Boganmeldelse

Bauer, Yehuda, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945

Yale University Press New Haven and London Copyright 1994 by Yale University. ISBN 0-300-06852-2


Først og fremmest er bogen et partsindlæg i et internt jødisk opgør om de tidlige 1940eres prioritering mellem at skabe en stat - Israel - og redde de jødiske mennesker i Europa. Det var det centrale stridspunkt jøder imellem helt op til staten Israels oprettelse. Den del vil jeg slet ikke gå ind på her, den fortjener sin egen artikel. Se her bl.a. Alfred M. Lilienthal, What Price Israel? (1953). Den resumeres af Bauer selv på p. 176-7. JA/ Ben Gurion m.fl. skal forsvares mod antizionistiske/orthodoxe angreb for at have prioriteret Israel over jødiske liv.

Bogen er svær at anvende på grund af irriterende henvisninger af typen "again, this was before the Brand mission." uden sidehenvisning. (Der er to Brand i indekset). Der optræder en mængde irrelevante personer og mange sider med oplysninger, der intet har med bogens titel at gøre.

Logisk, klar fremstilling er ikke Bauers sag. Bauer modsiger selv, den opfattelse han har på p.126, allerede på p. 144, (om i hvilken udstrækning nazisterne selv tror på deres officielle tese om, at det er jøderne, der styrer resten af verden).

Bauers bog er et led i den almindelige Holocaust propaganda. Hans særlige ærinde er at forsvare et antal jøder, der har indladt sig på forhandlinger med nazisterne om at redde nogen af deres trosfæller. Det er en prisværdig opgave, som han udfører godt. Men mens han leverer rimelig sandsynliggørelse af, at man havde kunnet redde mange flere, så afviser han (for mig at se helt uden begrundelse) alligevel den konklusion. Bogen er i det hele ret overfladisk med mange udokumenterede påstande, ret amerikansk. Karakteristisk er, Bauers omtale af Hitlers tale i Reichstag, 300138, som han lader andre definere som signalet til jødeudryddelsen - i modstrid med en almindelig læsning af det faktisk sagte - og med f.eks. Gerlachs tolkning. Hitlers tale kunne lige så vel siges at knytte an til de forhandlinger om Seys-Inquarts tilbud om salg af jøder, der fulgte i kølvandet på Evian-konferencen senere samme år.

Bauers bog er et typisk led i kampagnen for det enestående i jødeforfølgelsen - der ses jo i denne kampagne helt bort fra andre forfulgte, socialdemokrater, kommunister, homoseksuelle, Jehovas Vidner, zigøjnere, handicappede o.s.v. Bauer bruger bl.a. et Himmler citat til støtte for dette synspunkt - han overser bekvemt, at citatet ligestiller asiater og jøder. Se også Wiki, sidste sætning.

Efter min første gennemlæsning og bearbejdning af bogen havde jeg det indtryk, at Vesten havde stor grund til dårlig samvittighed over ikke at have gjort noget for at redde jøderne. Og at Sverige havde været smålig og fedtet med modtagelsen af flygtninge og i øvrigt kun hjulpet skandinaver. Jeg konsulterede så den svenske Nationalencycklopedi under Folke Bernadotte og Raoul Wallenberg. (Der er begge nævnt hos Bauer). Wallenberg repræsenterede War Refugee Board, det organ, der ved Roosevelts indsats skabtes efter den mislykkede Evian-konference. (Jeg går ud fra, at det er det samme som Bauer kalder: Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR). [Evian-konferencen i juli 1938 var nazisternes første forsøg på at sælge (40.000 østrigske) jøder. Inden krystalnatten. Den var samtidig et forsøg på at vise, at ingen ville have jøderne. Wallenberg benyttede sig af ungarernes beredthed til at skifte side og stille sig i et positivt lys ved at give udrejse til jøder i slutningen af 1944. Der udstedtes svenske beskyttelsespas og oprettedes beskyttede huse til jøderne i Ungarn. Wallenberg forhandlede om jødernes videre vej med repræsentanter for SS og dermed for Himmler, hvis dagsorden var at søge en ensidig fred med Vestmagterne. Konsekvensen heraf var at Wallenberg ved Den røde Hærs indmarch i Budapest, januar 1945, blev taget til fange og i 1947 døde i russisk fængsel. Folke Bernadotte var leder af Svensk Røde Kors og ledede en aktion i krigens slutfase, der befriede 30.000 koncentrationslejrfanger, der først fik pakker med mad og medicin, så samledes i få lejre og endelig transporteredes til Sverige. Omkrig 11000 heraf var jøder. (NE2, 472). Det er et typisk led i den israelske propaganda, at der skal skabes dårlig samvittighed og at de positive indsatser ikke omtales. Det ændrer intet ved at kritikken af den manglende indsats overfor dødsmarcherne i foråret 1945 er velbegrundet. Når amerikanerne ikke reagerede på de lange rækker af vandrende og døende, kunne det jo skyldes, at det ligner Cherokee indianerne Trail of Tears. Bauer mener - og netop det er formentlig velbegrundet - at marchernes formål var at sikre, at meget få, helst ingen, slap levende igennem til de allierede. På Herzl's 40 års-dødsdag i 1944 gav Ben Gurion en skrap tale til de allierede, hvor han angreb dem for manglende støtte. Talen gengives på side 195. Jeg linker her til slutningen, som er et berettiget spørgsmål ! Selv Israels krigsforbrydelser gør ikke anklagen i spørgsmålet ugyldig eller urimelig.

Op til 1935 måske endda indtil november 1938 er nazisterne, trods modstand fra Reichsbank, parate til at betale for jødisk emigration ! Der aftales endda helt officielt en ordning, Ha'avarah, hvorefter jøder kan emigrere til Palæstina med i det mindste noget af deres formue. (Den indre modsigelse her, ligger hos Bauer, jeg tror den stammer fra en tilsvarende indre modsigelse i den tyske politik). Min konklusion er, at havde man (USA, jødiske organisationer) forstået signalerne og ikke haft Israel som 1. prioritet, pengene som 2. og menneskene først som 3., så kunne alle jøder, der endnu var levende i 1938 være reddet.

Man kan få det indtryk, at når det virkelig kom til stykket, så troede de ledende nazister ikke selv på, at det var jøderne, der styrede de allierede. Altså at antisemitismen var et mobiliserings-, et propagandainstrument, f.eks. overfor konservative kredse, hvor den var meget udbredt.

Bogen er koncentreret om den tid, hvor Himmler søgte at opnå en aftale med Vesten. Altså efter at det tyske nederlag synes i horisonten. På dette tidspunkt - ihvertfald - umuliggøres handelen næsten helt af, at nazisterne har brug for valutaen og derfor vil have jøderne betalt. Zionisterne i Palæstina har brug for de samme penge til at opbygge Israel.

Evian-forhandlingerne i 1938 er kun lige nævnt. Beskrivelsen er i overensstemmelse med fremstillingen i Hans Habes Die Mission ! Så der er vel ikke noget at sige til, at nogen har dårlig samvittighed. Danmark var repræsenteret ved Gustav Rasmussen. Prisen nazisterne forlangte var vel ret rimelig. Jeg er fascineret af Australiens begrundelse for ikke at tage imod jøder, selvom det var  længe inden Aborigines overhovedet omtaltes. Det skulle altså have kostet 125 millioner USD at redde ALLE Tysklands jøder ! Hvis nogen ville have taget imod dem. Tænk hvor meget bøvl Verden havde sluppet for. (For nu at følge Bauers historie-opfattelse.) Ikke engang de amerikanske jøder ville betale ! I hvert fald ikke uden en hård hestehandel først !!! På dette tidlige tidspunkt - og i lidt mindre grad senere - var det et væsentligt ønske hos nazisterne at få spredt jøderne over så mange lande som muligt, det var dog sekundært til at slippe af med dem. Nazisterne forventede, at spredningen ville udbrede antisemitismen til flere lande.

Jeg kan forestille mig, at der også i de ledende tyske kredse er de, der glæder sig over at genere briterne med illegal indvandring - det er dog tvivlsomt, om dette ønske kan opveje den langsigtede modstand mod oprettelsen af en jødisk stat.

I 1939 går det så vidt, at Gestapo støtter et projekt med at sende 10.000 tyske jøder til Palæstina på Hapag (Hamburg-Amerika linien) skibe. RVE (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland)  lover 10 millioner RM til projektet, der dog strander på krigsudbruddet.

I 1940 gennemtrumfer Eichmann gennem Stofer, at de rige jøder skal betale for de fattige, hvad der udelukker, at man kan udvælge unge, arbejdsduelige til emigration til Palæstina (51).

De jødiske SS-agenter myrdes når de ikke længere er nyttige.

Helt til oktober 1941 kan jøder forlade Tyskland (53), i god overensstemmelse med Gerlachs opfattelse, at beslutningen om udryddelse af Europas jøder toges i dec. 1941, det passer også ind i denne sammenhæng, at gasningen i Chelmno starter 8. dec. 1941 (53).

Som så ofte er der også i denne bog en del sideoplysninger, der belyser forholdene omkring. Således bl.a. at den Rigsflugtskat, som jeg troede var indført af nazisterne faktisk er gennemført af Brüning i 1931.

Af Tysklands ½ million jøder var 20 %, altså ca 100.000 indvandret efter 1900.

Et Abwehr-par i Istanbul kontakter i 1944 SIS og OSS og bliver hjulpet ud af Tyrkiet. 2 andre følger efter. Det skulle være udløsende faktor for fyringen af Canaris. (132-3)

Table 1 Sources: Avraham Barkai, Hakalkalah Hamtzit (Hebrew), Sifriat Poalim, Tel Aviv, 1986, p. 197; Barkai, German interests in the Ha'avara-Transfer Agreement, in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 35, Mohr, Tübingen, 1990, pp. 245-66.her fra Bauer, p. 14

Det fremgår af Table 1, at Hitler får sat gang i økonomien. Det kan vel bedst beskrives som militær-keynesianisme med oprustning og motorveje som aktiveringsmidler.

Nazisternes opstramning af valutapolitikken betød, at den tyske rigsbank ikke længere var parat til at give [kapitalistiske, sic! ??] emigranter til Palæstina 1000 GBP kontant med.

Bauer er ikke stringent i sin behandling af Tysklands økonomi. Han ser ikke, at det fundamentale problem for Tyskland er den relative mangel på valuta til indkøb af råvarer til våbenindustrien. Valutareserven faldt med en faktor 20 fra 1928 til 1938.

Himmler said "that, [udryddelsen af polakker og jøder] too, happened on a legal basis. Because the Führer decided in Breslau in 1941 that the Jews should be annihilated. And the order of the Führer is the highest law in Germany." p. 105 kan stride mod  Gerlach, der argumenterer for at beslutningen blev truffet 12.12.41. se også note 10, 273.

Bauer glemmer helt den økonomiske side !!!!, Tysklands valutamangel og krigens omkostninger betyder, at jøderne ses som en penge- og valutareserve; lige så glemmer han, at man bevidst anvendte jøderne som gidsler overfor USA (Gerlach).

Det Heydrich fik ordre til af Göring 310741 var vel nærmest at udarbejde et arbejspapir som grundlag for ledelsens beslutninger. Og når Bauer beskriver det som en beslutning (decision), så er det, fordi han ikke ved. hvordan man arbejder med den type af politiske beslutninger.

Som Bauer (men ikke eksplicit) beskriver det - det skal kontrolleres med andre kilder - udgjorde jøderne en overklasse i det Østrig-Ungarske dobbeltmonarki. Det ville passe med, at det er her anti-semitismen har sit center.

Bauer taler om en britisk tendens til at lukke Palæstina for jødisk indvandring. Det er jo noget vrøvl. England havde Palæstina som mandatområde under Folkeforbundet. Det indebærer en forpligtelse til at undgå forandringer, der kan foregribe Folkeforbundets endelige afgørelse om områdets fremtid. Det er snarere det, at englænderne accepterer en legal indvandring, der kan kritiseres. Anklagen mod England er i.h.t. Lilienthal, en del af zionisternes afledningsmanøvre i forhold til Roosevelts forsøg på at løse det almindelige flygtningeproblem. Det må betyde, at den først bliver fremtrædende i slutningen af anden verdenskrig.

Bauer bidrager til opfattelsen af Himmler som hæderlig. Gad vide, hvor meget der er virkelighed og hvor meget myte.

Allen W. Dulles styrer et OSS-net i Tyskland fra Schweiz.(årstal ???). "Wild Bill" Donovan, der var chef for OSS forsøgte  at skabe en kontakt mellem Helmuth v Moltke (på dennes initiativ), og senere v. Papen (okt. 1943) og den amerikanske ledelse om et samarbejde mellem vestmagterne og den tyske konservative opposition [CIA var altså allerede antikommunistisk inden dets skabelse, mens den amerikanske politik endnu var samarbejdet med SSSR. - Om så det samarbejde var reelt eller kun gik ud på, at lade Sovjet tage de store tab. OJ]. I april 1944 sender Donovan en rapport om henvendelsen fra Moltke som behandledes i Joint Chiefs of Staff, men som først nåede Roosevelts bord efter attentatet mod Hitler i juli 1944. En sådan antikommunistisk alliance lå ikke Churchill fjernt. Samarbejdet mellem OSS og SS-folk ledte efter krigen til at nogen af de kendte SSere blev hjulpet til Amerika, især Sydamerika. [Odessa, Organisation Der Ehemaligen SS Angehörige, OJ].

Allerede under anden verdenskrig hyrede man - in casu den ungarske hær - bosniske muslimer til at føre krig for sig.

Allerede dengang var det efterretningstjenesten (counterintelligence) Emniyet, der styrede Tyrkiet.

p 197 øverst om forholdet mellem det ungarske hemmelige politi og SS
Jeg kan kun opfatte SSs handlingsmåde derhen, at de ville have solgt jøderne, hvis der havde været købere.

Ungarerne vil gerne skifte side (1943 ?), for at gøre et godt indtryk på Vesten vil de lade et stort antal jøder udvandre. Da Ungarn er lukket inde kræves der et tysk transitvisum. Det benytter tyskerne til at stille krav om, at hele Budapest ryddes for jøder. I hvert fald Schweiz accepterer det krav. Jeg læser Bauer derhen, at ungarerne er villige til at lade 40.000 gå, Sverige vil acceptere 87, selvom Raoul Wallenberg presser på for flere. Det er for mig uklart om de 87 er udover de knap 500 med svensk forbindelse.

Sidste afsnit p. 197 bruges til et bidrag til kampagnen mod muftien af Jerusalem.

p. 199 illustrerer bogens rolle i et opgør mellem zionister og deres jødiske modstandere.

Det ret pinligt at konstatere, at dødsmarcherne fra KZlejrene blev iagttaget af allierede fly og alligevel ikke optræder i de officielle rapporter. Men viljen til blindhed overfor statens/overordnedes forbrydelser/forsømmelser er meget udbredt. De få amerikanere, der tænkte over sagen kunne jo være kommet til at tænke på Cherokees "Trail of Tears".

Citater:

The art of the historian - history is hardly a science - is not just to describe and explain what happened and why but also to discover the beginnings of processes that realistically could have taken place but did not. p. 4

Nazi policies toward the Jews were ill defined; the original Nazi Party platform of 1920 promised to deny Jews Citizens' rights and expel all Jewish immigrants who had entered Germany after 1914. p. 5

By September 1933, Jews had been removed from all government or government-controlled positions, with a few exceptions for war veterans. p. 5-6

The Jews of Germany numbered about half a million, or less than 1 percent of the population. Of these, about 20 percent were immigrants from Eastern Europe who had arrived after 1900. p. 6

The non-Zionists, mainly the American Jewish Committee and similar bodies in the United States, the Anglo-Jewish Association in Britain, and important groups of wealthy people in France, Germany, and elsewhere, were committed to supporting the upbuilding of Palestine as a refuge for those Jews who had nowhere to go but shied away from the Zionist political aim of a Jewish political entity - a State or a Commonwealth in Palestine. p. 7

 ... Jewish Street fighters who were part of the social-democratic militia called the Reichsbanner. ... p. 7

 ... the small Jewish Yishuv (the Jewish population in Palestine 278,000 souls in 1932) ... p. 9

 ... an agreement was worked out between the Reichswirtschaftsministerium, or RWM (Ministry of Economic Affairs), and the [Jewish] agency; it was signed in August 1933. .. The results of this arrangement were, from the Jewish point of view, that Jewish capital could flee Germany without the Germans receiving any foreign currency in return. About 20,000 wealthy Jews managed to leave Germany with their capital - this was about 37 percent of all German Jewish immigrants to Palestine. p.10

Neither in the United States nor in Europe were the bigger Jewish merchants enthusiastic about the idea. In Palestine, too, the popular mood was in favor of the boycott, but the Jewish public bodies did not encourage the idea. By the summer, however, the American Jewish Congress, with  [Rabbi Stephen S.] Wise now persuaded to support the boycott, had become the major Jewish body organizing the boycott movement, just when the Jewish Agency reached its agreement with the Nazi government, called Ha'avarah (transfer). Wise was a major leader of mainstream Zionists, and so were some other supporters of the boycott; and because Ha'avarah had been arranged by Zionist bodies in Palestine, a very sharp controversy ensued within the ranks of the Zionist leadership. p. 11

Strict control over foreign currency dealings had been imposed by the Bruening government in 1931, when foreign capital began to flee Germany. A capital flight tax ( Reichsfluchtsteuer ) was imposed on emigrants who took with them sums in excess of 200,000 Reichsmark. p. 14

In March 1935, as the Nineteenth Zionist Congress was being planned, Sam Cohen again raised the spectre of the boycott in Berlin. The Reichsbank had until that time agreed to pay in foreign currency (cash!) the 1,000 pounds Sterling that each capitalist immigrant to Palestine had to have to attain an immigration certificate. p. 15

Source: Taken from Wolfram Fischer, Deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik, 1918-1945, Peters, Lüneburg, 1961, p. 104. her fra Bauer, p.16

The discussions began to revolve around the question of whether permitting Jews to take out some of their property would emigrate more Jews or whether the concession could be safely refused and Jews could still be expelled. 19

The Reichsbank, as might have been expected, opposed Ha'avarah, to which it had to pay Sterling for the capitalist emigrants to Palestine. In 1933-35 these payments amounted to RM 31.1 million. During the same period the net yield to the Germans from all kinds of exports within the Ha'avarah agreement was RM 27.3 million (these were payments from the blocked Paltreu accounts of the emigrants). 19-20

The detailed economic picture of Ha'avarah demonstrates a crucial point: the Germans had no economic reason to continue Ha'avarah in the late 1930s. What motivated them to persevere, contrary to their economic interests, was the furthering of Jewish emigration. 21

Generally speaking, the conditions for Ha'avarah deteriorated after 1935 The rhe Germans were interested in Jewish emigration but refused more and more adamantly to make any financial concessions to achieve it. p. 22

A decisive influence among the Jews was Max Warburg, the head of the Hamburg-based banking house of Warburg. p. 23

Another initiative, apparently also due to Max Warburg, was the establishment of the Allgemeine Treuhandstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Altreu), in effect run by the same people who ran Ha'avarah. This office arranged for capital transfers to countries other than Palestine, but on conditions that were much worse than Ha'avarah's; as late as 1936-39, then, at least some influential German officials had a preference for emigration to Palestine. When during the Kristallnacht pogrom (November 9-10,1938) all the Jewish offices in Berlin were ransacked, Paltreu and Altreu - both registered in Britain - were left untouched. The success of Altreu was apparently very limited but since the files were bombed in London during the blitz, there is little chance of ever filling in the picture. p.24

On July 8,1937, von Hentig wrote a letter to Weizsäcker in which he supported the idea of emigrating poor Jews and opposed the emigration of rich ones, who should be kept in Germany so money could be squeezed out of them. 25

Ha'avarah, he said, had supported the emigration of younger middle-class Jews to Palestine, whereas the really rich ones had gone to the West and to South Africa. There was a danger that German Jews emigrating to the West would exercise an anti-German influence on public opinion there, whereas if they went to Palestine they would be among themselves, and Germany would not be affected. 25

A completely different approach was pioneered in the report submitted by Hagen and Adolf Eichmann after their largely abortive visit to Palestine in September 1937. They opposed the whole Ha'avarah idea, because it was possible to get rid of the Jews by expelling them without giving them any money to transfer. In addition, the transfer of capital could only help in the Establishment of a Jewish State. 26

The Reichsbank would give Jews cash to enable them to emigrate, but it would determine who received the cash and in what amounts. The Germans were unhappy about transferring funds for Zionist institutions and wanted whatever cash was transferred to go to the emigrants directly. 26

... reports a Statement by Alfred Rosenberg: at a consultation Hitler had reiterated his decision to support both emigration to Palestine and Ha'avarah. Again, typically for the decisionmaking process in the Third Reich, this did not mean that attempts to change the decision were not made. In fact, only von Hentig continued, on practical grounds, to support the Führer's policy in a way; all the others tried to alter it. Ha'avarah was kept alive against the wishes of almost all German government economic bureaucrats because Hitler had decided that emigration of Jews was more important than any economic consideration - and that Ha'avarah was one of the ways to achieve that aim. 27

... and in Hitler's talk with a South African Minister (November 18,1938) in which he argued that Jewish capital in Germany belonged to the German people. 27

I should perhaps mention that this was but a tiny part of the total capital of german Jews, estimated at RM 10,000,000,000 in 1933. 28

They used the only option they had to save what could be saved - namely, negotiating with the enemy. Their purpose at that stage was not yet to rescue lives. Indeed, the upbuilding of Palestine was their primary goal, because Jewish Palestine was too weak to undertake rescues in Germany or elsewhere. 29

The initiative for convening the Conference (Evian) was American. Roosevelt wanted to do «something« for the people persecuted by the Nazis» without spending any money [!!!!! OJ] and without changing the quota System of immigration to the United States. 30

The Administration declared that it was uniting the small Austrian quota with the German one, and the resulting quota, 27370, was to be filled much more than before. Indeed it was: in fiscal 1937-38, the number of immigrants accepted into the United States was 17,199, whereas in the first half of the next fiscal year it was 19,452, and for the whole of fiscal 1938-39 it was close to 38,000 (including visitors' visas and other arrangements that caused the quota to be oversubscribed). 30

At the Evian Conference itself (July 6-15,1938), the delegates tried very hard to prevent any refugees from being dumped on their respective countries - certainly no Jews. The Latin Americans declared that they did not want any traders or intellectuals, the Australians said they did not have a racial problem and did not wish to import one, the French and the British said that their countries were full and that they could not accept further refugees, and the British also volunteered the statement that Palestine was closed to mass immigration. 31

The main purpose of the Americans, however, was to set up machinery to negotiate with the Nazis, and this was achieved: the Conference delegates agreed to establish an Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR). The agreement was by no means easy to reach, because the British and French were reluctant to remove the refugee question from the League of Nations, of which the United States was not a member. 31

An interesting and rather mysterious event occurred at Evian. A famous Viennese Jewish otolaryngologist, Heinrich Neumann von Hethars, came and asked for a Hearing with the principals of the Western delegations. He apparently met with Taylor and claimed that he had been sent, or that he had agreed to come, to Evian to bring to the attention of the delegations there an offer by the Nazi authorities to sell Jews for $250 per person. He had been sent, he said, by the then Nazi ruler of Austria, Artur Seyss-Inquart. When Tayler refused to talk about ransom, Neumann was reportedly told by the Gestapo to tell Taylor that 40,000 Austrian Jews would be sent to concentration camps. According to one researcher, Taylor then appointed a special subcommittee under the Colombian delegate to deal with the threat, but nothing practical emerged. These details are not verified, and the memoirs of the participants do not record Neumann's intervention at all, though accounts of his mission appeared in the New York Times (July 7) and the London Daily Express (July 12). The diplomats at Evian either did not take Neumann seriously or, on the contrary, did take his mission seriously but refused to consider a ransom proposal by the Nazis. It seems clear that he showed up, and there is limited historical evidence that he indeed proposed some ransom scheme, but it appears impossible to ascertain who sent him and for what purpose. But such a mission fits the general picture: the Nazis wanted to get rid of the Jews and thought that the West might be willing to buy them. 32

All prospective approaches to the Germans were put on hold, however, with the outbreak of the Sudeten crisis in September, and it was not until October 27 that Rublee presented his deas of how to deal with the refugees. 32

Rublee - and Schacht - proposed that 25 per cent of German Jewish assets (estimated at RM 6 billion in 1938, or $2.4 billion - down from RM 10 billion when Hitler came to power) be set up as a trust fund in Germany. Jews abroad would make available an equivalent sum (in non-German currencies), which would nominally be a loan to the prospective emigrants, and this fund would pay for travel and settlement. Emigrants would repay the loan and the interest on it in the form of German goods that they would take with them, bought by money from the trust fund, and sell thcse goods abroad, thus advancing German exports. Schacht spoke of "additional" German exports, that is, over and above the quantities that Germany was exporting in any case. 33

Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign Minister, wanted to preserve his own turf from incursion by the Goering-Schacht economic alliance, and he was against giving the Jews any capital whatsoever. But it had been made specific at the November 12 meeting that Hitler had empowered Goering to deal with the "Jewish question." 33

Schacht continued these talks in December, after the Jews had rejected the original proposals as in effect bolstering the German economy. 34

The aim of the plan that Schacht and Rublee agreed on was to settle 150,000 Jews of working age abroad, then 250,000 dependents. A further German promise was that the 200,000, presumably elderly, people left  behind would not be molested and, according to a newspaper report, even permitted to reopen some businesses, so that ''Jews outside would not be called upon to support their coreligionists in the Reich. 34

Historians have made abundantly clear the steps of radicalization that the Nazi regime took in regard to Jews in 1937-39. Jews had to register their property in advance of confiscatory measures (March 1938), Austrian Jews were beaten, humiliated, and arrested in droves (March-June 1938), arrests took place in Germany itself in June 1938, synagogues in Munich (Jne 9) and Nuremberg (August 10) were burnt and demolished, and then came the pogrom known as Kristallnacht. On November 9-10,1938, hundreds of synagogues were burnt or demolished, thousands of Jewish stores were broken into and plundered, 26,000 male Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps, and close to one hundred persons were killed. The purpose was mainly to make the Jews emigrate, as quickly as possible, but also to mobilize he masses against the Jewish enemy and thereby boost the popularity of the Party. The primary aim was achieved, but the second was not, for the bulk of the German population evinced a lack of enthusiasm for the pogrom, which they felt to be unpleasant - they did not particularly like Jews, but they did not like disorder, either. 35

An estimated 102,200 Jews left Germany, Austria, and Danzig in 1938; an additional 15,000 left Bohemia and Moravia, which were still part of an independent Czechoslovakia, but most of those who left were German Jews who had fled to the Czech lands. Another 144,000 left the German Reich in 1939. 35

On January 30, [1938] as mentioned, he [Hitler] gave a rambling, two-and-a-half-hour speech to the Reichstag on all aspects of his policy, domestic and foreign. A section of the speech was devoted to the Jewish "question." The oft-quoted passage threatening the the Jews of Europe with annihilation came at the end of that section:  »If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." This has been widely interpreted to reflect a plan to annihilate the Jews. 35

The crucial sentences were his demands that the Jews should be settled elsewhere by international agreement; and he added: "I think that the sooner this problem is solved the better; for European questions cannot be settled until the Jewish question is cleared up. It may very well be possible that sooner or later an agreement on this problem may be reached in Europe, even between those nations that otherwise do not so easily come together."" 36

But a little-noticed comment by Goering in November is a foretaste of Hitler's remarks: "Then one can make another proposal: the rich Jews can buy a territory in North America, Canada, or someplace else for their coreligionists." 36

This could be achieved - so oder so - either by arriving at an agreement with the West, which would give the Jews some capital, promote German exports as a side effect, and let the West see to their settlement; or by arriving at an arrangement to emigrate them to a territory such as Madagascar; or by simply expelling them, after confiscating their property, by means of unbridled terror. And if a war broke out, then - so  oder so, right? 37

Had things gone his way, he would have won a war against Poland and then, strengthened in the East, settled accounts with with France in order to deal with the East once and for all. He wanted an alliance with Britain based on the anti-Bolshevik attitude of the British government and would offer a division of the world between a germanized European continent, Britain, and presumably Japan and the United States. 38

We find some confirmation of this interpretation in two other documents af that fateful January 1939. On January 24, Goering instructed Heydrich to set up a Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The key sentence in the document is the first: "The emigration of the Jews from Germany is to be furthered by all possible means." 38

The new central office (run in effect by Adolf Eichmann) was to get rid of the Jews in the quickest and most efficient way. 38

The Jews did not want to make a contribution to Jewish settlement outside Europe but left it to Rublee to exert pressure on the German government to part with money to enable the Jews to leave. On top of that, as Evian has shown, the various countries did not want the Jews. Even the settlement of 100,000 Jews faced great difficulties, and Poland and Romania were clamoring to be rid of their Jews, too, so that even when the last Jew left German soil the problem for Germany would not be over. Palestine was no solution because of its limited absorptive capacity. Owing to the pressure of Arab resistance, the British now limited Jewish immigration. Germany was against the establishment of a Jewish State there, and Ha'avarah was also against German interests. Germany now wanted to splinter Jewish emigration and not concentrate it in Palestine, so that as many countries as possible would receive Jews, thereby increasing antisemitism and also sympathy for Germany." 38-9

Most Zionists opposed the idea, [om at betale] but two leading American personalities, Stephen S. Wise, head of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, and Louis Lipsky, an outstanding leader of American Zionism, approved. 39

The crucial point was that the proposed agreement had the full support of the U.S. and British governments. 39

This required setting up a Coordinating Foundation to do two things: direct the prospective emigrants, who now would come out with money, to places of immigration; and raise the counterfunds - according to the agreement, a  sum of $600 million - in the midst of what still was a bad economic crisis. Roosevelt again called on Myron C. Taylor to be the go-between, and a first meeting between him and a group of prominent Jewish non-Zionist leaders, roughly representing the American Jewish Committee and the JDC, took place on March 28, 1939; a second, broader meeting, in the chambers of Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, a Roosevelt contact, took place on April 15. The Jewish response was still guarded: 'We should take no steps that directly or by implication would give recognition by the Jewish community as such to the validity of any expropriation of private property or of the requirement that German Citizens who are Jews shall be driven into exile.' If Taylor wanted to form an organization to implement the plan, such an organization should be general, not Jewish. Further, private funds would not suffice, and overnmental help was essential. 39-40

Yet on April 29 forty-one Jewish leaders met and agreed to the plan. On May 4, Paul Baerwald of the JDC, Henry Ittleson, Lewis L. Strauss, Judge Joseph Proskauer, Sol Stroock - all of them leaders of the American Jewish Committee - and Judge Rosenman met with the President. Sumner Welles and Pierrepont Moffat represented the State Department. Roosevelt urged the Jews to set up the foundation as soon as possible. In the wake of that unprecedented pressure, JDC sent two enior representatives to London to negotiate with the British to set up the foundation.

The first problem of the Jewish leaders was money, or rather the lack of it.

The situation was further comphcated by the publication of the British White Paper on Palestine on May 17, 1939. The Bitish were under Arab pressure and feared Arab diversionary activities in the Middle East in case of var in Europe. 40

British Jewry's resources were strained to the limit. They had to support the children coming from Germany and large numbers of adult immigrants as well - the total number of refugees arriving in Britain in 1939 was over 50,000. In short, as the JDC emissaries soon found out, British Jews would not be able to help in the foundation project. 41

... and the American Jewish Congress and Labor leaders in New York demanded an assurance from JDC that no foreign currency and no additional exports would accrue to Germany as a result of the new approach. 41

The charter was signed on July 20 - six weeks before the outbreak of World War II. 41

The fact remains that American Jews were pressured by a Gentile President of their country to save their European kin, possibly because Roosevelt read the handwriting on the wall better than they did. But the effort did not succeed. Why? 42

This stood in no contradiction to Hitler's willingness to have the Jews leave by agreement with the Americans and thc British. But the British chose to enter the war, all contact was broken, and that was the end of that. 42

Hitler said explicitly in a number of statements to his military, to his nearest collaborators, and to others why he wanted the war. His statements can be summarized thus: he wanted the expansion of Germany in order to fortify the power of the Germanic or Nordic peoples of the Aryan race in the struggle for hegemony in Europe; and this was impossible without contending with the "encirclement" of Germany by its enemies, who were directed by International Jewry. The main threat came from Soviet Bolshevism, which was nothing other than the most dangerous expression of the Jewish will to rule the world. 42-3

To achieve that goal, International Jewry had to be fought, because it was behind every major power opposing Germany. The war was, therefore, not motivated by pragmatic considerations or interests - not military, not economic, not practical-political, but by ideology, and ideology alone. A central part of that ideology was antisemitism. 43

The Western governments were willing to press their Jews to agree to the plan but did not provide them with funds, nor did they open their gates to the refugees. 43

The background to the contacts, on the Jewish side, was the increasing tendency of the British in Palestine to limit, even choke off, Jewish immigration. 44

[I]n 1935 the British permitted a legal immigration of 62,000 Jews to Palestine. 44-5

Agami and the others established a link with the Gestapo through Wolfgang Karthaus, a highly placed Austrian Nazi who was willing to help the Jews, partly for ideological reasons. 46

[T]he first Mossad ship to transport people from the Reich (the Colorado, which transferred its passengers to the Atrato at sea) sailed from Susak, Yugoslavia, in March 1939, carrying 400 passengers (including 280 from Germany). After a short while, however, agents of Goebbels's propaganda ministry discovered the illegal transport arrangement in Yugoslavia, and Goebbels published the story in his paper, Der Angriff. One agency of the Nazis had sabotaged another. 46

At first, Eichmann appears to have been opposed to illegal transports to Palestine. 47

It may well have represented Eichmanr's own preferences. But they soon changed. 47

Gestapo pressure was a powerful reason for the private transports that left Vienna between May 1938 and May 1939. The decisive fact was that Jewish emigration was the central pillar of Nazi policies toward the Jews.  47

The Romanians agreed to permit passage of river-boats with immigrants to a Romanian Black Sea port, provided a vessel was there to receive them and provided some Romanian Jews would be extruded as well. 47

In August 1938 Eichmann established the Zentralstelle fur jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) in Vienna. 48

 ... the Zentralstelle deprived the Jews of their property and in return provided them with exit permits, one major aim being to force the richer people to pay for the emigration of the poorer ones. 48

The more Jews left the Reich, die greater the success the SS could claim in its internal battles for the dictator's favor. B immigration was, in addition, a promising way to extrude Jews to Palestine in the face of British opposition. The policy of the SS in this matter was radically opposed to that of the Foreign Office. 49

That he [Hitler] did not stop Ha'avarah explicidy, even in 1939, and that he approved of the Schacht-Rublee plan although it did not preclude emigration to Palestine increase the plausibility of this hypothesis. 49

Eichmann's success in emigrating some 117,000 Austrian Jews in 1938-39, to which the B-immigration contribution was minimal, caused Heydrich to push for the establishment of a Zentralstelle on the Viennese model in Berlin. Goering, the man responsible, under Hitler, for Jewish policies, signed an appropriate order on January 24,1939, and although Heinrich Müller, the Gestapo chief, was the formal head of the new outfit, Eichmann ultimately became responsible in fact for Jewish emigration in the whole of the Reich. 49

 ... send 10,000 German Jews to Palestine on vessels supplied by the German Hapag (Hamburg-Amerika) Lines - "illegally"! The Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (RVE), the official organization of German Jews - set up in July 1939 to replace the Reichsvertretung, which had operated until the Kristallnacht - offered to pay 10 million Reichsmark for the venture, quite contrary to its previous policies. 49

Storfer was born in 1882, in Bukovina, and became a respected merchant and banker in Austria. He was not active in Jewish affairs, but_after the Anschluss he joined the unoflicial Austrian Jewish delegation to the Evian conference. 50

On June 15,1939, his [Willi Perl] cousin in Prague, Robert Mandler, had received permission from the Gestapo to exchange Czech crowns for British pounds up to £20 per person. Germany was suffering from a lack of hard currency, and here the Gestapo was offering the Jews British pounds if only they left! 51

Storfer himself, like Mandler and some of the others, was murdered in the end - just as many other Jewish leaders were murdered who had supped with Eichmann. 53

Emigration to Palestine got rid of only a few thousand Jews - in fact, between September 1,1939, and March 1941, the number of B immigrants was 12,863, not all of them from the Reich, nor did all of them reach Palestine. 53

On July 3,1940,he [Eichmann] called the leaders of the RVE in the Vienna and the Prague communities and demanded that they submit a plan within forty-eight hours to remove all Jews from the Reich. 53

Until October 1941, however, Jews from the Reich were still permitted to leave, and many were pushed across the horders, even though mass murder had started in the areas being conquered in the Soviet Union. Indeed, the October date coincides with the preparation for the activation of the first mass murder camp at Chelmno, where gassings started on December 8,1941, but preparations were under way in October, when Jews could still leave. 53

Willi Perl captured the gist of the paradox inherent in the situation when he said that "on ships of neutral countries, young Jews of many nationalities were traveling with our organization to British-held Palestine, where they would undoubtedly join the British forces to fight the Nazis. The British tried to prevent this. The Germans not only permitted it; they aided the undertaking of providing the British with young soldiers who were doubtlessly well motivated to fight the Nazis. The Germans let the people out who would otherwise have been able to perform slave labor in factories. The Nazis supplied the riverboats, and they even granted the right to exchange local currency into foreign currency so needed by the Reich." 53-4

There is no evidence that any major Nazi agency was interested in negotiations with Jews or about Jews, except for B immigration, from the invasion of Poland well into 1942. 55
With the invasion of Poland, all contact with the United States regarding the sale of Jews ceased. 55

On September 21,1939, a consultation was held by Heydrich with office heads and chiefs of the special SS and Police Einsatzgruppen (Action Groups), as the police murder units spreading terror in occupied Poland were called. Those attending were very high ranking: Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller; Artur Nebe, head of the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo or Criminal Police); Adolf Eichmann, and their inhabitants, including the Jews, was discussed. 55
The crucial sentences in the protocol of the meeting, written on September 27, read as follows: "The Commissar for Settlement in the East will be the Reichsführer SS [Himmler]. The deportation of Jews to the alien province, extrusion beyond the demarcation line, was approved by the Führer. But all this will take a year."55
"alien province" is ex| future Generalgouvernement,
The idea of concentrating all Jews in the Lublin area was pursued then and later--again with die explicit support of Hitler.* The Opposition of the new Nazi governor of the GG, Hans Frank, to these deportations, mainly for economic reasons, received the support of Goering, and the idea of a Lublin "reservation" for Jews was dropped in March-April 1940.« 57
In the document Himmler also spelled out, in somewhat inexact language, the new policy toward the Jews: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony." 57
From then until die autumn, or possibly even the end of 1940, the Madagascar "Solution" was the preferred one in Nazi planning. 57
In October 1940 the Nazis deported 7,600 German Jews, mainly from the Baden-Pfalz area, not eastward but westward into France. This choice made sense if the plan was to deport the Jews via French ports to a former French colony. 58
As the months passed and the defeat of the Luftwaffe in its attempt to prepare for the ground invasion of Britain became evident, Nazi enthusiasm for the Madagascar plan waned. At the same time--actually, from July 1940 on Hitler began to prepare his main core of collaborators for a war against the Soviet Union. 58

!!! The decision was taken as Nazi Germany seemed on the point of victory in Europe, and as I have argued elsewhere. the Order to Heydrich, signed by Goering on July 31,1941, empowering the police Chief to prepare an all-European Solution (Gesamtlösung) to the Jewish "problem" and to prepare the ground for a "Final Solution" (Endlösung), is in fact most probably Hitler's order to murder the Jews." !! 59

Not until the autumn of 1942 did German fortunes change. The invasion of North Africa, the British victory at El Alamein, and the bogging-down of the German offensive at Stalingrad all signalled the end of the farthest German advance, the turn of the tide. 61
Hele værket har karakter af en politisk pamflet. jødeforfølgelsen er enestående !
Og så handler det meget lidt om forhandlingerne !
Kap 5 er det første om forhandlinger
the peculiar negotiations that took place in Slovakia in 1942-43 between a group of Jewish leaders and the Nazi Berater (adviser) on Jewish affairs in Bratislava, Dieter Wisliceny. 62
A Catholic priest, Andrej Hlinka, founded the Slovenská L'udová Strana, or SL'S (Slovak People's Party), a nationalistic, antisemitic, and anti-Czech political body, which slowly gained adherents in interwar Slovakia. A party militia, die Hlinková Garda, or HG (Hlinka Guard), copied the party militias in fascist states. 62-63
After Hlinka's death in 1938, the party was led by another Catholic priest, Jozef Tiso. 63
typisk: As Nazi Germany encircled Czechoslovakia in the 1930s... 63
Slovakia; its independence was declared on March 14,1939. 63
der hvor han virker vidende er på jødiske fraktioner i Slovakiet, p. 63 -
The main drift of new laws and regulations. which on September 9, 1941, culminated in die promulgation of a «Jewish codex, was the expropriation of Jewish property and its division among People's Party members, including those in the Hlinka Guard. Expropriation and reallocation were effected by a special office, the Ústredný Hospodárský Úrad, or ÚHÚ (Central Economic Office), headed by Augustin Morávek. Ultimately, for the Slovaks to secure the position thus won, Jews would be forcibly emigrated or expelled. The main motivation for the Slovak desire to deport the Jews of Slovakia was therefore economic. 64 - 65
Dieter Wisliceny præsenteres p. 65 overensst. m. Stockhorst
Eichmann's ordenssans omtales p 66
The context of the negotiations in Slovakia was the infamous Wannsee Conference on January 20,1942, at which Heydrich, the SS police chief, discussed implementing the decision to launch the "Final Solution" on a European basis - a decision made the previous summer - with representatives of a number of German ministries. 66
The next day, at another meeting, he said that die Jews would be sent to the Ukraine and that the Slovaks would pay RM 500 per head to be rid of them. 66
The Slovaks agreed to pay the Germans for taking their Jews as long as they could lay hands on their property. 67
Wisliceny claimed after the war that his own knowledge of the murder of the Jews dated from late July or early August 1942. He did visit Auschwitz m May 1942, though he claimed that he only met Rudolf Hoess, the Commander, in the SS officers' mess and that he had the Impression that the camp was a concentration camp like the prewar ones in Germany. 67
The Vatican made a fairly strong protest against the planned deportations on March 14. 68
Shortly afterward his [Burzio, papal Charge d'affaires] attitude changed visibly: he sent a report to the Vatican on October 27,1941, that was the first accurate description of the mass murder of Jews by the Germans in the Soviet territories. 68
What is clear from this survey is that the deportations in Slovakia were begun at Slovak, not German, initiative, and that the inclusion of families in other words, the prospective deportation of all of Slovak Jewry - was proposed by the Slovaks and only gradually accepted by the Nazis. 69 - 70

The United States did not allow the Swiss to buy American goods with dollars, and the Swiss had no use for idle dollars in U.S. banks, in return for which they would have had to pay out very real francs in besieged Switzerland. 76

note 44 The JDC, in its apologetic publications after the war, referred to $64 million that had been "appropriated" to relieve Jewish suffering between 1939 and 1945. The figure has misled many commenutors; it refers to the overall sum collected throughout the war years, but different sums were collected in different years. In 1942 and 1943 the amounts of $6.3 million and $8.4 million, respectively, were "appropriated" for all purposes worldwide. The JDC was unable to raise more, though it tried. But none of this money could have been transmitted to Mayer between April 1942 and September 1943; and the appropriations sitting for him in New York ($610,000 in 1942 and $940,000 in 1943) did not help him. 268-9

The letter, by the way, is roughly coterminous with the report to the United States and Britain by Gerhart Riegner of Geneva (August 8), which is usually - and wrongly - considered to be the first definitive evidence of the "Final Solution" to reach the West. 79

Steiner has a different story: he explicitly mentions an offer by the Group, in the opening stage of the negotiations, of a payment of $150,000, to be delivered when the first children's transport, which would be part of the agreement, went to Switzerland. If the Jews saw that the Nazis kept to the overall agreement, a second payment of $150,000 would be made, and further payments or goods would be delivered to the Nazis, provided the goods were not related to the German war effort. 80

It was then, in March [1943 CTR], that Wisliceny finally asked for a sum of $2 million, of which 10 percent would have to be a down payment. 81

In Palestine, reliable information about the Nazis' mass murder plans had been obtained with the arrival on November 13,1942, of sixtynine Palestinian Jewish citizens who had been caught in Europe at the outbreak of war. 82

Again, the customary present-day accusation is that the JA did too little too late to rescue Jews in Europe, that they placed the creation of a Jewish State above the rescue of Jews, and that Ben Gurion and Grünbaum especially were cold. wrongheaded politicians who ignored the destruction of their people in Europe. Liberal, non-Orthodox, Orthodox, and ultraorthodox Jewish writers and historians have been repeating these accusations for years. 82

From the Western Allies' point of view, no worse mistake could be made than to come out openly for the Jews, which would lay them open to the accusation at home that they were fighting the war because of the Jews. On the other hand, the Nazi leadership saw the war as an ideological struggle directed ultimately against the Jews. 82

 ... quote from Himmler's speech to top military and SS leaders at Sonthofen on June 21,1944; (Der Krieg, den wir führen, ist in seinem Hauptinhalt ein Rassenkrieg. Er ist erstens der Krieg gegen den Juden, der andere Nationalstaaten wie England und Amerika in den Krieg gegen uns hineingehetzt hat, und es ist zweitens der Krieg gegen Russland. Der Krieg gegen Judentum und Asiatentum ist der Krieg zweier Rassen.)" 83

note 63, p. 270: This is one of many placcs where the top Nazi leadership identified the war against the Soviet Union as the war against the Jews. In Himmler's terminology, clearly, "Judentum" and "Asiatentum" are expressions of the same racial denotation. As Andreas Hillgruber has shown in his VJHFZG article of 1972, the top Nazi leadership saw the Soviet Union as a Jewish-dominated state with a Jewish ideology. Hillgruber, op. cit. Arno J. Mayer's neo-Marxist argument in his Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? (Pantheon. New York, 1990) - that the primary motivation of the Nazis was anti-Marxist and that the "Judaeocide," as he calls the Holocaust, stemmed from that motivation - is a total misconception. It is shared by Ernst Nolte in his contributions to the German Hiitorikerstreit literature. Mayer ignored primary sources in writing his footnote-less book.  270

In the eyes of the Western powers the Jews were just one of many suffering groups under the Nazis. They were still very largely understood to be a religion rather than a people, and the persecution of the Jews, despite all the information over the previous nine years, was still largely understood to be a religious persecution, because these were terms with which Western civilization at the time could operate. 83

Ben Gurion may have derived some satisfaction from the recognition on the part of die Allies that the Jews of Europe were being murdered. A declaration to that effect was made on December 17,1942, in a Statement published m London, Washington, and Moscow. 83
 

... he demanded from the British a relative opening of the gates of Palestine, which had been closed by the British White Paper of May 17,1939; the White Paper limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to another 75,000, after which it was to cease (unless the Arabs agreed to allow it). 84
... another ransom proposal, from Romania, supposedly offering the rescue of 70,000 deportees in Romanian-occupied Transnistria (a region in southwestern Ukraine and contemporary Moldova) for a sum running into tens of millions of dollars. 84
One Problem was that the organizations to whom Mayer and the others turned - the JDC, the World Jewish Congress - did not encourage them to do anything; the contacts obviously thought that the vaunted plan was just another Nazi extortionary trick. 87
The understanding was that most of the $200,000 would be shared between the JDC and the JA. 88
som sædvanligt: hvem ska' nu betal'.
The total sent from Palestine to Slovakia in 1943-44 came to GBP 100,000, or about $400,000. note 77. p. 270
... 'even though, contrary to Willy's promises, deportations from Western Europe had not stopped. Their continuation undermined any confidence the Jewish leaders outside might have had in the prospects of the plan. [!!!!] 88
... for the Mufti of Jerusalem, the leader of the Arab Palestinian national movement, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who had fled to Germany in 1941, was opposed. The Mufti, he said, was a major player in pushing for extermination of the Jews. 88
This aid - again - makes utter nonsense of postwar arguments (including Weissmandel's) that Europe's Jews were abandoned by their kin in Palestine. 89 [!!!!!]
More fundamentally, there was the major issue of paying ransom for lives. Schwartz and Ben Gurion both knew very well that the Allies would never agree to a ransom policy 90
Eichmann then told him that most of the Slovak Jews were dead and after Wisliceny demanded the truth and swore an oath of secrecy, showed him an Order signed by Himmler in April or May 1942 and directed to Oswald Pohl of the Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (Chief Economic Administration Office) of the SS, the supervisory authority for the concentration camps and to Reinhard Heydrich, head of die Central Reich Security Office, which mentioned the Führer's order to murder all Jews. 92
But the contradiction between the testimonies is perhaps only an apparent one. Wisliceny never really claimed that he saw Himmler's order to kill all Jews. What he claims he saw was an order temporarily exempting certain categories of Jews from a general policy decided on by Hitler. 93
Denne ordre er i overensstemmelse med Gerlach.
We should, therefore, be inclined to believe Wisliceny regarding that document. He Claims to have been shocked and to have told Eichmann that if these matters were to become known abroad, then God help the German people, if their enemies did something similar to them. Eichmann said this was not his problem; the decision was made by the Führer. 93


BA/Bestand Alg. Schumacher 240 1. "Ich habe den Führer wegen der Loslösung von Juden gegen Devisen gefragt. Er hat mir Vollmacht gegeben, derartige Fälle zu genehmigen, wenn sie wirklich im namhaften Umfang Devisen von auswärts hereinbringen." Prior to this, Himmler's view on ransom had been negative. note 4, p. 272
, a note of Himmler to himself (Vermerk) of December 10, 1942. 103
In that same month of December, Himmler gave an order to Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller to segregate Jews who had important connections abroad from the French Jews and, significantly, Hungarian and Romanian Jews (who were not yet in the hands of the Nazis). A special camp was to be established for them where they would work but would be kept healthy a and alive (unter Bedingungen, dass sie gesund sind und am Leben bleiben"). Bergen-Belsen 103 - 4
note 6, p. 272: "Eichmann Trial, 06-1164: "Ich ordne an, dass von den jetzt in Frankreich noch vorhandenen Juden, ebenso von den ungarischen und rumänischen Juden alle diejenigen, die einflussreiche Verwandte in Amerika haben, in einem Sonderlager zusammenzufassen sind. Dort sollen sie zwar arbeiten, jedoch unter Bedingungen, dass sie gesund sind und am Leben bleiben. Diese Art von Juden sind für uns wertvolle Geiseln. Ich stelle mir hierunter eine Zahl von rund 10.000 vor."
studer note 8 p 272 - 3.
Himmler said "that, too, happened on a legal basis. Because the Führer decided in Breslau in 1941 that the Jews should be annihilated. And the order of the Führer is the highest law in Germany." p. 105 strider mod Gerlach, måske fordi der ikke skelnes mellem øst-jøder og tyske-vest-jøder.
se også note 10, 273
...to support the granting of Swiss entry visas, because the Swiss government did not want these Jews either. 109
The Abwehr, by the way, did not do badly on the deal; the prewar exchange rate had been RM 2.50 for a dollar. 110, viser at Bauer ikke har forstået, at nazistyrets problem var valuta !! Dec 43

Early in 1943, Anton Feldscher, an attaché with the Swiss legation in Berlin, transmitted to the German Foreign Office a British proposal that was the result of JA pressure on the British government. The request was to allow 5,000 Jewish children from the General Government (Poland) and the "East" (occupied Soviet territories) to emigrate to Palestine. At the same time, the British, via Sweden, requested the view of the Germans on permitting the emigration of "Judenkinder" (Jew-children) from Western Europe as well. Ribbentrop consulted with Himmler, and the result was an "agreement in principle by the Reich government to negotiate regarding the granting of exit permits, perhaps in exchange for interned [German] persons, but the he rejection of the idea of emigration to Palestine. The basic condition is the reception of these children in Britain and the approval of this by the House of Commons. 113

 ... statement from Ribbentrop's Office: "The Reich government cannot lend its hand to the ousting of such a noble and valiant people as the Arabs from their Palestine homeland by the Jews." The British declared that they could not accept the children on a permanent basis and rejected the release of much larger numbers of German or pro-Nazi internees in exchange for the children. 113

Himmler ...  speech at Poznan in October (1943) ... it was clear to him that the war was between the Jews and Germany and that the bombing of German cities was the work of the Jews. But although the Jews were being killed, none of their property would be taken, and the SS had remained decent. 115

For the democracies, as I have already pointed out, the fate of the Jews was not seen as unique; victory in the war was the central and overriding consideration, and the formula of the unconditional surrender precluded all direct negotiations for anything other than that, including the rescue of lives. Himmler might have been willing to sell, given certain conditions. There were no buyers. 119

A headquarters for their [OSS] operations was set up in Algiers, after the successful invasion of North Africa by the Allies in late 1942. 120

 ... most successful operative: Allen W. Dulles, who spun a whole web of contacts in Germany and, to a lesser degree, in some of the occupied countries. There was, however, one more place that had to be used: Istanbul. Turkey remained neutral in the war until August 1944. The Turkish Army was too weak to be relied on to withstand the Germans or the Russians, and the govemment was therefore eager to keep out of the war and maintain a determined neutrality. The Turkish counterintelligence agency, the redoubtable Emniyet, was among the best, and it maintained full control of what was happening in its country, which soon became a playground for the opposing intelligence groups of the belligerents. The OSS entered the game in Istanbul in earnest with the appointment of Lanning Macfarland, a Chicago banker, as chief of mission in Istanbul and his arrival there in April 1943. 121

 ... in July 1943, Helmuth von Moltke, came to Istanbul. 123

Moltke wanted the Western Allies to use overwhelming force in the West; then he and his fellow conspirators would rebel against the Nazi regime facilitating the occupation of Germany by the Anglo-Americans and prereventing a Soviet advance. 123

Not until July 29,1944, after the failure of the plot to assassinate Hitler, was the Donovan report on the Moltke mission put on Roosevelt's desk. 124

 ... that he had a letter from Moltke listing the names of friends, which he could show the ambassador; he then stated that manv on the list had already been executed. Hence, he said, Moltke had been genuine. The fact that Dogwood had such a list - it has not turned up so far - is very interesting. It meant that Moltke relied on his OSS contact sufficiently to expose the most secret and most life-endangering document of all, a rostcr of acquaintances who were planning the overthrow of the Nazi regime. 123

In Sweden there was Edgar Josef Klaus, a Latvian Jew, who tried to mediate between the Germans and the Soviets. 125

The Nazi conviction that the Jews ruled the Allied world and that therefore Jews could play an important role in any negotiations or contacts was absent. 126

Study of the conservative opposition to Hitler makes it clear that a very strong antisemitic feeling pervaded these opposition circles. 126

The Casablanca decisions of the Western Allies in February 1943 made unconditional surrender the only way Germany could get out of the war - surrender to all the Allies, not just to the West. 126

At the end of 1941 various groups organized resistance in Austria; most of the activists were communists or belonged to other left-wing groups, but some were Catholic. Left-wing contacts were maintained through Helene Sokal, a Jewish scientist, and Thomas Legradi, who had some protection because he was the employee of a Swiss firm. Another major figure was the deacon of Saint Stephen's Church in Vienna, Heinrich Maier. 127

One of [Franz Josef] Messner's aims was to prevent the bombing of the Semperit works, so he did not provide information about war plants situated next to Semperit factories. 127

When it became clear in November 1941 that he was betraying the Czechs to the Abwehr, the Czechs so informed the Americans. He then became an Abwehr informer. 129

Laufer proposed a trade of Jewish lives for trucks - again, this was before the Brand mission. 130

Nor had their attempts to contact the West brought any real result. It is true that in Switzerland, Hans-Bernd Gisevius, a member of the conservative Canaris clique and a German diplomat there, had become a trusted friend of the Bern representative of the OSS, Allen Dulles." But nothing emerged from that contact. 132. Se også Bahar.

note 23 The most successful German agent of the OSS had only marginal contacts with the conservative conspiracy. Through a Jewish businessman by the name of Kocherthaler, who had fled Germany in the early 1930s, Allen Dulles established contact with a German diplomat, Fritz Kolbe, (se også Almeida) who served as the Referent of the ambassador for special assignments (zur besonderer Verfügung), Karl Ritter. Ritter was Ribbentrop's hatchet man; all the cables from German diplomats all over the world passed through his hands, and he sifted them for Ribbentrop. Ritter - and Kolbe, of course - also read all the conversations of German Foreign Office officials in Berlin with foreign diplomats and German agencies. In 1943, Kolbe visited Bern and, through Kocherthaler, met with Dulles. Visiting Switzerland every three months on the average, but also sending in the material in various ways, Kolbe provided not only a full account of what the German Foreign Office was up to but also details about industrial plants and other targets for bombing attacks. Kolbe organized a group that he called the Inner Circle, twenty to twenty-five people from the military, the mdustrial world, and the Foreign Office, who were in touch with the July 20 people; but Kolbe said that he never believed in the success of the plot. The Kolbe Circle held, and was never discovered by the Nazis. Kolbe's motives were a deep hostility to Nazism and a conviction that only the defeat of Germany could lead to the abolition of the regime. We could assume that another motivc was his Catholicism and his deep friendship with Prelate Schreiber, abbot of the Ottobeuem monastery in Bavaria. Interview with Kolbe, 9/26/45, IF/MA/300/2. Gisevius's efforts were paralleled by those of Adam von Trott zu Solz, emissary of Moltke's Kreisau Circle. Both of them maintained their contacts via Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, a "half-Jew" with a German aristocratic father from a well-known liberal family in Freiburg; Schulze-Gaevernitz had become a U.S. citizen in 1936, and served as Dulles's expert on German affairs at the OSS mission in Bern. Like Dogwood, Dulles and Schulze-Gaevernitz tried to persuade their govemment to take the Breakers, as they called the German conspirators, seriously. 277

The repercussions were immediate. When Hitler received word of what had transpired, he exploded - as might have been expected. On February 10, Canaris was fired, and the Abwehr was abolished as an independent organization. 133

A reactionary Catholic politician, he was the German ambassador to Turkey. By 1943, Papen realized that Germany was likely to lose the war, and he, like so many others, was looking for a way out. Papen was not part of the conservative resistance group in Germany; he was a loner, an outsider, a man with tremendous personal ambition and great vanity, and he tried to impress American contacts with his importance, hoping to play a central role in the overthrow of Hider and in a future right-wing, anticommunist German state with U.S. backing. 134

'Hie Hungarian govemment under Prime Minister Miklos Kallay (1942-44) had begun to feel its way toward a separate peace with the Westem Allies after Stalingrad. 134

In February 1944 the Kallay govemment sent four Hungarian intellectuals - among them the Nobel Prize-winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and the lawyer Ferenc Vali - to Istanbul to pave the way for peace talks. 134

He [Lt. Col. Otto Hatz de Hatzsegy] had been involved in recruiting Muslim Bosnians for the Hungarian Army. 135

Churchill had originally wanted to defeat the Germans in the soft underbelly of their Balkan dependencies, but he had also been aiming at reducing the threatening influence of the Soviet Union in a post-Nazi Europe. 136

[Gyula] Kadar then decided to take the bull by the horns, and he and Hatz went to see Canaris in Munich; the meeting took place on January 9,1944. They told their story again, and a very wary Canaris warned them against the Allies - and against the Germans as well. The Hungarians should not see the Allies in Istanbul anymore; he knew that Hatz was playing a double game, and he did not want to expose himself It should be remembered that this was one month before Hitler abolished the Abwehr. 138

The last meeting of the OSS with Hatz prior to the occupation of Hungary by the Germans on March 19 was held in Istanbul on February 27, 1944, with Hatz, Macfarland, Kövess, and Dogwood present. At that meeting, Hatz promised that the Hungarians would provide the Americans with full economic intelligence data to prove that Hungary was in effect paying the Germans in order to prevent a German occupation. 139

Bagyoni escaped to Sweden in September. Hatz, who in October became the operations officer (la) of the Seventh Hungarian Corps, went over to the Russians on November 7. 140

In August 1944 an investigation headed by the redoubtable Frank G. Wisner, head of SI in Istanbul and then head of X-2 counterespionage, discredited the Dogwood chain. 142

After the capitulation of Romania on August 23, 1944, Wisner went to Bucharest to open shop there for the OSS. After the war, he became the prime mover in getting Byelorussians, possibly also Ukrainians, who had served with the SS into the United States as an anti-Soviet move. He apparently was also involved in helping former German Nazis into the Western Hemisphere. 143

When we consider that Himmler, contrary to Hitler's directives, continued to use Klaus in Sweden, who was also taken over from the Abwehr, a pattern seems to emerge: repeated attempts to approach the West at least partly through low-grade Jewish agents. 143

The pattern fits with Himmler's conviction that the Jews were behind all Germany's enemies and that offering Jewish lives might be one of the ways for Germany to achieve a temporary halt in its war against the United States and Britain. 144

The basic issue from a Jewish point of view was and is, Was it justifiable to conduct negotiations with the Nazis to save Jews? And if it was, what were the limits to such contacts? What was, and what should have been, the reaction of leadership groups in threatened Jewish communities? And, most important, was there a chance of rescuing Jews by negotiations? 145
Hungarian Jews were a very special group of people.
According to their own, superpatriotic legends, they had been in Hungary before the Mongol Hungarians ever came there; they had supposedly come with the Romans. Some archaeological finds show that Jews had indeed been in the Roman province of Pannonia, or modern Hungary. 146
Hungarian Jews were in fact comparatively recent immigrants. 146
In Hungary, unlike in other European countries, the Jews did indeed fulfill a central role in the development of the economy, and the antisemitic "charge" of Jewish economic leadership had a true ring to it.' 146
The younger generation of Jews before and during World War I was radicalized; some were prominent in the founding of left-wing movements. In 1918-19 a short-lived communist government ruled Hungary, headed by Bela Kun, a Jew; a majority of the Ministers had Jewish parentage but totally repudiated their Judaism. The right-wing reaction to this regime brought to power the government of Adm. Miklos Horthy, who assumed the title of Regent in the absence of an agreed-on royal figure to occupy the throne of Saint Stephen in Budapest. 147

Hungary joined Nazi Germany on June 27,1941, to attack the Soviet Union, partly, no doubt, because its neighbour, fascist-dominated Romania, had joined the Nazis, too, and Hungarian nonparticipation would have endangered Hungary's hold over newly acquired northern Transylvania, which the Romanians wanted back. 148
After Hungary entered the war, ... August 25, the SS general Franz Jeckebi agreed to accept die Jews and deal with them by September 1. On August 27-28 some 14,000-16,000 Hungarian Jews and several thousand local Jews were machine-gunned by the SS, Ukrainian collaborators, and Hungarian sappers. 148
Hungarian Zionists probably did not account for more than 5 percent of Hungarian Jews, the reason being that, as we have seen, most Hungarian Jews were patriotic Hungarians, whereas the Zionists preached that the Jews were a nation and should go to Palestine. 151-2
[Joel] Brand was born in 1906, also in Transylvania (in Naszod). He was educated in Erfurt, Germany, where his family had moved in 1910 or 1911. Later he became a communist agent, working for the Comintern as a sailor and an odd-job man in the Americas and the tropics. He became a middle-rank communist functionary in Thuringia and was arrested when the Nazis came to power. Released in 1934, probably because of his foreign citizenship, he returned to Transylvania, then settled in Budapest. There he became a Zionist, joining a Mapai (Ihud)-controlled youth movement, 152
From then on, Brand became actively involved in smuggling and aid to refugees. He joined Kasztner and Samuel Springmann, in ... Kasztner tried to organize a refugee aid group with the help of Hungarian Social Democrats. ... He tried and failed again in the autumn of 1943, ... But the Socialists were not willing to endanger themselves for the sake of the Jews. 152
By early 1943, the Aid and Rescue Committee had been organized; known by its Hebrew name of Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah. 152
As long as the Abwehr was an independent Organization run by opponents of the regime, there was relative security, but things turned sour when the Abwehr was taken over by the SD. 153
The Abwehr group in Budapest was. in the main, a bunch of greedy agents, who lined their pockets. 153
... the occupation of Hungary came six weeks after Hitler had ordered the firing of Canaris (February 1944) ... that appreciably strengthened Himmler's position in the Reich. 154
Vrba and Wetzler, two Auschwitz inmates. fled from Auschwitz on April 7, [1944] and their report was written up a couple of weeks later. It must have arrived in Budapest, perhaps through Kasztner, at the end of April, and been handed over to leading members of the Judenrat. 156-7
p. 158 redningsaktioner - Moshe Krausz, Charles Lutz, Raoul Wallenberg, Vaada

Calls to resist or flee went unheeded. 159

The churches were violently and murderously antisemitic; the greed of the neighbors who hoped to loot Jewish property once the owners were gone was overwhelming. [Ungarn] 159

In August 1944, Romania switched sides and joined the Allies. 160

Most of the young men were in labor battalions; in addition, as we have seen, they were mostly loyal citizens, and the fight would have been in large measure against Hungarian gendarmes. There was no Hungarian Jewish undergroimd organization, nor was there a Hungarian antifascist underground to speak of, certainly not one that would have joined in an uprising. 161

Two choices, basically: either despair and attempts to save individuals, as many of them as possible, or negotiations with the murderers. At a later stage, after the ascent to power of Szalasi's fascist regime on October 15, 1944, the youth movements added another realistic option: saving large numbers of Budapest Jews by illegal means and by collaboration with the neutral diplomats. 161

Wisliceny ... rejected a request for the immigration of a relatively small number of people to Palestine.162

The first $200,000 was supposed to have been paid on April 9, but "only" $92,000 was available, in Hungarian pengö supplied by the Judenrat, whom  Kasztner had informed of the situation. 163

On April 21, another $77,000 was paid, and Hunsche was indignant at the lack of seriousness on the part of the Jews. They had not fulfilled their promise; the Nazis, on the other hand, were gentlemen. 163

A totally ineffective move appears to have been made by the WRB through Switzerland to support this contact; the interesting thing is. however, that the WRB made a point of mentioning the effort, although in making it, the board was in effect sanctioning ransom negotiations. 163

On April 16 or 25, according to Brand, Eichmann summoned him to his headquarters on the Schwabenberg in Budapest and there offered him the famous "trucks for blood" proposal.« 163

. Becher says the request came two weeks before Brand left for Istanbul. He says that he went to see Himmler at Salzburg on another Jewish matter - ... - and told him what he had heard from Winkelmann and Eichmann - that the Jews had offered goods, mainly 10,000 trucks - and Becher asked him for permission to have Brand go to Istanbul. Himmler agreed and charged Becher with going back to Budapest and finding out more about these possibilities. 164

At this meeting, too, Gerhard Clages of the SD, Eichmann's rival, was present - another indication of the broader basis of the contacts with the SS. 164

...  the "basic objective of Reichsführer Himmler [was] to arrange if possible for a million Jews to go free in exchange for 10,000 winterized trucks, with trailers, for use against the Russians on the Eastern Front ... I said at the time, '[W]hen the winterized trucks with trailers are here, the liquidation machine in Auschwitz will be stopped." It is dangerous to place any credence in Eichmann, but something of the sort must have been said. Whether that was Himmler's basic objective may be doubted. 165

Obersturmbannführer Kurt A. Becher arrived in Hungary in March 1944, ostensibly to buy horses. What kind of horses he bought will be discussed later but for the moment it is important to note that Himmler involved three of his men, all of the same rank, in the Brand negotiations: Eichmann, whose job it was to send the Jews to their deaths; Clages, the intelligence officer whose task it was to reach the West; and Becher, who had to see to it that the SS did not lose any money or goods. God forbid. 165

Probably around May 7 [1944], the SD in Budapest finally decided to liquidate the Abwehr there. The service accused the Abwehr of corruption, and we find internal SS reports that tell a story of interrogations and a clear hint at executions. 165

Grosz was told by Clages, Klausnitzer, and Laufer on May 13 and 14 - or so he testified in Cairo - to "arrange a meeting in any neutral country between two or three senior German security officers and two or three American officers of equal rank, or as a last resort British officers, in order to negotiate for a separate peace between the Sicherheitsdienst [SD] and the Western Allies." If that failed, he was to arrange a meeting with the British through the mediation of the Zionists in Istanbul. 166

Brand apparently accepted this interpretation - implicitly at the time and explicitly after the war. As he put it in his testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961: "My impression was... that Himmler used the Jews as a bribe, as it were in order to have a visiting card with which to enter into bigger things.. [Eichmann] made it clear to me that the deal originated with Himmler." 166

But we also have direct evidence: a cable from Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office on July 22,1944, says explicidy that Brand and Grosz were sent to Turkey on the order of Himmler.167

It may be significant that at precisely the same moment that the Brand-Grosz mission was being discussed, indirect contacts took place in Stockholm between Peter Bruno Kleist, employed by both the Abwehr and the SS (June 28) and the WRB's Iver Olsen, who was also a full-time OSS operative. Nothing came of this offer to save 2,000 Latvian Jews in return for money, but no such clumsy contacts could have been made without Himmler's approval. 168

If large numbers of Jews had been released - let us say only the first 10,000 or more promised by Eichmann in return for the agreement in principle by the Western Allies - the result would have been, in effect, the stopping of some, if not all, military activity, especially in the air, as these people were being gathered and then transported through Central Europe. Such a ceasefire may well have been one aspect of Himmler's plan. 170

The Western powers responded in the context of the Normandy invasion. which occurred in the middle of the events that we are dealing with, on June 6,1944, and the end phase of the Soviet offensive, which brought the Soviet armies to the Vistula River in Poland and the Carpathian mountains in the south, on the edge of Hungary itself. 171

The idea of negotiating with the Germans for the release of Hungarian Jews had occurred to JA Executive members even before Brand's mission. On April 2, two weeks after the German occupation of Hungary, Yitzhak Grünbaum of the JA Executive suggested to his colleagues that they turn to the German representatives in Istanbul to stop the murders not only in Hungary but all over Europe. In effect, Grünbaum was trying to carry on where the Europa Plan had left off. The JA Executive, including Ben Gurion, rejected the idea, but largely for pragmatic reasons. 173

Ben Gurion's answers foreshadowed die JA stance: No goods could be shipped to the Nazis, but negotiations had to be undertaken, because lives might be saved. 174

In the meantime the Turkish authorities were very unhappy about the stay in their country of Jews who, in their eyes, were obviously Gestapo agents. 174

The British handled the Situation this way intentionally to prevent Brand and Grosz from landing in their lap. 175

The British attitude was given expression at a meeting of the War Cabinet Committee on die Reception and Accommodation of Refugees, which met in London on May 30. The consensus was that the German proposals were a piece of political warfare and an attempt at blackmail. After all, if the Germans had anything serious to offer, they could do so via the Swiss, who were he "Protecting Power" representing British interests to the Germans. 178
Perhaps the Germans wanted to exchange Jews for German POWs in Allied hands - which was unacceptable. 178
'The thought was offered that die Americans might be misled into sympathizing with the proposal, because the President's War Refugee Board "backed by Mr. Morgenthau had, partly for electoral reasons committed itself to the 'rescue' of Jews." This commitment might lead to the danger of "an offer to unload an even greater number of Jews on to our hands." 178
The British submitted an aide-memoire to the United States on June 5. In the very first paragraph of that document they reiterate what they saw as a real danger: if one million people left Nazi-held territory, military operations would have to be suspended, enabling the Germans to concentrate all their forces against the East - thereby implementing what probably was Himmler's Intention. Another comment was that if Jews were let out, there would be an outcry in the Allied countries; people would ask about Allied military and civilian internees, who faced «terrible conditions" (they did not, of course). 178-9

But on June 9 the State Department sent a cable to Moscow asking the U.S. ambassador to fill in the Soviet leadership. The inevitable answer came back on the nineteenth: Andrei Vyshinski, the Deputy Foreign Minister, had said that the Soviet government did not "consider it permissible or expedient to carry on any conversations whatsoever with the German Government" regarding the Brand proposals. 180
!! Did the State Department, then, turn to the Soviets because they knew what the response would be, or did they do it despite that. knowledge? 180

The context in which the Brand proposals were discussed in the United states was established by the more energetic role that the Americans were playing in attempting rescue through die WRB. 181 !!! selvmodsigende

One of the intercepted cables was that of the WRB representative in Switzerland, Roswell D. McClelland, dated June 24, which proposed the bombing of railways leading to Auschwitz in Hungary and Slovakia. The idea had been suggested in a message that Weissmandel sent ugh Schwalb on May 18. How paradoxical to think that the Suggestion of an ultraorthodox rabbi to bomb railways found its way not only to die WRB b& but also to Horthy. 182

The big argument within the JA Executive was over relations with the British. Grünbaum especially did not trust the British and was certain that they would Sabotage any effort to save Jews. 184

Hirschmann gained the impression - probably a very true one - that Eichmann had come to the trucks proposal more or less accidentally and that whether the exchange was for trucks or something else was not the central issue for the Germans. He also saw in Brand's description an indication that the Germans who had sent him were hoping to start separate peace negotiations. 185

What now developed was a significant difference of opinion between the British and the Americans. A British response of June 26 disagreed with the statement that "all" Jews who managed to escape should be looked after and instead proposed a list of certain groups that would be helped if they managed to leave Nazi Europe (some rabbis, 5,000 children and women from the Balkans to Palestine, and so on). They reiterated, however, that a negative answer should not be given, and offered to release Brand and return him to Hungary with some kind of story.« Interestingly, the British response was given after the negative Soviet reply; in other words, the British were willing to risk a minor unpleasant incident with the Soviets. They proposed to handle all negotiations through the Swiss and reject all suggestions of ransom. 186-7

Weizmann and Shertok asked for Brand's return, for negotiations through the Swiss or the WRB, for radio warnings to Hungarian railway men, and for the bombing of Auschwitz. 187

Ransom payment was explicitly demanded, and a declaration assuring the neutrals that Jews accepted into their countries would be looked after by the Allies was asked for. 187

Home Secretary Herbert Morrison (Labour) commented on July 1 that it was "essential that we should do nothing at all which involves the risk that the further reception of refugees here might be the ultimate outcome." 188

Despite the statement of the Germans that they would not allow masses of Jews to reach Palestine because of German commitments to the Jerusalem Mufti, the British suspected that proposal was a major German-Zionist plot to introduce a million Jews into Palestine. That, of course, they would prevent with all the means at their disposal. 188

If instead of Jews, thousands of English, American or Russian women, children and aged had been tortured every day, burnt to death, asphyxiated in gas chambers - would you have acted in the same way ? 195

Kasztner ... :.ln a desperate letter to Nathan Schwalb in Geneva on July 12,1944, ... The thing that happened here between May 15 and July 9. [transporterne til Auschwitz] 196

Eichmann had explicitly told him that that, too, was the Nazi proposal: "To extract necessary labor from Hungarian Jewry and sell the balance of valueless human material against valuable goods. 196

... there was a discussion of the possibility of permitting 600 people with Palestine certificates to go to Palestine via Constantza in Romania. Wisliceny said that the Germans were interested in large-scale Jewish emigration, not in the departure of small groups, but that the idea could be explored. 197

An idea germinated: a train that would leave for Spain--that was Eichmann's dictum--would be a first t breach in the policy of total murder. 198

In the end, 1,684 persons took the train, and it was indeed, as was said at the time, a Noah's ark. 198

As Kasztner States in his postwar report, Eichmann originally demanded $200 per head, then $500. That famous humanitarian, Kurt A. Becher, demanded $2,000 and ultimately settled for $1,000. 198

The train left Budapest on June 30. 199

.. but the decision [Auschwitch eller vestpå] was in Eichmann's hands. What made him send the train to Bergen-Belsen is not clear, but the decision must have come at least in part from further up the ladder - from Müller or Himmler himself 199

On July 8 the train reached Bergen-Belsen, which had been established as a transit and exchange camp for Jews by an order of Himmler dated December 1942. 199

The release of a trainload of Jews makes sense if we combine it with the hesitant steps taken by Himmler two months later in Switzerland to Start negotiations with the people whom he thought were the representatives of World Jewry. 200

The train, then, was one attempt that Kasztner made. But it was by no means the only one. Kasztner later thought that he had, by his negotiations. saved another 18,000-20,000 Jews. Behind these rescues was a desire on the part of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, now head of the RSHA, to provide his Viennese colleagues with industrial labor, which was in scarce supply. ....Eichmann offered Kasztner a chance to send 30,000 people to Austria instead of Auschwitz. In fact, only 18,000-20,000 Jews, mostly from Debrecen Szeged, Baja, and Szolnok, were sent to the areas around Vienna to work. The Nazis could have sent the women, the elderly, and the children to Auschwitz. In this case they did not do so, perhaps because of the Kasztner negotiations. 201

In the end, some of the 18,000-20,000 were shipped to Bergen-Belsen, some to Theresienstadt, and the rest stayed on near Vienna. About 12,000 survived. 201

What followed was a series of complicated discussions, described by Becher as "friendly," between Chorin, representing the Weiss family, [the group that controlled the Manfred Weiss industrial concern.] , and Obersturmbannführer Becher. Not about horses, to be sure, but about "equipment [Ausrüstungsgegenstände] and about handing control of the industrial concern to the SS in return for their lives. 202
Himmler needed a firm like that to establish the SS's own economic power base, which could begin to compete with Goering's economic empire, the Hermann Goering-Werke. 202-3

The main point in the four "agreements" that Becher forced Chorin to accept was that, because the Jewish members of the family could not expect to be trusted by the German Reich to increase production for the German war effort and because their property rights as Jews were restricted in any case, the non-Jewish members were "willing" to hand over their own shares to the Germans, who would serve as trustees for twenty-five years. 203
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The Hungarians, when they learned about the Weiss affair, were furious The pro-German Prime Minister, Döme Sztojay, protested; he demanded the participation of Hungarians in the directorate, so that the largest Hungarian industrial enterprise should not be totally under German control. 204

According to a well-researched paper on the subject by Paul L. Rose, when Kasztner finally received on July 10 the so-called Interim agreement between Brand and Bader of May 29, he rushed with it to Eichmann and Becher, who were impressed by its contents. 206
In any case, it appears that the memorandum made the SS negotiators - Becher and Clages primarily, we can assume - more eager to find a way to reach the West via the Jews. 206

The German negotiator was to have been Laufer, the Jewish SD man, so perhaps the alliance of these two Himmler agents, representing SD and SS economic interests, was directed against the third Himmler agent - Eichmann. 206

In 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, three newly established SS units went in behind the advancing German armies with "special security tasks." They were two SS motorized brigades and one SS cavalry brigade. They were'not part of die German Army, nor were they part of Heydrich's security forces (including the Einsatzgruppen, or action units - the murder squads who killed Jews on a large scale). The special new formation was called die Kommandostab Reichsführer SS, and it was under Himmler's personal command. Very well equipped and trained, these 18,000 or so men were given the task of "cleansing" the rear areas of partisans, communists, and Jews. 208

Emenegger detailed a story that is typical of many prosecutions in postwar West Germany. His research team obtained the texts of the two documents (Himmler's special order of 1941 and his letter of appreciation to Becher of 1943) and asked the appropriate government attorneys in Essen and Dusseldort where the actual documents were. Let Emenegger speak:

"Our informant, Dr. Max Merten, a Berlin lawyer, told us that the 'owner,' or rather the trustee with whom these incriminating documents were located. was Investigative Judge Dr. Hans Behm, district judge in Essen. Thereupon :he Frankfurt prosecutor Dr. Steinbacher, as well as the Frankfurt investigative judge. District Judge Schneider, demanded the documents from Dr. Behm. Dr. Behm claimed that he did not know about the documents and did  not possess them. 209-10

And this at a time when Becher was a multimillionaire in Bremen with excellent connections to the highest as well as, we might suspect, the lowest places? 211

In addition, the Swedish had promised an exit to 400 or 450 people with Swedish connections, and other, smaller categories had a chance to leave. The British government, afraid of an influx of 40,000 Jews into Palestine, tried to limit the offer to the 7,000 or 8,700 originally suggested, but it was too late: the Hungarians were willing to let 40,000 jews go. 213

The Germans officially agreed to the Hungarian request to grant transit visas to the emigrating Jews, but made their agreement conditional upon the agreement of the Hungarians to deport all the other Jews of Budapest. 213

note 35, p. 286: The permission that the Swiss were seeking for Jews with Palestine papers to leave Hungary was dependent "von der deutscherseits gestellten Bedingung der Judenevakuierung Budapests."

Eighty-seven people would be allowed to go to Sweden - the Swedish ambassador and Raoul Wallenberg, who had arrived in Budapest on July 9, had not been able to push the number any higher. 214

Kasztner then met with "Schröder," or Laufer. Laufer was interested in "his" people being among the first to go to Switzerland, a position that might indicate either that the SD had spies among the people on the train or that some of Laufer's family were on the train. 217

The funds that Mayer had at his disposal in 1944 were much more substantial than those he had had in 1942-43. Amerian Jews had reacted more generously to JDC appeals because of the information that reached the United States regarding the fate of European Jewry. He received $6,467,000, of which $3,763,000 was preempted for the upkeep of Jewish refugees in Switzerland and for fulfillment of obligations to help Jews in France and Romania. 219

Rothmund replied that only children and adults with relatives in Switzeriand would be permitted in and that Mayer was forbidden to offer ransom in his talks. 220

On August 21 the WRB, over the signature of U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, instructed Mayer that he could not offer ransom, could not offer goods, and could not negotiate in the name of JDC, because that was an American organization. 220

They met in the middle of the border bridge at Saint Margarethen because Mayer refused to enter Gemumy, and he did not particularly want his "partners" to enter Switzerland.

Becher repeated the demand transmitted by Brand for 10,000 trucks and supplemented it with a request for agricultural machinery. In return, the Nazis would let the Jews leave for the United States (not Palestine, because of the  the Arab veto) on the same ships that would bring the machines and trucks. To show their seriousness, the Nazis had brought 318 people who had been on the Kaszmer train from Bergen-Belsen to the Swiss border on the day of the meeting. 220

Postwar criticism of Mayer's behavior has centered on his refusal to offer serious ransom payments or the delivery of goods; he has also been accused of hiding behind the official U.S. policy. 221

The tractors were shipped, without any noticeable effect on Nazi policy. 223

We can See here what the two sides were after. Mayer went far beyond his brief and did not report to McClelland nearly all that he told the Nazis. Grüson, on the other band, expressed Himmler's real Intention: to reach someone with full political powers with whom options for a separate peace could be discussed. 224

On November 3, Musy met with Himmler. Himmler, Musy reported, said he had about 600,000 Jews and could release them without asking Hitler for permission if he received trucks and other goods in exchange. Musy said he offered over SFR 1 million.
Musy's report sounds genuine enough--and so do Himmler's conditions. They had not changed since May, when Brand was sent to Istanbul, and they were based on the same assumptions: if an impressive number of goods were sent in, Jews would be released (some of them? 225
What emerged, however, was internecine fighting among high SS officers--Schellenberg against Becher--which mirrored the dissensions between Sternbuch and Mayer. 225

On November 18, Musy wrote to Himmler, promising--in the name of the VH--SFR 20 million to pay for the release of Jews in Germany or the occupied territories; the VH would also see to it, Musy wrote, that goods would be available to be bought for Germany with the ransom paid. 225

... on November 5, Becher went with him to a meeting with McClelland at the Hotel Baur in Zürich. Mayer read a long, stern lecture to Becher and spoke of the inevitability of the Nazi defeat. ... What transpired at the Hotel Baur on that November day is quite amazing: an official representative of the U.S. government met with a high SS officer on neutral ground, ostensibly to discuss humanitarian issues. 226

But the Americans were unwilling to endanger the certain prospect of total victory because of some humanitarian projects. 227

Eichmann - with the agreement of the Hungarian fascist government of Ferenc Szalasi, which had assumed power after an unsuccessful bid by Horthy to sign an armistice with the Soviets (October 15) - began deporting Budapest Jews to the Austrian border on November 8 to work there on a line of fortifications against the Soviets 227

... the demand of the Romanian government, in November, that the Nazis return the Jews deported from Transylvania; the territory had been reconquered by the Romanian Army, now fighting on the side of the Allies. If the Jews were returned, the Romanians would then permit the Germans residing in the area to leave for Germany. 228

On the night of December 6 the remaining 1,368 Jews of the Kasztner train from Bergen-Belsen crossed the Swiss frontier.229

What the Americans and the British wanted to do with the Jews was. Himmler wrote to himself, of no interest. It was clear, he said, that Germany did not want them in its territory or any territory under its influence. If Jews were sent to Switzerland, Germany would demand a guarantee that they not go to Palestine, because Germany would never do such an indecent ("unanständig") thing to the Arabs ("those poor people, tortured by the Jews" 230

Krausz did not content himself with the Swiss. He found a sympathetic ear with Minister Carl I. Danielsson of Sweden and in mid-May cabled the Swedish Red Gross to send somebody like Count Folke Bernadotte, a nephew of the King of Sweden, to Budapest to protect Jews, especially children. The result was that Waldemar Langlet of the Swedish Red Gross came on June 11 to strengthen the legation. After some negotiations between the WRB and Sweden, in which the JDC was also involved, Raoul Wallenberg was approached, and he agreed to go to Budapest on a life-saving mission. He arrived on July 9, on the day that the Hungarians stopped the deportations, so he had time to acquaint himself with the country, the problems, and the Personalities. Schools were set up for Jewish children - in accordance with government orders, 10 percent of those in attendance were Christian children - and they were supervised by Langlet. 232

Most of those who remember Raoul Wallenberg tell about his heroic efforts to save people who had Swedish papers on them, and in some cases he bluffed his way to saving others as well. The difference between Wallenberg and the other neutrals, mainly Lutz, did not lie in the numbers saved. Lutz's signature was on many more papers than Wallenberg's, and the Swiss saved many more people than Wallenberg did in the Glass House and some other Swiss-protected facilities alone there were 21,000 people. But Lutz rarely went out himself to face the Nazis and their Arrow Gross allies. Wallenberg did. He gained access to some highly placed Hungarian politicians, and with his brash courage he faced Nazi officers who did not quite know how to handle him. He became an admired Scarlet Pimpernel figure. 234

 ... youth movement members dressed in Arrow Cross uniforms rounded up children - with the consent of the parents if the parents were still alive - and brought them to the safety of the new establishments. [protected by the International Red Cross]. 235

According to our source - Gyula von Szilvay, then director of the Hungarian Foreign Trade Ministry - the [hungarian] property shipped away was put on 25,000 wagons and trucks and had a total value of SFR 6,000,000,000. 239

The Nazi principle, reportedly enunciated by Hitler, was that enemies of the Reich should not fall alive into the hands of the Allies; all concentration camp inmates were enemies of the Reich. 241

Note 7, 289: On April 10,1945, when Schellenberg lunched with Kaltenbrunner, the latter reportedly quoted Hitler: "Besides, there is the general directive of Hitler... that all camps should be evacuated and especially Jews should be regarded as hosugcs." NA/M1270/Roll 17 Schellenberg testimony, 11/l3/45. See also YV/Werner Grothman testimony at Nuremberg, 1/4/47: "Hitler [hat] darauf bestanden dass kein ausslandischer Häftling lebend in die Hände des Feindes fallen darf."

The marches took place between January and May 1945, when the Allies had absolute control of the skies, and not a cockroach could move without being spied by Allied aircraft. Interestingly, these marches are very rarely mentioned in the records of the Allied intelligence organs and governments, and absolutely nothing was done to stop them - by putting railway engines out of action, for instance, or by calling on some of the many teams who parachuted behind enemy lines to be in touch with Allied POWs. Sometimes POWs were marched in the same echelons with the camp inmates, except that the POWs received a certain minimum of food and were not murdered on the road, whereas the camp inmates were. The conclusion is that the Allied commanders received information about these marches and did not do a thing about them. 241

One day after this peculiar meeting, on April 22, Hitler decided to stay in Berlin, which was under attack by Soviet ground forces. Himmler concluded from the decision that Hitler had removed himself from the German people. and he now saw himself free to act as he wished to save Germany from chaos. He thought that his SS was the only Central European element that could ensure an orderly transition to a new political reality and wanted to offer the Anglo-Americans an alliance against communism. 248

Bernadotte agreed to transmit to the Swedish government Himmler's request to have the Swedes arrange a meeting between himself and Eisenhower to discuss a German capitulation on the Western front. The Swedes and the Allies refused, of course. In the meantime, the Swedish mission, now reinforced by Danes [????], were feverishly active; in all, the Swedes shipped some 21,000 persons to Sweden; probably 6,500 or so were Jews." On May 8 the war ended. 248

During those last hectic few weeks before the final German collapse, there were quite a number of initiatives to prevent the wholesale death of camp inmates and slave laborers, though not, as we shall soon see, the deaths of those who had been taken out of the camps on marches. 249 [!!!!]

On April 14, as we have seen, Himmler nominated Becher to supervise the handing-over of the camps at Flossenbürg, Dachau (in Bavaria), Mauthausen (in Austria), and Theresienstadt (in Bohemia). 249

The accepted Interpretation of Nazi antisemitism and the evolving anti-Jewish policy of the regime has been confirmed in our study. 252
But exceptions were granted during the war if tactical advantages could be gained by keeping some Jews alive or by letting some Jews escape to the free or neutral world. 252 mine fremhævelser, OJ
... the "Final Solution" policy did not constitute a complete break with the emigration-expulsion policy preceding it. 252
... og så glemmer han den økonomiske side !!!!
lige så glemmer han at man bevidst anvendte jøderne som gidsler overfor USA [find reference, Gerlach ???]

The accepted Interpretation of Nazi antisemitism and the evolving anti-Jewish policy of the regime has been confirmed in our study. 252
But exceptions were granted during the war if tactical advantages could be gained by keeping some Jews alive or by letting some Jews escape to the free or neutral world. 252 min fremhævelse, OJ
... the "Final Solution" policy did not constitute a complete break with the emigration-expulsion policy preceding it. 252

We can see three phases in Himmler's attitudes and policies: the prewar Phase, the 1940-42 phase, and the phase of German decline, from the latter part of 1942 to 1945. In the first two, Himmler was in perfect accord with his Führer; in the third, he increasingly recognized die dangers that Nazism was facing and developed a different attitude from that of Hitler. 253
What emerges from our discussion is that Himmler carefully fllowed the Abwehr attempts to establish a dialogue with the West. He did so partly through aristocrats who had Western connections from before the war, such as Adam von Trott zu Solz, Gisevius, Moltke, and lesser figures; and partly through low-grade, mainly Jewish, contacts, of whom Klaus, Laufer, and Grosz were typical. The most important places where both types of contacts were tried were Bern, Stockholm, and Istanbul. 254
We need not consider, in this connection, the release of the Weiss family of industrialists from Hungary, because the reasons were purely economic, though it, too. suggests that the ''Final Solution" was final in its general conception, not in its tactical ups and downs. 255
The pivotal importance of the Soviet Union in the fight against Nazi Germany was the buttress of the Allies' firm stand. The German Army was defeated in Russia and by the Red Army - of that there can be hardly any doubt. 255
In January 1944 the Western Allied Chiefs of Staff made a decision that had nothing to do with Jews or their rescue: they would not use military means for such civilian aims as rescue or aid. 256
A contradiction was inherent in the Allies' stance. They were fighting, among other things, for the liberation of the civilian populations in Europe from the Nazi oppression. Logically, rescue plans that did not hinder the successful pursuit of war should have become a priority. Negotiating to gain time, exerting pressure on the Red Gross to intervene on behalf of inmates of concentration camps and then providing the wherewithal to do this effectively, and promising the neutrals early on that any refugees reaching their borders would not become a burden on the local economy - such tactics did not contradict the military effort. 256
The Allies went much further in their refusal to help Jews than even their Stated policies, in themselves erroneous and contradictory, required. They .-. contravened their own war aims and left a permanent black mark on their record. 256 her har han nok ret - og her har vi roden til Israels vellykkede afpresningspolitik !
The Allies never really understood the Nazi policy against the Jews. They did not take Nazi writings and Propaganda at face value. They thought that Nazi antisemitism was an Instrument to gain power and hold it and failed to realize that for the Nazis, antisemitism was not a tool but an aim. 257
For them the Jews were just a nuisance, and for the British in particular they were a menace to national interests in Palestine and the Middle East. 257
We must conclude that the Allies would not have received large numbers of Jews if Himmler had offered them. Nor would they pay for Jews whom they did not want, least of all by acceding to any demands by a Himmler. They would not have minded if the International Red Cross protected the Jews in the camps but, as has been pointed out already, would not intervene with the Red Gross to achieve this care - partly no doubt because they were afraid that diverting Red Cross attention to the Jews might affect Red Cross care for their own soldiers in captivity. The Red Cross, on its part, was a cautious, timid Organization that needed to be pressured to engage in new ventures, such as protecting civilians in Nazi camps. 257
Individual Jews were in positions of some importance in Allied leadership groups; such individuals were mostly reluctant to identify with the Jewish people's tragedy and were of no help - with a few exceptions, the chief one being the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
257
The Zionist right-wing Opposition, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, declared war against the British in January 1944, thus: in effect fighting on the side of the Nazis against one of the powers fighting the worst enemy the Jews ever had. 257
The massive social trauma that overcame the Jewish people after the war was not made any easier by their realization that the Allies had not done much to save the Jews from the clutches of the Nazis. 258
In the lands of the Holocaust, Denmark, Bulgaria, and Italy were examples of nations who refused to collaborate with the Nazis in annihilating their Jews. Overwhelming majorities of Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, French, and Serbs did likewise. 258
This tendency is especially pronounced because the Situation has changed since the war with the establishment of the State of Israel; now, paradoxically, a much smaller number of Jews wield more, though still not very impressive, power, just like so many other small nations or peoples. 258-9
But rescue was tried. Prior to the war, it took the form of emigrating Jews from the German sphere of influence, so that a peculiar coinciding of Nazi and Jewish interests took place. The Nazis wanted to expel, the Jews wanted to rescue - not from a Holocaust of which they did not and could not have known, but from a hostile regime. 259
The Jewish heroes were no knights in shining armor. Weissmandel was a fanatic, ulraorthodox Opponent of Zionism; Brand was an adventurer, a drinker, and a person whose devotion to the truth was not the most prominent mark of his character; Kasztner was an ambitious, overweening, and authoritarian personality, guilty of rescuing Nazis from postwar justice to satisfy his sense of honor and power; Biss was engaged on that same, pathetic mission to save the reputation of a Nazi humanitarian extortioner, Kurt Becher; Mayer was a pedantic philanthropist - and so on. Yet heroes they all are. 259 ok !!
They remind us that our heroes were ordinary humans, perhaps more gifted with insight and courage than the rest of us; they did the correct thing at the right time. 260
In any case. they should be judged, not by their success or failure, but by the answer to a basic moral question: Did they try? And try they did. 260

note 4, p. 261. In fact, the Palestine Yishuv was to grow to 549,000 souls in 1945. Between 1933 and 1941, some 230,000 Jews came to Palestine, 55,000 of whom came from Germany (or 24 percent). Of these, again, 12,000 came "illegally," without British permits.

Orla Jordal, 2007

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