Judenberater

Last updated

The Judenberater or Judenreferent (German plural: Judenberater; Judenreferenten), variously translated as Jewish advisers or Jewish experts, were Nazi SS officials who supervised anti-Jewish legislation and the deportations of Jews in the countries under their responsibility. Key architects of the Holocaust, most of them were under the direct command of Adolf Eichmann. [1] [2]

Contents

Role

The Judenreferent was not an "adviser" in the literal sense of the term, as he was deployed exclusively in allied or occupied states to promote anti-Jewish measures and their deportations, and was a direct participant in anti-Jewish activities before and during World War II. [1] [3]

In France and several other countries defeated by Germany, the Jewish advisers were subject to the disciplinary command of the Sicherheitspolizei . In allied countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, they were subordinate to the police attaché (Polizeiattaché) or the German ambassador. [4] The "Jewish advisers" of the SS received their instructions exclusively from the Eichmannreferat , who kept himself up to date through "regular activity reports and briefings on their actions". [3]

According to Claudia Steur, the Judenberater can be divided into two groups: those like Dannecker, Wisliceny, Brunner, Boßhammer and Abromeit were close confidants of Adolf Eichmann and served as role models for the other "Jewish advisors". The remaining ones were initiated relatively late in the Final Solution, and their "striving for power, prestige and social advancement" was an important motive for their later participation in the Holocaust. [5]

German policy was to involve allied governments in the persecution of Jews in order to make them complicit in the Holocaust. [6]

List

Perpetrators

Most of the perpetrators, who later rose to become "Judenberater" (advisers to the Jews), were born between 1905 and 1913, had joined the NSDAP before 1933, did not find a secure position until they joined the SS, and quickly advanced to positions of power. They "slowly grew into a role that became increasingly brutal, which they then, without doubting the appropriateness of the orders given to them, carried out diligently and consistently until the end of the war." [10]

Works cited

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alois Brunner</span> Austrian SS officer and war criminal

Alois Brunner was an Austrian officer who held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) during World War II. Brunner played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, and Slovakia. He was known as Final Solution architect Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reich Security Main Office</span> Nazi German police and intelligence organization (1939–45)

The Reich Security Main Office was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as Chef der Deutschen Polizei and Reichsführer-SS, the head of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel (SS). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany.

Anton "Toni" Burger was a Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in the German Nazi SS, Judenreferent in Greece (1944) and Lagerkommandant of Theresienstadt concentration camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drancy internment camp</span> Internment camp for Jews in occupied France during World War II

Drancy internment camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban community under the name La Cité de la Muette, it was located in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of Paris, France.

<i>Sonderaktion 1005</i> 1942–44 Nazi project to destroy evidence of war crimes in Poland

Sonderaktion1005, also called Aktion1005 or Enterdungsaktion, was a top-secret Nazi operation conducted from June 1942 to late 1944. The goal of the project was to hide or destroy any evidence of the mass murder that had taken place under Operation Reinhard, the attempted extermination of all Jews in the General Government occupied zone of Poland. Groups of Sonderkommando prisoners, officially called Leichenkommandos, were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies; inmates were often put in chains to prevent them from escaping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodor Dannecker</span> SS Officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Theodor Dannecker was a German SS-captain, a key aide to Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of Jews during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nisko Plan</span> Cancelled Nazi deportation plan for Jews

The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adolf Eichmann</span> German Nazi war criminal (1906–1962)

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and abducted by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Abromeit</span>

Franz Abromeit was an SS officer and worked in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). He was guilty of war crimes against Jews, but escaped from Germany at the end of World War II in Europe. In 1964 he was declared dead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pithiviers internment camp</span> WWII Transit camp for Jews in Nazi occupied France

Pithiviers internment camp during the Holocaust was a transit camp for Jewish deportees in Pithiviers in Occupied France during the Second World War. Children were separated there from their parents; the adults were processed and deported to concentration camps farther away, usually Auschwitz. This was the fate for example of the novelist Irène Némirovsky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Novak</span> Austrian SS officer and war criminal

Franz Novak was an Austrian SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain). He was Adolf Eichmann's railroad and transportation timetable expert, and coordinated the railroad deportation of European Jews to concentration and extermination camps.

Heinz Röthke was a German SS-Obersturmführer of Nazi Germany and a convicted war criminal. Röthke was the Gestapo Jewish expert in Paris and as such was in overall charge of the concentration camp in Occupied France as well as of the deportation of Jews, between 1940 and 1944, during the Holocaust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holocaust in Italy</span> Genocide of Jews by Nazis

The Holocaust in Italy was the persecution, deportation, and murder of Jews between 1943 and 1945 in the Italian Social Republic, the part of the Kingdom of Italy occupied by Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943, during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst Girzick</span> SS Officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Ernst Adolf Girzick was an Austrian SS-Obersturmführer and an employee in Referat IV B4 of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Girzick was responsible for the deportation of Jews to concentration and extermination camps. After the war, he was convicted of crimes against humanity in Vienna and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst Heinrichsohn</span> German SS, SD, and Gestapo official

Ernst Heinrichsohn was a German lawyer and member of the SS who participated in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz during World War II.

Carltheo Zeitschel also Carl Theo,, was a German physician, diplomat, Nazi functionary and SS-major (1940).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Working Group (resistance organization)</span> World War Two Jewish resistance organisation in Slovakia

The Working Group was an underground Jewish organization in the Axis-aligned Slovak State during World War II. Led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, the Working Group rescued Jews from the Holocaust by gathering and disseminating information on the Holocaust in Poland, bribing and negotiating with German and Slovak officials, and smuggling valuables to Jews deported to Poland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friedrich Boßhammer</span> German SS and Judenreferent

Friedrich Boßhammer (1906–1972) was a German jurist, SS-Sturmbannführer and close associate of Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the deportation of the Italian Jews to extermination camps from January 1944 until the end of the war in Europe. He was arrested in West Germany in 1968 and stood trial. Boßhammer was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1972 for his involvement in the deportation of 3,300 Jews from Italy, but died before he could serve time in prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ústredňa Židov</span> Judenrat in Nazi-occupied Slovakia

The Ústredňa Židov was the Judenrat in Bratislava that was imposed on the Jewish community of the Axis-aligned state of Slovakia to implement Nazi orders during the Holocaust. It was formed on the advice of SS (Schutzstaffel) official Dieter Wisliceny; the first leader, Heinrich Schwartz, was removed after refusing to cooperate with Nazi demands and replaced by the ineffectual Arpad Sebestyen. The collaborationist Department of Special Affairs run by Karol Hochberg aided the authorities in confiscating Jewish property and collecting information that was used to arrest and deport Jews. Nevertheless, most of the ÚŽ members focused on providing opportunities for emigration and improving the social welfare of Jews remaining in Slovakia, although they were hampered by the dwindling resources of the community. In addition, the ÚŽ attempted to resist deportation by bribing Slovak officials, retraining Jews who had been expelled from their previous profession, and improving and expanding labor camps for Jews in Slovakia. The underground resistance organization that ran under its auspices, the Working Group, took over the ÚŽ leadership in December 1943. Since its formation in early 1942, the Working Group had used the ÚŽ as cover for its illegal rescue activities. After the German invasion of Slovakia in August 1944, the ÚŽ was disbanded and many of its members were arrested and deported to concentration camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reich Security Head Office Referat IV B4</span> Sub-department of the Reich Security Main Office in Nazi Germany

Reich Security Head Office Referat IV B4, known as RSHA IV B4, was a sub-department of Germany's Reich Security Head Office and the Gestapo during the Holocaust. Led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, RSHA IV B4 was responsible for "Jewish affairs and evacuation" in German-occupied Europe, and specifically for the deportation of Jews from outside Poland to concentration or extermination camps. Within Poland, the liquidation of the ghettos and transport of Jews was handled by the SS and local police departments.

References

  1. 1 2 Herbert F. Ziegler, A review to the book by Theodor Dannecker: Ein Funktionär der 'Endlösung' , Central European History, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1999. JSTOR   4546920
  2. ↑ Steuer 2000, pp. 403–36.
  3. 1 2 Steuer 2000, p. 404.
  4. ↑ Steur, Claudia (1997). Theodor Dannecker.: Ein Funktionär der 'Endlösung' (in German). Klartext Verlagsges. Mbh. p. 43. ISBN   978-3884745458.
  5. ↑ Steuer 2000, pp. 432–34.
  6. ↑ Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 399. ISBN   978-0192804365.
  7. ↑ Lieven Saerens: Rachel, Jacob, Paul et les autres : une histoire des Juifs à bruxelles. Trad. du néerlandais par Serge Govaert. Brüssel : Mardaga, 2014 ISBN   978-2804702106
  8. ↑ Roland Ray, Annäherung an Frankreich im Dienste Hitlers?: Otto Abetz und die deutsche Frankreichpolitik 1930–1942, 2000, ISBN   3486596098, Chapter 10, Section 4: "Motor der 'Endlosung' in FrankReich: Judenreferent Carltheo Zeitschel"
  9. ↑ Max Williams, Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography: Volume 1 (2001), p. 61.
  10. ↑ Steuer 2000, p. 434.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.