TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter VI: National-Socialist Policy of Jewish Emigration 187
Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Munich, Vienna, Breslau, Prague, and Brünn
[Brno].”
On October 25, 1941, Franz Rademacher, legation counselor at the Foreign
Office, composed a note, in which, after recording the shooting of 8,000 male
Jews in Serbia, he added the following: 535
“The rest of the approximately 20,000 Jews (women, children, and old
people) and about 1,500 Gypsies, whose men were likewise also shot, [536]
were to be collected into the so-called Gypsy Quarter of the city of Belgrade
as a ghetto. Food for the winter could be secured in scanty amounts.
[…]
As soon as the technical possibility exists within the scope of the total
solution of the Jewish question, the Jews will be deported by sea to the reception
camps in the east.”
If, according to this, a portion of these Serbian Jews (the adult males) were
shot and the rest were subject to the “total solution to the Jewish problem,” it
is clear that the physical destruction of the Jews could not have been meant by
the latter phrase, but merely the deportation into “reception camps in the
east,” which served to accept Jews incapable of working.
The new course of the NS policy toward the Jews was officially announced
to the senior party ranks at the Wannsee Conference, called expressly for this
purpose. The conference, originally planned for December 9, 1941, 537 but then
postponed, took place on January 20, 1942, at Großer Wannsee 56/58 in Berlin.
The speaker was Reinhard Heydrich. The conference protocol begins with
a broad retrospective on the National Socialist Jewish policy up to that
point: 538
“At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of
the SD [Sicherheitsdienst = Security Service], SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich,
reported that the Reichsmarschall had appointed him delegate for
the preparation of the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe and
535
Robert Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen, Europe Verlag, Zürich-Stuttgart-Vienna 1961,
p. 293.
536
The male Jews were supposed to have been deported, since they had taken part in “numerous
acts of sabotage and revolt.” At first it was intended to deport them “to the General Gouvernement
or Russia,” but because “difficulties with transportation” intervened and the
Germans rated these Jews as a direct security threat, they were shot. ibid., pp. 288-292.
537
PS-709.
538
NG-2586-G. It should be pointed out that there is well-founded doubt as to the authenticity
of the Wannsee Protocol, cf. Roland Bohlinger, Johannes P. Ney, Zur Frage der Echtheit
des Wannsee-Protokolls, 2 nd ed., Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Viöl 1994;
Roland Bohlinger (ed.), Die Stellungnahme der Leitung der Gedenkstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz
zu dem von Bohlinger und Ney verfaßten Gutachten zur Frage der Echtheit
des sogenannten Wannsee-Protokolls und der dazugehörigen Schriftstücke, Verlag für ganzheitliche
Forschung, Viöl 1995; J. P. Ney, “Das Wannsee-Protokoll – Anatomie einer Fälschung”,
in: E. Gauss (ed.), op. cit. (note 98), pp. 169-191.