a uniform manner, encourage export, destroy the exemplary function of Paris, and
Interim Conclusions
85
above all exclude Jewish fashion designers. 69 At the same time, however, it remained entirely unclear what was supposed to be specifically ‘German’ about
the new style: in fact, ‘Aryan-style fashion’ was more or less exhausted in the
struggle against the ‘Jewish ready-made’, which was represented as the gateway of
international, above all French fashion. The complete Entjudung of the ready-
made industry was depicted as the precondition for the realization of a ‘German’
fashion, and the polemic against ‘alien’ fashion did not stop even after successful
Aryanization. 70 The slogan of Entjudung became a substitute for the lack of creativity of ‘Aryan’ fashion designers—and in the end it gave National Socialist
fashion functionaries crucial controlling functions in the fashion industry.
Even in the design of functional objects and furniture, the regime’s attempts—
we might think, for example, of the ‘Beauty of Work’ office of the German Labour
Front—to attempt an autonomous design style remained substantially unsuccessful;
official declarations distanced themselves from avant-garde visions such as those
developed in the ‘Jewish’ Bauhaus, but design remained to a large extent trapped
in the functionalistic design of the Weimar era. 71
The various examples have demonstrated that the Entjudung and racial ‘cleans-
ing’ of German society was a process that went far beyond the mere removal of the
Jews and other unwanted ‘foreigners’ in the different areas of life. In fact it was a
much more comprehensive process: as the homogeneous, entirely German Volks-
gemeinschaft could not be brought about in a positive way, either conceptually or
in practice, the National Socialists fell back on imposing it negatively, through
permanent differentiation, distancing, and liberation from an apparently omni-
present and omnipotent enemy.
Rhetorical as this process of dissociation remained, the above examples have
demonstrated that it affected practically all areas of life and by no means stopped
with the actual exclusion of Jews, but remained a lasting theme during the Nazi
period. Behind the phase of Entjudung there lay a very real claim in terms of
political power: the imposition of the Nazis’ claim to total power.
The Emergence of a Jewish Sector as a
Consequence of the Politics of Repression
The segregation policy promoted on a massive scale in 1935—as a consequence of
that year’s anti-Semitic campaign—and then again after the end of the Olympic
Games from the end of 1936 had profound consequences for the everyday life of
the Jewish minority. In so far as such generalizations are possible at all, in the
years 1935 and 1936 any private contact still existing between Jews and non-Jews
seems largely to have been severed. Numerous reports and memoirs make it clear
that the whole range of everyday relationships seems to have been affected by it:
86
Racial Persecution, 1933–1939
children stopped playing together; the members of youth cliques dispersed; polite
gestures such as everyday greetings ceased to be exchanged; neighbours stopped
talking to each other; visits to each other’s houses and communal visits to pubs
became a thing of the past; those friendships and love affairs that still existed fell
apart; even the joint participation of Jews and non-Jews in funerals became rarer.
Segregation was imposed through an interplay of government departments, the
Party apparatus, police, and Gestapo, which was able to rely on the energetic
support of the populace. 72 Of course, isolation tended to be more prevalent in smaller towns, where Jews had already become too frightened to go into the streets
and had become completely isolated, than it was in the anonymity of the big cities.
This strengthened the progress of migration from the countryside to the city and
worsened still further the precarious life of those impoverished, isolated Jews in
the countryside. 73
The many consequences of persecution for the life of the Jews themselves
cannot be pursued here in every last detail. The consequences for family life and
the relations between the sexes, the increased focus upon Jewish culture and a
more intense religious life as well as strategies of resistance and survival developed
by the various Jewish organizations are themes that have been extensively dis-
cussed in the literature. 74 Here we will merely attempt to provide an overview of Jewish self-organization under the immediate pressure of persecution and locate
that self-organization within the history of Judenpolitik.
The economic consequences of the increasing ‘creeping’ exclusion of many
Jews from the economy, which set in at the end of 1936 after the ‘boycott’ had
already considerably undermined their economic situation, were particularly
grave. The considerable reduction of economic possibilities as a consequence of
exclusion now led to characteristic relocations of Jewish economic activity, for
example to their heightened activity as salespeople (until that profession came
under greater pressure from the authorities late in 1937), or the relocation of
businesses to homes and thus to typical poverty careers. 75
Through the discriminatory measures in the economic field something like an
autonomous Jewish business cycle came into being: Jews were increasingly forced
to fall back on Jews as suppliers and customers, although that Jewish ‘internal
economy’ did not offer sufficient opportunities to make a livelihood; most busi-
nesses lived on their capital. 76 A closed Jewish labour market was supported by a Jewish labour exchange until it was closed down late in 1936. It was characteristic
of the Jewish commercial sector that the amount of credit provided by loan offices
increased steadily until 1936, while the activity of the agency that was supposed to
help with the reconstruction of livelihoods declined, since fewer and fewer Jews
wanted to engage in businesses. 77
Under the increasing pressure of exclusion on the one hand, and impelled by
Jewish attempts at self-assertion and self-organization on the other, an ‘autonomous
Jewish sector’ came into being, and not only in the commercial world, which
Interim Conclusions
87
facilitated survival for those Jews who had remained in Germany and gave them one
last means of support before complete impoverishment. As a result of segregation
something like a Jewish ‘public service’ came into being: Jewish health and educa-
tion, Jewish welfare, and social security78 reached a considerable size; a considerable administrative apparatus was maintained in the Jewish communities and in organizations such as the Central Committee and the Reich Board. The establishment of
Jewish institutions and the exclusion of Jews from the institutions accessible to the
general population occurred as a complementary process.
In 1935–6 the Reich Board of Deputies of the Jews in Germany (originally
founded, as an umbrella organization, as the Reich Board of Deputies of German
Jews, it had been obliged to assume this new name after the introduction of the
Nuremberg Laws in 1935) began to de
velop more collective places of education. 79
While it transpired that the redistribution of adults did not increase chances of
emigration to any significant extent, after 1935–6 these institutions undertook
above all the initial training of young Jewish people who were unable find an
apprenticeship, or whose training in the commercial professions preferred by Jews
seemed pointless.
By 1938 some 30,000 people had been trained in training farms and training
centres, two-thirds of them younger than 20. These included a considerable
number of young people who were able to train in agricultural professions outside
Germany. About 15 per cent of young people between 14 and 25 had thus been
covered by the educational measures by 1938.80
Finally, the construction of an autonomous Jewish cultural life made further
progress. 81 Alongside a sizeable Jewish press82 this found expression above all in the establishment of Jewish cultural organizations. March 1935 saw the foundation
of the Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Societies in Germany, under the
supervision of the Propaganda Ministry. With the appointment of Hans Hinkel,
the Commissar in the Prussian Ministry of Culture originally commissioned to
undertake the ‘Entjudung of cultural life’, as ‘Special Agent for the Cultural
Activity of all Non-Aryans’ in this ministry in July 1935, and through its simul-
taneous function as one of the managers of the Reich Chamber of Culture, a close
connection was established between the Entjudung of the general cultural indus-
try, and the construction of an autonomous Jewish culture was produced. From
August 1935 cultural associations had to become members of the Reich Associ-
ation, which thus became something resembling a Jewish Chamber of Culture. All
programmes of cultural events now needed—after being presented to the Reich
Association—permission from the Hinkel Office; organizers, performing artists,
and audiences had to be members of the Reich Association. In 1938 there were a
total of 76 cultural associations, involving about 50,000 people. The creation of an
efficient Jewish cultural organization was—and this connection should not be
overlooked—one of the preconditions for the exclusion of the Jews from the
general cultural life.
88
Racial Persecution, 1933–1939
The Jewish school system was considerably expanded under the pressure of
persecution. At the start of the Nazi era only around 25 per cent of Jewish primary
schoolchildren attended Jewish schools, about half each in private and public
schools. During the 1930s the following developments can be observed: the
number of Jewish primary schoolchildren declined overall, due to emigration
and the falling birth rate, while an ever greater proportion of Jewish schoolchil-
dren left general primary schools. The result of these movements in the Jewish
student body for the Jewish public schools was a steady loss of pupils; the number
of these establishments, most of which had been barely sustainable one-room
schools even before 1933, thus declined from 148 in 1932–3 to 76 in 1937. 83
The private Jewish primary schools, on the other hand, registered a constant
increase in pupil numbers, at least until 1938; later the figures fell again. The
number of these schools rose between 1933 and 1937 from twenty-seven to seventy-
two. 84 The number of pupils at the public secondary schools—ten schools in all—
increased slightly until 1937, while the role of the private Jewish secondary schools
remained insignifant. 85
In 1934 the Reich Board drew up guidelines for education in Jewish primary
schools, which were understood as a complement to the state curricula which were
also valid for the Jewish schools, and which effectively represented a compromise
between German-Jewish, Orthodox, and Zionist educational goals. 86 In 1937 the Reich Board issued new guidelines which took into account the altered outlook for
those Jews still living in Germany: unlike 1934, the emphasis was no longer on the
rootedness of Jewish culture in the German environment; instead the pupils’
orientation towards Jewish tradition and preparation for emigration, especially
to Palestine, 87 found expression, for example, in a larger amount of Hebrew education, a greater emphasis on sport and handicraft, as well as in increased
efforts to teach ‘Palestinian studies’.
Jewish welfare organizations attempted to support the Jews, who were increas-
ingly excluded from official services, in a great variety of ways, through food
agencies, services of goods and money, through measures in the field of open social
work, health care, and care for the elderly, etc. 88 In 1937 there were only twenty-one Jewish hospitals, fifteen sanatoria, forty-nine children’s homes and orphanages, and
seventy-six old people’s homes and hospices. 89 One of the most successful projects was a Jewish Winter Aid scheme. Once Jews were excluded from the official Winter
Aid scheme by the Nuremberg Laws, the Reich Board set up a Winter Aid scheme
of its own, under the control of the Reich Commissioner for Winter Aid. It was
financed, on the model of the official Winter Aid scheme, by tax-like donations
drawn directly from wages or other income, and levied throughout the whole six
months of winter. 90 The proportion of the Jewish population who received support from Jewish Winter Aid rose from 20.5 per cent (1935–6) to 24.3 per cent (1938–9). 91
The creation of autonomous Jewish organizations designed to rescue the Jews
excluded from the various social spheres and give them the support they needed
Interim Conclusions
89
to survive also led to the further intensification of the segregation and isolation
of the Jewish minority that had been set in motion by the regime. Further to
this, the formation of purely Jewish organizations in a later phase of Juden-
politik, in which they were turned into the organs of a state-controlled enforced
community, in many ways made it easier for the NS state to record and control
the Jews. It was to prove fatal that Nazi Judenpolitik was able to use the
extensive attempts to achieve Jewish self-organization for the further intensifi-
cation of persecution.
chapter 4
THE INTENSIFICATION OF THE RACIAL
PERSECUTION OF NON-JEWISH GROUPS BY
THE POLICE APPARATUS, 1936–1937
In the first years of the ‘Third Reich’, National Socialist ‘Racial policy’ was defined
above all by two strategies. By the exclusion and segregation of the Jewish minority,
and by the attempt to prevent the reproduction of the so-called erbkrank, or
hereditarily ill. After the mid-1930s further racial policy measures were added, mainly
by the police apparatus and directed specifically against particular groups.
After Himmler took over and reorganized the entire German police force in
1936, over the course of 1937 the Sicherheitspolizei, or ‘security police’, formed by
the merger of the Gestapo and the criminal police (Kripo), intensified the perse-
cution and systematic elimination of marginal groups which were seen as a public
danger because of their supposedly ‘inferior’ hereditary predispositions. In this
way the security police acted as an instrument of ‘racial general prevention
’. 1 This policy, which was closely connected to the continuing segregation of the Jews
occurring at the same time, affected four groups in particular: people of non-
European origin or children of Germans and non-Europeans, Gypsies, ‘asocials’,
and homosexuals. The exclusion and persecution of groups stigmatized by their
different ‘racial affiliation’ or supposed ‘hereditary predispositions’ granted the
police extensive opportunities for access and control with regard to the population
Persecution of Non-Jewish Groups by the Police, 1936–7
91
as a whole, whose everyday and social relations were subjected to a dense network
of prohibitions and prescriptions.
During the first few years of the ‘Third Reich’, the criminal police had, under
the watchword of ‘preventive crime-fighting’, attempted through the use of
preventive detention, preventive custody, and surveillance measures, systematic-
ally to eliminate so-called ‘professional criminals’. After the formation of the
Reich Criminal Police Office in July 1937 and the centralization of the Kripo as a
whole, there was an increasingly apparent tendency to organize crime-fighting on
the basis of the findings of ‘Criminal Biology’. To this end, after autumn 1937 the
Reich Criminal Police Office worked closely with the ‘Racial Hygiene Research
Institute’ in the Reich Health Office, and at the same time the Reich Minister of
Justice set up a special ‘Criminal Biology Service’, 2 and from the beginning of 1938
there was also a ‘Headquarters of Criminal Genealogy’3 within the Reich Criminal Police Office. The findings of ‘Criminal Biology’ provided the Kripo, within the
context of ‘preventive crime-fighting’, with the strategy of eliminating ‘social
misfits’ as the class actually responsible for criminality. The legal basis for this
lay in the unpublished ‘Fundamental Decree Concerning Preventive Crime-
Fighting by the Police of 14 December 1937’ signed by the Reich Interior Minister.
This document particularly regulated which group could be taken into the
preventive custody of the Criminal Police: ‘professional and habitual criminals’,
people who gave inadequate information about their personal details, as well as
Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Page 17
