August Frank memorandum

The August Frank memorandum of September 26 1942 was a directive from SS Lieutenant General August Frank, a higher official of the SS concentration camp administration department. The memorandum provides a measure of the detailed involvement planning that Frank and other Nazis put into the carrying out of the Holocaust. For example, it includes instructions as to the disposition of postage stamp collections and underwear of the murdered Jews. It also contains an instruction that the yellow stars that the Nazis forced the Jews to wear on their clothing were to be removed before the clothing was redistributed to ethnic Germans whom the Nazis were resettling into occupied Poland. This memorandum, when it came to light after the war, played a key role in refuting Frank's claims that he had no knowledge that Jews were being murdered en masse in the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard. The memorandum is also notable as an example of the use of the Nazi euphemism "evacuation" of the Jews, which meant their systematic murder