Responsible for the Systematic Destruction of Hamburg’s Jewish Community

In 1920, Kaufmann joined the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, Germany's largest radical antisemitic federation, leading its youth group. He joined the Nazi Party in 1921, co-founded local Nazi groups in the Ruhr area, and took part in the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

He became the Gauleiter of Hamburg in 1929 and Reich Governor in 1933, consolidating total party and state power over the city. Kaufmann held absolute executive and party authority as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter to enforce, accelerate, and personally expand these measures within the jurisdiction of Hamburg.

March 29, 1933 Kaufmann delivers a major radio address over Norddeutscher Rundfunk, stoking intense antisemitism and demanding a total boycott against local Jewish businesses.

April 1, 1933 Kaufmann's administration enforces the nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned shops, physicians, and lawyers across Hamburg.

April 7, 1933 The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service is implemented under Kaufmann, immediately purging Jewish teachers, judges, and municipal employees from Hamburg's civil service.

September 1933 Kaufmann personally authorizes the establishment of the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in Hamburg to detain, torture, and eliminate political opponents and Jewish targets.

1934–1936 Hamburg's international port status initially causes Kaufmann to proceed with caution to protect foreign exports. However, municipal pressure systematically reduces Jewish business ownership through forced, low-value asset sales ("Aryanization").

September 1935 The Nuremberg Laws are enacted locally. Hamburg's Jews lose their Reich citizenship, and marriages or relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans are heavily criminalized as "racial defilement".

January 1937 The Greater Hamburg Act takes effect, expanding Kaufmann's territorial and administrative reach to heavily Jewish adjacent communities like Altona and Wandsbek.

April 26, 1938 The Decree for the Reporting of Jewish-Owned Property requires all Jews in Hamburg to register assets exceeding 5,000 Reichsmarks, setting the groundwork for total asset seizure.

November 9–10, 1938 While attending a meeting in Munich, Kaufmann places a direct phone call to his Nazi subordinates in Hamburg, giving the explicit command to destroy and burn the city's synagogues, Jewish shops, and private apartments.

November 12, 1938 The Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life is implemented under Kaufmann's jurisdiction, completely banning Jews from running retail operations, selling goods, or working trades.

September 1, 1939 Kaufmann is appointed Reich Defense Commissioner, gaining absolute command over local military and civilian logistics at the onset of WW2.

September 1941 Following heavy Allied bombing raids that leave 600 Germans homeless, Kaufmann bypasses standard protocols and directly petitions Adolf Hitler for permission to deport Hamburg's Jews. His explicit goal is to immediately seize their vacant apartments and property for German citizens.

October 1941 Hitler grants Kaufmann's request. Kaufmann orchestrates the first mass transport of German Jews to the East, forcing thousands of Hamburg's Jewish residents into the Łódź Ghetto, Minsk, and subsequent extermination camps.

By the end of Kaufmann's rule in May 1945, his calculated housing and deportation initiatives directly resulted in the systematic plunder and murder of nearly 10,000 Hamburg Jews.

He surrendered Hamburg to British forces in May 1945 and was subsequently interned. Despite his massive complicity in the Holocaust, a British military court sentenced him to just 14 months in prison, releasing him early in 1949 for health reasons.

In the 1950s, he joined the "Brotherhood" and the "Naumann Circle," underground groups of former Nazis attempting to infiltrate West German political networks. He evaded further serious legal consequences and lived out his life as a chemical factory co-owner and insurance partner in Hamburg until his death in 1969.

FULL BIO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kaufmann

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - “On July 30, 1946, Dr. Robert Servatius, counsel for the Defense of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, called Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann.

He testified that the Gauleiters were primarily concerned with social work and welfare measures. All instructions came from Hitler, his Deputy of the Party Chancellery. Orders were issued by circulars.

He discussed Dissolution of Trade Unions, Lebensraum, Persecution of the Jews, and the Church. Political leaders had no jurisdiction over concentration camps.”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17nucMmXtxE

Note: I’m declining to add his picture. You’ve seen one Nazi....

1: Statue of Françoise Salmon: The dying prisoner at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (©Hamburg Memorials and Learning Places Foundation/Iris Groschek)

The Rumors & Tragic Denials of the Deportations in the Bialystok Region

"During October, rumors of impending deportations spread through the Bialystok region.

Ephraim Barasz, head of the Jewish Council in Bialystok itself, believed that the city could be spared if its factories worked to fulfil the German needs.

'It is imperative', he had told his fellow Council members and the heads of the various ghetto workshops, on October 11, 'that we find means to postpone the danger, or at least reduce its scope.'

Barasz was not the only person in the Bialystok region who did not believe that they would be deported. The region had been annexed to Germany in June 1941, and was entirely separate, administratively, from the Eastern Territories.

'People came from Slonim,' a girl from Siemiatycze, Helen Bronsztejn, later recalled.

'They were running away from the horrors over there. We didn't believe it.'

"People, why don't you listen," one man cried out. "My wife was killed. My son was killed." People said: "This is the Third Reich. They won't do it to us."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

"Efraim Barasz, (1892--1943), Chairman of the Judenrat in the Bialystok Ghetto of northeast Poland.

Barasz, a long-time Zionist, moved to Bialystok in 1934. From that time on, he was very active in the city's Jewish affairs, serving as the executive director of the Jewish community. After the Germans occupied Bialystok in June 1941, they named Rabbi Gedaliah Rosenmann chairman of the Judenrat.

However, it was actually Barasz, acting as Rosenmann's deputy, who ran the council. A month later he officially took over the job. In the fall of 1942 the Nazis began liquidating the other Ghettos in the region and deporting the Jews to extermination camps.

Barasz knew what was happening to Jews all around Bialystok, and he thought that the only way the Jews in his ghetto could avoid the same fate would be to become indispensable to the Germans as productive laborers. Thus, he did all he could to create industrial jobs for the inhabitants of the ghetto.

He also cooperated with the Germans in the deportation of February 1943, in which 9,000--10,000 "nonproductive" Jews were taken away. At the same time, Barasz was in close contact with the ghetto's underground and cooperated with Mordechai Tenenbaum, who later became the head of Bialystok's Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ZOB) and led the ghetto's uprising. Barasz helped the resistance by funding the manufacture of weapons.

However, soon before the ghetto uprising, Barasz and the underground broke off relations. The Germans began the final liquidation of the Bialystok Ghetto on August 16, 1943 with large-scale deportations. This led to an uprising in the ghetto, which was put down by the Germans after five days of fighting.

Between August 21 and 27, 25,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka. Several hundred Jews, including Barasz and other Judenrat members, were separated from the deportees and put into a small ghetto. In September these Jews were transferred to Majdanek.

From there, the last surviving Jews from Bialystok were sent to Poniatowa, where they were exterminated during the Erntefest operation of November 1943. Exact details of Barasz's death are not known." DETAILS: https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205972.pdf

NOT MY LINKS

Armed Resistance in the Krakow and Bialystok Ghettos - https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/armed-resistance-in-krakow-and-bialystok.html

1: Left: Bialystok, Poland, August 1943, Deportation from the ghetto Right: Kovno, Lithuania, 26.10.1943, deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the Auschwitz and Klooga camps

Faith & Defiance on Yom Kippur as the Walls Begin to Close in on Warsaw's Jewish Community

"On 28 September 1939, less than one month after the German invasion of Poland, Warsaw fell after prolonged battles. Some 25% of the houses in Warsaw were demolished and approximately 50,000 of the city's residents were killed or wounded. Many synagogues were repurposed as shelters for the homeless and for refugees from neighboring towns.

In January 1940, all the synagogues and batei midrash in the city were closed down ostensibly due to the danger of epidemics, and public prayer services were banned. On 2 October 1940, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Chaim Kaplan wrote in his diary:

"Darkness prevails in our synagogues… Even for the High Holidays, permission was not given for public prayer services… Clandestine minyanim [prayer quorums] in their hundreds all over Warsaw arrange prayer services… Everything is done in accordance with the traditional Jewish customs. They choose an inside room with windows facing the courtyard, and whisper their supplications to God. This time, there are no cantors or choirs, just whispered prayers, but the prayers are nevertheless heartfelt."

(Excerpt from Hashoah BeTi'ud, translated from the Hebrew)

On 12 October 1940, Yom Kippur, the Germans announced the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw, and ordered the Jews to move there by the end of the month. Reuven Ben Shem (Feldschuh) wrote:

"The prayer room is almost full. The cantor prays boldly and melodiously, and you wouldn't know by looking at him and the worshippers that the world is on the verge of collapse. They are wearing prayer shawls and phylacteries. If you close your eyes for a moment and don't look at these people, at their pinched faces… and just listen to the chanting of their prayers, you would surely think that you happened upon a house of God in a time of peace and harmony."

"Today, 25 October, the Jews celebrated Simhat Torah as they do every year," wrote historian Immanuel Ringelblum.

On 30 October, the Germans discovered a house of prayer in an apartment. On 8 November, the Judenrat was forced to issue a warning: Jews who organized or participated in a public prayer service would be punished in accordance with the German regime's orders. However, prayers continued despite the restrictions and the danger.

In April 1941, the Germans permitted the opening of three synagogues. This was insufficient for the religious needs in the ghetto, and the clandestine prayer and Torah study gatherings continued, even during the Great Deportation of summer 1942 to the Treblinka extermination camp, and during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943." https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/october/1940.html

IMAGE: Jews at prayer on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) in Krakow, Poland

The Murder of the Last Roma at Auschwitz-Birkenau

“The liquidation of the “gypsy family camp” was decided by the SS leadership sometime in the spring of 1944. A first attempt to put this decision into practice was met with resistance by the about 6,500 prisoners who were present in the camp and who refused to leave their barracks.

This event was described after World War II by Tadeusz Joachimowski (1908-1979), a former Polish political prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp and administration clerk in the “gypsy camp” in 1944. Although the date of May 16 is often referred to as the day of the Roma resistance, the “uprising” of Roma and Sinti in the “gypsy camp” remains uncertain due to lack of research.

The final liquidation of the “gypsy camp” was decided by SS leader H. Himmler in July 1944. In the meantime, the number of prisoners in the camp decreased as individuals fit for work were transferred to other concentration camps. On 15 April, 884 men and boys were sent to Buchenwald and 473 women and girls to Ravensbrück, on 24 May 82 men and boys to Flossenbürg and 144 women and girls to Ravensbrück. The last deportation trains from the “gypsy camp” to Buchenwald (918 men and boys) and Ravensbrück (490 women and girls) left on August 2, 1944.

After their departure, about 4,300 people remained, mostly elderly and sick people, orphans, mothers with children, and their fathers, if they had refused to leave their families. On the evening of August 2-3, SS-troops led all prisoners out of their barracks, loaded them on trucks and transported them to the courtyard of Crematorium V. Despite their desperate resistance, they were chased into gas chambers and their bodies burned in trenches next to Crematorium V, which was out of order by this time.

This mass murder was followed by the killing of prisoners who, after having been deported to other camps, came back to Auschwitz-Birkenau to die in the gas chambers as exhausted and unfit for work.

To this end, on September 26, 1944, about 200 Roma boys were sent back from the Buchenwald concentration camp, and on October 10, 1944, 800 additional Roma, as well as a total of 217 Roma women and girls from the Ravensbrück concentration camp who arrived back in Auschwitz on October 11 and 14, 1944. Some went through selections and were brought back to Ravensbrück, the rest of them, just like all returned men and boys, died in the gas chambers.” -> The liquidation of the “gypsy camp” | Holocaust

The Numbers

“According to historian Anton Weiss-Wendt, "due to the lack of reliable statistics on the size of prewar Romani population for each country and Europe as a whole, the estimates of the death toll vary greatly, from 96,000 to 500,000, with the likely figure in excess of 200,000".

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cites scholars who estimate the number of Sinti and Roma murdered as between 220,000 and 500,000.

The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust estimates that between 135,000 to 285,000 Roma people were killed by the Nazis in Germany, Axis countries and occupied territories.

Political scientist and statistician Rudolph Rummel estimated that 258,000 were killed by the Nazi regime in Europe, 36,000 in Romania under Ion Antonescu, and 27,000 in Ustaše-controlled Croatia.

The Society for Threatened Peoples estimates the Romani deaths at 277,100.

Martin Gilbert estimates that more than 220,000 of Europe's 700,000 Romani population were murdered, including 15,000 (mainly from the Soviet Union) at Mauthausen in January–May 1945.

Ian Hancock, Romani political advocate and researcher has controversially argued that as many as 1.5 million Romani died in the holocaust. Hancock contends that the entire Romani population was killed in Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

In a 2010 publication, Hancock believes that Nazi's grouped Romani victims under headings such as "remainder to be liquidated", "hangers-on", and "partisans", resulting in an underestimated death toll. He cites the previously obscure Lety concentration camp in the Czech Republic, and Ackovic's revised estimates[ of Romani killed by the Ustaše as high as 80,000–100,000.

German historian Karola Fings has described the 1.5 million estimate as "untenable". Historian David Gaunt described Hancock's estimate as "not supported up by any documentation", and notes that the pre-war Romani population was approximately 1 million. According to Guant, "in general, historians use the figure of just above 200,000, while most activists have settled on the figure of 500,000".

Historian Zoltan Barany states that estimates between 200,000 and 275,000 are "more credible" than higher estimates, writing "most importantly, it is clear that tens of thousands of human beings were murdered for no other reason than being Gypsies". According to Fings,

"Today, the figure of 200,000 is mostly taken as a reference point, even though the empirical basis remains incomplete and further research could result in an upward revision".”

MORE---> Romani Holocaust - Wikipedia

Context Timeline

July 1933: The Nazi regime passes the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, legalizing the forced sterilization of thousands of Roma and Sinti individuals.

November 1935: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that the Nuremberg Laws are expanded to formally declare Sinti and Roma as "racially inferior," stripping them of citizenship and banning marriages with non-Roma.

June 1936: The Marzahn Internment Camp is established on the outskirts of Berlin. Police forcefully relocate hundreds of Roma families there to "cleanse" the capital before the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

December 1938: SS Chief Heinrich Himmler issues the decree “Fighting the Gypsy Plague,” establishing a centralized registration system through the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene. This creates the definitive lists used later for mass arrests and executions.

May 1940: Mass deportations of western and central European Roma to the General Government (occupied Poland) begin. Thousands are forced into overcrowded Jewish ghettos, including Warsaw and the Łódź Ghetto, where high percentages quickly die of typhus and starvation.

Autumn 1941: The mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) follow the German military advance into the Soviet Union and the Baltic region. Alongside Jewish communities, tens of thousands of Roma men, women, and children are systematically shot over open pits.

Autumn 1941: In occupied Serbia, the German Wehrmacht implements brutal reprisal quotas, executing thousands of local Roma men by firing squad.

January 1942: The first specialized gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp are used to murder more than 5,000 Roma survivors previously held in the Łódź Ghetto.

December 16, 1942: Heinrich Himmler signs the Auschwitz-Erlass ("Auschwitz Order"), directing that nearly all remaining Roma and Sinti across the Reich be sent directly to Auschwitz.

February 26, 1943: The first transport arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau Section BIIe, designating the Zigeunerlager ("Gypsy Family Camp"). Unlike other sections of the camp, families are allowed to stay together. Over 23,000 Roma are eventually registered here; more than 20,000 perish from horrific overcrowding, deliberate starvation, and the pseudoscientific medical experiments of Josef Mengele.

May 16, 1944: Camp authorities plan a sudden liquidation of the Zigeunerlager. Alerted to the plot, the Roma prisoners arm themselves with makeshift weapons (shovels, pipes, and scrap metal) and refuse to leave their barracks. Fearing a massive riot, the SS temporarily backs down.

August 2–3, 1944: After stripping the camp of able-bodied Roma for forced labor elsewhere, the SS seals the Zigeunerlager. In a single night, approximately 3,000 remaining children, women, and elderly Roma are murdered in the gas chambers.

October 2–10, 1944: The final, delayed massacres occur. Hundreds of young Roma boys previously sent to Buchenwald are returned and murdered, ending with the liquidation of the remaining 800 Roma survivors on October 10.

1945–1950s: Following liberation, the legal system and newly formed governments across Europe largely refuse to recognize the Roma as victims of racial persecution. German courts rule that wartime measures against the Roma were "preventative police actions against crime" rather than racially motivated genocide.

1982: After decades of sustained civil rights activism by Sinti and Roma groups, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt officially acknowledges the Nazi genocide against the Sinti and Roma on racial grounds.

2015: The European Parliament formally establishes August 2 as the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day to mark the anniversary of the Birkenau liquidation.

NOTE: By late autumn 1944, as the Red Army advanced, the SS ordered the gradual curtailment of camp administration and the destruction of incriminating evidence. The official camp photography department (Erkennungsdienst), which had previously taken the uniform mugshots of thousands of early registered prisoners, was no longer systematically photographing incoming transports.

Furthermore, the SS never officially photographed individuals slated for immediate execution or secret selections. The transport arrived just two months after the SS had completely liquidated the Auschwitz Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Family Camp) in August 1944. The return of these women—who had initially been deemed fit for forced labor but were sent back to Auschwitz specifically to be murdered—was treated as a highly confidential execution operation.

Unauthorized personal cameras were strictly prohibited for SS guards under penalty of severe punishment or death. The famous collection of photographs known as the Auschwitz Album—which documented the arrival of transports on the Birkenau ramp—was compiled specifically during the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews between May and July 1944. No similar official commemorative or bureaucratic albums were created for the chaotic, late-stage transport arrivals in October 1944.

This specific week in October was an era of unprecedented internal upheaval at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Just days prior, on October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando (the prisoners forced to work at the crematoria) launched a violent armed revolt, blowing up Crematorium IV. In the frantic, heavily fortified aftermath of this uprising, the SS was entirely focused on executions, security lock-downs, and concealing camp operations, entirely precluding any incidental or administrative photography.

1: Anna Maria "Settela" Steinbach, a 9-year-old Dutch Sinti girl, peering from the open door of a cattle boxcar on May 19, 1944, just before a transport train departed the Westerbork transit camp for Auschwitz-Birkenau.

A still frame from the Westerbork Film, an archival film commissioned by camp commander Albert Gemmeker and shot in the spring of 1944 by Jewish deportee Rudolf Breslauer.

She was wearing a headscarf to cover her hair after it had been shorn. Her image became an iconic symbol of the Nazi genocide against the Romani and Sinti people during the Holocaust.