Preferred Jew

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In the language of National Socialism, prisoners of Jewish descent according to Nazi racial ideology were referred to as preferential Jews or exchange Jews who, because of their connections with foreign countries, seemed suitable to be of use in return for the release of German civilian internees or for the delivery of goods essential to armaments. Sometimes historians also use the term "hostage exchange" .

Civilian prisoner exchange

According to customary practice under international law, Germans abroad who were in the sphere of influence of enemy countries should, if possible, be exchanged for persons interned and imprisoned in Germany with foreign citizenship. Such exchange campaigns were prepared by the Legal Department and the Political Department of the Foreign Office and the Reich Security Main Office in Section II B 4 (later IV F 4), the Department for Aliens Police and Border Security and - for Jewish hostages - the Eichmann Department .

On the German side, embassy staff, seamen and paramedics who had been interned after the outbreak of war were available for an exchange of civilian prisoners. Since relatively few foreigners could be offered for exchange in order to redeem the large number of Reich Germans interned in hostile countries, there was increasing use of Jews with suitable citizenship and those with dual citizenship. At the beginning of 1943 the circle of "exchange Jews" was expanded considerably. Jews who only had “family, friendly, political or commercial relationships” with people in enemy states (primarily the USA) were to serve as exchange hostages.

Internment camp

Even before the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was established , people with suitable or dual citizenship were brought together in the internment camps in Vittel , in Liebenau (today's Liebenau Foundation ), in Wurzach , Laufen (Ilag VII) or Tittmoning (Oflag VII-C / Z) to To be available to “exchangeable” persons. The Liebenau (for women) and Laufen camps remained internment camps for exchange prisoners even after the Bergen-Belsen residence camp was established , if their foreign citizenship was beyond doubt. Other internment camps such as the Lindele camp were also used as a stopover for transports .

Residence camp Bergen-Belsen

In the spring of 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a camp for around 10,000 Jews, who were to be set aside for an exchange or as a means of pressure when procuring foreign currency and raw materials. Others interned there were citizens of neutral or allied states and were supposed to serve as a bargaining chip for the good conduct of the governments of these countries.

For this purpose, a so-called “ residence camp” for “exchange Jews” was set up in Bergen-Belsen in 1943 , which had a total of four camp sections. From mid-July 1943, Polish Jews who had passports or other personal identification documents from South American countries were imprisoned in the special camp . There was also a neutral camp for Spanish Jews from Greece with passports from American states, to which some Italian Jews with Turkish passports were also admitted. The largest section of the camp was the Sternlager , to which mainly Dutch Jews were deported; Small groups from Tunisia, Morocco, France, Yugoslavia and Albania also came there. The Hungarian camp was added in the summer of 1944 .

14,700 Jewish men, women and children passed through the Bergen-Belsen residence camp. Around 2,560 of them were released through exchange. For a group of roughly the same size, the residence camp was only a stopover on the way to the extermination camps, as their citizenship certificates or entry certificates were found to be null and void. Most of the Jews interned in the residence camp, around 7,000 men, women and children, were held as valuable bargaining chips until the last days of the war.

In November 1944 and January 1945, some “exchangeable Jews” on a transport from Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland were taken from the train and held back. They were not brought back to Bergen-Belsen, but distributed to the internment camps in Liebenau, Biberach an der Riss ( Lindele camp ) and Wurzach .

In the last months of the war there was no longer any question of “preferential treatment”. When the Allied army approached, the “exchange Jews” were to be transported in the direction of Theresienstadt , but only one of the three trains reached the destination. Numerous prisoners were killed on another transport, it ended up as a so-called lost train after days of wandering between the fronts.

Individual exchange campaigns

Palestine

At the beginning of the war, around 2000 “ German Templars ” lived in Palestine , who could be exchanged for British citizens from occupied Poland. The lengthy negotiations on repatriation only accelerated when 700 German nationals were brought from Palestine to Australia and interned there. Between December 1941 and February 1943, three groups, a total of 200 people, arrived in Palestine, including at least 69 Jews with Palestinian citizenship.

In the following period, the authorization for a repatriation to Palestine was handled more loosely; the permit for an immigration certificate was enough . In June 1944 an exchange took place in which 222 Jews from Bergen-Belsen and 61 from Vittel and Laufen (Salzach) were brought to Palestine via Turkey. In March 1945, 99 Jews from Bergen-Belsen and 38 from the Ravensbrück concentration camp came to Palestine via Sweden. In addition, hundreds of Jews were rescued because they were able to produce a certificate stating that they had been granted an entry visa to Palestine and were therefore spared as exchange hostages.

See also

Movie

In 2011, Caroline Schmidt , Stefan Aust and Thomas Ammann shot a 52-minute film for NDR entitled Hitler's human traffickers on the subject of “Exchange Jews”. It ran on arte on September 14, 2011 and September 20, 2011, among others . On August 19, 2013, the documentary was broadcast on the 1st TV program on ARD.

literature

  • Thomas Ammann, Stefan Aust: Hitler's human traffickers. The fate of the exchange Jews. Rotbuch, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86789-079-3 .
  • Yehuda Bauer : Free ransom from Jews? Negotiations between National Socialist Germany and Jewish representatives 1933 to 1945. Translated by Klaus Binder and Jeremy Gaines . Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-633-54107-1 .
  • Lisa Hauff (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection), Volume 11: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia April 1943–1945 . Berlin / Boston 2020, ISBN 978-3-11-036499-6 (here “Exchange Jews”, pp. 47–52).
  • Ladislaus Löb : Business with the Devil: The Tragedy of Resző Kasztner, the Savior of the Jews . Report from a survivor. Böhlau, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20389-4 .
  • Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Rahe : Bergen-Belsen main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , p. 196.
  2. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , p. 56.
  3. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , p. 387 / see document VEJ 6/228 in: Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 6 : German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia October 1941 – March 1943. Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-036496-5
  4. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , p. 55.
  5. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , p. 390.
  6. ↑ Rainer Schulze: "Rescue efforts." Comments on a difficult topic in contemporary history. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Ed.): Help or Trade? . Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-874-5 , p. 11 f.
  7. ↑ Rainer Schulze: "Rescue efforts." Comments on a difficult topic in contemporary history. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Ed.): Help or Trade? Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-874-5 , p. 14.
  8. ↑ Reinhold Adler: Lager Lindele (accessed October 4, 2018)
  9. ↑ On the entire complex in detail: Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , pp. 44-93.
  10. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , vol. 1, p. 131.
  11. ↑ Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Between human trafficking and the “final solution” - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-77511-1 , pp. 220-228.
  12. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , Vol. 1, pp. 132-133.
  13. ^ Arte.tv: Hitler's human traffickers. Jews as an exchange commodity.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.arte.tv   Germany 2011.