Statements by Leading Nazis on the "Jewish Question "

All of the documents on this Web page were retrieved from the archives of Shamash: The Jewish Internet
Consortium. The comments inside the square [ . . . ] brackets were written by Daniel Keren for the
Shamash archives.
Speech by Adolf Hitler, January 31, 1939.
Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.,
1949-1953, Vol XIII, p. 131:
Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should
succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization
of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

Adolph Hitler speaking to a crowd at the Sports Palace in Berlin, 30 January 1942.
Quoted in "The Holocaust," by Martin Gilbert, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1985, p. 285. Text as
monitored by the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, Federal Communications Commission.
And we say that the war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans,
but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews.

Excerpts from the meeting between Adolf Hitler and the Mufti, Haj Amin Husseini, on 28 November
1941.
The notes were taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt and are quoted in Gerald Fleming's "Hitler and the Final
Solution", p. 101-104. Also geheime Reichssache 57 a/41, Records Dept. Foreign and Commonwealth
Office Pa/2:
The Fhrer then made the following declaration, requesting the Mufti to lock it deep in his heart:
1) He (the Fhrer) would carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European
hegemony had been obliterated.
2) In the course of this fight, the German army would - at a time that could not yet be specified, but in any
case in the clearly foreseeable future - gain the Southern exit of Caucasus.
3) As soon as this breakthrough was made, the Fhrer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance
that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would
be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands.

Adolf Hitler, quoted in "Hitler," by Joachim Fest, Vintage Books Edition, 1974, p. 679-680:

Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into
the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is
being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like
vermin?

Speeches by Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler before senior SS officers in Poznan, October 4 and 6, 1943.
Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off.,
1949-1953, Vol. XIII, p. 323, and Himmler, Reichsfuehrer-SS - P. Padfield, Henry Holt and Co, NY, 1990,
p. 469:
I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy
to talk about, "the Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in
our program, elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them". And then they come, 80
million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is
an A-1 Jew. Not one of those who talk this way has watched it, not one of them has gone through it. Most
of you know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out
and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent
fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written
and is never to be written.
I ask of you that what I say in this circle you really only hear and never speak of. We come to the
question: how is it with the women and the children? I have resolved even here on a completely clear
solution. That is to say I do not consider myself justified in eradicating the men - so to speak killing or
ordering them killed - and allowing the avengers in the shape of the children to grow up for our sons and
grandsons. The difficult decision has to be taken, to cause this Volk [people] to disappear from the earth.
[This speech was recorded; the magnetic tapes are in the National Archives in Washington, DC]

Speech by Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler at Kharkow, April 1943.

Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 572-574:
We have - I would say, as very consistent National Socialists, taken the question of blood as our starting
point. We were the first really to solve the problem of blood by action, and in this connection, by problem
of blood, we of course do not mean antisemitism. Antisemitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting
rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness.

The Goebbels [Reich Propaganda Minister] Diaries, February 14 1942.

The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 - L.P. Lochner, Doubleday & Co., 1948, p. 86:
World Jewry will suffer a great catastrophe at the same time as Bolshevism. The Fhrer once more
expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish
sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. Their
destruction will now go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process
with cold ruthlessness.

The Goebbels [Reich Propaganda Minister] diaries, March 27, 1942.

The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 - L.P. Lochner, Doubleday & Co., 1948, p. 147-148:
Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government [Nazi occupied Poland] are now being
evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely.
Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 percent of them will have to
be liquidated whereas only 40 percent can be used for forced labor.

Speech by Hans Frank [Governor of occupied Poland], to German soldiers in Poland, urging them to
write home.
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. II, p. 633-634:
In all these weeks, they [i.e., your families] will be thinking of you, saying to themselves: my God, there
he sits in Poland where there are so many lice and Jews, perhaps he is hungry and cold, perhaps he is
afraid to write. It would not be a bad idea to send our dear ones back home a picture, and tell them: well
now, there are not so many lice and Jews any more, and conditions here in the General Government have
changed and improved somewhat already. Of course, I could not eliminate all lice and Jews in only one
year's time. But in the course of time, and above all, if you help me, this end will be attained. After all, it
is not necessary for us to accomplish everything within a year and right away, for what would otherwise
be left for those who follow us to do?

Speech by Hans Frank [Governor of occupied Poland], December 16 1941.

Documents on the Holocaust - Edited by Y. Arad, Y. Gutman, A. Margaliot, NY, Ktav Pub. House in
Association with Yad-Vashem, 1981, p. 247, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt.
Print. Off., 1946 Vol. II p. 634:
One way or another -- I will tell you quite openly -- we must finish off the Jews. The Fhrer put it into
words once: should united Jewry again succeed in setting off a world war, then the blood sacrifice shall
not be made only by the peoples driven into war, but then the Jew of Europe will have met his end....
But what should be done with the Jews? Can you believe that they will be accommodated in settlements
in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: why are you making all this trouble? We don't want them either,
not in Ostland nor in the Reichskommissariat; liquidate them yourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to
steel yourselves against all considerations of compassion. We must destroy the Jews wherever we find
them, and wherever it is at all possible, in order to maintain the whole structure of the Reich...
The Jews represent for us also extraordinary malignant gluttons. We have now approximately 2,500,000
of them in the General Government [Nazi occupied Poland], perhaps with the Jewish mixtures and
everything that goes with it, 3,500,000 Jews. We cannot shoot or poison those 3,500,000 Jews, but we
shall nevertheless be able to take measures which will lead somehow to their annihilation, and this in
connection with the gigantic measures to be determined in discussions with the Reich.

Letter from Hugo Hppenerner, higher SS and Police leader in the Warthegau, to SSObersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, July 16 1941:
Documents of Destruction - R. Hilberg, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971, p. 87.
Enclosed is a memorandum on the results of various discussions held locally in the office of the Reich
Governor.
Subject: Solution of the Jewish question
4) This winter there is a danger that not all of the Jews can be fed anymore. One might weigh honestly, if
the most humane solution might not be to finish off those of the Jews who are not employable by means
of some quick-working device. At any rate, that would be more pleasant than to let them starve to death.
5) For the rest, the proposal was made that in this camp all the Jewish women, from whom one could still
expect children, should be sterilized so that the Jewish problem may actually be solved completely with
this generation.

Excerpted from a memorandum dated 27 April, 1942 by Dr. Erhard Wetzel (a lawyer), who was serving
as desk officer in the Reich Ministry for the Eastern Territories.
"Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945", Volume II, J.Noakes and
G.Pridham, editors. Schocken Books, New York, (c)1988 by the Dept. of History and Archeology,
University of Exeter. ISBN 0-8053-0973-5 (vol. 1), 0-8052-0972-7 (vol. 2). Document #690 on p.979:
Re: the Solution of the Polish Question
...It should be obvious that one cannot solve the Polish problem by liquidating the Poles in the same way
as the Jews. Such a solution to the Polish problem would burden the German people with guilt for years to
come and lose us the sympathies of people everywhere, particularly since our neighbors would be bound
to reckon that they would be treated in the same way when the time came.

A letter to Rosenberg enclosing reports from Generalkommisar for White Russia, Wilhelm Kube, about
the extermination of Jews in the east, June 18 1943.
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol I, p. 1001:
...The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussion. However, it appears hardly
believable that this is done in the way described in the report of the General Commissioner of 1 June
1943. What is Katyn against that? Imagine only that these occurrences would become known to the other
side and exploited by them! Most likely such propaganda would have no effect only because people who
hear who hear and read about it simply would not be ready to believe it.
["Special treatment" and "resettlement" mean extermination, as is obvious from many such documents;
consider, for instance, the following]

Memorandum from Gestapo Headquarters, 15 June 1944.

Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off.,
1949-1953, Vol. IV, p. 1166:
In amending my directive of June 20 1944, I request that those people subject to special treatment be sent
to a crematorium to be cremated if possible.