expulsions, looting, and also destruction of synagogues, other buildings, and
religious objects.¹
The main objective of the Generalsiedlungsplan (General Resettlement
Plan) of 1939–1945 was the “Germanisation” of the occupied territories.
Expropriation and resettlements carried out by Polish Germans toward both
Christian and Jewish Poles were at first spontaneous; however, very soon they
were transformed into systematic operations, aimed at repopulating these territories with Germans from Russia, Romania and the Baltic states. By the end
of 1939, almost 88,000 residents had been resettled to the General Government;
by the end of 1940 — 250,000; by March 1941 — another 280.000. Of them,
many thousand were sent to the Third Reich as forced labourers. They were
only allowed to take some of their personal belongings; almost everything
was to be left for the future residents. At least 60,000 Germans came in 1939
in their place from the Baltic states, mostly to Warthegau. Over 50,000 were
Volhynian Germans; another 50,000 came from Galicia; almost 10,000 from
Podlasie, the northeastern part of Poland. There were even plans to bring
Germans from the Americas.²
The General Government was to concentrate all the Jews in over 200
ghettos. However, the Germans abandoned this policy, probably in view of
the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. On the initiative of Arthur Greiser,
the Nazi leader and governor of Warthegau with the full support of Hitler
and Himmler, a killing centre was built in Chełmno on the River Ner, or
Kulmhof, in November 1941.³ This is where most of the Warthegau Jews were
murdered. As for the Jews of the other new provinces of the Reich, they were
1 Tatiana Berenstein, Adam Rutkowski, “Prześladowania ludności żydowskiej w okresie hitlerowskiej administracji wojskowej na okupowanych ziemiach polskich (1 IX 1939–25 X 1939 r.),” BŻIH, part 1, 2 (38) (1961): 3–38; part 2, 3 (39) (1961): 63–87.
2 The main objective of the Generalsiedlungsplan was the transformation of a group of approximately 14 million people into slave labourers and the resettlement to Siberia or murder of 51 million Slavs (including 16-20.4 million, i.e. 80–85% Poles, 50% Czechs and Moravians, 65% Ukrainians and 75% Byelorussians, and some undefined number of Russians and Crimea Tartars). The plan was to settle four million Germans on the colonised areas during the first ten years, a further six million in the following years. Some 3–4.8 million Poles were to remain on the German land as slave labourers. (This paragraph and the note are based on: Maria Rutowska, “Wysiedlenia ludności polskiej z Kraju Warty do Generalnego Gubernatorstwa 1939–1941,” Poznań 2003.)
3 On Chełmno, see Introduction to Part Two.
