Nazi Policy

Guidelines on the Treatment of the Jewish Question 29 January 1942
Contemporary Source

1942-01-29 / Guidelines for the Occupied Eastern Territories: “Elimination of Jewry […] Fairly Rapid Solution of the Jewish Question”

On 29 January 1942, the office of the Reichsführer-SS forwarded to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories a proposed version of guidelines for the “Jewish question.” The guideline states that “the Jewish question must be solved generally for all of Europe” and that “measures in the occupied eastern territories which serve the final solution of the Jewish question and thereby the elimination of Jewry are in no way to be hindered”. The guidelines added that, especially in the occupied eastern territories “a fairly rapid solution of the Jewish question is to be sought”. They also remarked that “any “actions by the local civilian population against the Jews” were not “to be prevented”.

Short version of KOrherr report
Contemporary Source

1943-04-19 / The Short Version of the Korherr Report: “European Jewry has probably lost almost half of its total population”

On April 19, 1943, SS statistician Richard Korherr submitted a shortened version of his Korherr Report – the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” – to the personal staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, for presentation to Adolf Hitler. In the report, Korherr estimated that “the reduction of Jewry in Europe from 1937 to the beginning of 1943 is to be estimated at 4½ million” and noted that “only part of the deaths of Soviet-Russian Jews in the occupied eastern territories could be recorded, while those in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all.” He concluded that “European Jewry since 1933 has probably lost almost half of its total population,” of which “only about half has flowed to other continents.”

Letter dated April 10, 1943
Contemporary Source

1943-04-10 / Himmler’s Order to Sanitize the Korherr Report: “At No Point Should There Be Any Mention of Special Treatment of the Jews”

In April 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered changes to the Korherr Report, the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution” he considered as quite good “for camouflage purposes”. A letter dated April 19, 1943 instructed that the term “special treatment of the Jews” be removed from the report. The euphemism “passed through the camps in the General Government and the camps in the Warthegau” was to be used to denote the death toll from the extermination camps at Bełżec, Treblinka, Sobibór, and Kulmhof (Chełmno).

Letter dated April 9, 1943 Himmler letter on Korherr report
Contemporary Source

1943-04-09 / Himmler’s April 1943 Letter on the Korherr Report

A brief letter written by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, on April 9, 1943, to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Security Police and SD, makes direct reference to the so-called Korherr Report – a statistical analysis compiled by Richard Korherr, the SS’s chief statistician, on the progress of the “Final Solution”. In it, Himmler acknowledges the report’s value as “material for possible later times” and, above all, “for camouflage purposes”. At the same time, he orders that the report must not be published or circulated further. Himmler closes the letter by stressing his overriding concern that “what remains most important to me is that Jews are now being shipped off to the East as much as is at all humanly possible.”

Contemporary Source

1942-12-07 / The Hagen Letter to Hitler: “to deal with a third of the Poles … as with the Jews, that is, to kill them.”

On December 7, 1942, a German city medical officer named Dr. Wilhelm Hagen wrote an extraordinary letter addressed directly to Adolf Hitler. Hagen, who was the City Medical Officer of Warsaw, and claimed that during a government meeting on tuberculosis control, a senior official had revealed – as a “classified Reich matter” – that during the planned resettlement of 200,000 Poles to make way for German settlers, “to deal with a third of the Poles – with 70,000 old people and children under the age of 10, as with the Jews, that is, to kill them”. Hagen also wrote that “if this information had not come in an official capacity, I would dismiss it as mere fantasy.”

Report dated Februay 9, 1944
Contemporary Source

1944-02-09 Report About Nazi Extermination Methods: Insights From an SD Defector

In February 1944, Swiss intelligence received one 106-page report by a defector (agent code D 143) from Nazi Germany’s Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS’s intelligence branch. Dated 9 February 1944, this report offers an insider’s view of the internal disintegration, moral collapse, and infighting that plagued the Nazi foreign intelligence service, known as Amt VI. The SD defector described various Nazis’ extermination methods, experiments, and plans. He reveals that the commandos in the East adopted “the GPU method of a shot to the back of the neck” which was “widely used” with “in total, up to 100,000” victims. He also described the use of homicidal gas vans, known as “Nebe gas vans” after Arthur Nebe, the former head of Einsatzgruppe B and chief of the Criminal Technical Institute. According to the report: “rear compartment was sealed; 20 cm thick oak walls lined with sheet metal. Engine in front, from where exhaust gases are directed into the interior of the truck through a pipe.” The SD man noted that within Einsatzkommandos, most personnel were “completely drunk,” with as many as 40% suffering nervous breakdowns. He recalled that in in Summer 1943, Einsatzgruppe C chief Max Thomas informed him that “that approximately 6,000,000 people (Russians and Jews) had been disposed of”.

Report dated June 26, 1943 by Kusch on tour in Ukraine and exxtermination of Jews
Contemporary Source

1943-06-26 / Report by Journalist Kausch on a Tour in Occupied Ukraine and Crimea: “Jews were exterminated like bedbugs”

Report by German Journalist Hans-Joachim Kausch dated June 26, 1943 on a tour through occupied Ukraine and Crimea organised by the Ministry of the East. The report contains blunt and unambiguous admissions regarding the extermination of Ukraine’s Jewish population. Kausch writes that in Ukraine, “there had been 1.1 million Jews. They have been completely liquidated”. He notes that “some Hungarian and Slovak officers took photographs of executions, which later reached America”. According to Kausch, “Ukrainians mostly watched the executions with indifference”. He quotes a high-ranking official of the Reich Commissariat that “Jews were exterminated like bedbugs”.

Letter dated September 5,1944 on the Nazi's Jewish skeleton collection
Contemporary Source

1944-09-05 / The Nazi’s Jewish Skeleton Collection: Dissolution

In correspondence dated September 5, 1944 SS-Standartenführer Wolfram Sievers discusses the fate of Nazi’s “Jewish skeleton collection” housed in Strasbourg’s anatomy institute. As Allied forces advanced, Sievers requested a decision from the Personal Staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler on whether to preserve or “dissolve” the collection. He noted to Rudolf Brandt that one “can proceed with defleshing the bodies, thereby rendering them unrecognizable, but this would make much of the overall work pointless and result in a major scientific loss for this unique collection”. By October 1944, SS-Hauptsturmführer Bruno Beger claimed to Brandt that the collection had been “completely dissolved”.

Cover Letter to Korherr report on Final Solution of the Jewish Question dated April 28, 1943
Contemporary Source

1943-04-28 / The Korherr Report: Nazi Statistics on the “Final Solution” Through Early 1943

This post reproduces the so called Korherr Report, a statistical report on the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” up to 1943 and its accompanying cover letter from April 1943. Authored by SS statistician Richard Korherr for Heinrich Himmler, the report presents – through a veneer of euphemism and bureaucratic precision – the numerical decline of European Jewry via excess of deaths over births, emigration, deportation and so-called “evacuations” and “special treatement”. The report concludes that “European Jewry since 1933 … likely lost nearly half of its population”. A substantial portion of this loss is attributed to 1,274,166 Jews “processed through camps in the General Government” (i.e. Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor), 145,301 Jews “processed through camps in the Warthegau” and 633,300 Jews “evacuated in the Russian territories”.

Letter dated 21 June, 1943 by Sievers to Eichmann on Nazi Skeleton collection from prisoners in Auschwitz
Contemporary Source

1943-06-21 / The Nazi’s Jewish Skeleton Collection: Selection and Transfer Auschwitz to Natzweiler

In June 1943, SS officials completed a selection process at Auschwitz and choose 115 prisoners – mostly Jews – for execution and use in an anatomical collection in Strasbourg. SS anthropologist Bruno Beger and Ahnenerbe director Wolfram Sievers coordinated the operation authorised by the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and pressed the Reich Security Main Office to conduct the victims’ transfer to Natzweiler for killing. In a letter dated June 21, 1943, Sievers informed Adolf Eichmann that “79 Jewish men, 2 Poles, 4 Inner Asians, and 30 Jewish women” had been selected and requested “their immediate transfer to Natzweiler concentration camp” along with arrangements for “short-term housing accommodations.”

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