Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle
Encyclopedia
The Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Main Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans) (VoMi) was an NSDAP agency founded to manage the interests of the Volksdeutsche
(Ethnic Germans) who lived outside the borders of Nazi Germany
.
It would later, under Allgemeine-SS administration, become responsible for orchestrating the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum
(Living space) in Eastern Europe
.
Werner Lorenz
as a state office of the Nazi Party. Its headquarters were on Unter den Linden
, Berlin
(this changed to Keithstraße in 1943 due to Allied Bombing
). VoMi's primary task was the resettlement of German peoples outside Germany. Between 1939 and 1942, VoMi had resettled half a million ethnic Germans into the newly occupied territories of the Reich under the slogan "Heim ins Reich
" (Home into the Empire). These territories included the Reichsgau
s of the German Reich, these included Wartheland
(Posen
) and Danzig-West Prussia
(Danzig
).
On October 7, 1939, two days after Poland had been overrun, Adolf Hitler
appointed Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums (Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock) (RKFDV). This position authorized the SS to plan, initiate, and control the pace of germanisation
, settlement
and population transfer projects
in occupied Poland
; this was later expanded to occupied Russia
.
In 1941 the RKFDV was upgraded to an SS Main Office with control over all VoMi personnel and field offices. The RKFDV, as an SS-conrtolled organization, had the authority to say who was German, where ethnic Germans could live, and what populations should be cleared or annihilated
in order to make room for the German settlers. As RKFDV chief, Himmler authorized the SS-Einsatzgruppen
and other SS police units to round up and kill Jews, Slavs and Roma.
In June 1942 Himmler put all VoMi personnel under the jurisdiction of the SS Police and Courts
. With Hitler's blessing, Himmler now had complete control over VoMi, Volksdeutsche
policy and Lebensraum
programs. Although VoMi remained technically an office of the Nazi Party until the end of the Second World War, it was under the control of the SS.
This department, unlike other VoMi Amts, contained only SS personnel. It contained SS legal officers
and a Waffen-SS
unit.
This was managed by an SD
officer. It dealt with SS and non-SS personnel within the Volksdeutsche
. In the later period of the war, Amt II's importance increased as it was responsible for allocating Volksdeutsche
to the Reich Labor Service.
It was responsible for financing VoMi projects and distributing funds to Volksdeutsche
. It was the only department that remained under complete control of the Nazi State and not the Allgemeine SS
.
This department documented and reported all VoMi activity and resettlement projects. It worked closely with Joseph Goebbels
' Ministry of Information
. Amt IV also published information journals for the German settlers
.
This provided cultural and educational services to help Volksdeutsche
assimilate to German ways
.
This office looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans that had been allowed to settle within the borders of Germany
. It also assessed potential candidates for settlement grading them on their ethnicity, politics and skills. However, Amt VI, although tasked with the welfare of Volksdeutsche
, worked closely with the Gestapo
and the SD
of the RSHA
.
It had a similar role as Amt VI but looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans
in Eastern Europe, such as in occupied Poland
, Czechoslovakia
and Russia
. It had field offices in Krakow
, Riga
and Kiev
.
This section was engaged in collating and archiving the cultural history of resettled Volksdeutsche
. The department also acted as a curator
for artifacts, treasure and documents belonging to ethnic Germans.
The SS considered this to be the most important department within VoMi as it provided the political leadership for ethnic Germans within the Third Reich and occupied Europe. Amt IX had several sub divisions, these included domestic affairs, relations between ethnic Germans and the Nazi Party, affairs between foreign states and the Third Reich regarding ethnic Germans and liaisons with the Nazi Foreign Ministry.
This office established agriculture, work projects, banking and credit for the Volksdeutsche
. During the Second World War its main role was the exploitation of the ethnic Germans
in the interest of the Third Reich.
This department was primarily responsible for handling the massive germanisation
operation to settle
Volksdeutsche
throughout Germany and Occupied Europe.
Most of these murders occurred in the County (Judetul) of Berezovca, where ethnic Germans, distributed among 40 or so villages, made up 40% of the population. Sk-R was commanded by SS-Standartenfuher Horst Hoffmeyer, a senior VoMi officer. His HQ was in Landau, located west of the River Bug. Apparently, the unit was divided into seven local offices, three of which were:
Liebl's unit, for example, was responsible for the massacre of 1,200 Jews at Suha Verba in early June 1942.
Slightly more detail on this can be found in Andrej Angrick's paper in Yad Vashem Studies XXVI (1998), pp 232-234. Perhaps oddly, Radu Ioanid's "The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944" does not cover Sk-R, nor does Valdis O. Lumen's book dedicated to VoMi.
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer
August Frank
was an official of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
(Main SS Economic Administration Office ) who was responsible for the administration of the Nazi concentration camps
.
Frank was responsible for taking the property from Jews murdered in Aktion Reinhard in 1942. After the war, a memorandum prepared by Frank on September 26, 1942
detailed instructions on dealing with this ill-gotten wealth; which even included collecting the underwear of victims. It ordered that the property should be sent to the VoMi offices in Lodz, Poland.
The memorandum, refuted claims that organizations like VoMi, had no knowledge that Jews were being murdered en masse in the extermination camps. The note is also an example of the use of the Nazi euphemism "evacuation" for Jews that were being murdered in The Holocaust
.
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
(Ethnic Germans) who lived outside the borders of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
It would later, under Allgemeine-SS administration, become responsible for orchestrating the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
(Living space) in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
.
Formation
It was founded in 1937 under the command of SS-ObergruppenführerObergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and until 1942 it was the highest SS rank inferior only to Reichsführer-SS...
Werner Lorenz
Werner Lorenz
Werner Lorenz was SS head of the Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle an organization charged with settling ethnic Germans in the German Reich from other parts of Europe.-Early life:...
as a state office of the Nazi Party. Its headquarters were on Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden is a boulevard in the Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. It is named for its linden trees that line the grassed pedestrian mall between two carriageways....
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
(this changed to Keithstraße in 1943 due to Allied Bombing
Strategic bombing during World War II
Strategic bombing during World War II is a term which refers to all aerial bombardment of a strategic nature between 1939 and 1945 involving any nations engaged in World War II...
). VoMi's primary task was the resettlement of German peoples outside Germany. Between 1939 and 1942, VoMi had resettled half a million ethnic Germans into the newly occupied territories of the Reich under the slogan "Heim ins Reich
Heim ins Reich
The Heim ins Reich initiative was a policy pursued by Adolf Hitler starting in 1938 and was one of the factors leading to World War II. The initiative attempted to convince people of German descent living outside of the German Reich that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into a...
" (Home into the Empire). These territories included the Reichsgau
Reichsgau
A Reichsgau was an administrative subdivision created in a number of the areas annexed to Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945...
s of the German Reich, these included Wartheland
Reichsgau Wartheland
Reichsgau Wartheland was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from Polish territory annexed in 1939. It comprised the Greater Poland and adjacent areas, and only in part matched the area of the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen...
(Posen
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
) and Danzig-West Prussia
Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia
The Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia was a Nazi German province created on 8 October 1939 from the territory of the annexed Free City of Danzig, the annexed Polish province Greater Pomeranian Voivodship , and the Nazi German Regierungsbezirk West Prussia of Gau East Prussia. Before 2 November 1939,...
(Danzig
Gdansk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
).
RKFDV
On October 7, 1939, two days after Poland had been overrun, Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
appointed Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums (Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock) (RKFDV). This position authorized the SS to plan, initiate, and control the pace of germanisation
Germanisation
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
, settlement
Plantation (settlement or colony)
Plantation was an early method of colonization in which settlers were "planted" abroad in order to establish a permanent or semi-permanent colonial base. Such plantations were also frequently intended to promote Western culture and Christianity among nearby indigenous peoples, as can be seen in the...
and population transfer projects
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, while the rest of Nazi occupied Poland was named as General Government...
in occupied Poland
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
; this was later expanded to occupied Russia
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
.
In 1941 the RKFDV was upgraded to an SS Main Office with control over all VoMi personnel and field offices. The RKFDV, as an SS-conrtolled organization, had the authority to say who was German, where ethnic Germans could live, and what populations should be cleared or annihilated
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
in order to make room for the German settlers. As RKFDV chief, Himmler authorized the SS-Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
and other SS police units to round up and kill Jews, Slavs and Roma.
In June 1942 Himmler put all VoMi personnel under the jurisdiction of the SS Police and Courts
Hauptamt SS-Gericht
The Hauptamt SS-Gericht was the legal department of the SS during the Third Reich. It was responsible for formulating the laws and codes that the SS and various other groups of the secret police and Wehrmacht were to adhere to, as well as administering the SS and Police Courts and penal...
. With Hitler's blessing, Himmler now had complete control over VoMi, Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
policy and Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
programs. Although VoMi remained technically an office of the Nazi Party until the end of the Second World War, it was under the control of the SS.
Organization
The Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle had 11 departments ::Amt I : Führungsamt
- (Headquarters)
This department, unlike other VoMi Amts, contained only SS personnel. It contained SS legal officers
Hauptamt SS-Gericht
The Hauptamt SS-Gericht was the legal department of the SS during the Third Reich. It was responsible for formulating the laws and codes that the SS and various other groups of the secret police and Wehrmacht were to adhere to, as well as administering the SS and Police Courts and penal...
and a Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
unit.
Amt II : Organisation und Personal
- (Organization and Personnel)
This was managed by an SD
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
officer. It dealt with SS and non-SS personnel within the Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
. In the later period of the war, Amt II's importance increased as it was responsible for allocating Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
to the Reich Labor Service.
Amt III : Finanzen, Wirtschaft und Vermoegensverwaltung
- (Finances, Economics and Administration)
It was responsible for financing VoMi projects and distributing funds to Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
. It was the only department that remained under complete control of the Nazi State and not the Allgemeine SS
Allgemeine SS
The Allgemeine SS was the most numerous branch of the Schutzstaffel paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany. It was managed by the SS-Hauptamt...
.
Amt IV : Informationen
- (Propaganda)
This department documented and reported all VoMi activity and resettlement projects. It worked closely with Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
' Ministry of Information
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Nazi Germany's ministry that enforced Nazi Party ideology in Germany and regulated its culture and society. Founded on March 13, 1933, by Adolf Hitler's new National Socialist government, the Ministry was headed by Dr...
. Amt IV also published information journals for the German settlers
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
.
Amt V : Deutschtumserziehung
- (Cultural and Educational services)
This provided cultural and educational services to help Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
assimilate to German ways
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
Amt VI : Sicherung Deutschen Volkstums im Reich
- (Office of ethnic Germans within Germany)
This office looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans that had been allowed to settle within the borders of Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. It also assessed potential candidates for settlement grading them on their ethnicity, politics and skills. However, Amt VI, although tasked with the welfare of Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
, worked closely with the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
and the SD
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
of the RSHA
RSHA
The RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt was an organization subordinate to Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacities as Chef der Deutschen Polizei and Reichsführer-SS...
.
Amt VII : Sicherung Deutschen Volkstums in den neuen Ostgebieten
- (Office of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe)
It had a similar role as Amt VI but looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
in Eastern Europe, such as in occupied Poland
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
, Czechoslovakia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the majority ethnic-Czech protectorate which Nazi Germany established in the central parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia in what is today the Czech Republic...
and Russia
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
. It had field offices in Krakow
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
and Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
.
Amt VIII : Kultur und Wissenschaft
- (Archive and Records of ethnic German culture)
This section was engaged in collating and archiving the cultural history of resettled Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
. The department also acted as a curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
for artifacts, treasure and documents belonging to ethnic Germans.
Amt IX : Politische Führung Deutscher Volksgruppen
- (Political office of German ethnic groups )
The SS considered this to be the most important department within VoMi as it provided the political leadership for ethnic Germans within the Third Reich and occupied Europe. Amt IX had several sub divisions, these included domestic affairs, relations between ethnic Germans and the Nazi Party, affairs between foreign states and the Third Reich regarding ethnic Germans and liaisons with the Nazi Foreign Ministry.
Amt X : Führung der Wirtschaft in den Deutschen Volksgruppen
- (Office managing the economics of ethnic Germans)
This office established agriculture, work projects, banking and credit for the Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
. During the Second World War its main role was the exploitation of the ethnic Germans
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
in the interest of the Third Reich.
Amt XI : Umsiedlung
- (Resettlement)
This department was primarily responsible for handling the massive germanisation
Germanisation
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
operation to settle
Plantation (settlement or colony)
Plantation was an early method of colonization in which settlers were "planted" abroad in order to establish a permanent or semi-permanent colonial base. Such plantations were also frequently intended to promote Western culture and Christianity among nearby indigenous peoples, as can be seen in the...
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
throughout Germany and Occupied Europe.
Role in The Holocaust
A VoMi unit, Sonderkommando R (Russland), institutional successor to Einsatzgruppe D in the Transnistria area, carried out numerous massacres of Jews during the first half of 1942. The victims were deportees from Rumanian-controlled territory, it being Marshal Ion Antonescu's policy to racially "cleanse" the Rumanian nation. His preferred technique was to expell them to German-controlled territory and have the responsible SS/Police units exterminate them. Many of these Jews were passed back and forth for weeks before a mix of Sk-R units and ethnic German Selbstschutz militia killed them.Most of these murders occurred in the County (Judetul) of Berezovca, where ethnic Germans, distributed among 40 or so villages, made up 40% of the population. Sk-R was commanded by SS-Standartenfuher Horst Hoffmeyer, a senior VoMi officer. His HQ was in Landau, located west of the River Bug. Apparently, the unit was divided into seven local offices, three of which were:
- Worms - commanded by SS-Obersturmfuhrer Streit
- Lichtenfeld - SS-Obersturmfuhrer Franz Liebl
- Rastatt - SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Rudolf Hartung
Liebl's unit, for example, was responsible for the massacre of 1,200 Jews at Suha Verba in early June 1942.
Slightly more detail on this can be found in Andrej Angrick's paper in Yad Vashem Studies XXVI (1998), pp 232-234. Perhaps oddly, Radu Ioanid's "The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944" does not cover Sk-R, nor does Valdis O. Lumen's book dedicated to VoMi.
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer
Obergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and until 1942 it was the highest SS rank inferior only to Reichsführer-SS...
August Frank
August Frank
August Frank was an official of the Main Economic Administration Office of the Nazi SS generally known by its initials WVHA. WVHA was, among other things, responsible for the administration of the Nazi concentration camps...
was an official of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt was responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects for the Allgemeine-SS...
(Main SS Economic Administration Office ) who was responsible for the administration of the Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
.
Frank was responsible for taking the property from Jews murdered in Aktion Reinhard in 1942. After the war, a memorandum prepared by Frank on September 26, 1942
August Frank memorandum
The August Frank memorandum of September 26 1942 was a directive from SS Lieutenant General August Frank, a higher official of the SS concentration camp administration department. The memorandum provides a measure of the detailed involvement planning that Frank and other Nazis put into the...
detailed instructions on dealing with this ill-gotten wealth; which even included collecting the underwear of victims. It ordered that the property should be sent to the VoMi offices in Lodz, Poland.
The memorandum, refuted claims that organizations like VoMi, had no knowledge that Jews were being murdered en masse in the extermination camps. The note is also an example of the use of the Nazi euphemism "evacuation" for Jews that were being murdered in The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
See also
- Rassenpolitisches AmtOffice of Racial PolicyThe NSDAP Office of Racial Policy was a Nazi Party office created in 1933 for "unifying and supervising all indoctrination and propaganda work in the field of population and racial politics"...
, NSDAP office founded in 1933 and tasked with creating and formulating the Third Reich's racial policy. - RuSHARuSHAThe Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt-SS , , was the organization responsible for "safeguarding the racial 'purity' of the SS" within Nazi Germany....
, SS organization that enforced Aryan ideologyNazism and raceNazism developed several theories concerning races. The Nazis claimed to scientifically measure a strict hierarchy of human race; at the top was the master race, the "Aryan race", narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by lesser races.At the bottom of this...
, oversaw marriage licences and child-breeding programs. - Generalplan OstGeneralplan OstGeneralplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
, the destructionEthnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
of slavic peoples and the germanization of Eastern EuropeEastern EuropeEastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
.
Further reading
- Zaffiri Gabriel, Ahnenerbe, the Academy of sciences of the SS , Nicholas Calabria Publisher, Pacts (ME), 2004 ISBN 978-8888-010458-101