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Volume V · Page 985
| DESTRUCTION OF THE WARSAW GHETTO |
| In the fall of 1942, Himmler's plans for the complete subjugation of Poland reached a pinnacle. The Jewish ghetto at Warsaw covered a total area of approximately 320 hectares, or 800 acres. It comprised a large residential area and, in addition, housed a great number of industrial enterprises, principally textile and fur manufacturing plants. The ghetto had a population of nearly 60,000 persons. In October, Himmler ordered that the entire Jewish population of the ghetto was to be gathered together in concentration camps in Warsaw and Lublin to be used as an immense labor pool for armament purposes. After the round-up was completed, the Jews were to be deported to large concentration camps in the East and Polish labor substituted in the Warsaw industries. Himmler added: "Of course, there, too, the Jews shall someday disappear in accordance with the Fuehrer's wishes." All private Jewish firms were to be eliminated and no Jew was to be employed in private industry. This order raised a strong protest from the armament firms in Warsaw, in which a large number of Jews were employed, but Himmler was obdurate and insisted on the letter of his order being carried out. The Jewish residents of the ghetto, however, resisted deportation vigorously, and a pitched battle, lasting over a week, was necessary to uproot them. In February 1943, Himmler directed that after the removal of the concentration camp the ghetto be completely demolished. In his order he stated: |
| "A master plan for the pulling down of the ghetto has to be submitted to me. It has to be accomplished in any case that the living space, which accommodated 500,000 subhumans and was never suitable for Germans, will completely disappear, and that the city of Warsaw, with its one million inhabitants, will be reduced in size, having always been a dangerous center of rebellion." |
| This gigantic task of destruction and
deportation was committed to Pohl as chief of the WVHA. Himmler directed that
the "city center of the former ghetto is to be flattened completely and every
cellar and every canal is to be filled in. After the work is finished, the area
is to be covered up with earth, and a large park is to be planted." By an order dated 23 June 1943, addressed to the Higher SS and Police Leader in the East and to Pohl, Himmler ordered the erection of a concentration camp in the vicinity of Riga, to which the largest possible number of the male Jews were to be transferred. Surplus Jews from the ghetto were to be evacuated to the East, which meant ultimate starvation or extermination. In the |
