HIMMLER ON THE TREATMENT OF ETHNIC GROUPS AND JEWS IN THE EAST, IN A SECRET MEMORANDUM TO HITLER, MAY 25, 1940

HIMMLER ON THE TREATMENT OF ETHNIC GROUPS AND JEWS IN THE EAST, IN A SECRET MEMORANDUM TO HITLER, MAY 25, 1940

In the treatment of the alien populations of the East we shall have to endeavor to recognize and nurture as many individual peoples as possible; that is, in addition to the Poles and Jews also the Ukrainians, the Belorussians, the Gorals ( Goralen ), Lemcos ( Lemken ), and the Cashubes (Kaschuben) . And if there are any other splinter peoples to be found anywhere, then these too.

I wish to say by this that we have the greatest interest in not uniting the population of the East, but, on the contrary, in dividing it into as many parts and splinters as possible.

...I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of large-scale emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony. It must also be possible, in a somewhat longer period of time, to let the national concept of Ukrainians, Gorals and Lemcos disappear in our territory. Whatever is said concerning these splinter peoples applies on a correspondingly larger scale to the Poles.

...Cruel and tragic as every individual case may be, this method is the mildest and best if, out of inner conviction, we reject the Bolshevist method of physical destruction of a people as un-Germanic and impossible....

Source: Nuremberg Documents NO-1880.