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SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

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238 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, <strong>SOBIBÓR</strong><br />

There are other limitations concerning the press, the use of names,<br />

agricultural matters, as well as measures aiming at limiting population<br />

growth, such as abortions.<br />

On 17 July 1941 Himmler, in his role as Reichskommissar für die<br />

Festigung des deutschen Volkstums (Reich commissar for the consolidation<br />

of German ethnicity) 681 named SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik,<br />

at the time head of SS and police in Lublin, to the post of Beauftragter<br />

für die Errichtung der SS- und Polizeistützpunkte im neuen Ostraum<br />

(commissioner for the installation of SS and police agencies in the<br />

new eastern region). In a note written on 21 July 1941, item 13, Himmler<br />

ordered that the commissioner should “primarily issue orders, by autumn,<br />

for the installation of the SS and police agencies in the new eastern<br />

region.” 682 As Jan Erik Schulte tells us, “other orders issued by<br />

Himmler from Lublin indicate as well that he wanted to make use of detainees<br />

for projects arising in connection with the settling of the<br />

East.” 683<br />

Himmler’s high-flying projects transpire in his secret order of 5 December<br />

1941 concerning the “use of detainees from concentration<br />

camps” transmitted to the head of RSHA, SS-Gruppenführer Reinhardt<br />

Heydrich, to the inspector of the concentration camps SS-Brigadeführer<br />

Richard Glücks, to all camp commanders, and to SS-Gruppenführer<br />

Oswald Pohl, head of SS-Hauptamt Verwaltung und Wirtschaft (Main<br />

Office for administration and economy). He ordered Pohl to train, “by<br />

the date of a peace agreement, for the projects to be undertaken from<br />

that moment on: 1) at least 5,000 stone masons, 2) at least 10,000 bricklayers.”<br />

The size of this endeavor can be judged from the fact that Germany<br />

had only 4,000 stone masons before the war. After the peace treaty<br />

the company Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH was to provide at<br />

least 10,000 cubic meters of granite annually “for the Führer’s major<br />

construction projects.” 684<br />

As Schulte states: 685<br />

681<br />

To implement this task, which Hitler had given him with his decree of 7 October 1939,<br />

Himmler set up the “RKF office” (Dienststelle RKF [Reichskommissar für die Festigung<br />

deutschen Volkstums]) directed by SS-Oberführer Ulrich Greifelt, which changed into<br />

“RKF-Stabshauptamt” (Central staff agency RKF) in June of 1941.<br />

682<br />

NO-3031.<br />

683<br />

J.E. Schulte, op. cit. (note 675), p. 44.<br />

684<br />

NO-385.<br />

685<br />

J.E. Schulte, op. cit. (note 675), p. 48.

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