Film, p. 410.

141. Yizhak Ahren, Stig Hornshøj-Møller, and Christoph B. Melchers, Der ewige Jude: Wie Goebbels hetzte: Untersuchungen zum nationalsozialistischen Propagandafilm (Aachen, 1990), p. 23. The film was entirely based on graphic demonstrations and on the mixing of images and sequences taken from different sources: Nazi filming of Jews in Poland (in Lodz, for example, as we saw); sequences from Yiddish films; newsreel footage representing various German Jewish individuals and revolutionary scenes of the postwar period; scenes from a Leni Riefenstahl film and of German everyday working life. A sophisticated intercutting technique was used to show how a repulsive ghetto Jew became an assimilated Western Jew when he exchanged his traditional garb for Western clothes, cut sidelocks and beard, and thereby appeared as an almost unrecognizable and successful member of modern society. Bankers and stock exchange tycoons extended their spiderlike control over the productive potential of the nations, whereas Jewish revolutionaries incited the masses against the ruling order. The Jewish domination of journalism, culture, and the arts all led to the same disintegration. The “Relativitätsjude” (relativity Jew) Albert Einstein and the “Bühnediktator” (stage dictator) Max Reinhardt, were of the same ilk. And every year, on Purim, Jews the world over celebrated their murderous vengeance against their enemies at the Persian court, 75,000 of whom were slaughtered. (The Purim scenes, for instance were lifted from two Yiddish films—Joseph Green’s Der Purim Schpiler [1937] and Yidl mitn Fidl [1936].) Hilmar Hoffmann, Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit: Propaganda im NS-Film(Frankfurt am Main, 1988), p. 167.

142. Quoted in Hermann Glaser, “Film,” in Benz, Graml, and Weiss, eds. Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, p. 175.

143. Hoffmann, Und die Fahne, p. 166.

144. Ibid.

145. Dorothea Hollstein, “Jud Süss” und die Deutschen: Antisemitische Vorurteile im nationalsozialistischen Spielfilm (1971; reprint, Frankfurt/am Main, 1983), pp. 116–17.

146. For the Goebbels-Rosenberg feud during the 1930s, see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1, pp. 131ff.

147. Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York, 1994), p. 80.

148. Ibid.

149. Ibid., pp. 80ff.

150. O. D. Kulka, “The ‘Reichsvereinigung of the Jews in Germany’ (1938/9–1943),” in Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945, ed. Cynthia J. Haft and Yisrael Gutman (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 56.

151. The Gestapo had the addresses of all Jews in Baden and the Palatinate, as everywhere else in the Reich, on the basis of the Judenkartei, the regularly updated list of all members of the community, established by every local Reichsvereinigung office. See among others, David Martin Luebke and Sybil Milton, “Locating the Victim: An Overview of Census-Taking, Tabulation Technology, and Persecution in Nazi Germany,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 16, no. 3 (1994), pp. 25ff and in particular 33.

152. Yahil, The Holocaust, p. 234

153. Paul Sauer, “Otto Hirsch (1885–1941): Director of the Reichsvertretung,” in Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute (1987), p. 367.

154. For an assessment of the ghetto population on May 1, 1940, see Lucjan Dobroszycki, Introduction, in The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. xxxix n. 103.

155. For the ghetto’s isolation, see ibid., pp. xxxiiiff.

156. For these statistics see Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides, eds., Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege (New York: 1989), p. 36.

157. Frank, Diensttagebuch, p. 281.

158. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, ed. Jacob Sloan (New York, 1974), pp. 61–62.

159. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, p. 203.

160. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 206.

161. Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington, 1982), p. 63.

162. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York, 1972), p. 145.

163. Antony Polonsky and Norman Davies, eds., Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939–46 (New York, 1991), p. 288.

164. For Ringelblum’s comments see 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 (Lincoln, NE, and Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 235–36.

165. For all biographical details, see Derek Bowman, introduction to Dawid Rubinowicz, The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edmonds, WA, 1982), pp. viiff.

166. Ibid., p. 3.

167. Ibid.

168. Ibid., p. 5.

169. Ibid., p. 6.

170. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg, 1997), p. 18.

171. Ibid., p. 16.

172. Ibid., p. 19.

173. In the fall of 1940 the Jewish population included refugees from Holland and Belgium who did not return to their countries and, from the end of October 1940 on, also the Jews expelled from Baden, the Saar, and the Palatinate. These numbers, all based on post–June 1940 computations, do not include some 10,000 to 15,000 Jewish prisoners of war, nor do they take into account that in the various censuses, a few thousand foreign Jews did not register. See André Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation (Paris, 1991), pp. 18ff.

174. On this period of harmony see, among others, Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 (New York, 1979), pp. 33ff. See also Saul Friedländer, The Third Reich and the Jews, vol. 1, chapter 7.

175. About this policy reversal, see Regina M. Delacor, “From Potential Friends to Potential Enemies: The Internment of ‘Hostile Foreigners’ in France at the Beginning of the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 3 (July 2000), pp. 361ff.

176. For these events see mainly Grynberg, Les camps de la honte and Anne Grynberg, “1939–1940: L’Internement en temps de guerre. Les politiques de la France et de la Grande-Bretagne,” Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’Histoire (1997), pp. 24ff.

177. Lion Feuchtwanger, The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 (New York, 1941), p. 8. For another particularly vivid description of incarceration at Le Vernet and of the outbursts of French anti-Semitism during the collapse of the country, see Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth (New York, 1947), pp. 96ff., 142, 193, 237ff.

178. Renée Poznanski, Être juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1994), p. 55.

179. Quoted in Burrin, France Under the Germans, p. 56.

180. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation, p. 56.

181. Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, Refus et violences: Politique et littérature à l’extrême droite des années trente aux retombées de la Libération (Paris, 1996), p. 164.

182. The best analysis of these personalities and parties is in Burrin, France Under the Germans, and in Philippe Burrin, La dérive fasciste: Doriot, Déat, Bergery, 1933–1945 (Paris, 1986).

183. Foreign Relations of the United States, General and Europe 1940, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1957), p. 565.

184. A 1927 law had eased the naturalization process. The intention of Alibert’s commission was clear: Forty percent of the naturalizations that were cancelled were those of Jews. See Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944(New York, 2001), p. 171.

185. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris, 1990), pp. 17–18.

186. For the full text of both laws, see ibid., p. 399–401.

187. Pétain’s own anti-Semitism was apparently fed by his wife (La Maréchale) and by his physician, Dr. Bernard Ménétrel. See Denis Peschanski, Vichy, 1940–1944: Contrôle et exclusion (Bruxelles, 1997), p. 78.

188. Scholarly studies of these issues and of French anti-Jewish policies during the war are very extensive by now. Of necessity, only a few will be mentioned in this volume. On the responsibility regarding the statutes of October 1940 (and June 1941) and various reactions see in particular Denis Peschanski, “The Statutes on Jews, October 3, 1940 and June 2, 1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 22 (1992), pp. 65ff.; Pierre Laborie, “The Jewish Statutes in Vichy France and Public Opinion,” Yad Vashem Studies 22 (1992), pp. 89ff; Renée Poznanski, “The Jews of France and the Statutes on Jews, 1940–1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 22 (1992), pp. 115ff.

189. Quoted in Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation, pp. 61–62.

190. Peschanski, Vichy, 1940–1944: Contrôle et exclusion, p. 180.

191. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, p. 28.

192. François Bédarida and Renée Bédarida, “La Persécution des Juifs,” in La France des années noires, vol. 2, De l’occupation à la libération, ed. Jean-Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris, 1993), pp. 135–36.

193. Quoted in Pierre Birnbaum, Anti-Semitism in France: A Political History from Léon Blum to the Present (Oxford, 1992), p. 183.

194. Ibid., p. 185.

195. In a book published in 1947, L’Église Catholique en France sous l’occupation, Monsignor Guerry himself reproduced the gist of the declaration, possibly without even perceiving its problematic aspect. For a very mild discussion of this issue see Jean-Marie Mayeur, “Les Églises devant la Persécution des Juifs en France,” in La France et la question juive: 1940–1944, ed. Georges Wellers, André Kaspi, and Serge Klarsfeld (Paris, 1981), p. 151ff.

196. For example the bishop of Grenoble and the archbishop of Chambéry, ibid., p. 143 n. 11.

197. For a good summary of these attitudes, see François Delpech, “L’Episcopat et la persecution des juifs et des étrangers,” in Églises et chrétiens dans la IIe Guerre mondiale (Lyon, 1978).

198. Quoted in Michèle Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, 1940–1945. La repentance en question (Paris, 1998), pp. 187–88.

199. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, pp. 203–4.

200. Regarding Abetz’s role and his use of anti-Semitism for his own political ambitions, see Barbara Lambauer, “Opportunistischer Antisemitismus: Der deutscher Botschafter Otto Abetz und die Judenverfolgang in Frankreich,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2 (2005), pp. 241ff and in particular pp. 247ff. See also Ahlrich Meyer, Täter im Verhör: Die Endlösung der Judenfrage in Frankreich 1940–1944 (Darmstadt, 2005), pp. 23ff. Thus the initial role of the German military administration had to be nuanced. For the traditional interpretation see Ulrich Herbert, “Die deutsche Militärverwaltung in Paris und die Deportation der französischen Juden,” in Von der Aufgabe der Freiheit: Politische Verantwortung und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Hans Mommsen zum 5. November 1995, ed. Christian Jansen, Lutz Niethammer, and Bernd Weisbrod (Berlin, 1995), p. 431; Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 1943–1944 (Paris, 1985), p. 356. For Hitler’s initial order see Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch: Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabes des Heeres, 1939–1942, ed. Hans Adolf Jacobsen, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1962–64), p. 77.

201. Herbert, “Die deutsche Militärverwaltung in Paris und die Deportation der französischen Juden,” p. 432.

202. Ibid., p. 433.

203. Ibid.

204. Poznanski, Être juif, p. 67.

205. Ibid., pp. 67ff.

206. Ibid., pp. 68–69.

207. Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Waltham, MA, 2001), p. 85.

208. Herbert R. Lottman, La Rive gauche: Du Front populaire à la guerre froide (Paris, 1981), pp. 303–4. For a sample of the categories of forbidden authors of books, see Verdès-Leroux, Refus et violences, p. 149. All Jewish authors were excluded, whereas in many other cases the exclusion targeted only specific books.

209. Burrin, France under the Germans, p. 29.

210. Ibid.

211. See Lutz Raphael, “Die Pariser Universität unter deutscher Besatzung 1940–1944,” in Universitäten im nationalsozialistisch beherrschten Europa, ed. Dieter Langewiesche, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 23, no 4. (1997), pp. 511–12, 522. Some protests against the anti-Jewish measures were expressed by a few faculty members, but these were rare exceptions in a climate of indifference and acceptance (ibid., p. 523).

212. Burrin, France under the Germans, p. 307.

213. Ibid., p. 308.

214. Ibid.

215. Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1998), p. 73.

216. Ibid.

217. For Lambert’s prewar biography see Richard Cohen, introduction in Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985); for Biélinky’s prewar life see Renée Poznanski, introduction to Jacques Biélinky, Journal, 1940–1942: Un journaliste juif à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Renée Poznanski (Paris, 1992).

218. Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin, p. 72.

219. Ibid., p. 83.

220. Ibid., pp. 85–86.

221. Biélinky, Journal, p. 57.

222. See Pierre Birnbaum, Prier pour l’État: Les juifs, l’alliance royale et la démocratie (Paris, 2005), p. 117.

223. Biélinky, Journal, p. 106.

224. For the details of the negotiations between Dannecker and the Jewish organizations, see Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York, 1987), p. 53ff.

225. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), p. 45.

226. Manoschek, “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum,” p. 13.

227. Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 49.

228. Louis de Jong, “Jews and Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland,” in The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, 1989), vol. 4: The Final Solution Outside Germany (I), pp. 130–31.

229. For a general study of the German occupation of Holland and Dutch cooperation see Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–1945 (Oxford, 1988).

230. Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 57.

231. B. A. Sijes, “The Position of the Jews During the German Occupation of the Netherlands: Some Observations,” in The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, CT, 1989) vol. 4, p. 153.

232. Joseph Michman, “The Controversial Stand of the Joodse Raad in the Netherlands: Lodewijk E. Visser’s Struggle,” Yad Vashem Studies 10 (1974), p. 13.

233. Moore, Victims and Survivors, pp. 196ff.

234. Guus Meershoek, “The Amsterdam Police and the Persecution of the Jews,” in Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 3, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), p. 540.

235. For further details see J. Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (Detroit, 1988), p. 50.

236. Quoted in ibid., p. 27–28.

237. For a detailed account see Gerhard Hirschfeld, “Die Universität Leyden unter dem Nationalsozialismus,” in Universitäten im nationalsozialistisch beherrschten Europa, ed. Dieter Langewiesche, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 23, vol. 4 (1997) pp. 573ff.

238. DGFP: Series D, vol. 11, p. 1120.

239. Quoted in Röhm and Thierfelder, Juden, vol. 3, part 2, p. 270.

240. Benjamin Leo Wessels, Ben’s Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press, ed. Kees W. Bolle (Carbondale, IL, 2001), p. 21.

241. Ibid., pp. 21ff.

242. Claude Singer, Vichy, l’université et les juifs: Les silences et la mémoire (Paris, 1992), pp. 163ff. There were of course many private expressions of sympathy and one known resignation in protest against the anti-Jewish measures, that of a high official of the education system in Paris, Gustave Monod (ibid., p. 100). For some letters of sympathy see in particular ibid., pp. 379–82.

243. Marcel Baudot, “Les Mouvements de Résistance devant la persécution des juifs,” in La France et la question juive: 1940–1944, ed. Georges Wellers, André Kaspi, and Serge Klarsfeld (Paris, 1981), p. 279.

244. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, vol. 1, pp. 340–41.

245. A privileged mixed marriage was one whose children were not raised as Jews; its members were exempted from anti-Jewish measures. A nonprivileged mixed marriage was one whose children were raised as Jews, or a childless union like that of the Klemperers. Usually, even in the case of nonprivileged mixed marriages, deportations were delayed if the Jewish partner was a convert or if the Jewish partner was the wife.

246. Ruth Zariz, ed., Mikhtave halutsim mi-Polin ha-kevushah, 1940–1944 (Ramat Ef ’al, 1994), p. 51.

247. Walter Benjamin, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 861.

248. Walter Benjamin, Briefe, ed., Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), p. 846.

249. Hannah Arendt “Introduction” to Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, New York, 1968, p. 18.

Chapter 3: December 1940–June 1941

1. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part 1, vol. 9 (Munich, 1998), pp. 377–78.

2. Ibid., p. 379.

3. Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch: Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabes des Heeres, 1939–1942, ed. Hans Adolf Jacobsen, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1962–64), pp. 21, 31, 32, 34, 36, mainly 49ff.

4. The draft of the treaty indicates that “America” was its main target, at least on paper. DGFP: Series D, vol. 11, p. 188.

5. On the president’s stand and German reactions, see Saul Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–41 (New York, 1967), pp. 165ff.

6. Ibid., p. 171.

7. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, part 2 (Leonberg, 1987–88), pp. 1663–64.

8. KTB/OKW (3/3/1941), quoted in Jürgen Förster, “Operation Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and Annihilation,” in The Attack on the Soviet Union, ed. Horst Boog, Germany and the Second World War (Oxford, 1998), p. 185.

9. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. 2, pp. 336–37.

10. For a discussion of Eckart’s pamphlet see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I, pp. 97–98.

11. For Hitler’s interpretation of the role played by the Jews in Russia/the Soviet Union, see Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, ed. Gerhard L. Weinberg (New York, 2003), pp. 144ff., 150ff., and 232ff.

12. Sometimes Hitler’s utterances give the impression that, in his view, Stalin had liquidated the “Jewish” part of Judeo-Bolshevism, particularly regarding the political commissars. Thus, on January 7, 1941, he declared to the Bulgarian prime minister, Bogdan Filov, “First, the Bolshevists installed Jewish commissars, who tortured their former opponents to death. Next came the Russian commissars who, in turn, displaced the Jews.” (DGFP: Series D, vol. 11, p. 1023). Of course it may have been an indirect way of justifying to a foreign leader his arrangement with the Soviet Union: It was no longer Jewish.

13. These interpretations appear in Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History (New York, 1988).

14. The negotiations between SS and army started much earlier than was thought for a long time; discussions were already ongoing in February 1941. See Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York, 1991), pp. 149–150.

15. For the changing preambles attached to this order that at first pointed specifically to the Jews but then, however, remained limited to security arguments, see Christopher R. Browning and Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, NE, 2004), pp. 219–20.

16. For the text of the guidelines, see Peter Longerich and Dieter Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945 (Munich, 1989), p. 136.

17. Browning and Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution, pp. 222–23.

18. For discussions and supplementary decrees stemming from the order, see ibid., pp. 220–22.

19. Quoted in Manfred Messerschmidt; Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat; Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg, 1969), pp. 326ff.

20. At the end of 1941, 750,000 copies of Mitteilungen were printed per issue. See Martin Moll, “Die Abteilung Wehrmachtpropaganda im Oberkommando der Wehrmacht,” Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus 17 (2001), p. 130.

21. Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), pp. 313ff. and 320.

22. Götz Aly, “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London, 1999), p. 126.

23. Ibid., p. 172.

24. Ibid.; Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, pp. 290–91; Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), p. 139 n. 69.

25. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 9, pp. 389–90.

26. There is no direct evidence regarding the date on which Heydrich received Göring’s order (that is, Hitler’s order) to prepare a new territorial solution of the “Jewish question” in replacement of the “Madagascar plan.” But, on the basis of documents stemming from Eichmann’s delegate in Paris, Theodor Dannecker and from Eichmann himself, the order must have been given sometime at the end of 1940. Aly, “Final Solution,” pp. 172–73.

27. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1967–70), pp. 573–74.

28. This measure was most probably taken to allow for a maximum of emigration possibilities for Jews from the Reich and the Protectorate. As for the reference to the forthcoming final solution, it was, at this stage, a vague and widely used formula referring to any range of possibilities. For the text of the RSHA’s decree, see Kurt Pätzold, ed., Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 289.

29. Nuremberg doc. 1028-PS, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3 (Washington, DC, 1946), p. 690.

30. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 161 n. 23.

31. For the preparation of the economic exploitation of the eastern territories, see mainly Rolf-Dieter Müller, “From Economic Alliance to a War of Colonial Exploitation,” in Germany and the Second World War, ed. Horst Boog et al. (Oxford, 1998), pp. 118ff and in particular 136ff.

32. About these plans see mainly Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1998), pp. 10ff. and 14ff. For an English summary of Gerlach’s argument see Christian Gerlach, “German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia 1941/43,” in National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, ed. Ulrich Herbert, Studies on War and Genocide, vol. 2 (New York, 2000), pp. 210ff.

33. See Wulff Breback, “Wewelsburg,” in Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, eds., Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1997), p. 806.

34. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 172; Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York, 1998), p. 40. There is no necessary connection between Himmler’s musings that seem to imply long-term plans (also related to the Reichsführer’s colonization projects) and the “hunger plans” discussed at the OKW, whose aim was the immediate easing of the food supply for the Ostheer.

35. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, ed. Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), pp. 326ff.

36. Ibid., pp. 335ff.

37. Gerhard Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1938 bis 1945: Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik (Vienna, 1975), p. 108.

38. Kurt Pätzold, ed., Verfolgung, p. 279.

39. Stadtarchiv München, ed., “…verzogen, unbekannt wohin”: Die erste Deportation von Münchner Juden im November 1941 (Zurich: 2000), p. 17.

40. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41 (New York, 1998), vol. 1, p. 374.

41. Wolf Gruner, Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933–1945: Eine Chronologie der Behördenmassnahmen in der Reichshauptstadt (Berlin, 1996), p. 77.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., p. 78.

45. Peter Longerich, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten, part 4, vol. 2 (Murich, 1992), abs. no. 41008.

46. For the documents regarding this issue, see John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, vol. 2 (New York, 1982), pp. 249ff.

47. Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, vol. 20 (New York, 1993), pp. 32–33.

48. Longerich, Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, part 4, vol. 2, abs. no. 40601.

49. Ibid., part 1, vol. 1, abs. no. 14865.

50. Ibid.

51. Nuremberg doc. NG 2297, in Mendelsohn and Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust, vol. 2: Legalizing the Holocaust: The Later Phase, 1939–1943 (New York, 1982), pp. 135ff.

52. DGFP: Series D, vol. 12 (Washington, DC, 1962), p. 204.

53. Longerich, Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, Part 4, vol. 2, abs. no. 41006.

54. Ibid., abs. no. 41282.

55. Hertha Feiner, Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters, January 1939–December 1942, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, 1999), pp. 79–80.

56. Ibid., p. 85.

57. Ibid., p. 87.

58. Dawid Rubinowicz, The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edmonds, WA, 1982), p. 11.

59. Ibid., p. 12.

60. Ibid.

61. Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 35ff.

62. Ibid., pp. 44–46.

63. Donald L. Niewyk, ed., Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), p. 174.

64. Ibid., p. 175.

65. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (New York, 1996), p. 89.

66. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. 6.

67. For the establishment of the archives and the work of the chroniclers see Dobroszycki, introduction, pp. ixff.

68. See indications in Frank, Diensttagebuch, pp. 340 and 340 n. 12.

69. Hilberg and Staron, “Introduction,” Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), p. 48.

70. Ibid., pp. 48ff.

71. Quoted in Wladislaw Bartoszewski, “The Martyrdom and Struggle of the Jews in Warsaw Under German Occupation 1939–1943,” in The Jews in Warsaw. A History, ed. Wladislaw T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1991), p. 314.

72. Quoted in Joanna Michlic-Coren, “Battling Against the Odds: Culture, Education and the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–1942,” East European Jewish Affairs 27, no. 2 (1997), p. 80.

73. For the JDC’s financial support to Polish Jewry and its institutions during the period 1939–1941 see mainly Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945 (Detroit, 1981), pp. 67ff and particularly p. 73.

74. Yosef Kermish, “The Judenrat in Warsaw,” in Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945, ed. Israel Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 78–80.

75. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945 (Toronto, 1986), pp. 328ff.

76. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, ed. Jacob Sloah (New York, 1974), p. 121.

77. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham Isaac Katsh (New York, 1965), p. 245. There are many detailed descriptions of the inventiveness of the smugglers and the crucial function of these operations. See for example Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ed. Barbara Harshav (Berkeley, 1993), p. 129.

78. Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington, 1982), p. 68.

79. Ibid., p. 71.

80. Ibid.

81. Jacob Celemenski’s text is excerpted from his memoirs (in Yiddish) and quoted in Moshe Fass, “Theatrical Activities in the Polish Ghettos during the Years 1939–1942,” in Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb (Baltimore, 1999), pp. 100–101. The pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman performed in such a cabaret. See Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939–1945 (New York, 1999), pp. 83ff.

82. Hersch Wasser, “Daily Entries of Hersch Wasser,” in Yad Vashem Studies, ed. Joseph Kermish (1983), vol. 15, p. 239.

83. These testimonies are quoted in Michlic-Coren, “Battling Against the Odds,” pp. 79–80.

84. Ibid., p. 80.

85. Ibid., p. 91.

86. Ibid.

87. Joanna Michlic-Coren, “Battling Against the Odds: Culture, Education and the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–1942.” East European Jewish Affairs, vol. 27, no. 2, 1997, p. 91.

88. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki (London, 2001), p. 153.

89. Ibid., p. 157.

90. Ibid., p. 141.

91. Ibid., p. 159.

92. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, pp 25ff and 35.

93. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 88.

94. Ibid., p. 89.

95. Ibid., p. 90.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid., p. 91.

98. Yisrael Gutman, “Zionist Youth,” in Zionist Youth Movements during the Shoah, ed. Asher Cohen and Yehoyakim Cochavi, Studies on the Shoah 4 (New York, 1995), pp. 13–14; Aharon Weiss, “Zionist Youth Movements in Poland during the German Occupation,” in Zionist Youth Movements during the Shoah, ed. Asher Cohen and Yehoyakim Cochavi, Studies on the Shoah 4 (New York, 1995), p. 243.

99. Dina Porat, “Zionist Pioneering Youth Movements in Poland and Their Attitude to Erets Israel during the Holocaust,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 9 (1996), pp. 195ff.

100. The deep sense of betrayal and the bitterness of the survivors were papered over at the end of the war but reappeared as time went by and found widespread expression in interviews, memoirs, and in new historical research, mainly from the 1980s on.

101. See the notes above, as well as Erica Nadelhaft, “Resistance through Education: Polish Zionist Youth Movements in Warsaw, 1939–1941,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 9 (1996), pp. 212ff.

102. Quoted in 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, 1981), p. 230.

103. Shimon Huberband, “Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland during the Holocaust,” ed. Jeffrey S. Gurock and Robert S. Hirt (New York, 1987), p. 120.

104. Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik: Die Zusammenarbeit von Wehrmacht, Wirtschaft und SS (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), pp. 21ff. Immediately after the end of the Polish campaign, Himmler had declared that “2.5 million Polish Jews would be used to dig antitank ditches along the demarcation line with the Soviet Union.” See Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. 1, 184n. There was yet another way of sending tens of thousands of Jews into slave labor. In early 1941 Greiser took an ideologically unusual step: He offered some 70,000 Jewish workers from his territory to the Reich labor minister for employment in Germany. Göring, faced with the growing needs of the German war economy as the preparations for the campaign against the Soviet Union were moving into high gear, gave his assent. The Reichsmarschall apparently informed all regional authorities not to hinder the employment of this new and unexpected work force. All these plans came to naught: In April 1941, Hitler forbade any transfer of Jews from the East into the Reich, even for employment in war industries.

105. Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (Berlin [East], 1961), p. 221.

106. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 233.

107. Wasser, “Daily Entries of Hersch Wasser,” p. 266.

108. Kermish, “The Judenrat,” in Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J., Haft, Patterns of Jewish leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945 (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 80–81.

109. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York, 1972), pp. 499–500.

110. Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman, ed. Frank Fox (Boulder, CO, 1996), p. 9.

111. Ibid., p. 14.

112. Mary Berg, Warsaw Ghetto, A Diary, ed. Sh. L. Shnayderman (New York, 1945), pp. 45–46. Berg’s diary may well have been thoroughly reworked by the author and the publishers and thus is hardly used in this study.

113. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 92.

114. Ganzweich’s case shows in fact that at times there was possibly more solidarity among the ghetto Jews than met the eye. An inhabitant of the ghetto, Hillel Zeidman, met with Ganzweich in his apartment, probably in early 1941, and was shown some of the reports prepared for the Germans. “Do these reports (I browsed through dozens of them) amount to denunciation?” Zeidman noted in his diary. “One cannot say that. On the contrary, they contain proposals…meant to prove to the Germans that it is to their advantage to treat the Jews with lesser severity.” Hillel Zeidman, Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto [Hebrew] (New York, 1957), pp. 177–78. Ganzweich’s reports were found and published in the 1980s: The milder evaluation was confirmed. Much in the reports was intended to convince the Germans “that the ghetto residents should be regarded as a valuable asset.” Christopher R. Browning and Yisrael Gutman, eds., “The Reports of a Jewish ‘Informer’ in the Warsaw Ghetto—Selected Documents,” Yad Vashem Studies 17 (1986), pp. 247ff. and 255. The case of another notorious informer Alfred Nossig was not fundamentally different. Shmuel Almog, “Alfred Nossig: A Reappraisal,” Studies in Zionism 7 (1983).

115. See in particular Huberband, “Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland during the Holocaust,” pp. 136ff.

116. Auerswald’s report is published in Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, pp. 244–46.

117. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, p. 140.

118. Ringelblum, Notes, pp. 204–5. The health condition of the Jewish populations was not the same from one ghetto to another. Thus, in Vilna for example, from the fall of 1941 (after the establishment of the ghetto) mortality rates from disease stabilized at a relatively low level. This unusual situation may have been the result of a series of unconnected factors: The remaining population (after the exterminations of the summer and fall) was mostly young, the food supply was ampler than in Warsaw or Lodz, the number of physicians in the ghetto was relatively high, the main Jewish hospital of the city remained within the ghetto boundaries, and strict rules of hygiene and sanitation were imposed by the health department of the council. On the health situation in the Vilna ghetto see Solon Beinfeld, “Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 1 (1998), p. 66.

119. Ringelblum, Notes, p. 194.

120. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 261.

121. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg, 1997), p. 17.

122. Ibid., p. 18.

123. Ibid., p. 25.

124. Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL, 1993), p. 115.

125. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony, pp. 241–42.

126. Ringelblum, Notes, p. 181.

127. Daniel Uziel, “Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), pp. 36–37.

128. On “Das Reich” see Norbert Frei and Johannes Schmitz, Journalismus im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1989), pp. 108ff.

129. Ibid., pp. 114ff. and 118ff.

130. Quoted in Elizabeth Harvey, Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization (New Haven, 2003), p. 126.

131. Susannah Heschel, Transforming Jesus from Jew to Aryan: Protestant Theologians in Nazi Germany (Tucson, 1995), p. 6.

132. For some aspects of this research during the 1930s see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1, pp. 190ff.

133. For the most detailed study of both Institutes see Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank und sein Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands (Stuttgart, 1966). See also Patricia von Papen, “Schützenhilfe nationalsozialistischer Judenpolitik: Die Judenforschung des Reichsinstituts für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, 1935–1945,” in “Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses—”: Antisemitische Forschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut, Jahrbuch 1998/99 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust (Frankfurt, 1999), p. 17ff; Dieter Schiefelbein, “Das Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage Frankfurt am Main,” in “Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses…”: Antisemitische Forschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut, Jahrbuch 1998/99 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust(Frankfurt, 1999), pp. 43ff.

134. For the opening ceremony and for Rosenberg’s address, see Völkischer Beobachter, March 27–30, 1941.

135. Max Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People (New York, 1946), p. 104.

136. Ibid., pp. 107–10. Emphasis in original.

137. Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, 1991), p. 219.

138. Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors, p. 110.

139. Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, pp. 217ff.

140. Papen, “Schützenhilfe,” p. 29.

141. Ibid.

142. Monica Kingreen, “Raubzüge einer Stadtverwaltung: Frankfurt am Main und die Aneignung ‘Jüdischen Besitzes,’” Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus 17 (2001), pp. 32ff.

143. Ibid.

144. Ibid.

145. Quoted in Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (New York, 1997), p. 33.

146. For the details, see mainly Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, 1996), p. 129.

147. Ibid., p. 130.

148. Pätzold, Verfolgung, p. 285.

149. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss (unter Mitarbeit) and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 254.

150. Manoschek, “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung,” p. 16.

151. Kater, Das “Ahnenerbe,” p. 254.

152. Hitler, Reden, part 2, pp. 1663–64.

153. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago, 2000), p. 316. For a more graphic description of the “bestial ferocity,” see particularly the report sent by the U.S. minister in Bucharest, Gunther, to the secretary of state, on January 30, 1941. Foreign Relations of the United States, Europe, 1941, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1959), p. 860. The German minister to Romania, SA leader Manfred von Killinger, mentioned on January 23 Antonescu’s description of “unbelievably brutal acts…. The 693 Jews who were interned in Jilava dead under the most shameful torture.” DGFP: Series D, vol. 11, p. 1175.

154. For a general survey of Romanian anti-Semitism see Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford, 1991); Stephen Fischer-Galati, “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism,” in The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York, 1994), mainly p. 10ff.

155. Quoted in Volovici, Nationalist Ideology, p. 63.

156. Quoted in Jean Ancel, “The ‘Christian’ Regimes of Romania and the Jews, 1940–1942,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7, no. 1 (1993), p. 16. Among the young Iron Guard intellectual anti-Semites, the future world-renowned historian of religion Mircea Eliade was probably one of the most rabid. As Warsaw crumbled under the German onslaught, in September 1939, Eliade declared: “The Poles’ resistance in Warsaw is a Jewish resistance. Only Yids are capable of the blackmail of putting women and children in the frontline to take advantage of the Germans’ sense of scruple…What is happening on the frontier of Bukovina is a scandal, because new waves of Jews are flooding into the country. Rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate.” Sebastian, Journal, p. 238.

157. Fischer-Galati, “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism,” mainly pp. 19ff.

158. Foreign Relations of the United States Europe, 1940, vol. 2, p. 764.

159. Ibid., p. 774.

160. Ibid., 1941, vol. 2, p. 860.

161. Anne Grynberg, Les Camps de la honte: Les internés juifs des camps français, 1939–1944 (Paris, 1991), p. 12. In a meeting at the German embassy on February 2, 1941, Dannecker confirmed these data. See Serge Klarsfeld, ed., Die Endlösung der Judenfrage in Frankreich: Deutsche Dokumente 1941–1944 (Paris, 1977), p. 17.

162. Matteoli Commission, “Interim Report,” p. 181, quoted and translated in Michael J. Bazyler, Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts (New York, 2003), p. 175.

163. See Philippe Verheyde, “L’aryanisation economique: Le cas des grandes entreprises,” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah: Le monde juif 168 (Jan.–Apr. 2000).

164. Klarsfeld, Die Endlösung, p. 13.

165. Pätzold, Verfolgung, pp. 281–82.

166. DGFP: Series D, vol. 12 (Washington, DC, 1962), p. 228.

167. For details on the establishment of the CGQJ and on Vallat’s activities, see Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris, 1990), pp. 79ff.

168. The Commissariat Général even established its own police unit (La Police aux Questions Juives, or PQJ), but after a year or so, it became obvious to both the Germans and the French that this special police force did not have the means for systematic action. It was finally integrated into the general police as a Section d’Enquêtes et de Contrôle, or SEC. See in particular Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 1943–1944 (Paris, 1985), pp. 55ff.

169. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, pp. 92ff.

170. For the full text of the law summed up here, see ibid., p. 402.

171. DGFP, Series D, 1941, vol. 12 (Washington, DC 1962), p. 438.

172. For a thorough study of the “Institute” see Joseph Billig, L’Institut d’étude des questions juives (Paris, 1974).

173. For the propaganda posters display, see Reneé Poznanski’s note in Biélinky, Journal, p. 122 n. 47.

174. See Claude Singer, Le Juif Süss et la propagande Nazie: L’Histoire confisquée (Paris, 2003), p. 206.

175. Ibid., p. 211.

176. Ibid., p. 220.

177. Ibid., pp. 221 ff.

178. Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York, 1987), p. 70.

179. Renée Poznanski, Être juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1994), p. 103.

180. Jean Guéhenno, Journal des années noires, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1947), p. 111.

181. Poznanski, Être juif, p. 104.

182. Biélinky, Journal, p. 123.

183. For a definition of this policy see among others Claude Singer, Vichy, l’université et les juifs: Les silences et la mémoire (Paris, 1992), pp. 136ff. As for the distinction between “collaboration d’État” and “collaborationism,” see Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40 (Sept. 1968).

184. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, p. 209.

185. For Helbronner’s career see mainly Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1998), pp. 94ff.

186. Ibid., pp. 90ff.

187. For the full text of the petition see ibid., pp. 107ff. For the (slightly revised) translation of the last paragraph quoted here, see Paula Hyman, The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley, 1998), p. 167.

188. Adler, The Jews of Paris, p. 84.

189. Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A Life in History (Cambridge, 1989), p. 272.

190. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), pp. 72–73.

191. Ibid., pp. 73ff.

192. For SS bureaucracy in the Netherlands, see Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “Der Befehlshaber der Sipo und des SD in den besetzten niederländischen Gebieten und die Deportation der Juden 1942–1943,” in Die Bürokratie der Okkupation: Strukturen der Herrschaft und Verwaltung im besetzten Europa, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Johannes Houwink ten Cate, and Gerhard Otto, Nationalsozialistische Besatzungspolitik in Europa 1939–1945, vol. 4 (Berlin, 1998), pp. 197ff.

193. See now the following extremely thorough study: Friederike Sattler, “Der Handelstrust West in den Niederlanden,” in Die Expansion der Dresdner Bank in Europa, ed. Harald Wixforth, in Klaus-Dietmar Henke, ed., Die Dresdner Bank im Dritten Reich(Munich, 2006), vol. 3, pp. 682ff.

194. About the ransom deals in Holland, see mainly Bettina Zeugin and Thomas Sandkühler, Die Schweiz und die deutschen Lösegelderpressungen in den besetzten Niederlanden: Vermögensentziehung, Freikauf, Austausch 1940–1945: Beitrag zur Forschung, ed. Unabhängigen Expertenkommission Schweiz—Zweiter Weltkrieg (Zurich, 2001), pp. 46ff.

195. Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 83.

196. Guus Meershoek, “The Amsterdam Police and the Persecution of the Jews,” in Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), pp. 541ff.

197. For the details see J. Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (Detroit, 1988), pp. 47ff; Moore, Victims and Survivors, pp. 68ff.

198. Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 70.

199. Quoted in Gordon J. Horwitz, In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen (New York, 1990), pp. 52–53.

200. Ibid., p. 53.

201. Moore, Victims and Survivors, pp. 81–82.

202. Ibid., p. 83.

203. For these biographical details, see J. G. Gaarlandt, Introduction to Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943 (New York, 1983), pp. viiff.

204. Ibid., p. 9.

205. Ibid., pp. 23–24.

206. Moses Flinker, Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe, ed. Shaul Esh and Geoffrey Wigoder (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 19–20.

207. Melissa Müller, Das Mädchen Anne Frank: Die Biographie (Munich, 1998), p. 174.

208. On van Roey’s “flexible attitude” on the Jewish question see Lieven Saerens, “The Attitude of the Belgian Roman Catholic Clergy Towards the Jews Prior to the Occupation” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), p. 144–45; Mark Van den Wijngaert, “The Belgian Catholics and the Jews During the German Occupation, 1940–1944,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), p. 227.

209. Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews during World War Two (New York, 1986), pp. 52–53.

210. Quoted in Burkhart Schneider, Pierre Blet, and Angelo Martini, eds., Die Briefe Pius’ XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe 1939–1944. (Mainz, 1966), p. 134 n. 4.

211. Ibid., pp. 132–34.

212. John F. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1943 (New York, 1980), pp. 51–53. The full text of Bérard’s report was first published in Le Monde Juif, October 1946, pp. 2ff. According to the selected documents published by the Vatican, Pétain mentioned, then showed, Bérard’s report to the nuncio, Monsignor Valerio Valeri, to justify his own policies. Valeri protested against what he considered as the marshal’s simplistic interpretation but did not state that the report misrepresented the Vatican’s position. See Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider, eds., Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, vol. 8, Le Saint Siège et les Victimes de la Guerre (1974), pp. 295–97. The report probably expressed the views of Vatican undersecretaries of state, Monsigners Giovanni Battista Montini and Domenico Tardini or those of the superior general of the Dominican order, Father Gillet. In both cases, the report would have been authoritative. See Jean-Marie Mayeur, “Les Églises devant la Persécution des Juifs en France,” in La France et la question juive: 1940–1944, ed. Georges Wellers, André Kaspi, and Serge Klarsfeld (Paris, 1981), p. 155 n. 17.

213. For the argument of continuity, see in particular Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), pp. 30ff; see also Dieter Pohl, “The Murder of the Jews in the General Government,” in National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, ed. Ulrich Herbert (New York, 2000), pp. 84ff.

214. On the activities of the JDC and those of related organizations, see mainly Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust.

215. For details on Sugihara’s story see Hillel Levine, In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust (New York, 1996).

216. Ibid., p. 257.

217. Ibid., p. 5.

218. Ibid.

219. Ibid., p. 253.

220. Quoted on p. 195: “Die Relationen von Leben und Tod”: Abraham Lewin, “Eulogy in Honor of Yitshak Meir Weissenberg, September 31, 1941,” in A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, edited by Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1988), p. 243.

Chapter Four: June 1941–September 1941

1. Quoted in Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 75–76.

2. Dawid Rubinowicz, The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edmonds, WA, 1982), p. 16.

3. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. 62.

4. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (New York, 1996), p. 105.

5. Ibid.

6. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago, 2000), p. 370.

7. Ibid.

8. Benjamin Harshav, introduction to Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), pp. xlff.

9. Kruk, The Last Days, pp. 46–47.

10. Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), p. 251.

11. Ibid., p. 256.

12. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41 (New York, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 390–91.

13. See for example the various reports summed up in Marlis G. Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen: Stimmung und Haltung der deutschen Bevölkerung im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1970), pp. 206ff.

14. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998), part 2, vol. 1 (Munich, 1996), pp. 30, 35.

15. Nuremberg Doc. L-221, International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945–1 October 1946, 42 vols. (New York, 1971), vol. 38, pp. 68–94.

16. Reichskommissariat Ostland included eastern Poland, part of Belorussia (Weissruthenien for the Germans), and the Baltic countries (Bialystok and its district were annexed to East Prussia. Reichskommissariat Ukraine included part of Belorussia and the pre–September 1939 Ukraine; Western Ukraine (or Eastern Galicia) was annexed to “Galicia” as a district of the General Government.

17. See for example Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 1, pp. 42–43 and 115–16.

18. About the context of Bishop Galen’s sermon, see Beth Griech-Polelle, “Image of a Churchman-Resister: Bishop von Galen, the Euthanasia Project and the Sermons of Summer 1941,” Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 1 (2001), pp. 41ff.

19. About this second phase of euthanasia, see among others Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), pp. 345, and Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany c. 1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 220ff.

20. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols. (Leonberg, 1987–88), p. 1726.

21. Ibid., p. 1731.

22. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes (Frankfurt am Main, 1967–70), vol. 1, p. 614.

23. Ibid., p. 625.

24. Documents on German Foreign Policy. Series D, 1937–1945, vol. 13 (Washington, DC, 1964), p. 387.

25. Hewel diary entry, quoted in Peter Longerich and Dieter Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945 (Munich, 1989), p. 76.

26. Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944, ed. Werner Jochmann and Heinrich Heim (Hamburg, 1980), p. 41.

27. Henry Picker, ed., Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1942 (Stuttgart, 1965), p. 144.

28. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 1, p. 35 (In einigen Tagen wird, langsam beginnend, nun die antisemitische Kampagne anlaufen, und ich bin davon überzeugt, dass wir auch in dieser Richtung mehr und mehr die Weltöffentlichkeit auf unsere Seite bringen können).

29. For the full text of Dietrich’s Tagesparole see Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, “Die Sowjetunion in der Propaganda des Dritten Reiches: Das Beispiel der Wochenschau,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 46, no. 2 (1989), pp. 79ff. and 108–9.

30. Ibid., p. 133. See also Willi A. Boelcke, ed., Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? Die geheimen Goebbels Konferenzen 1939–1943 (Herrsching, 1989), p. 183.

31. Joseph Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel: Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1939/40/41 (Munich, 1941), pp. 526–31. The translation of the opening sentences is taken from German Propaganda Archive (CAS Department—Calvin College, [cited 2004]); available from www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb18.htm.

32. Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel: Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1939/40/41, pp. 533–535, 558, 566, 582–83, 585.

33. Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich: Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung 1933–1945 (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 328–29ff.

34. “Roosevelt, Hauptwerkzeug der jüdischen Freimaurerei” (Roosevelt, the main instrument of Jewish Freemasonry), Völkischer Beobachter, July 23, 1941, p. 3.

35. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 1, pp. 116, 168, 225, 271, 312, 328, 334, and 515. On the Kaufman affair, see mainly Wolfgang Benz, “Judenvernichtung aus Notwehr? Die Legenden um Theodore N. Kaufman,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 29 (1981), pp. 615–626.

36. Ibid.

37. “Das Kriegsziel Roosevelts und der Juden: Völlige Ausrottung des deutschen Volkes. Ungeheuriges jüdisches Vernichtungsprogram nach den Richtlinien Roosevelts,” Völkischer Beobachter, July 24, 1941, p. 1.

38. Benz, “Judenvernichtung,” pp. 620ff.

39. See for example Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 1, p. 48.

40. Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, 1938–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS, 17 vols. (Herrsching, 1984), pp. 2592ff.

41. DGFP: Series D, vol. 13, p. 201.

42. Boberach, ed., Meldungen, pp. 2563ff; Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 450.

43. For both letters, see Josef Wulf, ed., Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Gütersloh, 1963), pp. 431–32.

44. See Peter Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42. (Berlin: 1997), pp. 318–19.

45. Ibid., pp. 323ff.

46. Ibid., p. 337. According to the testimony given at Nuremberg by Otto Ohlendorf, head of Einsatzgruppe D (the only chief of an Einsatzgruppe to be put on trial), an oral order to exterminate all Jews on Soviet territory was transmitted by Heydrich’s emissary, Bruno Streckenbach, to the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen a few days before the beginning of the campaign. At the time of this testimony (1947), Streckenbach was thought to be dead. However when he returned from a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp in the mid-1950s, he declared that no such order was ever given or transmitted before the beginning of the Russian campaign. Other members of the killing units (heads or members of Einsatzkommandos—that is, subunits of the Einsatzgruppen) who were put on trial were more or less equally divided in support of either one of these opposing claims; moreover, any number of other versions that could help their own defense were brought forth. See Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust (London, 1994), pp. 94ff. In a masterly analysis of all available documents and testimonies, Burrin confirms the view first presented by Alfred Streim: The initial orders targeted Jewish men only; the killings expanded to entire Jewish communities from August on. For Streim’s view, see mainly Alfred Streim, “Zur Eröffnung des allgemeinen Judenvernichtungs befehls gegenüber den Einsatzgruppen,” in Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Entschlussbildung und Verwirklichung, ed. Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer (Stuttgart, 1985). See also Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42, p. 23.

47. The three thousand members of the four SS Einsatzgruppen (A, North; B, Center; C, South; D, Extreme South) were reinforced by Waffen SS units and by special SS units such as Kommandostab Reichsführer SS. The Kommandostab was a conglomerate of SS units (numbering approximately 25,000 men divided in three SS brigades) directly under Himmler’s command. The Reichsführer used it for “special tasks”: the killing of some 16,000 Jews in the area of the Pripet marshes and of thousands more in Pinsk and Bobruisk, as well as “minor” operations including only a few hundred victims in each case. Mostly, however, the Kommandostab brigades were under the command of the HSSPF and occasionally under that of the Wehrmacht (the first SS brigade, for example, was “lent” by Himmler to the HSSPF South, Jeckeln; then to Reichenau’s Sixth Army). See Yehoshua Büchler, “Kommandostab Reichsführer SS: Himmler’s Personal Murder Brigades in 1941,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1 (1986), pp. 11ff.

48. Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), p. 195 n. 14.

49. Quoted in Tikva Fatal-Knaani, “The Jews of Pinsk, 1939–1943: Through the Prism of New Documentation,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), p. 162. At the same time—and most probably as a follow-up to Hitler’s July 16 remarks—the SS chief considerably increased the number of SS units and police battalions on Soviet territory; he also ordered the large-scale inclusion of local auxiliaries in the killing process. See Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution(Cambridge, 1992), p. 106.

50. For the most thorough presentations of the food-supply argument see Christian Gerlach, “Deutsche Wirtschaftsinteressen,” in Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik, 1939–1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, ed. Ulrich Herbert (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), and Christopher Dieckmann, “Ermordung Litauischer Juden,” in ibid., pp. 263ff. and 292ff.

51. For the Jewish population statistics, see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3 vols. (New Haven, CT, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 295–97.

52. Hermann G.’s letters were first published in Ludwig Eiber, “Ein bischen Wahrheit…” 1999: Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 6, no. 1 (1991), pp. 58ff. This letter is quoted in Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Düsseldorf, 1998), p. 240ff. On September 12, the employment of Jews by soldiers was forbidden by Keitel: “There will be no collaboration between the armed forces and the Jewish population, whose attitude is openly or secretly anti-German, and no employment of individual Jews to render preferential auxiliary services for the armed forces.” Nuremberg doc. NOKW-3292.

53. Johannes Hürter, “Auf dem Weg zur Militäropposition: Tresckow, Gersdorff, der Vernichtungskrieg und der Judenmord: Neue Dokumente über das Verhältnis der Heeresgruppe Mitte zur Einsatzgruppe B im Jahr 1941,” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 3 (2004), pp. 527ff.

54. Documents explicitly referring to the widespread murder of Jews were brought to the knowledge of the future military resisters as early as mid-July 1941. See ibid., pp. 552ff. Hürter’s article restarted a controversy that had initially been launched in a series of publications by Christian Gerlach; see, most recently, Christian Gerlach, “Hitlergegner bei der Heeresgruppe Mitte und die ‘verbrecherische Befehle,’” in NS-Verbrechen und der militärische Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Gerd R. Uberschär (Darmstadt, 2000), pp. 62ff.

55. The English translation is quoted in Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York, 1991), p. 130.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., pp. 130–31.

58. Quoted in Jürgen Förster, “The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union,” Yad Vashem Studies 14 (1981), p. 7.

59. Quoted in Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen des Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938–1942 (Stuttgart, 1981), p. 232.

60. Ortwin Buchbender, Das tönende Erz: Deutsche Propaganda gegen die Rote Armee in Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1978), pp. 60ff.

61. Klara Löffler, Aufgehoben: Soldatenbriefe aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Bamberg, 1992), p. 115.

62. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg, 1997), p. 28.

63. Ortwin Buchbender and Reinhold Sterz, eds., Das andere Gesicht des Krieges: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe 1939–1945 (Munich, 1982), p. 73.

64. Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung,” p. 32.

65. Letters quoted in Stephen G. Fritz, ““We are trying…to change the face of the world”: Ideology and Motivation in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: The View from Below,” Journal of Military History 60, no. 4 (1996), p. 693.

66. Quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich, p. 106.

67. For the special anti-Jewish indoctrination of the SS units and order police battalions see in particular Jürgen Matthäus, “Ausbildungsziel Judenmord? Zum Stellenwert der “weltanschaulichen Erziehung” von SS und Polizei im Rahmen der ‘Endlösung,’” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 47 (1999), pp. 673ff. See also Jürgen Matthäus et al., Ausbildung Judenmord? “Weltanschauliche Erziehung” von SS, Polizei, und Wassen-SS im Rahmen der “Endlösung” (Frankfurt, 2003).

68. For a general historical survey see “Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation,” in Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York, 1980), pp. 176ff.

69. Friedman, Roads to Extinction, p. 177. The relations between Ukrainians and Jews throughout the centuries remain a strongly contested history, at least as intensely so as some major aspects of the relations between Jews and Poles (or Ukranians and Poles). For what appears (to a nonspecialist like myself) to be a balanced view, see Robert Magocsi, A History of the Ukraine (Seattle, 1996).

70. Friedman, Roads to Extinction, pp. 179–80. Very soon, however, the Germans, intent on turning the Ukraine into an area of colonization, would oppose Ukrainian nationalist demands and try to suppress their movements. See in particular Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), pp. 182ff.

71. Out of a population of approximately 110,000 Jews, some 4,000 were killed by the Germans and the Ukrainians during the early days of the occupation.

72. Bernd Boll, “Zloczow, July 1941: The Wehrmacht and the Beginning of the Holocaust in Galicia: From a Criticism of Photographs to a Revision of the Past,” in Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, ed. Omer Bartov, Atina Grossman, and Mary Nolan (New York, 2002), pp. 61ff.

73. Aryeh Klonicki and Malwina Klonicki, The Diary of Adam’s Father: The Diary of Aryeh Klonicki (Klonymus) and His Wife Malwina, With Letters Concerning the Fate of Their Child Adam (Jerusalem, 1973), pp. 22–23.

74. Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung,” p. 33.

75. For these testimonies by Jews and Poles from Brzezany, see Shimon Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919–1945 (Bloomington, 2002), pp. 114ff.

76. Thomas Sandkühler, “Anti-Jewish Policy and the Murder of the Jews in the District of Galicia 1941/1942,” in National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, ed. Ulrich Herbert (New York, 2000), pp. 199ff.

77. About the operation of Sonderkommando 4a and of its subunits, see among others, Helmut Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges 1938–1942 (Frankfurt, 1993), p. 163.

78. For the events that followed see mainly Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938–1940, ed. Helmut Krausnick and Harold C. Deutsch (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 534ff. The main documents relating to these events are available in English translation in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York, 1991); pp. 137ff. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York, 2000), pp. 617–19.

79. Klee et al., “The Good Old Days,” p. 138.

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid., p. 149.

83. Ibid., p. 154.

84. Bernd Boll and Hans Safrian, “Auf dem Weg nach Stalingrad: Die 6. Armee 1941/42,” in Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (Hamburg, 1995), p. 277.

85. Klee et al., “The Good Old Days,” p. 141.

86. Ibid., p. 141.

87. For more about Groscurth’s personality, see the detailed introduction to the Tagebuch. For Groscurth’s reference to Heydrich, see Tagebuch, p. 130.

88. Klee et al., “The Good Old Days,” p. 150.

89. Ibid., p. 149.

90. Ibid., pp. 150–51.

91. Christoph Dieckmann, “Der Krieg und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden,” in Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik, 1939–1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, ed. Ulrich Herbert (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), p. 244. For a detailed reconstruction of the orders received by “EK-Tilsit” see Konrad Kwiet, “Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June 1941,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 1 (1998), pp. 4ff. For these early stages, see also Jürgen Matthäus, “Jenseits der Grenze: Die ersten Massenerschiessungen von Juden in Litauen (Juni–August 1941),” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 2 (1996), pp. 101ff. There are several computations of the total number of Jews exterminated in Lithuania during the German occupation. According to the most recent studies, out of the Jewish population of 250,000, approximately 200,000 (80 percent) were exterminated. See Michael MacQueen, “Massenvernichtung im Kontext: Täter und Voraussetzungen des Holocaust in Litauen,” in Judenmord in Litauen, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Marion Neiss, Reihe Dokumente, Texte, Materialien, Bd. 33 (Berlin, 1999), p. 15.

92. Dieckmann, “Der Krieg und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden,” ibid.

93. Harshav, introduction to Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.

94. On these intricate developments, see among others Dov Levin, “The Jews in the Soviet Lithuanian Establishment, 1940–1941,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 10, n. 2 (May 1980), pp. 21ff; Dov Levin, “The Sovietization of the Baltics and the Jews, 1940–1941,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 21, no. 1 (Summer 1991), pp. 53ff. See also Michael MacQueen, “The Context of Mass Destruction: Agents and Prerequisites of the Holocaust in Lithuania,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12 (1998), pp. 32–34.

95. For the sequence of events and the quote, see Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 66–67. During the second half of July the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories took over the civilian administration of the “Reichskommissariat Ostland.”

96. Isaac Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, ed. Percy Matenko (Tel Aviv, 1973), pp. 35–36.

97. For a thorough presentation of the exterminations and an assessment of the number of victims, see Arad, Ghetto in Flames, pp. 101ff. and pp. 216–17.

98. MacQueen, “The Context of Mass Destruction,” p. 36.

99. Quoted in Yitzhak Arad, “Plunder of Jewish Property in the Nazi Occupied Areas of the Soviet Union,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), p. 134.

100. Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “The Good Old Days,” p. 32.

101. Both handwritten letters are reproduced in Wolfgang Benz, Konrad Kwiet, and Jürgen Matthäus, Einsatz im “Reichskommissariat Ostland”: Dokumente zum Völkermord im Baltikum und in Weissrussland, 1941–1944 (Berlin, 1998), pp. 177–78.

102. For Stahlecker’s report see Nuremberg doc. L-180, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 8 vols. (Washington, DC, 1946) vol. 7, pp. 978ff.

103. Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944: The Missing Center (Riga and Washington, DC, 1996), pp. 58 and 72.

104. I am grateful to Omer Bartov for this information based on recent Polish scholarship.

105. The participation of the Poles has been described in Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001). Gross’s book triggered a fierce controversy whose main aspects are thoroughly documented in Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. (Princeton, 2004), and also, from a different angle, in Alexander B. Rossino, “Polish ‘Neighbors’ and German Invaders: Anti-Jewish Violence in the Bialystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 16 (2003), pp. 431ff.

106. Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, p. 91.

107. Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts-und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999), p. 536.

108. Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, p. 91.

109. Quoted in Daniel Uziel, “Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), p. 54.

110. Quoted in Fatal-Knaani, “The Jews of Pinsk,” p. 149.

111. For a thorough study of the operations of Ohlendorf ’s unit, see Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der Südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg, 2003).

112. International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Presented to Romanian President Ion Iliescu. November 11, 2004, available from http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/presentations/programs/presentations/2 005-03-10/pdf/english/chapter_03.pdf., p. 2.

113. For the most complete description of the Iasi pogrom and of the Holocaust in Romania more generally, see Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, 2000); about the Iasi pogrom, see particularly pp. 62ff. The report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania states that “at least 15,000 Jews from the Regat (Old Romania) were killed in the Iasi pogrom and as a result of other anti-Jewish measures.” International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Final Report, p. 3.

114. Quoted in Jean Ancel, “The Romanian Way of Solving the Jewish Problem in Bessarabia and Bukovina, June–July 1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 19 (1988), p. 190.

115. Ancel, “The ‘Christian’ Regimes of Romania and the Jews,” p. 19.

116. About the ghetto in Kishinev, see Paul A. Shapiro, “The Jews of Chisinäu (Kishinev): Romanian Reoccupation, Ghettoisation, Deportation,” in The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era, ed. Randolph L. Braham (Boulder, CO, 1997), pp. 135ff.

117. Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania, pp. 177ff.

118. Quoted in Shapiro, “The Jews of Chisinäu,” p. 167.

119. Sebastian, Journal, p. 397.

120. Ibid., pp. 430–31.

121. Foreign Relations of the United States 1941, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1959), p. 871.

122. For an overview of German policies in Serbia see Walter Manoschek, “Serbien ist judenfrei”: Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42 (Munich, 1993); Walter Manoschek, “The Extermination of the Jews in Serbia,” in National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, ed. Ulrich Herbert (New York, 2000), pp 163ff. Christopher R. Browning, “The Wehrmacht in Serbia Revisited,” in Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, ed. Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and Mary Nolan (New York, 2002), pp. 31ff.

123. Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943 (London, 1990), p. 30.

124. Ibid.

125. Quoted in John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York, 1999), p. 255.

126. See Menachem Shelah, “Jasenovac,” in Yisrael Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 739–40.

127. Pierre Blet, Le Saint Siège et les Victimes de la Guerre, Janvier 1941–Décembre 1942., vol. 8 (Vatican City, 1974), p. 261. Translated in John F. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1943 (New York, 1980), p. 150

128. Actes et Documents (ADSS), vol. 8, p. 261. Translated in Menachem Shelach, “The Catholic Church in Croatia, the Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4, no. 3 (1989), p. 329.

129. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 31ff. and 37–38.

130. For this section see Steinberg, All or Nothing, pp. 15ff. and particularly pp. 29ff.

131. Ibid., p. 47.

132. On Slovakia, see Jörg K. Hoensch, “Slovakia: “One God, One People, One Party!” The Development, Aim and Failure of Political Catholicism,” in Catholics, the State, and the European Radical Right, 1919–1945, ed. Richard J. Wolff and Jörg K. Hoensch (Highland Lakes, NJ, 1987), pp. 158ff.

133. For an overview of the anti-Jewish policies of the Slovak state, see Livia Rothkirchen, “The Situation of the Jews in Slovakia between 1939 and 1945,” in Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 7 (1998), pp. 46ff.

134. Ibid., p. 49.

135. See Supra, chapter 2, p. 80.

136. Rothkirchen, “The Situation of the Jews in Slovakia between 1939 and 1945,” pp. 49–50.

137. For this synthesis I relied mainly on Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, abridged edition (Detroit, 2000); Randolph L. Braham, “The Holocaust in Hungary: A Retrospective Analysis,” in Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary 1944, ed. David Cesarani (Oxford, 1997); Ivan T. Berend, Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II (Berkeley, 1998); Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison, WI, 1995); Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars(Bloomington, 1983); and István Deák, “A Fatal Compromise? The Debate over Collaboration and Resistance in Hungary,” in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt., The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath (Princeton, 2000), pp. 39ff.

138. On the attitude of the Hungarian Churches see Randolph L. Braham, “The Christian Churches of Hungary and the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), pp. 244ff.

139. Braham, The Politics of Genocide (condensed), p. 34. While HSSPF Friedrich Jeckeln volunteered to murder the 18,000 Jews expelled by the Hungarians, more than 27,000 Jews expelled by the Romanians into German-controlled territory were pushed back into the Romanian-controlled area by Einsatzgruppe D. These contrary initiatives indicate that no clear overall policy had yet been decided by the end of August 1941 regarding the fate of large Jewish groups of this kind (that is, not local Jewish communities). On this point see Klaus-Michael Mallmann, “Der qualitative Sprung im Vernichtungsprozess: Das Massaker von Kamenetz-Podolsk Ende August 1941,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 10 (2001), pp. 239ff. and in particular, 255.

140. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 185 n. 15.

141. On July 17, Himmler had appointed Globocnik as “delegate of the Reichsführer-SS for the establishment of the SS and police strongholds in the new Eastern territories.” Ibid., n. 14.

142. Ibid.

143. For details about the testing of the van and its use in Poltava, see Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, eds., Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (New Haven, 1993), pp. 54ff and 60ff.

144. Part of the details on the origins and the early history of Auschwitz are taken from Danuta Czech, “Entstehungsgeschichte des KL Auschwitz, Aufbau und Ausbauperiode,” in Auschwitz: Nationalsozialistisches Vernichtungslager, ed. Franciszek Piper and Teresa Swiebocka (Oswiecim [Auschwitz], 1997), pp. 30ff. It seems, however, that no Polish caserns were used but rather a workers’ and refugees’ camp. For these indications see Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: Geschichte und Nachgeschichte (Munich, 2004), p. 13.

145. On the successive stages of IG Farben’s involvement in the Auschwitz Buna plant, see mainly Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (New York, 1987), pp. 347ff.

146. For details see Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz (New York, 2002), pp. 197ff; Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 123n.; Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945 (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989), p. 79. Contrarily to Höss’s testimony, during this visit Himmler did not order the construction in Birkenau of a camp for (future) Soviet prisoners. The construction of the Birkenau prisoners’ camp started in October 1941, and, as will be seen further on, only several months later would it be turned into an extermination camp. Sybille Steinbacher, “Musterstadt” Auschwitz: Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich, 2000), pp. 238ff.

147. Since World War I, prussic acid—as Zyklon B was then called—was increasingly used as a powerful pesticide for major disinfection purposes. In September 1939, at the outset of operation T4, the use of Zyklon B was considered as a possible method for the killing of the mentally ill, yet it was rejected in favor of carbon monoxide, which was deemed more efficient. Although the potential of Zyklon B for killing human beings was underrated at first, it was widely used as a disinfectant. Thus, in early 1940, as the decision to set up a concentration camp in Auschwitz was taken, Zyklon B was utilized to disinfect the first buildings of the new camp. Over the coming year and a half, Auschwitz, like all other concentration camps, regularly used Zyklon B to this end.

      In the early summer, smaller, thus much more effective, disinfection rooms for processing clothes, blankets, and the like were introduced after being suggested by the Zyklon producer, DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung). According to postwar testimony, during one such operation the slave workers in charge and their SS overseer noticed the rapid death of a cat that had remained in one of these rooms. “Why not use it on human beings?” the overseer supposedly commented. An idea too hastily abandoned in 1939 was born again.

      There were plenty of inmates on whom the product could be tested. We saw that mainly after August 1941, within the context of the 14f13 killing program, camp detainees in the hundreds were selected and sent to their death in the T4 institutions. Although some of these institutions remained “operational” until the end of the war, it became obvious that the murder on site, in the camps, would be more efficient. Moreover, following the attack on the Soviet Union, the killing of political commissars, other functionaries of the communist party and all Jewish prisoners of war started. The POW camps were searched by the Gestapo, and those destined for execution were either killed on the spot or transferred to nearby concentration camps to be murdered there. The killing procedures differed from one camp to another; the shot in the back of the neck seems to have been the most common method, but much leeway was left for the inventiveness of the executioners. In Auschwitz, Zyklon B was chosen. On these developments see Florent Brayard, La “Solution finale de la question juive”: La Technique, le temps et les catégories de la décision (Paris, 2004), pp. 262ff.

148. Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939–1945 (New York, 1990), pp. 85–86.

149. Ibid.

150. For Wagner’s role in the starving to death of the Soviet POWs see mainly Christian Gerlach, “Militärische ‘Versorgungszwänge,’ Besatzungspolitik und Massenverbrechen: Die Rolle des Generalquartiermeister des Heeres und seiner Dienststellen im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion,” in Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit, ed. Norbert Frei et al. (Munich, 2000), pp. 175ff. The most thorough study concerning the German treatment of Soviet POWs remains Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsfangenen 1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1978).

151. Götz Aly, ed., Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore: 1994), p. 130.

152. Ibid., p. 135.

153. Nuremberg Doc. PS-710.

154. See Eichmann’s memoirs in Adolf Eichmann, Ich, Adolf Eichmann, ed. R. Aschenauer (Leoni am Starnberger See, 1980), p. 479.

155. Notes of the meeting were taken by Bernhard Lösener, the adviser on Jewish affairs at the Ministry of the Interior. See Peter Witte, “Two Decisions Concerning the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: Deportations to Lodz and Mass Murder in Chelmno,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 3 (1995), p. 322.

156. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 1, pp. 265–66.

157. Ibid., p. 278.

158. Ibid., p. 269.

159. Ibid.

160. Heydrich was ready to start the deportations from the Reich forthwith, but, as we saw, Hitler vetoed any such immediate step as he vetoed the immediate implementation of Goebbels’s evacuation plans. It is thus difficult to follow Christopher Browning’s interpretation of Göring’s letter as “Heydrich’s charter” instructing the chief of the RSHA to draw up a “feasibility study” for the mass murder of European Jewry. “Heydrich needed the July 1941 authorization because he now faced a new and awesome task that would dwarf even the systematic murder program emerging on Soviet territory.” See Christopher R. Browning and Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, NE, 2004), pp. 315–16. Two documents adduced to bolster the “feasibility study” thesis can also be read differently. On August 28, Eichmann rejected a demand from the Wilhelmstrasse to allow Jewish emigration from the occupied countries in the West, “in view of the imminent ‘Final Solution,’ now in preparation.” Ibid., p. 322. This formula could, however, be applied either to the preparation of a general deportation of all European Jews to northern Russia or to the preparation for their extermination. However, as there was no preparation that we know of, Eichmann may simiply have used a general formula to explain his refusal.

      A second document, a memorandum sent on September 3 by the chief of the Emigration Central Office [Umwandererzentrale, or UWZ] of the RKF in Posen, SS Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, to Eichmann, seems to confirm that the “preparations” were aimed at the deportation of European Jewry to the Russian North. Höppner suggested the expansion of the Berlin Central Office for Emigration to the whole of European Jewry; he also suggested that control over the “reception areas” be granted to the new central agency. But precisely this document indicated that no decision had yet been taken: “I could well imagine,” Höppner wrote, “that large areas of the present Soviet Russia are being prepared to receive the undesired ethnic elements of the greater German settlement area…. To go into further details about the organization of the reception area would be fantasy, because first of all the basic decisions must be made. It is essential in this regard, by the way, that total clarity prevails about what finally shall happen to those undesirable ethnic elements deported from the Greater German settlement area. Is the goal to ensure them a certain level of life in the long run, or shall they be totally eradicated?” Ibid.

      In a further section of the September memorandum, Höppner stressed that “his proposals concerning ‘reception areas’ [Russia] had to remain ‘patchwork’ for the moment, as he did not yet ‘know the intentions’ of Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich.” Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge, MA, 2000), p. 37. Had a “feasibility study” for total extermination been in preparation when Höppner wrote his memorandum, Eichmann would probably have hinted about it and the entire memorandum would not have been so tentative and open-ended.

161. For these numbers see Wolfgang Scheffler, “Die Einsatzgruppe A 1941/2,” in Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzen Sowjetunion 1941/42, pp. 34–35.

162. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, pp. 96–99.

163. Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, pp. 31–32.

164. Ibid., pp. 32–33.

165. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, UK, 1990), p. 13.

166. Ibid., pp. 26–28.

167. Ibid., p. 32.

168. Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL, 1993), p. 168.

169. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 256.

170. Ibid., p. 257.

171. Ibid. On January 1, 1941, 1,761 inhabitants of the ghetto belonged to non-Jewish denominations. See Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York, 1992), pp. 154ff.

172. Ibid.

173. See mainly Havi Ben-Sasson, “Christians in the Ghetto: All Saints’ Church, Birth of the Holy Virgin Mary Church, and the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Yad Vashem Studies 31 (2003), pp. 153ff.

174. Ibid.

175. Ibid., p. 165.

176. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 261.

177. Ben-Sasson, “Christians in the Ghetto,” pp. 163–64.

178. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 167 n. 7.

179. Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle, p. 71.

180. Ibid., p. 67n.

181. Ibid., pp. 68–69.

182. Ibid., p. 69. On July 29, the day the patients were removed, Rumkowski’s secretary, Szmul Rozensztajn, tersely noted in his diary: “All efforts by the Chairman to save the mentally ill were to no avail. At 11 A.M. today, a van arrived at the hospital on 3 Wesola Street to take 58 persons. They had been given injections of the sedative scopolamine.” Quoted in Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides, eds., Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege (New York, 1989), p. 156.

183. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York, 1972), p. 84.

184. Ibid.

185. All details about Bruno Schulz are taken from Jerzy Ficowski, Regions of the Great Heresy: Bruno Schulz: A Biographical Portrait (New York, 2003).

186. Ibid., pp. 164–65.

187. All details about Dubnow’s life are taken from Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, The Life and World of S. M. Dubnov: Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish History (New York, 1991).

188. Ibid., p. 229.

189. Ibid., pp. 245–46.

190. Ibid., p. 218.

191. For the spreading of information, see Mordechai Altschuler, “Escape and Evacuation of Soviet Jews at the Time of the Nazi Invasion,” in Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (Armonk, NY, 1993), pp. 84ff.

192. For an overview of these attitudes see Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, pp. 61–62.

193. Mordechai Altschuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust: A Social and Demographic Profile (Jerusalem, 1998), p. 188.

194. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, 2004), p. 221.

195. Ibid., p. 245.

196. Quoted in ibid., p. 288.

197. See mainly Joshua Rubenstein, Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg (New York, 1996), pp. 189ff.

198. Jonathan Frankel, “Empire tsariste et Union Sovietique,” in Les juifs et le XXe siècle: Dictionnaire critique, ed. Elie Barnavi and Saul Friedländer (Paris, 2000), p. 298.

199. David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1939–1942 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), p. 136.

200. See mainly Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (New York, 1993). See also Peter Duffy, The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews, and Built a Village in the Forest (New York, 2003).

201. Nechama Tec and Daniel Weiss, “The Heroine of Minsk: Eight Photographs of an Execution,” in “Photography and the Holocaust,” ed. Sybil Milton and Genya Markon, special issue, History of Photography (1999), pp. 322ff. Also in Minsk, another Jewish woman, Yelena Mazanik, planted the bomb that killed Reichskommissar Wilhelm Kube in September 1943. Cf. John Garrard, “Russia and the Soviet Union” in Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds., The Holocaust Encyclopedia. (New Haven, 2001), p. 590.

202. For a detailed account of the genesis and activities of the committee, see Shimon Redlich, Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia: The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR, 1941–1948 (Boulder, CO, 1982).

203. The Erlich-Alter affair has generated an abundant scholarly literature. For the above mentioned rendition of the events, see Daniel Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre: Le mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939–1949 (Paris, 2002), pp. 101ff.

204. Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1981), p. 229.

205. Ibid., p. 347.

206. Paul Sauer, ed., Dokumente über die Verfolgung der jüdischen Bürger in Baden-Württemberg durch das nationalsozialistische Regime 1933–1945, 2 vols., vol. 2, (Stuttgart, 1966), p. 214.

207. Quoted in Léon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker: Dokumente (Berlin, 1959), p. 452.

208. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41, vol. 1, p. 434.

209. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 450.

210. Boberach, ed., Meldungen, pp. 2645ff.

211. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 458.

212. Ibid., pp. 456–57.

213. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41, p. 434.

214. Ibid., p. 445.

215. Ibid., p. 441.

216. Elisabeth Freund, “Waiting,” in Hitler’s Exiles: Personal Stories of the Flight from Nazi Germany to America, ed. Mark M. Anderson (New York, 1998), p. 122.

217. Ibid., p. 123.

218. Telegram from Morris to Secretary of State, September 30, 1941, reproduced in John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982), vol. 2, p. 280.

219. For the manifold confirmations of these attitudes see David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism (Oxford, 1992), pp. 124ff.

220. Ibid., p. 129.

221. Quoted in Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism: Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust, 1938–1944 (Uppsala, 1996), p. 118.

222. Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany: An Oral History (Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 362–63.

223. Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, 2001), p. 49.

224. Michael H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (New York, 1997), p. 103.

225. Renée Poznanski, “The Jews of France and the Statutes on Jews, 1940–1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 22 (1992), pp. 115–16.

226. René Rémond, Le “Fichier juif” (Paris, 1996), pp. 67–68.

227. Ibid., p. 68.

228. Ibid., p. 74.

229. Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985), p. 105.

230. Ibid., p. 187.

231. Jacques Biélinky, Journal, 1940–1942: Un journaliste juif à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Renée Poznanski (Paris, 1992), p. 146.

232. About the exhibition see Joseph Billig, L’Institut d’étude des questions Juives (Paris, 1974), pp. 160ff.

233. Lucien Steinberg and Jean Marie Fitère, Les Allemands en France: 1940–1944 (Paris, 1980), pp. 75–76. Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York, 1987), pp. 75ff; Renée Poznanski, Être juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1994), p. 311.

234. For a detailed history of local French life in the Nantes region during the war, see Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Everyday Life in the French Heartland under the German Occupation (New York, 2003), pp. 229ff.

235. On this issue, see in particular Philippe Burrin, Hitler und die Juden: Die Entscheidung für den Völkermord (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), pp. 144–45.

236. Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn, 1996), p. 312.

237. Ibid.

238. Adler, The Jews of Paris, pp. 79–80.

239. Ibid., p. 105–6.

240. See particularly Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin, pp. 129ff.

241. Exact statistics are unavailable. See Rudi von Doorslaer, “Jewish Immigration and Communism in Belgium, 1925–1939,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), p. 63. For the early measures taken in Belgium, see Maxime Steinberg, La Persécution des Juifs en Belgique (1940–1945) (Brussels, 2004), pp. 33ff.

242. Ibid.

243. For the Antwerp events and the text of the “protest” see Lieven Saerens, “Antwerp’s Attitude Toward the Jews from 1918 to 1940 and Its Implications for the Period of Occupation,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 192–193.

244. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p. 77.

Chapter Five: September 1941–December 1941

1. The general description of the events follows Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944: The Missing Center (Riga and Washington, DC, 1996), pp. 244–50.

2. It seems that SS architects and other experts were consulted about the disposals of the bodies of the 30,000 Riga Jews. See Konrad Kwiet, “Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June 1941,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 1 (1998), p. 7.

3. Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944, p. 253.

4. Ibid., p. 254.

5. Wolfgang Benz, Konrad Kwiet, and Jürgen Matthäus, Einsatz im “Reichskommissariat Ostland”: Dokumente zum Völkermord im Baltikum und in Weissrussland, 1941–1944 (Berlin, 1998), p. 96.

6. Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, The Life and World of S. M. Dubnov. Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish History (New York, 1991), pp. 246–47.

7. Jürgen Matthäus, “Weltanschauliche Forschung und Auswärtung. Aus den Akten des Amtes VII im Reichssicherheitshauptamt,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 5 (1996), p. 316.

8. Quoted in Konrad Kwiet, “Erziehung zum Mord: Zwei Beispiele zur Kontinuität der deutschen ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage,’” in Geschichte und Emanzipation, ed. Michael Grüttner et al. (Frankfurt, 1999), p. 449.

9. Peter Witte, “Two Decisions Concerning the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: Deportations to Lodz and Mass Murder in Chelmno,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 3 (1995), p. 330.

10. Ibid., pp. 324–25.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich part 2, vol. 1 (Munich, 1996), pp. 384, 388.

14. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, UK, 1994), pp. 243–44.

15. This had been the pretext for the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1933 and was mentioned time and again as an effective anti-Jewish strategy from the end of 1938 to the war. See Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, 1997), p. 316.

16. Martin Dean, “The Development and Implementation of Nazi Denaturalization and Confiscation Policy up to the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 2 (2002), p. 230.

17. Saul Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–41 (New York, 1967), pp. 290ff.

18. Ibid., p. 291.

19. On these discussions and related issues see Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienst- kalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), pp. 203, 205.

20. Ibid., p. 205 n. 19.

21. Christopher R. Browning and Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, NE, 2004), p. 328.

22. About the exchanges between Himmler and Übelhör, then between Heydrich and Übelhör, see mainly ibid., pp. 331ff. See also, among others, H. G. Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch: Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974), pp. 173ff.

23. Henry Friedlander, “The Deportation of the German Jews: Post-War German Trials of Nazi Criminals,” in Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute (London, 1984), vol. 29, p. 212.

24. For the additional measures see Yaacov Lozowick, “Malice in Action,” Yad Vashem Bulletin 27 (1999), pp. 300–301.

25. For the fate of the Reich Jews deported to Kovno see, among other publications, Dina Porat, “The Legend of the Struggle of the Jews from the Third Reich in the Ninth Fort near Kovno, 1941–1942,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 20 (1991), pp. 363ff. and particularly 375ff.

26. Friedlander, “The Deportation of the German Jews: Post-War German Trials of Nazi Criminals,” p. 214.

27. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 278 n. 104.

28. Ibid.

29. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, pp. 49–50, 73 (for the translation see Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers [Cambridge, 2000], p. 38).

30. Willi A. Boelcke, ed., Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? Die geheimen Goebbels Konferenzen 1939–1943 (Herrsching, 1989), p. 246.

31. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, ed. Alan Adelson (New York, 1996), p. 136.

32. Ibid., p. 138.

33. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham I. Katsh (Bloomington, 1999), p. 272.

34. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41 (New York, 1998), p. 440.

35. Willy Cohn, Als Jude in Breslau 1941, ed. Joseph Walk (Gerlingen, 1984), p. 106.

36. Ibid., p. 110.

37. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago, 2000), p. 425.

38. Jacques Biélinky, Journal, 1940–1942: Un journaliste juif à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Renée Poznánski (Paris, 1992), p. 156.

39. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), p. 440.

40. Ernst Klink, “The Conduct of Operations: 1. The Army and the Navy,” in The Attack on the Soviet Union, ed. Horst Boog (Oxford, 1998), pp. 685ff, 690ff, and 701–2.

41. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, p. 296.

42. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–41, pp. 292ff.

43. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999), p. 499.

44. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, p. 297.

45. Galeazzo Ciano, Diary 1937–1943: The Complete Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1936–1943 (London, 2002), p. 459.

46. About the Des Moines speech, see A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York, 1998), pp. 324ff.

47. Ibid., p. 426–27.

48. Ibid., p. 427.

49. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 1, p. 417.

50. For the text of Hitler’s order of the day of October 2, 1941, see Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols. (Leonberg, 1987–88), part 2, vol. 4, pp. 1756–57.

51. Ibid., p. 1759.

52. Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944, ed. Werner Jochmann and Heinrich Heim (Munich, 2000), p. 78.

53. Ibid., p. 88.

54. Ibid., p. 90.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid., p. 93.

57. Ibid., p. 96.

58. Ibid., pp. 96–99 (for the translation of some of the excerpts, see also Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper [London, 1953]), p. 79.

59. Nuremberg doc. NG-287. Quoted in Josef Wulf, ed., Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Gütersloh, 1964), p. 254.

60. Hitler, Monologue, p. 106.

61. Ibid.

62. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes (Frankfurt am Main, 1967–70), vol. 1, pp. 634–35.

63. Hitler, Monologe, pp. 130–31.

64. Hitler, Reden, vol. 4, p. 1772.

65. Ibid., pp. 1772–73.

66. Ibid., p. 1778.

67. DGFP: Series D, vol. 13, (Washington, 1964), p. 767.

68. Hitler, Monologe, p. 137.

69. Ibid., p. 143.

70. Joseph Goebbels, “Die Juden sind schuld!” in Joseph Goebbels, Das eherne Herz: Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1941/42, ed. Moritz Augustus Konstantin von Schirmeister (Munich, 1943), pp. 85ff.

71. For an excellent analysis of Goebbels’s article in Das Reich and his lecture of December 1, see Jeffrey Herf, “The ‘Jewish War’: Goebbels and the Antisemitic Campaign of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19, no. 1 (2005), pp. 67–68. Now, see mainly Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), pp. 122ff.

72. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, pp. 340–41.

73. DGFP: Series D, vol. 13, pp. 850–51.

74. Hillgruber, Staatsmänner, pp. 664ff.

75. DGFP: Series D, vol. 13, p. 893.

76. Memorandum for Ribbentrop from Schmidt, November 30, 1941, ibid., pp. 908–9.

77. Hitler, Monologe, p. 144.

78. Ibid., pp. 147–8.

79. Hitler, Reden, part 2, vol. 4, p. 1794.

80. Ibid., pp. 1794–97.

81. Ibid., pp. 1800–1804. “The spirits this man has called” was of course a reference to Goethe’s Faust.

82. Ibid., p. 1804.

83. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, pp. 498ff.

84. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 194; Christian Gerlach, “Die Wannsee-Konferenz, das Schiksal der deutschen Juden und Hitlers politische Grundsatzentscheidung, alle Juden Europas zu ermorden,” in Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1998), pp. 8, 121.

85. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, pp. 533–34.

86. Hitler, Monologe, p. 158.

87. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, p. 614.

88. Hitler, Reden, pp. 1820–21.

89. The killing operations in Galicia—including the mass murders in the fall of 1941—have been studied in considerable detail. See in particular Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organization und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich, 1996); Dieter Pohl, “Hans Krüger and the Murder of the Jews in the Stanislawow Region (Galicia),” Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998); Thomas Sandkühler, “Endlösung” in Galizien: der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941–1944 (Bonn, 1996); Browning and Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, pp. 347ff.

90. For the description of the events at the cemetery, see in particular Sandkühler, Endlösung in Galizien, pp. 151–52.

91. Elsa Binder’s diary is quoted in Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages. Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, 2002), pp. 301ff., particularly 315.

92. The deportations to Minsk also led to mass executions of local Jews; the killing of local Jews to make space for the deportees from the Reich may explain the aborted plans for setting up an extermination site in Mogilev. On this issue see Christian Gerlach, “Failure of Plans for an SS Extermination Camp in Mogilev, Belorussia,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7, no. 1 (1997), pp. 60ff.

93. The full text of Heydrich’s statement is quoted in H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941–1945: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Tübingen, 1960), pp. 720ff. The Wannsee conference will be discussed in chapter 6.

94. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, pp. 233–34 n. 35.

95. For the function of the Zamosc region as the first colonization project in the framework of General Plan East, see in particular Bruno Wasser, “Die ‘Germanisierung’ im Distrikt Lublin als Generalprobe und erste Realisierungsphase des ‘Generalplans Ost,’” in Mechtild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher, and Cordula Tollmien, eds., Der “Generalplan Ost”: Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik (Berlin, 1993), pp. 271ff.

96. Hitler, Monologe, pp. 78ff. Hans Mommsen’s suggestion that the extermination process leading to the full-scale “Final Solution” was triggered by Globocnik’s extermination initiatives in Lublin and Katzmann’s murder operations in Galicia is hard to sustain. According to this argument it was Globocnik who convinced Himmler to send him T4 personnel to deal with the Jews unfit for work on his road-building projects (Durchgangstrasse IV ) and also to make space for ethnic Germans from the Zamosc region. Along the lines of the same interpretation, Globocnik’s initiative would have led to the construction of the other extermination camps in the General Government and started a murderous chain reaction that ultimately engulfed the whole of European Jewry. For this thesis see Hans Mommsen, Auschwitz, 17. Juli 1942: Der Weg zur europäischen “Endlösung der Judenfrage” (Munich, 2002), pp. 134ff. and 138. There is no doubt that the fanaticism and the activism of a Globocnik—or a Jeckeln or a Greiser—were highly valued by Himmler and certainly acknowledged by Hitler; yet nothing indicates that these or any other local initiatives set a course that “die höchste Instanz” then adopted as his own. The Globocniks of the system could act only within the limits set by Himmler, and when it came to the general extermination plan, the Reichsführer himself got his orders from Hitler.

97. Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust (London, 1994), p. 127.

98. To make sense of Eichmann’s story, Christopher Browning, who uses the testimony as an indication that Hitler gave the go-ahead for the “Final Solution” sometime in September, when the order to deport the Jews from Germany was issued, has to assume that the head of IVB4 was sent to Lublin before the construction of the camp, and that the use of existing huts was at first considered sufficient for gassing purposes. No documents indicate that this may have been the case. See Browning and Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution, pp. 362ff.

99. The limited gassing capacity of Belzec at this initial stage has been pointed out in Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der District Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1933–1941, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993). For Greiser’s notorious letter to Himmler, see Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (East Berlin, 1961), p. 278.

100. For Heydrich’s response to the Spanish offer, see Bernd Rother, “Franco und die deutsche Judenverfolgung,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 46, no. 2 (1998), pp. 189ff. and particularly p. 195. See also Bernd Rother, Spanien und der Holocaust(Tübingen, 2001).

101. Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, 15 vols., vol. 13, U.S. v. von Weizsaecker: The Ministries Case (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1952), Nuremberg doc. NG-5095, p. 174 [emphasis added].

102. Quoted in full in Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), p. 443.

103. On December 12, as mentioned, Hitler told his old-time party companions that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. On the sixteenth of that month, Hans Frank, having heard Hitler’s address, parroted his Führer in a speech to his top administrators in Kraków. Could not a comparison be made between Frank’s reaction to Hitler’s speech and a secret Rosenberg address to the German press, on November 18, after a lengthy meeting with Himmler three days beforehand?

      According to this interpretation, Rosenberg probably had been told by Himmler of the decision, and he echoed the newly acquired information in his speech to the press, as Frank was to echo Hitler a month later. “This Eastern territory,” Rosenberg declared, “is called upon to solve a question which is posed to the peoples of Europe; that is the Jewish Question. In the East, some 6 million Jews still live, and this question can only be solved in the biological eradication of the entire Jewry of Europe. The Jewish Question is only solved for Germany when the last Jew has left German territory, and for Europe when not a single Jew lives on the European continent up to the Urals. That is the task that fate had posed to us…. It is necessary to expel them over the Urals or eradicate them in some other way.” (Quoted in Browning and Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, September 1939–March 1942, p. 404.)

      Rosenberg’s meeting with Himmler was in fact primarily intended to establish some clear rules regarding the division of tasks in the occupied Eastern territories between SS and police leaders on the one hand, and Reich or Gebietskommissare on the other. It is in this context that the Jewish issue was discussed, and we do not know whether on that occasion Himmler imparted any further information—if any decision was to be imparted at all—to a rival whom he despised. On the next day, Himmler and Rosenberg were both Hitler’s guests at dinner. Were the Jews discussed on that occasion? We do not know either. (For the Himmler-Rosenberg meeting, see Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 262, n. 46; for the dinner with Hitler, see Ibid., p. 264.) The “table-talk” records for that day indicate no allusion to the Jewish issue. (Hitler, Monologe, p. 140–42.)

      As for Rosenberg’s speech as such, it is ambiguous. It refers both to biological eradication and to expulsion over the Urals. It could be that Rosenberg meant eradication and not mere expulsion, as later, in the same speech, he stressed the urgency of the issue and the necessity for his generation of Germans to accomplish this historical task. (For the text of the speech see Browning and Matthäus, p. 404). But could not the same urgency apply to the expulsion of all the Jews beyond the Urals, leading eventually to their extinction (like all other territorial plans)?

      Other documents of these same November 1941 days are no less ambiguous than Rosenberg’s speech. Thus, on November 6, Goebbels recorded that, according to information from the General government, the Jews were setting all their hopes on a Soviet victory. “They don’t have much to lose anymore,” the minister went on. “In fact, one cannot hold it against them that they look for new glimmers of hope. It can even be of help to us, as it should allow us to deal with them in an even more decisive way in the general government as in the other occupied countries, and first of all also in the Reich.” (Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich [Munich, 1995], part 2, vol. 2, p. 241.)

      On November 29, 1941, Heydrich sent invitations to a conference that was to take place on December 9 in Berlin, at the Interpol center on Am Kleinen Wannseestrasse 16. The invitation letter clearly defined the subject of the meeting: “On 31 July 1941 the Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich commissioned me to make all necessary preparations in organizational, factual, and material respect for the total solution [Gesamtlösung] of the Jewish question in Europe with the participation of all central agencies and to present to him a master plan as soon as possible…. Considering the extraordinary importance which has to be conceded to these questions and in the interest of the achievement of the same viewpoint by the central agencies concerned with the remaining work connected with this final solution [Endlösung], I suggest to make these problems the subject of a combined conversation, especially since Jews are being evacuated in continuous transports from the Reich territory, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to the East ever since 15 October 1941.” [Nuremberg doc. 709-PS, The Ministries Case, pp. 192–93.] The conference was postponed as a result of the Japanese attack on the United States and the planned German response (“Unfortunately,” Heydrich wrote on January 8, 1942, “I had to call off the conferencebecause of events which suddenly became known and of the engrossment with them of some of the invited gentlemen”). (Ibid.); it was reconvened for January 20, 1942.

      The way the initial invitation was formulated indicates that no preparations for a “general solution” of the Jewish question had been made since Göring’s instructions to Heydrich; had there been some significant overall decisions taken in October, for example, they would have been alluded to, at least indirectly. The only concrete developments mentioned were the deportations from Germany. This very fact, as well as the date on which Heydrich sent the letters, indicate that the “evacuation” from the Reich and the complaints it generated would be a major item on the discussion agenda. (This is Gerlach’s argument in Christian Gerlach, “Die Wannsee-Konferenz, das Schicksal der deutschen Juden und Hitlers politische Grundsatzentscheidung, alle Juden Europas zu ermor- den,” in Werkstatt Geschichte 18 (1997), p. 16. The invitation of Stuckart and Schlegelberger confirmed Heydrich’s intention. Whether this was to be the only topic of the December 9 conference cannot be determined.

      One could also argue, however, that the inclusion of Luther, the chief of “Division Germany” of the Wilhelmstrasse (dealing with Jewish matters throughout the continent) points to the discussion of plans extending beyond the deportations from the Reich (Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im Schatten der “Endlösung” [Berlin, 1987], p. 221). Rademacher, Luther’s second-in-command, prepared a list of issues to be dealt with, particularly the deportation of Jews from Serbia, of stateless Jews living in territories occupied by Germany, and of Jews of Croat, Slovak, or Romanian nationality living in the Reich. Moreover, Rademacher suggested to inform the governments of Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Hungary that Germany would be ready to deport their Jews to the East. Finally, the representative of the Wilhelmstrasse proposed to ask “all European governments” to introduce anti-Jewish legislation (Döscher, p. 223). Of course, these were suggestions of the Wilhelmstrasse; whether they would have been discussed, we do not know. Moreover, Rademacher’s agenda does not indicate anything beyond the deportation plans to the East. Significantly, the countries of western and northern Europe were not mentioned.

      On November 18, in a speech at the University of Berlin, Hans Frank unexpectedly praised the Jewish workers toiling in the General Government and forecast that they would be allowed to continue working for Germany in the future (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, 1981], pp. 246–47). Could it be, if extermination had already been decided in early October, that Frank, in his visit to Berlin in mid-November, would not have been told anything? As we saw, by December 16 the tone had changed, and Frank spoke of only one goal: extermination.

      The same change of tone is noticeable in the exchange between the Ostland Reichskommissar Lohse and Rosenberg’s chief acolyte, Bräutigam. On November 15, Lohse asked Bräutigam whether the ongoing liquidations in the Baltic countries should also include Jews employed in war production. Bräutigam replied on December 18: “In the Jewish question, recent oral discussions have in the meantime clarified the issue (In der Judenfrage dürfte inzwischen durch mündliche Besprechungen Klarheit geschaffen sein). In principle, economic considerations are not to be taken into account in the settlement of the problem” (Ibid., pp. 394–95).

      In other words, in mid-November, Rosenberg’s delegate to the area, which had been the scene of some of the largest local massacres, was not yet aware of a general policy of extermination. But, as in Frank’s case, by mid-December he was told of the guidelines, “recently clarified.” (On this specific exchange see also Christian Gerlach, “Die Wannsee-konferenz.”

      Finally, in a letter sent to Himmler a few months later, on June 23, 1942, Viktor Brack, referring to the extermination camps in the General Government, added: “At one time, you yourself, Reichsführer, indicated to me that for reasons of secrecy we ought to complete the work as quickly as possible.” It has been plausibly assumed that “at one time” referred to a personal meeting between Himmler and Brack. Such a meeting took place on December 14, 1941 (Ibid.).

      In more general terms, if the deportation of the Jews from Germany had been the starting signal for the “Final Solution,” why should the transports from the Reich have been directed to Lodz to begin with? No killing site was yet ready in or near Lodz, whereas choosing Riga, Kovno, or Minsk from the outset…would have befitted a killing plan—at least as a possibility. But the Ostland destinations were alternatives chosen to ease the burden imposed upon Lodz. The setting up of Chelmno, the building of Belzec, and plans for other camps also appear as “solutions” for the overcrowding of Lodz, of the Lublin district, and of the Ostland ghettos, in view of the new arrivals, not necessarily as the first steps of a general extermination plan.

      If it was in Hitler’s plan to turn the Jews of Germany into hostages, mainly in order to deter the United States from entering the war, murdering the hostages before December 1941 would have been contrary to the very aim of the operation; murdering them once America was at war was true to type.

      The Wannsee conference of January 20, 1942, will show, as the conference of December 9 would have shown, that no preparations had been made and that, except for general statements, Heydrich, the convener, had no concrete plans: there was no time schedule, no clear operational plan, no accepted definition of the categories of Mischlinge that were to be spared or deported and the like. Hitler probably finalized his decision in December; in January, Heydrich was barely starting to consider various possibilities, apart from the phased deportation to the East.

104. Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung. (Heidelberg, 1981), p. 350.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid., p. 351.

107. Ibid., p. 353.

108. Ibid., p. 355.

109. Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1972), p. 284. For an exhaustive discussion of this issue, see ibid., pp. 274ff.

110. Ibid., p. 291.

111. Götz Aly mentions the case of the Jewish laborer Ernst Samuel who worked at Daimler Benz, received a net weekly salary of twenty-eight reichsmarks, after an amount of twenty-four reichsmarks had been paid as income tax, benefits, and so on. Götz Aly, Im Tunnel: Das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931–1943 (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), p. 64.

112. For this complicated bureaucratic process see Dean, “The Development and Implementation of Nazi Denaturalization and Confiscation Policy,” pp. 217ff.

113. Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich, pp. 292ff and 299–301.

114. Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933–1943 (Hanover, NH, 1989), p. 176.

115. Ibid., pp. 179–80.

116. For the full text of the law see Kurt Pätzold, ed., Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942. (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), pp. 320–321.

117. Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, pp. 177ff.

118. Ibid., pp. 177–79. Regarding the H and W accounts one may accept the hypothesis that the Reichsvereinigung was itself cheated at the outset, but for how long? On the policies of the Reichsvereinigung see, among others, Yehoyakim Cochavi, ““The Hostile Alliance”: The Relationship Between the Reichsvereinigung of Jews in Germany and the Regime,” Yad Vashem Studies 22 (1992), pp. 262ff.

119. Pätzold, Verfolgung, p. 309.

120. See Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, 22 vols. (New York, 1990), vol. 20, doc. 17, pp. 32–33.

121. Nuremberg doc. NG-978, reproduced in John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (New York, 1982), vol. 2, pp. 284–85 (the translation has been slightly revised).

122. For this issue see Beate Meyer, “Jüdische Mischlinge”: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1999), pp. 230ff; Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, KS, 2002), pp. 116ff.

123. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, pp. 128ff.

124. Ibid., pp. 144ff.

125. Ibid., p. 132.

126. Béla Bodo, “The Role of Antisemitism in the Expulsion of Non-Aryan Students, 1933–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 30 (2002), pp. 216–17.

127. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944. (Hamburg, 1997), p. 45.

128. Ibid., p. 49.

129. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), pp. 467–68.

130. For the reports of Swiss diplomatic representatives, see Daniel Bourgeois, Business helvétique et Troisième Reich: Milieux d’affaires, politique étrangère, antisémitisme (Lausanne, 1998), pp. 197ff.

131. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression of Information about Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ (London, 1980), p. 26. What German officials knew, British intelligence knew even more precisely by intercepting and decoding the radio messages sent by police battalions operating on Soviet territory to their headquarters in Berlin. However, this information was kept strictly secret to protect the British code-breaking operation. See mainly Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York, 1998).

132. Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya: 1939–1945, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (New York, 1990), pp. 155–56.

133. Ibid., p. 175.

134. Ibid., p. 183.

135. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 277.

136. Quoted in Gordon J. Horwitz, In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen (New York, 1990), p. 35.

137. SD Aussenstelle Minden, 12.12.1941 in Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 477.

138. Quoted in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader. vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination; (Exeter, UK, 1998), p. 1044.

139. Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), p. 349.

140. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, pp. 476ff.

141. Ibid. p. 478.

142. Ibid., pp. 483–84.

143. Quoted in Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, 1991), p. 199.

144. Ibid.

145. Ibid.

146. Ibid., p. 200.

147. Ibid., pp. 200–201.

148. Ibid., p. 199 n. 22.

149. For all the details regarding Schieder’s confidential survey and for the quotations, see Götz Aly, “Theodor Schieder, Werner Conze oder die Vorstufen der physischen Vernichtung,” in Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Winfried Schulze and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Frankfurt, 1999), p. 167.

150. Quoted in Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1933–1945. 6 vols., vol. 5: 1940–1942 (Mainz, 1983), p. 555 n.

151. For Cardinal Bertram’s pastoral letter, see ibid., p. 555ff.

152. Bertram to Faulhaber, 17.11.1941, quoted in Ernst Klee, Die SA Jesu Christi: Die Kirchen im Banne Hitlers (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), p. 144.

153. Cordelia Edvardson, Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer (Munich, 1989), pp. 54–55.

154. Richard Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 229–30.

155. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden, pp. 468–69.

156. Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950, p. 230.

157. Ibid., p 231.

158. Ursula Büttner, “‘The Jewish Problem Becomes a Christian Problem’: German Protestants and the Persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. David Bankier (New York, 2000), pp. 454ff.

159. Quoted in Klee, Die SA Jesu Christi, p. 148.

160. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, pp. 362–63.

161. Klee, Die SA Jesu Christi, p. 148.

162. Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950, pp. 231–32.

163. Quoted and translated in Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews, ed. Victoria Barnett (Lincoln, NE, 2000), p. 194.

164. Ibid., pp. 194–96.

165. Ibid., p. 196.

166. Ibid., p. 197.

167. Jochen Klepper, Unter dem Schatten Deiner Flügel: Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, ed. Hildegard Klepper (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 1009.

168. For the text of the draft pastoral letter, see Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhaber, vol. 2, 1935–1945 (Mainz, 1978), pp. 827ff.

169. Ibid., p. 853.

170. Klaus Schölder, A Requiem for Hitler: and Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle (London, 1989), p. 163.

171. Ibid.

172. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, vol. 5, Mainz, 1983, p. 675n.

173. Ibid.

174. Ibid., p. 636.

175. Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen, Akten, Briefe und Predigten, ed. Peter Löffler, vol. 2, 1939–1946 (Mainz, 1988), pp. 910–11.

176. Ibid., pp. 910 ff.

177. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York, 1992), p. 268.

178. Breitman, Official Secrets, pp. 68 and 106, among others.

179. Raya Cohen, “The Lost Honor of Bystanders? The Case of Jewish Emmissaries in Switzerland,” in Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation, ed. David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine (London, 2002), p. 162.

180. Riegner protested but had to accept Wise’s decision. On the other hand, Alfred Silberschein, the man in charge of the Relief Committee (RELICO) set up to help the starving Jewish populations, continued to organize the sending of food against Wise’s instructions. See ibid., pp. 162ff.

181. For both quotes see Gulie Ne’eman Arad, America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington, 2000), p. 212.

182. Dina Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 18.

183. Quoted in Tuvia Friling, Arrow in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv’s Leadership and Rescue Efforts during the Holocaust (Tel Aviv, 1998), 2 vols., vol. 1, p. 45.

184. Yoav Gelber, “Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939–1942),” Yad Vashem Studies 13 (1979), pp. 191–92.

185. Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David, p. 22.

186. Friedlander and Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 4, Central Zionist Archives, p. 40. It was in this context of utter misperception regarding the fate of European Jewry under German rule that a splinter of the Revisionist clandestine group Irgun, the “Stern group” (or Lehi), offered the Reich, in late 1940 (via a German diplomat in Beirut), to fight on the Axis side of against the British, in exchange for German help in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Lehi offer never received an answer.

187. Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch, pp. 380ff.

188. Cohn, Als Jude in Breslau 1941, p. 122.

189. Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany: An Oral History (Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 306.

190. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, p. 474.

191. Ibid., p. 472.

192. It seems that in most such cases the Jews were not utilized as agents; the Abwehr used the pretext to help some selected (and wealthy) individuals to leave the Reich. See for example Winfried Meyer, Unternehmen Sieben: eine Rettungsaktion für vom Holocaust Bedrohte aus dem Amt Ausland/Abwehr im Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Frankfurt am Main, 1993). However, notwithstanding the opposition of some senior Abwehr officers to the regime, other members and particularly the secret military police (Geheime Feldpolizei) units and their commanders were deeply involved in the mass murder of Jews and other groups, in the eastern territories. Even later participants in the military conspiracy against Hitler were implicated. See Christian Gerlach, “Männer des 20 Juli und der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion,” in Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (Hamburg, 1995), pp. 434ff.

193. Mark Roseman, A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany (New York, 2001), pp. 125ff, 130ff, and 133ff.

194. Konrad Kwiet, “The Ultimate Refuge: Suicide in the Jewish Community under the Nazis,” in Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute (London), p. 151.

195. Ursula Baumann, “Suizid im ‘Dritten Reich’—Facetten eines Themas,” in Geschichte und Emanzipation, ed. Reinhard Rürup et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), p. 500.

196. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 2, p. 247.

197. Stadtarchiv Müchen, ed., “…verzogen, unbekannt wohin”: Die erste Deportation von Müchner Juden im November 1941. (Zürich: Pendo, 2000), doc. 14 [the document section is unpaginated].

198. Ibid., p. 20; Porat, “The Legend of the Struggle of the Jews from the Third Reich in the Ninth Fort near Kovno, 1941–1942,” pp. 363 and 370.

199. Yaacov Lozowick, “Documentation: “Judenspediteur,” Deportation Train,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6, no. 3 (1991), pp. 286ff.

200. Shalom Cholavsky, “The German Jews in the Minsk Ghetto,” Yad Vashem Studies 17 (1986), pp. 223–25.

201. For the details about Rosenfeld’s life see the editor’s introduction to Oskar Rosenfeld, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lódz, ed. Hanno Loewy (Evanston, IL, 2002), pp. xiii–xviii.

202. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

203. Ibid., p. 11.

204. Ibid.

205. Ibid., p. 21.

206. For an excellent survey and analysis see Avraham Barkai, “Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto,” in The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, 1989), vol. 6, pt. 1, pp. 378ff, and, specifically, pp. 394–395.

207. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. 79.

208. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 141.

209. Ibid., p. 144.

210. Ibid., p. 142.

211. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, pp. 80–81.

212. Donald L. Niewyk, ed., Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), p. 303.

213. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, p. 109.

214. Ibid., pp. 109 and 109n3.

215. Ibid., p. 113.

216. Rosenfeld, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto, pp. 31–32.

217. Ibid., p. 32.

218. Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, p. 233.

219. May’s postwar memoir is quoted in Dobroszycki’s “Introduction” to Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle, pp. lv–lvi.

220. Ibid., p. 108.

221. Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (New York, 2000), p. 115.

222. Translated from the original and quoted in Laqueur, The Terrible Secret, p. 130.

223. Ibid., p. 131.

224. David Graber, “Some Impressions and Memories,” in Joseph Kermish, ed., To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!…: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbath”). (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), p. 61.; Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley, 1993), p. 156ff.

225. Biélinky, Journal, pp. 153ff.

226. Ibid., p. 155.

227. Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985), p. 132.

228. Ibid.

229. Ibid., p. 163.

230. Sebastian, Journal, p. 427.

231. Ibid.

232. Ibid., pp. 428–29.

233. Ibid., p. 434.

234. Ibid., p. 452.

235. Ibid.

236. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41, p. 440.

237. Ibid., p. 442.

238. Ibid., p. 446.

239. Hertha Feiner, Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters, January 1939–December 1942, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, IL, 1999), p. 53.

240. Dawid Rubinowicz, The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edmonds, WA, 1982), p. 26.

241. Ibid.

242. Ibid., p. 27.

243. For details about Elsa Binder, see Alexandra Zapruder’s “Introduction” to the diary in Zapruder, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, pp. 301ff.

244. Ibid., pp. 306–7.

245. Ibid.

246. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony, p. 267.

247. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham Isaac Katsh (New York, 1973) p. 285.

248. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, ed., A Holocaust Reader (New York, 1976), p. 264ff.

249. Ibid., pp. 273–74.

250. Martin Gilbert, introduction to Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, OK, 1990), p. xiv.

251. Tory, Surviving, p. 44.

252. Ibid., p. 46.

253. Ibid., p. 47.

254. Ibid., pp. 49–55.

255. Ibid., pp. 55–59.

256. Isaac Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, ed. Percy Matenko (Tel Aviv, 1973), p. 46.

257. Ibid., p. 48.

258. Dina Porat, “The Vilna Proclamation of January 1, 1942 in Historical Perspective,” Yad Vashem Studies 24 (1996), pp. 106ff.

259. Ibid., pp. 108ff.

260. Ibid., pp. 111ff.

261. Yisrael Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Boston, 1994), p. 103.

262. Ibid., pp. 104–5.

263. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, pp. 153–54.

264. Ibid., p. 156.

265. Sebastian, Journal, p. 458.

266. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41, p. 456.

267. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), p. 149.

268. Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, p. 311.

269. Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL), 1993), p. 179.

270. Ibid., p. 180.

271. Ibid., p. 179.

272. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, p. 153.

Chapter Six: December 1941–July 1942

1. For a detailed narration of the Struma tragedy, see Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II’s Holocaust at Sea (New York, 2004).

2. Quoted in Dalia Ofer, Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel, 1939–1944 (New York, 1990), p. 158.

3. Quoted in Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (London, 1979), pp. 145–46.

4. Ofer, Escaping the Holocaust, pp. 162ff. According to documents uncovered in Soviet archives, Stalin had apparently given a secret order to sink neutral ships sailing from the Bosporus into the Black Sea to disrupt the delivery of chromium from Turkey to Germany. See Frantz and Collins, Death on the Black Sea, pp. 159 and 341.

5. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago, 2000), pp. 476–47.

6. Hitler’s New Year’s speech to the German people was in fact dated December 31, 1941, but was published by the VB on January 1, 1942. See Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols. (Leonberg, 1987–88), part 2, vol. 4, pp. 1820, 1820n.

7. Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944, ed. Werner Jochmann and Heinrich Heim (Munich, 2000), pp. 228–29.

8. Hitler, Reden, pp. 1828–29. (Emphasis in the original.)

9. Kulka/Jäckel, Die Juden, p. 485.

10. Ibid., p. 486.

11. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham I. Katsh (Bloomington, 1999), p. 297.

12. Hitler, Reden, p. 1844.

13. Karl Dürkefälden, Schreiben, wie es wirklich war: Aufzeichnungen Karl Dürkefäldens aus den Jahren 1933–1945, Herbert Obenaus and Sibylle Obenaus, eds. (Hannover, 1985), p. 108.

14. Ibid., pp. 107–8.

15. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1996), part 2, vol. 3, p. 104.

16. Ibid., pp. 320–21.

17. Ibid., part 2, vol. 3, p. 561.

18. Ibid., part 2, vol. 4, p. 184.

19. See Hitler, Reden, part 2, p. 1865.

20. Ibid., pp. 1865–69.

21. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 4, p. 188.

22. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–41 (New York, 1998), vol. 2, p. 45 (emphasis in original).

23. David Bankier, “The Use of Antisemitism in Nazi Wartime Propaganda,” in The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Reexamined, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (Bloomington, 1998), p. 45.

24. Ibid., pp. 45–46.

25. Ibid., p. 46.

26. Kulka/Jäckel, Die Juden, p. 489.

27. Ibid., p. 491.

28. Ibid., p. 494.

29. Martin Doerry, My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944 (London, 2004), pp. 95–96.

30. For the main details about the conference see Kurt Pätzold and Erika Schwarz, eds., Tagesordnung Judenmord: Die Wannsee-Konferenz am 20. Januar 1942: Eine Dokumentation zur Organisation der “Endlösung.” (Berlin, 1992) See also Mark Roseman, The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (London and New York, 2002).

31. See Yehoshua Büchler, “A Preparatory Document for the Wannsee Conference,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 1 (1995), pp. 121ff.

32. There is no indication, however, of Heydrich’s wish to convey to the participants (and to their chiefs) that he, the newly appointed SS Obergruppenführer and acting Reichsprotektor was in fact the man whom the Führer had personally put in charge of the “Final Solution,” independently of the SS Reichsführer. Had that been Heydrich’s intention (and had Hitler indeed appointed him) the RSHA chief would probably have avoided indicating immediately at the outset that the ultimate executive authority in the matter was that of the SS Reichsführer. For this hypothesis see Eberhard Jäckel, “On the Purpose of the Wannsee Conference,” in Perspectives on the Holocaust, ed. James S. Pacy and Alan P. Wertheimer (Boulder, CO, 1995), pp. 39ff.

33. In Heydrich’s view, mixed breeds of the first degree were to be considered identical to Jews, when not married to full-blooded Germans with whom they had children; in the latter case they would be exempted from deportation. In order to solve once and for all the problem of the Mischlinge, mixed breeds of the first degree exempted from evacuation would be sterilized. Mixed breeds of the second degree were put on equal footing with Germans, except if they were “bastards” (that is, the offspring of parents both of whom were themselves Mischlinge), if their physical appearance pointed to their Jewishness, or if an incriminating police record indicated that they felt and behaved as Jews.

      The issue of mixed marriages followed. Heydrich emphasized the impact that decisions in this domain could have on German partners. In marriages between full Jews and Germans, the decision about the Jewish spouse’s deportation depended on the existence of children. In childless marriages the Jewish spouse would be deported. In marriages between a Mischling of the first degree and a German, the mixed-breed partner would also be deported if the marriage was childless. If the couple had children (Mischlinge of the second degree), and if these children were put on an equal footing with Jews (in the three cases previously mentioned), the Mischling parent and the children would be deported. If the children were not identified with Jews (the rule), they would not be deported, nor would their parent, the mixed breed of the first degree.

      In regard to marriages of Mischlinge of the first degree among themselves or with Jews, everybody, including the children, would be “evacuated.” Finally, in the case of marriages of mixed breeds of the first degree and mixed breeds of the second degree, everybody would be “evacuated,” as children in these unions tended to present a racially stronger influence of the Jewish blood than mixed breeds of the second degree (“da etwaige Kinder rassenmässig in der Regel einen stärkeren Jüdischen Bluteinschlag aufweisen, als die Jüdischen Mischlinge 2. Grades”).

34. For the full text of the conference see Pätzold and Schwarz, Tagesordnung, pp. 102–12.

35. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 355n.

36. For this Hitler order, see Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York, 1998), p. 111.

37. Miroslav Kárný, Jaroslava Milotová, and Margarita Kárná, eds., Deutsche Politik im “Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren” unter Reinhard Heydrick 1941–1942: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin, 1997), p. 229. See also Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 353n.

38. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 321.

39. Himmler to Glücks, 25.1.1942, U.S. v. Flick: The Flick Case. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law no. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949, 15 vols., vol. 6 (Washington, DC: US. GPO, 1952), Nuremberg doc. NO-500, p. 365.

40. Quoted in Peter Longerich and Dieter Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden (Munich, 1989), p. 165ff. See also Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), p. 483.

41. Pätzold and Schwarz, Tagesordnung, pp. 118 and 118n.

42. Schlegelberger to Stuckart et al., 8 April 1942, Nuremberg doc. NG-2586-I; Hilberg, The Destruction, vol. 2, p. 440.

43. For a good summary see Beate Meyer, “Jüdische Mischlinge”: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1999), p. 99ff. The protocols of both meetings are reproduced in Nuremberg doc. NG-2586, U.S. v. von Weizsaecker: The Ministries Case. Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, 15 vols., vol. 13 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1952), pp. 221–25. One of the exemptions granted by Hitler led to a strange conflation between a mixed marriage and the measures deriving from the Eleventh Ordinance regarding the loss of citizenship and of all assets by German Jews “residing outside of the Reich.” On September 16, 1942, the Propaganda Ministry intervened with the Ministry of the Interior in favor of the Jewish wife of one of Germany’s most famous actors, Hans Moser. Moser had been authorized by “a decision at the highest level” (allehöchster Entscheidung) to pursue his activities without any hindrance. In the meantime, however, his wife had moved to Budapest and, as a consequence of the Eleventh Ordinance, had automatically lost her German citizenship (and passport); she had become “stateless.” Moser was understandably distressed by this sudden blow. The Ministry of the Interior was asked to restore Mrs. Moser’s citizenship (and passport). To support its demand, the Propaganda Ministry added the names of other actors who had also been allowed by “a decision at the highest level” to live and work in the Reich with their full-Jewish wives: Paul Henckels, Max Lorenz and Georg Alexander. See Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 20, pp. 118ff.

44. The protocol of the March 6 conference is quoted in Peter Longerich and Dieter Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945 (Munich: Piper, 1989), pp. 167ff. For a discussion of the conference see Yaacov Lozowick, Hitlers Bürokraten: Eichmann, seine willigen Vollstrecker und die Banalität des Bösen (Zurich, 2000), pp. 130–31. At about the same time, Eichmann divided IVB4 into sections a and b: IVB4a, in charge of the logistics of deportations, was headed by the transportation specialist Franz Novak, while section IVB4b, in charge of legal and technical matters, was under Friedrich Suhr (followed by Otto Hunsche). Rolf Günther faithfully served as Eichmann’s deputy and an intense “esprit de corps” characterized the entire group of Eichmann’s men. For this tightly knit group see Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna, 1992); Lozowick, Hitlers Bürokraten: Eichmann, seine willigen Vollstrecker und die Banalität des Bösen; David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer” (New York, 2006), particularly pp. 126ff.

45. Wolf Grüner, “Zwangsarbeit,” in Wolfgang Benz et al., Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, p. 814.

46. Quoted in Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The “Final Solution” in History (New York, 1988), p. 333.

47. Ibid, pp. 333–34.

48. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, ed. Alan Adelson (New York, 1996), p. 148.

49. Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 71ff.

50. Ibid. p. 74.

51. Ibid., p. 75.

52. Ibid., p. 76.

53. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 4, p. 350.

54. Ibid., p. 351.

55. Ibid., p. 355.

56. Ibid., p. 386.

57. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, p. 437n86.

58. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 4, p. 405.

59. Ibid., p. 406.

60. Ibid. A few days later, Goebbels noted that hundreds of Jewish hostages should be shot for each assassination attempt: “The more of this filth we eliminate, the better the security of the Reich will be.” Ibid., p. 433.

61. Kurt Pätzold, “Lidice,” in Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, eds., Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1997), p. 569.

62. For the interim period, see Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg, 2002), pp. 681ff.

63. Himmler, Der Dienstkalender, pp. 448, 450, 451.

64. Heinrich Himmler, Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden, 1933 bis 1945, und andere Ansprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p. 159. Himmler imitates Hitler’s expressions about the extermination of the Jews (“and soon none will laugh anymore” as well as “wiping the slate clean”).

65. Nuremberg doc. No-5574, reproduced in Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (East Berlin, 1961), p. 303.

66. The most detailed monograph on Theresienstadt remains H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941–1945: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Tübingen, 1960). Although extremely detailed, Adler’s study is considered highly biased in terms of personal assessments; on this issue see any number of essays in Miroslav Kárný, Vojtech Blodig, and Margita Kárná, eds., Theresienstadt in der “Endlösung der Judenfrage” (Prague, 1992).

67. All details on Edelstein are taken from Ruth Bondy, “Elder of the Jews”: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt (New York, 1989).

68. Ibid., pp. 159ff.

69. Ibid., pp. 208ff.

70. Ibid., p. 246.

71. Egon Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman (Lexington, KY, 1992), pp. 3ff.

72. Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” p. 270.

73. Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, p. 5. Actually the nine men who were hanged had smuggled letters out of Terezin. See Eva Roubièkova, We Are Alive and Life Goes On: A Theresienstadt Diary (New York, 1998), p. 20; also Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” pp. 260ff.

74. Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, p. 53.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid., pp. 53 and 54 n. 26. See also Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” pp. 300ff.

77. Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” p. 301.

78. Ibid., p. 302.

79. Ibid., p. 61.

80. Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, 2001), pp. 78–79.

81. Ibid. The 1942 film was a failure from the Nazi propaganda viewpoint, as the “ghetto” looked too close to reality. For a thoroughly researched article on the history of this first film, see Karel Margry, “Der Nazi-Film über Theresienstadt” in Miroslav Karny et al., Theresienstadt in der “Endlosüng der Judenfrage” (Prague, 1992), pp. 285ff.

82. This letter, among others, was brought to Marianne Ellenbogen by the owner of a truck dealership in Essen who knew both Ernst and Marianne. He had joined the SS and traveled frequently to Izbica. For the document and the context see Mark Roseman, A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany (New York, 2001), pp. 179ff.

83. Ibid., p. 186.

84. Ibid., p. 188.

85. Ibid.

86. Ibid., p. 192.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid., pp. 207ff.

89. Memo by Rauter, March 17, 1942, in Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord. pp. 269–70. Test gassings in which hundreds of Jews were exterminated had taken place from the end of February to mid-March. See Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, eds., Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (New Haven, 1993), p. 109.

90. For the details see Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 72ff; Kogon, Langbein, and Rückerl, Nazi Mass Murder; Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), pp. 113ff. It appears that Majdanek was included among the “Aktion Reinhardt” camps by the headquarters in Lublin. As for the spelling of Reinhard(t), both forms were used by Heydrich himself.

91. There has been some debate about the number of Jews exterminated in Belzec, until the discovery in the Russian archives of a message sent on January 11, 1943, by Hermann Ho¯fle (Globocnik’s deportation specialist) to Franz Heim (at the RSHA in Kraków), which indicates the number mentioned above. See on this issue Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, “A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during “Einsatz Reinhardt 1942,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 95 (2002), pp. 458ff. The document will be quoted in chapter 8.

92. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (London, 1974), p. 111.

93. Ibid., p. 117.

94. Arad, Belzec, p. 80.

95. Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL, 1993). Klukowski’s diary raises some problems. One editor, Zygmunt’s son, mentions that the full text, deposited at the library of the Catholic University in Lublin, has been cut by some 8 percent; moreover, in the collaborative effort with Zygmunt’s grandson to translate the text into English, some changes in the wording were apparently made and short paragraphs “that were clearly related” were combined (Klukowski, Diary, p. xix). Some passages that were rephrased in the English translation offer, in the original, a very negative image of the behavior of the local Polish population; these passages will be quoted in part of the next note, and can be compared in the note with their translation by Jan T. Gross.

96. Ibid. Jan T. Gross’s translation runs as follows: “All the scum are milling around, a lot of [peasants with] wagons came from the countryside and stood waiting the entire day for the moment when they could start looting. News keeps reaching us from all directions about the scandalous behavior of segments of the Polish population who rob emptied Jewish apartments. I am sure our little town will be no different.” Quoted in Jan T. Gross, “A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews and Communists,” in The Politics of Retribution, ed. István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton, 2000). Klukowski was right. Many of the Jews of Sczebrzeszyn were murdered on the spot, on May 8, 1942. “The next morning,” Klukowski noted, “behavior of a certain part of the Polish population left a lot to be desired. People were laughing, joking, many strolled to the Jewish quarter looking around for an opportunity to grab something from the deserted houses.” Gross, “Tangled Web,” p. 90.

97. In her day-by-day chronicle of the events in Auschwitz, Danuta Czech noted for February 15, 1942: “The first transport of Jews who have been arrested by the [Ge]stapo and destined for death in Auschwitz arrives from Beuthen. They are unloaded on the platform of the camp siding. They have to leave their bags on the platform. The standby squad takes charge of the deportees from the Stapo and leads them to the gas chamber in the camp crematorium. There they are killed with Zyklon B gas.” Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939–1945 (New York, 1990), p. 135.

98. Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz (New York, 2002), p. 301.

99. Ibid., pp. 302–3.

100. For the stagewise beginning of the second sweep from the end of 1941 on, see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 2003), vol. 1, pp. 382ff.

101. Nuremberg doc. PS-2174, pp. 72–75. Quoted in Dieter Pohl, “Schauplatz Ukraine,” in Darstellungen und Quellen zur Geschichte von Auschwitz Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit: Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik, ed. Norbert Frei, Sybille Steinbacher, and Bernd C. Wagner, vol. 4 (Munich, 2000), p. 155.

102. For a detailed overview see mainly Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews 1941–1944 (Jerusalem, 1990). Regarding the results of the “first sweep” and the extermination in Rovno, see pp. 113–15.

103. Pohl, “Schauplatz Ukraine,” pp. 156–57.

104. For the function of these auxiliary forces see in particular Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust. Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and the Ukraine, 1941–44 (New York, 2000).

105. Ibid., p. 96.

106. Pohl, “Schauplatz Ukraine,” p. 158.

107. Ibid., pp. 159–61.

108. Jäger’s report of February 9, 1942, is reproduced in Friedlander and Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 22, doc. 82, p. 177.

109. Ibid., vol. 22, doc. 91, p. 196.

110. See the basic documentation in Helmut Heiber, “Aus den Akten des Gauleiters Kube,” Viertelsjahrhefte für Zeitgeschichte 4 (1956), pp. 67ff.

111. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminal Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1946–9 October 1946, PS-3428, vol. 12, p. 67, quoted in Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley, 1984), p. 118.

112. Ibid., p. 148.

113. For the response, see Longerich and Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung, pp. 355–56.

114. Ibid.

115. For the details of this operation, see the partly diverging interpretations in Christopher R. Browning, Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (New York, 1985) and in Menachem Shelach, “Sajmiste—An Extermination Camp in Serbia,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2, no. 2 (1987), pp. 243ff.

116. Shelach, “Sajmište,” pp. 253–54. For the full text of Schäfer’s telegram, see Nuremberg doc. 501-PS, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 8 vols. (Washington, DC, 1946), vol. 3, p. 418–19.

117. Shelach, “Sajmište,” p. 254.

118. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, p. 278.

119. For a detailed history of the Bielskis, see mainly Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (New York, 1993).

120. Ibid.

121. About the situation in Minsk, see mainly Shalom Cholavsky, “The Judenrat in Minsk,” in Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933–1945. Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft, eds. (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 120ff. See also Hersh Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis (New York, 1989).

122. Ingo Müller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA, 1991), p. 114ff.

123. Nuremberg doc. NG-1012, quoted in John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (New York, 1982), vol. 13; John Mendelsohn, The Judicial System and the Jews in Nazi Germany (New York, 1982), p. 233.

124. Mendelsohn, The Judicial System and the Jews in Nazi Germany, pp. 240–41.

125. Ibid., p. 243.

126. See Jörg Wollenberg, ed., The German Public and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1945 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1996), p. 137.

127. Müller, Hitler’s Justice, p. 114. See also Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 498.

128. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–45, pp. 4–5.

129. Helmut Heiber, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten, vol. 1, part 2 (Munich, 1983), abs. no. 26106.

130. Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1981), p. 360.

131. Heiber, Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, vol. 1, part 2, abs. no. 26106.

132. Ibid.

133. Ibid., p. 366.

134. Peter Longerich, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten., vol. 2, part 4 (Munich, 1992) abs. no. 42409.

135. Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht, p. 368.

136. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–45, p. 58.

137. Ibid., p. 52.

138. Wolf Gruner, Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933–1945: Eine Chronologie der Behördenmassnahmen in der Reichshauptstadt (Berlin, 1996), p. 84.

139. Ibid.

140. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP, part 2, vol. 4, abs. no. 42900.

141. Gruner, Judenverfolgung in Berlin, p. 85.

142. Bormann’s letter and Fiehler’s answer are quoted in Ernst Piper, “National Socialist Cultural Policy and Its Beneficiaries: The Example of Munich,” in The German Public and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1945, ed. Jörg Wollenberg (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1996), p. 110.

143. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1941–1945, vol. 2, p. 8.

144. Ibid., p. 9.

145. Ibid., p. 28.

146. Hertha Feiner, Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters, January 1939–December 1942, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, IL, 1999), p. 102.

147. On this issue see in particular Beate Meyer, “Das unausweichliche Dilemma: Die Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, die Deportationen und die untergetauchten Juden,” in Überleben im Untergrund: Hilfe für Juden in Deutschland, ed. Beate Kosmala and Claudia Schopmann (Berlin, 2002), pp. 278ff.

148. Ibid., pp. 280–81.

149. Paul Sauer, ed., Dokumente über die Verfolgung der jüdischen Bürger in Baden-Württemberg durch das nationalsozialistische Regime 1933–1945, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: 1966), vol. 2, pp. 317–18.

150. Ibid., pp. 322–23.

151. Ibid.

152. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich and June Barrows Mussey, Berlin Underground, 1938–1945 (New York, 1947), p. 77.

153. Ibid., p. 78.

154. For the events in Slovakia see mainly Livia Rothkirchen, “The Situation of the Jews in Slovakia between 1939 and 1945,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 7 (1998), pp. 46ff. and particularly 51ff.

155. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000), p. 88.

156. Ibid., p. 89.

157. Ibid.

158. Ibid., p. 90.

159. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Series E, 1941–1945 (Göttingen, 1974), vol. 3, pp. 65–66.

160. Ibid., p. 66 n. 1.

161. Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, 1994), pp. 62ff.

162. For the text of Dannecker’s memorandum of June 15, see Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France (Paris, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 202–3.

163. Ibid., p. 70ff.

164. J. Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (Detroit, 1988), p. 92.

165. Ibid., pp. 94ff.

166. Ibid., pp. 98ff.

167. Ibid., pp. 100ff.

168. Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943 (New York, 1983), p. 93.

169. Ibid., p. 107.

170. Ibid., p. 118.

171. Ibid., p. 122.

172. For the chronology of events in France and in the early summer of 1942 most of the relevant documents see mainly Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1 (Paris, 1983).

173. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 236.

174. Ibid., p. 237.

175. For the introduction of the star in Holland, see Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), p. 86ff. For France, see Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York, 1981), pp. 234ff.

176. Moore, Victims and Survivors, pp. 85–89.

177. Presser, Ashes in the Wind, pp. 124–26.

178. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris, 1990), pp. 236–37.

179. Renée Poznanski, Être juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1994), p. 358.

180. Ibid.

181. Biélinky, Journal, p.191.

182. Ibid., p. 209.

183. Ibid., pp. 209–10.

184. Ibid., pp. 214ff.

185. Nuremberg doc. NG-183, The Ministries Case, p. 235.

186. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Journal, 1939–1945, ed. Julien Hervier (Paris, 1992), p. 302.

187. Lucien Rebatet, Les Décombres (Paris, 1942), pp. 568–69 (translated in David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture [Princeton, 1995], p. 212).

188. Ibid., p. 605 (Carroll, French Literary Fascism, p. 211).

189. Quoted in Frédéric Vitoux, Céline: A Biography (New York, 1992), p. 378.

190. Quoted in Carroll, French Literary Fascism, p. 121.

191. Ibid., p. 275.

192. See in particular Robert Belot, “Lucien Rebatet, ou L’Antisémitisme comme Événement Littéraire,” in L’Antisémitisme de plume, 1940–1944: Études et documents, ed. Pierre-André Taguieff (Paris, 1999), pp. 217ff. See also Robert Belot, Lucien Rebatet: Un itinéraire fasciste (Paris, 1994).

193. Pierre Assouline, Gaston Gallimard: A Half-Century of French Publishing (San Diego, 1988), p. 279.

194. Richard I. Cohen, The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership During the Holocaust (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 71ff, 116ff.

195. Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985), p. 163. Much of what Lambert writes about the overall attitude of the Consistoire is true; the donations to “l’Amitié Chrétienne,” however, were intended as financial support for Jewish children helped by the organization. See Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux Prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1998), p. 263.

196. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), pp. 173–74.

197. The report written by G. Jaszunski, head of the cultural department of the council, is reproduced in Lucy S. Dawidowicz, ed., A Holocaust Reader (New York, 1976), pp. 208ff.

198. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 67.

199. Ibid.

200. Ibid., p. 72.

201. Quoted in Antony Polonsky, “Beyond Condemnation, Apologetics and Apologies: On the Complexity of Polish Behavior toward the Jews during the Second World War,” in Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 5, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), p. 46.

202. Ibid., p. 47.

203. Ibid.

204. Ibid.

205. Dawid Rubinowicz, The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edmonds, WA, 1982), p. 38.

206. Ibid., p. 43.

207. Ibid., pp. 85–87.

208. Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages. Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, 2002), pp. 322–23.

209. Ibid., p. 325.

210. Ibid., p. 327.

211. Ibid., p. 306.

212. Sierakowiak, Diary, p. 149.

213. Ibid., p. 151.

214. Introduction to Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. xx.

215. Avraham Barkai, “Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto,” in The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, CT, 1989), p. 418.

216. Ibid., p. 420.

217. Ibid., pp. 419ff.

218. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, pp. 163–64.

219. Ibid., pp. 181–182.

220. Ibid., p. 185.

221. Ibid., pp. 193–94.

222. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, pp. 292–93.

223. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emanuel Ringelblum, ed. Jacob Sloan (New York, 1974), p. 251.

224. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham Isaac Katsh (New York, 1965), p. 237.

225. Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz (New York, 1979), p. 328 (at this level the annual mortality rate would have been 14 percent).

226. Ibid., p. 328.

227. Ibid., p. 330.

228. Ibid., p. 339.

229. Ibid.

230. Ibid., p. 342.

231. For the meeting, see Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington, 1982), pp. 168ff; Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 170ff; Daniel Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre: Le mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939–1949 (Paris, 2002), pp. 130ff.

232. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 168; Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, p. 174; Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre, p. 130.

233. One may also argue that the time had not yet come, as there was a collective responsibility for the Jewish population. On that important point see Ruta Sakowska, “Two Forms of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto—Two Functions of the Ringelblum Archives,” Yad Vashem Studies 21 (1991), p. 217.

234. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 169; Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, p. 174; Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre, p. 130.

235. For a history of the Bund in Poland during the war and immediate postwar years and for the Bundist view of a common front with the Zionists, see Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre, particularly pp. 129ff. In his memoirs Zuckerman describes the Bund’s attitude as seen from the Zionist perspective. See Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, pp. 170ff.

236. About the publicity given to the Bund report in the British media, see Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York, 1981), pp. 42–43.

237. Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (New York, 2005), p. 139.

238. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 343.

239. Note in Ibid., p. 344n. The killings took place during the night of the seventeenth to the eighteenth: Czerniakow noted them under the April 17 entry, usually, the April 18 date is referred to.

240. Note in ibid., p. 344 n.

241. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, pp. 177ff.

242. See Zuckerman’s indications about the rise and fall of the “Anti-Fascist Bloc” in the late spring of 1942. Ibid., pp. 180ff.

243. Hersch Wasser, “Daily Entries of Hersch Wasser,” Yad Vashem Studies 15 (1983), pp. 271–72.

244. Almost every study or memoir about the Warsaw ghetto mentions Rubinstein. See in particular Jan Marek Gronski, Life in Nazi-Occupied Warsaw. Three Ghetto Sketches (1992), p. 192ff.

245. Yitzhak Perlis, “Final Chapter: Korczak in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in The Ghetto Diary, ed. Janusz Korczak (New York, 1978), pp. 78ff.

246. Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary, ed. Aaron Zeitlin (New York, 1978), p. 192.

247. For details about Lewin see Antony Polonsky, introduction to his edition of Lewin’s diary, Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, ed. Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1988).

248. Ibid., p. 80.

249. Quoted in Ruta Sakowska, Menschen im Ghetto: Die jüdische Bevölkerung im besetzten Warschau 1939–1943 (Osnabrück, 1999), p. 220. The author assumes that the message was well understood; this cannot be established.

250. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, pp. 376–77.

Chapter Seven: July 1942–March 1943

1. This report, titled “Observations about the ‘Resettlement of Jews’ in the General Government” (IfZ, Munich, doc. ED 81) is reproduced in Raul Hilberg, ed., Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933–1945 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 208ff.

2. For the growing crisis and the unfolding military situation, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), pp. 526ff.

3. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss (unter Mitarbeit) and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 330.

4. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols., vol. 2, part 1 (Munich, 1965), p. 1920. For an analysis of these sadistic aspects of Hitler’s “prophecy,” see Philippe Burrin, Ressentiment et Apocalypse. Essai sur l’antisemitisme nazi (Paris, 2004), pp. 78ff.

5. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944, ed. Radu Ioanid (Chicago, 2000), p. 511.

6. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945 (New York, 1998), p. 150.

7. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1996), part 2, vol. 6, pp. 445–46.

8. Ibid., vol. 5, p. 378.

9. Nuremberg doc. NO-205, in John Mendelsohn and Donald S. Detwiler, eds., The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (New York, 1982), vol. 9, p. 173.

10. See Longerich and Pohl, Die Ermordung, p. 371–72.

11. Helmut Heiber, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten., vol. 1, part 2 (München, 1983), abs. no. 26773.

12. Ibid., part 1, vol. 1, abs. no. 16019.

13. Ibid., part 1, vol. 2, abs. no. 26778. The pamphlet Der Untermensch (Berlin, 1942) was published by the SS Hauptamt.

14. Rudolf Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen., ed. Martin Broszat (Stuttgart, 1958), p. 207; Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), p. 492 n. 70.

15. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 188. The order was brought to Höss by Paul Blobel, the former head of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, who in the meantime had been put in charge of Aktion 1005, the elimination of all traces of the murder operations, mainly by opening the mass graves and burning the bodies. See Shmuel Spector, “Aktion 1005—Effacing the Murder of Millions,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5, no. 2 (1990), p. 159.

16. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 210.

17. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), pp. 92–93.

18. Quoted in Peter Longerich and Dieter Pohl, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945 (Munich, 1989), p. 258.

19. Guus Meershoek, “The Amsterdam Police and the Persecution of the Jews,” in Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 2004), vol. 3, p. 547.

20. Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–1945 (Oxford, 1988), p. 175.

21. Mussert’s party was more strongly represented in the police than in any other Dutch agency. Ibid., pp. 175ff.

22. Ibid., p. 178.

23. Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “Der Befehlshaber der Sipo und des SD in den besetzten niederländischen Gebieten und die Deportation der Juden 1942–1943,” in Die Bürokratie der Okkupation: Strukturen der Herrschaft und Verwaltung im besetzten Europa, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Johannes Houwink ten Cate, and Gerhard Otto, Nationalsozialistische Besatzungspolitik in Europa 1939–1945 (Berlin, 1998), vol. 4, p. 202.

24. Ibid., pp. 206ff.

25. Louis de Jong, The Netherlands and Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 12.

26. Ibid., p. 13.

27. Quoted in J. Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (Detroit, 1988), p. 167.

28. Moore, Victims and Survivors, p. 96.

29. Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943 (New York, 1983), p. 147.

30. Ibid., pp. 152–53.

31. Ibid., p. 166.

32. Ibid., p. 167.

33. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, ed. Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler (New York, 1995), pp. 18ff. and 21.

34. Presser, Ashes in the Wind, pp. 152–53.

35. Ibid., pp. 154–55. Presser’s sharp criticism of the council has itself been forcefully attacked. In regard to the August event for example, Presser does not mention that De Wolff, a student of his, saved Presser’s wife from deportation on this occasion. About this and other aspects of Presser’s account see Henriette Boas, “The Persecution and Destruction of Dutch Jewry, 1940–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 6 (1967). The highly emotional feuding about the behavior of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam and even more specifically about its two leaders Cohen and Assher (particularly Cohen) has been going on since the end of the war. See, for example, the attack on Cohen’s main detractors De Jong, Isaak Kisch, and Presser and the favorable interpretation of his stewardship in Piet H. Schrijvers, “Truth Is the Daughter of Time: Prof. David Cohen as Seen by Himself and by Others.” In Chaja Brasz and Yosef Kaplan, eds. Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and by Others (Leiden, 2001, pp. 355ff).

36. Ibid., pp. 40–41.

37. Ibid., p. 41.

38. Benjamin Leo Wessels, Ben’s Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press, ed. Kees W. Bolle (Carbondale, IL, 2001), p. 43. The stealing and mistreatment by the Wehrmacht unit stationed in Oostvoorne is confirmed in other letters.

39. Most of the details mentioned here are quoted from Louis de Jong, “The Netherlands and Auschwitz,” Yad Vashem Studies 7 (1968), pp. 39ff.

40. Ibid., pp. 47–48.

41. Ibid., p. 50.

42. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), p. 128.

43. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945 (Göttingen, 1975), vol. 4, p. 328.

44. If Cohen knew of these clandestine activities and approved them, his role appears in a different light; the testimonies on this issue are contradictory.

45. See Debórah Dwork, Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (New Haven, 1991), pp. 45ff.

46. The number one thousand is mentioned in Werner Warmbrunn, “Netherlands,” in Laqueur and Baumel, eds., Holocaust Encyclopedia, p. 440.

47. See in particular Bob Moore, “The Dutch Churches, Christians and the Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands,” in Dutch Jews, ed. Chaya Brasz and Yosef Kaplan (Leiden, 2001), pp. 277ff; see also Bert Jan Flim, “Opportunities for the Jews to Hide from the Nazis, 1942–45,” in ibid., pp. 289ff. Louis de Jong has estimated the number of Dutch families that hid Jews at one stage or another at approximately 25,000 (De Jong, The Netherlands and Nazi Germany, p. 21).

48. Quoted in Presser, The Destruction, p. 182.

49. Ibid., p. 183 (emphasis in original).

50. Ibid., p. 184 (emphasis in original).

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., p. 183.

53. On the function of Vught, see in particular J. W. Griffioen and R. Zeller, “A Comparative Analysis of the Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium During the Second World War” (Amsterdam, 1998), p. 11.

54. For these statistics see Gerhard Hirschfeld, “Niederlande,” in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991), p. 151.

55. Biélinky, Journal, pp. 232–33.

56. Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Everyday Life in the French Heartland under the German Occupation (New York, 2003), pp. 259–60.

57. André Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation (Paris, 1991), p. 222.

58. Renée Poznanski, Être juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1994), p. 385.

59. On July 15, Biélinky noted in his diary: “It appears that Jews and Jewesses aged eighteen to forty-five are going to be arrested and sent to forced labor in Germany.” Jacques Biélinky, Journal, 1940–1942: Un journaliste juif à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Renée Poznanski (Paris, 1992), p. 233.

60. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation, p. 224.

61. Quoted in ibid., p. 226–27.

62. Poznanski, Être juif, p. 385.

63. Ibid., 386.

64. Ibid., p. 386.

65. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris, 1990), p. 258.

66. Ibid., p. 260.

67. Ibid., pp. 260–61.

68. Biélinky, Journal, p. 236.

69. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, p. 255.

70. Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1983–85), vol. 1, p. 328.

71. Ibid., p. 330.

72. Georges Wellers, De Drancy à Auschwitz (Paris, 1946), pp. 55ff.

73. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 355.

74. Richard I. Cohen, The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust (Bloomington, 1987), p. 79.

75. Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985), p. 180.

76. Ibid., p. 178.

77. Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1998), pp. 253–56. For the text of a draft of July 28, see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 295.

78. Cohen, Richard I. The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 80ff and 122ff.

79. Schwarzfuchs, Aux Prises avec Vichy; see also Richard I. Cohen, “Le Consistoire et L’UGIF—La Situation Trouble des Juifs Français Face à Vichy,” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah: Le monde juif 169 (2000), pp. 33ff.

80. Serge Klarsfeld, Les transferts de juifs du camp de Rivesaltes et de la région de Montpellier vers le camp de Drancy en vue de leur déportation 10 août 1942–6 août 1944 (Paris, 1993), p. 31–32.

81. For some of the préfets’ reports about reactions in their districts, see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, pp. 305ff.

82. Renée Poznanski, “Jews and non-Jews in France During World War II: A Daily Life Perspective,” in Lessons and Legacies V: The Holocaust and Justice, ed. Ronald M. Smelser (Evanston, IL, 2002), p. 306.

83. Ibid.

84. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation, pp. 306–7. The main Catholic periodical of the Free French in London, Volontaires pour la cité chrétienne, hardly mentioned the persecution and extermination of the Jews at all. See Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–1945: Entre Vichy et la Résistance (Paris, 1998), p. 176.

85. The notes are published in Michèle Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, 1940–1945: La rèpentance en question (Paris, 1998), p. 224.

86. For part of the interpretation, see ibid. In part the reading of the notes is my own.

87. For the French original see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 280. See also Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, 1940–1945, p. 225. Cardinal Suhard was known for his support of Vichy’s policies even against the Jews. Thus he took disciplinary measures against two priests of his diocese who had counterfeited baptismal certificates to help Jews. See Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–1945: Entre Vichy et la Résistance, p. 78.

88. Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, p. 266. For Valerio Valeri’s letter to Maglione, where the expression is used, see Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 1, p. 297

89. Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy, pp. 209–10.

90. About Chaillet’s assistance to Jews, see mainly Renée Bédarida, Pierre Chaillet: Témoin de la résistance spirituelle (Paris, 1988).

91. Translated in Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation (New York, 1966), p. 115.

92. Cointet, L’Église Sous Vichy, pp. 234ff. A few days after the reading of the letter, the deputy attorney general of Toulouse questioned Saliège. The prelate declared that the parties had “indecently misused his letter.” See the text of the interrogation in Eric Malo, “Le camp de Récébédou (Haute-Garonne),” Le Monde Juif 153 (1995), pp. 97–98.

93. For the assistance offered by Christian rescuers in France see, among numerous studies, Asher Cohen, Persécutions et sauvetages: Juifs et Français sous l’Occupation et sous Vichy (Paris, 1993).

94. Ibid., p. 430.

95. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945. Series E, 1941–1945 (Göttingen, 1974), vol. 3, p. 125.

96. On the Catholic response in Belgium see Mark Van Den Wijngaert, “The Belgian Catholics and the Jews During the German Occupation, 1940–1944,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 225ff.; see also Luc Dequeker, “Baptism and Conversion of Jews in Belgium,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 235ff.

97. Griffioen and Zeller, “A Comparative Analysis of the Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium during the Second World War,” p. 21.

98. On this specific aspect see Rudi von Doorslaer, “Jewish Immigration and Communism in Belgium, 1925–1939,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews, Belgians, Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 66n and 67ff.

99. Peter Longerich, ed., Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes. Regesten., vol. 2, part 4 (Munich, 1992), abs. no. 43548.

100. Ibid.

101. Ibid., abs. no. 43518.

102. Nuremberg doc. L-61, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 8 vols. (Washington, DC, 1946), vol. 7, pp. 816–17 (emphasis in original).

103. Wolf Gruner, “Die Fabrik-Aktion und die Ereignisse in der Berliner Rosenstrasse: Fakten und Fiktionen um den 27. Februar 1943,” Jahrbuch fur Antisemitismusforschung 11 (2002), p. 146. See now Wolf Gruner, Widerstand in der Rosenstrasse. Die Fabrik-Aktion und die Verfolgung der Mischehen 1943 (Frankfurt am Main, 2005).

104. Ibid., pp. 148–49.

105. Ibid., pp. 152–54.

106. Ibid., pp. 160–64.

107. Ibid., pp. 167ff.

108. H. G. Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch: Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974).

109. Rivka Elkin, “The Survival of the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, 1938–1945,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 38 (1993), pp. 167ff.

110. Ibid., p. 177.

111. Ibid.

112. Nuremberg doc. PS-1472, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 4, p. 49.

113. Hertha Feiner, Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters, January 1939–December 1942, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, II 1999), pp. 27–28.

114. Jochen Klepper, Unter dem Schatten Deiner Flügel? Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, ed. Hildegard Klepper (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 1127.

115. Ibid., p. 1130.

116. Ibid., p. 1133.

117. Ibid.

118. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg, 1997), p. 58.

119. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, ed. Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), pp. 508ff., translation in Wolfgang Scheffler, “The Forgotten Part of the “Final Solution”: The Liquidation of the Ghettos,” in Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual (Chappaqua, NY, 1985), p. 817.

120. Adam Czerniaków, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniaków: Prelude to Doom, ed. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Joseph Kermish (New York, 1979), pp. 382–83.

121. Ibid., p. 384.

122. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki (London, 2001), p. 164.

123. Ibid., pp. 165–66. Höfle’s orders and threats are quoted in Scheffler, “The Forgotten Part,” p. 820.

124. Czerniaków, Warsaw Diary, p. 385.

125. Hilberg and Staron, “Introduction” to ibid., pp. 63–64. See also Jerzy Lewinski, “The Death of Adam Czerniaków and Janusz Korczak’s Last Journey,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 7 (1992), pp. 224ff.

126. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham Isaac Katsh (New York, 1965), pp. 324–25.

127. Ibid., pp. 208–9.

128. Chaim Aron Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, ed. Abraham I. Katsh (Bloomington, 1999), p. 391.

129. Yitzhak Perlis, “Final Chapter: Korczak in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in Janusz Korczak, The Ghetto Diary (New York, 1978), pp. 40ff.

130. Korczak, Ibid., p. 143.

131. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 147.

132. Janusz Korczak, Tagebuch aus dem Warschauer Ghetto 1942 (Göttingen, 1992), p. 119.

133. Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, ed. Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1988), p. 148. There have been many descriptions of this march, and quite a few “literary” embellishments were added to the bare facts, which certainly do not need any added pathos. For a detailed critique of some of these descriptions see Lewinksi, “The Death of Adam Czerniaków,” pp. 224ff.

134. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony, p. 340.

135. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 213.

136. Wilm Hosenfeld, “Extracts from the Diary of Captain Wilm Hosenfeld,” in The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45, ed. Wladyslaw Szpilman (New York, 1999), p. 198. For a detailed account of Hosenfeld’s attitude and activities, see Wilm Hosenfeld, “Ich versuche jeden zu retten”: Das Leben eines deutschen Offiziers in Briefen und Tagebüchern (Munich, 2004).

137. Quoted in Ruta Sakowska, “Two Forms of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto: Two Functions of the Ringelblum Archives,” Yad Vashem Studies 21 (1991), p. 215.

138. Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 40–42.

139. Ibid., p. 87.

140. Ibid.

141. Arad, Belzec, pp. 87–88.

142. Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (London, 1974), p. 161.

143. Ibid., p. 157. Sereny shows that, apart from some errors in dates and some “tactical” changes in the sequence of events, Stangl’s descriptions were amply confirmed during his trial and that of ten Treblinka guards in Düsseldorf in 1964. Among the documents produced at the 1964 trial, the diary of Hubert Pfoch, who traveled on the same railway line in August 1942, confirmed the killings and the corpses lying along the tracks. Ibid., pp. 158–59.

144. Josef Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days: Writings from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. Michal Unger (Jerusalem, 2002), pp. 258–59.

145. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), pp. 250ff.

146. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lódz Ghetto, ed. Alan Adelson (New York, 1996), p. 214.

147. Ibid., pp. 219–20.

148. Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days, pp. 280–83.

149. Ibid., p. 280.

150. Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle, pp. 250–54.

151. Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days, pp. 259–60.

152. Thomas Sandkühler, Endlösung in Galizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941–1944 (Bonn, 1996), p. 221.

153. Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York, 1980), p. 279.

154. Ibid., p. 280.

155. Ibid., p. 279.

156. Ibid., p. 317.

157. Jerzy Ficowski, Regions of the Great Heresy: Bruno Schulz: A Biographical Portrait (New York, 2003), p. 134.

158. Ibid., p. 136.

159. Ibid., p. 138.

160. Friedman, Roads to Extinction, pp. 365–66.

161. Ibid.

162. Isaac Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, ed. Percy Matenko (Tel Aviv, 1973), pp. 70–71.

163. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), p. 389.

164. 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, 1981), p. 445.

165. Ibid., p. 446.

166. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, pp. 421–22.

167. Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, p. 53.

168. Ibid., p. 71.

169. Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, p. 66.

170. Etty Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork (New York, 1986), pp. 26–27.

171. Egon Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman (Lexington, KY, 1992), p. 50.

172. Biélinky, Journal, p. 245.

173. Ibid., p. 271.

174. Renée Poznanski, introduction to ibid., p. 11.

175. Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin, pp. 201–2.

176. Ibid.

177. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945, p. 156.

178. Ibid., p. 157.

179. Quoted in Robert Moses Shapiro, “Diaries and Memoirs from the Lodz Ghetto in Yiddish and Hebrew,” in Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro (Hoboken, NJ, 1999), p. 97 (the same lack of punctuation appears in the original Yiddish. Shapiro also quotes at some length from the diary of a survivor, Shlomo Frank, who died in Israel in 1966. Frank’s recordings indicate precise knowledge about the fate of the Lodz deportees to Chelmno. However, it seems that the author thoroughly “improved” various editions of his notes, excising and adding parts, changing entry dates, etc.) See Ibid., pp. 101ff. Such editing makes Frank’s diary historically unreliable.

180. Lewin, A Cup of Tears, p. 153.

181. Ibid., pp. 170–71.

182. Moses Flinker, Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe, ed. Shaul Esh and Geoffrey Wigoder (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 25–26.

183. Ibid., p. 32.

184. Ibid., p. 37.

185. Ibid., pp. 42–43.

186. Ibid., pp. 58–59.

187. Ibid., pp. 69–70.

188. Ibid., p. 71.

189. Biélinky, Journal, pp. 254–55.

190. Sebastian, Journal, p. 509.

191. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945, pp. 147–48.

192. Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, p. 72.

193. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, p. 212.

194. Peretz Opoczynski, “Warsaw Ghetto Chronicle—September 1942,” in To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!…: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbat,”) ed. Joseph Kermish (Jerusalem, 1986), p. 109.

195. Lewin, A Cup of Tears, p. 184.

196. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, UK, 1990), pp. 133–36.

197. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, pp. 360–61.

198. Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, pp. 56–57.

199. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, p 258.

200. Oskar Rosenfeld, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lódz, ed. Hanno Loewy (Evanston, IL, 2002), p. 134.

201. Haim Avni, “Spain” in Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds., The Holocaust Encyclopedia (New Haven, 2001), p. 602.

202. Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland—Second World War, Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War (Zurich, 2002), p. 134.

203. Ibid., p. 113.

204. Ibid., p. 114.

205. Ibid.

206. Ibid.

207. Paul A. Levine, “Attitudes and Action: Comparing the Responses of Mid-Level Bureaucrats to the Holocaust,” in Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation, ed. David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine (London, 2002), pp. 223ff.

208. For a detailed analysis of Swedish policy see Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism: Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust, 1938–1944 (Oppsala, 1998).

209. The only book in English on this issue is Hannu Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland’s Jews (New York, 1987). Rautkallio’s interpretations have been strongly questioned in William B. Cohen and Jorgen Svensson, “Finland and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9 (1995), pp. 70ff. The numbers mentioned are taken from Cohen and Svensson, “Finland,” p. 71.

210. Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland’s Jews, p. 166.

211. Cohen and Svensson, “Finland and the Holocaust,” p. 76.

212. Ibid., p. 77.

213. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Ser. E, vol. 3 (Göttingen, 1974), p. 526.

214. Radu Ioanid, “The Fate of Romanian Jews in Nazi Occupied Europe,” in The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era, ed. Randolph L. Braham (Boulder, CO, 1997), p. 160ff.

215. Quoted in Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), pp. 522ff.

216. For the details see Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, 2000), pp. 241ff.

217. Ibid., pp. 246–47.

218. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP: Ser. E, vol. 5 (Göttingen 1978), p. 134.

219. Helmut Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler (Munich, 1970), p. 184.

220. Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, 1994), p. 149.

221. For these details see essentially Lorand Tilkovszky, “The Late Interwar Years and World War II,” in A History of Hungary, ed. Peter F. Sugar et al. (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 348–49.

222. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Ser. E, vol. 4 (Göttingen, 1975), pp. 24ff.

223. Ibid., p. 150.

224. Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943 (London, 1990), pp. 85–86.

225. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 2, pp. 13ff.

226. Ibid., pp. 16–17.

227. Ibid., p. 18.

228. Commissione per la pubblicazione dei documenti diplomatici, I documenti diplomatici italiani. Nona serie: 1939–1943, 10 vols. (Rome, 1954–90), quoted and translated in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy(New Haven, 2000), pp. 108–9.

229. Per Ole Johansen, “Norway,” in Laqueur and Baumel, The Holocaust Encyclopedia, p. 450.

230. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, pp. 253ff.

231. Quoted in Polonsky, “Condemnation, Apologetics,” in David Cesarani, Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 5 (New York, 2004), pp. 59–60.

232. For the declaration of September 17, see Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, pp. 253 and 257–58.

233. For the early Karski report see chapter 1, pp. 46–47.

234. See mainly David Engel, “The Western Allies and the Holocaust: Jan Karski’s Mission to the West, 1942–1944,” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5 (1990), pp. 363ff.

235. Ibid., p. 366.

236. Daniel Blatman, Notre liberté et la vôtre: Le mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939–1949 (Paris, 2002), p. 195.

237. For a detailed analysis see David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1939–1942 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), pp. 180ff.

238. On this issue the Western Allies stood on the side of the Soviet Union, almost from the outset. The Soviet demands were explicitly accepted at the Tehran conference in November 1943 and reconfirmed at Yalta in February 1945. For a spirited defense of the Polish positions see, among numerous other studies, Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (London, 2003).

239. For this specific threat see Tuvia Friling, Arrows in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv Leadership, and Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust (Madison, WI, 2005), vol. 1, p. 88.

240. On Kot’s negotiations in Palestine see Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust (New York, 1996), pp. 35ff.; see also David Engel, “Soviet Jewry in the Thinking of the Yishuv Leadership 1939–1943,” in The Holocaust in the Soviet Union ed. Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock, (Armonk, NY, 1993), pp. 111ff.

241. Friling, Arrows in the Dark; vol. 1, p. 64.

242. Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Stars, p. 259.

243. About Gerstein and his mission see Saul Friedländer, Kurt Gerstein, The Ambiguity of Good (New York, 1969) particularly pp. 100ff.

244. Ibid., pp. 109–10.

245. Ibid., pp. 117–19.

246. Ibid., pp. 122–26.

247. Ibid., pp. 128–29.

248. Ibid., p. vii.

249. For Vendel’s report see Jozef Lewandowski, “Early Swedish Information about the Nazis’ Mass Murder of the Jews,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry (2000), vol. 13, pp. 113ff.

250. The translation of Vendel’s report is based on Lewandowski’s translation as well as on that of Steven Kublik. Kublik is the first historian to have published Vendel’s report. See Steven Kublik, The Stones Cry Out (New York, 1987).

251. Lewandowski, “Early Swedish Information about the Nazis’ Mass Murder of the Jews,” p. 123.

252. For the Schulte mission and the Riegner telegram see mainly Gerhart M. Riegner, Ne Jamais Désesperer: Soixante années au service du peuple juif et des droits de l’homme (Paris, 1998), pp. 55ff; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York, 1998), pp. 42ff.; Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies: How the Allies Responded to the News of Hitler’s Final Solution (London, 1981), pp. 57ff. See also Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman, Breaking the Silence (New York, 1986).

253. Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge, U.K., 1999), pp. 39–41.

254. David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York, 1998), p. 51.

255. Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (London, 1979), p. 172.

256. Either during the visit or in preparation for it, Roosevelt was handed a memorandum prepared by the World Jewish Congress that described the extermination in precise details and mentioned in particular Ozwiecim as one of the main killing centers. For early knowledge in London and Washington about the function of Auschwitz as a major extermination camp, see Barbara Rogers, “British Intelligence and the Holocaust,” Journal of Holocaust Education 8, no. 1 (1999), pp. 89ff. and particularly 100.

257. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, p. 72.

258. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945, p. 173.

259. Willi A. Boelcke, ed., Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? Die geheimen Goebbels Konferenzen 1939–1943 (Herrsching, 1989), p. 313.

260. For Wise’s information, see Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1970), p. 170. See, moreover, Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), p. 619, n. 43.

261. Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler, p. 169.

262. Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 104ff. Strangely enough Bernardini’s report has not been included in the volumes of documents published by the Vatican.

263. Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider, eds., Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Vatican City, 1974), vol. 8, p. 453.

264. Ibid., p. 534 (quoted and translated in Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 102).

265. For most of the details, see Shimon Redlich, “Metropolitan Andrei Sheptys’kyi, Ukrainians and Jews During and After the Holocaust,” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5, no. 1 (1990), pp. 39ff.

266. Blet, Martini, and Schneider, Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Vatican City, 1967), vol. 3, part 2, pp. 625 and 628. Excerpted and translated in Redlich, “Metropolitan Andrei Sheptys’kyi, Ukrainians and Jews During and After the Holocaust,” pp. 45–46.

267. Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 121–22.

268. Cable from Tittman to Hull, 10/10/1942 in ibid., pp. 123–24.

269. John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York, 1999), pp. 290–91.

270. Ibid. About Maglione’s answer, see also Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 125.

271. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 131.

272. On these reactions, see Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p. 293.

273. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 6, p. 508.

274. For this anonymous report see Kulka/Jäckel, Die Juden, p. 511.

275. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York, 1981), p. 105.

276. For this text, see Saul Friedländer, “History, Memory and the Historian: Dilemmas and Responsibilities,” New German Critique 80 (Spring-Summer 2000), pp. 3–4.

Chapter Eight: March 1943–October 1943

1. Louise Jacobson and Nadia Kaluski-Jacobson, Les Lettres de Louise Jacobson et de ses proches: Fresnes, Drancy, 1942–1943 (Paris, 1997), p. 141.

2. Ibid., pp. 41–42.

3. For a vivid description of the Battle of Kursk, see Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (London, 2000), pp. 510–11.

4. For a good summary of these developments see Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), pp. 566ff. For a lively but obviously self-serving description of the intrigues that swirled at the highest reaches of the regime, particularly around the “Committee of Three” and other attempts at reorganization, see Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (New York, 1970), pp. 252ff.

5. For the translation of the speech excerpts and the reference to Körner’s verse, see Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, vol. 4: The German Home Front in World War II (Exeter, UK, 1998), pp. 490ff.

6. Moses Flinker, Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe, ed. Shaul Esh and Geoffrey Wigoder (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 78–79.

7. Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago, 2000), p. 546.

8. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945 (New York, 1999), p. 202.

9. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1996), part 2, vol. 7, p. 287.

10. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols. (Leonberg, 1987–88), part 2, vol. 4, p. 2001.

11. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 8, p. 119.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 235.

14. Ibid., p. 261.

15. Ibid., pp. 287ff.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., pp. 287–88.

18. Ibid., pp. 288ff and 90.

19. Quoted and translated in Noakes and Pridham, eds., Nazism, vol. 4, p. 497.

20. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945, pp. 230–31.

21. Ibid., p. 234.

22. Ibid., pp. 235–36.

23. Kulka and Jäckel, Die Juden, p. 517.

24. Ibid.

25. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945, p. 304.

26. For ideological fanaticism in the RSHA, see mainly Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg, 2002), and Yaacov Lozowick, Hitlers Bürokraten: Eichmann, seine willigen Vollstrecker und die Banalität des Bösen(Zurich, 2000); for the WVHA main figures see in particular Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002).

27. All the details about these documents (which were declassified by the British Public Record Office in 2001) are taken from Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, “A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhardt 1942,’” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15, no. 3 (2001), pp. 468ff.

28. Ibid., p. 470.

29. Heinrich Himmler, Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), p. 513 n. 32.

30. Witte and Tyas, “A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhardt 1942,’” p. 476.

31. Helmut Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler (Munich, 1970), p. 183. Quoted and translated in Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley, 1984), p. 136.

32. Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, p. 136.

33. Ibid., p. 137. See also Raul Hilberg, “Le bilan démographique du génocide,” in L’Allemagne nazie et le génocide juif: Colloque de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), ed. École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris, 1985), pp. 265ff.

34. For the report and the estimate see the introduction to Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991), p. 3.

35. For this argument see Hilberg, “Le bilan démographique du génocide,” p. 265.

36. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New Haven, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 407–8.

37. Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, p. 138.

38. Nuremberg doc. 015-PS, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1946), vol. 3, pp. 41–45.

39. Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, p. 139.

40. Ibid., p. 137.

41. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 256–57.

42. Eugene Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry (Zurich, 1948), p. 33.

43. Translated and excerpted in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 2, pp. 877–78.

44. The most detailed survey of the events in Bulgaria remains Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944 (Pittsburgh, 1972).

45. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans George Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Ser. E, 1941–1945 (Göttingen, 1978), vol. 5, p. 521.

46. Ibid., p. 538.

47. Livia Rothkirchen, “The Situation of the Jews in Slovakia between 1939 and 1945,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 7 (1998).

48. For Ludin’s report see Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, Aktien zur deutschen auswärtige Politik, 1918–1945, Ser. E, 1941–1945, vol. 5 (Göttingen, 1978) pp. 581ff.

49. Hillgruber, Staatsmänner, vol. 2, p. 268. Hitler’s unbridled obsession with all aspects of the Jewish question took on yet another weird aspect when he corrected Tiso about Lord Rothermere; according to the Nazi leader, Rothermere was not a Jew but had a Jewish mistress, Princess Hohenlohe, born Richter from Vienna. Ibid., p. 268.

50. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, 15 vols., vol. 13 U.S. v. von Weizsaecker: The Ministries Case. (Washington, DC, 1952), Nuremberg doc. Steengracht 64, pp. 300–301.

51. On the extermination of Croatian Jewry see mainly Menachem Shelach, ed., Yugoslavia (Jerusalem: 1990), pp. 137ff [Hebrew].

52. For the exact date of Wisliceny’s and Brunner’s arrival in Salonika, see Daniel Carpi, “Salonika during the Holocaust: A New Approach,” in The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond: The Jews in Turkey and the Balkans 1808–1945, ed. Minna Rozen (Ramat-Aviv, 2002), p. 263n9.

53. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York, 2004), pp. 402 and 411.

54. For the role played by Simonides and Altenburg, see in particular Andrew Apostolou, “The Exception of Salonika: Bystanders and Collaborators in Northern Greece,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, no. 2 (Fall 2000), pp. 179ff.

55. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, pp. 392ff. and 411.

56. Ibid., p. 405.

57. Ibid., pp. 392ff.

58. For a more nuanced view of Koretz’s role, see Minna Rozen, “Jews and Greeks Remember Their Past: The Political Career of Tsevi Koretz (1933–43),” Jewish Social Studies 12, no. 1 (2005), pp. 111ff.

59. Ibid., p. 401.

60. Apostolou, “The Exception of Salonika,” pp. 181ff.

61. Ibid., p. 183.

62. Carpi, “Salonika During the Holocaust: A New Approach,” p. 271.

63. Ibid., p. 272.

64. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, Aktien zur deutschen auswärtige Politik, 1918–1945, Ser. E, 1941–1945, vol. 5 (Göttingen, 1978), pp. 731ff.

65. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, p. 407.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid., pp. 397–99.

68. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, 22 vols. (New York, 1993), vol. 20, doc. 7, pp. 17–18. The “Da” appellation (Da 152) was generally used for deportation trains; it was most probably an abbreviation for “Durchgangaussiedler-[Zug]” (“evacuees’ transit train”). See Götz Aly, Im Tunnel: Das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931–1943 (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), p. 137.

69. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 2003), vol. 2, pp. 424ff and particularly p. 429.

70. Quoted in Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (East Berlin, 1961), p. 321.

71. Adalbert Rückerl, ed., NS-Prozesse. Nach 25 Jahren Strafverfolgung: Möglichkeiten, Grenzen, Ergebnisse (Karlsruhe, 1971), p. 114 (quoted in Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington, IN, 1987), p. 51).

72. Alfred C. Mierzejewski, “A Public Enterprise in the Service of Mass Murder: The Deutsche Reichsbahn and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15, no. 1 (Spring 2001), p. 36.

73. Ibid.

74. Nuremberg doc. PS-3688 (quoted in Arad, Belzec, p. 52).

75. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, p. 346.

76. Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 20, doc. 8. Incidentally the matter received its formal closure on May 26. On that day the Regierungspräsident in Düsseldorf informed the Gestapo that all the assets of Elsa Sara Frankenberg, Julius Israel Meier, and Augusta Sara Meier from Krefeld, who had committed suicide before their deportation to Izbica, had been credited to the Reich. The relevant ordinance was published in the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger und Preussische Staatsanzeiger no. 112 of May 15, 1942. Ibid., vol. 20, doc 10.

77. Quoted and translated in Arad, Belzec, p. 145.

78. Oskar Rosenfeld, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lódz, ed. Hanno Loewy (Evanston, IL, 2002), pp. 11–12.

79. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York, 1958; reprint, 1996), p. 18.

80. Ibid.

81. Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, 2001), pp. 91–92.

82. Christopher R. Browning, Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony (Madison, WI, 2003), p. 75.

83. Ibid., p. 76.

84. Ibid., pp. 76–77.

85. Ibid., pp. 78ff.

86. Ibid., p. 81.

87. 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, 1981), pp. 287ff.

88. Ibid., p. 289–90.

89. For various aspects of these plans see Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor and the Concentration Camps, pp. 245ff.

90. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, pp. 354–55.

91. Ibid., p. 356.

92. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, ed. Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), pp. 681–82.

93. Each category of stolen goods demanded the issuing and implementing of precise rulings, mostly issued by the Finance Ministry for customs’ use. See, among others, Michael MacQueen, “The Conversion of Looted Assets to Run the German War Machine,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 2004), p. 31.

94. Ibid., p. 30.

95. Ibid., p. 31.

96. For the Degussa involvement see now Peter Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA, 2004).

97. MacQueen, “The Conversion of Looted Assets to Run the German War Machine,” pp. 34ff.

98. Nuremberg doc. NO-724, quoted in Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, pp. 109–11.

99. For these details see Bertrand Perz and Thomas Sandkühler, “Auschwitz und die ‘Aktion Reinhard’ 1942–1945: Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 5, no. 26 (1999), p. 291.

100. Note included in Nuremberg doc. NG-3058, The Ministries Case, pp. 201–4. Much of this booty must have found its way to the Judenmärkte (Jew markets) described in Frank Bajohr, “Arisierung” in Hamburg: Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1997), and particularly Bajohr, “The Beneficiaries of ‘Aryanization’: Hamburg as a Case Study,” Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998), pp. 198ff.

101. Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Chicago, 1999), p. 12.

102. For these specific details see Götz Aly, “Arisierung: Enteignung: Was geschah mit den Besitztümern der ermodeten Juden Europas? Zur Ökonomie der Nazis,” Die Zeit 47 (2002), p. 47.

103. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, pp. 421–22.

104. Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (East Berlin, 1961), pp. 412–13.

105. Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1981), p. 399.

106. Perz and Sandkühler, “Auschwitz und die ‘Aktion Reinhard’ 1942–1945: Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht,” p. 292.

107. See Raul Hilberg, “Auschwitz,” in Laqueur and Baumel, The Holocaust Encyclopedia (New Haven, 2001), p. 37.

108. According to Wolfgang Sofsky’s computation, the gassing capacity of Bunker I was 800 persons, of Bunker II: 1,200 persons, of crematoriums II, III, IV, and V, 3,000 persons each. See Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp(Princeton, 1997), p. 263.

109. Allen, The Business of Genocide, p. 141.

110. Quoted in ibid. On Kammler see, moreover, Rainer Fröbe, “Hans Kammler, Technokrat der Vernichtung,” in Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf: 30 Lebensläufe, ed. Ronald M. Smelser and Enrico Syring (Paderborn, 2000), pp. 305ff. and particularly pp. 310ff.

111. Quoted in Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, eds., Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (New Haven, 1993), pp. 157–58.

112. All the technical details about the functioning of the gas chamber in Crematorium II are taken from Jamie McCarthy, Daniel Keren, and Harry W. Mazal, “The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2004), pp. 68ff.

113. Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History (London, 2005), p. 99.

114. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 3, p. 946.

115. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, pp. 19–20. Exactly 536 members of Levi’s transport were immediately gassed. See Myriam Anissimov, Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist (Woodstock, NY, 2000), p. 105.

116. Kluger, Still Alive, p. 94.

117. Quoted in Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), pp. 65–66.

118. Kogon, Langbein, and Rückerl, Nazi Mass Murder, p. 133.

119. Robert Jay Lifton and Amy Hackett, “Nazi Doctors,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington, 1994), p. 313. For an overview of the medical experiments in Auschwitz and in other camps, see, among a vast literature, Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York, 1986).

120. See for example Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt, 1964 [1946]), pp. 50–51, as well as almost all general studies about Auschwitz. Thus, see also Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp(Bloomington, 1994), pp. 20, 312, 398, and others.

121. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 3, p. 984.

122. Ibid.

123. The process has often been described, also in the diaries of the Sonderkommando members. Here, the indications are mainly taken from Gideon Greif, Wir weinten tränenlos…. Augenzeugenberichte der jüdischen “Sonderkommandos” in Auschwitz(Cologne, 1995), pp. xxxivff.

124. This notorious diary is quoted here from Henry Friedlander, “Physicians as Killers in Nazi Germany: Hadamar, Treblinka, and Auschwitz,” in Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany, ed. Francis R. Nicosia and Jonathan Huener (New York, 2002), pp. 69–70.

125. Lifton and Hackett, “Nazi Doctors,” p. 310.

126. Kogon, Langbein, and Rückerl, Nazi Mass Murder, p. 154.

127. Quoted in Danuta Czech, “The Auschwitz Prisoner Administration,” in Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington, 1994), p. 374. For the periodic liquidiation of members of the Sonderkommando see Greif, Wir weinten tränenlos, p. xxv.

128. The camp experience does not seem to have changed the violence of Polish anti-Semitism. Among a long list of examples, Langbein quotes a Polish woman inmate who declared that notwithstanding the horrible means utilized, the Jewish problem in Poland was being solved: “This may sound paradoxical,” she concluded, “but we owe this to Hitler.” See Langbein, People in Auschwitz, p. 75.

129. Yisrael Gutman, “Social Stratification in the Concentration Camps,” in The Nazi Concentration Camps: Structure and Aims, the Image of the Prisoner, the Jews in the Camps, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (Jerusalem, 1984), p. 172.

130. Quoted in Langbein, People in Auschwitz, pp. 78–79.

131. See Danuta Czech, “The Auschwitz Prisoner Administration” in Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 363ff.

132. Peter Hayes, “Auschwitz, Capital of the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17, no. 2 (2003), p. 330.

133. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg, 1997), p. 63.

134. For the total number of SS personnel see Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History, p. 40.

135. See for example Norbert Frei et al., ed., Standort-und Kommandanturbefehle des Konzentrationslagers Auschwitz 1940–1945 (Munich, 2000), p. 472.

136. See in particular Gabriele Knapp, Das Frauenorchester in Auschwitz: Musikalische Zwangsarbeit und ihre Bewältigung (Hamburg, 1996).

137. Steinbacher, Auschwitz, a History, p. 42.

138. Sybille Steinbacher, “Musterstadt” Auschwitz: Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich, 2000), p. 247

139. Rudolf Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen, ed. Martin Broszat (Stuttgart, 1958), p. 190.

140. Elizabeth Harvey, Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization (New Haven, 2003), p. 216.

141. Ibid., p. 216–17.

142. Peter Longerich, “Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!”: Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945 (München, 2006), p. 236–37.

143. Ibid., p. 237.

144. Quoted in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, vol. 3, p. 614.

145. Hans Mommsen, “Der Widerstand gegen Hitler und die nationalsozialistische Jundenverfolgung,” in Alternative zu Hitler: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Widerstandes, (Munich, 2000), pp. 396ff.

146. Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya: 1939–1945, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (New York, 1990), p. 252.

147. For the details and the quotations, see Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews, ed. Victoria Barnett (Lincoln, NE, 2000), pp. 210 and 212ff.

148. Ibid., p. 213.

149. Ibid.

150. For the text of the leaflet see Inge Scholl, The White Rose: Munich, 1942–1943 (Middletown, CT, 1983), p. 78.

151. SD-Aussenstelle Detmold, 31.7.42, Staatsarchiv Detmold, Preußische Regierung Minden. I thank Dr. Sybille Steinbacher for examination of this document.

152. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 503.

153. Ibid., p. 527n2.

154. Ibid., p. 528.

155. Ibid., p. 529.

156. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 70–71.

157. Ibid., p. 71.

158. For the quotation see ibid., pp. 73–74.

159. Ibid., p. 75.

160. Ibid., p. 76.

161. For Pius XII’s answer to Preysing enunciating the freedom left to the bishops, see Saul Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 135ff.

162. Ibid.

163. For the full text of Wurm’s letter, Richard Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879–1950 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 353ff.

164. Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent, p. 204.

165. See Martin Doerry, My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944 (London, 2004), pp. 113ff.

166. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945, p. 278.

167. Ibid., p. 277.

168. Ibid., p. 295.

169. Cordelia Edvardson, Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer (Munich, 1989), pp. 58ff and 68.

170. Beate Meyer, “Gratwanderung zwischen Verantwortung und Verstrickung: Die Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland und die Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin 1938–1945,” in Juden in Berlin, 1938–1945, ed. Beate Meyer and Hermann Simon (Berlin, 2000), pp. 323 and 325ff.

171. Edvardson, Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer, pp. 69ff.

172. Ibid., pp. 73–74.

173. Ibid., pp. 74–75.

174. Yisrael Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Boston, 1994), pp. 152ff.

175. Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington, 1982), p. 272.

176. Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, ed. Antony Polonsky (Oxford, 1988), p. 186.

177. Ibid., p. 188.

178. Ibid., p. 203.

179. Ibid., p. 205.

180. Ibid., p. 225.

181. Ibid., p. 240.

182. Ibid., pp. 241–42.

183. These negotiations are described in detail in an abundant literature. For a useful and concise presentation see Shmuel Krakowski, The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942–1944 (New York, 1984), pp. 167–68.

184. Ibid., pp 168–69.

185. Antony Polonsky, introduction to Lewin, A Cup of Tears, p. 53.

186. Nuremberg doc. NO-2494, in 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, 1981), p. 292.

187. Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 319–36.

188. Apart from the already mentioned studies on the Jews of Warsaw and on Jewish resistance (Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw; Gutman, Resistance; Krakowski, The War of the Doomed) and the memoirs of Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, I have used a number of widely known books, in particular Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights (1945; reprint, London, 1990); Kazik [Simha Rotem], Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter (New Haven, 1994).

189. About the Jewish armed underground in Kraków and the “Cyganeria” action, see Yael Peled, Jewish Cracow, 1939–1943: Resistance, Underground, Struggle [Krakov ha-Yehudit, 1939–1943: Amidah, Mahteret, Ma’avak] (Tel Aviv, 1993) (In Hebrew), particularly pp. 216ff.

190. Emanuel Ringelblum, “Little Stalingrad defends itself,” in To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!…: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbath”) ed. Joseph Kermish (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 599–600.

191. This topography of the early fighting is based on Moshe Arens, “The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt: The Narrative,” p. 1.

192. See mainly Moshe Arens, “The Jewish Military Organization (ZZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19, no. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 201ff.

193. Ibid.

194. “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More!” Sybil Milton, ed., The Stroop Report (New York, 1979), May 24, 1943 entry.

195. U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality and International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, pp. 726–27.

196. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 8, p. 192. Regarding the “military reports,” the minister was referring to the communiqués issued by Adolf Berman and Yitzhak Zuckerman on April 19, 20, and 21 and the subsequent ones issued in the name of the Coordinating Committee with the participation of Feiner from the Bund. The reports were passed on to the Polish underground, which broadcast some of them on its secret radio station.

197. Ibid., p. 343.

198. Frank, Diensttagebuch, p. 682.

199. Moltke, Letters to Freya: 1939–1945, p. 330.

200. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Klaus Peter Reiss and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen (Berlin, 1988), p. 365.

201. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, eds., Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945: The First Complete Stenographic Record of the Military Situation Conferences, From Stalingrad to Berlin. (London, 2002), p. 472.

202. Nuremberg doc. NO-2496.

203. Note by Heiber in Heiber and Glantz, Hitler and His Generals, pp. 993–94.

204. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945, p. 234.

205. Oskar Rosenfeld, Wozu noch Welt: Aufzeichnungen aus dem Ghetto Lodz, ed. Hanno Loewy (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), p. 207.

206. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, UK, 1990), pp. 304–5.

207. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), p. 520.

208. Ibid., p. 524.

209. David G. Roskies, “Landkentenish: Yiddish Belles Lettres in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro (Hoboken, NJ, 1999), pp. 20–21.

210. Alf Lüdtke, “The Appeal of Exterminating “Others”: German Workers and the Limits of Resistance,” in Resistance Against the Third Reich, 1933–1990, ed. Michael Geyer and John W. Boyer (Chicago, 1994), p. 72.

211. For the events in Bialystok see Sara Bender, Facing Death: The Jews of Bialystok 1939–1943 (Tel Aviv, 1997) [Hebrew].

212. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, p. 449.

213. Bender, Facing Death: The Jews of Bialystok 1939–1943, pp. 233ff.

214. Ibid., pp. 260ff.

215. Ibid., pp. 274ff.

216. Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Düsseldorf, 1998), p. 240.

217. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, p. 566.

218. Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, p. 450.

219. Isaac Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, ed. Percy Matenko (Tel Aviv, 1973), pp. 138–39.

220. Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler, p. 214.

221. For these debates see Dina Porat, Beyond the Reaches of Our Souls: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner (Tel Aviv, 2000), pp. 135ff [Hebrew].

222. Ibid.

223. Ibid., pp. 140ff.

224. Ibid., pp. 134ff.

225. See Harshav, introduction to Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, pp. xlviiiff.

226. Zelig Kalmanovitch, Diary in the Vilna Ghetto [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1977), pp. 114ff.

227. Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 1980), p. 425. Gens’s leadership was not only praised by an eminent contemporary such as Kalmanovitch as against the FPO, but years later it received recognition from quite an unexpected side. Nathan Alterman was undoubtedly Israel’s most prominent poet, the voice of “heroic” Zionism from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s. He interrogated Kovner at great length about the history of the Vilna ghetto and, in the end, declared: “Had I been in the ghetto, I would have been on the side of the Judenrat.” Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York, 1993), p. 292.

228. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 (New York, 1990), pp. 466ff.

229. Porat, Beyond the Reach of Our Souls, pp. 155ff. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, various degrees of armed resistance took place in 24 ghettos in western and central Poland; moreover, there were sixty-three armed groups in the 110 ghettos and other Jewish concentrations in western Belorussia, and some forms of armed preparedness in another 30 ghettos. See Yehuda Bauer and Nili Keren, A History of the Holocaust (New York, 1982), p. 270.

230. Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941–April 1943, p. 140.

231. Ibid., p. 12.

232. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, ed. Alan Adelson (New York, 1996), p. 268.

233. Alan Adelson’s note, ibid.

234. For the text of the poem and Milosz’s comment on it, see Jan Blonski, “The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 4 (1989), pp. 322–23.

235. Quoted in Michael Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Syracuse, 1997), p. 32.

236. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki (London, 2001), pp. 190ff. and 194.

237. Ibid.

238. Ibid., pp. 197ff.

239. Arad, Belzec, p. 348.

240. Jan T. Gross, “A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews and Communists,” in The Politics of Retribution, ed. István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton, 2000), p. 80 (emphasis in original).

241. Quoted in Shmuel Krakowski, “The Attitude of the Polish Underground to the Jewish Question during the Second World War,” in Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, ed. Joshua D. Zimmerman (New Brunswick, NJ, 2003), pp. 100–01.

242. Aryeh Klonicki and Malwina Klonicki, The Diary of Adam’s Father: The Diary of Aryeh Klonicki (Klonymus) and His Wife Malwina, With Letters Concerning the Fate of Their Child Adam (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 25.

243. Ibid., pp. 31–32.

244. Ibid., p. 34.

245. Ibid., pp. 78–79. Klonicki’s diary, written in Hebrew, was retrieved in 1948 from Franka’s brother, Stanislaw Wanshik, by New York relatives of the author; a series of letters exchanged between the family in the United States and the Wanshiks was appended to the published diary; it provides the details about the Klonickis’ end and Adam’s disappearance.

246. Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 71ff.

247. Ibid., p. 73.

248. For a description of the anti-Jewish violence in the Ukraine in the last year of the war and later, see Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2002), pp. 191ff.

249. In the Polish context of the summer of 1942, Kossak’s declaration made a difference; yet the attitude towards the Jews that it expressed remained highly problematic. For a convincing analysis, see Jan Blonski, “Polish-Catholics and Catholic Poles: The Gospel, National Interest, Civic Solidarity, and the Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Yad Vashem Studies 25 (1996), pp. 181ff.

250. All details and quotations are taken from Joseph Kermish, “The Activities of the Council for Aid to Jews (“Zegota”) in Occupied Poland,” in Yisrael Gutman and Efraim Zuroff, eds., Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust. (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 367ff.

251. Ibid., p. 372.

252. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 7, p. 454.

Chapter Nine: October 1943–March 1944

1. Saul Friedländer, Kurt Gerstein, The Ambiguity of Good (New York, 1969), pp. 201ff.

2. Ibid., p. 108.

3. For these strategic plans, see Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, England, 1994), pp. 656ff. and particularly pp. 665–66.

4. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (New York, 1970), p. 299.

5. Tatiana Berenstein, ed., Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (East Berlin, 1961), p. 296.

6. The pamphlet appropriately opened with a Himmler quotation from 1935: “As long as there are human beings on earth, the fight between humans and subhumans will be a historical law and the fight led by the Jew against the nations belongs, as far back as we can see, to the natural course of life on our planet. One can safely arrive at the conclusion that this struggle for life and death is as much a law of nature as the fight of the plague germ against the healthy body.” See Walter Hofer, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1957), p. 280 (doc. 1576).

7. Berenstein, Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord, pp. 357–58.

8. Heinrich Himmler, Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden, 1933 bis 1945, und andere Ansprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p. 169.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., pp. 201ff.

11. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1995), vol. 10, p. 72.

12. Nuremberg doc. PS-1919, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 4 (Washington, DC, 1946), pp. 563–64. The translation has been slightly amended.

13. Höss may have been treated with such care because of his close ties to Bormann. See Raul Hilberg, “Auschwitz and the Final Solution,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington, IN, 1994), p. 83.

14. On the entire episode see also Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), pp. 39–40.

15. Frank Dingel, “Waffen-SS,” in Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss (Stuttgart, 1997), p. 792.

16. See, for example, Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, p. 336.

17. Heinz Höhne, Canaris (Garden City, NY, 1979), pp. 487ff.

18. For these aspects, see Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn, 1996), p. 327.

19. Ibid., p. 330

20. Ibid., p. 332.

21. For the standard work on the Jews of Denmark during the Holocaust see Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy (Philadelphia, 1969). Yahil’s study can be usefully complemented by relevant chapters in Ulrich Herbert’s biography of Werner Best and by Hans Kirchhoff, “Denmark: A Light in the Darkness of the Holocaust? A Reply to Gunnar S. Paulsson,” in Cesarani, Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 5, pp. 128ff. As for Gunnar S. Paulsson, “The Bridge over the Øresund: The Historiography on the Expulsion of the Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark” (in Cesarani, Holocaust, vol. 5, pp. 99ff), it is not always convincing, particularly in view of Herbert’s study on Best.

22. Herbert, Best, p. 362ff.

23. Ibid., p. 366.

24. Ibid., p. 367.

25. Ibid., p. 368.

26. Ibid., p. 369.

27. About Best’s attitude, see ibid. As for the participation of the Danes in the rescue operation, see Kirchhoff, “Denmark,” in Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds., The Holocaust Encyclopedia (New Haven, 2001), p. 148.

28. Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997), p. 104.

29. Ibid., p. 102.

30. For this summary see ibid., p. 125.

31. Philip Mechanicus, Waiting for Death: A Diary (London, 1968), p. 48.

32. Ibid., p. 49.

33. Ibid., p. 33.

34. Ibid., pp. 32–33.

35. Ibid., p. 76.

36. Etty Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork (New York, 1986), p. 97.

37. Ibid., p. 55–56.

38. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, ed. Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler (New York, 1995), p. 187.

39. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, 2002), p. 525.

40. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris, 1990), pp. 325ff.

41. Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1983–85), vol. 2, p. 331.

42. Jacques Adler, “The Changing Attitude of the ‘Bystanders’ Toward the Jews in France, 1940–1943,” in John Milfull, Why Germany?: National Socialist Anti-semitism and the European Context (Providence, RI, 1993), pp. 184ff.

43. Richard I. Cohen, The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 91–92.

44. Ibid., pp. 90–91.

45. Ibid., p. 97.

46. For the clandestine efforts, see Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York, 1987), pp. 154ff.; Cohen, The Burden of Conscience, pp. 96–97.

47. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 2, p. 124.

48. Ibid.

49. André Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’occupation (Paris, 1991), pp. 294ff.

50. Ibid., p. 298.

51. Ibid.

52. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 2, pp. 124–25.

53. Raymond-Raoul Lambert, Carnet d’un témoin: 1940–1943, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Paris, 1985), pp. 233–34.

54. Ibid., pp. 235–36.

55. Ibid., p. 238.

56. Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux Prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France, 1940–1944 (Paris, 1998), pp. 304–6.

57. Aharon Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland—Postures and Attitudes,” Yad Vashem Studies 12 (1977), pp. 363–64.

58. Dan Diner, “Historical Understanding and Counterrationality: The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage,” in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed. Saul Friedländer (Cambridge, MA, 1992), pp. 128ff.

59. Quoted in Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington, 1987), p. 276.

60. For these details, see mainly ibid., pp. 282ff.

61. Ibid., pp. 290ff.

62. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (London, 1974), pp. 239–40.

63. Arad, Belzec, p. 298.

64. Ibid., p. 297.

65. Jacob Wiernik became one of the main witnesses in Claude Lanzman’s film Shoah.

66. For the preparations of the uprising in Sobibor see Arad, Belzec, pp. 299ff. and mainly 306ff.

67. For the events of October 14, 1943, see ibid., pp. 322ff.

68. On the basis of the “SD decodes” and other sources, Richard Breitman reached the conclusion that Himmler’s order to Kappler was issued on September 24 or possibly a few days earlier. See Richard Breitman, “New Sources on the Holocaust in Italy,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies16, no. 3 (Winter 2002), pp. 403–4.

69. For these details see mainly Robert Katz, The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans and the Pope, September 1943–June 1944 (New York, 2003), pp. 61ff.

70. Breitman, “New Sources on the Holocaust in Italy,” p. 404.

71. Katz, The Battle for Rome, pp. 63ff.

72. Stanislao G. Pugliese, “Bloodless Torture: The Books of the Roman Ghetto Under the Nazi Occupation,” in The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation, ed. Jonathan Rose (Amherst, MA, 2001), p. 52.

73. Ibid., p. 53.

74. Ibid.

75. Katz, The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans and the Pope, September 1943–June 1944, p. 77; Breitman, “New Sources on the Holocaust in Italy,” pp. 405–6.

76. Breitman, “New Sources on the Holocaust in Italy,” p. 407.

77. For the sequence of the events see Daniel Carpi, “Italy,” in Laqueur and Baumel, eds., The Holocaust Encyclopedia, pp. 336–39.

78. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Ser. E, 1941–1945 (Göttingen, 1969), vol. 7, p. 31.

79. Ibid., p. 31 n. 2.

80. Katz, The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans and the Pope, September 1943–June 1944, pp. 78ff.

81. Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider, eds., Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Vatican City, 1975), vol. 9, pp. 505–6.

82. According to some historians, one of the German diplomats, Gerhard Gumpert, dictated the letter to Hudal. See for example Katz, The Battle for Rome, pp. 106ff.

83. For the text of Weizsäcker’s cable see Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation (New York, 1966), p. 207.

84. Ibid., p. 208.

85. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Ser. E, vol. 7, pp. 130–31.

86. Ibid., vol. 5, p. 97.

87. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 7, p. 295.

88. Ibid., p. 465.

89. Ibid., p. 569.

90. ADAP, Ser. E, vol. 6 (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 232–33.

91. Saul Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 190.

92. Ibid., pp. 191–192.

93. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 6 (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 584–86.

94. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 9, pp. 264–65.

95. Ibid., part 2, vol. 10, p. 104.

96. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 100–101.

97. For the text of the address entitled “Grandezza dolori e speranze del popolo Polacco” see Blet, Martini, and Schneider, Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 801–2. For a discussion of Pius XII’s attitude to the Polish issue and for the translation of the quotes from his speech of May 31, 1943, see Robert S. Wistrich, “The Vatican Documents and the Holocaust: A Personal Report,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 15 (2002), pp. 426ff. and particularly 429.

98. See for example, among many other such interventions, the nuncio’s protest to Weizsäcker about the fate of Polish priests, on September 20, 1940, and the Holy Office’s Declaration of early December 1940 concerning euthanasia, in Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 63 and 66.

99. Father Pierre Blet’s study on the pope’s policies and decisions during World War II is unconvincing, notwithstanding the fact that Blet, as one of the three editors of the Vatican documents, had full access to Vatican archives. Blet’s core argument regarding Pius’s silence in the face of the deportation and extermination of the Jews of Europe is that of ignorance about the ultimate fate of the victims (“As long as the war lasted, the fate of the deportees was shrouded in obscurity.”). Yet, Blet stated, “Pius XII never used this continuous shadow regarding an unknown destination as an excuse for abandoning those who were being persecuted. On the contrary, he employed all the means at his disposal to save them. As much as possible he took care to limit what he said in public, expecting nothing worthwhile to come out of this. He did not speak, but he took action.” Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican (New York, 1999), p. 167.

100. For the text, see Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 143.

101. For the emphasis on Poland see the comments added to the mention of the address in Blet, Martini, and Schneider, Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, vol. 9, p. 327.

102. Quoted in Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 143.

103. Letter from Preysing to Pius XII, March 6, 1943, quoted in Burkhart Schneider, Pierre Blet, and Angelo Martini, eds., Die Briefe Pius XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe 1939–1944 (Mainz, 1966), p. 239n1.

104. Quoted in Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 139.

105. Ibid. (emphasis added).

106. For this argument, see most recently John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York, 1999), pp. 295–97.

107. Pius’s special affection for the German people and his love for German culture have often been recognized. The way he chose at times to express his feelings was neither subtle nor diplomatic. Thus, at the end of October 1941, as the German attack on Moscow was still in full swing, the pope gave a private audience to Goebbels’s sister Maria, on a visit to Rome, and asked her to transmit his personal blessing to the propaganda minister. Goebbels noted the event with highly sarcastic comments in his diary entry of October 26. See Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998), part 2, vol. 2, p. 185.

108. Friedländer, Pius XII, pp. 141–42.

109. Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven, 2000), p. 307.

110. Ibid., pp. 307–8.

111. Ibid., p. 208.

112. Regarding Vatican policy toward Croatia, see Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pius XII (London, 1970), which remains the most thorough study on this issue; see, also, Menachem Shelach, “The Catholic Church in Croatia, the Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4, no. 3 (1989), pp. 323ff.

113. According to historian Giovanni Miccoli, Pius XII was essentially guided by the rule of necessary neutrality (formulated by Benedict XV during World War I) in a war opposing “post-Christian” nation-states over which the pope had no authority but that included Catholics fighting on each side. Miccoli himself considers this attitude as highly problematic in the face of Nazi atrocities and interprets Pius’s position as attributing to the war itself the responsibility of all evils. For this thesis, see mainly Giovanni Miccoli, Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII. Vatican, Seconde Guerre mondiale et Shoah (Bruxelles, 2005), pp. 425ff. This interpretation would be convincing if the Vatican had not taken such a resolute, albeit non-public, position against the Soviet Union.

114. Tittmann to Hull, October 19, 1943, FRUS, 1943, vol. 2 (Europe), Washington, p. 950.

115. Quoted in Kenneth C. Barnes, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hitler’s Persecution of the Jews,” in Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, ed. Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis, 1999), pp. 125–26.

116. Ibid., p. 126.

117. Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1933–1945, 6 vols., vol. 6: 1943–1945 (Mainz, 1985), p. 310.

118. Ibid., p. 480.

119. See the document discovered in the French archives and published by Alberto Melloni in Corriere della Sera, on December 28, 2004. The authenticity of the document is unquestionable. I am grateful to Carlo Ginzburg and to Michael R. Marrus for having drawn my attention to this document and to various aspects of the controversy surrounding it. For a thorough discussion of the Vatican’s stance, see Michael R. Marrus, “Le Vatican er les orphelins juifs de la Shoah,” L’Histoire 307 (March 2006), pp. 75–85.

120. Cordelia Edvardson, Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer (Munich, 1989), pp. 81ff.

121. Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, 2001), pp. 104ff. and 107–08.

122. Ibid., p. 107.

123. Ruth Bondy, “Elder of the Jews”: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt (New York, 1989), pp. 386ff.

124. Egon Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman (Lexington, KY, 1992), p. 129.

125. Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1999), p. 41.

126. Otto Dov Kulka, “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp: Jewish Social History in the Holocaust Period and its Ultimate Limits,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf, eds., The Nazi Concentration Camps (Jerusalem: 1984), p. 328.

127. See, among others, Nili Keren, “The Family Camp,” in Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 428ff.

128. Ibid., p. 436.

129. Ibid., p. 440.

130. For details on the diarists see Nathan Cohen, “Diaries of the Sonderkommando,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 592ff.

131. Ibid., p. 523.

132. Zalman Gradowski, “The Czech Transport,” quoted in David G. Roskies, The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 562–63.

133. Ibid., p. 563.

134. Roskies, “The Great Lament” in The Literature of Destruction, p. 518.

135. Gradowski, “The Czech Transport,” in ibid., pp. 563–64.

136. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 8 (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 153–54.

137. For a typical camp of this category, see Felicja Karay, Death Comes in Yellow: Skarzysko-Kamienna Slave Labor Camp (Amsterdam, 1996).

138. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 5 (Göttingen, 1978), pp. 326–27.

139. Eberhard Kolb, “Bergen-Belsen, 1943–1945,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf, The Nazi Concentration Camps: Structure and Aims, the Image of the Prisoner, the Jews in the Camps (Jerusalem, 1984), p. 335.

140. Ibid., pp. 336–37.

141. Martin Gilbert, introduction to Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, UK, 1990).

142. Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert and Dina Porat (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 508ff.

143. Gilbert, Introduction to ibid., pp. xxiii and xxiv.

144. Ibid., pp. 506–7.

145. See on this issue, Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), pp. lx and lxi.

146. Ibid., p. lxii.

147. Ibid., pp. 422–23.

148. For these cultural aspects see also Gila Flam, “Das kulturelle Leben im Getto Lodz,” in “Wer zum Leben, wer zum Tod…” Strategien jüdischen überlebens im Ghetto, ed. Doron Kiesel et al. (Frankfurt, 1992), p. 92.

149. Dobroszycki, The Chronicle., p. 413.

150. Ibid., p. 470–71.

151. Helmut Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler (Munich, 1970), p. 120.

152. Ibid., p. 213.

153. Ibid., pp. 246–47.

154. Ibid., pp. 175–76. Rumor had it that Richard Wagner was the illegitimate son of the Jewish actor Ludwig Geyer.

155. Warren Paul Green, “The Nazi Racial Policy Towards the Karaites,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 8, no. 2 (1978), p. 40.

156. Ibid., p. 38.

157. Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York, 1980), p. 155.

158. Green, “The Nazi Racial Policy Towards the Karaites,” p. 40.

159. Ibid.

160. Friedman, Roads to Extinction, pp. 164–65.

161. Green, “The Nazi Racial Policy Towards the Karaites,” pp. 38–39.

162. For details on the activities of “Amt VII,” see Jürgen Matthäus, “Weltanschauliche Forschung und Auswärtung. Aus den Akten des Amtes VII im Reichssicherheitshauptamt,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 5 (1996), pp. 287ff., and Lutz Hachmeister, Der Gegnerforscher, pp. 212ff.

163. See Wolfgang Behringer, “Der Abwickler,” in Himmlers Hexenkartothek: Das Interesse des Nationalsozialismus an der Hexenverfolgung, ed. Sönke Lorenz et al. (Bielefeld, 2000), pp. 121ff.

164. Jürgen Matthäus, “Weltanschauliche Forschung und Auswärtung. Aus den Akten des Amtes VII im Reichssicherheitshauptamt,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 5 (1996), p. 288.

165. Ibid., p. 289.

166. For many of the details see David E. Fishman, “Embers Plucked from the Fire: The Rescue of Jewish Cultural Treasures in Vilna,” in The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation, ed. Jonathan Rose (Amherst, MA, 2001), pp. 68ff.

167. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, p. 311.

168. Fishman, “Embers,” p. 69.

169. Ibid.

170. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, p. 408.

171. On the book rescue operation, see mainly Fishman, “Embers,” pp. 70ff. See also Dina Abramowicz, Guardians of a Tragic Heritage: Reminiscences and Observations of an Eyewitness (New York, 1999).

172. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, p. 578.

173. For the memorandum, see Kurt Pätzold, ed., Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), pp. 341–42.

174. For the entire issue, see the painstaking research in Michael H. Kater, Das “Ahnenerbe” der SS 1935–1945: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 245ff.

175. Ibid., p. 249.

176. Ibid. The inclusion of “Innerasiaten” may indicate that Schäfer was somehow informed of the project.

177. Ibid.

178. Ibid., p. 250.

179. Ibid., pp. 254–55.

180. On this issue see, most recently, Dirk Rupnow, “‘Ihr müsst sein, auch wenn ihr nicht mehr seid’: The Jewish Central Museum in Prague and Historical Memory in the Third Reich,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 1 (2002), pp. 23ff. On this puzzling issue, see also Jan Björn Potthast, Das Jüdische Zentralmuseum der SS in Prag: Gegnerfoschung und Völkermord im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt, 2002).

181. Rupnow, “‘Ihr müsst sein, auch wenn ihr nicht mehr seid,’” p. 29.

182. Ibid., p. 35.

183. For the quotation, see Ariel Hurwitz, “The Struggle Over the Creation of the War Refugee Board (WRB),” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6 (1991), p. 19.

184. On Bergson see mainly David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust (New York, 2002).

185. Ibid., p. 211.

186. Quoted in Gulie Ne’eman Arad, America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 220ff.

187. Ibid.

188. Long claimed that since 1933, 580,000 Jewish refugees had entered the United States; it soon became known that the real number was 210,732. See Hurwitz, “The Struggle Over the Creation of the War Refugee Board (WRB),” p. 20.

189. Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust (Syracuse, 1995), pp. 83–84.

190. Dina Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 62–63.

191. Ibid., p. 78.

192. Ibid., p. 79.

193. Ibid., pp. 82ff. and 86.

194. Blatman, Notre Liberté, p. 195.

195. Ibid., p. 198–99.

196. Quoted in 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, 1981), pp. 324ff.

197. Blatman, Notre Liberté, p. 199.

198. Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943 (New York, 1983), pp. 220ff.

199. Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork, p. 146.

200. Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, p. xiii.

Chapter Ten: March 1944–May 1945

1. Translated in Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1983–85), vol. 2, p. 382.

2. Ibid., p. 161.

3. Ingrid Krüger-Bulcke and Hans Georg Lehmann, eds., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Ser. E, 1941–1945, (Göttingen, 1979), vol. 3, p. 338.

4. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1995), part 2, vol. 12, p. 202.

5. This correlation does incidentally confirm the probable link between the first major military crisis, in December 1941, and the Nazi leader’s final decision to exterminate all the Jews of Europe.

6. Thousands of full-time guidance officers and tens of thousands of part time NSFO lecturers or writers certainly contributed to the intense anti-Semitism so pervasive in the Wehrmacht to the very end. The indoctrination was particularly apparent in a flood of publications issued by the OKW that must have reached soldiers and officers in their hundreds of thousands (probably in their millions). Thus, for example, “Der Jude als Weltparasit” (The Jew as Global Parasite) was issued as number 7 in the series of Richthefte des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (guidance publications of the OKW), in 1944. See Nuremberg doc. NO-5722.

7. Heinrich Himmler, Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden, 1933 bis 1945, und andere Ansprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p. 203.

8. For the full text, see Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, “Hitlers Ansprache vor Generalen und Offizieren am 26 Mai, 1944,” Militärgeschichliche Mitteilungen 2 (1976), pp. 123–70, here p. 136.

9. The quote was excerpted and translated in Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), pp. 636–37.

10. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Ser. E, vol. 7, pp. 526ff and in particular 534.

11. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), p. 439.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., pp. 389ff.

14. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 7, pp. 396–97.

15. Philip Mechanicus, Waiting for Death: A Diary (London, 1968), p. 255.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 256.

19. Presser, introduction to ibid.

20. For the postcard see Benjamin Leo Wessels, Ben’s Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press, ed. Kees W. Bolle (Carbondale, IL, 2001); for the date of Ben’s death, see ibid., p. 9.

21. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, ed. Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler (New York, 1995), p. 257.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., pp. 297–98.

25. Ibid., p. 298.

26. Ibid.

27. Moses Flinker, Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe, ed. Shaul Esh and Geoffrey Wigoder (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 7–8.

28. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 7, p. 102.

29. For this ultimate surge of French collaborationism, see Philippe Burrin, France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise (New York, 1996), pp. 448ff. and particularly 451.

30. Quoted in Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Waltham, MA, 2001), p. 445.

31. Renée Poznanski, “The Jews of France and the Statutes on Jews, 1940–1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 22 (1992), p. 462.

32. Ibid., p. 463.

33. Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York, 1987), p. 159.

34. Ibid., p. 159.

35. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, vol. 2, p. 390.

36. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Ser. E, vol. 7, p. 218.

37. Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven, 2000), pp. 267–68. At times the Jews who attempted to flee to Switzerland were turned back by the Swiss and, at times, turned over to Germans by Italian collaborators in the border towns. The Germans did not shy away from executing the betrayed Jews on the spot. In some cases they also burned the corpses on the spot to erase all traces. See, for example, Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish families under Fascism (New York, 1993), p. 89.

38. Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal, p. 161.

39. Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44 (New Haven, 1993), p. 252.

40. For these details see Götz Aly, “Die Deportation der Juden von Rhodos nach Auschwitz,” Mittelweg 36: Zeitschrift des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung 12 (2003), pp. 83ff. Aly’s argument about the “economic importance” of the booty seized from the Jews of Rhodes and Kos is unconvincing: The booty could have been seized without deporting these Jews to their death. For the further significance of this particular deportation, see also Walter Laqueur, “Auschwitz,” in Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, eds., The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? (New York, 2000), pp. 189–90.

41. Berlin was well informed of the Hungarian intentions to change sides and, moreover, Hungary’s raw material reserves were considered vital for the pursuit of the war. On this aspect see Christian Gerlach and Götz Aly, Das Letzte Kapitel: Realpolitik, Ideologie und der Mord an den ungarischen Juden, 1944/1945 (Stuttgart, 2002), p. 97.

42. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 11, 1994, pp. 397–98.

43. About the concentration and deportation from the provinces, see Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, vol. 2, pp. 595ff. Farther on, both the 1981 original two-volume edition of Braham’s The Politics of Genocide and the 2001 abridged edition will be used. The original edition is identifiable by the use of the volume number.

44. See Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, 1994), p. 157.

45. For various arguments of the controversy, see Rudolf Vrba, “Die missachtete Warnung: Betrachtungen über den Auschwitz-Bericht von 1944,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 44 (1996), pp. 1–24; and Yehuda Bauer, “Anmerkungen zum ‘Auschwitz-Bericht’ von Rudolf Vrba,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 2 (1997), pp. 292ff.

46. For this statement see Braham, The Politics of Genocide, vol. 2, p. 705.

47. See in particular Randolph L. Braham, “The Role of the Jewish Council in Hungary: A Tentative Assessment,” Yad Vashem Studies 10 (1974), pp. 69ff. See also Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 84.

48. Both groups of Orthodox Jews and Zionist youth groups used escape over the borders as the main avenue to safety. Between 7,000 and 8,000 Jews may have succeeded in escaping Hungary to Yugoslavia, Slovakia and mainly Romania between March and September 1944. Fighting in these areas put an end to the escapes. For these details see Robert Rozett, “Jewish and Hungarian Armed Resistance in Hungary,” Yad Vashem Studies 19 (1988), p. 270. Bauer mentions the much lower number of 4,000 to 4,500. Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, p. 160.

49. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 84.

50. See Eleanore Lappin, “The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 28 (2000), p. 203.

51. For the excerpting and translating of Broad’s statement, see Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination (Exeter, UK, 1998), p. 592.

52. Paul Steinberg, Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning (New York, 2000), pp. 97–98.

53. Rudolf Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen., ed. Martin Broszat (Stuttgart, 1958), p. 152.

54. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (1958, reprint, New York, 1996), p. 132.

55. Ibid., pp. 134–35.

56. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 161.

57. Hillgruber, Staatsmänner, vol. 2, pp. 463–64.

58. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 161.

59. For Horthy’s vacillation during these weeks, see Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, 2 vols. (New York, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 743ff.

60. See the exchange of documents about these late deportations in Jenö Lévai, Eichmann in Hungary: Documents (Budapest, 1961), pp. 128ff.

61. Nuremberg doc. NG-2263.

62. Randolph L. Braham, “Hungarian Jews,” in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington, 1994), p. 466.

63. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 (New York, 1990), p. 640.

64. First published in Eugene Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry (Zurich, 1948), p. 232.

65. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 240.

66. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000), p. 90; Randolph L. Braham, “The Christian Churches of Hungary and the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001), pp. 248–49.

67. Braham, “The Christian Churches of Hungary and the Holocaust,” pp. 250ff.

68. Quoted in ibid., p. 264.

69. Phayer, The Catholic Church, p. 109.

70. Ibid., p. 106.

71. Quoted in Braham, “The Christian Churches of Hungary and the Holocaust,” pp. 258–59.

72. For the details of these contacts, see Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, pp. 163ff.

73. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 7, p. 602.

74. Bauer mentions these arguments but appears inclined to believe that already at that time Himmler was interested in putting out genuine feelers to the West. Despite some circumstantial evidence regarding various contacts apparently initiated by the Reichsführer, the very course of the deportations from Hungary would seem massive evidence to the contrary. See Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, pp. 168ff.

75. Tuvia Friling, Arrows in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv Leadership, and Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust (Madison, WI, 2005), vol. 2, pp. 7ff.

76. According to Brand’s postwar declarations, Eichmann offered to liberate one hundred thousand Jews! See Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, p. 174.

77. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York, 1981), p. 227.

78. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 208.

79. Quoted in Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York, 1993), p. 113.

80. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Ser. E, vol. 3, p. 194.

81. Ibid., p. 222.

82. Richard Breitman, “Nazi Jewish Policy in 1944,” in Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary 1944, ed. David Cesarani (New York, 1997), p. 78.

83. Helmut Heiber, Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler (München, 1970), p. 276.

84. Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, pp. 196ff.

85. A sensational trial in Israel in the 1950s brought up grave accusations against Kastner and led to his assassination in Tel Aviv. A second trial before Israel’s Supreme Court rehabilitated him posthumously. The core of the public issue focused on Kastner’s choice of whom to include among the train’s passengers.

86. Jean-Claude Favez and Geneviève Billeter, Une Mission impossible?: Le CICR, les déportations et les camps de concentration Nazis (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1988), p. 331. (These details are included only in the original French edition.)

87. Ibid., p. 332.

88. On this well-known deal, see in particular Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3 vols. (New Haven, CT, 2003) vol. 2, pp. 886–87.

89. Quoted in Neufeld and Berenbaum, eds., The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?, p. 250.

90. Weissmandel’s letter is quoted in Lucy S. Dawidowicz, ed., A Holocaust Reader (New York, 1976), p. 321ff.

91. Neufeld and Berenbaum, eds., The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?, p. 256.

92. Ibid., pp. 258, 259.

93. Ibid.

94. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 285.

95. Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History (London, 2005), p. 109.

96. Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44, ed. Andrew Klukowski and Helen Klukowski May (Urbana, IL, 1993), pp. 344–45.

97. Ibid., p. 345.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., p. 346.

100. For a powerful rendering of the Polish uprising see Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (London, 2003); see also a balanced account of responsibilities East and West in Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945(London, 2004), pp. 99ff.

101. Anonymous diarist quoted and excerpted in Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages. Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, 2002), pp. 368–96.

102. Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1984), p. lxii. Sonderkommando Bothmann reactivated Chelmno in April 1944.

103. Oskar Rosenfeld, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lódz, ed. Hanno Loewy (Evanston, IL, 2002), p. 281.

104. Ibid., p. 312.

105. Quoted in Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, pp. 393–94.

106. Introduction, Dobroszycki, The Chronicle, p. lxv.

107. Ibid.

108. For the statistics, see Antony Polonsky, “Beyond Condemnation, Apologetics and Apologies: On the Complexity of Polish Behavior Toward the Jews During the Second World War,” in David Cesarani, ed., Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, 6 vols. (New York, 2004), p. 31.

109. For details and numbers, see mainly Dov Levin, “July 1944—The Crucial Month for the Remnants of Lithuanian Jewry,” in The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, ed. Michael Marrus (Westport, CT, 1989), pp. 447ff.

110. Ibid., pp. 458–59.

111. Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven, CT, 2002), p. 703.

112. Ibid.

113. Ibid., p. 704.

114. Ibid.

115. Ibid., p. 705.

116. Stephen G. Fritz, “‘We Are Trying to Change the Face of the World’: Ideology and Motivation in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: The View from Below.” Journal of the Military History 60, A (Oct. 1996).

117. Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg, 1997), p. 73.

118. Quoted and translated in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, vol. 4, pp. 632–33.

119. Manoschek, “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum—Vernichtung,” p. 75.

120. Hillgruber, Staatsmänner, vol. 2, p. 494.

121. Ruth Bondy, “Elder of the Jews”: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt (New York, 1989), pp. 396ff. and 441–42.

122. Ibid., p. 446.

123. On Murmelstein see Jonny Moser, “Dr. Benjamin Murmelstein, ein ewig Beschuldigter?,” in Theresienstadt in der “Endlösung der Judenfrage,” ed. Miroslav Kárný, Vojtech Blodig, and Margita Kárná (Prague, 1992), pp. 88ff.

124. See in particular Karel Margry, “Der Nazi-Film über Theresienstadt,” Ibid., pp. 285ff.

125. Vojtěch Blodig, “Die letzte Phase den Entwicklung des Ghettos Theresienstadt,” Ibid, p. 274.

126. See Egon Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman (Lexington, KY, 1992), p. 160 n. 19.

127. Aaron Kramer, “Creation in a Death Camp,” in Theatrical Performance During the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb (Baltimore, 1999), pp. 181–83. See also David Bloch, “Versteckte Bedeutungen: Symbole in der Musik von Theresienstadt,” in Theresienstadt in der “Endlösung der Judenfrage,” ed. Miroslav Kárný, Vojtech Blodig, and Margita Kárná (Prague, 1992), p. 142.

128. For these estimates, see Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 2, p. 455.

129. Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, p. 161.

130. Saul S. Friedman, introduction to ibid., p. xiv.

131. Martin Doerry, My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944 (London, 2004), pp. 250ff.

132. Livia Rothkirchen, “Slovakia” in Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds., The Holocaust Encyclopedia (New Haven, CT, 2001), p. 600.

133. Livia Rothkirchen, “The Situation of the Jews in Slovakia between 1939 and 1945,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 7 (1998), p. 63.

134. John F. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1943 (New York, 1980), pp. 73ff.

135. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 184.

136. Quoted in Krisztián Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II (New Haven, CT, 2005), p. 289.

137. Ibid.

138. Ibid., p. 293.

139. Ibid., p. 294.

140. Krüger-Bulcke and Lehmann, ADAP, Series E, vol. 8, p. 509.

141. Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest, pp. 298–99.

142. Ibid., p. 300.

143. Many of the forged papers had been produced and distributed by Zionist youth groups. See Rozett, “Jewish and Hungarian Armed Resistance in Hungary,” p. 272.

144. For the numbers mentioned see Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest, p. 293. About Carl Lutz, see Alexander Grossman, Nur das Gewissen, Carl Lutz und seine Budapester Aktion: Geschichte und Porträt (Wald, 1986); regarding Friedrich Born’s role, see mainly Arieh Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Jews in Hungary, 1943–1945 (Geneva, 1988). There are several publications about Wallenberg’s activities; See in particular Leni Yahil, “Raoul Wallenberg: His Mission and his Activities in Hungary,” Yad Vashem Studies 15 (1983), pp. 7–54. For details about less well known helpers such as Giorgio Perlasca, see Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest, p. 294. Ben-Tov’s study about the ICRC also gives his due to the delegate who preceded Born and was recalled because of his insistence on intervening for the Jews of Hungary: Jean de Bavier; it offers a harsh assessment of the Geneva organization.

145. Quoted in Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest, p. 302.

146. Ibid.

147. Most of the details that follow and the translation of Radnóti’s poem are quoted from Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, In the Footsteps of Orpheus: The Life and Times of Miklós Radnóti (Bloomington, 2000), pp. 212ff. About this early death march see the personal testimony of Zalman Teichman as published in Nathan Eck, “The March of Death from Serbia to Hungary (September 1944) and the Slaughter of Cservenka,” Yad Vashem Studies 2 (1958), pp. 255ff.

148. Ozsváth, In the Footsteps of Orpheus, pp. 217ff.

149. Quoted in Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945, pp. 211–12.

150. Christian Gerlach and Götz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel: Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden (Munich, 2002), p. 97.

151. Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944, ed. Werner Jochmann and Heinrich Heim (Munich, 2000), pp. 412–13.

152. Adolf Hitler, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols. (Leonberg, 1987–88), vol. 4, p. 2185.

153. Ibid., pp. 2195ff.

154. Ibid., p. 2204.

155. Ibid., p. 2206.

156. Ibid.

157. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998–), part 2, vol. 15, p. 82.

158. Ibid., p. 316.

159. Nuremberg doc. R-124. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 8 (Washington, DC, 1946), p. 189.

160. André Sellier, The History of the Dora Camp (Chicago, 2003), pp. 120–21.

161. See mainly Eleanor Lappin, “The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews through Austria in the Spring of 1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 28 (2000).

162. Edit Raim, “Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung im letzten Kriegsjahr,” in Theresienstadt in der “Endlösung der Judenfrage,” ed. Miroslav Kárný, Vojtěch Blodig, and Margita Kaŕná (Prague, 1992), p. 262.

163. Ibid.

164. Breitman, “Nazi Jewish Policy”, pp. 84ff.

165. Ibid.

166. For details about the Swedish initiatives, see Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, pp. 243ff.

167. Daniel Blatman, “The Death Marches, January–May 1945: Who Was Responsible for What?,” Yad Vashem Studies 28 (2000), p. 169.

168. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 170.

169. Blatman, “The Death Marches,” p. 173.

170. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz, pp. 169–70.

171. Steinberg, Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning, pp. 140–41.

172. Gudrun Schwarz, Eine Frau an seiner Seite: Ehefrauen in der “SS-Sippengemeinschaft” (Frankfurt, 1997), p. 7.

173. Blatman, “The Death Marches,” p. 178.

174. Ibid., pp. 189–90.

175. Ibid., p. 191.

176. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, p. 171.

177. Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, 2001), pp. 113ff. and 128ff.

178. Cordelia Edvardson, Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer (Munich, 1989), pp. 100ff.

179. Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Chicago, 1999), pp. 166ff.

180. Ibid., p. 171.

181. Sybil Milton, “Deportations,” in 1945: The Year of Liberation (Washington, DC, 1995), p. 90.

182. Ibid. (Reproduced from Marlene P. Hiller, ed., Stuttgart im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Katalog [Gerlinger, 1989].), p. 181.

183. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945 (New York, 1998), p. 404.

184. Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2001), pp. 253–54.

185. Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 546.

186. Ibid., p. 547.

187. Quoted in Hastings, Armageddon, p. 435.

188. Otto Dov Kulka, “The German Population and the Jews: State of Research and New Perspectives,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. David Bankier (New York, 2000), p. 279.

189. See in particular Gellately, Backing Hitler, and Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude during the Second World War, ed. Thomas E. J. de Witt (Athens, OH, 1977).

190. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 2, vol. 15, p. 586.

191. Ibid., pp. 654–55.

192. Ibid.

193. Hitler, Reden, pp. 2223–2224.

194. All details about this notorious murder operation are taken from Günther Schwarberg, The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm (Bloomington, 1984).

195. Ibid., p. 22.

196. Ibid., pp. 37–41 (excerpted in U.S. Holocaust Museum, ed., 1945, pp. 88–89).

197. Martin Broszat, “Soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 18 (1970).

198. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (New York, 1986).

199. See mainly Norbert Frei, 1945 und Wir: das Dritte Reich im Bewusstsein der Deutschen (Munich, 2005).

200. Hitler, Reden, p. 2226.

201. Ibid.

202. Ibid., p. 2250.

203. Klaus Schölder, A Requiem for Hitler: And Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle (London, 1989), p. 166.

204. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942–1945, p. 435.

205. Notwithstanding various computations, an exact estimate of the number of victims of the Holocaust is not possible. For detailed statistical analyses see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 3, pp. 1301ff (whose estimate of 5,100,000 is on the low side) and Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991), p. 17, whose minimal estimate reached 5,290,000 and who also calculated a maximum of just above 6,000,000 victims.

206. The places indicated are those where the diaries were mostly written; at times I chose the diarists’ places of origin.

207. For these additional diarists, see Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages (New Haven, 2002); Robert Moses Shapiro, “Diaries and Memoirs from the Lodz Ghetto in Yiddish and Hebrew,” in Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro (Hoboken, NJ, 1999); and Alexandra Garbarini, Numbered Days: Diaries and the Holocaust (New Haven, 2006).