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On December 18, 1941, Heinrich Himmler recorded a meeting with Adolf Hitler at the Führerhauptquartier (Wolfsschanze) in his Diensttagebuch (service diary). The brief entry reads: “Jewish Question. | To be exterminated as partisans.” The date marks a critical moment in the evolution of Nazi policy toward European Jews. Just days earlier, Hitler had announced the decision to physically exterminate the Jewish population within the Nazi sphere of influence. The phrase “To be exterminated as partisans” noted by Himmler reflects an attempt to frame the genocide as a necessary wartime measure against alleged enemies and subversive elements. The general accusation was intended to justify collective destruction.
On August 1, 1941, Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg led a high-level meeting to discuss the governance of Nazi-occupied territories in Eastern Europe. Hinrich Lohse, the Reichskommissar for Ostland and Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein, reported that “approximately 10,000 Jews had been liquidated by the Lithuanian population”. Lohse emphasized that, following Hitler’s directive, “the Jews should be completely removed from this area”.
In May 1943, Walter Schellenberg, head of RSHA Office VI (Ausland – SD-Ausland), informed the German Foreign Office of Britain’s plan to publish a “White Paper on the alleged German atrocities against Jews and Catholics in Poland.” The Nazis feared that the Vatican might supply the British with supporting evidence that leaked “during a visit by an Italian group to Russia, material relating to this matter could have made its way to Italy”.
The Feldscher Aktion, named after Swiss diplomat Peter Anton Feldscher, represented a significant diplomatic effort by the British government during World War II to secure the emigration of 5,000 Jewish individuals, primarily children, from Nazi-controlled territories. In a memo dated May 5, 1944, Eberhard von Thadden, the Jewish Affairs Referent of the German Foreign Office, noted that “the Reich Security Main Office confidentially communicated that the 5,000 Jewish children eligible for emigration were now only available in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. However, this ghetto would soon be dissolved by order of the Reichsführer-SS.”
Memo by SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Strickner, head of RSHA Department III (Volkstum, or Ethnicity), analyzing occupation policy from 1939 to 1944 and outlining considerations for reorganizing Polish policy. The document, dated October 18, 1944, explores various approaches to manage the Polish population, with a particular focus on the Generalgouvernement. Strickner notes that “a final and official decision on the ultimate fate of the Polish people was not reached” and the Polish people “fear that they, similar to the Jewish people, are to be annihilated in their ethnic substance.”