to Eichmann’s own records—from Müller’s order, as was mention of what were now three hundred thousand Jews to be deported. Steur traces the increasing radicalization to Heydrich’s visit with Hitler on October 7, when the topics under discussion included the “handling of Jews” (“Judenbehandlung”).17 And although it seems entirely possible that Heydrich thereby sought authorization to expand the deportations and passed the larger numbers on to Eichmann, who on that day was still in Berlin and not already on his way to Vienna, Steur’s evidence nonetheless remains questionable because her conjecture is based on an extremely short entry in Halder’s war diary. But the entry reveals little and seems to refer more to a conflict between the Wehrmacht and the SS over the killings conducted by a police unit in Mława.18 In the entry, Halder simply wrote, “Complaint about Mława. Handling of Jews.”19
Even if Halder’s war diary is not enough to show that Hitler himself had approved large-scale deportations of Jews from the Reich itself, the likelihood that Eichmann received the number three hundred thousand from Müller or Heydrich before leaving Berlin is nonetheless much greater than the possibility that he simply invented it, thereby mentioning it to Wagner without any backing from above. Such a rapid escalation would not have been otherwise unusual for the overall Nisko campaign, nor for the subsequent deportation actions. In Mährisch Ostrau and Kattowitz, Eichmann did name Poland as the destination for the deportation trains, but what the exact locality would be, he did not know. It was only after the discussion with Wagner that Eichmann, along with Stahlecker, set out for Poland to settle this question as well. The initial ruminations focusing on the area around Kraków were made obsolete by the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty of September 28, which is why the area around Lublin now came into consideration. It was from there that Eichmann’s wireless message of October 15, 1939, then reached the Gestapo in Mährisch Ostrau: “Railroad station for transports is Nisko on the San”—just in time to keep the entire operation from grinding to a halt.20 It was only two days later that the Gestapo assembled the first transport, which left Mährisch Ostrau on October 18 as the first train in the Nisko campaign. On board were some nine hundred male Jews, who were considered by the Gestapo to be in good physical condition, and who were predominately Polish nationals—a crucial aspect, for it underlines the focus of the Nisko campaign.21
Just like its origins, the sudden termination of the Nisko campaign by an order from Berlin also raises some fundamental questions. The day after a train had left Mährisch Ostrau (which was to be followed by another from Vienna on October 20), a telex arrived in Kattowitz from Müller at the Reich Security Main Office. Sent only an hour after the transport had departed Mährisch Ostrau, Müller’s message made clear that for every further transport, there needed to be, “in general, an authorization from this office.”22
Since Eichmann, the addressee of this message, had already left the city, it was passed on to his deputy, SS Head Assault Leader Rolf Günther, who was at that moment supervising the dispatch of a deportation train carrying Jews who had fled from Kattowitz across the border after the German invasion and sought refuge in Mährisch Ostrau.23 Günther decided against stopping the departure of the train and instead forwarded the telex to Eichmann. As a result, the latter immediately returned from Vienna to Mährisch Ostrau, where he learned from Günther that, in the meantime, the Reich Security Main Office had now ordered that “all transports of Jews are to be stopped.”24 After that, Eichmann immediately traveled on to Berlin in order to clarify the situation, for only half the originally planned transports had been sent. Nevertheless, it was no longer possible to undertake any more transports. Although one more train did leave Prague on November 1 with three hundred predominantly Polish Jews, it nonetheless had to be stopped at Sosnowitz (today Sosnowiec), especially since the bridge over the San had also collapsed in the meantime.25 A third transport from Vienna also failed to come about.
Scholars have generally reckoned Eichmann to have been “successful,” at least to the extent that the first deportation wave of October 18 and 20 was followed by a second one on October 26 and 27, during which—according to Moser—4,760 Jews were deported from Mährisch Ostrau, Kattowitz, and Vienna.26 On the deportations from Vienna, the Austrian State Archive holds what would seem to be the most informative summary, one bearing the notation “Correct Nisko Lists,” which shows a first transport on October 20 and a second one on October 26, with 669 persons assigned to the latter, recorded with car and seat numbers.27
The Austrian archive’s list has not been mentioned in scholarship to date. But it is in fact also of questionable reliability, for it proves only that German ambitions to expel Vienna’s Jews had already ripened quite far. It does not, however, answer the question of whether this second transport actually departed, or whether it too was halted at the last moment. Neither H. G. Adler nor Herbert Rosenkranz provide evidence about this, and neither do Moser or Goshen.28 Goshen quotes a telegram sent from Berlin by Eichmann on October 24, in which the latter confirmed the cessation of deportations, but he nonetheless announced to his subordinates in Mährisch Ostrau that there would be one more, final, transport, “in order to maintain the prestige of the local [i.e., Mährisch Ostrau] Gestapo.”29 Meanwhile, Moser bases his claim on a telegram from the next day, in which Günther forewarned the camp superintendent in Nisko, Theodor Dannecker, of the arrival of a combined transport from Mährisch Ostrau and Kattowitz, which would depart from Kattowitz on October 27—but there is no mention of Vienna in the telegram.30 More important: In a report on the history of the Austrian Jews under Nazism, compiled after the war by two members of the organized Jewish Community of Vienna (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, or IKG), Nisko is indeed mentioned—but with only the one transport that departed Vienna on October 20.31 The same is true of the fifty-page report prepared by the former head of the IKG, Dr. Josef Löwenherz. He too describes Nisko as a traumatic wound and also lists one by one the deportations to Poland that started again in early 1941—but here too, there is no mention of a second transport to Nisko.32 In the scholarly literature, however, apart from Tuviah Friedmann and Götz Aly, the second transport is taken for granted; for example, by Christopher R. Browning, Sybille Steinbacher, and Wolf Gruner.33 No reliable evidence, in fact, exists for the second transport from Vienna apart from the aforementioned declarations of intent by the Nisko campaign’s protagonists, which means they can be more convincingly seen as simply reflecting their eagerness to actually complete the project as envisaged. But at a time when the deportations had already come under heavy fire from Berlin, eagerness probably no longer sufficed to set more trains in motion.
Moreover, my doubts about the departure of this second transport from Vienna are further compounded by a message to Himmler on March 1, 1940, written by the state secretary at the Reich Transport Ministry, Dr. Wilhelm Kleinmann, listing all transports conducted since October 18, 1939, and still scheduled to happen by March 15, 1940.34 Only three of them might have been part of the Nisko campaign: a transport carrying three thousand persons from Mährisch Ostrau on October 18 and two trains carrying a total of a thousand persons from Vienna on October 20. This would roughly match Moser’s figure of 4,760 Jews deported to Poland, with the difference based on the lower number of Jews deported from Vienna, namely, a thousand persons instead of more than fifteen hundred.35 Although Kleinmann’s summary also raises some questions, in that it does not mention a train from Kattowitz, and the number of persons transported from Mährisch Ostrau appears somewhat high at first, both these discrepancies could be explained by the transport from Mährisch Ostrau having gone through Kattowitz, where it gained additional cars.36 Furthermore, the entry for this transport differs from all others on the list in two regards: first, the train is not labeled a “Sonderzug” (“special train”) but instead as a Wehrmacht train; second, it includes the notation “fifty freight cars.”37 Since the Wehrmacht also moved its troops in freight cars, each carrying around forty soldiers with all their gear, it is entirely conceivable that fifty freight cars were used in this case to deport three thousand persons.38
Kleinmann had compiled this summary after a meeting hosted by Göring, whose participants included the Gauleiters of the annexed eastern provinces,
