JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

With the outbreak of war, *Himmler established the
Main Office for the Security of the Reich (RSHA) commanded
by Heydrich. Eichmann was appointed to chair the Jewish Department
with Heinrich Mueller at the head. Consequently,
Eichmann was serving under Heydrich.
During October 1939, Eichmann and his men were responsible
for the expulsion of thousands of Jews from Germany,
Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia to a
remote place in Poland called Nisko. Most of them perished;
only about 300 of them survived. These deportations and
those that came immediately afterwards became the basis for
the development of methods of mass expulsions during the
entire period of Nazi rule on the entire continent. It was Eichmann
who at that time translated the German Foreign Office’s
plan to deport the Jews to the tropical island of Madagascar
into a viable plan. The plan was never put into action.
In February 1940, the RSHA began a series of reorganizations.
Eichmann’s unit was renamed IVB4, the name by
which it would become known forever: the “Department of
Jewish Matters and Deportation.” It was formally listed under
the authority of the Gestapo. It was a victory for the SD in the
struggle for control of anti-Jewish policy. Eichmann was now
formally a Gestapo officer.
Now Eichmann worked furiously. As head of the Department
of Emigration in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, he had to
evacuate hundreds of thousands of people to Poland to make
room for ethnic Germans who had been evacuated from the
Baltic countries. The deportation was carried out from the
areas of Stettin and Posen, causing great chaos in the General
Government and strong protests from Governor Hans
*Frank. This crisis crossed wires historically with the preparations
for the invasion of the U.S.S.R. It seems that at this
point, the expert in emigration became the expert in mass
murder and genocide.
The month of September 1941 marks the beginning of
Eichmann’s activities on a mass scale. In mid-September, *Hitler
ordered Himmler to carry out a deportation of Jews from
Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate. In October, Himmler
officially prohibited Jewish emigration from the continent
and in the same month Eichmann organized the deportation
of 20,000 Jews from the Reich along with 5,000 Roma (gypsies)
to the Lodz ghetto. In the same month, Eichmann was
again promoted. This time, he was promoted to Obersturmbannfuhrer
(lieutenant colonel), his highest rank. In October,
Eichmann held a meeting of representatives of different
institutions that were connected to the Jewish issue where he
informed them of the deportation of German Jews. Likewise,
they were required to report their activities in that matter.
When all was ready, the trains from Germany and Austria
began to move towards Poland, White Russia, and the Baltic
area. Eichmann personally commanded all arrangements and
traveled to Minsk, Lvov, Lublin, and Lodz, to check the progress
of the preparations to receive the deportees.
At the beginning of 1942, Eichmann visited Auschwitz
and Treblinka. Even so, most of his activities until then had
Eichmann, Adolf Otto
involved deportations and their organization, and not the
genocide of European Jews. His involvement in the latter
phase began with the convening of the *Wannsee Conference
on January 20, 1942.
At the Wannsee Conference, the coordination of all the
German bodies connected with the implementation of the Final
Solution was discussed. Eichmann had convened the conference,
written Heydrich’s speech, and written the protocol.
At the end of the day, it was Eichmann, Muller, and Heydrich
who joined together after all of their aims had been discussed.
Eichmann had now turned from an emigration expert to one
of the most important people in the implementation of the
new policies against the Jews.
After Wannsee, Eichmann became the director of the
largest murder project in history.
Eichmann now directed transportation from all parts of
Europe to the extermination camps in Poland, and oversaw
the number of deportees. He coordinated the train departure
schedules with railroad authorities in different countries. In
cooperation with the German Foreign Office, he organized
the seizure of the huge quantity of possessions that the deported
Jews left behind.
In defining Eichmann’s role in this time period, it can
be said that it was not Eichmann who determined the policy,
yet he was an important link as an operative interpreter
of the policy.
Although Eichmann was well aware of what was happening
in the death camps, most of his activities were not in Poland
and Eastern Europe. He was not involved in the activities of the
Einsatzgruppen. His greatest impact was mostly in activities in
Central and Western Europe. In all of those countries, except
for Denmark, Norway, and Finland, representatives of his department
spread out and were responsible for the deportations.
In occupied France, Holland, Belgium, Greece, Slovakia, and
the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, as well as in the Reich,
the orders were given by Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich and
carried out by the joint action of local collaborators and Eichmann’s
department. Yet Eichmann was informed and knew all
along of the growing severity of the policy. Again and again, it
can be seen how he intervened to reduce the number of Jews
who received temporary exemptions from deportation orders.
In Holland, for example, Eichmann fought to cancel the
exemptions that were given to the country’s Jewish diamond
workers, who were very important for its economy.
Eichmann was a key figure in two places: in the Theresienstadt
ghetto and in Hungary. The history of the Theresienstadt
ghetto/camp in Bohemia is closely connected with the
name of Eichmann. It begins with the order of Heydrich in
October 1941 to evacuate 86,000 Jews from the Protectorate.
The fear of chaos as with Nisko produced the decision to isolate
them in the area of the Protectorate itself. Between January
and June 1942, more than 50,000 Czech Jews were sent to
the camp. In addition, Jews from Vienna and Jews of German
nationality were later added. For most of them, the camp was
a way station to Auschwitz.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 249