Katzmann Report

The Katzmann Report (or the Final Report by Katzmann) is one of the most important testimonies relating to the Holocaust in Poland and the extermination of Polish Jews during World War II. It was used as evidence in Nuremberg Trials (USA No. L-18, Exhibit-277)[1] and numerous other proceedings against war criminals abroad. It is a leather-bound report by SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann, Commander of the German SS and Police in the District of Galicia, entitled "Lösung der Judenfrage im Distrikt Galizien" (The Solution of the Jewish Question in the District of Galicia), submitted on June 30, 1943 to the SS and Police Chief Friedrich Krüger. It describes part of the Operation Reinhard.[2]

The Katzmann Report
Cover page of the Katzmann Report
Submitted
June 30, 1943, Kraków
Author

The Report was published in German and illustrated with photographs of the systems of persecution.[2] A Polish translation of the report had been published in the 1950s, but was subject to the communist censorship and it did not have an accompanying scholarly analysis that came with the more recent edition by the Institute of National Remembrance. Full uncensored text of "Katzman report" was published in 2009.

Report as an artifact

Modern historians consider the report to be of limited value in terms of evidence because of its intentional distortion of facts meant to cover up the wholesale theft of gold and money by various German officials. The 62-page book attempts to present the extermination of Jews as an orderly operation. It begins with the photo collection titled "The Solution of the Jewish Problem in East Galicia", which is followed by the cost and benefit analysis. The report provides only a window into the scale of plunder. The totals are never rounded off. They are meant to lead the reader into believing in their authenticity.[3]

The Katzmann Report was written not in the occupied territories but in Berlin after Katzmann's tour of duty in Distrikt Galizien where he personally directed the slaughter of between 55,000 and 65,000 Jews during 1941-1942 around Lemberg. In the following months, his "Jew hunts" coupled with round ups for mass deportations to death camps produced a death toll of 143,000 people.[4] In all, the Report described the liquidation of 434,329 Jews, implementing a thoroughly sanitized and approved language based on popular "racial science" of Adolf Hitler and his "experts", so as to help Katzmann advance his career.[5]

See also

Notes
  1. http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/4404-cover-letter-to-ss?q=katzmann#p.1
  2. Wendy Lower (2011). Katzmann Report. The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia. Rowman Altamira. p. 101. ISBN 9780759120808. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  3. Claudia Koonz (November 2, 2005). "SS Man Katzmann's "Solution of the Jewish Question in the District of Galicia"" (PDF). The Raul Hilberg Lecture. University of Vermont: 2, 16–18. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 February 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  4. Koonz 2005, p. 11. Source: D. Pohl, Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 229-230; see also: A. Schwarz, Story of a Janowska Survivor.
  5. Koonz 2005, pp. 2-8.

References
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