SECRET
To: Chiefs of all Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police
Subject: Jewish Question in the occupied territory
I refer to the conference held in Berlin today and once more point out that the planned overall measures (i.e., the final aim) are to be kept strictly secret. The planned measures demand the most thorough preparation in their technical as well as economic aspects. It is obvious that the tasks that lie ahead cannot be laid out in full detail from here. The instructions and guidelines below will at the same time serve the purpose of urging the Chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen to give the matter their practical thought. For the time being, the first prerequisite for the final aim is the concentration of the Jews from the countryside into the larger cities. This is to be carried out with all speed.
In doing so, distinction must be made (1) between the areas of Danzig and West Prussia, Posen, Eastern Upper Silesia, and (2) the rest of the occupied territories. As far as possible, the area mentioned (in item 1) is to be cleared of Jews; at least the aim should be to establish only a few cities of concentration. In the areas mentioned in item 2, as few concentration points as possible are to be set up, so as to facilitate subsequent measures. In this connection, it is to be borne in mind that only cities which are rail junctions, or at least are located along railroad lines, are to be designated as concentration points. On principle, Jewish communities of fewer than 500 persons are to be dissolved and transferred to the nearest city of concentration. Within this area, only an improvised census of Jews is to be carried out. Furthermore, Councils of Jewish Elders, as discussed below, are to be set up.
Councils of Jewish Elders (Judische Alteestenrate)
1: In each Jewish Community, a Council of Jewish Elders is to be set up to be composed, as far as possible, of the remaining influential personalities and rabbis. The council is to comprise up to 24 male Jews (depending upon the size of the Jewish Community). The council is to be made fully responsible, in the literal sense of the word, for the exact and punctual execution of all directives issued or yet to be issued.
2: In case of sabotage of such instructions, the councils are to be warned of the severest measures.
3: The Jewish Councils are to take an improvised census of the Jews in their local areas—broken down if possible by sex (age groups): (a) up to 16 years of age, (b) from 16 to 20 years of age, and (c) over, as well as by principal occupational groups—and are to report the results in the shortest possible time.
4: The Councils of Elders are to be informed of the dates and deadlines for departure, departure facilities, and finally departure routes. They are then to be made personally responsible for the departure of the Jews from the countryside. The reason given for the concentration of the Jews into the cities is that Jews have most influentially participated in guerrilla attacks and plundering actions.
5: The Councils of Elders in the cities of concentration are to be made responsible for appropriately housing the Jews moving in from the countryside. For general reasons of security, the concentration of Jews in the cities will probably necessitate orders altogether barring Jews from certain sections of cities, or, for example, forbidding them to leave the ghettos or go out after a designated evening hour, etc. However, economic necessities must always be considered in this connection.
6: The Councils of Elders are also to be made responsible for appropriate provisioning of the Jews during the transport to the cities. No objections are to be voiced in the event that migrating Jews take their movable possessions with them, to the extent that this is technically possible.
7: Jews who do not comply with the order to move into the cities are to be allowed a short additional period of grace where circumstances warrant. They are to be warned of strictest punishment if they should fail to comply with this latter deadline.
The Chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen will report to me continuously on the numerical survey of the Jews present in their territories (broken down as indicated above, if possible). The numbers of Jews who are being evacuated from the countryside and those who are already in the cities are to reported separately.
Heydrich
SS Gruppenführer
(Above) Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (center) with senior officials of the SS police and security apparatus in Munich, November 1939. From left to right: SS-Brigadeführer Franz Josef Huber, SS-Gruppenführer & Generalleutnant der Polizei Arthur Nebe, SS-Gruppenführer & Generalleutnant der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich and SS-Standartenführer Heinrich Müller. Heydrich and Müller later attended the Wannsee Conference. All five men were deeply involved in the persecution, deportation, and mass murder of Jews, Roma, Sinti, and other victims of the Nazi regime
At a high-level meeting in November 1938, days after Kristallnacht, SS Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering discussed what to do about the Jewish Question. Heydrich, a second way of getting the Jews out would be an emigration operation for all Jews in the rest of the Reich, spread over at least 8 to 10 years. We cannot get out more than the maximum of 8000 to 10000 Jews a year. That would leave a great many Jews here. Because of Aryanization and other restrictions, the Jewry will be unemployed. We will see the remaining Jews becoming proletarians. I would have to take measures in Germany to isolate the Jews, on the one hand, so that they will not enter into the normal life of the Germans. On the other hand, I must create possibilities of permitting the Jews certain activities, in the matter of lawyers, doctors, barbers, etc., while yet limiting them to the smallest possible circle of customers.
This question will have to be studied. As far as isolation is concerned, I should like to put forward a few suggestions, purely police matters, which are important in part for their psychological effect on public opinion. For instance, the identification of the Jews, saying. Every person who is a Jew in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws must wear a certain distinguishing mark. This is a possibility which would simplify many other matters. I don’t see any danger of excesses against the Jews, and it would make our relationship with foreign Jews easier.
– Goering: A uniform?
– Heydrich: A badge. This would also prevent the foreign Jews whose external appearance is no different from that of the local Jews, from suffering the same disadvantages.
– Goering: But dear Heydrich, you will not be able to avoid having ghettos in the cities on a really big scale. They will have to be established.
– Heydrich: As for the matter of ghettos, I would like to make my position clear right away. From a police point of view, I think that a ghetto in the form of a completely segregated district with only Jews is not possible. We would have no control over a ghetto where the Jew gets together with the whole of his Jewish Tribe. It would be a permanent hideout for criminals, a source of epidemics, and the like. The situation today is that the German population forces the Jews to behave more carefully in the streets and the houses. The control of the Jews by the watchful eyes of the whole population is better than putting thousands upon thousands of Jews together in a single district of a city where uniformed officials will be unable to check on their daily activities.
– Goering: We only have to cut off the telephone link with the outside.
– Heydrich: I could not stop the movements of Jewry out from this district completely.
– Goering: And in cities, really all their own?
– Heydrich: Yes, if I put them into cities entirely their own. But then this city would become such a center for criminal elements that it would be very dangerous. I would try a different way.
– Goering: I shall choose the definition that the German Jews as a whole, as a punishment for their abominable crimes, etc., will have to pay a contribution (fine) of one billion marks. That will do it. The swine won’t hurry to commit another murder. In general, I must say once again: I should not like to be a Jew in Germany.
Immediately after the Kristallnacht, a fine of one billion marks was levied, not upon the criminals, but upon the victims, the Jewish Community of Germany. Along with the fine came a decision, taken in a conference of Nazi Leaders on Nov 12, 1938, to Aryanize the German Economy, to get the Jew out. Nazi policy had now moved into the overt destruction of all Jewish Life in the Third Reich. The violence of the Kristallnacht aroused the world to condemn the Nazi actions. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled the American ambassador from Berlin, stating that he could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization. However, even the condemnations failed to change Western immigration policies. With a few exceptions (e.g., England, which increased its absorption of refugees after the Kristallnacht), the doors to safety remained barred. As one leader of German Jewry stated two months after the Kristallnacht (Jan 25, 1939), from America, nothing tangible (in immigration possibilities) has arrived. With violent antisemitism now institutionalized, and with few places to flee, the Jews of Germany, Austria, and later, occupied Europe, were trapped and doomed.
The Kristallnacht serves as the symbol of that destruction. The synagogues and Torah scrolls that were burned and desecrated signified, as Rabbi Leo Baeck had earlier realized, that the thousand-year history of the Jews in Germany had come to an end. It is that noble history and glorious legacy of German Jewry that we remember on the Kristallnacht, a legacy of religious scholarship, intellectual creativity, and scientific achievement. Nobel Prize winners and rabbinic scholars, businessmen and soldiers, government ministers and social activists all had their worlds shattered, along with the thousands of windows that gave the Kristallnacht its name.
The Legacy of Kristallnacht
There are important lessons to be drawn from the Kristallnacht, for it served as a bridge experience for both Jews and Nazis. For the Jews, there was the terrifying realization that political antisemitism can lead to violence, even in Western Civilization. It also demonstrated that apathy can still pervade the world when the lives of Jews or other minorities are threatened. For the Nazis, the Kristallnacht taught that while the world might condemn their pogroms, it would not actively oppose them. World opinion, however, taught the Nazis the value of secrecy in the perpetration of future actions against Jews. Added to the complaints of Germans offended by the random violence of the Kristallnacht, the stage was set for the Final Solution – the organized, bureaucratically efficient genocide of 6.000.000 men, women, and children. In retrospect, the Kristallnacht was more than the shattering of windows and illusions. It portended the physical destruction of European Jewry. As such, this commemoration must be observed both as a memorial and as a warning.
Fact Sheet – November 9 & November 10, 1938
Sites: Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria.
Perpetrators: Mobs of Germans and Austrians, acting under instructions of the Nazi hierarchy.
Damage: Arrested, sent to camps, Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, 30.000 Jews (8000 from Austria).
Murdered: 36 Jews (other sources put this figure at 91), 36 more severely injured.
Vandalized and/or set ablaze: 7500 Jewish homes, businesses, 267 synagogues, 76 destroyed.
Pretext: Assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, by Polish-Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, in an attempt to protest the forced deportation of his family, among others, to the Polish-German Border.
Berlin, November 1938
People walk past broken store windows in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht. The nazis destroyed Jewish-owned businesses on the night of broken glass.
Causes: Nazi policy decision based on (1) Internal Nazi Party power struggles as segments of the party (i.e., the SA, the propaganda section) wanted a greater role in the anti-Jewish activities. (2) Urge to expedite the exclusion of Jews from German life. (3) Economic factors, such as the necessity to raise large amounts of money to pay for the rearmament of the German military. (4) 15th anniversary of Hitler’s Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923 created an atmosphere that encouraged street violence.
Aftermath
(1) The Jewish community is immediately fined 1.000.000.000 Reichsmarks Nazi government confiscates all insurance claims. (2) Nazis expedite plan for elimination of the Jew from (the) economic life of Germany established as official policy, November 12, 1938.
Personalities
Leo Baeck (1873-1956), Rabbi, leader of organized German Jewry during Nazi era. Although realizing that when the Nazis took power, the thousand-year history of German Jewry had come to an end, he refused all offers to escape, insisting that he could flee only when he was the last Jew alive in Germany. He was arrested several times and finally sent to Theresienstadt (Czechoslovakia), where he clandestinely taught philosophy and theology. He survived the Holocaust and died in London in 1956.
Josef Goebbels (1897-1945), Nazi Minister of Propaganda, who organized the Kristallnacht pogrom, asserting his power and authority in internal Nazi policies.
Hermann Goering (1893-1946), Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, and second in authority to Hitler. On November 12, 1938, he convened a conference to deal with the results of the Kristallnacht, at which time heavy sanctions were imposed on the Jewish community.
Herschel Grynszpan (1821-19?), 17-year-old Polish Jew, living in France, who shot Ernst vom Rath upon hearing of his family’s plight (deported from Germany to no-man’s land between Germany and Poland). Grynszpan was arrested, never tried, and later handed over to the Nazis. His eventual fate is uncertain.
Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), Head of Reich Main Security Office, issued a telegram of instruction to rioters on November 10, 1938. On November 12, he participated in a meeting designed to plan the removal of Jews from German economic life. Later, in 1942, he convened and participated in the Wannsee Conference where the Final Solution was adopted. Heydrich was second in importance to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization. Nicknamed ‘Blond Beast‘ by the Nazis, and ‘Hangman Heydrich’ by others, he had insatiable greed for power and was a cold, calculating manipulator without human compassion who was the leading planner of Hitler’s Final Solution in which the Nazis attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish Population of Europe.
(Above) During the Holocaust, the Theresienstadt (Terezín) Ghetto was a site of imprisonment for more than 140.000 Jews. Theresienstadt played several important roles in the Nazis’ persecution and murder of Jews. It simultaneously served as a transit ghetto and an old-age ghetto. In 1944, the Nazis used Theresienstadt as a deceptive propaganda tool to trick international observers.
Berlin, Night of Broken Glass, 1938
Telegraph 1 – Telegram received from JF
This telegram must be Leipzig closely paraphrased before being communicated. Dated November 10, 1938, to anyone.
Rec’d 8:40 a.m. Secretary of State, Washington.
November 10, 11 a.m.
Violent anti-Semetic program pogrom in progress in Leipzig (Germany). Three synagogues in flames, one next Consulate burning, but the fire is under control. Hundreds of shop windows throughout the city were smashed, no American property or lives were molested as yet. The district was badly damaged.
A Letter by a Firefighter
This letter was written by a retired fireman, who remembered Crystal Night in Laupheim (Germany).
The alarm went off between 0530 and 0530 a.m., and as usual, I jumped on my bicycle towards the firehouse. I had a strange feeling when I got there and saw many people standing in front of it. I was not allowed to go into the firehouse to take the engines out, or even to open the doors. One of my friends, who lived next to the Synagogue, whispered to me, ‘Be quiet– the Synagogue is burning; I was beaten up already when I wanted to put out the fire.’ Eventually, we were allowed to take the fire engines out, but only very slowly. We were ordered not to use any water till the whole synagogue was burned down. Many of us did not like to do that, but we had to be careful not to voice our opinions, because ‘the enemy is listening.’
Only after one of the party members was worried that his house was going to catch fire were we allowed to use water. But, even then, we just had to stand and watch until the House of Prayers was reduced to rubble and ashes. In the meantime, the marshals rounded up the Jews and dragged them in front of the Synagogue, where they had to kneel down and put their hands above their heads. I saw with my own eyes how one old Jew was dragged down and pushed to his knees. Then the arsonists came in their brown uniforms to admire the results of their destruction. Everyone seemed rather quiet and subdued… We had to stand watch at the Synagogue to make sure there were no more smoldering sparks. My turn was from 10-11 and 0200 to 0300 p.m. The brown uniforms paraded around to admire their work. As I was watching the destroyed Synagogue and the frail old Jews, I wondered whose turn would be next! When would it be our turn? Will the same thing happen to our Protestant and Catholic Churches!
A Personal Memoir By Michael Bruce
Michael Bruce, a non-Jewish Englishman, provided this eyewitness account
Hurriedly, we went out into the street. It was crowded with people, all hurrying towards a nearby synagogue, shouting and gesticulating angrily. We followed. As we reached the synagogue and halted, silent and angry, on the fringe of the mob, flames began to rise from one end of the building. It was the signal for a wild cheer. The crowd surged forward, and greedy hands tore seats and woodwork from the building to feed the flames. Behind us we heard more shouts. Turning, we saw a section of the mob start off along the road towards Israel’s store, where, during the day, piles of granite cubes, ostensibly for repairing the roads, had been heaped.
Youths, men, and women, howling deliriously, hurled the blocks through the windows and at the closed doors. In a few minutes, the doors gave way, and the mob, shouting and fighting, surged inside to pillage and loot. By now, the streets were a chaos of screaming, bloodthirsty people lusting for Jewish bodies. I saw Harrison of The News Chronicle, trying to protect an aged Jewess who had been dragged from her home by a gang. I pushed my way through to help him and, between us, we managed to heave her through the crowd to a side street and safety. We turned back towards Israel’s, but now the crowd, eager for fresh conquests, was pouring down a side road towards the outskirts of the city.
We hurried after them in time to see one of the foulest exhibitions of bestiality I have ever witnessed. The object of the mob’s hate was a hospital for sick Jewish children, many of them cripples or consumptives. In minutes, the windows had been smashed and the doors forced. When we arrived, the swine were driving the wee mites out over the broken glass, barefoot and wearing nothing but their nightshirts. The nurses, doctors, and attendants were being kicked and beaten by the mob leaders, most of whom were women.
