M action

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From 1942, a “West Department ” of the Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern territories was active with a so-called M-Action (“M” for furniture) and confiscated furniture and other furnishings from “unguarded Jewish homes” of escaped or deported Jews in France and the Benelux countries. The home furnishings were taken to collective storage facilities, initially made available to the administrations in the occupied eastern territories, but later offered for sale to the "bomb victims" in the German Reich .

West Office

In order to expand the tasks of the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in the occupied western countries, an additional robbery was initiated. Furniture, household items and clothing from Jewish homes in France, Belgium and the Netherlands now had to be confiscated and transported away. Since the staff of Reichsleiter Rosenberg was soon overloaded, Rosenberg set up an independent “West Office” of the RMO in Paris on April 17, 1942, after consulting the “Führer” , from which further offices in occupied France were set up , in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Initially it was the task of the West Department to provide the new administrative authorities in the conquered eastern areas with furniture. When the Allied bombing increased and great damage was caused in German cities, the furniture of the M-Aktion was used to care for those damaged by the bombs. Kurt von Behr , who was the head of the West Office of the ERR (France, Belgium and the Netherlands) and who was subordinate to the head of the ERR Gerhard Utikal , acted as "Head of the West Department" . At the same time, until June 1943, Behr was head of the special staff "Fine Arts" in the West Office of the ERR. Von Behr was one of the main people responsible for the ERR's art theft in the west. Behr was not aware of any wrongdoing and boasted the invention of the furniture robbery. The German staff of the agency comprised around 80 male and 30 female civil servants and employees who belonged to the "Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories". In total, the number of employees at M-Aktion was several thousand. Up to 1,500 French workers with 150 lorries were busy evacuating the houses every day; 800 Jewish forced laborers were employed and barracked in three assembly camps . In addition, numerous police officers and workers were used to make the transport possible.

From 1942 the West Department was operational. In April, the first trains with looted goods left Paris heading east. There was a first collection camp in the Reich in Cologne; After the bombing of Cologne on May 30, 1942, the trains went to various other places.

Action

In the “Activity Report of the West Office” it is shown that in many cases “registration officers” in Paris went from house to house to locate the abandoned apartments of Jews who had fled, to take inventory and to seal the door. In Paris alone, over 38,000 apartments were recorded.

In order to avoid objections and errors, the apartments were usually sealed for two to three months before an officer from the transport command with an interpreter and movers cleared them. The furniture, other home furnishings, dishes, clothes and linen, etc., were collected in six warehouses and warehouses. In three of them, 800 Jews were locked up as forced labor for sorting and packing. The Jews were guarded by SS units. In the affiliated workshops, the delivered items were repaired by skilled workers such as carpenters, furriers, shoemakers, watchmakers, etc. and then packed. Usually the Aubervilliers camp , which had its own siding, was used for transport to Germany.

"Current account"

In a "total performance report up to July 31, 1944" the following data are given:

  • 69,619 Jewish apartments recorded, 69,512 complete apartments transported to the bomb-damaged locations in Germany
  • 26,984 freight wagons required for this
  • also secured foreign exchange and securities worth 11,695,516 RM
  • also removes 2,191,352 kg of scrap metal, paper and textiles

Furthermore, numerous lifts found in Antwerp , sea-proof boxes with emigrants' belongings, were transported away by inland waterway vessels. For example, Hamburg received 45 shiploads with 27,227 tons of furniture, furnishings and clothing. However, this is not mentioned in the “current account” and could have been initiated by another agency.

Profiteers

Rosenberg originally planned to use the furniture confiscated in France for the benefit of the administration in the east. Since the railway lines were overloaded by military transports, the stolen inventory was collected as a reserve in eleven “imperial camps” or sold directly to “ air victims ”.

SS divisions as well as the Reichsbahn and Reichspost were also supplied. In addition to bombed out victims, the beneficiaries included disabled people as well as large families and newlyweds. “ Knight's Cross bearers ” were also allowed to claim “donations from the M-Action”. Sometimes there were also public auctions that were announced in newspapers. All income was transferred to the Reich Treasury.

The M-Action of the West Department was considered to be “vital work for the people in need”, with which the morale of the war was supported by the fact that people seriously damaged by bombs could soon be equipped with complete furnishings. Private-sector cooperation partners of the NS agencies such as the Kuehne + Nagel freight forwarder also benefited from the orders from the campaign.

See also

literature

  • Source “Report on the M-Action of the West Department from August 1944” = Document 188-L printed in: The Trial against the Major War Criminals before the IMT - Reprint Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2527-3 , Volume XXXVIII (= document volume 14), pp. 25-32.
  • Wolfgang Dreßen: Relates to Action 3 - Germans recycle Jewish neighbors. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02487-8 .
  • Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State. Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-10-000420-5 (Chapter: Unbureaucratic emergency aid ).
  • Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Sarah Gensburger: The camp in Paris. Austerlitz, Lévitan, Bassano, juilet 1943 - août 1944. Paris 2003, ISBN 2-213-61707-4 .
  • Hanns Christian Löhr, Art as a Weapon - The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Ideology and theft of art in the “Third Reich” , Berlin 2018, p. 83 ff. ISBN 978-3-7861-2806-9 .
  • Margarete Rosenbohm-Plate: Dutch furniture - foreign furniture - Jewish furniture . In: Oldenburger Jahrbuch 103 (2003), pp. 169–176.
  • Christina Hemken: The task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg and the "M-Action". In: Christina Hemken / Karl-Heinz Ziessow: In the shadow of total war: looted property, captivity and forced labor. Cloppenburg 2018, pp. 185–196.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Report on the M action of the West Department from August 1944 = Document 188-L in: The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the IMT - Reprint Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2527-3 , Volume XXXVIII (= Document Volume 14), Pp. 25-32.
  2. ↑ Jean Marc Dreyfus in the essay Almost-Camps in Paris: The difficult description of three annexes of Drancy - Austerlitz, Levitan, and Bassano , here in the section Why these camps? The Möbel Action, p. 224 in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth, New York 2005
  3. ↑ Wrong spelling "von Bohr '" in Wolfgang Dreßen: concerns' Aktion 3'. Germans recycle Jewish neighbors, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02487-8 , p. 54.
  4. ^ Jean Marc Dreyfus: "Almost-Camps" in the essay Paris: The difficult description of three annexes of Drancy - Austerlitz, Levitan, and Bassano , here in the section Why these camps? The Möbel Action , p. 224. In Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath . Edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth. New York 2005.
  5. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State. Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-10-000420-5 , p. 142.
  6. ^ Report on the M-Action of the West Department from August 1944 = Document 188-L, p. 31.
  7. ^ Jean Marc Dreyfus, "Almost-Camps" in the essay Paris: The difficult description of three annexes of Drancy - Austerlitz, Levitan, and Bassano, here in the section Why these camps? The Möbel Action, p. 224 in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth, New York 2005
  8. ↑ The presentation of this section follows the multi-page "Report on the M-Action of the West Office from August 1944" = Document 188-L
  9. ↑ Sentence from the original IMT source: In order to avoid objections, especially by sealing Aryan apartments or the Jews who were not included in the action ...
  10. ^ Wolfgang Dreßen: Action 3 - Germans recycle Jewish neighbors. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02487-8 , p. 55.
  11. ↑ Appendix to the “Report on the M-Action of the West Department from August 1944” = Document 188-L, p. 32 / Document VEJ 11/158.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Dreßen: Action 3 ..., p. 48.
  13. ^ Frank Bajohr: Aryanization in Hamburg. Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-7672-1302-8 , p. 334.
  14. ↑ "Memo for the Führer" from December 18, 1941 - Document 001-PS in IMT: The Nuremberg Trial ... Vol. XXV (Document Volume 1), Reprint Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2521-4 .
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Dreßen: Action 3 ..., p. 53.
  16. ↑ Margarete Rosenbohm-Plate: Holland furniture - foreign furniture - Jewish furniture. In: Oldenburger Jahrbuch 103 (2003), p. 175.
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Dreßen: Action 3 ..., p. 205.
  18. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State. P. 155.