RADEMACHER, FRANZ°

RADEMACHER, FRANZ ° (1906–1973), German diplomat; from 1940–43 head of Section Deutschland iii of the German Foreign Office, which dealt with "Jewish Affairs" and cooperated closely with *Eichmann. The son of a railroad engineer, he was a lawyer and joined the Nazi party only in 1933. He joined the Foreign Office in 1937 and served abroad. Like many ambitious civil servants, Rademacher carved out an area of expertise, choosing to view the Jewish situation within the context of Germany's war aims and its expected triumph. It is in this context that Rademacher wrote a memorandum on the "*Madagascar Plan" – one of a number of territorial solutions to the Jewish problem that were overtaken by the Final Solution. When Germany did not defeat Great Britain, the plan became impossible to implement and therefore non-operative. He exerted personal influence on the German representatives in the satellite states to facilitate the "Final Solution" (see *Holocaust, General Survey). In the autumn of 1941 he was sent to speed up the killing of 8,000 Serbian Jews (see *Yugoslavia). His task was in part to minimize the foreign policy complications of the Final Solution. After the war he was sentenced to only five months' imprisonment by a German court in 1952, but skipped bail and escaped to Syria. In 1966 he returned to Germany and was sentenced in May of that year to five years' imprisonment for aiding in the murder of Romanian, Bulgarian, and Yugoslav Jews, but was released from prison for medical reasons.

bibliography:

G. Reitlinger, Final Solution (1968²), index; L. Poliakov and J. Wulf, Das dritte Reich und seine Diener (1956), passim; Billig, in: Le Monde Juif, 24 no. 50 (1968), 27–36; R. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1967²), index s.v.Rademacher, Karl. add. bibliography: C.R. Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of the Referat D3 of the Abetilung Deutschland 1940–43 (1978).

[Yehuda Reshef /

Michael Berenbaum (2^nd ed.)]