The precise words used at Wannsee

I was quite puzzled to read your comment to Mr. Ramanujan relating to the Wannsee conference.

Perhaps the following paragraph had escaped your attention:

“Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)”

“The possible final remnant” — you REALLY don’t see anything ominous about that, nor about the plan to “treat them accordingly”?

The mind does boggle, Mr. Irving!

Ron Jacobson

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David Irving replies:

I THINK that native Germans will have less difficulties than we Anglo-Americans, who are obliged (unless we know German) to rely on whatever specious translation is fed to us.

We did not pick up the sinister entendre behind the word “possible” which you detect; it depends what the original German word was, I suspect something like “eventuell”.

During the Lipstadt Trial we argued however on three days [Days 17, 25, 26] about the precise intent of the two words bei Freilassung: For example, whether the bei is translated as “upon” of “if” — upon being rather more positive than if, of course. If would normally be represented by “wenn” with the corresponding verb.

Some of the less scrupulous historians have recognised the difficulty they are in by omitting the two-word phrase entirely!

Clearly Hitler intended to release large numbers of Jews after the war, hence his constant reference, in private to Himmler and others, to the Madagascar plan, as late as July 24 1942 (Table Talk). Which document is of course another problem for some bodies of historians.

APPRENTLY you continue to ignore the part about “the remnant which may survive” the slave labor program. Regardless of what the Nazis planned to do with this “remnant” — which is quite clear to me — the mere statement that only a remnant may survive, clearly implies genocide (considering that millions of Jews were to be used in the program).

Two additional remarks if I may:

1. The Jews “unfit for work” were to be killed immediately, according to the well-known entry in Goebbels’ diary (March 27, 1942).
2. In order to prevent reproduction among the Jews selected for work, Brack (June 23 1942) suggested to Himmler to sterilize the “fit for work” Jews. On August 11, 1942, Himmler gave Brack the green light to proceed with the sterilization experiments. Obviously, the goal was to annihilate the Jews without a trace.