TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter VIII: Indirect Transports of Jews to the Eastern Territories 247
On April 29, 1942, the German embassy in Bratislava (Pressburg) sent the
Slovakian government a verbal note containing the following:
“The Jews who have been transported out and those yet to be transported
out of the territory of Slovakia into Reich territory will be coming
into the General Gouvernement and into the occupied eastern territories
after preparation and retraining for work assignment. The accommodation,
feeding, clothing, and retraining of the Jews, including their relatives,
is incurring expenses, which cannot presently be covered from the initially
small labor output of the Jews, because the retraining bears results only
after some time and because only a portion of the Jews who have been and
who are going to be transported is capable of working.”
In order to cover these expenses, the Reich government required a sum of
500 Reichsmark per person of the Slovakian government. 714
On May 11, 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann’s
deputy in Slovakia, informed the Slovakian Minister of the Interior that, according
to information from the RSHA, there was a possibility of intensifying
the transports of Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz, but he qualified this with: 715
“However, these transports are allowed to contain only Jews and Jewesses
who are fit for labor, no children.”
The proposal was not adopted, and for this reason all 19 Jewish transports
from Slovakia in May 1942 went into the Lublin district.
A total of 57,752 Jews in 57 transports were deported from Slovakia in the
year 1942. Of these, 38 transports, or a total of 39,006 persons, were brought
to the Lublin district, 716 the 19 remaining transports comprising 18,746 persons
were sent to Auschwitz.
The first transports of Jews from France are also to be seen within the
framework of this program for the exploitation of the Jewish work force, since
the first transports comprised exclusively Jews able to work. In March 1942,
SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, representative for Jewish affairs in
France, reported that preparatory talks “with regard to the expulsion of
approx. 5,000 Jews to the east” could be conducted with the French authorities.
Dannecker made clear that those involved would have to be “male Jews
able to work, not over 55 years of age.” 717 The mass deportation of the Jews
living in France, but also of those in Holland and Belgium, was decided in
June of 1942. At that time, the Germans were conducting first and foremost a
policy for the exploitation of the Jewish labor force in Auschwitz, so that the
problem of those who were unfit for work was only a peripheral one. On June
15, 1942, Dannecker wrote a note, in which he summarized the results of a
714 Ibid., p. 105.
715 Ibid., pp. 108f.
716 According to the transport lists cited in the preceding section, the 38 transports into the Lublin
District comprised a total of 39,899 persons.
717 RF-1216.