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10 - Ghettos During the Final Solution, 1941–1943: The Territories Occupied in Operation Barbarossa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2011

Dan Michman
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
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Summary

The establishment of ghettos should be undertaken in places where Jews constitute a large share of the population, especially in cities, when their establishment is essential or at least serves the goals.

Gen. Franz von Roques, military directive, August 28, 1941

In no circumstances should the establishment of ghettos be viewed as urgent.

Gen. Franz von Roques, military directive, September 3, 1941

[It is inconceivable that in Lemberg] the Jews will be handled differently than in Krakow and Warsaw. Consequently, in the days to come, the Jews will be concentrated in Jewish neighborhoods in Lemberg, too, as in the other cities of Galicia, and disappear from the streets.

Dr. Karl Lasch, governor of Lemberg province, October 21, 1941

Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, was intended to be the start of Nazi Germany's apocalyptic war against Judeo-Bolshevism. In the wake of the Wehrmacht's rapid advance through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Belorussia, prewar eastern Poland, and the Ukraine, the first stage of the organized mass murder of the Jews took shape in the space of a few weeks. For many years after 1945 the Final Solution was considered to be the implementation of an idea that had crystallized in advance; only later was this so-called intentionalist view replaced by the perception that the emergence of the genocidal campaign was more complex. In fact, the intentionalist interpretation was not constructed only by scholars after the Holocaust; it took root at an early stage of World War II among individuals who were not at the center of the decision-making process – both Jews, such as the members of the underground group headed by Abba Kovner in the Vilna ghetto, during the last weeks of 1941, and Germans in the field.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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