XPost: talk.politics.misc, can.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022 23:05:59 -0500, dsharavi <void@invalid.not>
wrote:

by Adolf Eichmann [ Argentine Memoirs ]

The rapid defeat of Poland on the one hand and, on the other hand, the >growing difficulties in providing immigration opportunities for the
Jews gave me the idea of trying to form a kind of "Jewish state" on
Polish territory. At that time I had practically nothing to do with
Berlin, but was under the command of the Sipo and the SD, Dr.
Stahlecker. In him I found a superior who was extraordinarily lively
and active, perhaps also a little ambitious, but always looking for
creative ideas. In this sense, he was by no means a civil servant;
because the entire life of civil servants takes place according to
"Scheme F" – the civil servants are transferred or remain in the same
place until they are ready for retirement or die. New thoughts are
hardly born; if one dares to come up with political solutions of a new >structure, then the official is generally buttoned up. Stahlecker was
not at all, and so I was able to carry out the plan for the
realization of a "Center for Jewish Emigration" through him abruptly.
As always, in the case of the "Jewish State in Poland" I was inspired
by Adolf Böhm's book "The Jewish State". It gave rise to the desire in
me to find a solution to the problem through which the Jews could be
given a home and at the same time the German people could be made
"free of Jews". "Home" was also the saying of the "Balfour
Declaration".

Stahlecker enthusiastically took up my idea of separating a territory
the size of a German Gau from the enormous number of square kilometers
in Poland in order to found a kind of Jewish state there. There we
would expel all Jews; they would have their own administration and
their own schools; the head of Sipo and SD would only be a supervisory >authority. Undoubtedly, Stahlecker informed Gruppenführer Heydrich of
this; I got permission to start my plan. Of course, Stahlecker was
able to appear all the more convincing with Heydrich because he knew
that I saw possibilities for such a proposal to be realized.
Stahlecker was by no means a feather fox who wanted to know everything
down to the smallest detail in advance. He liked to be everywhere, but
on the other hand hovered over things and tried to steer them from a
higher vantage point. Heydrich resembled him in this. He and
Stahlecker could have been brothers. Stahlecker had confidence in my
plans and in my work, because I had proven through the "Zentralstelle"
in Vienna that I would not just "talk about it". – In addition, the
"Jewish state in Poland" meant a political solution that was always so
much sought.

When I received the permit, I set off to look for a suitable place
within the Polish territory. I came to the San, saw a blown up railway
bridge and a wide landscape, infinitely far, from horizon to horizon,
almost a plain. The San was a huge water carrier; Nisko, a larger
village the demarcation line, was available to me as a base for the
first times. The terrain seemed ideal to me. I drove back and made
terrain sketches and descriptions for Stahlecker. In his enthusiasm,
he decided to go there with me to see everything for himself. That may
have been in mid-October 1939, two to three weeks after the Polish
armistice. We drove to the german-Soviet demarcation line and chatted
with a GPU commissioner. I see the tall, broad-shouldered man with his >browing leather jacket as a uniform still in front of me. In a way, he
headed the checkpoint at the entrance to the corridor. He accompanied
us for a short stretch and stood on the running board of the car to a >checkpoint of the Siberian Rifle Regiment stationed along the
demarcation line. There he let us know that we could pass freely and >unhindered. Some soldiers accompanied us through the Soviet corridor
so that we would be spared from unpleasantness; because we drove in
full uniform. The corridor was probably twenty kilometers long; on our
way we were admired by the population. In a small village we had to
stop because of a minor breakdown and were surrounded by many
inhabitants. Dr. Stahlecker was also thrilled when he looked at the
area I had chosen; I got permission to start the practical work right
away. My intention was to immediately raise the whole matter on a
large scale and realize it in the shortest possible time. For this I
had calculated that about 2000 Jewish craftsmen and corresponding
supervisory staff were needed. I had often entrusted Rabbi Dr.
Murmelstein with administrative work; I now also handed over the
composition of the working groups to him. The best craftsmen from >Moravia-Ostrava and the best professionals and workers from Prague and
Vienna were pulled out; in Theresienstadt, where we had many barracks,
I had the initially necessary material put together. Then I received
some trains for the 2000 people to be transported and the material.
Among the staff was also a veterinarian who asked me to take his son
as an assistant. I approved it.

The Jews did not work under our direction, but under the guidance of
the various Jewish clerks and experts. Of course, I had told Dr.
Murmelstein how I thought of the settlement. I rode the terrain with
him and gave him my explanations. The village of Nisko was to be the
first base in this district that I hoped to preserve entirely for my
plan; Transport train after transport train was to bring people and
material there to carry out the settlement from the Nisko radiation
point. The San was the border of Jewish territory. One has to imagine
this country in its boundless vastness: perhaps fifty kilometers in
the vicinity of Nisko there was nothing; further away was the city of
Radom in the later lublin district. I wanted to have this whole
district and make the city of Radom the first capital of the Jewish
state. But experience has shown that I first reckoned with Nisko am
San; for for the time being, I could only think of radome because it
would have required major administrative regulations to resettle the
local Polish population. I preferred to start small and from the
bottom up, and first of all I ventured into an area where I did not
need or fear decrees and ordinances. Winter had already arrived, and
there was a lot of snow. Nevertheless, the furnishing work was
vigorously advanced, it lasted only a few weeks.

Murmelstein was enthusiastic, and the other Jews also understood that
in Nisko a small Jewish state was in the making. Initially, there was
a ban mile of 10 square kilometers available, which I had simply
taken. There were horses; I said to Murmelstein, "Rabbi, here you also
have to learn to ride and not just sit at your desk." That's when
Murmelstein crawled onto a Gaul for the first time and sat, obviously
little built, like a grease stain on the horse's back. There was
little to do with vehicles, but because the terrain was large, horses
were needed. It was the small beginning that was to grow into an
autonomous Jewish state in the Lublin district under the protectorate
of the German Reich. Of course, I also thought about how this state
could be viable if it only employed Jews. This could not be achieved >overnight, nor could I suddenly transport two million or only one
million or 500,000 Jews there: they would have died away like flies;
because the risk of epidemics is great in such cases. That's why I
first brought the professionals there; they were to build barracks,
develop Nisko into a base and create the necessary industry. In
addition to the specialists, unskilled workers would have been needed
– all this was possible; because even our concentration camps had
grown into large concentration camps with 100,000 or more inmates in a
place where nothing used to be. But it was not a concentration camp
that was to be built here, but an autonomous Jewish state.

During this time, of course, I made various inspection trips to Nisko
am San. When I was staying in Krakow one day, the commander of the
Sipo and the SD, Streckenbach, informed me – he considered this a joke
– that Governor General Frank had given the Higher SS and Police
Leader in the General Government, Krüger, order me to be arrested when
I entered the General Government. The "Jewish state" started just
after overcoming the initial difficulties, when this order of the >Governor-General Frank put a spanner in the works. The next morning I
drove back to Prague and reported on it. It seemed that Governor
General Frank had protested to Goering or elsewhere against my "Jewish
state" and had gotten away with his protest. Never again did I get the
order to go to Nisko am San, but I had to dissolve the camp there
after about a year and lead the Jews back to their places of origin or
to Theresienstadt. – In contrast to Konrad Henlein in Bohemia and
Moravia, an extraordinarily modest man, the "Polish-Frank" was biased
in complete self-aggrandizement. He was eloquent and liked to put
himself in the spotlight. Streckenbach, I think, told me that when the >"Polen-Frank" drove home from his office, a huge caravan of cars with
sirens and police set in motion, as if an oriental prince were
traveling. Frank apparently saw in me a competition and wanted to take
all the initiatives himself. To be truthful, I must state sharply: If >"Polen-Frank" had allowed the RSHA to operate and prevail in the Nisko
am San district from the end of 1939 to 1941 and had he not prevented
my plan, for which I had the approval of my superiors, then he would
never have had anything to do with the extermination of the Jews, and
then the whole question would have been solved completely bloodlessly
in the General Government. He would only have had to leave the Lublin >district to me; because I wanted to work my way up from Nisko to Radom
and on to Lublin.

The "Jewish state in Poland" was to be a final solution to the Jewish >question, a political, bloodless solution...

My "Jewish state in Poland" was also disturbed and made impossible by
some forces – and I got into a net from which I could no longer get
out.

Today, however, I cannot absolve Governor General Frank of being the >co-author of the enormous extermination of the Jews in his General >Government, because perhaps out of short-sightedness, perhaps out of >convulsive fear for his competence, he made the bloodless solution of
the Jewish question in the form of an autonomous "Jewish state"
impossible. For me, this development was a bitter disappointment. >Nevertheless, I continued my efforts to find a political solution to
the Jewish problem and a little later drafted the Madagascar Plan, to
which I will come back later.

Deborah

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