A final Hitler decision for the "final solution"? The Riegner telegram reconsidered

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 3-10

  Browning, Christopher R ^a  

^a PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750263509     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/10.1.3     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. For the history of the Riegner telegram, I depend on Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman, Breaking the Silence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986). The text of the Riegner cable is taken from a photograph of the document on p. 88 of this book. I am grateful to Richard Breitman for his very helpful comments on the initial version of this paper
2. Ulrich Herbert, "Labor and Extermination: Economic Interest and the Primacy of Weltanschauung in National Socialism," Past and Present, No. 138 (February 1993), pp. 166-67
3. Nürnberg Document NO-205: Brack to Himmler, June 23, 1942
4. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, ed. by Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1975), p. 511 (Polizeisitzung, June 18, 1942)
5. Dieter Pohl, NS-Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941-1944: Die Organisierung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Ph.D. thesis, Ludwig-Maximiliens-Universität zu München, 1994), pp. 202-203. Despite my past proclivities in that direction, I would describe this period as one of renewed optimism but not one of "victory euphoria."
6. Yad Vashem Archives (hereafter YVA), TR-10/835, StA Düsseldorfs 8 Js 430/67, Indictment of Albert Ganzenmüller, p. 208 (Wolff testimony); and NO-2207: Ganzenmüller to Wolff, July 28, 1942
7. Rudolf Höss, The Commandant of Auschwitz (New York: Popular Library Edition, 1959), pp. 197-202
8. Jean-Claude Pressac, "The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz," Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 216-19
9. and Franciszek Piper, "Gas Chambers and Crematoria," ibid., p. 165
10. Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), pp. 198-99
11. YVA, O-53/130/410, Memo on Krüger-Schindler meeting of July 17, 1942
12. For the subsequent course of SS-military negotiations on Jewish labor in the General Government and the ultimate murder of these Jews in 1943, see Helge Grabitz and Wolfgang Scheffler, Letzte Spuren (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1988)
13. NO-5574: Himmler to Krüger, July 19, 1942
14. Cited in Dieter Pohl, Von der "Judenpolitik" zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements 1939-1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), p. 128. Pohl surmises that this statement by Globocnik refers primarily to Himmlers approval of Globocnik's pet-project for the "ethnic cleansing" and "Germanization" of the Zamosc region. But Globocnik referred to a plurality of tasks, and the reference to finishing them "in no time" coupled with Brack's earlier account of Globocnik's impatience, however, would seem to indicate that Globocnik was in part referring to the latest Final Solution order
15. NO-626: Himmler to Berger, July 28, 1942
16. Christopher R. Browning, "Beyond Warsaw and Lodz: Perpetrating the Holocaust in Poland," Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Raul Hilberg, ed. by James S. Percy and Alan P. Wertheimer (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 78-9
17. I begin with a figure of 2.35 million Jews in west and central Poland, slightly amending the calculations of Frank Golczewski, "Polen," Dimension des Völkermords, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), pp. 411-98. According to the Korherr report (NO-5193), some 530,000 Jews were alive in these regions at the end of December 1942. Subsequently, more than 40,000 Jews from Bialystok were then murdered in late January and early February 1943. I have roughly estimated some 100,000 Jews in hiding. These figures, of course, must be viewed as proximate rather than precise
18. Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, p. 200
19. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews revised and expanded edition (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), pp. 332-33
20. Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman, Breaking the Silence revised and expanded editon (Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1994), p. 265
21. Robert Wolfe, "Nazi Paperwork for the Final Solution," Perspectives on the Holocaust, pp. 8-18