"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (54 page)

The owners of confiscated land and assets were not merely restricted in their rights of disposal (e.g., a prohibition on disposal or an approval proviso); they lost all rights of disposal and administration in toto.
³⁸
In the case of the confiscated Polish state assets, the Reich was registered in the land register as the owner of all rights to the real estate. The relevant decree explicitly mentioned the “incorporation” of the rights of the former Polish state into the assets of the Reich.
³⁹

Under the guidelines issued by the head of the Main Trustee Office East, it could undertake the “irreversible assignment of title” to confiscated assets; compensation was “subject to special regulations,”
⁴⁰
but these were never issued.
⁴¹
The Main Trustee Office East Property Stock Corporation, a subsidiary of the Main Trustee Office East, was empowered to “exploit [sell]” confiscated residential properties, among other activities.
⁴²
The Reich Financial Administration not only regarded Jewish assets as being at the disposal of the Reich; it put private Polish estates in the same category and confiscated them as well.
⁴³

The fact that although many agencies were authorized to issue confiscation orders, their implementation was exclusively a matter for the Security Police (Gestapo), which also undertook the collection of the confiscated assets at the “special request” of the Main Trustee Office East,
⁴⁴
offered a certain “guarantee” that practical implementation was controlled by the concept of expropriation. When it came to real estate belonging to the Polish state, the state administration—in this instance the Main Trustee Office East—had in any case been forced to assign to Himmler, in his capacity as Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, the most important sector for the “reorganization of the Eastern Territories,” the administration of agricultural real estate. In a letter dated February 15, 1940,
⁴⁵
Himmler informed the Reich minister of food and agriculture that the Main Trustee Office East had “delegated” these powers to him with Göring’s approval, and he requested that these properties be administered not by the trust offices but by the Reich Estates Administration, part of the Reich Ministry of Food, as he was evidently confident of greater influence over this agency than over the local trust offices.

III. Civil Service Law

In contrast to the situation in the education and economic sectors, which required complete reorganization, Civil Service law was familiar ground, and the segregation and special legislation concept could be put into practice using the proven model. As in the Altreich, all “non-German” career civil servants in the Annexed Eastern Territories, that is, all Polish civil servants (including Jews) were sacked immediately, and all pension entitlements were annulled;
¹
unless these individuals were deported to the General Government, they were forced into subordinate positions in the labor market. Because not all of them could be replaced by ethnic Germans, they frequently found employment as auxiliary personnel (messengers, drivers, low-level office clerks) in the German administration, very much to the displeasure of the high-echelon administration, which feared a strengthening of Polish espionage activity and attempted to keep Poles out of the public sector by means of considerable underpayment.
²

Even in later days, Polish employees, at least in the Warthegau (or Wartheland), could not be paid at a higher rate than Group 7 in the wage scale for employees; in principle, they were only allowed to be paid 80 percent of the salary earned by Germans “because of their poor performance”; if their performance was “above average,” they received 90 percent, and only “very highly qualified performance” earned them 100 percent.
³

To implement the principle of segregation, a large number of directives were issued to carry the “racial struggle” into the public service. In the Warthegau, for instance, all members of the public service were instructed to practice the greatest restraint in official and private talks with Poles;
⁴
under a decree issued by the Reich Ministry of the Interior on February 12, 1941,
⁵
they were even obliged to avoid all dealings with Poles whatsoever. Sexual relations between members of the public service and Poles resulted in immediate dismissal and the annulment of all pension rights. Family relations with Poles also incurred drastic consequences; identical decrees issued by the Reich Ministry of the Interior
⁶
and the Reich Ministry of Justice
⁷
in summer 1941 at the suggestion of the champion of the radical “racial struggle” against the Poles, the
Reichsstatthalter
of Posen (Pozna
) (which decrees were probably followed by the other ministries),
⁸
stipulated that all career civil servants, salaried employees, and workers at the relevant Reich authorities who were “related by blood or marriage” to Poles (i.e., the so-called Protected Subject Status Poles) were not to be transferred to the Annexed Eastern Territories or the General Government “in the interests of Germanization.” All employees transferred to the Annexed Eastern Territories were required to submit a declaration of nonkinship with Poles, in much the same way as all civil servants, both in the Reich and in the Eastern Territories, had to submit proof of non-Jewish descent. This also applied to all employees of the Reich domestic administration working in these territories; any employee unable to furnish such evidence was to be replaced immediately.
⁹
In the Warthegau this procedure was even applied to the employees of all ministries;
¹⁰
in the other Eastern Territories, such declarations were also frequently required to avoid conflicts of loyalty.
¹¹

IV. Professional and Labor Law

1. Professions Requiring State Licensing (Lawyers and Physicians)

The principle of segregation and discrimination was also implemented without exception outside the public service. It was self-evident that Poles of Jewish descent who had not fallen victim to the special-duties groups of the SIPO and had not been deported disappeared from all professions and were commandeered for forced labor, mostly in the form of labor troops in closed camps under extreme conditions, to enforce their complete isolation, not only from the Germans but also from their complete isolation, not only from the Germans but also from their Polish surroundings.
¹
Severe restrictions were also imposed upon the Poles, who, if they were not deported to the General Government, were removed from all higher or self-employed positions in industry and commerce and were used only as employed workers (sometimes as auxiliary labor in their own, confiscated business).
²
Polish physicians and lawyers were subjected to a strict licensing procedure and strict political verification; if this proved negative, they were struck off the register of their respective professions. If not, they were permitted to continue working (under political supervision). Like the Jews in the Reich, Polish lawyers lost their professional titles, were assigned merely a
konsulentenãhnliche
position (similar to the position of Jewish lawyers; see part 1, section 1, V, 1a of this volume [“Attorneys and Related Professions”]), and were entitled only to be called
advocates.
³
In addition, they could be prohibited from giving legal advice on the grounds of “unsuitability.”
⁴
Of course, they were completely dependent upon political clients and were forbidden from advising potential German clients. A ban on representing German clients was such a foregone conclusion under ethnic policy that there was not even any need for explicit prohibitions.

2. Labor Law and Working Conditions

The vast majority of the population in the Annexed Eastern Territories was used as unskilled industrial and agricultural labor. The long-term goal of labor market policy, in particular in the
Reichsgau
Wartheland, was to leave only the “good” workers in the Eastern Territories and to deport the “bad” to the General Government;
⁵
during the war, however, all available workers were needed,
⁶
but a large number of discriminatory measures separated the “non-German” workers from the German employees.
⁷

One of the segregation measures implemented to the point of absurdity was to ensure that Poles were never made the superiors (e.g., supervisors) of German employees;
⁸
the principle of allowing qualified training (an apprenticeship) for Poles only if no German workers were available, and then only to the minimum extent possible,
⁹
was also implemented without exception in the Warthegau.

The official maxim that any parallels between Germans and “non-German workers” were impossible, in particular that all legal rights for the latter must be denied,
¹⁰
applied especially to wage conditions, and here above all for the Jewish workers, who (at least in the Warthegau) received only a fraction of their wage entitlement: 35 percent, with 65 percent being paid into a special account. The authorities also reserved the right to modify these rates depending on work performance and the costs of upkeep.
¹¹
Polish workers were also exposed to substantial discrimination. Although they formally enjoyed wage parity with German workers, in practice they had to suffer numerous restrictions and deductions, as described in the following summary.

In terms of special treatment under labor law, the Poles were basically in a worse position than German employees,
¹²
since the corresponding provisions of Reich law were also applied in the Annexed Eastern Territories. Polish employees were subject to the regulations of the Reich minster of labor issued on October 5, 1941, cited above, which assigned a “special status” to Polish workers in the Reich because it “would not be compatible with the healthy sentiment of the
Volk
” “if they were also to participate without restriction in the social progress of the new Germany.” The consequence was that they were excluded from numerous regulations regarding bonuses and wage payments on public holidays.
¹³
Wages were therefore paid only for work actually performed. Unless stated otherwise in a statutory wage regulation, Poles were always to be paid the lowest rates; however, performance bonuses were not excluded. Public holiday bonuses, family or child allowances, statutory maternity benefits (maternity relief), and pension agreements were prohibited.
¹⁴
The general vacation ban in the Reich for Polish workers did not apply in the Eastern Territories,
¹⁵
however, so Polish workers were entitled to vacation time. Only the provisions in the statutory wage regulations regarding increased vacation on the basis of longer service were excluded. The special status of Polish workers was rounded off by the fact that Polish youths were not covered by the Juvenile Protection Law but by the Working Hours Decree of April 30, 1938, and other regulations applicable to adults and that the statutory period of notice was reduced to a maximum of two weeks; regulations to the contrary did not apply to Poles. As described above, the special status corresponded almost exactly to the status of Jewish workers in the Altreich in this respect.

These regulations of the Reich minister of labor, which, though they contained a large variety of special directives for Poles, clung to the principle of equal wages for equal work (albeit in heavily watered-down form), did not fit in any way into the concept of “racial struggle” promoted by the high-handed administrative chiefs of the Annexed Eastern Territories. Thus, no uniform line was taken in the Eastern Territories; the political and labor conditions differed too much.

In Danzing–West Prussia, for instance, the principle of equal wages for equal work was mostly observed,
¹⁶
whereas in the annexed territories of Upper Silesia, Polish workers were evidently treated harshly by the labor offices
¹⁷
(none of “this humanitarian nonsense”) and the aforementioned Reich labor law principles were deliberately torpedoed. The “model district” of the Wartheland followed a similar course; the office of the
Reichsstatthalter
there had already complained, even before these Reich labor law regulations had been issued, that the policy of equal wages and the lack of discrimination against Poles in the statutory wage regulations for individual occupational categories was quite wrong, because the Polish workers displayed poor discipline and performance (only around 40–60% of the performance of German workers) and deliberately worked slowly, a claim that was completely at odds with the experience in all other Eastern Territories.
¹⁸