"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (185 page)

5.
See the communication of June 18, 1942, from the SD-
Leitabschnitt
, Posen, to the district president of Posen (State Archive Pozna
,
Reichsstatthalter
2335, Bl. 148); decree of September 10, 1939, issued by the head of the Civil Administration Danzig (Gda
sk) (
VOBl. Reichsstatthalter Danzig–West Prussia
, p. 11, HK Warschau, Plakatsammlung II, doc. t 12/6; in German and Polish); decree of October 2, 1939, from the head of the Civil Administration Kattowitz (
VOBl. Head of the Civil Administration
12/39, p. 67, in
Doc. Occ.
5:74); also the dissolution orders by the Kattowitz Gestapo office of July 4, 1940, regarding the meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses and July 7 regarding the “unified evangelical Seventh Day Christians” (
Amtsblatt Regierung Kattowitz
, 1940, Stück 24, no. 221, and Stück 37, no. 309, Warsaw University Library, Sign. 034693); the legal basis was the decree of February 28, 1933, sec. 1 (
RGBl.
I, 83), which declared restrictions on the right of assembly to be admissible.

6.
Decree of October 8, 1940, by the State Archive Pozna
, Gendarmerie Kreis Schrimm 143, p. 14: “It has come to my notice that the Polish population frequently use funerals as a welcome opportunity for private meetings. To prevent such cases in the future, it appears desirable to prohibit Polish funerals from starting at the home (where normally people drink and talk politics) and to have them start at the funeral parlor and to limit participation to close relatives only.”

7.
See the activity report of the
Kreisleitung
of Hermannsbad (Ciechocinek) for June 1941 (State Archive Pozna
NSDAP, Gauleitung Wartheland 13, 12–13): “The clerics are even showing themselves in their skirts on the streets and in the culture centers once again. This has now been forbidden by the commissar and
Ortsgruppenleiter
.”

8.
Regarding the persecution of the church in Poland, see the detailed report by Madajczyck,
Polityka
II, sec. “Religious Life,” 176 ff., 195 ff.; Broszat,
Verfolgung polnischer katholischer Geistlicher 1939–1945
(1959) (BA IV d 70); Broszat,
Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik
(1961), 143 ff.; with respect to the individual measures, see, for example, the letter of February 6, 1941, from the Reich governor of Posen to the then Episcopal Council of Posen (Nuremberg doc. NG-3914) (prohibition of religious assembly); confiscation order of January 20, 1941, by the Main Trustee Office East–Danzig>N>West Prussia regarding the assets of the Catholic Church and Catholic foundations and orders in Danzig–West Prussia (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc. I-140); a summary will be found in the Main Trustee Office East activity report for 1939–42, reproduced in Łuczak,
Diskriminierung der Polen
(1966), 172 ff., 192 (real estate and cattle belonging to the Catholic Church went to the district heads of agriculture; see letter of October 16, 1941, from the Gestapo, Posen, to the district
Landräte
, ZS); see also the report of July 8, 1941, from the district president of Hohensalza (State Archive Pozna
,
Reichsstatthalter
856, Bl. 9) (surveillance of church services); circular of May 17, 1940, from the Apostolate Nuntius Culm and the bishop of Danzig (Gesch. no. 635/40; Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, I-40) (removal of Polish inscriptions in churches; prohibition of processions and the use of the Polish language in confessions). Decree of July 31, 1940, no. 115/40, quoted in the report of September 18, 1940, by the district president of Hohensalza (Inowrocław) (Posen University Library) (dispersion of Polish clerics all over the country); reports of September 18, 1940, and of March 8, 1942, from the district president of Hohensalza, Posen University Library (arrest and deportation of the Polish clergy); reports of February 18, 1941, and March 8, 1942 (Posen University Library, 8) (prohibition of reduction of Catholic services); letter of October 16, 1941, from the Gestapo Posen to the
Landräte
of the district (ZS) (closure of Polish churches in Posen); decree of April 24, 1941, by the Reich governor of Wartheland, issued as order of the day by BdO Posen of May 8, 1941 (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc. 635) (prohibition of attendance at Polish services by Germans).

9.
RGBl.
I 679.

10.
Cf. Hitler’s statements at table in June 1942:

He was, however, in no way affable with regard to the Vatican’s efforts to extend the concordat to the new Reich territories. The Saar, Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, the
Reichsgau
Danzig–West Prussia, the Warthegau, and a large part of Silesia and Alsace-Lorraine had no official relationship whatsoever with the Roman Catholic church…. Organization of ecclesiastical affairs in these regions was exclusively a matter for the governor and the highest local head of the religious association of the region…. If the clerics had no legal recourse to state funds, they would have to earn them by behavior agreeable to the state…. Funds would then have to be stopped for the individual priests … , so as to provoke petty squabbling between them, to our own great enjoyment. (Picker,
Hitlers Tischgespräche
[1951], 215 ff.)

11.
Ibid.; Hitler then said that it was “only because of the war that he had not yet put into practice his intention to declare the so-called relations with the Vatican superfluous.”

12.
See note 10 above; also Hitler at the working supper of July 4, 1942 (ibid., 218): “The behavior of this Bishop von Galen [von Galen was the bishop of Münster] will also be an opportunity to dissolve the concordat immediately after the war, to replace it by regional arrangements, and immediately to confiscate the contractually assured financial assets of the church.”

13.
Report of October 8, 1941, by the district president of Hohensalza (Posen University Library, 4 f.): “The measures … are also being hotly discussed in Evangelical circles in the Altreich … there is a certain bitterness, and people are asking whether the National Socialist State needs to set itself up against the Evangelical church too.”

14.
Decree of September 13, 1941, issued by the Reich governor of Wartheland (
VOBl. Reichsstatthalter Wartheland
1941, 463, in
Doc. Occ.
5:319 ff.); these associations were “the Posen Evangelical Church of German Nationality in the Wartheland, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of German Nationality in the West Wartheland, the Roman Catholic Church of German Nationality in the
Reichsgau
of Wartheland.” The church tax under public law ceased to exist. The German churches in the Wartheland and in the regions incorporated into the provinces of Upper Silesia and East Prussia were, however, empowered to levy contributions through the decree on the collection of contributions dated March 14, 1940 (
Verordnungsblatt Reichsstatthalter Wartheland
1940, 299), or the Reich Ministry of the Interior decree of December 22, 1941 (
RGBl.
I, 794).