The Fallacy of Race and the Shoah

THE FINAL SOLUTION—DEPORTATIONS AND CAMPS

THE FINAL SOLUTION— DEPORTATIONS AND CAMPS The Fateful Year—1941 The late spring and summer of 1941 was a turning point in European history. It was a pivotal moment in Nazi planning for the Jews. On 20 May 1941, one month before the German attack on the Soviet Union, instructions were sent to German military officials in France. These instructions stated that, according to a directive from Hermann Goring, the emigration of Jews from France and Belgium was to be stopped because transportation facilities were limited and because the "certain final solution of the Jewish problem"was now to be kept in mind.1 On 31 July 1941, just over a month after the Einsatzgmppen had begun their work in the Soviet territories , by which time they had already killed more than 62,000 victims,2 Goring issued another directive.This one authorized Reinhard Heydrich to undertake all necessary preparations for a total solution of the Jewish question throughout all of German-occupied Europe.3 The scope of the German attack on the Jews had now expanded. The idea of the "Final Solution" of the Jewish question by means of a Europe-wideprogramme of mass annihilation had now crystallized. It was from this fateful period during the summer of 1941 that events unfolded to bring about the realization of this gigantic task. Among the many events that transpired over the next few months,several illustrate crucial stages in the process. During the summer,Himmler consulted with the SS physician Ernst Grawitz as to the most efficient way to undertake mass killing. Grawitz suggested that gas chambers be used.4 On 16 July 1941,in a letter from Rolf-Heinz Hoppner, an SS official on the staff of the chief of police in the Wartheland,one encounters the first known documentary reference to the possibilityof "eliminating"Jews in the Wartheland by the use of "some fast-working poison."5 On 18 September 1941 Himmlernoted in a memorandum to Arthur Greiser,Gauleiter of the Wartheland, that it was the Fuhrer s wish that the Altreich and the Protectorates should be cleared of Jews from west to east.This task was to be "completed during this year as a first stage, preparatory to their being sent further east early in the new year."6 This document points to Hitler as the source of the order to kill the Jews and also exemplifies the general use of camouflaged language in official correspondence to disguise the killing process. The phrase that Jews were to be "sent further east early in the new year" is but one example of this technique.The phrase further indicates some sense of the scheduling 1. Nuremberg Document NG-3104. 2. See Ronald Headland,"The EinsatzgruppetT.The Question of Their Initial Operations,"Holocaust and Genocide Studies,Vo\.4, No.4 (1989), 406. 3. Nuremberg Document PS-710. 4. Hilberg, Destruction,Vol 3,873. 5. Kogon,Nazi Mass Murder, 73-74. 6. Krausnick/'Persecution of the Jews,' 69-70. 215 7. See Gertrude Schneider, Journey into Terror: Story of the Riga Ghetto (NewYork:Ark House, 1979), 155-175. Gerald Fleming,Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkley,Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), 67,75-80. \ii\berg,Destruction,Vol. 2,402.A deportation to Lodz of some 20,000 Reich Jews took place in October 1941. 8. Krausnick/'Persecution of the Jews," 68-69. 9. Raul Hilberg/'Auschwitz and the Final Solution," in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, edited by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 84-85. (Hereafter, Hilberg, Anatomy.^) 10. Yitzhak Arad,Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 24. (Hereafter, Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.^) Hilberg,Destruction, Vol. 3,875. 11. For Chelmno,see Kogon, Nazi Mass Murder, 73-101, and below. 12. Krausnick/'Persecution of the Jews," 68. 13. Nuremberg Document PS-709. of the annihilation measures as it was already perceived at the time. Starting in October, thousands of Jews were, in fact, deported from cities in the Reich to ghettos in Riga, Minsk, and Kovno, some of whom were shot immediately upon arrival.7 These deportations of Reich Jews represented a new, radical stage in a more comprehensive assault on European Jews. Another significant step in the process was the order sent out on 23 October by Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller, banning immediately all further Jewish emigration.Evidently, once the decision to murder the Jews had been reached, it was no longer...