Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 01: The Years of Persecution

by Saul Friedlander

  “You claim that on October 16, 1935 [the official graduation date] you were awarded the doctoral degree by the philosophy faculty of Berlin University. I demand that you refrain from making this false statement. You will not be granted this degree in the future either, as you are unworthy of bearing a German academic title. This has been unequivocally confirmed by a verification of your dissertation. The faculty regrets that you had been allowed to accede to the doctoral examination.”

  In 1961 Heller wrote to Humboldt University in East Berlin to receive his doctoral diploma. The university did not answer, but the senator for education of East Berlin sent an authorization allowing Heller to use the doctoral title. With the opening of the archives of the German Democratic Republic, the reason for the university’s silence in 1961 became clear: Heller’s dissertation was considered to be anticommunist. In 1992, fifty-seven years after Heller had in fact been deemed worthy of the doctoral degree, two representatives of Humboldt University came to his home in Israel and presented him with his diploma. Abraham Heller, personal archives, Ramat-Gan, Israel. I am indebted to Dr. Heller, and to his daughter, Mrs. Nili Bibring, for having given me access to the documentation in this case.

  63. Peter Hanke, Zur Geschichte der Juden in München zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Munich, 1967), p. 139.

  64. Ibid., pp. 139–40.

  65. Kommission…, Dokumente zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, p. 163.

  66. Ibid., pp. 163–64.

  67. Ibid., pp. 167–71.

  68. Ibid., p. 172.

  69. Müller, Stuttgart, p. 296.

  70. Ibid., pp. 296–97.

  71. Ibid., p. 297.

  72. Dr. Hugo Schleicher, Offenburg i/B, to District Office Offenburg, 19 March, 1937, Unterlagen betr. Entrechtung der Juden in Baden 1933–1940, ED 303, IfZ, Munich.

  73. The Mayor as Chairman of the Hospital Fund to District Office Offenburg, 2.4.1937, ibid. When he referred to “the obscurantists of our time,” the mayor of Gengenbach was using the title of Alfred Rosenberg’s anti-Catholic pamphlet An die Dunkelmänner unserer Zeit (To the obscurantists of our time).

  74. District Office, Offenburg, to Mayor, Gengenbach, 5.4.1937, ibid.

  75. Chronik der Stadt Stuttgart, vol. 3, p. 354.

  76. Ibid., p. 368.

  77. “Otto Bernheimer, ‘Kunde Göring,’” in Hans Lamm, ed., Von Juden in München (Munich, 1959), pp. 351–52.

  78. Thomas Klein, ed., Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei über die Provinz Hessen-Nassau 1933–1936, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1986), p. 515.

  79. Bröszat, Fröhlich, and Wiesemann, Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. 1, p. 462.

  80. Ibid., p. 458.

  81. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, pp. 40, 108. An SD quarterly report for the period January through April 1937 states that some large Jewish firms had doubled their revenues by comparison to 1933. Ibid., p. 108.

  82. Hayes, “Big Business and Aryanisation,” p. 260.

  83. Ibid., pp. 260–61.

  84. Ibid., p. 262.

  85. Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, p. 108.

  86. Ibid., p. 84.

  87. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, p. 165.

  88. See Wilhelm Treue, “Hitlers Denkschrift zum Vierjahresplan,” VfZ 3 (1955).

  89. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 2, p. 267.

  90. Adjutantur des Führers 1934–1937, microfilm MA 13/2, IfZ, Munich.

  91. The Führer’s Deputy, the Chief of Staff, directive, 23.10.37, Stellvertreter des Führers (Anordnungen…), 1937, Db 15.02, IfZ, Munich.

  92. Ben-Elissar, La Diplomatie du IIIe Reich, p. 191. I follow Ben-Elissar for most details on this issue.

  93. Ibid., p. 194 (see English translation in Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, vol. 5, pp. 746–47).

  94. Ibid., pp. 209ff. On the whole issue see Avraham Barkai, “German Interests in the Haavarah-Transfer Agreement 1933–1939,” LBIY 35 ([London] 1990).

  95. Jüdische Rundschau, Jan. 14, 1938, LBI, New York.

  96. Hitler, Speeches and Proclamations, p. 1057.

  97. Kwiet and Eschwege, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand, p. 201.

  98. Thomas Bernhard, Heldenplatz (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), pp. 136–37.

  Chapter 8 An Austrian Model?

  1. Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York, 1988), p. 628. A minor postscript may be added to the story of this departure. As the emigration and an entry permit to France had been arranged through the intervention of the U.S. ambassador to Paris, William Bullitt (an ex-patient and devoted admirer of Freud’s), an American official accompanied the Freuds from Vienna to Paris. Years later a person who knew the official wrote: “When I saw him…he told me about the trip and also vehemently described his personal feelings of repugnance for Freud, his friends and relatives, Jews and psychoanalysis.” Quoted in Linda Donn, Freud and Jung: Years of Friendship, Years of Loss (New York, 1988), p. 20.

  2. Tonny Moser, “Österreich,” in Benz, Dimension des Völkermords, p. 68n.

  3. F. L. Carstens, Faschismus in Österreich: Von Schönerer zu Hitler (Munich, 1978), p. 185.

  4. Ibid., pp. 231–32.

  5. Ibid., p. 233.

  6. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, pp. 52–53.

  7. Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer, p. 32.

  8. Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, p. 33.

  9. Ibid., p. 38.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid., p. 39.

  12. The Führer’s Deputy to the Reich Commissary for the Reunification of Austria with the Reich, Gauleiter Party comrade Josef Bürckel, 18.7.1938, Reichskomissar für die Wiedervereinigung Österreichs mit dem Deutschen Reich, microfilm MA 145/1, IfZ, Munich.

  13. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 61.

  14. The State Commissary for Private Business (Walter Rafelsberger) to Heinrich Himmler, 14.8.1939, Persönlicher Stab des Reichsführers SS, microfilm MA–290, IfZ, Munich.

  15. Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Antisemitism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992), p. 289. About the confiscation of Jewish dwellings in Vienna, see mainly Gerhard Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien, 1938–1945 (Vienna, 1975).

  16. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, p. 52.

  17. Eichmann to Hagen, 8.5.1938, in Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Guttman, and Abraham Margalioth, eds., Documents on the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 93–94. There were other ways of perceiving the situation that was unfolding in former Austria. In a letter to the London Times of April 4, 1938, a Mr. Edwin A. Stoner wrote: “At St Anton—a village beloved by British skiers—the railway station was a blaze of color; even the station dog wore his swastika, but he looked unhappy and wagged a reluctant tail. Ninety per cent of Viennese now sport the swastika, popularly referred to as ‘the safety pin.’ One of the strangest sights was the vast crowd struggling to get into the British consulate in Wallnerstrasse. Many were Jews desirous of British nationality or anxious to leave a country where only Aryans are tolerated. Poor demented folk, they had little chance of success. Quoted in George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna: The Rise and Destruction of a Family, 1842–1942 (New York, 1981), p. 199.

  18. Herbert Rosenkranz, “Austrian Jewry: Between Forced Emigration and Deportation,” in Yisrael Guttman and Cynthia J. Haft, eds., Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945 (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 70–71. During his interrogation by Israeli police in 1960, Eichmann described how Löwenherz, just released from prison, authored the new plan for the centralization of the emigration procedures: “I gave Dr. Löwenherz paper and pencil and said: Please go back for one more night and write up a memo telling me how you would organize this whole thing, how you would run it. Object: stepped-up emigration…. The next day, this Dr. Löwenherz brought me his draft. I found it excellent and we immediately took action on his suggestions.” Jochen von Lang, ed., Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police (New York, 1983), pp. 50–5
1.

  19. Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer, p. 41.

  20. Quoted in Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS (New York, 1970), p. 337.

  21. Ibid., p. 338.

  22. On the forcible expulsion of Jews from the Reich, mainly over Germany’s western borders, see Jacob Toury, “Ein Auftakt zur Endlösung: Judenaustreibungen über nichtslawische Reichsgrenzen 1933 bis 1939,” in Büttner, Johe, and Voss, Das Unrechtsregime, vol. 2, pp. 164ff.; for Austria, pp. 169ff.

  23. Memorandum of II 112/4, 2.11.38, idem.

  24. Moser, “Österreich,” p. 68n.

  25. SD, II 112, to Racial Policy Office of the NSDAP, 3.12.38; Racial Policy Office to Chief of the SD Main Office, 14.12.38, SD Hauptamt, microfilm MA-554, IfZ, Munich.

  26. Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, p. 40. In May, on Eichmann’s orders, some nineteen hundred Jews with prior records of jail sentences were shipped to Dachau, spreading fear in the community and hastening the exodus. Herbert, Best., p. 213.

  27. Gordon J. Horwitz, In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen (London, 1991), p. 23.

  28. Ibid., p. 28.

  29. Ibid., p. 29.

  30. Ibid., p. 12.

  31. Ibid., pp. 13–14.

  32. Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, p. 36.

  33. Ibid., pp. 41–42.

  34. Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust (Syracuse, N.Y., 1995), p. 75.

  35. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1938, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1950), pp. 740–41.

  36. Shlomo Z. Katz, “Public Opinion in Western Europe and the Evian Conference of July 1938,” Yad Vashem Studies 9 (1973): 106.

  37. Ibid., 108.

  38. Ibid., 111.

  39. Ibid., 113.

  40. Ibid., 114.

  41. Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1938–1945, vol. 2 (Herrsching, 1984), p. 23.

  42. David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938–1941 (New York, 1985), p. 50.

  43. Ben-Elissar, La Diplomatie, p. 251.

  44. Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 2, p. 899.

  45. For the situation of the Jews in Italy before 1938 and for the 1938 laws, see, among others, Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy 1922–1945 (London, 1978), particularly pp. 152ff; Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941–1943 (London, 1990), pp. 222ff; Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (New York, 1987), pp. 28ff.

  46. Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, p. 191.

  47. For the situation of the Jews in Hungary before 1938 and for the laws of 1938 and 1939, see, among others, Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, vol. 1 (New York, 1981), particularly pp. 118ff; Nathaniel Katzburg, Hungary and the Jews: Policy and Legislation 1920–1943 (Ramat Gan, Israel, 1981), particularly pp. 94ff; Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe, pp. 85ff.

  48. All details are taken from Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, L’Encyclique cachée de Pie XI: Une occasion manquée de l’Église face à l’antisémitisme (Paris, 1995). The full text of the encyclical is published for the first time in this study. Regarding Pius XI’s meeting with LaFarge and his instructions to him, see ibid., pp. 69ff.

  49. Ibid., pp. 113ff.

  50. Ibid., pp. 180–81.

  51. Ibid., pp. 285ff.

  52. Ibid., pp. 116ff., and particularly 138.

  53. Ibid., pp. 139, 208.

  54. Letter of State Secretary Zschintsch, 17.3.1938 (NG-1261) in Mendelsohn, The Holocaust, vol. 1, p. 75.

  55. Michael P. Steinberg, The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival: Austria as Theater and Ideology, 1890–1938 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990), pp. 164ff.

  56. Ibid., pp. 233ff.

  57. Shirakawa, The Devil’s Music Master, p. 221.

  58. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov. 4, 1937, Nationalsozialismus/1937 (misc.), LBI, New York.

  59. SOPADE, Deutschland-Berichte 5 (1938): 195–96. Strangely enough, in their all-encompassing propaganda effort, the Nazis did not make major use of film until the beginning of the war. Thus, during the second half of the thirties, the only anti-Semitic productions shown in German theaters were an adaptation of a Swedish comedy, Peterson und Bandel (1935), a merely allusive scene in the German film Pour le mérite (1938), and, finally, a minor anti-Jewish film, Robert und Bertram (1939). Dorothea Hollstein, “Jud Süss” und die Deutschen: Antisemitische Vorurteile im nationalsozialistischen Spielfilm (Frankfurt am Main, 1971), pp. 38ff.

  60. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 2, p. 364.

  61. Minister of Justice to State Prosecutors…, 24.2.1938, Reichsjustizministerium, Fa 195/1938, IfZ, Munich.

  62. Memorandum, II 112, 28.3.38, SD Hauptamt, microfilm No. MA–554, IfZ, Munich.

  63. See Adam, Judenpolitik, pp. 198–99. The seeming absurdity of this measure did not escape the victims: “Now we have also to turn in our passports,” noted Berlin Jewish physician Hertha Nathorff in her diary. “Jews are not allowed to have passports anymore. They are afraid that we might get across the border! But isn’t that what they want? Strange logic.” Wolfgang Benz, ed. Das Tagebuch der Hertha Nathorff: Berlin-New York, Aufzeichnungen 1933 bis 1945 (Munich, 1987), p. 105.

  64. For the text of the decree see Pätzold, Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung, p. 155.

  65. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 237.

  66. Pätzold, Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung, p. 159.

  67. Christiane Hoss, “Die jüdischen Patienten in rheinischen Anstalten zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus,” in Mathias Leipert, Rudolf Styrnal, Winfried Schwarzer, eds., Verlegt nach unbekannt: Sterilisation und Euthanasie in Galkhausen 1933–1945 (Cologne, 1987), pp. 67–68.

  68. I owe this information to the late Amos Funkenstein.

  69. Internal memorandum of the SD, August 29, 1938, regarding letter of Streicher to Himmler, July 22, 1938, and Rosenberg to Henlein, October 15, 1938, in Mendelsohn, The Holocaust, vol. 4, pp. 216–17.

  70. Reich leadership of the NSDAP, Office for the Fostering of German Letters to SS-Hauptsturmführer Hartl, Gestapo Vienna, 17.6.1938; SD II 112 to Reich leadership of the NSDAP, Office for the Fostering of German Letters, 17.8.1939, SD Hauptamt, microfilm MA–554, IfZ, Munich.

  71. SS-Oberführer Albert to SS-Standartenführer Six, 18.1.39; SS-Standartenführer Six to SS-Oberführer Albert, 26.1.39, SD Hauptamt, microfilm MA–554, IfZ, Munich.

  72. Mendelsohn, The Holocaust, vol. 4, p. 138.

  73. Karl Winter to Rosenberg, 9.3.38, NSDAP, Hauptamt Wissenschaft, microfilm MA–205, IfZ, Munich.

  74. Main Office for Science (NSDAP) to Karl Winter, 18.3.38, ibid.

  75. Karl Winter to Rosenberg, 30.3.38, ibid.

  76. Main Office for Science (NSDAP) to Karl Winter, 12.4.38, ibid.

  77. Max Kreuzberger Research Papers, AR 7183, Box 8, Folder 9, LBI, New York.

  78. Ibid.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, p. 114.

  81. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 223.

  82. Ibid., p. 229. I am using the simplified translation of the law as presented in Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 82.

  83. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 232; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 83–84.

  84. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 234.

  85. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 84.

  86. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 234.

  87. Ibid., p. 242. Seven hundred physicians were allowed to attend to the Jewish population as “caretakers of the sick” and two hundred lawyers were similarly authorized as “consultants.” See Arndt and Boberach, “Deutsches Reich,” p. 28. The procedure that enabled a Jewish lawyer to become a consultant—and the status of consultants—is analyzed in Lotha
r Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933–1949: Anpassung und Unterwerfung in der Ära Gürtner (Munich, 1988), pp. 181ff.

  88. Ibid., pp. 178–79.

  89. Reich Chamber of Physicians to Ministry of Education, 3.10.38, Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft u. Erziehung, microfilm MA 103/1, IfZ, Munich.

  90. Minister of Justice to Minister of Education…, 3.10.38, ibid.

  91. Interior Minister to Minister of Education, 14.12.38, ibid.

  92. Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, p. 129.

  93. Hayes, “Big Business,” p. 266.

  94. Ibid., p. 267.

  95. See in particular Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 60–90; Genschel, Die Verdrängung, mainly chap. 10; Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, p. 75.

  96. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 79.

  97. Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, p. 118.

  98. For the details of this affair and the supporting documentary evidence, see Wolf Gruner, “Die Reichshauptstadt und die Verfolgung der Berliner Juden 1933–1945,” in Reinhard Rürup, ed., Jüdische Geschichte in Berlin: Essays und Studien (Berlin, 1995), pp. 238, 260–61.

  99. None of this was apparently mentioned by Speer in his talks with Gitta Sereny. See Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (New York, 1995).

  100. It was the first time that the SD had taken the initiative of arresting a large number of German Jews and sending them to concentration camps. Herbert, Best, p. 213.

  101. For the text of the Gestapo memorandum and its historical context, see Wolf Gruner, “‘Lesen brauchen sie nicht zu können’: Die Denkschrift über die Behandlung der Juden in der Reichshauptstadt auf allen Gebieten des öffentlichen Lebens, von Mai 1938,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 4 (1995): 305ff.

  102. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3, p. 452.