"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (202 page)

47.
See urgent memo of November 18, 1941, from the district president of Posen to the chief of police of Posen and the district
Landräte
(State Archive Pozna
, Landratsamt Grätz, 22, 56 f.): “Subject to final regulation of the ownership of the bicycles seized, the Reich governor has agreed to the proposal by the deputy Gauleiter that the bicycles seized from Poles should be made available for the following purposes of public interest: official visits to settler farmers, which is particularly difficult on account of the long distances involved, the care of settlers by the NS women’s association, care of the NSV, League of German Girls [Bund Deutscher Mädel] allocation camps, and for those looking after students.”

48.
In this context see the transcript of a discussion between Heydrich, Goebbels, Göring, and others on November 12, 1938, regarding the continued treatment of Jews after the so-called
Kristallnacht
(ZS, Ordner Versch. 6/1783 ff.; copy); regarding the fate of the Jews of Greater Poland, see Nawrocki,
Hitlerowska Okupacja Wielkopolski
(1966), no. 3, 5 g.

49.
Circular of September 21, 1939, from the head of the SIPO and the SD to the head of the task forces of the Security Police, with detailed instructions on the concentration of rural Jews in the towns as part of the “final solution” (ZS, Ordner Versch. 6/1783 ff.; copy).

50.
Regarding the catastrophic conditions in the Łód
ghetto (some eight hundred deaths daily as a result of disease and killings by the police), see the report by the Council of Jewish Elders of the Łód
ghetto dated June 16, 1940 (State Archive Pozna
, 1940–42, Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei, 7). The immediate use of firearms against Jews at the slightest provocation is chronicled in the report of November 15, 1942, by the inspector of the SIPO and the SD (State Archive Pozna
,
Reichsstatthalter
1174, Bl. 131 and 133). Raids were a popular means of extorting every last penny from Jews, or of selecting victims for deportation: see the report for the period February 16 to March 15, 1940, by the district president of Kalisch, who was still responsible for Łód
at that time (State Archive Pozna
,
Reichsstatthalter
1830, Bl. 8), describing an “unplanned evacuation”: “Since the Jews often did not obey the ban on leaving the Łód
ghetto, the police undertook an extensive raid in which 2,951 Jews were taken into custody. A number of them were released into the ghetto again after payment of the official police fine of RM 150 [the maximum fine—Author]; (this whole operation brought in a total of RM 71,400) the majority were evacuated.” The plundering of the Jews by the ghetto administration and the police is documented in the report of November 15, 1942 (ibid.), by the district president of Kalisch and the letter of December 1940 by the Oberbürgermeister of Łód
(ZS, Versch. 25 [2], Bl. 480 ff.). For the conditions in the Łód
ghetto, see Wulf, “Lodz: Das letzte Ghetto auf polnischem Boden” (1962).

51.
Gestapo Posen to the
Landrat
of Lissa, August 27, 1943, regarding evacuation of the Jews from Lissa (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
).

52.
Even before their isolation in the ghetto (and to an even greater extent than in the Reich), the majority of Jews were already physically and emotionally devastated by the absolutely intolerable conditions imposed by the civil administration: the barest requirements for living were not even satisfied, and they had been stripped of every possibility of support. On July 1, 1941, Reich governor Greiser had already ordered that no further correspondence with Jewish and especially American aid committees supporting Jews in need was to be permitted, thus making the aid efforts themselves impossible (Reich governor, Wartheland, to the district presidents of Posen, Hohensalza, and Kalisch, July 1, 1941, I/50, Akten der Geheimen Staatspolizeileitstelle Posen II B-Wi, Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
). There was of course no question of support from public funds. Some local authorities ran their own Jewish camps to cover their labor requirements (letter of August 17, 1943, from the
Landratsamt
, Lissa, to the District Construction Office, in which the
Landrat
demanded abolition of the Jewish work camp at Buchendorf maintained by the latter, where the Jews were kept in a “state of starvation” [cf. the camp kitchen note dated April 13, 1943, which indicated that the food costs for April 1943 amounted to less than RM 0.50 per inmate], State Archive Pozna
1943–44, Landrat Kreis Lissa, 19). Further details of the Jews’ living conditions in the Warthegau will be found in von Hohenstein,
Wartheländisches Tagebuch
(1963); under the administrative decree issued by the
Reichsführer
-SS on August 2, 1943, quoted in the letter of August 17 from the
Landratsamt
of Lissa to the District Construction Office of Lissa (State Archive Pozna
1943–44, Landrat Kreis Lissa, 19), all Jews who were still living outside the ghetto were to be sent there by August 1943 at the latest.