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While Jews Were Sent to Death Camps, Nazi Police Worried About Animal Rights
In the summer of 1942, Fritz Sendel, chief of staff of the German Order Police in occupied Poland, sent a message to the force’s commanding officers. Its subject: protecting the rights of animals that were transported on trains. “In the spirit of the Reich Animal Protection Act, I order, with immediate effect, that the officers of the stations (German and non-German) intervene immediately in cases of cruelty to animals, put a stop to it and report the offenders,” he wrote.
The Great Aktion in the Warsaw Ghetto had begun three days earlier – in its course more than a quarter of a million Jews would be transported in trains to Treblinka to be murdered. That form of cruelty, it goes without saying, was perfectly acceptable to the Reich.
Nature conservation and animal protection were important principles of Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler exemplified this personally in the way he treated his dog Blondi, behavior that was supposed to be emulated by concentration camp commandants who dealt with pets. However, the 1942 document, which was recently discovered in a Polish archive, reveals a different angle of this story.
Sendel noted that “the majority of cases involving the cruelty to animals until now have been observed in regard to the horses used by the police forces.” On top of this, “the crowded conditions in the railway cattle cars, especially for animals being sent to slaughter, have also led to many credible complaints.” He went on to explain that abuse of animals also has an effect on “the food situation, in the gravest way,” causing “the loss of cattle for slaughter because of overcrowded railcars.” Accordingly, he ordered “a halt to the cruelty to animals that is entailed in the loading process.”
The document in question was found in Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance by Eliyahu Klein, a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, whose dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Havi Dreifuss and Dr. David Silberklang from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, focuses on the relationship between Jews and non-Jews under the German occupation in Poland and elsewhere.
Sendel added an appendix containing precise instructions, ordering the police officers to take action to prevent cruelty to animals and to report on any colleagues who mistreated them. The recommendations included reducing the number of animals per railcar, allowing them to have time to rest and monitoring their condition.
“The text mentions the need to oversee the conditions of the animals being transported,” Klein says. Officers were urged to ensure that the railcars were properly ventilated, to take note of the capacity of the cars and keep track of the number of animals loaded onto each one, and to make note of their physical condition, including details of injuries, respiratory problems and other symptoms. In addition, the German personnel were to see to it that the animals were not struck unnecessarily while being loaded onto the train, and asked to report on cases of sickness or death during the transport.
What makes this document particularly interesting is that it reflects the aspiration to apply certain laws enacted by Nazi Germany in the territories of the General Government, which was the administrative political body the Nazis established in the areas of occupied Poland that were not formally annexed to the Reich; these included Krakow, Warsaw, Radom, Lublin and eventually Galicia as well.
“I was shaken by the terrible comparison one can make in this context regarding the transports of Jews to the death camps,” Klein says. Indeed, the document he found shows that even as the Germans were deporting and murdering Jews – they were concerned about the welfare of animals and took steps to protect them. In short, Sendel’s instructions graphically illustrate how absolute the inferiority of the Jews was in the eyes of the Germans.
“It underscores the antisemitic ideological view of Jews as an inferior race – a nonhuman element who constitute, in their perception, an existential danger to the world,” as Prof. Dreifuss puts it.
In this context, Klein mentions an exchange of correspondence in the summer of 1942 between two high-ranking Nazi figures. In it the deputy transport minister of Nazi Germany, Albert Ganzenmueller, updated Karl Wolff, chief of staff of Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler, about the transports to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto. In response, Wolff wrote, as quoted in Kerstin von Lingen’s 2013 book “Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals”: “I note with particular pleasure after reading your communication that a train with 5,000 members of the chosen people has been running daily [to Treblinka] for 14 days and that we are accordingly in a position to continue with this population movement at an accelerated pace. I have taken the initiative to seek out the offices involved, so that a smooth implementation of the named measures appears to be guaranteed. I thank you once again for the effort…”
How can one reconcile the Nazis’ brutality toward human beings and their concern for animals? As early as 1935, Nazi Germany enacted the Reich Nature Protection Law which, according to a 2008 article written in Haaretz by the late historian Boaz Neumann, was one of the most advanced laws of its time, one of “unprecedented scope.” The Nazis also enacted other ecological and “green” laws and regulations dealing with care of forests, the prevention of air pollution and similar issues. For example, Neumann notes, “they reduced and forbade the slaughter of unstunned animals, hunting and experiments on animals,” and promoted courses and training in animal protection. A few months after his party came to power, Nazi leader Hermann Goering threatened to dispatch to a concentration camp anyone who caused unnecessary suffering to animals while experimenting on them.
The Nazi movement, which bore “extreme nationalist characteristics, was also sensitive and open to ‘ecological’ and ‘green’ ideas as part of an outlook seeking to safeguard and conserve the German Heimat, or homeland – German nature, land, and scenery,” Neumann explains.
Another reason for this approach was related to propaganda: For the Nazis, progressive environmental laws underscored the huge difference between Germans and Jews. “Within the framework of the ideas of conserving flora and fauna, the Jews and the Gypsies were perceived and presented as the antithesis of Aryan conceptions,” Dreifuss explains. Thus, for examples, the Nazis depicted kosher slaughter as Jewish cruelty to animals.
Images illustrating the disparity between the Nazis’ attitudes toward animals and toward human beings appear in the photo album of Johann Niemann, deputy commandant of the Sobibor death camp in Poland. About 50 of these images were acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2020 (a few of them can be seen on the museum’s website). Among them are some of geese, pigs, horses and dogs that are being well treated by Nazi soldiers, just meters from the facilities in the camp where Jews were murdered.
Overall, the Nazis failed in their aim to protect animals – as is abundantly clear from the calamities inflicted on nature, animals and humans in the war. “In practice,” Dreifuss observes, “over the years and throughout the territories occupied by Nazi Germany, military and economic interests superseded any ideas of protecting flora and fauna.”
While Jews Were Sent to Death Camps, Nazi Police Worried About Animal Rights
In the summer of 1942, Fritz Sendel, chief of staff of the German Order Police in occupied Poland, sent a message to the force’s commanding officers. Its subject: protecting the rights of animals that were transported on trains. “In the spirit of the Reich Animal Protection Act, I order, with immediate effect, that the officers of the stations (German and non-German) intervene immediately in cases of cruelty to animals, put a stop to it and report the offenders,” he wrote.
The Great Aktion in the Warsaw Ghetto had begun three days earlier – in its course more than a quarter of a million Jews would be transported in trains to Treblinka to be murdered. That form of cruelty, it goes without saying, was perfectly acceptable to the Reich.
Nature conservation and animal protection were important principles of Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler exemplified this personally in the way he treated his dog Blondi, behavior that was supposed to be emulated by concentration camp commandants who dealt with pets. However, the 1942 document, which was recently discovered in a Polish archive, reveals a different angle of this story.
Sendel noted that “the majority of cases involving the cruelty to animals until now have been observed in regard to the horses used by the police forces.” On top of this, “the crowded conditions in the railway cattle cars, especially for animals being sent to slaughter, have also led to many credible complaints.” He went on to explain that abuse of animals also has an effect on “the food situation, in the gravest way,” causing “the loss of cattle for slaughter because of overcrowded railcars.” Accordingly, he ordered “a halt to the cruelty to animals that is entailed in the loading process.”
The document in question was found in Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance by Eliyahu Klein, a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, whose dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Havi Dreifuss and Dr. David Silberklang from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, focuses on the relationship between Jews and non-Jews under the German occupation in Poland and elsewhere.
Sendel added an appendix containing precise instructions, ordering the police officers to take action to prevent cruelty to animals and to report on any colleagues who mistreated them. The recommendations included reducing the number of animals per railcar, allowing them to have time to rest and monitoring their condition.
“The text mentions the need to oversee the conditions of the animals being transported,” Klein says. Officers were urged to ensure that the railcars were properly ventilated, to take note of the capacity of the cars and keep track of the number of animals loaded onto each one, and to make note of their physical condition, including details of injuries, respiratory problems and other symptoms. In addition, the German personnel were to see to it that the animals were not struck unnecessarily while being loaded onto the train, and asked to report on cases of sickness or death during the transport.
What makes this document particularly interesting is that it reflects the aspiration to apply certain laws enacted by Nazi Germany in the territories of the General Government, which was the administrative political body the Nazis established in the areas of occupied Poland that were not formally annexed to the Reich; these included Krakow, Warsaw, Radom, Lublin and eventually Galicia as well.
“I was shaken by the terrible comparison one can make in this context regarding the transports of Jews to the death camps,” Klein says. Indeed, the document he found shows that even as the Germans were deporting and murdering Jews – they were concerned about the welfare of animals and took steps to protect them. In short, Sendel’s instructions graphically illustrate how absolute the inferiority of the Jews was in the eyes of the Germans.
“It underscores the antisemitic ideological view of Jews as an inferior race – a nonhuman element who constitute, in their perception, an existential danger to the world,” as Prof. Dreifuss puts it.
In this context, Klein mentions an exchange of correspondence in the summer of 1942 between two high-ranking Nazi figures. In it the deputy transport minister of Nazi Germany, Albert Ganzenmueller, updated Karl Wolff, chief of staff of Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler, about the transports to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto. In response, Wolff wrote, as quoted in Kerstin von Lingen’s 2013 book “Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals”: “I note with particular pleasure after reading your communication that a train with 5,000 members of the chosen people has been running daily [to Treblinka] for 14 days and that we are accordingly in a position to continue with this population movement at an accelerated pace. I have taken the initiative to seek out the offices involved, so that a smooth implementation of the named measures appears to be guaranteed. I thank you once again for the effort…”
How can one reconcile the Nazis’ brutality toward human beings and their concern for animals? As early as 1935, Nazi Germany enacted the Reich Nature Protection Law which, according to a 2008 article written in Haaretz by the late historian Boaz Neumann, was one of the most advanced laws of its time, one of “unprecedented scope.” The Nazis also enacted other ecological and “green” laws and regulations dealing with care of forests, the prevention of air pollution and similar issues. For example, Neumann notes, “they reduced and forbade the slaughter of unstunned animals, hunting and experiments on animals,” and promoted courses and training in animal protection. A few months after his party came to power, Nazi leader Hermann Goering threatened to dispatch to a concentration camp anyone who caused unnecessary suffering to animals while experimenting on them.
The Nazi movement, which bore “extreme nationalist characteristics, was also sensitive and open to ‘ecological’ and ‘green’ ideas as part of an outlook seeking to safeguard and conserve the German Heimat, or homeland – German nature, land, and scenery,” Neumann explains.
Another reason for this approach was related to propaganda: For the Nazis, progressive environmental laws underscored the huge difference between Germans and Jews. “Within the framework of the ideas of conserving flora and fauna, the Jews and the Gypsies were perceived and presented as the antithesis of Aryan conceptions,” Dreifuss explains. Thus, for examples, the Nazis depicted kosher slaughter as Jewish cruelty to animals.
Images illustrating the disparity between the Nazis’ attitudes toward animals and toward human beings appear in the photo album of Johann Niemann, deputy commandant of the Sobibor death camp in Poland. About 50 of these images were acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2020 (a few of them can be seen on the museum’s website). Among them are some of geese, pigs, horses and dogs that are being well treated by Nazi soldiers, just meters from the facilities in the camp where Jews were murdered.
Overall, the Nazis failed in their aim to protect animals – as is abundantly clear from the calamities inflicted on nature, animals and humans in the war. “In practice,” Dreifuss observes, “over the years and throughout the territories occupied by Nazi Germany, military and economic interests superseded any ideas of protecting flora and fauna.”
