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Notes
| CHAPTER: A FATE THAT BEGGARS DESCRIPTION [...] ON THE following day he [Goebbels] took note of an extensive report by Heydrich's office, probably on the Wannsee conference.[1] There were still eleven million Jews in Europe, he dictated, summarizing the document. 'For the time being they are to be concentrated in the east [until] later; possibly an island like Madagascar can be assigned to them after the war.' It all raised a host of 'delicate questions,' like what to do with half-Jews and people like the late Gottschalk, Aryans married to Jews. 'Undoubtedly there will be a multitude of personal tragedies,' he wrote airily, 'But this is unavoidable. The situation now is ripe for a final settlement of the Jewish question.'[2] The covering letter from Heydrich invited Goebbels to a second conference, at his headquarters in Kurfürsten Strasse on March 6. Goebbels sent two of his senior staff, Oberregierungsrat Pay Carstensen of the propaganda division, and Dr Schmidt-Burgk, of its eastern territories sub-section.[3] The conference was raw with untutored remarks. Eichmann talked crudely of 'forwarding' the Jews, like so many head of cattle; and when one civil servant objected that they could hardly proceed against law-abiding Jewish citizens, Eichmann's rough-tongued adjutant S.S. Sturmbannführer Günther remarked cynically, 'That's up to our judgement as policemen.'[4] The ministry of justice handled the report like a hot potato.[5] The Reich Chancellery referred it all to Hitler.[6] Hitler told Hans Lammers categorically that he wanted the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until after the war was over - a ruling that remarkably few historians now seem disposed to quote.[7]
Publication
of this book in the United States by
St
Martin's Press and
Doubleday Inc in April 1996 was halted after a
campaign
by the New York-based Anti-Defamation
League
of B'nai B'rith, who
vilified the book
(without having seen it) as "neo nazi" and
"antisemitic".
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