#124
Post
by michael mills » 20 Jan 2018, 02:43
There was the case of some German Jewish men who were privileged by reason of being married to non-Jewish women, but who were sent by mistake to Auschwitz in early 1943.
That occurred in the context of the purging of the Reichsvereinigung der deutschen Juden at that time, which was part of the "Fabrikaktion" initiated by Goebbels. There were two categories of privileged Jews in Germany: (1) employees of the Reichsvereinigung, and (2) persons with non-Jewish spouses. At the suggestion of Goebbels, it was decided to reduce the number of privileged Jews by cancelling the privileged status of Reichsvereinigung employees who were not married to non-Jews and deporting them to Auschwitz, and replacing them with Jewish men who were married to non-Jews and thereby already had privileged status.
All the privileged Jewish men in Berlin were rounded up and held in the building of the welfare office of the Reichsvereinigung for the purpose of sorting through them to determine which did not have non-Jewish wives and therefore could be deported, and which did have non-Jewish wives and therefore could not be deported. An additional purpose was to select from the men with Jewish wives suitable replacements for the former Reichsvereinigung employees who had lost their privileged status and were now to be deported.
However, it appears that the German officials carrying out the sorting process became confused and mistakenly included a number of men with non-Jewish wives among the group of Reichsvereinigung employees who were deported to Auschwitz. When the men with non-Jewish wives arrived at Auschwitz, they were not killed but were held separately because the Auschwitz staff were not sure of their status, ie whether they were still privileged or whether they had lost their privileges status and could be treated like the vast majority of Jews arriving at Auschwitz. In a few days the Berlin authorities realised their mistake and ordered the return of this group of men; they were in fact returned unharmed and non was killed at Auschwitz.
That incident shows that the Auschwitz staff did not have carte blanche to kill willy-nilly all Jews arriving at Auschwitz; they could kill only those they were specifically authorised to kill, which of course was the overwhelming majority. There was a small minority of Jews whose killing was not authorised, eg "privileged" German Jews and Jews who were citizens of Allied countries recognised as belligerents by Germany (eg UK, US) or of neutral countries (eg Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Bulgaria) which had not given specific permission for the deportation of their Jewish citizens.
That was the background to the prosecution of Grabner by the SS courts. As wm correctly stated, he had as head of the Political Section at Auschwitz ordered the execution of a group of prisoners without having received authorisation from Berlin. In that respect his prosecution had the same basis as the reprimand given by Himmler to Jeckeln on 1 December 1941 for the latter's unauthorised killing of the first transport of German Jews that arrived at Riga on 30 November as the Rumbula massacre was just starting. Himmler warned Jeckeln to obey the regulations governing the treatment of German Jews, and threatened to punish him for any further unauthorised killings.
