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Hans Frank

  Speech to senior members of his administration

The Removal of the Jews from the General Government

   

Hans Frank (center) and his senior staff

16 December 1941  

 

One way or another – I will tell you that, quite openly – we must finish off the Jews.

 

The Fuhrer put it into words once:

 

“Should united Jewry again succeed in setting off a World War: then the blood sacrifice shall not be made only by the peoples driven into war, but then the Jew of Europe will have met his end.”

 

I know that there is criticism of many of the measures now applied to the Jews in the Reich.

 

There are always deliberate attempts to speak again and again of cruelty, harshness, etc: this emerges from the reports on the popular mood.

 

I appeal to you: before now I continue speaking: first agree with me on a formula: we will have pity, on principle, only for the German people, and for nobody else in the world.

 

The others had no pity for us either. As an old National Socialist, I must also  say that if the pack of Jews were to survive the war in Europe while we sacrifice the best of our blood for the preservation of Europe, then this war would still only be a partial success.

 

I will therefore, on principle, approach Jewish affairs in the expectation that the Jews will disappear. They must go. I have started negotiations for the purpose of having them pushed off to the East.

 

In January there will be a major conference on this question in Berlin to which I shall send State Secretary Dr Buhler. The conference is to be held in the office of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich at the Reich Security Main Office.

 

A major Jewish migration will certainly begin. But what should be done with the Jews? Can you believe that they will be accommodated in settlements in the Ostland?

 

In Berlin we were told: why are you making all this trouble? We don’t want them either – not in Ostland or in the Reichskommisariat: liquidate them yourselves!

 

Gentlemen I must ask you to steel yourselves against all considerations of compassion. We must destroy the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is at possible, in order to maintain the whole structure of the Reich, the views that were acceptable up to now cannot be applied to such gigantic, unique events.

 

In any case, we must find a way that will lead us to our goal and I have my own ideas on this.

 

The Jews are exceptionally harmful feeders for us. In the Government – General we have approximately 2.5 million, and now perhaps 3.5 million together with persons who have Jewish kin and so on.

 

October 26, 1939,  order by Hans Frank mandating compulsory labor for the Jewish population

We cannot shoot these 3.5 million Jews, we cannot poison them, but we will take measures that will somehow lead to successful destruction; and this in connection with large-scale procedures which are to be discussed in the Reich, the Government-General must become as free of Jews as the Reich.

 

When and how this is to be done is the affair of bodies which we will have to appoint and create, and on whose work I will report to you when the time comes.

 

-This statement was made some five weeks before the meeting of senior officials at 56-58 Grosser Wannsee, Berlin, on January 20, 1942, where the final administrative details concerning the Final Solution of the Jewish question were discussed in detail.

 

(The conference had originally been planned for December 9, 1941).

 

Less than a year earlier on July 12, 1940 Hans Frank made the following comments on the Madagascar Plan
 

Another very important point is the decision of the Fuehrer, which he made at my request, that there will be no more transports of Jews into the area of the Generalgouvernement.

 

As a general political observation I would like to state that it is planned to transport the whole pack of Jews ( Judensippschaft ) from the German Reich, the Generalgouvernement and the Protectorate, in the shortest conceivable time after peace has been made, to an African or American Colony.

 

Madagascar is being considered, to be ceded by France for this purpose. There will be ample room here for a few million Jews on an area of 500,000 sq. kms. I have tried to let the Jews in the Generalgouvernement also share in this advantage, of building up a new life on new land.

 

This has been accepted so that there should be a tremendous easing within sight...

An entry from Hans Franks diary dated August 18, 1942 stated the following:

"Anyone who passes through Krakow, Lvov, Warsaw, Radom, or Lublin today must in all fairness admit that the efforts of the German administration have been crowned with real success, as one now sees hardly any Jews."

 

 

 

 


 

Sources:

 

Wiener Library

Diary of Hans Frank

Holocaust Historical Society   

PRO

 

 

 

 

Copyright Chris Webb & Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

 

 

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