Breaking News
History

Details of the Final Solution start to filter into pages of the Times Mirror

By Josh Cotton 6 min read

Through the rest of World War II, tidbits and fragmented reports emerged from behind the Nazi curtain about what was happening to 'undesirables' under German rule.

Persecution of those elements of society, as we've seen, was widely reported in generalities and, at times, in detail up until this point.

But the total elimination of these groups – especially European Jewry, had not yet been a formalized objective. That came in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference when the process underpinning the Final Solution was settled.

"The "Final Solution" was the codename for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews," a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) article explains. "At some still undetermined time in 1941, Adolf Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder."

The conference was called to "inform and secure support" from government ministries and agencies needed to implement the Final Solution and to "disclose to the participants that Hitler himself" tasked specific individuals with implementing this plan.

"The men at the table did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime."

The killing ramped up in a myriad of ways after the conference.

A 2001 film – Conspiracy – provides a fascinating look at how that conversation may have unfolded. To those interested, know what the subject material is going in, though. It can be a difficult movie to watch.

What matters is that from early 1942 until the end of the war,

The Times Mirror on July 15, 1942 reported on a "SWEEPING DECREE ISSUED AGAINST JEWS."

It was another French provision that took control of all "Jewish-controlled property and businesses, leases and rights in French colonies.

"The edict came upon the heels of a gestapo order barring Jews from every public gathering place, indoors or outdoors, in the Nazi-occupied regions."

The first report of killing on a, frankly, industrial scale can be found in Nov.

"250,000 Jews Are Reported Exterminated."

"One-Half of Population In Poland Said To Have Been Ordered Killed."

"METHOD IS REVOLTING."

It was a wire report that relied on information from the Polish government-in-exile which claimed that "Heinrich Himmler, Nazi Gestapo chief, had ordered the extermination of one-half of the Jewis population of Poland by the end of this year and that 250,000 had been killed through September under that program" and that just 40,000 Jews remained in the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Warsaw Ghetto had been established two years earlier.

According to the USHMM, Warsaw was Poland's largest city – 1.3 million people with a Jewish population of about 350,000.

The ghetto saw those 350,000 jammed into just 2.4 percent of the city, about 1.3 square miles.

Thousands died each month in the ghetto, which included 10-foot walls and 7.2 persons per room.

According to the USHMM – and unsurprisingly, the "food allocation "rationed to the ghetto… were not sufficient to sustain life." 83,000 people are believed to have died of starvation or disease in the ghetto before mass deportations to the killing center at Treblinka were undertaken from July into September 1942.

That report gives a detailed explanation of how the killings were undertaken: Those to be immediately killed were "driven to a square where old people and cripples are segregated, taken to a cemetery and shot" while the rest "are loaded into freight cars, 150 to a car intended for 40. The floor of the car is sprinkled with a thick layer of lime or chlorine-sprinkled water. The doors of the cars are sealed. Sometimes the train starts immediately. Other times it waits on a siding for days.

"The people are packed so tightly that those who die of suffocation remain in the crowd side by side with those still living. Half of the people arrive dead at the destination. Those surviving are sent to special camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. Once there they are mass-murdered."

An early sign of Allied resistance popped into the pages of the Times Mirror as 1943 dawned – "Stand Taken On Restoring Of Properties."

"Seventeen Allied belligerent governments and the French national committee served notice on the Axis and its beneficiaries today that property rights in countries now occupied by them will be restored to their rightful owners when the Axis is ejected," the Jan 5, 1943 Times Mirror reported.

"The declaration does not specifically mention properties previously owned by Jews in Germany or other countries and now held by non-Jews who took them over at panic prices when Jews were forced out of business or expelled."

In June, a report emerged that an additional 14,000 people were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto.

"The Germans were reported today to have virtually wiped out the Warsaw ghetto by deporting 14,000 Jews to the east after three weeks of desperate street fighting in which 2,000 were shot to death and 3,000 died in their flaming homes," the report claimed. "A secret Polish radio station heard here last night said the Jews in the walled ghetto, scene of other bloody pogroms since the Nazis overran Poland, had given a good account of themselves by killing 300 German elite troops and wounding 2,000 others."

Awareness of the gravity of the situation appears to have come into focus as 1944 passed, even if war news continued to absolutely dominate the daily coverage.

In July: "Urge Help For 500,000 Jews in Hungary."

"The fate of some 500,000 Jews left in Hungary rested today on decisive action by the regent, Adm. Nicholas Northy," the report explained. "The Vatican and the International Red Cross are understood to have interceded in an effort to halt handing them over to the Germans and Horthy was reported last week in Bern to have promised to stop forcible evacuation of the Jews."

A Hungarian editor claimed in that report that "so far the only Jews who have been killed in Hungary have been killed by Anglo-Sazon bombs. Only a cessation of air raids can prevent an outbreak of passionate anti-semitism."

The article concluded with an estimate that 400,000 Jews in Hungary "have been turned over to the Germans and that one-fourth of these already have been killed…."

Starting at /week.