Inferno - Max Hastings [324]
Peter Longerich, one of the more authoritative historians of the Holocaust, has convincingly argued that the Nazi leadership’s commitment to executing the Final Solution through designated death camps was not made until the end of 1941: “The leadership at the centre and the executive organizations on the periphery radicalized one another through a reciprocal process.” Construction of the first purpose-built extermination camp at Bełżec, near Lublin, began only on 1 November 1941. Longerich cites evidence that, until very late that year, key SS officers were still talking of mass deportations rather than extermination, and were chiefly preoccupied with how best to organise and mobilise Jews for slave labour. That autumn, anti-Jewish propaganda within the Reich was sharply increased, to prepare public opinion for the deportation of German Jews to the east. If the distinction sounds arcane between shipping the condemned to a wilderness where they were expected to starve and gassing them wholesale, it was significant in the evolution of the Holocaust.
When the U.S. commitment to the Allied cause became explicit, Hitler could no longer discern advantage in sparing Jews within his reach. “In autumn 1941,” writes Longerich, “the Nazi leadership began to fight the war on all levels as a war ‘against the Jews.’ ” The construction of gas chambers commenced at Chelmno, Bełżec, Auschwitz and elsewhere. Gas trucks had already been employed for the murder of mental patients in Germany and parts of the Nazi empire. Himmler welcomed wider use of such technology, not least to ease the psychological strain which mass shootings imposed on his SS. By autumn 1941, Zyklon B was killing selected prisoners at Auschwitz and elsewhere—though at that stage, most victims were non-Jews. Local initiatives by SS officers, rather than a coherent central directive, determined who died.
In mid-October 1941, mass deportations of Jews from the Reich began, with thousands being dispatched variously to Łódź, Riga, Kaunas and Minsk. Among the designated victims there were more than a few suicides, and in the light of events it is hard to suggest that those who took this course were ill-advised. Hans Michaelis was a retired lawyer in Charlottenburg. Just before being transported, he sent for his niece. “Maria,” he said, “I don’t have much time. What should I do? What is easiest, what’s the most dignified? To live or to die? To suffer a terrible fate or to end one’s own life?” His niece wrote: “We speak. We examine both possibilities. We ask ourselves what his late wife … would have advised. Again he grabs the clock.” Then he said, “I have 50 hours left here, at most! … Thank God that my Gertrud died a normal death, before Hitler. What would I give for that! … Maria, see how time flies!” As at last they parted, she said, “Uncle Hans, you will know the right thing to do. Farewell.” Hans Michaelis took poison.
A Berliner named Hilde Meikley watched the removal of local Jews: “Sadly I have to say that many people stood in the doorways voicing their pleasure as the wretched column went by. ‘Just look at those cheeky Jews!’ someone shouted. ‘They’re laughing now, but their last hour has come.’ ” The victims were permitted to carry 110 pounds of baggage apiece. All their valuables were seized at the departure stations, where body searches were conducted and passengers were required to pay fares. Luggage was loaded onto freight wagons, never to be seen again by its owners. Local authorities took possession of vacated housing, which was reallocated to eager new tenants. The rhetoric of Alfred Rosenberg, the minister for the occupied eastern territories,