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Nazi Letters on Execution of Jews
Letter: Execution of Jews
15.November.1941
Reichskommissar for Ostland
IIa 4
Secret
To: Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
RE: Execution of Jews
. . .Will you please inform me whether your inquiry of 31.October should be interpreted as a directive to liquidate all the Jews in Ostland? Is this to be done regardless of age, sex, and economic requirements (for instance, the Wehrmacht’s demand for skilled workers in the armament industry)? Of course the cleansing of Ostland of Jews is a most important task; its solution, however, must be in accord with the requirements of war production. . .
Loshe
Reichskommissar for Ostland
Letter: The Jewish Question
18.December.1941
Berlin
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
To: Reichskommissar for Ostland
RE: Jewish question
The Jewish question has presumably been clarified meanwhile by means of verbal discussion. In principle, economic considerations are not to be taken into account in the settlement of the problem. It is further requested that any questions that arise be settled directly with the Higher SS and Police Leader.
Braeutigam
******
December.1941
Reichskommissar for Ostland
To: Higher SS and Police Leader
. . . I request most emphatically that the liquidation of Jews employed as skilled workers in armament plants and repair workshops of the Wehrmacht who cannot be replaced at present by local personnel be prevented. . .
. . . Provision is to be made as quickly as possible for the training of suitable local personnel as skilled workers. . .
Loshe
Reichskommissar for Ostland
******
16.December.1941
Minsk
Generalkommissar for Byelorussia
To: Reichskommissar for Ostland
I wish to ask you personally for an official directive for the conduct of the civilian administration towards the Jews deported from Germany to Byelorussia. Among these Jews are men who fought at the Front and have the Iron Cross, First and Second Class, war invalids, half-Aryans, even three- quarter Aryans. . .
. . .These Jews will probably freeze or starve to death in the coming weeks.
. . On my own responsibility I will not give the SD any instructions with regard to the treatment of these people. . .
I am certainly a hard [man] and willing to help solve the Jewish question, but people who come from our own cultural sphere just are not the same as the brutish hordes in this place. Is the slaughter to be carried out by the Lithuanians and Letts, who are themselves rejected by the population here? I couldn’t do it. I beg you to give clear directives [in this matter,] with due consideration for the good name of our Reich and our Party, in order that the necessary action can be taken in the most humane manner.
Heil Hitler!
Wilhelm Kube
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