- Headline
-
Terror Reigned as Nazis Attacked Jews
- Sub-Headline
- Polish Ghettos Used to House Berlin Victims; Thousands Slaughtered In Conquered Soviet Areas; Boy, 14, Hired as Killer
- Publication Date
- Tuesday, January 27, 1942
- Historical Event
-
German Government Forces Jews to Wear Yellow Stars
This database includes 625 articles about this event - Article Type
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 7C
- Author/Byline
- Pierre J. Huss (INS)
- Article Text
- (EDITOR'S NOTE: The incredible brutality whereby Nazi Germany is attempting to "cleanse" itself of Jews and make the Catholic Church a helpless tool of its own machinations is revealed in all its stark horror today by Pierre J. Huss, for eight years chief Berlin correspondent of International Neics Service.)
NEW YORK, Jan. 27—Bormann as busy again with the full support of Himmler and the wholehearted sanction of all mad Nazis.
We knew that the plight of the Jews in Poland was terrible beyond description, a living hell ruled by corrupt and grafting S. S. overseers and dealers in death, who sold the Jew his lease on existence and life day by day for money and valuables he could offer but once penniless, they'd drop him like a hot brick and soon he was just another of the condemned.
The mortality rate in the ghettos of Poland stands high and is climbing steadily. For men like Bormann it cannot climb fast enough.
Men of his ilk foisted on the German army the supposition that every Communist is a Jew and every Jew a Communist, consequently the backbone of Salin's war-machine.
Every inch of the scorched red earth in Russia was played up in the eyes of German soldiers by tireless propaganda as resting on the shoulders of Jews alone, inspired by Jews around Stalin and transformed into a jolicy[sic] by the "half-caste Jew" Stalin.
Therefore, it was possible last fall to read on front pages of German newspapers indicative revelations like those in a clipping from a leading Nazi newspaper in Berlin which I brought with me. Signed by Nazi war correspondent Kurt Kraenzlein, it says in part:
"It is but natural to find the Jew in occupied regions the friend of Bolshevism and the most dangerous single influence on public opinion. It was the Jews alone who carried out Stalin's orders to destroy barracks, public buildings, factories and storehouses.
"In many cases they plundered towns and villages before leaving, or buried available supplies. The smoky black walls and windows of Russia often are not from the effect of shell or bomb but solely the work of the firebrand Jew. The Jew and before all the Jewess, is the foremost ally of our foe.
Ruthless Measures Taken
"Against this dark enemy behind our lines, frequently part and parcel of the criminal element, German authorities proceed with iron hand. In all towns of Russia, Jews are being assigned their own reserved section. Day by day they are being evacuated from the villages.
"Everywhere they are commandeered for productive work. Acts against the safety of the German Army or local population are summarily punished. The ghettoing and death penalty do not solve the Jew problem in Russia anymore than up to now it has in the Reich, but much can be done as time goes on, when circumstances and the New Order in Europe will contribute much to the final liquidation of Jews on the European continent."
Carry a Blacklist
I reprint this extract of Nazi propaganda against the Jews to give a better understanding the background and the causes of events that happened. As is customary in the Hitler way of doing things, the German army goes in and occupies a country by force of arms but on its heels to subdue and "adjust" it comes the dreaded S. S. and Gestapo of Heinrich Himmler. They carry a blacklist, too, and every name thereon is hunted down for the reckoning.
Jew the Chief Target
As in all occupied lands after the conquest, the Jew was the chief target and victim in Russia. Not only did the S. S. go on a rampage there but the mob was incited wherever possible to have a field day against the Jews.
Thus it stands in the records of Bormann and Himmler in Berlin that by the end of October 58,000 Jews had been slaughtered in the Riga area alone. The S. S. had turned the machine guns and population loose at the same time and made short shift of the Jews around here. Similar shocking casualty figures come daily to your ears in Berlin from people who have been there.
4,000 Killed in Day
Down as far as the Black Sea, whither I sent my American assistant in Berlin, Hugo Speck last October, the guns are blazing away at the Jews under Nazi guidance. In the naval shipyard city of Nikolajev, where the Rumanians took over after the Germans drove the Soviets out, more than 4,000 Jews weer[sic] killed in one day. In the small port of Otchav, Speck and a Danish colleague saw a boy of 14 lugging a heavy-looking rifle, obviously with eyes open for a target to shoot at. He spoke French, or enough to carry on conversation.
"What are you shooting at? Speck asked.
Bonus for Killing Jew
"Jews," the Rumanian lad replied. "I get five lei for every one I kill. On this stick in my hand I have thirty-four notches, each made by a policeman I show the dead Jew to. When I have fifty then I get an extra bonus. It is only 3 o'clock in the afternoon and it will not be dark for three hours. I may get the fifty."
Further up the street the two correspondents saw the untended bodies of several Jews, pushed aside into the guttter until they could be hauled away. That on the whole is the lot of the Jew in New Order Europe today.
Bormann's Mad Dream
Perhaps, in his carpeted office in Berlin, Bormann dreamed of liquidating the less than 300,000 remaining Jews in the Greater Reich as speedly and systematically.
Therefore every Jew must first of all be exposed to the mob, branded and identified beyond all possibility of mistake. He did this by pushing through an edict compelling every Jew, man, woman or child, to wear over the heart on overcoat or blouse a David Star of yellow cloth two inches across. Then with Joe Goebbel's aid he put over a propaganda campaign calling on the German people to take note of the many Jews in their midst.
Fails To Take Effect
This didn't faze the down-trodden Jew so much; in fact, he or she stuck chin up and went almost proudly about their business. I saw a German officer step up to an old gentleman with a David Star in the Tiergarten and salute him, with apologies for the Fatherland.
But the mob and the narrow-minded and prejudiced little German striving to be 500 per cent Nazi when any superior of his is looking, went out of the way to annoy the Jews.
Slick Nazi Trick
The Nazis, to assuage the offended and anxious section of the public mind, spread the word through school and beer hall that the David Star was fixed on Jews because in America President Roosevelt had compelled every German to wear the swastika in his coat lapel. That was a typical trick of slick Joe Goebbels.
Bormann's outfit, aided by the Gestapo, went further step by step and organized a fine terrorization campaign against the Jews. The night telephone call, the knock on the door, and the sudden arrest of some members of the Jewish family blanched faces and revived suicide by the score. It had happened before, but never on such a large scale.
Diabolical Nazi Plan
The most diabolical of all was the black-bordered death notice which came through the regular mails to hundreds of Jews in Berlin. I saw dozens of these cards, printed in staid black type with crossed palm branches at the bottom. 1. read:
"You are instructed herewith to deliver your useless person at 3 p. m. tomorrow to the ground back of Lichtenberg cemetery, equipped with spae or shovel, to dig the hole in which you will lie with other Jews after liquidation of your carcass free of cost."
In Berlin alone, that devilish little card produced scores of deaths from heart shock or suicide. Jews came around to us with blanched faces, in the depths of despair, fully cognizant by now with the sworn oaths of Bormann that before the end of 1941, not a single Jew would be left inside Germany. The lid was off; Bormann was riding high and the Gestapo and S.S. pounced like packs of hungry wolves on the Jews.
One dark night in the blackout I walked past the big synagogue on Fasanen Strasse: It had been gutted by flames after the Nazis set fire to it in their mad outburst of violence against the Jews in November of 1938. Only the walls remained in mute testimony of the crime.
Jews Hauled from Homes
I saw large motortrucks drawn up there, and thought it might be one of the mobile anti-aircraft batteries getting located for a night's raid. But I heard sobbing and moans in the dark, and harsh voices commanding people to move fast. I slowed down and even walked back, trying to catch the meaning of it all. I had stumbled by chance, as it turned out from subsequent developments, on the first of the systematic hauls of Jews from their homes for assembly in synagogues and transport next day to bleak ghettos in Galicia.
Thorough and Inhumane
Bormann's method of liquidating the Jews was as thorough as it was inhumane. Night after night, beginning around 11 o clock, flying squadrons of Gestapo in motor trucks would spread over the city and knock or ring peremptorily at addresses[sic] of Jews on their list.
The terrified members of that Jewish family, 5 or 70 years old as the case might be, were told then and there by their sinister visitors to get out of bed and within one hour be ready to leave with no more than 30 pounds of clothing and personal possessions in hand, in addition to not more than 10 marks apiece.
Dead and Living Treated Alike
The wailing and weeping availed nothing; those who died of fright or by own hand in the space of that hour were carted away along with the living. The Gestapo always turned out the lights after their victims had gone down the stairs into these waiting trucks, and carefully pasted a printed slip over the door outside leading into the apartment saying:
"Closed and sealed by the Secret State Police."
The motortrucks, when filled to capacity, proceeded with doused blue deadlights along to one of the several big synagogues of Berlin, there to unload their cargo of agonized human beings with muttered oaths and commands. The synagogue in Fasanen Strasse, roofless and windowless, received about 500 nightly. Some of the others got more.
Misery Reduces the Weak
Next morning or even two days later, when pneumonia and sheer misery had ravaged the weak and the old and reduced the survivors by an appreciable percentage, the S. S. loaded them again on trucks and off they went on the long ride to Poland.
Many more died on those cold trips, scores died within short time after being dumped into miserable little villages located on the barren stretches of Galicia earmarked by the Nazis as Ghettoland.
S. S. rifles of course, greatly helped the mortality rate.
In Berlin, the Spree Canal had to be dragged every morning for its haul of bodies, to prevent epidemic. They were all bodies of Jews.
I knew a very cultured Jewish family, once upon a time in the far-off years of 1935 the owners of a great department store of Berlin. Man and wife had gradually been pushed down the ladder to a two-room apartment.
When the Gestapo came on the inevitable night, she sat in front of her boudoir mirror, ready for bed and in beautiful silk pajamas. She had a drink of excellent Martell on her dressing table and rings on her fingers.
One Dies a Lady
She smiled when the Gestapo entered, and told the man in the doorway of the bedroom to come in. She told him over her shoulder she was alone, all alone, because her husband at the moment was hanging dead out there in the bathroom. She drank her Martell and, very nicely, before there be any rough-housing or interfering, she shot herself straight through the heart with a beautiful revolver.
She died as she was born, a lady.
The Gestapo men who had to do the dirty work of gathering the Jews in at night complained that so many of those on the list were not to be found. Apparently they slept away from home, desperately hoping to stall off the black fate another day. So Bormann dispatched advance notices to the victims days ahead, telling them just when their turn would come and to be on hand. That caused more suicides.
Nazis Angered At Slowness
The Nazis were pretty sore by the end of October when they had to admit to themselves that the job of tearing some 300,000 human beings away from the land is not what it is cracked up to be.
I found out from one of the Gestapo that Himmler and Bormann were raising Cain in early November because the records showed that only 68,000 Jews had been taken away from Berlin to Poland up to then. Twice as many remained, when I left some weeks later, the raid on Jews and their extermination was continuing with renewed vigor.
The Nazis touched no foreign Jew up to then, except those of occupied lands. But I heard from very good source that the foreign Jew will be "regulated" in Germany in 1942.
When America and Naziland went to war, the last loophole of escape for the Jew was closed. But even before that the blow had fallen. On the night of November 5, at 9 p. m., the usual special train carrying emigres away from the Reich stood on the tracks of Friedrich Strauss Bahnhof waiting for the signal to move off.
All Were Jews
The emigres without were Jews who had secured permission to enter foreign lands, after years of waiting. Many had been on the list of the American Embassy, waiting their turn. When it came and the final German and foreign papers were in hand, they sold everything except the clothes on their backs and kept 10 marks in cash after paying off all tickets and incidenals[sic].
The Germans had regularly[sic] provided a special train for transport of these outcasts to Lisbon. As they put it, they were glad to get rid of them. The Jews on those trains could hardly restrain tears of Joy, and from an abyss of despair climbed into a new paradise of life mile by mile as the train left Hitler's land behind.
Train Never Leaves
But that special train on the night of Nov. 5 never did get the go signal. At 9:10 p. m. S. S. men in steel helmets and plainclothes Gestapo appeared in swarms on the platform and rudely commanded all to get off that train. They were told to take only a bundle of personal possessions and leave all else behind.
Then, amidst the wailing and shouting, they were marched downstairs to the inevitable trucks. Two men dashed past the guards before they could fire and sprang to death in front of an electric train just coming in on the other side of the platform.
That was the last special train scheduled to leave for Lisbon.
Jewish Property Confiscated
In the Berlin newspapers during November, you could read long advertisements by official auctioneers. They offered scores and scores of auctions in furniture and clothes, all confiscated from apartments of Jews gone to Poland.
There was a mad rush on the part of the Nazis to get at these coveted goods and wives of Nazi officials even pulled each other's hair at these auctions. In the party offices they distributed the empty apartments amongst themselves and patted themselves on the back for a job well done.
Thus, Bormann the little Nazi of a few years ago and of the ominous prophesies became Big-Shot Bormann with favors to give.
He can stand in front of his mirror now and say to himself that thousands of Nazis are grateful to him for crushing the Jew and bestowing on his friends the wonderful apartments and furniture offered for a song.
That sort of thing always gladdens the heart of any Nazi.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This concludes the chapter on Nazi persecution. Next, Huss will describe for the first time the full extent to which Hitler has made Italy a German province.) - History Unfolded Contributor
- Carlos G.
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