Gas chamber letter

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A draft letter written by Erhard Wetzel and addressed to Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse in Riga on October 25, 1941 , is called a gas chamber letter . The letter is the first known document to report the intended extermination of disabled Jews in gas chambers . At the same time, this document testifies to a connection between Aktion T4 , which was controlled by the Fuehrer's office , and the mass murder of the Jews ( Holocaust ).

text

The reason for the letter, as Wetzel writes, was "very numerous shootings of Jews" in Vilnius (in the south-east of Lithuania , cf. Ghetto Vilnius ). Wetzel therefore speaks of the plan for an orderly solution beyond the public:

“With reference to my letter of October 18, 1941, I inform you that Herr Oberdienstleiter Brack from the Fuehrer's office has agreed to help with the construction of the necessary accommodations and the gassing apparatus. At the moment there are not enough devices available, they have to be manufactured first. Since, in Brack's opinion, the production of the apparatus in the Reich causes much greater difficulties than on the spot, Brack considers it most expedient if he immediately informs his people, especially his chemist Dr. Kallmeyer , who will take care of everything else there. Oberdienstleiter Brack points out that the procedure in question is not without risk, so that special protective measures are required. Under these circumstances, I ask you to contact Oberdienstleiter Brack through your Higher SS and Police Leader and to request the dispatch of the chemist Dr. Kallmeyer and other assistants to ask. May I point out that Sturmbannführer Eichmann , the clerk for Jewish questions in the Reich Security Main Office ... agrees. According to Sturmbannführer Eichmann, camps for Jews are to be created in Riga and Minsk , to which Jews from the old Reich area may also come. Jews are currently being evacuated from the Altreich who are supposed to come to Litzmannstadt , but also to other camps, in order to be deployed later in the east, if they are able to work . "

“As a matter of fact there are no concerns if those Jews who are unable to work are eliminated with Brack's tools. In this way, the processes that occurred during the shooting of the Jews in Vilnius ... and which, in view of the fact that the shootings were carried out publicly, can hardly be approved, should no longer be possible. Those able to work, on the other hand, are transported to the east for work. It goes without saying that men and women should be kept separate among Jews who are capable of working. "

Historical background

After the attack on Poland in 1939, the German Reich annexed Poland in violation of international law . The German-Soviet War began with the attack on the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941) . The Wehrmacht's troops made rapid progress until the Battle of Moscow at the end of 1941.

The letter was written after the Lange Sonderkommando had murdered institutional patients in the Reichsgau Wartheland with the help of gas vans up to the summer of 1941 . The first gas vans used pure carbon monoxide from gas bottles and thus copied the method of the T4 killing centers - referred to in the "gas chamber letter" as "Bracksche aids". Other gas vans that were used in Chelmno in December 1941, for example , suffocated their victims from engine exhaust. Wetzel's proposal to install stationary gas chambers (referred to in the letter as “accommodations”) instead of gas vans was not implemented in Riga, but a short time later in the Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps . In Belzec , carbon monoxide was initially used from gas cylinders, later, on the instructions of Christian Wirth, engine exhaust gases were used in order not to be dependent on deliveries of pure carbon monoxide gas from the BASF plant in Ludwigshafen am Rhein .

The source

A handwritten note “Draft” can be seen in the facsimile of the “Secret” document; at the end of the letter the letters "NdHM" are drawn in pencil. Evaluators who analyzed the document from Rosenberg's East Ministry as evidence in October 1946 interpreted this abbreviation as "Nachschrift dem Herr Minister" - but this is also interpreted as "Only by Herr Minister" [to be signed] or "Name of the Herr Minister" . In the letterhead, the sender is “The Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories” and, underneath, the “AGR. Dr. Wetzel ”. The addressee is the “Reich Commissioner for the East” and reference is made to his “Report of October 4, 1941 regarding the solution of the Jewish question”.

The "gas chamber letter" was presented as evidence in the Nuremberg medical trial . Said there Viktor Brack denied under cross-examination, these and more it had received incriminating letters and stated not to recall Eichmann or Wetzel. In the first interrogations, Adolf Eichmann did not comment on the draft letter, but expressed the assumption: “Perhaps it was the case that people in the circles of the Eastern Ministry said to themselves: It has to be more elegant; the shooting no longer suited them. ”The notes that Eichmann made during the trial show that his defense counsel presented the letter to the court in four versions: a handwritten draft, a typed plain text, another typed draft and a Typewritten letter to an office of the East Ministry (RMfdbO). According to Eichmann, all versions should have neither a signature nor a signature. Contrary to this information, however, the design made by Wetzel is actually handwritten with the signature “Wet”. Rosenberg, who avoided being publicly associated with acts of violence throughout his life, did not sign this document. In the Eichmann trial , in addition to the gas chamber letter, two of Wetzel's draft letters were dealt with in order to be able to appreciate their evidential value. Erhard Wetzel, when asked as a possible witness, refused to provide information because there were investigations pending against him in Germany. Judge Sussmann then stated that the decisive question was not which version of the letter was the final one and whether the letter had reached its recipient, but whether the interview reported there had taken place.

Wetzel testified to this in a - later discontinued - investigation by the Hanover public prosecutor's office in 1961 and stated that he had visited Viktor Brack before the letter was written so that he could use his information to answer the Lohses report of October 4th. During his interrogation, Wetzel not only confirmed the essential details of the document, but added: "Incidentally, Brack had told me in his statement that it was a Fuhrer order or an order from the Fuhrer." After the interview with Brack, Wetzel, had a short conversation with Eichmann and then reported to Otto Bräutigam . The latter asked him to write the letter to Lohse. The historian Christopher Browning explains that Lohse soon arrived in Berlin and was "probably personally" informed of Brack's proposal by Bräutigam. Browning takes the view that the gas chamber letter was therefore not even sent.

Context and interpretations

Although the gas chamber letter is only available in the form of a draft, the information contained therein is not called into doubt by any well-known historian: The close "connections of personal and material nature [...] between the so-called euthanasia campaign and the later mass extermination of Jews cannot be overlooked consist."

The long-standing head of the Central Office in Ludwigsburg , Adalbert Rückerl , had already pointed out in 1979 that the role of the “Führer’s Chancellery” or the T4 organization in the extermination of the Jews was considerably undervalued. There is evidence that more than one hundred people who had previously worked as “proven euthanasia helpers” were transferred to the East from September 1941. Many of them were mainly active in extermination camps and mostly continued to be looked after and paid for by the "Chancellery of the Führer". Such was Christian Wirth at the first "trial gassing" in the Nazi killing center Brandenburg and further been operating under the T4 program before as a responsible inspector the three extermination camps Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka headed. A chemist assigned by T4 was used for the “test gassings” in these extermination camps. The historian Sara Berger speaks of a "T4 Reinhardt network", of which at least 121 people were active in the extermination camps.

In the controversial question of when the decision to commit the genocide of the Jews came about, the intentionalists among historians often resort to the "gas chamber letter". The historian Helmut Krausnick considers it unthinkable that a subordinate functionary was allowed to promise the elimination of incapacitated Jews with the "Brackian aids" without asking. This could only have been based on a decision previously made by the highest authority. Uwe Dietrich Adam questions the common interpretations for the official "stop of Operation T4": One could also assume that these killing specialists are now urgently needed in the east to start the mass murder in the extermination camps. Henry Friedlander speaks of a “sponsorship of the Führer Chancellery”, since the “T4 killing specialists” continued to be looked after by their old office when they were already working in the extermination camps.

To Andrej Angrick , the “negotiations about the establishment of permanent mass murder facilities in Riga” appear to be an unrealized “business game”. The document shows “a barbaric attitude towards the deportees [from the West], which differed little from the murders against local Jews.” The civil authorities of the planned arrival locations were in agreement with the Gestapo on this.

confidentiality

Further parallels between “Operation T4” and the mass gassing of Jews are unmistakable: “A complex process based on division of labor was developed, the perpetrators apparently relieved of responsibility and the process aimed at secrecy ”.

Under the leadership of the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg standing Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) in which Erhard Wetzel worked was - unlike the Reich Security Main Office of the SS (RSHA) - at the time of the writing of the letter very therefore, seeks the murder by Jewish people to hide from the public. The so-called “wild executions of Jews” were obviously seen as a threat to the legitimacy of a new East-German government based on racial ideology , as planned by Rosenberg. At the end of October 1941, Rosenberg gave a speech in front of all NSDAP trainers, in which he made it clear that in the East it was practically a new government and the "neglected area had been placed under the protection of the German Reich". To these words he added the demand that “what was heard should never be used in public lectures.” And one day later, on October 31, 1941, Georg Leibbrandt , head of the political department in Rosenberg's RMfdbO, wrote a letter to the “Reichskommissar Ostland in Riga ”, so to Hinrich Lohse. It reads: “The Reich and Security Main Office complains that the Reich Commissioner Ostland has prohibited the execution of Jews in Libau. I request an immediate report on the matter concerned. On behalf of Dr. Leibbrandt. (Head of Department II). “In a letter dated December 18, 1941, Otto Bräutigam instructed Reich Commissioner Lohse that economic issues should be disregarded in relation to the Jewish question, namely its liquidation. Rosenberg and other powerful lobbyists were able to push through their demand for a possible isolation of knowledge about the murders from the public. The Foreign Office put at the behest Rosenberg's specially established a "special language regime East".

literature

  • Henry Friedlander : The Road to Genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 (Bes. Chapter 14 on the use of personnel in the final solution).
  • Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 2. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-596-10612-5 (Chapter IX .: The destruction centers ).
  • Document under VEJ 7/206 printed in: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German Military Administration, Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Quoted in: Gerald Reitlinger : The Final Solution . Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939-1945, 7th edition, Berlin 1992, pp. 144 f., Cf. also p. 226 f. (The quote was subsequently adapted to the reformed German spelling.); see. Helmut Heiber: The General Plan East . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Documentation 6 (1958), p. 305. (Cited sources: Nbg. Doc. NO-365, NO-996/97.) A complete copy of the document can also be found in: Anatomie des SS-Staates : Expert opinion of the Institute for Contemporary History , vol. 2, dtv, Munich 1967, p. 337. DNB and again as VEJ 7/206.
  2. ↑ compared with VEJ 7/206.
  3. ^ Mathias Beer: The development of gas vans during the murder of the Jews . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 35 (1987), p. 405 f. Available online: Archive (PDF; 8.0 MB)
  4. ↑ Peter Longerich : The unwritten order . Hitler and the way to the "final solution". Munich 2001, p. 76, ISBN 3-492-04295-3 .
  5. ↑ This interpretation by Peter Longerich: Politics of Destruction. Munich 1998, p. 443, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 - Gerlach, on the other hand, interprets gassing apparatus as gas vans = Christian Gerlach: Calculated Morde. The German economic and annihilation policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944 , study edition Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-930908-63-8 , p. 765 / Gas vans are also accepted in the regest for VEJ 7/206 - Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.) : The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 564.
  6. ↑ a b Gas trucks were used in Riga. Götz Aly (Ed.): Aktion T4 1939-1945 . The "euthanasia" headquarters in Tiergartenstrasse 4. 2., ext. Aufl., Berlin 1989, p. 201, ISBN 3-926175-66-4 .
  7. ↑ Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews; the years of persecution 1933-1939; the years of destruction 1939 - 1945. Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , p. 739.
  8. ↑ Eugen Kogon et al. (Ed.): National Socialist mass killings by poison gas . Frankfurt a. M. 1983, p. 154, ISBN 3-10-040402-5 .
  9. ↑ Henry Friedlander: The Path to Genocide - From Euthanasia to the Final Solution . Berlin 1997, p. 473, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 .
  10. ↑ The gas chamber letter in facsimile ( memento of the original from January 26, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the Nuremberg Trial Project @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nuremberg.law.harvard.edu
  11. ↑ Havard Law School Library: Staff Evidence Analysis NO-365 ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed October 8, 2008) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nuremberg.law.harvard.edu
  12. ^ Helmut Krausnick: Persecution of Jews . In: Anatomy of the SS State . dtv, Munich 1967, p. 338.
  13. ↑ Mazal Library, NMT01-T886ff ( Memento of November 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Jochen von Lang: The Eichmann Protocol - tape recordings of the Israeli interrogations. Berlin 1982, p. 178, ISBN 3-88680-036-9 .
  15. ↑ nizkor.org: Eichmann Notes 215f = AE: 174f ( accessed October 8, 2008) and schoah: Eichmanns Aufzüge "Götzen" , p. 215f.
  16. ↑ One came through . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1961, pp. 23 ( online - August 16, 1961 ).
  17. ^ Documents NO-996 and NO-997. Available online: in For content see Christopher Browning : The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office , Washington 2000, footnote 83. Available online: Browning ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed October 21, 2008) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ess.uwe.ac.uk
  18. ↑ nizkor.org: Session-04-07 ( Memento from May 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) “The question is not whether the letters were sent, or which letter was sent, but rather the question is whether the conversation referred to in the letters actually took place. "
  19. ↑ Quoted from Helmut Krausnick: Discussion. In: Eberhard Jäckel / Jürgen Rohwer: The murder of the Jews in World War II. Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 85, ISBN 3-596-24380-7 .
  20. ↑ Christopher Browning: Unleashing the 'Final Solution'. Munich 2003, p. 528, ISBN 3-549-07187-6 .
  21. ↑ Discussion. In: Eberhard Jäckel / Jürgen Rohwer: The murder of the Jews in World War II. Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 84.
  22. ^ Adalbert Rückerl : Nazi extermination camps in the mirror of German criminal trials. Munich 1979, p. 72.
  23. ^ Ernst Klee: Euthanasia in the Nazi state. Frankfurt a. M. 1985, p. 374, ISBN 3-596-24326-9 / the number given there of 92 people has been superseded by Sara Berger, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 .
  24. ^ Raul Hilberg : The Reinhard Action. In: Eberhard Jäckel, Jürgen Rohwer: The murder of the Jews in World War II. Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 130, ISBN 3-596-24380-7 .
  25. ^ Astrid Ley: The beginning of the Nazi murder in Brandenburg on the Havel. On the importance of the 'Brandenburg trial killing' for the 'Action T4'. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtsforschung 58 (2010), pp. 321–331.
  26. ↑ Ernst Klee : From the 'T4' to the annihilation of the Jews . In: Götz Aly (ed.): Aktion T4 1939-1945 . The "euthanasia" headquarters in Tiergartenstrasse 4. 2., ext. Ed., Berlin 1989, p. 147 f.
  27. ^ Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 14.
  28. ^ Helmut Krausnick: Discussion. In: Eberhard Jäckel / Jürgen Rohwer: The murder of the Jews in World War II. Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 86.
  29. ^ Uwe Dietrich Adam: Contribution to the discussion . In: Eberhard Jäckel, Jürgen Rohwer: The murder of the Jews in World War II. Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 87, ISBN 3-596-24380-7 .
  30. ↑ Henry Friedlander: The Path to Genocide - From Euthanasia to the Final Solution . Berlin 1997, p. 467.
  31. ^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The 'Final Solution' in Riga: Exploitation and Destruction 1941-1944. Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-534-19149-9 , p. 201.
  32. ↑ Peter Longerich: The unwritten order . Hitler and the way to the "final solution". Munich 2001, p. 76.
  33. ↑ Kurt Pätzold / Manfred Weißbecker (ed.): Steps to the gallows . Life paths before the Nuremberg judgments, Leipzig 1999, p. 176. (Cited source: BAK, NS 8/64, p. 103 f.)
  34. ↑ see document VEJ 7/213 in: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas below German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 578.
  35. ↑ The Trial of the Major War Criminals at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 . Vol. XI, Munich / Zurich 1984. p. 609.
  36. ↑ VEJ 7/221.
  37. ↑ Martin Vogt: Autumn 1941 in the "Führer Headquarters" . Werner Koeppens reports to his Minister Alfred Rosenberg, Koblenz 2002, p. 75. (Cited source: PA, Pol. Dept. XIII, General files 9.-11.41 = Vol. 14.)