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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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foreign nationality or origin, and helped break down
the Italians' disinclination to persecute the Jews in their zone of occupation.
After the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, when the dreadful
"Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" was adopted, S.S. Martin Luther, an
Under Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, got the consent of Reinhard Heydrich,
the head of the Reich's central Security Department (RSHA), for his ministry to
be consulted on all matters pertaining to anti-Jewish measures outside the
Fatherland. The liquidation of the Jews resulted, on the whole, from the
collaboration between Himmler's and Ribbentrop's ministries. That collaboration
between the German ministries was what was effected in France.
On March
1, 1941, Theo Zeitschel, Achenbach's subordinate, sent his superior valuable
data on anti-Jewish operations, including a report on what was said at a
conference concerning the Central Jewish Office in Paris. This quickly led to
the creation of the efficient General Commission for Jewish Affairs, which was
to do the work the Germans wanted. That conference took place at the embassy on
February 28, 1941. Present were Abetz, Achenbach, Zeitschel, and Theodor
Dannecker, the head of the S.D.'s Department IV-J.
"On that occasion it
was noted that thanks to the previous accomplishments of the S.D. under the
management of Dannecker, a master file was almost completed in which all Jews
in France were listed under four different headings. The S.D., in addition, had
taken pains to make a very thorough census."
Theo Zeitschel, the
embassy's specialist on Jewish matters, claimed to be the illegitimate son of
Emperor Wilhelm II. In 1940, when he was twenty seven years old, he was an S.S.
colonel and a counselor in the embassy, under the supervision of Achenbach,
responsible for relations with the S.D. On November 19, 1941, he was also put
in charge of relations with Count Fernand de Brinon, the Vichy government's
general representative in Paris. One communication to Abetz, dated August 21,
1941, is enough to give a picture of Zeitschel:
An appeal for help has appeared in the
Jewish newspapers in Palestine. It is directed to the ten million Jews who live
in America to remind them that in the areas we now occupy in Russia are six
million Jews, or a third of all the Jews in the world, who have been designated
for extermination. My opinion is that there is only one response to be made . .
. .
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
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