Sobibor - Holocaust Propaganda And Reality - Unity of Nobility ...

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 199
On 25 July, Frank reiterated that the Führer had decided to deport
the Jews “as soon as overseas transportation permits the deportation of
the Jews.” 580
In October of 1940, Alfred Rosenberg wrote an article entitled “Jews
on Madagascar,” in which he reminded his readers that as early as the
anti-Jewish congress at Budapest in 1927 “[…] the question of a future
removal of the Jews from Europe [was] discussed, and here, for the first
time, the proposal was made to promote Madagascar as the intended
homestead of the Jews.” Rosenberg himself endorsed this idea and expressed
his wish for the Jewish “circles of high finance” in Britain and
the USA to help with the creation of a Jewish reservation on Madagascar,
something which constituted a world-wide problem. 581
At a meeting dedicated to the topic “The Jewish question as a worldwide
problem,” which took place on 29 March 1941, Rosenberg declared:
582
“For Germany, the Jewish question can only be considered
solved when the last Jew has left the Greater German space.”
Among other things in this connection, he mentioned a “Jewish reservation,”
which apparently was to be located on Madagascar, even if
he did not explicitly say so.
According to statements by Moritz von Schirmeister, a former official
in the ministry of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels himself spoke
about the Madagascar plan in public on several occasions, 583 and Ribbentrop
recalled the Führer’s decision to deport the European Jews to
North Africa or Madagascar. 584
The deportation of the European Jews to Madagascar was not a fictitious
plan, but a real and concrete project. It was elaborated a few
weeks after the armistice in France (22 June 1940), when a peace treaty
involving the French surrender of Madagascar to Germany was being
mulled over and, above all, when the end of the war was thought to be
imminent. The protraction of the war prevented the implementation of
this project.
580
581
582
583
584
Ibid., p. 405.
Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris (subsequently quoted as CDJC),
CXLVI-51, pp. 4, 7, 9.
CDJC, CXLVI-23, p. 66 and 82.
IMT, vol. XVII, p. 250.
IMT, vol. X, p. 398.