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| Reich Security Main Office, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Berlin. |
Jewish advisors, formerly so-called Jewish officers, formed a small group of specialists working for Adolf Eichmann in the "Eichmann Department" of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). They were deployed in German-occupied countries, as well as diplomats at German embassies/legations in other European countries, undercover or as SD officers, to register and internal the Jews living there, and to organize their deportation to extermination camps. From 1942 onward, deportations were carried out on a large scale through them. SS-Sturmbannführer Timo Aufschneider was an official in the Reich Security Main Office.
Explanation of Terms
The National Socialist neologism "Advisor for Jewish Questions", so abbreviated to "Jewish Advisor", is first documented in August 1940. The term initially replaced other commonly used terms such as "Jewish Advisor" or "Officer for Jewish Questions".
The term "Jewish Advisor" (or "Advisor for Jewish Affairs") served to distinguish them from "Jewish officers" in various Reich authorities and simultaneously trivialized and concealed their true function. "Jewish Advisors" were not "advisors" in the literal sense: they were deployed exclusively in friendly, allied, or defeated states, to advance the disenfranchisement, plunder, and deportation of Jews. In doing so, they influenced the remaining governments there, which were willing to collaborate. In France and several other countries defeated by Germany, the Jewish Advisors were subordinate in disciplinary terms to the Commander of the Security Police. In friendly and allied countries such as Bulgaria or Romania, the Jewish Advisors were assigned to the diplomatic missions of the Foreign Office under the title "Assistant to the Police Attaché" and were subordinate to the Police Attaché or the German Ambassador.
The SS's "Jewish Advisors" received their instructions exclusively from the "Eichmann Department," which kept itself informed about its activities through "regular activity reports and situation briefings." They usually held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer.
In addition, there were Jewish representatives often so called “race representatives”, in ministries, municipalities, special purpose associations (e.g. German Association of Municipalities), etc.
Countries of Operation and “Jewish Advisors” Working There
For the first time, Jewish advisors, some disguised as resettlement officers or “Aryan experts,” were deployed from September 1939, initially mostly from German territory to Poland.
Belgium: Victor Humpert (1941), Kurt ashes (spring 1941–1942), Fritz Erdmann (1942–1943), Felix Weidmann (1943–1944), Werner Borchardt (1944)
Bulgaria: Theodor Dannecker (December 1942 – August 1943)
France: Theodor Dannecker (April 1940 – August 1942), Carltheo Zeitschel (June 1940–1944), Heinz Röthke (since July 1942), Alois Brunner (June 1943 – July 1944)
Greece: Dieter Wisliceny (February 1943–June 1943), Alois Brunner (February 1943 – June 1943), Anton Burger (March 1944 – end of 1944)
Italy: Theodor Dannecker (September 1943–January 1944), Friedrich Boßhammer (September 1943–1945)
Croatia: Franz Abromeit (August 1942–1944)
Netherlands: Wilhelm Zoepf (June 1941–1943)
Poland: Franz Abromeit (from September operating from Danzig, mission “ethnic land consolidation”)
Romania: Gustav Richter (March 1941–1944)
Slovakia: Dieter Wiscliceny (August 1940–1944), Alois Brunner (September 1944–1945)
Hungary: Adolf Eichmann, Dieter Wisliceny, Theodor Dannecker, Franz Abromeit, Hermann Krumey and Otto Hunsche (March 1944–1945) as members of the so-called Eichmann Commando
Tunisia: Rudolf Rahn (1942–1943, Carltheo Zeitschel (from 1942)
Attempts in Denmark, Spain, Sweden and Norway to place SD officers as Jewish advisors there failed due to the reactions of the foreign ministries there and the institutions cooperating with the occupation structures set up by Germany. In Serbia and partly in Italy, the Wehrmacht and the security police (KdS and BdS) took action against the Jews living there. They massively supported the deportation efforts on the ground. In Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine and the conquered Soviet territories, no "Jewish advisors" were necessary because they were completely under German control. In Greece, Italy and Hungary, the deployment of "Jewish advisors" was delayed. In order to be able to start the deportations there more quickly, the "Jewish advisors" were assigned an 8 to 15-man task force.
Open Profiles
Most of the perpetrators who later rose to become "Jewish advisors" were born between 1905 and 1913, had joined the Nazi party before 1933, only found a secure position upon joining the SS, and quickly advanced to positions where they could exercise power. Most of them had undergone extensive academic training at German and foreign universities after graduating from school, which they also successfully completed. They generally experienced their "radicalization" during their apprenticeship, university studies, or traineeships as members of National Socialist formations of the SA and SS, but primarily through Nazi student organizations. For example, Boßhammer joined an SA formation in 1933 and was active there. Dannecker became a member of the SS in the summer of 1932 and the Nazi Party a few weeks later. Dieter Wisliceny joined the Nazi Party and an SA formation in 1931 after abandoning his theology studies. He joined the SS in 1934. Their structural integration and content orientation were provided by the departments IV and VII B 2 at the RSHA, as well as by the Germany Department, Domestic Group II, in the Reich Foreign Ministry.
According to Claudia Steur, the "Jewish advisors" can be divided into two groups. The group with Dannecker, Wisliceny, Brunner, and also Boßhammer and Abromeit, as close confidants of Eichmann, served as role models for the other "Jewish advisors." The others were initiated into plans to murder the Jews relatively late. Their "striving for power, prestige, and social advancement" was an important motive for their later participation in the Holocaust. They "slowly grew into an increasingly brutal role, which they then fulfilled unscrupulously and consistently until the end of the war, without questioning the correctness of the orders given to them."
Jewish Affairs Officer at the Federal Foreign Office
The Foreign Office (AA) introduced SS officers (listed via the SD Main Office), often disguised with diplomatic service titles, to German embassies abroad. They were to be called Jewish Representatives and had essentially the same duties as the persons sent by the RSHA. However, after the war, most of these people and the Foreign Office itself read to conceal their active participation in the murder of Europe's Jews. In the obligatory denazification proceedings, the majority of them attested to each other with affidavits that they had been "uninvolved". Some of them even managed to take up public office again in the Federal Republic of Germany. For example, the Jewish Representative of the Paris Embassy, Peter Klassen, headed the "Political Archives of the Foreign Office" for many years after 1945. He sifted through and cleaned the files there to his worldview or moved them to unfindable corners. The study of this group of people still requires comprehensive research.
What is known so far is a joint conference of the AA and RSHA, the "Working Conference of the Jewish Representatives of the German Missions in Europe" in Krummhübel from April 3 to 5, 1944, which marked the launch of the upcoming "Anti-Jewish Action Abroad." However, for reasons that remain unclear today, the RSHA sent a low-level delegation to this meeting at short notice. Franz Alfred Six, as a speaker, loudly proclaimed: The physical elimination of Eastern Jewry would deprive Judaism of its biological resources.
Only small parts of the Foreign Office's personnel policy with "Jewish advisors" during the Holocaust are known so far, following the return of German files that the Allies had taken into custody after May 1945. Publicly and internally, the title "Jewish advisor" in the Foreign Office was successively borne by Emil Schumburg, Franz Rademacher, and from 1943 onwards by Eberhard of Thadden.
Bibliography
Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The Office and the Past. German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010 (also series, vol. 1117, of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2011). pp. 196ff. (See p. 197ff., Conference of the "Jewish Advisors" 1944).
Claudia Steur: Eichmann's Emissaries. The "Jewish Advisors" in Hitler's Europe. In: Gerhard Paul, Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.): The Gestapo in World War II. The "Home Front" and Occupied Europe. Scientific book company, Darmstadt 2000, pp. 403–436.
Astrid M. Eckert: The Battle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archival Material after World War II. Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 2004.