The imagined ethno-racial border and the expulsion of Jews from western Poland, 1939-41

Although the ‘Jewish question’ had always figured prominently in Nazi ideology and long-term goals, the population policy to which wartime Nazi elites gave priority in practice in 1939-1941 was that of relocating ethnic German resettlers to annexed western Poland. Christopher Browning and other scholars have argued that Himmler and Heydrich may have planned the comprehensive deportation of Jews from the ‘incorporated eastern territories’ as the highest priority in autumn and winter 1939, but because they and other Nazi leaders did not prioritize it in practice, it never happened. This article shows that this view does not quite reflect the full picture of events. For key parts of the Nazi elite there was an ethno-racial boundary running vertically down the middle of annexed western Poland and west of it they did give the removal of Jews significant priority in practice. This is demonstrated through a detailed case study of the expulsion of Jewish residents from east to west across this boundary within Province Silesia in May to June 1940.