History Forum / General / General Topics / August 2008

[Follow-ups set]

September 1

1939

During a conference of the department heads of Security Police and
Commanders of Special Units, with Heydrich presiding, the deportation
of the "remaining 30,000 Gypsies" from the German territory to Poland
becomes policy. (Ruerup, 124)

Restrictions on the movement of German Jews are announced, and curfews
(9 p.m., 8 p.m. during winter) are established. (Ruerup, 118)

Hitler authorized Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt to "grant
merciful deaths." This was the beginning of Operation T4, and gas
chambers were one of the instuments used for the euthanasia of
incurables and the mentally ill. (Vidal-Naquet, 107)

1940

The coke-fired two-retort furnace in the Auschwitz camp crematorium
was put into service for the disposal of bodies. (Czech, et al. p. 124)

1941

The social isolation of the Jews within Germany, the marking
of them as socially dead beings, was further intensified and
symbolized by the government regulation compelling German
Jews to wear in public a sizable yellow star of David
inscribed in black with the word "Jude." (Goldhagen, 138, Ruerup, 118)

Ninth Company, Police Battalion 322 participates in the murder of
more than 900 Jews from the Minsk area, while Police Regiment South
reports shooting 88 Jews, and Battalion 320 reports shooting 380.
(Browning, 16,17; Breitman, 50)

1943

German and Estonian police surround the Vilna ghetto and
begin arresting ghetto inhabitants for deportation to forced-
labor camps in Estonia. The underground United Partisan
Organization (FPO) mobilizes its forces and issues a
manifesto urging the ghetto populace to resist. The call is
not heeded, and after an abortive clash between the FPO and
German units, _Judenrat_ Chairman Jacob Gens reaches an
agreement with the Germans to fill the required deportee
quota (five thousand Jews), providing German forces leave
the ghetto. (See September 14). (USHMM 1993, 43)

1944

In London, A.R. Dew, head of the Southern Department of the
British Foreign Office, comments on submissions by the Board
of (Jewish) Deputies urging help for Hungarian and Romanian
Jews: "In my opinion a disproportionate amount of time of
this office is wasted in dealing with these wailing Jews." (USHMM 1994, 58)

                        Work Cited

Czech, Danuta, Stanslaw Klodzinski, Aleksander Lasik,
  Andrezej Strezecki, eds. "Auschwitz 1940 - 1945. Central
  Issues in the History of the Camp, Volume V.
  Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: Oswiecim 2000.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans
  and the Holocaust.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996

Breitman, Richard. Official Secrets. New York: Hill & Wang, 1998                              
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
  Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992

Ruerup, Reinhard, Ed., trans. By Werner T. Angress. Topography of
  Terror. Berliner Festspiele GmbH, Berlin: 1987