SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 193
7. National-Socialist Policy of Jewish
Emigration
The establishment of the Be��ec, Sobibór, and Treblinka camps took
place within a historical context which must be well understood, before
one can judge whether these camps – as traditional Holocaust historiography
asserts – were extermination camps. For that purpose it is necessary
to outline once again, with some more recent amplifications, the
framework of the National-Socialist policy towards the Jews, which has
been presented before in a separate study. 555
7.1. Emigration
In one of the first written documents of his political career, Hitler, in
a letter dated 16 September 1919 addressed to his friend Adolf Gremlich,
proposes: 556
“An anti-Semitism based merely on emotion will ultimately result
in pogroms [sic]. Rational anti-Semitism, however, must lead to a
planned [and] lawful fight against, and to the removal of, Jewish
prerogatives, which set the Jew off from other aliens living in our
midst (legislation concerning aliens). The final unalterable objective,
though, must be the removal of the Jews.”
A few months later, on 13 August 1920, Hitler made a speech in
Munich on the subject “Why are we anti-Semites?,” in which he
stressed that scientific evaluation of the Jewish question should result in
moves bringing about the “removal of the Jews” from among the German
people. 557
This aim became the cornerstone of Hitler’s Jewish policy after his
ascent to power.
555 C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 10, Engl. ed.), pp. 179-202.
556 Ernst Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr,” in: Vierteljahrshefte
für Zeitgeschichte, 7(2), April 1959, p. 204.
557 Reginald H. Phelps, “Hitlers ‘grundlegende’ Rede über den Antisemitismus,” in: Vierteljahrshefte
für Zeitgeschichte, 16(4), October 1968, p. 417.