June promotion

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As of June action is called a mass arrest in June 1938, as part of the campaign "Arbeitsscheu Reich" was planned. The originally thought "audience" was the so-called social misfits on personal orders of Hitler expanded and anti-Semitic aligned. During the June campaign, more than 9,000 men were deported to concentration camps, among them a group of around 2,300 Jews who had a criminal record of at least four weeks.

Campaign "work shy Reich"

The June action was part of the campaign "Arbeitsscheu Empire" (ASR), which since the beginning of 1938 by the department four-year plan in the personal staff of Heinrich Himmler planned and by the Gestapo and criminal investigation was conducted. On January 26, 1938, Himmler ordered preparations to be made for the arrest of all men who were fit for work, “... who in two cases, verifiably, refused the jobs offered to them for no justified reason or who started work but gave up again after a short time for no valid reason. “The action should run with a“ ... one-time, comprehensive and surprising access ”. During the first action from April 21st to April 30th, 1,500 to 2,000 people were abducted. A second, more extensive wave of arrests followed in June 1938.

June promotion

The second wave of arrests, from 13 to 18 June 1938 was aimed originally solely on non-sedentary asocial "beggars, vagrants and alcoholics", but also "Gypsies and wandering craftsmen". According to internal reports, other groups of people such as “pimps and malicious defectors” have also been arrested by the criminal police. On June 1, 1938, the target group was expanded according to Hitler's personal orders: Jews who had a previous conviction and who had been sentenced to at least one month in prison had to be arrested.

"200 male anti-social workers able to work" were to be arrested for each criminal police control center district. According to this specification, only 3000 people should have been recorded; in fact, approximately 10,000 people are believed to have been detained.

Even before the campaign got under way across the Reich, the Vienna State Police Office "instantly" took the initiative and instructed the District Police Department on May 24, 1938 to "immediately arrest undesirable Jews, especially those with criminal offenses, and transfer them to the Dachau concentration camp ." The first two transports from May 31 and June 3 comprised approximately 1200 Jews and are highlighted by Wolf Gruner as an “Austrian special”. Only with the next transports were mostly non-Jews abducted. If an instruction from Hitler from the last week of May was passed on orally, a misunderstanding could be explained because the upper or lower case of the word "asocial" changes the meaning significantly. Gruner quotes the instruction in the following notation, namely that "in order to carry out important earthmoving work in the entire Reich territory, asocial [sic] and criminal Jews are to be arrested."

With almost 2,300 deportees, a disproportionately large number of Jews were imprisoned in the nationwide June campaign. Her previous convictions did not go back to "normal delinquency" alone, but were often based on prosecution-specific offenses such as foreign exchange offenses or were based on marginal and distant offenses such as violation of traffic regulations. 1,256 Jewish men were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp , 211 to Dachau concentration camp and 824 to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where they were subjected to brutal harassment.

The Buchenwald concentration camp played a special role, receiving 4,500 forced laborers (almost 60% of the prisoner workforce in July 1938) for the large-scale development as a central concentration camp in Central Germany through the “Arbeitsscheu Reich” campaign . Some of the Jewish prisoners were imprisoned in the so-called sheepfold , a former cattle shed, without any furniture. Most of these 500 prisoners came from Berlin and Breslau . 300 g of bread and 750 ml of water soup were allocated as food. The catastrophic conditions claimed 150 lives by August 1938. Reporting on the BBC radio station led to the survivors being transferred to a normal wooden hut .

Jews were at the bottom of the hierarchy of prisoners in concentration camps. The death rate among Jewish prisoners was disproportionately high in the first few weeks. However, some Jews whose plans to emigrate were well advanced were released in June 1938. Numerous others were released in December, as were most of the so-called action Jews who had been imprisoned in the November pogroms . The National Socialist policy initially aimed at emigration and expulsion of Jews from Germany.

classification

At the latest with these actions, the focus of the security police activity had from fighting political opponents on the rejection of " antisocial shifts," which tended to socially harmful conduct because of alleged genetic predisposition. Heydrich justified the action in a quick letter to the criminal police headquarters: It was not to be tolerated that “anti-social people evade work and thus sabotage the four-year plan .” According to Wolfgang Ayaß, it was not the alleged danger of the individual “ anti-social ”, but his ability to work decisive arrest criterion. Martin Broszat points out that at this time the SS's own building material production began in and near concentration camps and that larger numbers of prisoners were required for this. More important than the work performance of these imprisoned “work shy” is likely to have been the deterrent effect on other “work loafers”.

The “June Action” was also the first self-directed action by the security police in which a large number of German Jews were deported to concentration camps. Their inclusion in the “June Action” goes back to Hitler's personal orders. Christian Dirks points to anti-Semitic attacks in Berlin, which - beginning in May - accumulated between June 13 and 16, 1938 and culminated in calls for boycotts, the marking of Jewish shops, raids in cafes and arrests. Christian Faludi also states a connection between the “Radau anti-Semitic street riots” staged by Joseph Goebbels and Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff in Berlin and the competing efforts for a “nationwide centralized 'solution'” by Reinhard Heydrich's and Heinrich Himmler's secret service apparatus .

literature

  • Wolfgang Ayaß : "Asocial" in National Socialism. Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-608-91704-7 .
  • Wolfgang Ayaß: "Community strangers". Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933-1945, Koblenz 1998. Digitized
  • Christian Dierks: The 'June Action' 1938 in Berlin. In: Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon: Juden in Berlin 1938-1945 (companion volume to the exhibition of the same name in the foundation “New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum”), Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0168-9 .
  • Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : mass admissions to concentration camps. "Arbeitsschaf Reich" campaign, November pogrom, "Thunderstorm" campaign. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 1: The Organization of Terror. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52961-5 .
  • Christian Faludi (Ed.): The “June Action” 1938. A documentation on the radicalization of the persecution of Jews. Campus, Frankfurt a. M./New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39823-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum: mass admissions to concentration camps. "Arbeitsschaf Reich" campaign, November pogrom, "Thunderstorm" campaign. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Munich 2005, vol. 1, p. 159.
  2. ↑ Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937-1945 , published by the Buchenwald Memorial, p.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: "Asocial" in National Socialism. Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-608-91704-7 , p. 141.
  4. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum: Mass admissions to concentration camps ... In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Ed.): Der Ort des Terrors .... Munich 2005, vol. 1, p. 158.
  5. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum: mass admissions to concentration camps. "Arbeitsschaf Reich" campaign, November pogrom, "Thunderstorm" campaign. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Munich 2005, vol. 1, p. 159.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: "Asocial" in National Socialism. Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-608-91704-7 , p. 156.
  7. ↑ Quoted from Wolf Gruner: Forced Labor and Persecution - Austrian Jews in the Nazi State 1938-1945, Innsbruck a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-7065-1396-X , p. 34.
  8. ↑ Wolf Gruner: Forced Labor and Persecution ..., Innsbruck a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-7065-1396-X , p. 33.
  9. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum: Mass admissions to concentration camps ... In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Ed.): Der Ort des Terrors ... Munich 2005, vol. 1, p. 159.
  10. ↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 (edited by Susanne Heim), Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p 188.
  11. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum: Mass admissions to concentration camps ... In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Ed.): Der Ort des Terrors ... Munich 2005, vol. 1, p. 159 / Hans-Dieter Schmid: Die Aktion ' Arbeitsscheu Reich '1938. In: Herbert Diercks (Red.): Excluded. 'Asoziale und Kriminelle' in the National Socialist camp system , Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8378-4005-6 , pp. 36-37 / The figure for Dachau does not match the information from W. Gruner, which refers to 1,800 Austrian Jews sum s. Wolf Gruner: Forced Labor and Persecution ..., Innsbruck a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-7065-1396-X , p. 34.
  12. ↑ Harry Stein: Functional change in the Buchenwald concentration camp as reflected in the camp statistics. In: Ulrich Herbert et al. (Ed.): The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 , Vol. 1, p. 169.
  13. ↑ Hans-Dieter Schmid: The action 'Arbeitsscheu Reich' 1938. In: Herbert Diercks (Red.): Ausgänket. 'Asocials and Criminals' in the National Socialist Camp System , Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8378-4005-6 , p. 37.
  14. ↑ Ulrich Herbert: From fighting opponents to "racial general prevention". In: Ulrich Herbert et al. (Ed.): The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 , Vol. 1, p. 81.
  15. ^ Quoted from Wolfgang Ayaß: "Asoziale" in National Socialism. Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-608-91704-7 , p. 149.
  16. ↑ Martin Broszat: National Socialist Concentration Camp 1933-1945. In: Anatomie des SS-Staates , Munich 1967, Vol. 2, p. 77.
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: "Asocial" in National Socialism. Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-608-91704-7 , p. 164.
  18. ↑ Christian Dierks: The 'June Action' 1938 in Berlin. In: Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon: Jews in Berlin 1938 - 1945. (Accompanying volume to the exhibition of the same name in the foundation “New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum”) Berlin 2000, p. 34.
  19. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum: mass admissions to concentration camps. "Arbeitsschaf Reich" campaign, November pogrom, "Thunderstorm" campaign. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52961-5 , vol. 1, p. 159.
  20. ↑ Christian Dierks: The 'June Action' 1938 in Berlin. In: Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon: Jews in Berlin 1938 - 1945 , Berlin 2000, pp. 34–41 / Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews: Vol. 1., The years of persecution: 1933–1939 , through. Special edition Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , pp. 282–284.
  21. ↑ Christian Faludi (Ed.): The "June Action" 1938. A documentation on the radicalization of the persecution of Jews. Campus, Frankfurt a. M./New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39823-5 , p. 9.