If Krieger’s conduct perhaps bordered on prostitution, then real prostitutes were particularly vulnerable to denunciation from hostile neighbours for entertaining Jewish clients. Jewish men and women who had more committed relationships with non-Jewish partners took considerable precautions to conceal them after September 1938, but inevitably many fell victim to denunciations from prying neighbours or zealous Nazi snoopers. As time went on, people were denounced simply for being ‘friendly to Jews’: innkeepers for incautiously telling someone that Jews were still welcome in their establishments, German citizens for maintaining friendly relations with Jews of an entirely non-sexual kind, or even non-Jews for shaking hands with Jews in the street. On occasion the behaviour for which such people were denounced could denote a principled opposition to Nazi antisemitism; more often it was the product of indifference to official rules and regulations, or even simply long-maintained habit. Many such denunciations were false, but this in a sense was beside the point; false denunciations contributed as much as truthful ones to a general atmosphere in which Germans gradually cut off all their ties to Jewish friends and acquaintances, much as Melita Maschmann had done. By going well beyond what the Nuremberg Laws prescribed, and by pursuing all the denunciations they received, however frivolous or self-interested, the Gestapo and other agencies of law enforcement and control dismantled piece by piece the elaborate networks of social contacts which had been built up between German Jews and their fellow Germans over the decades. They were backed by the whole range of Party institutions, from the Block Warden upwards, who were similarly dedicated to preventing any further social intercourse between Aryans and Jews.96
Only occasionally did a Block Warden turn a blind eye, as in the case of the young lawyer and aspiring journalist Raimund Pretzel and his partner, a Jewish woman whom he met on his return from Paris in 1934. Pretzel had originally left Germany because of his dislike of the Third Reich’s repression and racism, and also in pursuit of a girl; when she married another man, he went back to Germany and began to make a living writing unpolitical articles for the arts pages of newspapers and magazines. His new partner had been sacked from her library job because of her race, and her marriage had also recently broken up. Her son, Peter, was blond and blue-eyed, and was even photographed as an ideal Aryan child. When Pretzel moved into her flat, they were contravening the Nuremberg Laws, but the Block Warden liked the family and protected them from interference. However, in 1938 she became pregnant, and the danger of denunciation became too great. Taking Peter with her, she went to an emigration office and obtained leave to join her brother in England. Pretzel himself got permission to go to England separately, using the pretext that he was writing a series of articles about English life; viewed with suspicion by the British authorities when he overstayed, he found great difficulty in making ends meet, and was rescued only by Frederic Warburg, head of the publishers Secker and Warburg, who was sufficiently impressed by the synopsis of a book he had submitted to offer him a contract. This satisfied the Home Office, who gave Pretzel a year’s extension to his visa. In the meantime, he had married his partner, and they had had a son. The future for both of them, however, seemed anything but certain, as it did for thousands of others who emigrated at this time.97
‘THE JEWS MUST GET OUT OF EUROPE’
I
Jews in particular emigrated from Germany if they were young enough to start a new life abroad and wealthy enough to finance it. This was not voluntary or free emigration, of course; it was flight into exile to escape conditions that for many were becoming wholly intolerable. We do not really know how many Jews left Germany during these years. The official statistics, which continued to classify Jews by religion alone, are all we have to go on. Given the very high rates of conversion to Christianity over the decades before 1933, the official figures might have underrepresented by 10 per cent or more the number of people who fled the country because the Nazi regime classified them as Jewish whatever their religion. According to the official statistics, there were 437,000 Germans of Jewish faith in Germany in 1933. By the end of 1937, the figure had dropped to around 350,000. Thirty-seven thousand members of the Jewish faith left Germany in 1933, under the impact of the boycott of 1 April and the Law of 7 April; a fall in the number of emigrants to 23,000 the following year reflected the absence of any similar nationwide actions or laws in 1934. The number stayed relatively low in the following years too - 21,000 in 1935, 25,000 in 1936 and 23,000 in 1937. As Europeans, most of them preferred to stay in another country on the same continent - 73 per cent of 1933’s Jewish emigrants remained within Europe - while only 8 per cent travelled overseas, to destinations such as the United States. In 1933, despite the relative weakness of Zionism in Germany, no fewer than 19 per cent settled in Palestine. Altogether, 52,000 German Jews went there between 1933 and 1939. A significant reason for this surprisingly high number lay in the fact that representatives of the Zionist movement in Germany and Palestine had signed a pact with the Nazi government on 27 August 1933. Known as the Haavara Transfer Agreement, it was personally endorsed by Hitler and committed the German Ministry of Economics to allowing Jews who left for Palestine to transfer a significant portion of their assets there - about 140 million Reichsmarks all told - while those who left for other countries had to leave much of what they owned behind.98
Map 13. Jewish Overseas Emigration, 1933-8
The reasons for the Nazis’ favoured treatment of emigrants to Palestine were complex. On the one hand, they regarded the Zionist movement as a significant part of the world Jewish conspiracy they had dedicated their lives to destroying. On the other, helping Jewish emigration to Palestine might mitigate international criticism of antisemitic measures at home. Moreover, and crucially, the principal aim of the Nazis in these years was to drive the Jews out of Germany and preferably out of Europe too; for all the murderous violence they meted out to them, they did not at this stage intend, still less plan, to exterminate all Germany’s Jews. A Germany free of Jews would, in Nazi eyes, be a stronger Germany, fit to take on the rest of Europe and then the world. Only when that happened would the Nazis turn to solving what they thought of as the Jewish problem on a world scale. The Zionists were prepared to do a deal with the Nazis if the result was a strengthening of the Jewish presence in Palestine. German Jews would bring much-needed skills and experience with them; they would also, many leading Zionists thought, bring money and capital for investment. In return, the Haavara Transfer Agreement, which formalized these arrangements, provided for the export of much-needed goods such as citrus fruit from Palestine to Germany as part of the exchange. On both sides, therefore, this was above all a marriage of convenience. But it was increasingly disputed within the Nazi regime itself. This was not least the consequence of the establishment of the Jewish Affairs Division of the SS Security Service in 1935. One of the principal sections of the organization, it was led by an increasingly radical group of young officers, including Dieter Wisliceny, Theodor Dannecker and Adolf Eichmann. These men became progressively more anxious that encouraging Jews to go to Palestine would accelerate the formation of a Jewish state there, with dangerous consequences for Germany in the long run, or so they thought.99
For Zionists, the cloud of persecution and discrimination, above all in the shape of the boycott of 1 April 1933 and the subsequent civil service law, had a certain silver lining, for it brought Germany’s deeply divided Jews closer together. Already in 1932, in the light of mounting antisemitic attacks, regional Jewish associations had decided to establish a national organization, which was set up on 12 February 1933. It did little apart from protesting that it had nothing to do with what the Nazis described as the international campaign for the boycott of German goods. It was not until September 1933 that this organization, together with others, including the German Zionists, set up an umbrella organization in the shape of the Reich Representation of German Jews under the chairmanship of the Berlin rabbi Leo Baeck. Its purpose was to regroup and defend Jew
ish life in the new Germany. Its leaders urged a dialogue with the Nazis, perhaps with a view to reaching a Concordat like the one the Third Reich had concluded with the Catholics. They emphasized the patriotic service many Jews had rendered the Reich at the front during the First World War. Jews were not the only Germans to believe that the violence that accompanied the seizure of power would soon dissipate, leaving a more stable, ordered polity. Leo Baeck even encouraged the preparation of a large dossier illustrating the Jewish contribution to German life.
Map 14. Jewish Emigration within Europe, 1933-8
But the dossier was banned before it could be published.100 The financial penalties imposed on German Jews, the Aryanization of Jewish businesses and the tightening of restrictions on the export of currency and chattels ensured that German Jews found it increasingly difficult to obtain refuge in countries whose governments did not want immigrants if they were going to be a burden on the welfare system. Even finding the money to pay for a passage out of Germany had become a problem. The fact that an increasing proportion of German Jews was now near or over retirement age made things worse. Jewish immigrants of working age were often resented because unemployment remained high in many countries as a result of the Depression. Jewish organizations in receiving countries did their best to help by providing funds and opportunities for work, organizing visas and the like, but the extent to which they were able to influence government policy was very restricted, and they were hampered in addition by their own fear of arousing antisemitism at home.101
On 6 July 1938, a conference of thirty-two nations met at Evian, on the French shore of Lake Geneva, to discuss the growing international phenomenon of migration. The conference made an attempt to impose generally agreed guidelines, especially in the light of the possible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of destitute Jews from Poland and Romania. But it was careful not to upset German sensibilities at a time when international relations were becoming increasingly fraught. The German government did not take part, declaring Jewish emigrants to be an internal matter. One delegation after another at the conference made it clear that it would not liberalize its policy towards refugees; if anything, it would tighten things up. Britain and the European states saw themselves mainly as countries of transit, from which Jewish migrants would quickly disperse overseas. Anti-immigrant sentiment in many countries, complete with rhetoric about being ‘swamped’ by people of ‘alien’ culture, contributed further to this growing reluctance.102
At the same time, of course, the situation offered new opportunities for corrupt German officials, who frequently demanded money or goods in return for their agreement to apply the all-important rubber stamp to the papers of would-be emigrants. The temptation to enrich oneself was all the greater since the emigrants had to leave virtually everything behind. One Jew who applied for emigration papers was told by an official after preliminary formalities had been completed:‘Well, give me a thought when you emigrate, won’t you?’ I told him to say what he wanted, and I’d see what I could do. A few hours later, as I was having supper at home, the doorbell rang, and there was the official himself (in his uniform with a coat over it), and as I opened the door and was obviously surprised to see him there, he said he only wanted to tell me that he would very much like to have a round table and a rug about 2 metres by 3. And indeed our emigration permits were issued in an amazingly short time. 103
To get round currency and other problems the Gestapo eventually organized illegal transports of Jewish emigrants, chartering boats to Palestine down the Danube via the Black Sea, and charging, as might be expected, hugely inflated prices for tickets.104
II
For those who stayed in Germany, the leaders of the Jewish community organized new institutional structures to try and alleviate the situation. A central Committee for Aid and Reconstruction was founded on 13 April 1933, following on a similar Central Institution for Jewish Economic Aid the previous month. These organizations raised loans for Jews who found themselves in economic difficulties, tried to find employment for Jews who had lost their jobs and ran retraining courses for Jews who wanted to go into agriculture or handicrafts (many of these subsequently emigrated). Increasingly, Jewish organizations rendered logistical, bureaucratic and sometimes financial assistance to those who wanted to emigrate. Until 1938 Jews were still entitled to public welfare benefits, so Jewish charities acted more in the way of a supplement than a substitution when it came to aiding the really destitute; however, as the Jewish community grew steadily more impoverished, so the work of the charities became increasingly important.105
The process of segregation had a particularly stark impact on Jewish children. In 1933 there were about 60,000 Jewish children aged from seven, the starting age for formal schooling, to fourteen, the age at which it ceased to be compulsory, in Germany, and a substantial further number who were enrolled in secondary schools. Emigration, particularly amongst Jews of child-bearing and child-rearing age, reduced the number of young Jewish people between six and twenty-five years of age from 117,000 in 1933 to 60,000 in 1938. The children had to face a concerted effort by the Nazis to drive them out of German schools. The Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities, promulgated on 25 April 1933, together with its implementation orders, set a maximum for new admissions to all schools above the primary level of 1.5 per cent of non-Aryan children. At the same time, the rabid hostility of the Nazi Students’ League drove most Jewish students out of the universities within a short space of time, so that only 590 were left in the autumn semester of 1933 compared to 3,950 in the summer semester of the previous year. In a similar way, the hostility of fanatical Nazi teachers and, increasingly, Hitler Youth activists in the schools had a powerful effect in driving Jewish children out. In Württemberg, for instance, while 11 per cent of Jewish pupils were forced to abandon their secondary education because of the Law, some 58 per cent broke it off as a result of the hostility of some teachers and children at their schools. So fierce was the pressure that even Education Minister Rust complained about it in May 1933, and repeated his strictures in July.
In some schools, Jewish children were made to sit on a special ‘Jewish bench’ in the classroom, and they were banned from German lessons. They had to listen to their teachers describing Jews as criminals and traitors. And they were not allowed to take part in ceremonies and festivals, concerts and plays. Teachers deliberately humiliated them and gave them bad marks for their work. Of course, the atmosphere varied strongly from school to school; in some working-class areas, the other children showed considerable solidarity with their Jewish classmates, while in small-town Germany, local bullies made their life a misery and caused them to live in permanent fear of being beaten up. The result of such pressure was that in Prussia the number of Jewish children in state secondary schools fell from 15,000 in May 1932 to 7,000 in May 1935 and just over 4,000 the following year; figures that almost certainly underestimate the scale of the decline, since they only include the children of parents of Jewish faith, not children classified as Jewish on racial grounds by the regime. By 1938, a mere 1 per cent of state secondary school pupils in Prussia was Jewish, and from January that year these young people were in any case officially excluded from sitting the common university entrance examination. The remaining Jewish school pupils were all summarily expelled at the end of the year.106
The expulsion of Jewish children from German state schools urgently demanded the provision of replacement educational facilities by the Jewish community. Parents from the acculturated Jewish middle class looked down on Germany’s Jewish schools in 1933; many considered their standards low and did not share their religious stance. This applied particularly, of course, to the many parents of Christian faith who now suddenly found themselves classified by the regime as Jewish by race and thrown together with a community they had up to now studiously avoided. Many local Jewish communities had no educational facilities at all. Concerned parents, appalled at the isolation into which their childr
en were being driven by the hostility they encountered in state schools, often took the lead in providing them. By 1935 over half of the 30,000 Jewish children of primary-school age were attending Jewish community schools, funded mostly by Jewish organizations. Finding trained teachers was difficult, and classes were often very large, with up to 50 children each, in cramped and inadequate accommodation. Especially in the secondary schools, children from widely varying backgrounds, abilities and educational experience were suddenly thrown together. Transport and travel were major problems for many parents and children. There were bitter quarrels between different ideological factions, Orthodox, liberal and secular, right and left, about the curriculum, which only died down as increasing discrimination and repression made them seem less important. By early 1937 there were 167 Jewish schools in Germany, attended by nearly 24,000 pupils out of a total of 39,000 in all. Emigration soon reduced their number; by October 1939 there were fewer than 10,000 Jewish schoolchildren left in Germany, and a number of Jewish schools had closed down. Their achievement was above all, perhaps, to provide an educational environment free from the ethos of race hatred, militarism and brute physical prowess that had come to dominate the vast majority of German schools by this time.107
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