User:PeterCantropus/Erich Rajakowitsch

Erich Rajakowitsch, later Erich Raja (23 November 1905 – 14 April 1988), was an Austrian jurist and SS-Obersturmführer who, as an associate of Adolf Eichmann, was instrumental in deportations of Jews in the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II.

Early life and education

Rajakowitsch was born on 23 November, 1905, in Trieste, Austria-Hungary, and grew up in Graz, where he finished high school. He studied law at the University of Graz, and graduated in November 1931. In 1934, he married Anna Maria Rintelen, the daughter of Anton Rintelen. Since 1938, he worked in the Viennese law firm of Heinrich Gallop.

World War II

On May 1, 1938, after the Anschluss, Rajakowitsch joined the Nazi Party and, with Gallop, developed the model of "Aryanization against emigration" by having the domestic assets of very wealthy Jewish clients transferred to them and, in return, carrying out their departure formalities. He was also involved in the Gildemeester Organisation for Assistance to Emigrants, through which the emigration of destitute Jews was financed by wealthy ones. In this context, from late autumn 1938, together with his new partner Hugo Weber, he managed the "property transaction" for the Fund. Through these financial transactions, he also cooperated closely with the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, through which he met Adolf Eichmann. Rajakowitsch also set up an "emigration fund" at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, which he supervised.

After the beginning of World War II, Rajakowitsch became a member of the SS and was deployed in Nisko, in German-occupied Poland as part of the Nisko Plan. In the SS, he rose to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer in 1940.

Through Eichmann, Rajakowitsch joined in the spring of 1940 the IV B4 sub-department of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, responsible for "Jewish affairs and evacuation", where he became a close associate of Eichmann and a consultant "to deal with legal questions at the Central Offices for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin". According to Eichmann, he was an "extraordinarily moderate and clever jurist, whose help I did not like to do without because he embodied lively practical jurisprudence and not dry official jurisprudence". Together with Theodor Dannecker, he was one of the staff members who, until August 1940, dealt with the never-implemented Madagascar Plan for the deportation of European Jews to the African island.

In April 1941, Rajakowitsch was assigned to the German-occupied Netherlands. His task there was to set up the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Amsterdam and to establish and manage an emigration fund. Since the Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart briefly prevailed against the Higher SS and Police Leader Hanns Albin Rauter in the competence dispute over Dutch "Jewish affairs" with the SS, Hans Fischböck eventually became head of the emigration fund. Rajakowitsch was a business partner of Dresdner Bank in the Netherlands, as he had been before in Czechoslovakia and Austria.

In August 1941, Rajakowitsch finally took over the provisional leadership of the Special Department J of the Gestapo Department under the commander of the Security Police and SD in The Hague Wilhelm Harster, which was "for combating Jewry in its entirety, the goal of which was the final solution of the Jewish question by resettling all Jews". From February 1942, Special Department J operated as Department IV B4, and Rajakowitsch was replaced by Wilhelm Zoepf as department head, deputizing for him in his absence. In these capacities, Rajakowitsch was also involved in the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands to the extermination camps. Rajakowitsch himself took over Department II B (confiscation of assets and naturalizations and expatriations) in the RSHA office in The Hague in February 1942.

In October 1943, Rajakowitsch was transferred to the Waffen-SS and completed an officer's course at the SS-Junker School in Bad Tölz, Germany. Then he fought in the Eastern Front until the end of the war.

After World War II

After the end of World War II, Rajakowitsch was briefly in American captivity, from which, however, he managed to escape. He went into hiding and stayed in Trieste from 1946.

Bibliography

• Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Paul Brown: The Gestapo. In: Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, Robert Wolfe: U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge UP, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-61794-4, S. 359ff.
• Joachim Castan, Thomas F. Schneider (Hrsg.): Hans Calmeyer und die Judenrettung in den Niederlanden; Katalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89971-122-X.
• Mathias Middelberg: Judenrecht, Judenpolitik und der Jurist Hans Calmeyer in den besetzten Niederlanden 1940–1945. V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89971-123-8.
• Theodor Venus, Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Die Entziehung jüdischen Vermögens im Rahmen der Aktion Gildemeester. Eine empirische Studie über Organisation, Form und Wandel von „Arisierung“ und jüdische Auswanderung in Österreich 1938–1941. Oldenbourg, Wien u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7029-0496-4, (Veröffentlichungen der Österreichischen Historikerkommission 20, 2), (Nationalsozialistische Institutionen des Vermögensentzuges 2).
• Simon Wiesenthal: Doch die Mörder leben. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Joseph Wechselberg. Droemer/Knaur, München und Zürich 1967.
• Anna Hájková: The Making of a Zentralstelle: Die Eichmann-Männer in Amsterdam. Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (2003), S. 353–382. doi:10.17613/M6Z05Q