The Wannsee Conference
On 20 January 1942, a number of high-ranking officials of the Nazi state and security apparatuses gathered , under the direction of the Chief of Security Police, Reinhard Heydrich, in order to discuss ‘the Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. As a result of this meeting, Heydrich received the full backing from the participants to carry out the systematic extermination of the European Jews. The decision itself, to exterminate the Jews, was presumably taken before the conference was held.
It has been calculated that as much as 1 million Jews were murdered before the Wannsee Conference took place. The first time the concept ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish question’ (German: Endlösung) was in Hermann Göring’s authorisation to Reinhard Heydrich, dated 31 July 1941. In this brief statement, Nazi Germany’s second-in-command confirmed Heydrich’s status as the man in charge of the regime’s Jewish policies.
Göring’s authorisation thus constituted the formal basis for Heydrich’s ability to call the Wannsee Conference. At the time of Göring’s confirmation of Heydrich’s authority in matters concerning the Jews the extermination of the Jews had already begun. It is highly probable that Heydrich therefore wished to have for instance the murder raids of the Einsatzgruppen, which had started a month earlier, legitimised. Another important reason for the holding of the Wannsee Conference was the status of the war. The merciless war against the Soviet Union had not progressed as planned, although the Germans had conquered vast territories from the Soviets by the end of 1941. The plans for a solution to the ‘Jewish question’, which had circulated earlier, had all presupposed a prompt victory over the Soviet Union. When this seemed to fail – and the Germans could look forward to a prolonged war in the east – the plans for the Jews had to be revised.
The progress of the Wannsee Conference appears from the minutes, the so-called ‘protocol’, which was written by Adolf Eichmann. The language in the protocol was consciously manipulated. Expressions like ‘extermination’, ‘murder’, ‘deportation’, and etc. were not used. In stead the protocol speaks of ‘natural reduction of population’, ‘special treatment’ and ‘immigration’.
Heydrich was very content about the progress of the conference. Broadly speaking, he had accomplished what he desired: no-one had opposed his absolute authority in the matter of a solution to the Jewish question – on the contrary, several of the participants had declared themselves more than willing to lend a helping hand. For the Jews of Europe the outlook following the Wannsee Conference was worse than ever:
• For the German Jews the Wannsee Conference constituted a catastrophe. After the conference, they were deported in great numbers to the ghettos in the east and then murdered.
• For the Jews in the remaining countries around Europe the situation was hardly better. From all German-controlled areas transports to the extermination camps were now initiated.
• For the Polish Jews the fight for survival was now definitively lost. Beginning in the spring of 1942, the Germans began to empty the Polish ghettos and deport the residents to the extermination camps, as part of the so-called Operation Reinhard.
The Nazis and the Jews of North Africa
T he history of the Holocaust in France's three North African colonies (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) is intrinsically tied to France's fate during this period. France quickly fell after Germany invaded in May 1940. On June 22, Marshall Pétain, the popular hero of World War I, signed an armistice with Germany. The terms of the agreement divided France in two unequal parts, with the northern part of the country, including the entire Atlantic coastline, under direct German control. Pétain was granted power over the southern third of metropolitan France and the colonies. Despite the change in regime, the colonial administration, under the control of the French armed forces, remained largely intact.
Antisemitic legislation in Vichy, initiated by the French government, was inspired by that of Nazi Germany. The first anti-Jewish law (Jewish Statute) was passed on October 3, 1940. It defined Jews residing on the French mainland (known as the “metropole” or “metropolitan France”) and in Algeria by race, based on the religion of their grandparents. In Algeria as in metropolitan France, Jews were forbidden to exercise any public functions: they could no longer work for the government, teach except in Jewish schools, serve in or work for the military, or even be employed by businesses with public contracts. Moreover, Jews were not allowed to participate in political activities. There were a few exceptions, mainly for Jewish war veterans.
In contrast, Jews in Tunisia and Morocco were defined by their membership in a religious community. This distinction offered Jewish community institutions greater autonomy, mitigated somewhat the impact of anti-Jewish laws, and permitted Jews to continue to hold positions within their communities.
The first Jewish Statute was quickly followed by an event that had a major impact on the Algerian Jews. On October 7, 1940, the French government revoked the Algerian Jews' French citizenship. Since France's occupation of Algeria in 1830, small numbers of Algerian Jews had migrated to France. By 1939, small communities of North African Jews lived in Paris, Marseille, and Lyon. Although the Jews living in Algeria and the protectorates would avoid deportation to the Nazi concentration camps, North African Jews living in the metropole were among France's Holocaust victims.
A subsequent Jewish Statute on June 2, 1941, widened the scope of the earlier anti-Jewish law. In an attempt to further exclude Jews in the colonies from economic and professional life, the Vichy authorities barred Jews from engaging in any occupations dealing with finance. This included not only banking and the stock market, but also gambling, granting loans and credit, and trading in grain, livestock, artwork, and lumber. Jews were not allowed to own, direct, or manage businesses, and were dismissed from jobs in the media.
In the professional fields, quotas limited the number of Jewish lawyers, doctors, dentists, midwives, notaries, and architects to only 2% of the total number licensed in such professions. Jewish teachers had already been barred from teaching at all but Jewish schools; this legislation excluded Jewish students in Algeria from state schools and universities altogether. In response, the Jewish community of Algeria established its own centralized private education system of 70 primary schools and 5 secondary schools. These schools had Jewish instructors, were run by the local Jewish religious administrations (known as Consistories) of Algiers, Oran, and Constantine, and were regulated by the Vichy administration. Vichy authorities quickly moved to prevent the creation of a university for Jewish students.
Given Algeria's significant Jewish professional class and high rates of assimilated Jews, these restrictions had the greatest impact on Algerian Jews. In Morocco and Tunisia, the restrictions primarily affected Jewish professionals such as doctors and lawyers; most Jewish students attended the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and few attended university, and thus were not directly affected by the legislation. However, in Morocco, local business and manufacturing associations and labor unions could strengthen the adverse economic implications of the anti-Jewish statutes. Eager to eliminate Jewish competition, these organizations moved to expel Jewish members and fire Jewish employees. Overall, the Jews in the protectorates were less assimilated, and the restrictions on occupations, business, and education affected them less than the Jews in Algeria.
In Tunisia, sympathetic French and Muslim officials -- in particular the resident-general Admiral Jean-Pierre Estéva, the Tunisian ruler Ahmed Pasha Bey and his successor, Moncef Bey -- and entreaties from the Jewish community postponed evictions and “Aryanization.”