Two days later, Göring chairs a meeting at the Air Ministry to find a way of making the Jews bear the costs of all the damage. As the spokesman for the insurance companies points out, the price of broken windows alone comes to five million marks (this is why it’s called “Crystal Night”). It turns out that many of the Jewish boutiques are owned by Aryans, which means they must be compensated. Göring is furious. Nobody had thought about the economic implications, least of all the finance minister. He shouts at Heydrich that it would have been better to kill two hundred Jews than to destroy so much valuable property. Heydrich is upset. He replies that they did kill thirty-six Jews.
As solutions are found to make the Jews themselves pay for the damages, Göring calms down and the atmosphere lightens. Heydrich listens as Göring jokes with Goebbels about the creation of Jewish reservations in the forest. According to Goebbels, they ought to introduce certain Jewish-looking animals—like the moose, with its hooked nose. Everyone present laughs heartily, except for the representative of the insurance companies, who’s unconvinced by the field marshal’s finance plan. And Heydrich.
At the end of the meeting, when it has been decided to confiscate all Jews’ goods and to forbid them from having businesses, Heydrich decides it would be useful to refocus the debate:
“Even if the Jews are eliminated from economic life, the main problem remains. We must kick the Jews out of Germany. In the meantime,” he suggests, “we should make them wear some kind of sign so they can be easily recognized.”
“A uniform!” shouts Göring, always fond of anything to do with clothing.
“I was thinking of a badge, actually,” Heydrich replies.
The meeting, however, doesn’t end on this prophetic note. Henceforth, the Jews are excluded from public schools and hospitals, from beaches and swimming pools. They must do their shopping during restricted hours. On the other hand, following objections from Goebbels, it is decided not to make them use a separate carriage or compartment on public transport: What would happen during rush hour? The Germans might be packed like sardines in one carriage while the Jews had another carriage all to themselves! And so on—you get the idea. Let’s just say that the debate scales new heights of technical precision.
Heydrich suggests yet more restrictions on the Jews’ movements. Then Göring—completely recovered from his brief loss of temper—raises, out of the blue, a fundamental question. “But, my dear Heydrich, you will have to create ghettos in all our cities, on an enormous scale. It’s unavoidable.”
Heydrich replies brusquely:
“As far as ghettos are concerned, I would like to define my position straightaway. From a policing point of view, I believe it’s impossible to establish a ghetto in the sense of a completely isolated district where only Jews may live. We cannot control a ghetto where a Jew can melt into the rest of the Jewish population. That would provide shelter for criminals, and also a breeding ground for diseases. We don’t want to let the Jews live in the same buildings as Germans, but at the moment—whether in whole districts or in individual buildings—it is the Germans who force the Jews to behave correctly. Surely it would be better to keep them under the watchful eyes of the whole population than to cram them in their thousands into areas where I cannot adequately control their daily lives with uniformed agents.”
Raoul Hilberg sees in this “policing point of view” the prism through which Heydrich views both his job and German society: the entire population is considered a sort of auxiliary police force, responsible for surveying and reporting any suspect behavior among the Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, which will take the German army three weeks to crush, proves Heydrich right: you can’t trust those Jews. He also knows, of course, that germs do not racially discriminate.
Physically, Monsignor Jozef Tiso is small and fat. Historically, he belongs with the biggest collaborators—his role as the Slovak version of Pétain being determined by the hatred he feels for centralized Czech power. The archbishop of Bratislava has worked his whole life for his country’s independence and today, thanks to Hitler, he achieves his goal. On March 13, 1939, as the Wehrmacht’s regiments prepare to invade Bohemia and Moravia, the chancellor of the Reich invites the future Slovak president into his office.
As always, Hitler talks and the other person in the room listens. Tiso isn’t sure if he should be happy or fearful. His long-held wish is finally coming to pass—but why must it come in the form of blackmail and an ultimatum?