July 31: The “Final Solution”

The “Final Solution of the Jewish question” was ordered on this date in 1941 by Hermann Goering in a letter to General Reinhardt Heydrich of the SS. Heydrich was instructed “to carry out all the necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence,” which by then extended to twelve countries. Killing squads had been already been murdering Jews in the newly invaded territories of the USSR for a month. Heydrich would chair the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, at which the genocidal operations were further refined. He was killed by Czech partisans in May, 1942, but by then three killing centers had been established in Poland as part of “Operation Reinhard”: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. In 1943, the euphemistic language ended, at least internally within Nazi ranks, when Heinrich Himmler spoke of “what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person — with exceptions due to human weaknesses — has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.”

“Respecting the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would live to see their annihilation in it. That wasn’t just a catch-word. The world war is here, and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence.” —Hermann Goering, diary entry, December 12, 1941