Archive/File: orgs/american/ihr flash.point From oneb!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!cyber2.cyberstore.ca!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!news.sprintlink.net!news.world.net!teleport.com!teleport.com!not-for-mail Sat Nov 13 04:51:46 PST 1993 Article: 5138 of alt.revisionism Xref: oneb soc.history:19126 alt.censorship:14934 alt.activism:30805 alt.revisionism:5138 alt.discrimination:11274 alt.conspiracy:22712 alt.politics.correct:7037 alt.journalism.criticism:1246 talk.politics.misc:101180 talk.politics.mideast:36995 Path: oneb!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!cyber2.cyberstore.ca!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!news.sprintlink.net!news.world.net!teleport.com!teleport.com!not-for-mail From: dgannon@teleport.com (Dan Gannon) Newsgroups: soc.history,alt.censorship,alt.activism,alt.revisionism,alt.discrimination,alt.conspiracy,alt.politics.correct,alt.journalism.criticism,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast Subject: KRISTALLNACHT: Instigators, Victims and Beneficiaries. Date: 10 Nov 1993 04:13:54 -0800 Organization: TelePort - Public Access Lines: 800 Message-ID: <2bqlu2$8po@kelly.teleport.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: kelly.teleport.com Excerpts from: _FLASH POINT: Kristallnacht 1938, Instigators, Victims and Beneficiaries_ by Ingrid Weckert Published by Institute for Historical Review P.O. Box 2739 Newport Beach, California 92659 All rights reserved English translation (C)opyright 1991 Institute for Historical Review ISBN 0-939484-37-4 Table of Contents (minus page numbers) is as follows: Publisher's Preface In Place of a Foreword I. The Grynszpan Case II. The Jewish "Declaration of War", March 24, 1933 III. Statements of the German-Jewish Communities IV. Anti-German Agitation Centers in Paris V. The Murder of Wilhelm Gustloff VI. Echoes of the Grynszpan Assault in German Public Opinion VII. November 9th, 1938 Unknown Provocateurs....Gathering of the Old Guard and Goebbel's Address....Goebbels -- Instigator of the KRISTALLNACHT?....Gauleiters and SA-Chief of Staff Forbid Action by Brownshirts....Where was Reinhard Heydrich That Night?....Postwar History and Historical Truth. VII. Schallermeier's "Sworn Statement" IX. What Happened in the Fuhrer's Apartment that Night X. Anti-Jewish Incidents XI. Dimensions of the Damage Heydrich's Report of November 11, 1938 to Hermann Goering.... Minutes of a Meeting in the Air Ministry, November 12, 1938.... Report of the Party Supreme Court to Goering, February 13, 1939....Summary XII. Destruction of Synagogues XIII. New "Documentation"? XIV. The Other Heydrich Telex Format of the "Telex"....Content of the Telex XV. The "Muller Telex" and other "Documents" XVI. The Role of the Brownshirts XVII. Extent and Effect of the Destruction XVIII. After the KRISTALLNACHT XIX. Cui Bono? XX. Conference in the Ministry of the Interior XXI. Conference in the Air Ministry, November 12, 1938 XXII. Jews Among Foreign Nations XXIII. Jewish Emigration Problems The Ha'avara Agreement....The Evian Conference and the "Intergovernmental" Committee....The Schacht Plan....The Rublee-Wohlthat Agreement....The Schacht-Rublee Conversations: Epilogue XXIV. The KRISTALLNACHT in Judicial Proceedings After 1945 XXV. Conclusions Herschel Grynszpan....The "Ligue Internationale Contre l'Anti-Semitisme" (LICA)....A Murder Staged to Incite a Pogrom? ....Concerns of the German Government....Efforts Toward Jewish Emigration...."Final Solution" Meant Emigration or Resettlement XXVI. KRISTALLNACHT Without End? Appendix Text of the Rublee-Wohlthat Agreement Footnotes Bibliography Glossary of Persons Mentioned in the Text Index Chapter XXV *** Conclusions *** This study of the REICHSKRISTALLNACHT draws to an end. Who, then, set the synagogues afire? Was it Dr. Goebbels? Heinrich Himmler? Reinhard Heydrich? Or Adolf Hitler? Was it a Nazi conspiracy? Was it the start of "the extermination of the Jews"? These questions are regarded today as having been answered in the affirmative, the answers having become "generally known historical facts" that, however, people are not free to dispute -- and, in Germany, forbidden by law even to doubt. Nevertheless, up to the present day not an atom of evidence linking anyone in the government of the Third Reich to the KRISTALLNACHT has been presented. It should be clearly understood at the outset that what we know as the KRISTALLNACHT is a whole complex of events in which differing trends and actions commingle. Only our purveyors of contemporary history, writing out of context, reporting in a grotesquely twisted and over-simplified manner, can make a "National Socialist Jewish pogrom" out of it. This study has tried to identify the individual threads of the tapestry, and to show to what other threads each is knotted. In other words, the book is intended to enable the reader to discern the connections these events and occurrences had with one another. Herschel Grynszpan First, there is the "Grynszpan case." Weighing all the data, it can be affirmed, with highly probable certainty, that it was the LICA who induced him to murder vom Rath. There is a valid conjecture as to why Grynszpan refused to admit that during his police interrogations: the LICA had guaranteed him its (very potent) support -- on condition he remain silent. The LICA lawyer, Moro-Giafferi, was at his side immediately after Grynszpan's murderous assault. Grynszpan spent a quiet time in a French jail. After the defeat of France in 1940, he was taken to Germany, but his planned trial was never held. To what extent the LICA, and its collaborators in Germany, had a hand in that turn of events, too, cannot be ascertained. The reasons for not having a trial lie entirely in the dark. Grynszpan disappeared mysteriously from the scene. It may be assumed, however, and realistically, that secret negotiations between the National Socialist government and the "Reich Union of Jews" produced this extraordinary situation. It has long ceased to be a secret that practically every Jew detained in a camp or held in prison in Germany in whom the international Jewish associations were especially interested could obtain his freedom -- naturally in exchange for a commensurate service by the Jewish side. Only the Jewish leaders knew the criteria they used to decide their choices. The motives for wanting the release of a 17 year-old murderer must have been very grave. Grynszpan, simply as a person, would not have justified it. At the same time, so powerful an organization the LICA was that, in any event, it was in a position to press effectively its demand that Grynszpan be freed. After the war, under a new name, and with fresh papers, he resurfaced -- in Paris, where the LICA still had its headquarters. While Grynszpan spent the war years safely in French and in German custody, or at liberty in some place unknown, his family emigrated to Palestine. It will be remembered that, in the consequence of the "Polish passport crisis" in October 1938 the Grynszpan family was deported from Hanover to Poland. The Grynszpans found refuge in Bentschen, but didn't stay there long. An American Jewish organization got the parents, a brother, and a sister authorizations to immigrate to Palestine. Such authorization normally was based on certain prerequisites: the applicant must be proficient in a craft or trade needed in Palestine -- clothes-mending, preeminently, was not among them -- or show 1,000 Palestine Pounds in currency, per family, upon entry. Mr. Grynszpan had been out of work and living on German social welfare payments for years. It is difficult to suppose that he accumulated the enormous sum of 1,000 Pounds Sterling (or Palestine Pounds) and had it on hand in cash. Then how did he get himself and his family into Palestine? The Jewish-American organization got them the immigrant papers, did it give them also the 1,000 Pounds entry money? Or was that contributed by the LICA? Either way, that was the pay-off for Herschel Grynszpan's silence. He was not punished. He lived securely through the war years, and was given the opportunity for a fresh start. The "Ligue International Contre l'Anti-Semitisme" (LICA) By its actions to damage and discredit Germany, the LICA had gained some notoriety. After the metamorphosis of Monsieur Lecache's propaganda center into an "International League Against Anti-Semitism," LICA, it staged demonstrations that attracted public attention to this new Jewish cabal. It produced a monster spectacular on the occasion of the burning of the Reichstag (the German parliament building in Berlin) on the night of February 27, 1933, a theatrical "trial of the National Socialist government" that hit its high (or low, according to taste) when the LICA "prosecutor," one Moro Giafferi, shrieked histrionically, "Goering, you set the fire!" The LICA served as a mouthpiece for Albert Einstein in publishing his proclamation. Einstein was visiting the United States when, on January 30, 1933, Reich President von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. Whereupon, Einstein resolved not to return to Germany, even though some circles in Berlin virtually entreated him to come back. He did go back to Europe, but stopped in Belgium, to settle his personal affairs from there. Then he wrote an insulting letter to Max Planck, the President of the Prussian Academy of Science, and took ship to America. On March 27, 1933, the ship called at at LeHavre. A LICA delegation came aboard to solicit the famous physicist's views on Germany. Einstein had left Germany months ago and had no direct knowledge of conditions there since January 30th, but that did not deter him from giving the LICA the text of a proclamation reading: The brutal violence and oppression committed against all free spirits, and against the Jews... these acts of violence that have taken place in Germany fortunately have awakened the conscience of all countries that remain true to humanity and political freedom. The International League against Anti-Semitism has performed the great service of defending justice by securing the unity of the peoples who are not infected by the poison. It is very much to be hoped that the reaction will be strong enough to prevent Europe's relapse into long-forgotten times of barbarism. May all friends of our so gravely menaced civilization concentrate their efforts to remove this psychic sickness from the world. I am with you.^152 The verbiage bears a malodorous resemblance to the mouthings of Samuel Untermeyer a few months later, in August, 1933, in Amsterdam and in New York. Now, as then, no specific accusation is made; instead there is an overall calumny and denunciation of Germany as the incarnation of evil and inhumanity. Opposing Germany are the "good guys" fighting for humanity, justice, freedom, and, of course, democracy. The self-serving sanctimoniousness of this primitive white vs. black is characteristic of a certain type of Germany's enemies (others lie just as viciously, but are more sophisticated about it). This type of anti-German hate agitation is possible because those at whom it is aimed are usually too apathetic to inquire into the substance of the fantastic assertions that are made. In Einstein's case, one wonders how a mathematical genius can be so simple-minded -- if he was, in fact so simple-minded -- as to sign a pronouncement such as the one the LICA put before him. The LICA's next official appeal was in 1936, when David Frankfurter murdered Wilhelm Gustloff, the NSDAP country-group leader in Switzerland. It was not only the attempt of the LICA's star barrister, Moro Giafferi, to take over the murderer's defense before a Swiss court that made the Frankfurter/LICA connection an obvious one. After an orderly trial, Frankfurter was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released, prematurely, in 1945. With the help of his influential friends, he went to Palestine. What hopes had rested on that murder can only be surmised. But it provoked no repercussions in Germany. In general, what the chroniclers wrote of the activities of another Jewish organization was true also of the LICA: "...always in the background, pulling countless strings, organizing ever new methods of operating undergound, but always fighting..."^153 A Murder Staged to Incite a Pogrom? What was the purpose of the murderous attack on vom Rath? From the beginning, all who became involved in the case agreed that the person of Legation Secretary vom Rath had nothing to do with it. Grynszpan's initial heroic pose as "an avenger of the Jewish people" was transparently false. The LICA, or whoever primed the murderer, had a different aim. SOMEONE had to be murdered -- it just happened to be the young diplomat -- not because a victim, but because a murderer was needed -- a JEWISH murderer. What game is being played here? A man is murdered, on an open stage, as it were. The victim is a German diplomat. The murderer is a Jew; he does not try to hide, nor to flee, but acts as though he wanted to be caught, and he is caught. It is the murderer who is the object of the exercise. The instigators need a murderer -- a Jewish murderer -- because they expect the murder by a Jew to provoke a spontaneous reaction in Germany that they hope will turn into a pogrom. Is that too bold a conjecture? In eastern Europe, a murder -- and often a far lesser offense -- frequently led to a popular uprising against the Jews, to the outbreak of a pogrom. In Prague, a Jew had done nothing more than throw sand at a priest; that was enough to cause a bloodbath in which more than four thousand Jews were killed. When the Russian Czar Alexander II lost his life in a bomb attack in May 1881, a Jewess was among those arrested on the spot. Whether or not she may have had a part in the assassination was not even considered. There was a massacre of Jews that took the lives of thousands. Murder was a tried and proven technique for unleashing a pogrom. There remains the question: Why was a pogrom in Germany desired under all circumstances? Was it intended to cause distress among the Jews in Germany? The "propitious storm" for which Jabotinsky yearned and strove comes to mind. Bernard Lecache, the LICA capo, and Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Zionist Revisionist Party, were both born in Odessa and had worked together closely since Jabotinsky founded his party in 1925 in Paris, where Lecache had come to identify himself very largely with Jabotinsky's ideas. It is therefore highly probable that the "propitious storm" was a man-made typhoon intended to blow the Jews out of their host countries, and in particular, out of Germany, into Palestine. Jabotinsky used many connections to Jewish communities in Germany to set up the necessary contacts. That, in itself, was not enough to produce a pogrom; it was a first step. What would have happened if the Germans were as easily aroused to passion, and to taking action, as are, for example, the Russians, or the Poles? There were cruel and bloody persecutions of the Jews in Poland and in Russia as recently as the third decade of this century. The governments remained largely impassive, often not intervening until days after the riots had started, and the ringleaders' craving for vengeance against the Jews had begun to subside. To be sure, it must be recognized that in these countries a Jewish pogrom was a form of catharsis: The dammed-up popular resentment, and dissatisfaction, actually directed at the government, found a scapegoat in the Jews, and in this way the people worked off their "anti- government" emotions. In Germany, a Jewish pogrom tolerated -- or even organized -- by the state would have had a completely different effect. If the National Socialist leaders had sent out the arsonists and the bully- boys who took part in the tumults of that November night -- as the "re- educators" keep trying to claim -- those tumults would have taken on other proportions, but they would not have had the approval, let alone cooperation, of the general population. The overwhelming majority of Germans would not have supported a state-orchestrated pogrom, and would have taken a stand decidedly against the regime. The German leadership at one stroke would have dissipated its most valuable asset: the love and respect, not to say reverence, they had for the person of Adolf Hitler. Whereupon, most probably, internal disturbances would have followed. The provocateurs who made every effort to incite anti-Jewish aggression found only a very faint echo among the population: a few wild anti-Semites; a few ruffians; some street rabble; a fringe of asocials; one or another steamed-up Brownshirt troop. That was the full array. Despite their years of preparation -- at least since the murder of Wilhelm Gustloff in February, 1936 -- and their most strenuous efforts -- that was all the backing the instigators could drum up. Hardly adequate for a full-scale pogrom, with hundreds, perhaps thousands, slain. The German leadership would have known that beforehand, and never would have counted on an uncontrolled blood-lust on the part of the German people. That someone did count on that is evidence of a dismal ignorance of the German character and a skewed perception of the German social order. In this author's opinion, the plan that launched the November occurrences was to encourage the incidents to spread to such an extent that they could be exploited to work up the people against their government. With that, the impatiently awaited opportunity would have come for the moral perverts who today are "proud" to acknowledge that they betrayed their country during the government of Adolf Hitler. Bringing Austria into the German Reich, the Munich Agreement, were events that disturbed them deeply, since such international political successes heightened Adolf Hitler's prestige abroad and strengthened his popularity at home. One of the traitors was Capt. Fritz Wiedemann (Ret.), the Fuehrer's personal adjutant. Behind Hitler's back, he maintained liaison with British intelligence, passing over secret records of conferences, reports, and other confidential material to which, in his position of trust, he had easy access. By spurious accounts and lying tales, he strove to create the impression in England that Germany was in "complete confusion"; the Fuehrer's authority and prestige ruined, not only among the entire German people, but among his closest collaborators. It is intriguing to observe that Wiedemann, in a secret report dated June 30, 1938 to his confidential connection, Secretary of State Sir Robert Vansittart -- which the latter then conveyed to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain -- stated that, at Hitler's prompting, Goebbels had instructed his subordinate Party organizations that "mistreatment of the Jews" was to start anew. Really uncanny, how Wiedemann foresees the events of a few months later. In his June 30, 1938 report to Vansittart, Wiedemann claims also that a number of highly placed observers were of the view that "a political set-back for the Nazi-system, and for the Fuehrer himself -- as long as it did not hurt the German people -- would have some repercussions, and hasten the coming of the crisis."^154 If the contemplated political setback was not to be at the expense of the German people, a most suitable alternate victim had to be chosen: the Jewish people. The traitorous clique in Germany kept up many contacts with foreign organizations hostile to Germany, and used those connections to obtain help in furthering their plans to overturn the German government. Many publications have revealed numerous ties to England. The existence of analogous links between German conspirators and the LICA cannot reasonably be denied. In any case, the plotters' plans and prognoses, sent out clandestinely, are sure to have reached Jewish circles, and the Jews would not have been the last to welcome a change in the political order in Germany. It was not only German traitors, working for the downfall of Hitler, for whom a pogrom, with its attendant disturbances, would have been highly opportune. Testimony on hand indicates that certain Zionist elements, who tried by every means to get the German Jews to emigrate to Palestine, secretly would have welcomed anti-Jewish measures in Germany. World Jewry, represented in the League of Nations by the Jewish Agency, also was stirring for a political change in Germany. A pogrom, that would be seen as verifying his constant assertions of the suffering of German Jews under the "Nazi Terror," would have been especially welcome to Nahum Goldmann, the Zionist leader. Then there was still the matter of the plan to partition Palestine, a plan that was to be rejected by the British Cabinet precisely at the beginning of November 1938. While Jabotinsky's "Revisionists" opposed this plan because they wanted all of Palestine for a future Jewish state, the Peel Commission plan was seen by moderate Zionists as meeting at least in part their claim to Palestine. Would the British not give in, after all, if they saw, practically before their eyes, how barbarously the Jews were treated in Germany? That it was the German Jews who would have to bear the afflications of a pogrom must not have weighed too heavily on the consciences of those who would be responsible for it. Larger issues were at stake. Nahum Goldmann, for one, espoused the standpoint that the interests of the Jews in Germany were to be subordinate to those of world Jewry. As far back as 1934, he had said, in a conversation with Mussolini: "... our policy cannot be to relinquish the future just to provide some small improvement for the present generation of Jews."^155 For him, the future of the Jewish people lay in Palestine. Securing their pretensions to this strip of land was in any case more important to the Jewish people than the possible hardship and oppression the Jews in Germany might have to bear. These reflections show that anti-Jewish outbursts in Germany were, for their own purposes, gratifying to certain groups. They all had the same objective: to do harm to Germany; to overthrow the Reich government; to destroy National Socialist Germany. Concerns of the German Government There was one group who had no interest whatever in any kind of disturbance but, quite to the contrary, had a vital interest in, and took the strictest measures to assure, the prevalence of calm and order in the Reich. That group was, understandably, the German leadership. The Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, his Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, and the Chief of German Police, Heinrich Himmler, would have taken it as a personal affront if disorders had broken out in Germany; they would have felt they had failed their responsibilities. The overriding interest of the German leadership did not lie in fomenting anti-Jewish disturbances but in bringing about the inner unity of the German people and to enhance respect for it abroad. These aims, clearly and incontestably evident in German policy in the years of peace, seem today to have been expunged from public awareness. The measures taken against Jews in the Third Reich touched only their exclusion from the spiritual community of the German people. The statment of that fact does not constitute a moral justification of all the laws enacted at that time. No one can be so blind, or so pigheaded as to deny that many thousands of German Jews were bitterly wronged by being forced to emigrate from Germany. (Lamentably, neither is there any other state on the planet whose policies, or politics, would pass moral muster. Germany, i.e., the "Federal Republic," is the first -- and is likely also to be the last -- state in history to try earnestly to make amends, and has been doing so by paying astronomical sums as "reparations" to millions of people -- in their vast majority, Jews -- generation after generation.) Moreover, the National Socialist anti-Jewish measures were entirely legal, and were internationally so recognized. The alien-incited, artificially-contrived KRISTALLNACHT disturbances had nothing to do with them. It is impossible to fathom why one of the most intelligent of the NSDAP leaders, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, is put forth so insistently as the author of the KRISTALLNACHT manifestations. He never would have stooped to such crude tactics, if only because he knew they would make the Jews into martyrs. If he had entertained any thought of staging anti-Jewish demonstrations, he had other means for the purpose. In such an eventuality, the disturbances would not have touched a mere one and a half percent, as was the case on November 9th/10th, 1938, but practically the whole Jewish population. If Adolf Hitler, or Heinrich Himmler, or Dr. Goebbels really wanted to provoke anti-Semitic incidents, would it not have been incomprehensible if, immediately upon receiving word of the occurrence of such incidents they should give strict orders that the transgressions be suppressed at once? As soon as reports of disturbances in Hessia began to come in during the reunion dinner in the Munich Old Town Hall, Goebbels -- after what may have been one of his typical emotional discharges -- had his Gauleiter colleagues telephone their home offices to assure the preservation of calm and order. The same held true for the Brownshirts. Chief of Staff Lutze ordered that under no circumstances were Brownshirts to be drawn into anti-Jewish actions. Where show windows had been smashed, Brownshirts were to stand guard against looting. Adolf Hitler learned of the events after midnight, whereupon he ordered that this "madness" be ended at once. Himmler telexed instructions to the SS and the police to provide for the protection of the Jewish population. The "Deputy of the Fuehrer" (Rudolf Hess) at the same time teletyped a directive to all regional administrations that no fires were to be set anywhere, under any circumstances whatever. All these orders have been preserved; they are before us in writing. Looters and other miscreants were pursued ruthlessly. How can these documented facts be reconciled with the thesis that it was the German leaders who organized the happening in the first place? The thesis does not square with the facts; it is preposterous; it cannot be reconciled. Far from having started the trouble, the German leaders' presence of mind and quick reactions kept the mischief from becoming far more dangerous and deadly. It was because Party leaders, SS, and police in many localities calmed the people excited by the agitators and, where necessary, took Jews into protective custody, that the disturbances were quelled relatively quickly and graver consequences obviated. When dawn broke on November 10th, the spectre had vanished. People came back to their senses. Those who during the night had seized the inviting opportunity to take things out of showcases, in most instances took the things back spontaneously, not waiting for the official call to do so, or surrendered them to the police. Dr. Goebbels' appeal to "desist at once from all demonstrations and actions against Jews" did not fail of its effect and showed clearly the attitude of the German government. The position of those elements in the National Socialist movement who felt the Jews were a "disturbing element" in the "German spiritual community" would seem to have been strengthened by the KRISTALLNACHT events. A Jew had murdered a German diplomat, which moved the German population to react violently against its Jewish fellow-citizens. That was the official and generally accepted version. That the whole affair -- from the murder to the KRISTALLNACHT -- was one large-scale operation prearranged by anti-German elements outside and inside the country does not seem to have been grasped by anyone. Efforts Toward Jewish Emigration One consequence of the KRISTALLNACHT in Germany was an intensification of the effort to persuade the Jews to leave. To that end, Adolf Hitler assigned to Hermann Goering the task of consolidating the work of various agencies that were engaged in various aspects of Jewish emigration. A "Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration" was set up. Its principal purpose was to counsel Jewish citizens who had decided to emigrate, to give them the broadest possible support, and to facilitate the completion of the necessary emigration formalities. An example of the special consideration accorded emigrating Jews was exemption from payment of the "emigration tax," to which every other German citizen who left the country to settle abroad was subject. Their personal financial claims were upheld; pensions, retirement payments, and other income, were to be remitted to them at their new place of residence. At the German government's expense, with the technical help of the SS, retraining centers were established where emigrating Jews could learn a new craft or trade or agricultural technique that was expected to ease their accommodation to a new country. The transfer abroad of their assets and their capital was handled generously, not to say magnanimously -- a privilege not enjoyed by other German emigrants for whom legal stipulations made it impossible to take out their capital. The Reich Central Office gave Jews without sufficient resources the funds necessary for emigration. A "Reich Union of Jews in Germany" was operated as the Jewish counterpart to the "Recih Central Office." Its function was to advise Jews on questions of emigration and to represent their interests vis-a- vis the Reich Central Office. The connection between the Kristallnacht and the accelerated promotion of Jewish emigration by setting up these two new organizations was brought out explicitly in the first session of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration on February 11, 1939: After a brief review of the events of November 9/10, 1938 and the need for unified handling of Jewish emigration particularly after the KRISTALLNACHT, SS-Group Leader Heydrich set forth in detail the objective of the Reich Central Office and took first the Rublee Plan. This plan... was to be the basis of an organized massive Jewish emigration.^156 "Final Solution" Meant Emigration or Resettlement The aftermath of the "November pogrom," as the KRISTALLNACHT was labelled by a hostile press, looked very different from what may have been envisaged by its planners. A final solution of the Jewish question, a definitive solution of this problem, was now essayed. The attempt was frustrated by the unwillingness of other countries to accept Jews as immigrants. The way to Palestine did stand open, mainly because of the Ha'avara Agreement, that made possible the entry of every Jew and the transfer there of his capital. But not every Jewish citizen of Germany wanted to go to Palestine. One of the biggest problems -- and, in the end, an insoluble one -- of the Reich Central Office, as well as the Reich Union of Jews -- was to find countries willing to take in Jews. In the summer of 1940, Heydrich, as Director of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, had to capitulate. He writes von Ribbentrop on June 24, 1940: In January, 1939 Field Marshall General Goering gave me the responsibility for carrying out the emigration of the Jews from the entire territory of the Reich. Subsequently, despite great difficulties, and in the face of the present hostilities, I had some success in accomplishing Jewish emigration. Since my agency took on this assignment on January 1, 1939, more than 200,000 Jews have emigrated from the territory of the Reich. But now the problem as a whole can no longer be solved by emigration. Therefore, a territorial final solution is needed.^157 "A territorial final solution." It is stated very distinctly. A new territory was to be set aside on which the Jews would be resettled. That was the "final solution." This word never had another meaning. For a time, the so-called "Madagascar Project" floated among the plans for emigration. In a peace treaty with France, the French island of Madagascar was to be made available for settlement by Jews. Obviously, the plan didn't go through. At the so-called "Wannsee Conference" in Berlin on January 20, 1942, "Project Madagascar" had been forgotten. Instead, an "evacuation of Jews to the East" was weighed. However, it must be pointed out that the dubious features of what one alleged to be the "minutes" of this conference have not been cleared up to this day.^158 Wilhelm Staeglich (author of _The Auschwitz Myth_) shows convincingly that at least partial sections of these "minutes" were inserted, omitted, or altered retroactively to suit the Nuremberg tribunal, and the subsequent writing of history.^159 At all events, the text of what we are told to believe are the "minutes" of the Wannsee Conference does not even hint that the "final solution" might mean anything other than emigration or evacuation. That is supported unequivocally in a letter written after the conference by Legation Counsel Rademacher of the Foreign Office to Minister of Legation Bielfeld of the French desk at the Foreign Office in which he relates the following: In August, 1940 I turned over to you for your files the plans worked out by my office for the final solution of the Jewish question for which the island of Madagascar was to be demanded of the French in a peace treaty. The practical accomplishment of the task was to be assigned to the Reich Main Security Agency (RSHA). In accordance with this plan, the Fuehrer has given Group Leader Heydrich the responsibility for the solution of the Jewish question in Europe. In the meanwhile, the war against the Soviet Union has provided the possibility of making other territories available for the final solution. Accordingly, the Fuehrer has decided that the Jews will not be sent to Madagascar, but shall be deported to the east. With this, Madagascar need no longer be considered for the final solution.^160 Here again is the same clear definition of "final solution" as definitive exclusion of the Jews from the European peoples; their physical removal, and their resettlement in a restricted region in the east. This was neither "extermination" nor "genocide." The first large-scale plan for a full, or corporate, solution was the Rublee-Wohlthat Agreement already discussed. The conferences that followed upon the KRISTALLNACHT also had that single purpose of seeking out possibilities to further the emigration of the Jews. The KRISTALLNACHT, engineered by alien intriguers, proved to be a catalyst that propelled the Jewish question into a forced evolution it may not have reached if vom Rath had not been murdered and the anti- Jewish incidents not been instigated. What the conspirators who planned the assassination and organized the demonstrations intended -- to precipitate internal commotions in Germany -- did not happen. The REICHSKRISTALLNACHT -- however insensately distorted and exaggerated after the war by the mass media and the "opinion makers" -- was forgotten in a few days. Chapter XXVI *** KRISTALLNACHT Without End? *** The KRISTALLNACHT troubles the conscience of many Germans to this day. Not because they had any part in it, or approved of it, but because nearly fifty years of purposeful propaganda have made them feel that for having "tolerated" the occurrences the whole German nation is "guilty." "They heard and saw their neighbors' windows broken, and did nothing about it. They walked past the shattered glass in the street, and saw the Jewish shop owners sweep it up, and still they failed to rise in revolt, and to sabotage the 'Nazis'. Their silence meant approval or, at the very least, toleration of the wrong done their Jewish fellow-citizens." So goes the propaganda. Thus declaring a whole people "guilty" is the more infamous when there is no evidence whatever that the transgressions were either planned or perpetrated by the National Socialist leadership. This book presents evidence that opponents of National Socialist Germany arranged the murder of vom Rath and dispatched provocateurs to incite the big- city rabble to aggression against Jews. The identities of the men behind this is, officially, still unknown. Words have monstrous power. Before the twentieth century there was no known period in history in which words out of context and outright lies were brought to bear so massively and so remorselessly on the moral destruction of a people. So long as there exists a special group of people, uniquely obsessed with an insatiable craving for revenge of wrongs, real or imaginary, recent or long past; so long as these people are in a position, by their manipulation of the media of mass communication, to continue to spread lies and hate about the world, a harmonious coexistence of peoples is impossible. Some have discerned the lessening effect and the ultimate futility of these tactics. They complain that the Germans "don't want to acknowledge their past"; that they are "reluctant to confess" the misdeeds for which an ongoing hate campaign has been reproaching them daily for decades. Those people probably have a foreboding that, as the years pass, even their lies will wear out. It is a truism that historical truth cannot be suppressed forever. The historical truth of our century includes two terrible wars in which all participants share guilt in whatever degree. Charging just one of the participants, Germany, with the whole primordial guilt is historically, and morally, perverse. It is blatant hypocrisy and in a very real sense "a crime against humanity." The Germans are portrayed as uncivilized barbarians and murderous fiends. No crime in history, or in pre-history, could have been so horrible as the "genocide" assertedly practiced on the Jews by the "Nazis." That Germany grieves for ten million dead in a war that was forced on her is passed over. The fact that the war's killing machine, once set in motion, ground up Germans just as it did other peoples does not seem to be acknowledged by Germany's enemies. It is an enduring tragedy that in the meanwhile two new generations of Germans have been inoculated with falsehood. The history taught them is falsified. It has been distorted so grotesquely, and so diabolically, that countless thousands of young Germans, and very many not young, succumbed to the peculiarly loathesome lie, among others hammered into them relentlessly by the "re-educators," that their parents and their grandparents, their relatives and their friends of a generation or two back, must have been beasts. Innumerable victims of this "re-education" were infected so badly that they now spread themselves this spiritual pestilence. All who have not lost their sense of proportion under the influence of the anti-German hate campaign that has been going on, with fluctuating intensity, since 1914, know that the Germans are the main bearers of European culture and science; that without Germany there is no Europe. As with every other nation, so the Germans have the right to have their history accepted and respected. The time is long overdue for putting an end to arbitrary, indiscriminate, one-sided denunciations of "Nazi crimes" -- especially since "the Nazis" committed no more, nor worse crimes than did others, and rather fewer than some. The pretense that a certain epoch of German history consisted only of barbarism, organized criminality, and inhumanity should have been dropped long ago. Above all, it is time to stop acting as though it were acknowledged fact that there is only one people who suffer all the evil that happens in the world -- that the sufferings (actual or asserted) of these special people transcend, in depth and in pain, the combined sufferings of all other peoples -- that all the world's agony since time began counts as nothing compared to what the Jews endured at the hands of "the Nazis." For a people that demands special privileges, that insists on priority of place -- and be it only the priority of suffering -- integration into the community of peoples is impossible. The Jews of Germany and of Europe suffered no more in the war than did the inhabitants of other European states. They were no more the victims of planned genocide than were other peoples (and decidedly less so than were the Germans and the Japanese). Their fate was not an extraordinary one, and their pretension to a preferential place among the nations is supported by nothing. Only when the Germans become conscious once more of their own worth, when they cease in cowardly fashion to give in to the Jews' incessant extortionate demands; when they rise from the breast-beating mea culpa posture into which they were forced in 1945, will a natural relationship among the free peoples be possible. Tremendous changes, affecting the lives of all peoples, began to make themselves felt very early in this century. For one, the progress of nuclear science sooner or later, but inevitably, will confront us with problems that at this time are unimaginable. We can meet this future best -- or only -- if people are resolved to work with, not against, one another. About the Author At the end of the Second World War, Ingrid Weckert was a teenager in devastated Berlin. After GYMNASIUM graduation, she studied theology, including Judaic studies, in Switzerland. Familiar with both English and Hebrew, she deepened her understanding of Jewish history during several stays in Israel. Weckert is a librarian by profession, but in recent years has devoted her time to historical research and writing. She lives in Munich. ----- -Dan Gannon -- dgannon@teleport.com Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)
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