Talk:Einsatzkommando Egypt

[Untitled]

From Retures:

By Thomas Krumenacker Fri Apr 7, 9:47 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - Nazi Germany planned to expand the extermination of Jews beyond the borders of Europe and into British-controlled Palestine during World War Two, two German historians say.

In 1942, the Nazis created a special "Einsatzgruppe," a mobile SS death squad, which was to carry out the mass slaughter of Jews in Palestine similar to the way they operated in eastern Europe, the historians argue in a new study.

The director of the Nazi research center in Ludwigsburg, Klaus-Michael Mallman, and Berlin historian Martin Cueppers say an Einsatzgruppe was all set to go to Palestine and begin killing the roughly half a million Jews that had fled Europe to escape Nazi death camps like Auschwitz and Birkenau.

In the study, published last month, they say "Einsatzgruppe Egypt" was standing by in Athens and was ready to disembark for Palestine in the summer of 1942, attached to the "Afrika Korps" led by the famed desert commander General Erwin Rommel.

The Middle East death squad, similar to those operating throughout eastern Europe during the war, was to be led by SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Walther Rauff, the historians say.

"The central plan for the group was the realization of the Holocaust in Palestine," the authors wrote in their study that appears in a book entitled "Germans, Jews, Genocide: The Holocaust as History and the Present."

But since Germany never conquered British-controlled Palestine, plans for bringing the Holocaust to what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories never came to fruition.

Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis in Europe. According to their own records, the Einsatzgruppen killed over one million people, most of them civilians.

In the battle of El Alamein, Egypt, British General Bernard Montgomery turned the tide of the war in north Africa by routing Rommel's "Afrika Korps" and ending his African campaign.

As they did in eastern Europe, the plan was for the 24 members involved in the death squad to enlist Palestinian collaborators so that the "mass murder would continue under German leadership without interruption."

Fortunately for the Jews in Palestine, "Einsatzgruppe Egypt" never made it out of Greece.

"The history of the Middle East would have been completely different and a Jewish state could never have been established if the Germans and Arabs had joined forces," the historians conclude.

Regarding the question why this is emerging 61 years after the end of World War Two, Mallmann and Cueppers said they simply unearthed something other historians had not found yet.

Regarding recent deleting of Shepherd

This is said by Shepherd (whom I doubt anyone will accuse of being a Nazi sympathizer, or even a Rommel/Afrika Korps sympathizer):

Anti Semitic measures were certainly carried out in Axisoccupied Tunisia during late 1942, when Rauff's Einsatzkommando forced Jews to build fortifications. At this time, however, Rommel's forces were retreating from Egypt, and there is no evidence that Rommel himself had contact with the Einsatzkommando.

What in the text did "not align" with that? Also, btw if it's apparently proper to mention Rommel the famed commander of the Afrika Korps in the first part, reason suggests it's appropriate to clarify the matter later. Deamonpen (talk) 01:16, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

On the sourcing: I agree Shepherd is far from a Nazi sympathizer. When I clicked on the original link it directed me to a different section of Shephard's book and I was unable to find the area you linked. Many thanks.

Regarding Rommel: I take no issue with him appearing in the article. However, his inclusion at the end seemed tact on as the first time he is mentioned is the final sentence. Normally I would have expanded and added to this but I wasn't able to locate the required reference within Shephard's work (something which is likely my own fault).

Thank you for opening up sub-section within Talk to discuss the issue.

S.R. Summerfield (talk) 16:14, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your insight and courtesy. The historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers do dedicate a special mention of Rommel and the Afrika Korps in their work. It seems even to be the "ground-breaking" aspect of their study and have become the basis for documentaries (although I do not think that Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers themselves even mention that Rommel knew about it or the Afrika Korps helped Rauff and his SS unit or something like that anywhere in their book). So perhaps that is why this article (it was not me) mentions him and the Afrika Korps in the first place. It does seem tact on to me. But it is the usual thing as also seen in the cases of familiar faces like Stalin, Hitler etc New ground-breaking studies (that are involved with big picture issues and thus boring to most people) have to mention them somehow. Regarding Rommel, one has Rommel's Treasure or Rommel being addicted to methamphetamine or Rommel directing Romanian offensives for example (I imagine that the first two are now known to English speaking people through documentaries). But this is an encyclopaedia so one should include and respect such authors too, including their more fanciful aspects, I think. Deamonpen (talk) 03:48, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

What Haim Saadon says

In the article it is claimed that: According to historian Haim Saadon, Director of the Center of Research on North African Jewry in World War II, Rauff's documents show that his foremost concern was assisting the Wehrmacht, rather than extermination of Jews, and his plan for this was to place the Jews in forced labour camps. In relative terms, the North African Jews escaped the Final Solution. I have checked the sources cited and do not find them supportive of that claim. Saadon(Saadoun) uses reports exposed from Rauff's diary to analyze the German policy in Tunisia. As Mallmann/Cueppers state: "Out of consideration for Germany’s close ally in Tunisia, which the Germans accepted as an Italian sphere of interest, the Rauff Commando did not organize a mass murder of the Jewish population there. Instead, Rauff and his men were put to work registering the Jews and deploying them at forced labor for the construction of fortifications." (2007, p. 29) Thus, in the article the Rauff Commando of the Panzer Army Afrika is conflated with the Einsatzkommando Ägypten, and it is highly misleading to pitch Saadon against Mallmann/Cueppers. Assayer (talk) 01:58, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying that Rauff did not plan for extermination of the Jewish community in Tunisia because it was Italian, but he planned to do so elsewhere in North Africa? At least, what seems different to me is that, for Saadon/Saadoun, Rauff did not plan to carry out the Holocaust in Tunisia was because he needed them for labour or making them into a human shield, not beccause Tunisia belonged to the "Italian sphere of interest".

See also:

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4647858,00.html

I would like to hear if someone has the book Les Juifs d'Afrique du Nord face à l'Allemagne nazie edited by Dan Michman and Haïm Saadoun. (2018). I don't have it, but the introduction of book says that the persecution/extermination of the Jews in North Africa in general was "non-systematic":

On est généralement surpris d’entendre parler de Shoah au sujet des Juifs d’Afrique du Nord. En effet, les nazis ont occupé seulement une partie de cette région, le reste étant aux mains des Alliés. Pour les Juifs, la guerre fut courte, l’extermination non systématique. Ils ont sans doute bien moins souffert que les Juifs d’Europe. Cependant, ils ont aussi connu des persécutions et leurs proches vivaient en France et en Italie.

https://www.cairn.info/les-juifs-d-afrique-du-nord-face-a-l-allemagne-naz--9782262074579-page-9.htm

However, it appears that there is an ongoing argument between the authors, including the two editors about whether the term Shoah should be applied to the situation in Africa or not.

'Dan Michman a pourfendu l'idée selon laquelle aucune erreur n'affecterait les documents allemands et a distingué la Shoah de la "Solution finale de la question juive". Les Juifs d'Afrique du nord étaient-ils inclus dans la "Solution finale de la question juive" ? Les historiens sont divisés. Selon Dan Michman, Peter Longerich et Saul Friedlander répondent par l'affirmative à cette question, alors que Michael Marrus, Robert Paxton Daniel Carpi et Asher Cohen considèrent que les Juifs d'Afrique du nord en étaient exclus. Quant à Haim Saadoun, il s'est attaché à évoquer les sources de la vie quotidienne des Juifs d'Afrique du nord - des lettres, des photographies - et a brossé un tableau qui a paru édulcorer les persécutions antisémites : "pas de stigmatisation des juifs", etc.'

http://www.veroniquechemla.info/2019/02/les-juifs-dafrique-du-nord-face.html

Deamonpen (talk) 05:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I myself am not saying anything about the matter. I am just quoting Mallmann/Cueppers. In their book Nazi Palestine. The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine (2010) they have a whole chapter on the actions of Rauff's unit, which they refer to as Einsatzkommando Tunis, in Tunisia. They note that Admiral Jean-Pierre Esteva had already prevented the implementation of the anti-semitic laws introduced by the Vichy regime. Both Esteva and the Italians interfered with the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures that Rauff's Einsatzkommando had devised soon after it had arrived in Tunisia on 24 November 1942. Mallmann/Cüppers: "In view of their ally’s attitude, the Germans were forced to dispense with the use of Italian Jews for forced labor and to generally exempt them from the special measures." (p. 174) (Note: about 5000 of the Jews in Tunisia held Italian citizenship). Then they give three main reasons, why Rauff failed to organize mass murder: hostility of many Italians towards German Jewish policy, interference by Esteva, and the conditions in the bridgehead, which prevented deportations and made it likely, that the murder of the Jews could become quickly revealed. Mallmann/Cüppers: "If the conditions in the bridgehead had been more favorable and less consideration necessary for the Italian allies, Rauff would doubtless have been ready to engage in mass murder in Tunisia as well—or so his earlier actions strongly suggest. [...] Rather than killing the Jews, the SS Einsatzkommando in North Africa was primarily engaged in registering, robbing, and terrorizing the Jews, as well as using them extensively as forced laborers for the Axis powers." (p. 174)

The sources that Saadon has edited are Rauff's "diary" and reports, that he sent from Tunisia to the Gestapo headquarters in Germany, in other words, something like the Einsatzmeldungen of the Einsatzgruppen. You would not expect to find more far reaching plans in there. The idea to use Jews as human shields was come up with by diplomat Rudolf Rahn and quickly done away with by Rauff. Instead Rauff had apparently thought about the introduction yellow stars for the Jews and determined that there would be too much unrest. (He did introduce the yellow Star for Jewish forced laborers, though.) The references given also only point to news reports about the edition (translation), not to a scholarly introduction by Saadon himself. And there is also no discussion of whether the SS actions in Tunisia were part of the Holocaust as such or in what respect.

In the context of Einsatzkommando Ägypten, however, it is important to note that this is a different matter altogether. The Einsatzkommando Ägypten is dealt with by Mallmann/Cüppers in another chapter, which has also been published separately in Yad Vashem Studies in 2007. Einsatzkommando Ägypten was never in action. So it is futile and misleading to discuss German plans for Palestine in the light of German actions in Tunisia. None of the sources you cited deals with the Nazi plans for Palestine.

Another question to be asked is whether it would be reasonable to write an article about the whole history of Rauff's commando, i.e. how it was raised, what its initial plans and tasks were, and what its actions in Tunisia. But such an article could not be listed under the headword Einsatzkommando Äygspten, and I do not intend to write such an article. Assayer (talk) 12:27, 12 March 2024 (UTC)