“It is not our duty,” he said, “to Germanize the East in the old meaning of the term, that is to say to teach the people there the German language and law, but to see that only people of pure German blood live in the East.” This was the natural consequence of the S.S. racial principles. “The cleansing of foreign races outside the incorporated territories is one of the essential aims to be accomplished in the German East.”
In order to speed up this new type of “Germanization,” Himmler ordered the appropriate measures to “prevent the increase of the Polish intellectual elite; distribute the freed lands on the liquidation of the Polish farmers to Germans and reclaim such ‘good racial types’ as might be discovered in such a mixture of races. I think it is our duty to adopt their children, to remove them from their surroundings, if necessary to steal or kidnap them. Where we can win good blood which we could utilize ourselves, we shall give it a place in the bosom of our people. Now gentlemen, perhaps you might find this cruel, but Nature is cruel and we shall destroy all alien and inferior blood.”
...
“We must exterminate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible,” said Frank. It was to achieve this end more easily that in 1940 the extermination camp of Auschwitz was opened near Cracow. Here, in an unhealthy marsh, millions of Jews were exterminated during the course of the next five years. Shortly after Auschwitz, two other camps were opened at Maidanek and Treblinka. Treblinka served as the prototype for the extermination camps created later.
At the end of a year the R.S.H.A. had banished from the part of Poland occupied by the Reich 1,500,000 Polish peasants or Jews and had dispatched them into the “General Government.” At the end of May 1943 the expropriations had reached a total of 702,760 estates, totaling 6,367,971 hectares. This figure did not include the expropriations carried out in Danzig, East Prussia, Poznan, Zichenau, and Silesia. In these lands less than 500,000 pure-blooded Germans were installed—a third of the number of Poles expropriated. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, which had opened a new branch under the control of Himmler, participated in the operation as did an “Immigration Center” with premises next to the head office of the police services and the S.S.
The Poles sent to Germany were reduced to the condition of slaves. For the first time Himmler’s theory on the functioning of the future Reich was put into practice. The Poles, employed as farm workers, were subjected to a fifteen-point directive. As a start their regulation decreed: “In principle farm workers of Polish nationality have not the right to complain; in consequence no demands will be admitted by any official administration whatsoever.” Thus, delivered completely to the arbitrary will of their masters, the Polish slaves had no right to leave their place of work. They had to observe a curfew from 8 P.M. to 6 A.M. in winter and from 9 P.M. to 5 A.M. in summer. They were not allowed to use bicycles except to reach their place of work, and with their employer’s consent. They were forbidden to enter churches or temples, cinemas, theaters, places of cultural entertainment, or restaurants. They had no right to have sexual relations with women of any description. They had no right to hold meetings, to use any type of transport—railways, buses, etc.—and they were strictly forbidden to change employers. On the other hand, the latter had the right to inflict upon them corporal punishment “if orders and kind words failed.” In this case the employer was not forced to give an account of his actions and could not be held responsible before the courts. He was also advised to keep the Polish workers away from their families. Any “crime” committed by a Polish worker was to be reported immediately by his employer under pain of serious sanctions. By the word “crime” was to be understood sabotage, “go-slow” or ill-will at work or insubordinate behavior. Severe punishments were provided for employers who “do not respect the distance which of necessity has to be kept between themselves and farm workers of Polish nationality. The same rule applies to women and young girls. The giving of supplementary rations is strictly forbidden.”
The Polish women were placed as servants in German families, members of the N.S.D.A.P. having priority in obtaining one of these free servants. Between 400,000 and 500,000 of these unfortunate women, reduced to slavery “in order to bring a tangible relief to the German housewife ... to prevent her health being later impaired,” were transplanted. Their situation was as wretched as that of the farm workers. “No time off is to be asked for. Female servants from the East cannot in principle leave the house except for domestic tasks. However, by way of reward they can be given the possibility of three hours’ rest out of doors a week. This time off must end at nightfall, at the latest by 8 P.M.” The same prohibitions which applied to men also applied to these unfortunate women: “Outside the house the Eastern servant must always carry her working permit which is to serve as her personal pass.”
~~The Gestapo: A History of Horror -by- Jacques Delarue
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