From this time the number of prisoners grew daily although the accommodation for them was unsatisfactory. Medical provisions were inadequate and epidemic diseases became common. In 1941, also, the first intake of Jews arrived from Slovakia and Upper Silesia, and from the first those unfit for work were gassed in a room in the crematorium building.
Later the same year Hoess was summoned to Berlin by Himmler and told that Hitler had ordered the “final solution of the Jewish question” to be put into operation. This was the Nazi term for the Führer’s plan for the total extermination of European Jewry. Persecution of the Jews in the countries which the Nazis invaded and occupied since 1939 had already been on a stupendous scale, but it cannot have taken by surprise anyone who had followed the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933 or their Party program. Point four of the program declared: “Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.” This masterpiece of German logic was preached throughout the length and breadth of Germany from the moment of Hitler’s accession to power. The Jews were to be regarded as foreigners and have no rights of German citizenship. It was used by the Nazis as one of the means of implementing their master-race policy.
The first organized act was the boycott of Jewish enterprises as early as April 1933, and thereafter a series of laws was passed which in effect removed the Jews from every department of public life, from the civil service, from the professions, from education, and from the services.
The spearhead of this anti-Semitic attack was “Jew-baiter Number One,” as Julius Streicher styled himself, whose duty it was to fan the Germans’ postwar dislike of Jews into a burning hatred and to incite them to the persecution and extermination of the Jewish race. He published a scurrilous pornographic anti-Semitic newspaper called Der Stürmer in which the most incredible nonsense about the Jews was printed. It might be wondered how anyone could even read such absurdities, but they did; and the poison spread, as it was meant to, throughout the whole nation until they were willing and ready to support their leaders in the policy of mass extermination upon which they had embarked. By 1938 pogroms were commonplace, synagogues were burned down, Jewish shops were looted, collective fines were levied, Jewish assets were seized by the State, and even the movement of Jews was subjected to regulations. Ghettos were established and Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothing.
A few months before the outbreak of war this menacing German Foreign Office circular must have clearly pointed out the course of future events to all but those who did not wish to see it. “It is certainly no coincidence that the fateful year of 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of Greater Germany… The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy, and culture, paralyzed the power and the will of the German people to rise again. The healing of this sickness among the people was, therefore, certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance of the world.”[10]
The persecution of the Jews in the countries invaded by Germany far transcended anything that had come before, for the Nazis’ plan of extermination was not to be confined to the Reich. Its only boundary was the limit of opportunity, and as the flood of German conquest rushed ever forward into other lands, so more and more Jews became engulfed in its cruel waters.
Steps were taken immediately the Germans had successfully completed the invasion of a foreign country, or had occupied a considerable part of it, to put into force the requirements and restrictions which weise already applicable to Jews in the Reich. The official organ of the SS which was called Das Schwarze Korps, so named after their black uniforms, wrote in 1940, “just as the Jewish question will be solved in Germany only when the last Jew has gone: so the rest of Europe must realize that the German peace which awaits it must be a peace without Jews.” The question now brooked no delay and was regarded by all Gauleiters as of the utmost priority. Indeed, Hans Frank, then Governor General of Poland, made this apologetic note in his diary: “I could not, of course, eliminate all lice nor all Jews in only a year, but in the course of time this end will be attained.”
When Hoess went to Berlin to receive Himmler’s instructions regarding the speeding up of the “final solution” he was told to go first and inspect the extermination arrangements at Treblinka. This he did two months later and found the methods in use there somewhat primitive. It was accordingly decided that Auschwitz was the most suitable camp for the purpose as it was situated near a railway junction of four lines, and the surrounding country not being thickly populated the camp area could be completely cut off from the outside world.
Hoess was given four weeks to prepare his plan and told to get in touch with SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann, an official of some importance in Amt 4 of the Reich Security Head Office, known by the initials RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptawt).
He experienced many administrative difficulties before everything was ready, and it is clear from the account which he has given in this book that red tape has no national boundaries. Meanwhile the numbers of convoys began to increase and as the extra crematoriums would not be completed before the end of the year the new arrivals had to be gassed in temporarily erected gas chambers and then burned in pits at Birkenau, and, as Hoess has himself stated, the smell of burning flesh was noticeable in Auschwitz camp, a mile away, even when the wind was blowing away from it.
This raises the much debated question, what did the German people know of these things. It has often been suggested that they knew nothing. That probability is as unlikely as its converse, that they knew everything.
It has been said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time,” and there is an abundance of evidence that a large number of the Germans knew a great deal about what went on in the concentration camps. There were still more who had grave suspicions and perhaps even misgivings but who preferred to lull their consciences by remaining in ignorance.
As the shortage of labor grew more acute it became the policy to free German women criminals and asocial elements from the concentration camps to work in German factories. It is difficult to believe that such women told no one of their experiences. In these factories the forewomen were German civilians in contact with the internees and able to speak to them. Forewomen from Auschwitz who subsequently went to the Siemens subfactory at Ravensbrück had formerly been workers at Siemens in Berlin. They met women they had known in Berlin and told them what they had seen in Auschwitz. Is it reasonable to suppose that these stories were never repeated? Germans who during the war indulged in careless talk used to be told: “You had better be careful or you’ll go up the chimney.” To what could that refer but to the concentration camp crematoriums?