"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (69 page)

This “impression” was quite correct because the legal basis of such mass seizures and confiscations was more than questionable. The only possible basis was the confiscation decree of January 24, 1940
³²
(confiscation “in the public interest”), with the robbery of the Jewish population obviously regarded as the “fulfillment of tasks in the public interest,” as described in a budget meeting in the governor general’s office.
³³
However, it is questionable whether the decree of January 24, 1940, was ever used. The evidence tends to show that the administration shared the prevailing view in the Reich that Jewish property was ownerless as it was and could therefore be occupied without a specific basis in law. This ambiguity is an indication that there was essentially only one aim: the comprehensive implementation of the robbery of assets by the state and the seizure of Jewish assets as quickly as possible.

Implementation of this robbery of assets by the state was based very heavily on models from Reich law. The confiscated Jewish assets were under provisional administration, but they were allowed to deteriorate quickly, because they were administered by German and Polish trustees at district level (District Trust Agencies), who were frequently a bad choice of individuals, interested only in personal gain; they had been appointed during the military administration and had no desire to preserve the Jewish enterprises entrusted to them but regarded them merely as a fat living to line their own pockets.
³⁴
The countless cases of personal enrichment and the deterioration of the operating assets resulted in a deplorable state of affairs in many enterprises. Even the offices of the government of the General Government complained about the “scandalous conditions” and the “uncontrollable plundering” by the trustees, whose large number was in inverse proportion to their efficiency
³⁵
and who succeeded in creating a situation whereby as early as 1940, the majority of the confiscated Jewish enterprises were no longer competitive because of the lack of capital and the incompetence of the trustees and had become run down to the point of bankruptcy and sold off for a minimal amount to private or state buyers. In Warsaw, for instance, the “administration” of Jewish rented property swallowed up the entire rental income of 88 million złoty. Of a thousand Jewish enterprises seized in Warsaw, only three hundred were still functioning in 1940.
³⁶

The profits and proceeds from the “utilization” of Jewish assets accrued to the administration,
³⁷
in particular at the
Kreis
level (
Kreishauptleute
and
Stadthauptleute
); those individuals also benefited from the use and exploitation of the confiscated Jewish real estate, since much of it (seized by the government of the General Government), representing enormous financial resources,
³⁸
as stated by the head of the Central Department of Economics in the office of the governor general, was, “as it were, given away to the municipalities,”
³⁹
which at the same time were burdened with the cost of upkeep.
⁴⁰

As usual, there was friction with the police, but this time the administration came out on top. The
Reichsführer
-SS, in his capacity as Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, also had his eye on these assets and—when the planned expropriation decree mentioned above did not come to fruition—issued a corresponding directive on December 15, 1942,
⁴¹
instructing the higher SS and police leader in the East (HSSPF
Ost
) to dispose of all Jewish real property assets following the registration of the entire assets of the deported Jews (Action Reinhard)
⁴²
and to make these available for German settlers. This immediately caused a storm of indignation in the administration. Governor General Frank insisted on his jurisdiction and declared the decree and the measures implemented thereunder to be void. As “ownerless goods,” all Jewish property was the property of the state; only when this was recognized in principle could negotiations be initiated with the Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood.
⁴³
However, Himmler had no intention of accepting this view, and the matter therefore remained in abeyance.
⁴⁴
The result was that the confiscated real estate of Jewish owners was not used and lost value because maintenance work was neglected. Formally at least, this property and real estate continued to be administered by the District Trust Agencies, but if it exceeded the needs of the German administration, it was sold off to private individuals at giveaway prices. The blocked Jewish accounts and securities portfolios at the banks were not surrendered to the police but remained at the banks, which refused to surrender them because jurisdiction for their release had not been clarified.
⁴⁵
The RFSS/RKF was thus unable to achieve complete success with his objective of bringing all Jewish assets under his control. However, the police acted first. As the deportations of the Jewish population increased and with them the jurisdictional scope of the police, there was a rise in the number of unauthorized seizures and disposals of Jewish real estate by the police. After a personal meeting between Frank and Himmler in February 1944,
⁴⁶
Himmler yielded only to the extent that he instructed the SS Central Office to put
movable
Jewish assets at the disposal of the governor general; cash was to be used for settlement purposes. The question of who was ultimately to have the use of the Jewish real estate remained unsolved at the end of the war.

EXCURSUS

Tax Law

The fiscal “special treatment” of the “non-Germans,” outlined below, ran parallel to the special legislative treatment in the commercial sector. Besides the existing taxes levied under Polish law, the “non-Germans” were subject to special taxes, levied and collected by the Polish tax authorities under German supervision.
⁴⁷
Whereas German state subjects and ethnic Germans in the General Government were basically taxed under Reich law,
⁴⁸
new sources of tax revenue were tapped (in addition to the 50% increase in the land tax)
⁴⁹
by making all inhabitants of the Polish municipalities age 18 and over liable to a special tax from the beginning of 1940; it was a municipal tax, the so-called Resident’s Tax, which ranged from 15 to 20 złoty per annum depending on the municipality concerned, and was principally envisaged to fund municipal welfare services, in particular for the homeless Poles and Jews deported from the Annexed Eastern Territories. Two-thirds of tax revenues accrued to the Reich, and one-third was retained by the municipalities.
⁵⁰
Germans, who had initially been liable to this tax, were exempt from the Resident’s Tax from 1942.
⁵¹

This special tax was later increased substantially (to 50–100 złoty per person per annum) but shortly thereafter reduced again;
⁵²
the revenue distribution ratio was also changed, with 20 percent of revenues now to be transferred to the central administration in Kraków and 40 percent to the
Kreishauptleute;
the municipalities also received 40 percent of the revenues to reduce the chronic cash shortage of the municipal authorities.
⁵³
From 1942 an additional “war surcharge” of 200 percent of the Resident’s Tax was levied on the Resident’s Tax (minimum rate of 36 złoty per annum),
⁵⁴
which represented an appreciable burden in view of the extremely low wages. The Jews were liable to even greater income restrictions. In addition to the taxes described above, they also paid a 50 percent surcharge on trade tax;
⁵⁵
it was merely a matter of course that—as in the Reich—all tax allowances for Jewish corporations and associations had been abolished in November 1939.
⁵⁶

III. Civil Service Law

In contrast to the cultural and commercial sectors, where the Poles suffered heavy discrimination, the public service sector was initially characterized by segregation rules. The objective was to demonstrate the unity of
Deutschtum
to the “non-Germans.” As in many other areas of the Eastern Territories, the administrative leadership in the General Government emphasized unremittingly that all personal contacts with Poles must be avoided, with this being impressed upon the civil servants in numerous instructions,
¹
because in the words of Governor General Frank, “
Deutschtum
in the General Government as a self-contained entity in all its expressions was subject … to the law of the National Socialist weltanschauung” [the principle of racial segregation—Author].
²
As in the Annexed Eastern Territories, the overwhelming number of Polish personnel in the German departments did not, of course, permit any strict observance of the strict segregation that had been ordered; the situation forced them to close ranks. As a consequence, the reports of the police and administrative authorities are full of complaints about very far-reaching “fraternization” between Germans and Poles, particularly in the countryside, where personal contacts were completely unavoidable. It must be questioned whether the severest “official sanctions” threatened for social contact with “non-Germans” were of great importance.
³
The same probably applies to the threat of sacking civil servants without notice who married or had sexual relations with “non-German” persons.
⁴
Apart from the aforementioned segregation from German staff, a further special legislative treatment of the Polish civil servants and salaried employees
⁵
still employed was that although they received the same salary as before, this salary represented a blatant underpayment barely covering the minimum required for subsistence, compared with the German personnel, paid under Reich rates, and in view of the general inflation.
⁶

A formal adoption of the principles of Reich (racial) special law did not take effect until the beginning of 1941; from this time on, all German members of the public service in the General Government were required to submit the
Ariernachweis
(proof of Aryan descent), in particular senior members of the Civil Service.
⁷
Under a decree issued by the governor general on July 31, 1942, at the same times as the start of the mass deportations of the Jews to the extermination camps, Polish civil servants still employed in 1942 were to be dismissed if they or their spouses were of Jewish descent or were “Jewish half-breed[s]” or were no longer capable of “ruthless obedience.”
⁸
There was also a comprehensive shake-up of civil servants employed before 1939; a directive that “non-German” civil servants still employed should be retired after completing at least fifteen years’ service was intended to free positions for employees loyal to the occupying power.

Of much greater significance than the measures applied to pay and employment policy was the principle of the “subjugation” of the Poles; this was applied to a lesser extent than in the Annexed Eastern Territories because of the personnel shortage, but still it was enforced with the greatest severity. Poles lost their managerial posts in the administration and were not readmitted to these posts later because of a fear of sabotage (expressed as “uncertainty about the future”) and a revival of the Polish intelligentsia. The failure of this stubborn policy of subjugation by removing former senior Polish state and municipal civil servants from their posts or placing them under German supervisory bodies was soon very evident, because the very consequences that the Germans feared were bound to, and did indeed, ensue. But in its most characteristic shortsightedness and naïveté, the administrative leadership obviously did not realize this; it seriously held the view that the policy of debarring Poles from leading positions “had been quite right”
⁹
(especially after the retreat in the East) but that “no humiliation of the Poles” had thereby been intended.

IV. Professional and Labor Law

1. Professions Requiring State Licensing (Lawyers, Physicians, Etc.)

The same principles of segregation and subjugation were applied to employment law in the professions, especially with regard to the accreditation of lawyers.
¹
German attorneys in the General Government, who, like members of related professions,
²
were subject to strict supervision and were accredited only if they were politically reliable and exercised their profession exclusively in the General Government (as “ambassadors of
Deutschtum
in the outpost of the Eastern lands”),
³
felt the impact of the concept of segregation in two ways: not only was acceptance of Jewish clients “of course” out of the question, but the acceptance of Polish clients was also undesirable; this was only unobjectionable if not forbidden by “the nature of the matter.”
⁴
Prohibited, for instance, was the representation of a Polish client in an action against a German agency (in other words, the representation of Polish interests against confiscation and robbery by the authorities);
⁵
desirable was the representation of Poles by German attorneys in criminal cases heard before German courts, because it was assumed that this would “better serve the establishment of truth.”
⁶
Apart from the representation of Reich and ethnic Germans, German attorneys were totally forbidden to appear in the “non-German” courts.
⁷