Men of the Reichsarbeitsdienst on the train to Poland, September 1939
Permanent exhibit - Room 5
War and Genocide in Eastern and South-eastern Europe
The German invasion of Poland in 1939 and of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1941 heralded a more extensive and extreme process of persecution: the genocide of European Jewry.
From the outset, the German Reich consciously disregarded moral standards and obligations under international law during the war in Southern and Eastern Europe. Condemned as “inferior”, the Slav population sustained severe losses through air raids and brutal oppression by the German occupiers.
Rapid occupation and the dissolution of state structures meant that millions of Jews were completely at the mercy of the Germans. Harassment, collective punishments and exhaustion through hunger and forced labour soon made living conditions unbearable for the Jewish population.
The perpetrators became more and more radical. Whilst expulsion and ghettoisation were the focus of persecution following the occupation of Poland, in Serbia the fate of the Jews was determined by targeted killing operations. The war against the Soviet Union led to the systematic murder of millions of men, women and children.
5.1.
Poland 1939-40: Conquest and Establishment of Tyranny
The German invasion of September 1939 was marked by a deliberate extension of violence against the entire Polish population. The Jewish minority in particular had to suffer the immediate onset of abuse, selections and arbitrary murders carried out by German troops. The population was to be forced down into a slave existence and exploited ruthlessly for the German war effort. In order to obtain future “settlement space” in the annexed western Polish territories, the German occupiers drove out hundreds of thousands of people to the General-Government or the territories occupied by the Soviet Union. The deportation plans envisaged the expulsion of millions more inhabitants. In addition, Jews and Sinti and Roma from Germany were to be concentrated in a “Jewish reservation” east of the Vistula.
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“The destruction of Poland has priority. The aim is to eliminate living forces, not to reach a certain line. […] I shall use propaganda to trigger the war, whether or not this is plausible. The victor will not be asked at a later stage whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging a war it is not right that matters but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. 80 million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The stronger man is right. The greatest harshness.”
Hitler’s second address on the outbreak of war
against Poland to Commanders-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht at his Berghof
retreat near Berchtesgaden, 22 August 1939
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Men of the Reichsarbeitsdienst on the train to Poland, September 1939 |
“Reprisal operation” by the German Wehrmacht against inhabitants of the town of Cestochowa, 4 September 1939
Soldiers from infantry regiment 42 rounded up Jewish and Polish inhabitants in Strazacka street and in the market place. 227 men, women and children lost their lives in the executions.
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Jewish prisoners being guarded by German Ordnungspolizei (uniformed police) at an improvised detention camp in Poland, autumn 1939 |
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Deportation of Jews from Plonsk (Zichenau district) to the General-Government, undated |
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“We must prevent the Polish intelligentsia from forming a leadership structure. The country must retain a low standard of living; we just want to draw on labour forces there. […] Implementation requires a harsh battle for Germandom, a battle which allows no legal binds. The methods will be at odds with our usual principles. […] The control of the territory must enable us to also clear the Reich territory of Jews and dirty Poles.”
Meeting between Hitler and Wilhelm Keitel, Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, 17 October 1939, excerpt of a written record, 20 October 1939
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The following broad instruction has been issued:
1.) Jews to be moved to the towns as quickly as possible, 2.) Jews to be moved out of the Reich into Poland, 3.) The remaining 30,000 gypsies also to be moved to Poland, 4.) Jews in the German [i.e. formerly Polish] territories to be systematically deported by goods train”
Meeting between Reinhard Heydrich and the Chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland on 21 September 1939, excerpt of a note by Walter Rauff, Head of the Stabskanzlei (Office of the Staff) at the Reich Security Main Office, 27 September 1939
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This operational plan essentially contains the following basic instructions: a) Persons designated for resettlement: Politically incriminated Poles (members of the chauvinist political parties and associations), Jews, Polish intelligentsia – insofar as they had to cede their positions to Germans they are personally and professionally uprooted and thus necessarily enemies of the state –, criminal and asocial elements […] b) Aim of resettlement: To clean and secure the new German Reichsgau as a prerequisite for the consolidation of German Volkstum and at the same time to create accommodation and employment opportunities for immigrating Baltic and Volhynian ethnic Germans. […] 2. The first Short-Term Plan was completed in the allocated time. On 17.12.1939, 80 transports left for the end destinations assigned by the General-Government, carrying a total of 87,883 resettlers.”
Excerpt of a memorandum from the Office for the Resettlement of Poles and Jews on the mass deportations in the framework of the “First Short-Term Plan”, 26 January 1940
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5.2.
Persecution Measures
In the very first weeks of the occupation tens of thousands of people were murdered by units of SS and police, Wehrmacht and ethnic German “self-protection” squads on the pretext of combating “guerillas” or as retribution for losses sustained. The main victims of the terror measures were members of the Polish political and societal elite. Jews faced wide-scale humiliation and reprisals, and many of them were murdered. However, the Jewish people were not yet the target of a systematic programme of murder at the time. Nonetheless, the Jewish population was increasingly deprived of its basis for existence through orders from the occupation administration which served to vilify them, strip them of their rights and isolate them from the rest of the population. The extensive murder of Polish Jews began in December 1941 at the concentration camp at Chelmno (Kulmhof).
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Order from District Governor Wächter on the compulsory symbols to be worn by Jews in the Cracow district, 18 November 1939
“According to this decree, a Jew is:
To mark them out,
Jews shall wear an armband on the right upper arm of their clothes and coats.
The outside of the armband shall bear a blue Star of Zion on a white
background.” |
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Public humiliation of Jews in the town of Tomaszow Mazowiecki (near Lodz), probably in September/October 1939 (USHMM Washington) |
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Anti-semitic poster produced by the German occupation administration. Jews are likened to parasites and vilified for allegedly spreading epidemics (typhus), undated |
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“Reprisal operation” against Jewish inhabitants of the town Ostrow Mazowiecka, 11 November 1939 Members of Ordnungspolizei battalions 11 and 91 shoot at least 355 Jewish men, women and children at a pre-dug pit. |
5.3.
The readiness of German soldiers to deploy extreme violence was incited by long-standing perceptions of the enemy. Their actions against “Eastern Jews” and alleged “insurgents” were often taken without an explicit order, but were nonetheless tolerated by their superiors. Wehrmacht leaders had accepted Hitler’s instructions on politically motivated mass murder at an early stage. Perpetrators were rarely condemned and ultimately received full exoneration through a “general pardon” from Hitler. Protests from senior officers against SS and police crimes were categorically rejected by Hitler. The Wehrmacht bowed to political pressure and consulted with the SS and police with regard to future campaigns.
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“On the afternoon of 24 September two synagogues and two houses then burnt down in Wloclawek. Following a report by the mayor to the 2nd SS Standarte, stating that the Jews set the houses on fire as revenge for synagogues being burnt down, 800 Jews were detained, of whom 2 were shot dead trying to escape and one shot and wounded. SS-Standartenführer Nostitz commenced this operation after the fall of darkness without giving me prior notification. Only after the start of the operation did he send an adjutant to my department. The adjutant told Colonel Wilck, the Quartermaster standing in for me, that Nostitz intended to detain all male Jews in the town. In response to the observation that this would mean arresting perhaps 10,000 or more, a number which it was impossible to detain, the adjutant said that as many would be arrested as the prisons would hold and that they would be shot dead anyway. The Quartermaster replied that he did not want to prevent the action as halting an operation that had only just started would damage the reputation of the Wehrmacht and SS. However, he said that he would try to limit the scale of the operation. [...] He added that the plan to shoot dead all the Jews would hardly be in line with the Führer’s wishes. The subsequently “limited” operation then consisted in arresting the aforementioned 800 Jews. [...] The Jews here and throughout Poland must be severely taken in hand as soon as they attempt any attacks. However, an operation such as that executed here by the 2nd SS Standarte would appear inappropriate, especially now with the extraordinarily weak military occupation in this locality and the lack of any police surveillance.”
Excerpt of a report by the Commandant of the rearward army area 581 to the Supreme Command of the 8th Army concerning terror campaigns against Jewish citizens carried out by the 2nd SS Totenkopfstandarte “Brandenburg”, 25 September 1939
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“I am ashamed to be German. This minority, which is casting a slur on the German name through murder, burning and pillage, will bring misfortune upon the whole German nation if we do not put a stop to their actions soon.”
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“It is absurd to slaughter some 10,000 Jews and Poles, as is happening at present, for because of the scale of the population this will neither succeed in killing the idea of a Polish state, nor in eliminating the Jews. On the contrary, the way in which the slaughter is being carried out entails severe damage, complicates the problems and makes them more dangerous than they would be if the action taken were well thought-out and purposeful. [...] If senior SS and police officials demand violence and brutality and commend this in public then very soon there will only be violent people left in charge. [...] The only way of fending off this epidemic is by putting the perpetrators and their associates under the control of the military leadership and jurisdiction as soon as possible.”
Notes for a presentation by Johannes von Blaskowitz to the Supreme Commander of the Army at Spala castle, excerpt, 15 February 1940
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“Acts committed in the period from 1 September 1939 to the present in the occupied Polish territories out of bitterness for the atrocities committed by the Poles will not be tried.”
“General pardon” from Adolf Hitler for German servicemen who had committed crimes against the population during the campaign in Poland, 4 October 1939
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