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CASE STUDY
The Rise of Nazism and the
Destruction of European Jewry
148 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
T 02 9360 7999 F 02 9331 4245 E [email protected]
sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au
Acknowledgements
Karen Finch, Education OfficerAvril Alba, Director of EducationSophie Gelski, extract from Teaching the HolocaustSusi Brieger, Education Consultant
The contributors also wish to thank Dr Konrad Kwiet, Resident Historian, Sydney Jewish Museum.
Every effort has been made to contact or trace all copyright holders. The publishers will be grateful to be notified of any additions, errors or omissions that should be incorporated in the next edition.
These materials were prepared by the Education Department of the Sydney Jewish Museum for use in the program, The Rise of Nazism and the Destruction of European Jewry. They may not be reproduced for other purposes without the express permission of the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Copyright, Sydney Jewish Museum 2008. All rights reserved.
Design by ignition point
Dear Teacher
Please find enclosed pre visit materials, lesson plan and post visit materials for you to use in the classroom to support student learning at the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM).
The Rise of Nazism and the Destruction of European Jewry program will introduce concepts from Option C: Germany 1919-1939, Part II: National Studies. The content and learning experiences are linked to syllabus outcomes.
Students will investigate
the nature and influence of racism
changes in society
the nature and impact of Nazism
Students will learn about
Nazi racial policy; antisemitism; policy and practice to 1939
At the Museum, your students will meet a Holocaust survivor or descendant and hear first hand experiences of the period. Engaging with documents and film extracts will provide students with a range of sources to enhance their knowledge and understanding of historiography. The visit will include an interactive session facilitated by a Museum educator.
Post visit materials will consolidate and extend your students’ learning. Included is a bibliography to assist students undertaking further research. All texts can be sourced in the SJM’s Library and Resource Centre.
The SJM has acquired the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive (established by Stephen Spielberg) with access to 2,500 testimonies of Holocaust Survivors and other witnesses videotaped by the Shoah Foundation Institute in Australia. Students and teachers are invited to return to the Museum to search the collection for testimonies with links to the topic area.
If you have any further questions, please contact our Education Department on 02 9360 7999 or email [email protected]
Best wishes SJM Education
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Case Study page 2
2 Pre Visit Materials page 3
3 Lesson Plan page 6
4 Museum Visit page 12
5 Bibliography page 13
6 Post Visit Materials page 14
7 Evaluation page 19
Sydney Jewish Museum
148 Darlinghurst Road
Darlinghurst NSW 2010
T 02 9360 7999
F 02 9331 4245
sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au
© Copyright 2008
M A J O R S P O N S O R
with assistance from the
Haberman and Kulawicz Fund
THE RISE OF NAZISM AND THE
DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY
OVERVIEW
Since the time of the second expulsion from the Ancient
Near East by the Romans in 70CE, Jews have travelled to
and settled in all corners of the world. In Europe, the origins
of some of the oldest Jewish communities can be traced
back to Roman times. Other communities came about due
to subsequent migrations. Common to them all was a long
history of developing rich cultural, religious and social lives
in the places they settled and, despite periods of persecution,
becoming largely integrated into local societies.
The rise of the Nazi Party to power in 1933 and the
establishment of Hitler’s totalitarian regime, which led to
the implementation of harsh discriminatory laws, spelled
the beginning of the end of these communities. Ultimately,
the intention of the Nazi regime was to annihilate the Jews
in Europe and then the rest of the world. Of the estimated
nine million Jews in Europe at the beginning of the war, only
some three million survived. However, the loss of life and
community was near total in its effect — at the end of
World War II, two thousand years of European Jewish life
and civilization had been destroyed forever.
The Rise of Nazism and the Destruction of European Jewry provides students with the opportunity to study in depth the complex and tragic relationship between the rise of Nazism and the destruction of two thousand years of European Jewish life.
The Case Study addresses the following topic within the Syllabus:
CASE STUDY
MODERN HISTORY — PART II — NATIONAL STUDIES
OPTION C. GERMANY NATIONAL STUDY 1918-1939
Students learn about: The rise of the Nazi Party; Nazism in power; Nazi foreign policy.
Students learn to: Describe and evaluate the role of key individuals, groups and events during the period; explain and evaluate the significance of forces contributing to change and continuity during the period.
The following outcomes are taken into account: 1.1; 1.2; 2.1; 3.1; 4.1
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PRE VISIT MATERIAL
ADOLF HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY 1920-1933
Adolf Hitler, disenchanted by Germany’s loss in World War I, joined the German Workers Party in 1920. It was renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party — shortened to the Nazi Party.
Initially, Hitler was responsible for party propaganda, but in 1921 he became leader of the party. In 1923, he instigated an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, an event known as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’. The attempt failed, the Nazi Party was outlawed and Hitler was gaoled. During his incarceration, he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The Nazi Party was revived in 1925 and began to spread its influence beyond its roots in Bavaria. Early elections throughout the 1920s saw the Nazi Party achieving a small percentage of the overall votes. However, between 1930 and 1933, a series of successful campaigns lead to them becoming the largest political party in Germany, achieving 37 percent of the vote in the 1933 elections — not a clear majority, but enough to hold the balance of power in the Reichstag.
In January 1933, President Paul von Hindenberg appointed Hitler as chancellor of Germany. In March 1933 the ‘Enabling Act’ was passed, transferring legislative power to Hitler. Almost immediately, the Nazi Party and its paramilitary organisations, the SA and the SS, seized all government and public institutions, turning Germany into a totalitarian state. Many Germans supported Adolf Hitler because they saw in him a charismatic Führer (‘Leader’), who could solve the severe problems affecting the country. These problems included the consequences of the military defeat in the First World War; the harsh terms imposed by the Peace Treaty of Versailles, political instability, social unrest, economic malaise and large-scale unemployment.
In Hitler’s vision, Germany, and with time the world, was to be remade along the lines of Nazi ideals – strong, ‘Aryan’ and ‘racially pure’.
It was a world in which there was no place for any group or individual defined as a political, social or racial enemy. The Jew was regarded not only as the ‘cancer’ of the German Volksgemeinschaft (‘national community’) but also the source of all evil – as the Weltfeind (the ‘world enemy’). The Jew had to be removed and finally eliminated.
THE JEWS OF GERMANY
The earliest documents supporting a Jewish presence in Germany date from the Roman Empire. However, there is no evidence to support a continuation of the community in Cologne after the end of the Empire. The next documentation comes from the tenth century when Jewish merchants came from France and Italy to settle in Germany.
By the end of the Middle Ages, Jewish communities were firmly established in Germany and included great centres of Jewish learning and spiritual creativity. The Yiddish language of Ashkenazi (European) Jews developed from a fusion of medieval German and Hebrew and came to be spoken as the mama loshen (mother tongue) of Ashkenazi Jewish communities across central and eastern Europe. Jews became prominent in trade and commerce but persecution of Jews persisted in Germany, sometimes wiping out entire
communities. The worst periods were during the Crusades and the period of the Black Death (1348-1349). During the Reformation, further difficulties arose with loss of status and expulsion from larger cities being enforced by Church bodies. Most resettled in smaller communities, while those who left made their way to larger centres of Jewish life developing in eastern Europe.
The French Revolution and subsequent period of Enlightenment marked changes in societies all over Europe. In parallel, the Jewish Enlightenment — the Haskalah — embraced enlightenment values of equality and citizenship. These rights and freedoms were finally won for German Jewry when FRONT PAGE JEWISH NEWSPAPER, BERLIN, 1931
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Germany was unified in 1871. Jews were now able to live outside of their traditional communities, working and living side by side with non-Jewish colleagues and neighbours. Within Jewish communities, the changes had widespread ramifications with the development of alternative, liberal streams of Judaism. These movements spread across Jewish communities of Europe, but in Germany the level of assimilation and integration into urban German life was significantly stronger. Jews were prominent in the arts, the legal, medical and scientific professions, finance and commerce, and politics. When the founder of the World Zionist Organisation , Theodor Herzl, died in 1904, the headquarters of the organisation moved to Germany.
There were protests, both political and social, with the precursors of later right wing and nationalist parties mounting antisemitic campaigns. These were answered in part by Jewish political organisations who worked to counter such attacks and maintain the civil rights of Jews in Germany.
Antisemitism continued to increase up to and during the First World War. However, there was no obstacle to Jewish men of army age serving in the armed forces, many of them doing so and being decorated as war heroes. The establishment of the democratic Weimar Republic after World War I included significant contributions from Jewish politicians. In the period between the wars, Jewish politicians continued to hold posts within German democratic and socialist parties. However, the instigators of rising antisemitism launched propaganda campaigns targeting Jews as one of the main reasons for Germany’s losses in World War I.
NAZI POLICIES AND THE CONSEQUENCES
In Hitler’s genocidal, racist ideology, Erlösung (the ‘redemption’) of the Germans and of ‘Aryan’ humanity depended on Endlösung (the ‘Final Solution’) of the ‘Jewish Question’.
Systematically, the Jews were excluded from German society. In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were proclaimed to ‘protect German blood and honour’ by banning marriages between Jews and Germans, and by depriving Jews of their civil rights and citizenship. Thousands of Jews fled Nazi Germany. This exodus prompted the United States of America to convene an international conference on refugees at Evian in July 1938. Very little however, was done to help the refugees.
The Nazis continued to intensify their campaign against the Jews. On the night of 9 November 1938, a massive pogrom was organised against Jews in Germany and Austria which became known as Kristallnacht — the ‘night of broken glass’. More than 1,000 synagogues were razed and 7,500 Jewish-owned shops vandalized, leaving streets covered with shards of glass. Nazis broke into Jewish homes, terrorizing families. Jews were murdered and
almost 30,000 Jewish men were incarcerated in concentration camps in order to increase the pressure on emigration.
Following Kristallnacht, Nazi policy became even more relentless. Jewish businesses, assets and valuables were confiscated. Jews were herded together in specially segregated ‘Jew houses’ and deployed in forced labour. They undertook feverish efforts to escape Nazi terror.
FRONT PAGE JEWISH NEWSPAPER, BERLIN JULY, 1932
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BEYOND GERMANY
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, instigating World War II. The war sealed the fate of European Jewry. The Jews found themselves trapped and defenceless against a powerful enemy bent on their total destruction, in a world largely indifferent to their fate.
In addition to heavy military and civilian losses for the Polish people, Poland’s Jews became victim to the systematic introduction of similarly restrictive laws and policies that the Nazis had effected against the Jews of Germany, implemented with even greater brutality and force. Poland, with the largest Jewish population in Europe, became the dumping ground for Jews from western Europe as the German war machine advanced on new territories. Jews were rounded up and herded into ghettos all over occupied Poland. With the invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Nazi policy toward local Jewish populations was further radicalized. Mobile killing
units (Einsatzgruppen) followed the German front line forces into the USSR, decimating Jewish communities in mass shootings, sometimes referred to as ‘pit killings’. Concurrently, the Nazis built, as part of a massive and complex camp system, six ‘extermination camps’, the specific purpose of which was to expedite the so called ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish question’ — the genocide of European Jewry.
The pattern of persecution of European Jewry had been set in Germany from 1933-1938. It was enacted repeatedly as country after country was invaded by German forces, with increasing efficiency and brutality as the war continued. In an ultimate demonstration of this efficiency, some 450,000 Hungarian Jews were deported en masse over the period between 15 May and 9 July 1944 to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau where the vast majority perished.
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LESSON PLAN
BACKGROUND
Circumstances in Germany following World War I, due to the reparations demanded by the Allies, created severe difficulties in all aspects of life, from industry through to small business.
The democratic Weimar republic was defeated by the Nazi Party largely because the Nazis promised change for Germany. Hitler’s totalitarian regime was dedicated to creating the Third Reich, a greater glorious Germany that was intended as a model of civilisation for the whole world.
One aim of the Nazi regime was to reconfigure the map of Europe along racial grounds. Those who opposed the regime or belonged to ‘undesirable’ racial groups were persecuted and, in the case of Jewish and Sinti/Roma people, eventually marked for extermination.
FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. Why were Jews among the target groups of the Nazi regime?
2. What were some of the social conditions that made it possible for the racial laws to be accepted by the German public?
3. Using the chronologies and the selection from the Nuremberg Laws, examine the concepts of civil liberties and restrictions. With your class, look at their expectations as citizens of Australia, now and as adults in the future.
Points to consider:
Being able to say what you think
Reading books of your own choosing
Using public facilities – buses, trains, swimming pools, libraries, etc
Choosing your own friends and life partners
Practicing the religion of your choice
Being protected by the law
Having equal employment opportunities
4. Why was it so difficult to leave Germany? What were the documents people needed to be able to leave?
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TEACHING STRATEGIES
1. What was the Australian Government policy on the intake of German and German Jewish refugees before the War? How is it different, or not, currently?
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THE STORY OF LOTHAR PRAGER
Lothar Prager was born 28 May 1902 in Rybnik, Upper Silesia. He was the youngest child of Wanda and Wilheim Prager, owners and proprietors of a fabric dyeing factory situated in Breslau, Germany, on the border with Poland. Lothar had two siblings; Mary, the eldest, was much older but her date of birth is unknown. Rudolf, closest in age to him, was born in 1898.
Lothar went to the local primary school and then the selective high school, studying mainly arts subjects. By the time he was sixteen, he was ready to leave school and wanted to enter the Silesian Border Patrol. Family documents show that he obtained a full school report for the end of that year enabling him to leave school and be admitted to the Patrol. He remained there for six months, when he decided that he didn’t want to stay and obtained his release. He went back to Breslau and made contact with textiles factories and shops. He was employed as an apprentice at Fabische & Co, learning all aspects of the business, including purchasing. He then became a travelling sales representative for a different garment business. With two cars, one driven by his model, he toured the countryside selling women’s blouses.
By 1935, with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Racial Laws, he was forced to stop travelling, and give up his apartment, moving in to share with a friend. In 1937, when it was clear that things were only going to continue to get worse, he began to apply for visas to leave Germany. As
was the case with many German Jews, he applied to any country he could think of and was eventually rewarded by receiving a visa for Paraguay in South America. Among the documents he received was one that required he provide the German authorities with an itemised list of everything he was taking with him out of the country, including every piece of clothing in his luggage.
He sailed from Hamburg on 31 August 1938. The ship docked at Montevideo, Uruguay, where he was to disembark prior to the overland journey to Paraguay. However, finding he was warmly welcomed in Montevideo, he made the decision to stay. He found accommodation and a job, and with these as proof of his ability to support himself and his family, began to try and obtain permission for his parents to leave Germany and join him.
His efforts were unsuccessful. Documents held by the family show that he was still in touch with them up to 1942 when they were picked up by the authorities and deported to Theresienstadt. His father, Wilheim, died just after arriving, and his mother, Wanda, died six months later.
His older sister Mary, with her husband Erich Kohn, escaped from Germany to Holland. Earlier, in 1934, their son, Gerry, had emigrated to the United States of America. Returning
PRAGER FAMILY, PREWAR.
LOTHAR PRAGER, AGED 16, SILESIAN BORDER PATROL.
page 7
to Europe as an American soldier, he was unable to find out exactly what had happened to Mary and Erich. It is known from family documents that they were still in Amsterdam in late 1942. Lothar Prager received a telegram from them in Uruguay in January 1943 that had been sent in December. However, that was the last communication anyone in the family received from them. They were deported soon after. Subsequent searches by family members have found records that show Mary was incarcerated in Theresienstadt. From there she was sent to the death camp of Sobibor where she died in the gas chamber. It is not know when or where Erich perished.
Lothar’s brother, Rudolf, was able to obtain a visa for Chile and left Germany. He married but had no children. He died there in April 1971.
Lothar married Dina Weitser, another refugee from Germany, when he was 45 and she was 41. They had one son, Victor. Victor and his wife, Rita, migrated to Australia in 1992.
Lothar Prager died in Montevideo in 1989.
RED CROSS VOUCHER FOR LOTHAR’S FATHER TO LEAVE GERMANY.
WILHEIM PRAGER, GERMAN ID
TEACHING STRATEGIES
Using the Yad Vashem website – www.yadvashem.org – search the data base for members of the Prager family who perished.
The data base holds records of about half of the estimated 6,000,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust. If you can’t find any of Lothar’s family members, search for people from the region in Germany where he was born. Try to reconstruct a simple timeline of one person’s life.
The story of Lothar Prager has been reconstructed by family members using documents that were saved from Germany. How important are documents like this? Ask your students to find documents that would help them reconstruct a picture of their own families.
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CHRONOLOGY
1933
First anti-Semite laws passed in Germany in order to exclude Jews from all levels of society.
1935
15 September — the Nuremberg Laws passed, defining who was a Jew; German Jews had their citizenship revoked; Jews were prohibited from marrying ‘Aryans’.
1938
Jewish identity papers were stamped with a ‘J’ to identify the Jewish populace. Jews were forced to adopt the names ‘Israel’ for men and ‘Sarah’ for women.
13 March — Anschluss; Austrian Jewry fell under Nazi rule as the Anschluss was implemented. The anti Jewish laws were now operating in Austria.
9 & 10 November — Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Violent attacks against Jewish property, businesses and lives.
1939
1 September — Germany attacks Poland, outbreak of World War II.
3 September — Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.
21 September — Under the direction of Security Police Chief Reinhardt Heydrich, Jews were expelled from most regions of occupied Poland and forcibly resettled in concentrated areas — ghettos. Judenräte (Jewish Councils) consisting of community leaders were established to implement German orders.
Jews were forced out of the economy — their food rations were cut and their property confiscated.
Compulsory labour for Jewish males between the ages of 14 and 60 was ordered. Later this was also extended to women.
1940
9 April — Germany invades Denmark and Norway.
9 May — Germany invades France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
15 November — Warsaw Ghetto established, incarcerating 445,000 Jews.
1941
22 February — Germany raids the ‘Jewish Quarter’ in Amsterdam.
22 June — Germany invades the Soviet Union. The first wave of mass shootings of Jews signals the beginning of the ‘Final Solution’.
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7 December — The United States of America enters the war.
1942
20 January — Wansee Conference was held in Berlin to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’.
11 July ‘Black Sabbath’ — 9,000 Jews publicly terrorized in Salonika, Greece, by Nazi authorities.
Beginning of mass deportations in Western Europe and the systematic gassings of Jews in the death camps.
1943
Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Warsaw’s remaining Jews hold off Nazi forces for a month before being defeated, the ghetto razed to the ground. Only a handful survived, escaping through the sewers to the Polish side.
1944
450,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz from Hungary.
6 June — ‘D-Day’; the Allied invasion of Normandy.
August — the last 65,000 Jews in the Lodz ghetto were deported to Auschwitz.
Beginning of the death marches.
1945
Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen Belsen and other camps liberated.
‘Unconditional surrender’ of Germany.
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TEACHING STRATEGIES
Look at the sequence of events listed in the Chronology provided. How much of Lothar Prager’s story can your students fit into that framework between 1933 and 1939?
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GERMAN PASSPORT, MARKED ‘J’ FOR JEWISH ID.
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THE NUREMBERG LAWS 15 SEPTEMBER 1935
FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. What acts have been declared illegal by the Nazis?
2. Why do you think the Nazis introduced these laws?
3. How do you think German citizens reacted to these laws?
4. Why? Refer to the German ‘race crimes’ section of the exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
5. How did German Jews react to these laws? Why?
6. Why do you think the majority of German citizens remained silent and/or indifferent to such examples of persecution.
TEACHING STRATEGIES
Ask students to consider whether there are any basic freedoms that should be enjoyed by everyone. Make sure that students can justify their choices.
Discuss aspects of everyday life that were affected by Nazi racial laws. Ask the students how they would feel if they were faced with similar restrictions.
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Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour.
Entirely convinced that the purity of German blood is essential to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated herewith:
Section 1
1. Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad.
2. Only the Public Prosecutor may initiate proceedings for annulment.
Section 2
Sexual relations outside marriage between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden.
Section 3
Jews will be forbidden to employ female citizens of German or kindred blood as domestic servants.
Section 4
Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colours.
On the other hand they are permitted to display the Jewish colours. The exercise of this right is protected by the State.
Section 5
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 1 will be punished with hard labour.
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 2 will be punished with imprisonment of with hard labour.
A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Section 3 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine, or with one of these penalties.
IVAN ASCHER, AGED 2AND MOTHER, KAITLIN
HUNGARY, 1944.
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RACISM IN ACTION – NAZI ASSAULT ON THE RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS OF GERMAN JEWS 1933-1943
1933
Jews were forced out of jobs in the civil service, teaching, law and journalism.
April boycott – Germans told to boycott Jewish shops, goods, doctors and lawyers. SA and SS guarded doors of Jewish shops to deter entry by other Germans.
1935
Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and ‘Aryans’ (pure-blooded Germans) were made illegal. Punishment for contravening this law was imprisonment or the death penalty.
Jews were virtually excluded from parks, restaurants and swimming pools.
1936
Jews were prohibited from owning bicycles, typewriters or other electrical equipment.
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1938
Jews had to have their passports stamped with a ‘J’.
On 9 November, the Nazis in Germany unleashed a pogrom in which Jews were murdered, synagogues were burned, sacred objects were desecrated, Jewish shop windows were smashed and thousands of German Jewish men between the ages of 16 and 60 were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Jewish children were banned from attending school.
Jews were excluded from cinemas, theatres, concerts, beaches and holiday resorts.
Jewish publishing houses and bookshops were closed down.
1940
Jews were allowed to buy groceries only between 4pm and 5pm.
Jews’ telephones were disconnected.
1941
Jews were only permitted to use public transport.
All Jews over the age of six had to wear a yellow star with ‘Jew’ written on it.
Mass deportations of German Jews to ghettos located in Nazi-occupied Poland commenced.
1942
All Jewish homes were marked with a yellow star.
Jews were prohibited from using public transport.
Jews were not permitted to have pets.
Jews were not to received eggs or fresh milk.
Jews were not allowed to buy newspapers, magazines or books.
1943
May – Berlin was declared Judenrein (free of Jews).
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JEWISH FORCED LABOUR GANG,ROAD-BUILDING, HUNGARY.
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MUSEUM VISIT
The Museum visit will include:
Lecture and interactive session with a Museum educator.
Viewing of DVD The Way We LivedThe Way We Lived.
Interactive session with a Holocaust Survivor of Descendant.
Self guided tour of the Museum.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What were the laws which led to the loss of rights for European Jews?
2. List ways that these laws affected people’s everyday lives.eg. Expulsions from schools, confiscation of businesses, loss of personal autonomy and possessions.
3. How did the social and political climate in Germany contribute to the success of Nazi Racial policies?
4. What were possible options for German Jews when the new laws were first implemented? What were some of the reasons that they may have chosen to stay rather than leave (see Lothar Prager’s story)?
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Bankier, D. (Ed) Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism. German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933-1939, New York/Oxford/ Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 2000.
Bauer, Y. History of the Holocaust, Danbury, Conn, Franklin Watts, 2002.
Brenner, M. & Penslar, D.J. (Eds), In Search of Jewish Communities. Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria 1918-1933, Bloomington, 1998.
Craig, G. Germany 1866-1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978.
Friedländer, S. Nazi Germany and the Jews, Harper Collins, New York, 1997.
Gidal, N.T. Jews in Germany From Roman Times to the Weimar Republic, Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft, Köln, 1998.
Gelski, S. Teaching the Holocaust, 2 vols, Years 6-9, Years 9-12, Sydney, Sydney Jewish Museum, 2003.
Gutman, I. (Ed), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan, New York, 1990.
Hilberg, R. The Destruction of the European Jews, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003.
Hilberg, R. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders. The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, New York, Harper Collins, 1992.
Kaplan, M. Between Dignity and Despair. Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, New York/Oxford, 1998.
Marrs, M.R. (Ed), The Nazi Holocaust. Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, 9 vols, Westport, 1989.
Shirer, W. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Bison, London, 1987.
Spector, S. & Wigoder, G. (Eds) Encycolpedia of Jewish Life, 3 vols, New York, New York University Press, 2001.
Yahil, L. The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, Oxford University Press, 1990.
Weiss, Y. Citizenship and Ethnicity, German Jews and Polish Jews, 1933-1940, Jerusalem, 2001.
VIDEOS
Reifenstahl, L. & Ruttmann, W. Triumph of the Will, Das Dokument vom Reichsparteitag 1934, 1934.
WEBSITES
www.holocaust.com.au
www.holocaust-history.org
www.yadvashem.org
www.ushmm.org
www.wiesenthal.com
www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/maslin.html
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POST VISIT MATERIALS
Decimated, cut off from the world, stripped of civil rights, deployed in forced labour, undernourished, freedom of movement severely restricted, branded with a large, yellow star — this was the grim picture presented by a persecuted group in early October 1941. On the eve of the mass deportations, there were still some 164,000 Jews living in Germany, and none had any premonition of what awaited them after shipment to the east. Almost everywhere, indications regarding organised mass murder were rejected as ‘war propaganda’ among Jews and non-Jews, in Germany and abroad.
The architects and executors of the ‘Final Solution’ maintained total secrecy. Thus, in October 1941, when avenues for emigration were sealed and the first transports were sent east, virtually all Jews clung desperately to the official proclamations of a program of ‘resettlement’ for purposes of ‘labour deployment’.
In 1933, some 500,000 Jews had experienced the loss of Jewish-German fraternity. During the first few years of persecution, they were at the mercy of a National Socialist regime that still allowed a choice — to lose status or to accept expulsion. A minority left immediately: those who were in danger as a result of political affiliations, Zionists, and Jews. Yet the majority chose to stay. They felt unable to leave a country they had lived in for generations and in which they felt at home. An organisation calling itself the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was set up soon after the Nazis took power. It made great efforts to protect and maintain Jewish life and continued existence in Germany.
The possibility of militant resistance was rejected as illusory. Underlying that rejection was the recognition that two key partners had vanished with the loss of liberalism and the organised labour movement. These had been forces that formerly had played a major role in marshalling
support for Jewish emancipation. An additional worry was that any open Jewish resistance might precipitate punitive sanctions and lead to further dangers for the Jewish community. Their defensive struggle was shaped by another basic conviction: most Jews believed that the Nazi regime would be short-lived, an illusion shared with many non-Jews in Germany at the time.
Given this perspective, Jewish representatives were neither prepared nor able to call upon the Jewish community to leave. “Each one must stick to his position”, was the slogan. Later, efforts were made to arrange ‘orderly’ emigration. Palestine was the priority as the final destination. It soon became evident that there were numerous barriers blocking this path of flight, as all others.
No country opened its gates unconditionally to refugees. Immigrant quotas and other restrictions served to restrict the influx of foreigners. In many countries, the refugees felt the brunt of xenophobia or were subjected to anti-Semitic attacks. Few were fluent in the language of their prospective country. Generally, they were prohibited from practising their former professions. They had to learn new trades, look for new opportunities, or run the risk of opening new businesses. Emigration meant loss of social status and required the emigre to revise his or her patterns of behaviour and ‘correct’ previously held attitudes.
This call for adaptation was often made by Jewish communities in their destination countries. Mostly, these communities limited their assistance to calls for contributions to aid new immigrants, then left it to welfare organisations to provide help for the new arrivals. Only later did many emigres realise that German Jews themselves had not behaved any differently toward their fellow Jews from Eastern Europe who had sought refuge in Germany before 1933. In the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic, the Ostjuden had encountered opposition and rejection because
To leave or not to leave – the German Jews at the crossroads Konrad Kwiet
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they were different from German Jews in respect to origin, language, dress, religiosity, social position, and customary occupations.
After expulsion, Jews from Germany experienced what it meant to cope as a refugee. They remained isolated for a long time. But until the last, they maintained ties with those who had remained behind. The alarming news reports spurred them to try to persuade relatives and friends to leave the country.
Emigration was expensive. The Nazi regime required payment of a Reich ‘flight tax’ and other compulsory taxes (up to 1940, the Reich treasury had raised 900 million reichsmarks in flight tax revenues). Money was needed to pay for travel and moving costs. Proof was required of sufficient capital to obtain entry visas and to finance a new life in another land. Emigration pre-supposed compulsory sale of apartments, businesses and other enterprises. Debts, taxes, and fees were deducted from this sum, and only a fragment of original assets remained. Nazi seizure of ‘Jewish wealth’ led swiftly to financial ruin.
Not until Jews experienced direct threats to their lives did they finally recognise that their ties to and positions in Germany were no longer defensible. That occurred in November 1938. They reacted with horror and despair to the wave of destruction that swept over synagogues, homes, and businesses, to the mistreatment, murders, mass arrests, and internments in concentration camps. Acts of violence and terrorism, previously considered impossible in Germany, triggered a profound sense of shock in the German-Jewish community. The pogrom marked the turning point in events. Most Jews now abandoned the notion that they still had rights as citizens in their German homeland. There was no longer any reason to hope for better times. On the contrary, measure after measure
was introduced, aimed at shattering their existence, introducing forced labour, and implementing spatial and social segregation of Jews — ghettoization. Members of the various Jewish communities in Germany continually spoke out against the defamations, slander, and discrimination. Yet their protests fell on silent ears among the public and the authorities.
Jews by themselves were in no position to stem the course of National Socialist Jewish policy. They had to depend on the assistance of non-Jews. Their persecution and expulsion were taking place before everyone’s eyes, yet did not trigger opposition in the German public, with a few exceptions. Outside Germany, people and governments preferred not to get involved. Their national and economic interests dictated the pursuit of a restrictive refugee policy. The outbreak of war then provided a lever for the closure of state borders. Priority given to military war aims discounted the loss of the Jews as unavoidable. The direction events would take was already determined before 1939.
In November 1938, numerous Germans looked on with dismay and fright at the ‘popular anger’, goaded by the Nazis. Many voices were raised criticising destruction of property or complaining about ‘illegal’ excesses. Yet few were courageous enough to champion the persecuted. Hardly any protest was voiced in public against ghettoization.
The debate about whether or not to leave Germany faded in the aftermath of the November pogrom (Kristallnacht). It was replaced by the slogan, “Save yourself if you can”. Mass flight from Germany began, and special rescue campaigns were initiated in every Jewish community. Preference was given to sending children and teenagers to Western countries. Jewish representatives now began to go outside the law. Contributions made to secret bank accounts
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financed the mass exodus, and there was a flourishing black market in documents, genuine and counterfeit.
The Reichsvertretung financed the release and emigration of Jews who had been detained by the authorities. Between 1938 and 1940, the business magnate Hans Walz made available 1.2 million reichsmarks to to save Jewish lives. The acceptance and utilisation of these funds constituted one of the few infringements of valid law by Reichsvertretung officials.
Shortly before the outbreak of the war, the Reichsvertretung (under Jewish control) was transformed into Reichsvereinigung (under German control). They were compelled to assist in facilitating the ghettoization and ‘evacuation’ of Jews. There was still resistance to the first large deportation. When the approximately seven thousand Jews resident in Baden and the Saar Palatinate were arrested and deported to southern France in October 1940, the Reichsvereinigung became highly active. Staff members hurried to notify Jews away on trips and warn them not to return home. The entire Reichsvereinigung staff threatened to resign and the foreign press was secretly informed about what had transpired. A circular letter was sent to all personnel urging them to observe a day of fasting and remembrance, to cancel all scheduled events of the Jewish Cultural League for one week, and to pray and give sermons on behalf of the deportees on the upcoming Sabbath. The SS forced the Reichsvereinigung leadership to revoke its instructions. Julius Seligsohn, author of the letter, was arrested and put to death in Sachsenhausen. The Reichsvereinigung resistance was broken by means of these sanctions. Until its liquidation in 1943 the organisation remained ensnared in the trap of legality.
By now, some 270,000 to 300,000 Jews had left Germany. In the period from mid-November 1938 to 1 September 1939, 115,000 fled to safety. After the outbreak of the war, 25,000 were able to flee to freedom. 30,000 emigres were taken into custody once again in occupied territories. About 50 percent of German Jews were able to find refuge abroad. In 1933, three-fourths of all refugees had sought refuge in other European countries; by 1937, that percentage had plummeted to one-quarter. Those who reached the United States numbered 132,000, 55,000 settled in Palestine, and 40,000 found asylum in England. Brazil and Argentina each accepted some 10,000. 9,000 reached the ‘open’ port of Shanghai, 7,000 landed in Australia, and 5,000 found refuge in South Africa. The remainder were spread across a number of countries.
Left behind were those whose family ties had largely dissolved. Women and the elderly were in the majority. Half of the 164,000 Jews remaining were fifty years of age or older, a third of them over sixty. With increasing age, there was a decline in readiness and ability to break ties with their familiar surroundings. The aged, infirm, and sick had little
prospect of fulfilling entry requirements of the countries of refuge. Many had already taken leave of their children and grandchildren, whose decision to emigrate had been easier for — or, more accurately, had been made easier for them. What remained were their memories and the consolation that they, at least, had found a refuge.
More men emigrated than women. Often, immigration permits and transportation possibilities prevented entire families emigrating together. Many women allowed their husbands and children to go on ahead, hoping to be able to follow them soon. Others refused to leave Germany. Concern for aging parents or sick relatives kept them from leaving. A large number of the female staff of the Reichsvereinigung also stayed.
Children and teenagers were the smallest segment in the age pyramid. In 1941, only 20,669 were under eighteen years of age — 13 percent. Rescue came too late for more than 10,000 children that were still on the waiting lists of the Reichsvereinigung and youngsters who had been gathered together in Jewish hachshara (training) centres to be given agricultural training and Jewish education as preparation for emigration to Palestine. The others were deployed as forced labourers in the factories.
Jewish youngsters still found strength to resist. A Zionist youth group, Chug halutzi (Pioneer Circle), numbered some forty members; in 1942, together with its adult counselors Joachim Schwersenz and Edith Wolff, it disappeared into the Berlin underground. The approximately fifty members of the Herbert Baum Group were recruited largely from the two Jewish sections of the Siemens plant in Berlin. The spectacular, abortive sabotage attempt against the propagandistic hate exhibit ‘The Soviet Paradise’ in the Lustgarten in Berlin in May 1942 represented the highpoint of their resistance activity.
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An additional circle of persons remained in Germany. They were approximately 15,000 Jewish spouses living in so-called mixed marriages and who had had children the Nazis termed Mischlinge (persons of racially mixed background). The classification ‘privileged mixed marriage’ did not protect these families from abuse and discrimination, but promised the Jewish parent a chance to survive providing there was no formal, or forced, divorce.
In February 1943, the Gestapo struck a blow at another category of Jews who had been largely spared up to that time, the so-called armaments Jews. Within the framework of a massive planned operation, numerous Jews married to non-Jewish spouses were also arrested. That wave of arrests triggered a unique protest demonstration. In Berlin, Aryan wives appeared in front of the assembly camp and demanded the release of their husbands. Passers by joined in with their support. Alarmed by this spontaneous and massive resistance, the Gestapo released the Jewish spouses. This protest constituted the most vehement open resistance to the persecution of the Jews in Germany. Its success suggests that similar actions might have been able to redirect the destructive course of National Socialist Jewish policy into other directions.
Christians of Jewish origin recognised too late that the race fanatics would not take religious convictions and firm roots in German society into account. Jews who had been baptized as Catholics and Protestants discovered that they could no longer expect protection from their churches. Toward the end of 1941, they were classified once again as Jews, then deported to the east.
For the Jews remaining there were two options left to escape. One was suicide, the other to go underground. There are no reliable statistics on the number of Jewish suicides and
attempted suicides in the Third Reich; it is estimated to be about 10,000. Numbers rose during the ‘boycott of Jews’ in April 1933, the Austrian Anschlus, and the November 1938 pogrom. The curve peaked during the period of forced deportation. These suicides were distinguished by two characteristics: their advanced age and their high degree of assimilation. Their average age was sixty-five. Almost all of them waited until the very last moment — when the orders for deportation arrived.
Between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews found the strength to resist the orders for special marking and deportation. There were an estimated 5,000 Jews living in hiding in Berlin in 1943 — 7 percent of those registered in 1941. After the war, 1,402 Jews emerged from their hiding places: one can conclude that some 30 percent of Jews who had gone into hiding managed to survive. They had had to overcome many factors in their struggle for survival in the heart of the Reich. First, there was the network of surveillance and persecution that the Nazis had spun to entrap them. There were severe penalties for anyone attempting to avoid ‘registration’. Escaping that net also presupposed overcoming the Jewish bureaucratic measures. The Reichsvereinigung and Jewish communities sent out notices and information sheets and were responsible for making sure that the marking of Jews and their transport were carried out ‘in an orderly and proper manner’. They also issued sharp warnings against resisting official orders.
Another factor was fear of a form of existence that entailed a radical change in one’s way of life and daily circumstances. To go underground meant giving up ‘legal’ existence and to lead an ‘illegal’ life that promised no security or rescue, holding out slim chances for survival. The decision to risk certain mortal dangers was combined with hope
page 17
that the persecution would soon come to an end. Going underground also meant finding non Jews who were prepared to take in the person for days, months, or even years. During the period of war and deportation, there were still Germans, especially in Berlin, who were actively helping to rescue Jews. Relatives, old friends, and former domestic servants often offered quarters where Jews could hide. Some Jewish forced labourers met friends at work who assisted them in securing their illegal existence in the underground. The danger of being discovered in these circles was especially great since they were watched over by the Gestapo.
Life underground demanded courage, tenacity, and a high degree of social adaptability. People had to learn to live with being alone. Since couples or small groups, strangers and friends, men and women, children and the elderly all went into illegal hiding, group tensions were unavoidable. People had to suffer limitations in hygienic conditions; toilet facilities were often inadequate or nonexistent. Illness had to be surmounted without medical assistance, since living in hiding generally precluded visits to the doctor or a hospital. Anyone leaving their hiding place increased the risk of discovery. Police and SS units patrolled the streets, and inspectors searched the air-raid shelters seeking illegal Jews. Informers waited to fulfil their ‘duty as citizens’ by filing a report with the Gestapo — and then pocketing the reward. There were also a small number of German Jews who acted as Gestapo informers. These persons were dubbed grabbers (greifer, schnapper); in Berlin, they numbered fifteen to twenty individuals. They enjoyed the privilege of being exempt from wearing the obligatory Jewish star and hoped to be exempted from deportation as well.
Finally, living underground required money to fund a life in illegality. Ration cards and false papers were indispensable. They were sold for high prices on the black market, and demand for them increased steadily. As the war progressed, increasing numbers of non-Jews went into hiding. These were resistance fighters, foreign forced labourers and POWs who had managed to escape from the camps. The Jews who went into hiding did not have any financial reserves. Their helpers and rescuers had to come to their aid, providing funds for rent and clothing, food and false papers.
In the extermination camps, there was no possibility for German and foreign Jews to resist annihilation. Behind them lay a long and harrowing journey. They had been arrested in Germany and occupied areas and were shipped in sealed boxcars from deportation assembly points, freight stations, Jewish transit camps, and forced ghettos directly to the unloading ramps of the extermination sites. They climbed off these freight cars exhausted and broken human beings.
On the selection ramps, the aged stood side by side with children and women. Only a few were aware that death was awaiting them at the end of their short path. That
uncertainty was maintained by SS deception until the last moment. Those selected were told that they had to be ‘disinfected’ before going on to their new quarters. Surrendering their baggage, they were led over a closed-off access path to disrobing rooms. Members of a Jewish special unit were often on hand and had been instructed to pacify the victims.
The small number of German Jews who, because of their youth or presumed fitness to work, had been ordered to the barracks or to labour detachments had just as little opportunity to resist. Their murder had only been postponed. For most prisoners, the path into organised resistance in the camps remained closed. In many cases, it was hopeless to try to overcome the barriers, animosities, and antisemitism that emerged from other prisoners and groups of inmates. Individual and open acts of resistance remained limited or were automatically ruled out because they necessarily cancelled one’s ‘respite of time’ and any hope for continued survival in the camp. Only 8,000 of the 134,000 German Jews who were deported ultimately survived.
In 1945, those who had emigrated received news about the deaths of their relatives and the destruction of their communities with shock and sadness, frequently intermingled with feelings of guilt because of their own survival. Most emigres remained in their new countries of emigration. The old memories of Germany resurfaced only in photo albums, letters, and conversations, especially in the recollections of a happy childhood and schooldays, fondly remembered times brought to an end by anti-Semitism. Their attitudes toward Germany were marked by a clear sense of distance and often by a sharp feeling of rejection. Most preferred to avoid Germans, particularly those in the age group of the perpetrators and bystanders.
Few emigres returned to the land of their birth. Their first visits were limited to business trips or a brief, painful return to former neighbourhoods, reunions with school friends, visits to the cemetery. As time passed, the numbers of those willing to renew contacts with Germans, with the post war generation, increased. The invitations and ‘organised visits’ arranged by West German cities for the former ‘Jewish friends and fellow citizens’, albeit late in coming, provided one opportunity for such contacts. Yet many of their children and grandchildren have broken all ties to Germany, totally and completely.
Emeritus Professor Konrad Kwiet is Adjunct Professor for Jewish Studies and Roth Lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the University of Sydney. He is also Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
This article was edited with Professor Kwiet’s permission by Karen Finch.
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EVALUATION FORM
THE RISE OF NAZISM AND THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY
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Sydney Jewish Museum148 Darlinghurst RoadDarlinghurst NSW 2010
T 02 9360 7999 F 02 9331 4245 E [email protected]
Sydney Jewish Museum
148 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
T 02 9360 7999 F 02 9331 4245 E [email protected]
sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au
