Franz Rademacher

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Franz Rademacher (1906-1973) was head of the Jewish Desk of the Reich Foreign Office, where he dealt with the international aspects of forced Jewish emigration, deportation and killing in Holocaust. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, and joined the Foreign Office in 1937.

In 1940, he sent a memorandum to State Secretary Martin Luther, asking him to define Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's basic policy toward Jews, trying to shift the role of his desk from settling individual cases to establishing policy. [1]

Madagascar Plan

In 1940, he drafted the Madagascar Plan proposal for deporting all European Jews to Madagascar.[2]

Yugoslavia

A 1941 report of travel to Belgrade gives his expenses for a trip "described in a hand-scribbled note as the 'liquidation of Jews in Belgrade.'" [3]

Russia

Along with State Secretary Luther, he received reports, from Reinhard Heydrich, on Einsatzgruppen killings.His assistant , Fritz Gebhard von Hahn, summarized them. Summaries from both Hahn and Luther went to Ernst von Weizsaecker and Ernst Woermann, who circulated them to interested parties in the Foreign Office. The summaries were initialed by 16 officials. [4]

Navy

After a 1943 reorganization, he left the Foreign Office for naval service.

Postwar

A German postwar court, in Nuremberg-Furth, convicted him of war crimes. While the case was under appeal, he escaped to Syria in 1953. Penniless and in ill health, he returned to Germany in 1966, and had a new further trial, conviction, and appeal before he died in 1973.[5]

References

  1. Christopher R. Browning (2004), The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0-8032-1327-1, p. 82
  2. Browning, pp. 83-88
  3. Tristana Moore (27 October 2010), "Were German Diplomats Complicit in the Holocaust?", Time
  4. Browning, pp. 491-492
  5. Rademacher, Franz, Shoah Research Cener, Yad Vashem