Wannsee by Peter Longerich & Lesley Sharpe & Jeremy Noakes

Author:Peter Longerich & Lesley Sharpe & Jeremy Noakes [Longerich, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198834045
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-07-30T05:00:00+00:00

Deportations and mass murder in spring 1942

A few days after the conference, the RSHA began to prepare for a new wave of deportations from the Reich. On 31 January 1942 Eichmann informed the regional Gestapo headquarters in the Reich that ‘the evacuation of Jews to the east that has been taking place recently in various regions’ marked ‘the start of the final solution of the Jewish question in the Altreich, the Ostmark, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’. ‘Particularly pressing plans’ would be carried out first, but new ‘accommodation’ was being prepared so that further ‘batches’ of Jews could be deported. All Jews were to be included who fitted the definition contained in the First Decree implementing the [Nuremberg] Reich Citizenship Law, with the exception of those who were living in ‘mixed marriages’, were foreign nationals, were in work camps and ‘carrying out labour vital to the war effort’, were over sixty-five years of age, or were between fifty-five and sixty-five but particularly infirm. There was no mention here of a general deportation of Jewish ‘Mischlinge’ as discussed by Heydrich at the Wannsee Conference.297

Eichmann was therefore trying to present this ‘start’ to the ‘final solution’ in the Reich as still being a provisional arrangement that was not to be confused with the coming European ‘total’ or ‘final’ solution. For negotiations continued concerning the final criteria that would define the range of those to be deported. Indeed, in February Heydrich announced to conference participants receiving the minutes that only when these criteria had been established and other open questions had been clarified in a series of ‘discussions of matters of detail’ would he be in a position to complete the plan to implement the ‘final solution’ that Göring had requested the previous July. In fact, however, he appears not to have completed the documentation before his death early in June 1942.298

A few weeks later the RSHA had firmed up its future plans to the extent that on 6 March Eichmann was able to announce an additional deportation programme at a meeting with Gestapo officials from the entire Reich; 55,000 people from Reich territory, including the Ostmark and the Protectorate, were involved,299 making up the ‘third instalment’, which Heydrich had already made known in November, after the previous year’s first two waves of deportations (Lodz and Riga/Minsk).300

In addition, on 6 March Eichmann announced the plan to deport the majority of Jews remaining in the Altreich to Theresienstadt in the course of the summer or autumn; in the meantime, ‘15–20,000 Jews from the Protectorate’ would ‘move there temporarily’. Eichmann explained that the plan for an ‘old people’s ghetto’ for Jews from the Altreich that Heydrich had introduced at the Wannsee Conference had been ‘for appearances’ sake’: the official reason for the deportations, allegedly to provide ‘labour in the east’, could only be credible if there were exemptions for the old and sick and for those whose service to the country was beyond question.

On 6 March Eichmann chaired a further meeting. It was

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