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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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Let us point out another subtlety of expression in
the text of the ordinance. Just as in the exposé of Heydrich, one finds
there the evocation of Theresienstadt intended for the old people and the
privileged ones (which, incidentally, did not at all prevent the deportation of
these Jews to Auschwitz where at first they were settled to be afterwards
exterminated). But in principle the camp of Theresienstadt was not designated
for the extermination. To stress the exceptional position of Theresienstadt, it
was a question not simply of the transportation of the Jews, but of their
"transplantation."
Aside from that, there was no longer any question of
any sort of Jewish reserve. If the Jews were to be treated in such a way as to
have them disappear from the "European economic space," it was necessary in
those conditions to make them disappear from the face of the earth.
The
ordinance of October 9, 1942, was faithful to the conventional vocabulary
introduced by Heydrich at the Conference of Wannsee: the stage of work "in the
East" and the stage of disappearance "farther east." The fiction which replaced
the transport to the gas chambers by the transport into "zones of operation"
farther east was respected.
This terminology was respected by the heads
of the regime even among themselves. On March 27, 1942, Goebbels wrote in his
personal diary (135):
"In the General Government, the Jews,
beginning with those of Lublin, are going to be evacuated to the East. To
accomplish this, one is employing rather barbaric methods, on which no further
explanation is necessary; not much is left of the Jews. Generally speaking, one
may say that sixty percent of them must be liquidated, whereas only forty
percent can be put to work. The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is directing
this operation, is accomplishing it with sufficient discretion, and by
employing procedures which do not attract the attention too much... No other
government and no other regime would have enough strength to resolve this
question once and for all. Here again, the Führer is the determined
champion of a radical solution which the circumstances require and which thus
seems inevitable. The ghettos which become free in the cities of the General
Government will be filled with Jews evacuated from the Reich; then the
operation will be renewed from time to time..." Thus Goebbels,
even in his diary, observed the convention of calling "evacuation to the East"
what he at once explained as extermination on the spot by "procedures which do
not attract the attention too much, that is to say, by gas chambers. Another
fiction was observed: in the secrets to be revealed concerning the "final
solution," there was no question of Auschwitz. Goebbels spoke of the General
Government and of the operation of Globocnik. In the autumn of 1942, General
Oberg, Himmler's representative in occupied France, indicated to Laval that to
questions on the deportation of the Jews it was necessary to answer that they
were transported to the General Government to work. However, the Sipo-SD in
Paris sent one convoy after the other not to the General Government, but to
Auschwitz, located in Upper Silesia.
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
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