Heydrich went on to say that in the course of the "practical execution of the final solution", Europe would be "combed through from west to east", but that Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would have priority "due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities". This was a reference to increasing pressure from the regional Nazi Party leaders in Germany, the Gauleiters, for the Jews to be removed from their areas to allow accommodation for Germans made homeless by Allied bombing, as well as for labourers being imported from occupied countries. The "evacuated" Jews, he said, would first be sent to "transit ghettos" in the General Government, from which they would be transported to the East.[23] Heydrich said that to avoid legal and political difficulties, it was important to define who was a Jew for the purposes of "evacuation". He outlined categories of people who would be exempted. Jews over 65 years old, and Jewish World War I veterans alike, who had been severely wounded or who had won the Iron Cross, would be sent to the "model" concentration camp at Theresienstadt. "With this expedient solution," he said, "in one fell swoop many interventions will be prevented."[24]
The situation of people who were in a "racial" sense half or quarter Jews, and of Jews who were married to non-Jews, was more complex. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, their status had been left deliberately ambiguous. Heydrich announced that "mischlings" (a Nazi pejorative for mixed-"race" persons) of the first degree (persons with two Jewish grandparents), would be treated as Jews. This would not apply if they were married to a non-Jew and had children by that marriage. It would also not apply if they had been granted written exemption by "the highest offices of the Party and State." Such persons would instead be sterilised.[25]
