Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  murders, was sanctioned by the regime, the whole system of government of the

  ‘Third Reich’ underwent a qualitative change. If the Party and state leadership had

  over the past few years, in public declarations at least, repeatedly distanced

  themselves from the ‘individual actions’, and with the subsequent legislative

  measures kept alive the illusion of a degree of legal security, now the regime’s

  street terror was officially legitimized as an understandable expression of ‘national

  rage’, and with the subsequent mass internment of Jews in concentration camps

  was transformed directly into state terror. The laws passed after 9 November

  amounted to the complete deprivation of the rights of the Jewish minority; they

  represented a declaration of bankruptcy on the part of the lawyers in the Reich

  ministries, since what these laws meant in essence was the fact that the Jewish

  minority would henceforth be subjected to pure terror.

  The German Jews had been publicly taken hostage, and the various public

  threats of extermination voiced by leading representatives of the regime over the

  coming weeks and months made it clear that the lives of the hostages could be

  placed at their mercy once again and to a far greater extent than before.

  If it had still been possible, up until the November pogrom, to nurture the

  illusion that the regime gave free rein to terror only in emergencies, before

  invariably re-establishing order afterwards, and that the state apparatus, bound

  by norms, could repeatedly put a stop to the illegal ‘measures’ of the Party base,

  now the entirely arbitrary, terroristic character of the regime was clearly revealed.

  The regime no longer only controlled the professional careers of Jewish Germans,

  their possessions and their everyday behaviour; it had now elevated itself to

  become master of life and death.

  The final capitulation of the conservative elites, and also of the general German

  population, to National Socialism’s total claim to power could not have been more

  clearly expressed than by this total delivery of a minority defined by racial criteria

  into the hands of the regime. The total deprivation of the rights of the Jewish

  minority, the extensive pervasion of German society by National Socialism and

  the transition to a policy of expansion and heightened preparation for war were

  three processes which ran in parallel, and not by chance.

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  Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

  New Anti-Jewish Measures

  The more intense campaign begun late in 1937 led in early 1938 to a whole series of

  anti-Jewish laws. Thus, for example, the law concerning changes of surnames and

  forenames of 5 January 1938 empowered the authorities to revoke name changes

  that had occurred before 30 January 1933, and to order official changes of fore-

  names. (An implementation order of 17 August 1938 would finally stipulate that

  Jews might only bear forenames contained in the ‘Guidelines for the Bearing of

  Forenames’ passed by the Reich Interior Ministry on the same day, or else had to

  assume the obligatory additional names Israel or Sara.)

  Through the law of 28 March, the Jewish religious associations lost their

  existing status as public corporations and thus a series of tax privileges. Also in

  March Jews were definitively excluded from the allocation of public commissions.

  In February 1938 Jews were excluded from the auction trade and in March from

  the weapons trade, when a general prohibition against Jews owning weapons was

  also introduced. In February 1938, through a change in the law concerning income

  tax, Jews were excluded from child tax benefit. Further discriminatory legal

  regulations were passed during this period, or else discussed and put on hold.

  Early in 1938 Himmler, Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police, also

  opened up a sideline of ‘Jewish policy’: the systematic expulsion of Eastern

  European Jews from the Reich. Early in January 1938 he initially ordered that all

  Soviet Russian Jews be expelled. This meant about 500–1,000 former Russian

  citizens of Jewish extraction who had fled to the Reich and now, on the basis of

  existing laws, were being expelled without further explanation. This policy would

  finally lead to the expulsion of Polish Jews from the Reich in October 1938. 3

  The Anschluss and the Austrian Jews

  With the Anschluss of Austria, in March 1938 about 200,000 more Jews came

  under immediate German rule. In Austria the persecution of the Jews very rapidly

  reached a level far more radical than the situation that had built up gradually in

  the Old Reich over a period of several years. The ‘backlog’ of anti-Semitic

  discrimination led, amongst the Austrian National Socialists, amidst the general

  frenzy of the assumption of power to a spontaneous discharge of hatred and

  aggression that put the waves of German anti-Semitism in 1933 and 1935 in the

  shade. Immediately after the German invasion the Austrian National Socialists, in

  particular in Vienna, launched a hounding (Hatz) of Jews, in which men and

  women were driven together and often forced by a mocking crowd to perform

  humiliating ‘cleaning duties’ in public streets and squares and similar places. 4

  Over the next few weeks the German anti-Jewish special legislation was intro-

  duced in Austria. 5

  Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

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  But in Austria from the very first, the direct and violent attack on Jewish

  property was a central component of the persecution measures, while within the

  Reich at the same time work was still under way on the preparation of the legal

  foundations for an expropriation of the Jews and the ‘individual actions’ of Party

  activists had been successfully contained for more than two years. In Austria,

  immediately after the Anschluss the local Party organs introduced ‘Commissars’

  for Jewish businesses, whereby the transition to open plundering was often fluid.

  Gradually, however, Josef Bürckel, installed as Reich Governor by the Reich

  government, managed to bring the commissariats under his control and centralize

  the Entjudung of the economy. 6

  Particularly radical was the action by the National Socialists against the mostly

  Orthodox Jewish minority in Burgenland, numbering around 3,800 people, some

  of whom had been driven over the unmanned border, while some had fled to

  Vienna to disappear. In May, 2,000 Jews were arrested in Vienna and transported

  to Dachau. 7 In Austria, a few months after the Anschluss, not only had the Jews been totally eliminated from the economy, but the first mass deportations had

  been put into effect. As a result of these measures the pressure upon the Austrian

  Jews was intensified to the extent that their emigration assumed the character of a

  mass exodus: in the first five months after the Anschluss 46,000 Jews emigrated

  from Austria. 8

  The Final Exclusion of the Jews from the Economy

  and the Crisis of Jewish Emigration

  The anti-Semitic thrust in ‘annexed’ Austria was to have a radicalizing effect on

  the persecution of Jews throughout the whole of the Reich.

  If the ‘Aryanization’ of Jewish assets along legal lines was now introduced in the


  ‘Old Reich’ under the influence of the results achieved in Austria, these measures

  merely ended the factual expropriation of Jewish property, which was already far

  advanced.

  The ‘boycott’ of Jewish companies, the continued discriminatory state measures

  against them, manifold pressure on Jewish owners to sell their businesses, were

  backed up from the end of 1937 by a massive obstruction of access to raw materials

  in the context of the allocation measures of the Four-Year Plan. 9 The Israeli historian Avraham Barkai estimates that by early 1938, as a result of all these

  hindrances to Jewish economic activity, around 60–70 per cent of Jewish busi-

  nesses existing in 1933 were no longer in the hands of their former owners. Of the

  50,000 retail businesses in the Old Reich in 1933, by July 1939 only about 9,000 still

  remained, while the assets in Jewish ownership which, in 1933, were estimated at

  10–12 billion Reichmarks (RM), by April 1938 had already fallen to 5 billion. 10 In contrast, between April and November 1938 about 4,500–5,000 Jewish firms of all sizes

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  Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

  and business types were ‘Aryanized’, or no more than 5 per cent of the Jewish

  businesses existing in 1933.

  The recording and earmarking of Jewish businesses now initiated the definitive

  expulsion of Jews from the economy, ‘Aryanization’, along legal lines. By the end

  of 1937 Jewish businesses, following instructions from the Reich Economics

  Minister, were methodically recorded by the Chambers of Trade and Industry. 11

  The Third Decree of the Reich Citizenship Law of 14 June 1938 finally estab-

  lished that all Jewish businesses were to be included in a special list of enter-

  prises. 12 Work on the recording of the businesses began immediately, and was scheduled for completion by that autumn. 13

  By autumn 1937, many local authorities had begun marking Jewish businesses

  without waiting for the expected legal regulation. After the passing of the Third

  Decree, there was an accumulation of cases in which Party activists marked Jewish

  businesses by daubing them with paint, and local authorities, under pressure from

  these actions, placed special signs on Jewish shops. 14

  The Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan’s ‘Decree against Support for the

  Disguising of Jewish Business Enterprises’ of 22 April threatened German nation-

  als with punishment if they helped to camouflage the ‘Jewish character’ of a

  business enterprise or carry out hidden transactions on behalf of Jews. 15

  The ‘Decree for the Registration of Jewish Assets’ of 26 April, 16 as well as the implementing order issued on the same day, obliged all Jews to report all assets

  over 5,000 marks by 30 June. The implementation order introduced a permit

  procedure for the sale of Jewish businesses which was to be carried out by the

  higher government departments. 17 This established the legal condition whereby remaining Jewish businesses could be steered individually towards ‘Aryan’ owners

  without resorting to the compulsory expropriation of Jewish assets.

  A decree of the Reich Economics Ministry on 5 July 1938 established further

  particulars for the approval procedure; according to these, among other things,

  the relevant Gauleiter was to be consulted in the course of the procedure. In a

  Party order issued two weeks later, Bormann presented the possibilities that this

  decree created for the Party with unmistakable clarity:18

  I refer particularly to the fact that the transfer of Jewish businesses to German hands gives the Party the opportunity to proceed with a healthy policy with regard to middle-sized

  businesses and help national comrades with suitable political and specialist qualities to achieve an independent livelihood even if they lack the requisite financial means. It is the Party’s duty of honour to support those Party comrades who because of their membership

  of the movement have suffered economic disadvantages in the past and help them achieve

  an independent livelihood, and to support German citizens expelled from abroad who have

  lost their belongings . . . It is the Party’s duty to ensure that the Jew does not receive an inappropriately high purchase price. In this way Jewry will make reparation for part of the damage that it has done to the German Volk.

  Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

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  Bormann further announced: ‘Party Comrade Field Marshal Goering plans a

  fundamental sorting out of the Jewish question. This sorting out will occur in a

  way that does the greatest justice to the demands of the Party. The Party has

  accordingly undertaken to avoid all individual actions.’

  The intervention of the Party through its Gau and district economic advisers in

  particular involved a personal and political assessment of interested purchasers

  and led to massive patronage of Party comrades. In the completion of contracts,

  ‘donations’ to the Party were habitual. The Party economic advisers had appro-

  priate channels to use different methods to make the Jewish owner ‘happy to sell’,

  for example through repeated official screenings and the imposition of conditions,

  through arrests or the intervention of the Chambers of Trade and Industry or local

  authorities who ‘suggested the advisability’ of the sale. 19

  Between July and October a series of legal regulations was passed, definitively

  excluding the Jews from a series of further professions. 20 This included in particularly the prohibition on Jews working as real estate brokers or commercial

  agents; in addition, approval was withdrawn from those Jewish doctors still

  permitted to practise, and lawyers still working had to abandon their legal

  practices.

  As early as the beginning of 1938, the SD had reached the conclusion that the

  increasing elimination of Jews from the economy would not necessarily lead to a

  greater volume of emigration, unless possibilities of reception abroad were also

  available. In fact, the number of emigrant Jews in the last quarter of 1937 had

  dropped slightly; within the SD a crisis in ‘Jewish policy’ was anticipated:

  But it must not be forgotten that the possibilities of emigration have declined just as the pressure to emigrate has risen. The mounting exclusion of Jews from German economic

  life, which had taken a very strong upturn under the pressure of the conditions outlined, is at the same time causing a drop in the income of the Jewish community, and of the political and aid organizations from which to a large extent the emigration funds for less affluent Jews and Jews without means are drawn.

  On the other hand, however, ‘excessive reliance on foreign aid for the Jews contains the risk that emigration is made dependent on the goodwill of international aid organizations’. 21

  But with the Anschluss of Austria, which increased the number of Jews living

  under the Nazi regime by 200,000, the emigration chances of the ‘Old Reich’ Jews

  became even smaller, and from the perspective of the Jewish department of the SD

  the balance between ‘pressure to emigrate’ and possibilities of emigration would

  inevitably be lost. However, if emigration fell again, the massively advancing

  ‘exclusion of Jews from economic life’ would lead inevitably to the impoverish-

  ment of Jews still living in Germany, and thus to a further decline in emigration.

  Added to this threatening dilemma was the fact that in March 1938, immediately
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br />   after the Anschluss of Austria, the Jewish Department of the SD learned of a

  decision by Himmler that called the existing emigration policy into question and

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  Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

  clearly made the ‘Jewish experts’ of the SD deeply insecure. Having received an

  application to enter Germany from a German Jewish woman living abroad, the

  Reichsführer SS had ruled that the woman in question had permission to enter the

  country, ‘in so far as she undertook to stay in Germany, as Germany did not want

  to let go of the Jews, its most valuable collateral’. As this instruction ‘fundamen-

  tally altered previous “Jewish policy” ’, the Jewish Department asked, in a docu-

  ment intended for Himmler, for agreement on the following principles of

  emigration policy:22

  (a) Those who are to emigrate are

  1. The anti-social Jewish proletariat without means . . .

  2. other old and young Jews, frail and without means, to free up the

  German welfare authorities for more worthwhile tasks and avoid

  trouble spots

  (b) Those who are not to emigrate are

  1. all wealthy Jews

  2. all Jews who are famous or otherwise suited to acting as collateral.

  The draft, the suggestions of which contradicted existing emigration practice,

  which had had the emigration of affluent Jews as its priority, was passed on to

  Himmler on 31 March and returned to the SD Department II in early June, signed

  by both Heydrich and Himmler, without a more detailed statement on the subject

  from either of them. It was not until the beginning of July that the responsible

  Gestapo specialist informed the Jewish department that Himmler had said the file

  was now redundant. 23

  In the spring and early summer of 1938, then, ‘Jewish policy’ faced a compli-

  cated dilemma: in the medium term the forced emigration of the Austrian Jews

  had to be to the detriment of the chances of emigration of the German Jews,

  particularly since the mass exodus prompted strong resistance in the potential

  countries of immigration. But that meant that because of the speedily advancing

  process of eliminating the Jews from the economy a subproletarian class would