I Am a Star (3 page)

For those Jews who remained in Germany, conditions finally improved. In the early 1800s they were permitted to leave the ghetto, and they were gradually accepted by some of the Christian community. During the 1870s, they became full and equal citizens under the law throughout the country. They felt part of the German family, differing from other Germans only in religion.

A large number of Germans, however, never fully accepted their Jewish fellow citizens because of their different traditions. Jews were still not permitted to reach the highest ranks in law, government, the armed forces, or the universities. At the same time, a new wave of hostility based on a racist theory emerged in many parts of Europe. People began to believe that the Jews were a separate, inferior race. Jews tried hard to become accepted by society, some of them proudly proclaiming that their religion was secondary to their nationality.

At first, in Germany as elsewhere, most people did not believe this racist anti-Semitism. This attitude changed however as Germans looked for a scapegoat after their disastrous defeat at the end of World War I in 1918. During the war both Jews and non-Jews had fought side by side and died together for their fatherland, but with Germany’s spiritual and economic defeat, this period of unity and patriotism ended. Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and to admit that she had started the war. She had to accept the severe measures that the Allies imposed, and to drastically reduce the army. She also had to pay large amounts of money to compensate for the suffering caused during the war, and to reduce the German Empire. A new democratic government was elected and the Weimar Republic was formed.

The Weimar government was troubled from the start. The postwar years saw inflation, unemployment and finally, in 1929, a world depression. Jewish people were blamed for the ailing economy and extremists called for them to be pushed out of German society. Racist anti-Semitism gathered support. In this climate of hostility and depression the stage was set for Hitler’s Nazi party to emerge.

 

 

A
dolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau, a village in Austria near the German border. He was not a gifted student, and he failed as an artist. In 1907, he moved to Vienna where his political aspirations were born. At the age of twenty-four he arrived in Munich, Germany, and soon was in the midst of World War I. He volunteered for service in the German army, fought in many battles and reached the rank of corporal.

In 1919 in Munich, Hitler joined a small nationalist group called the German Workers’ Party, which changed its name a year later to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This group later became known as the Nazi Party.

On November 8, 1923, Hitler held a rally in a Munich beer hall and called for a Nazi revolution against the Bavarian government. The following day he attempted to seize power. This event became known as the Beer Hall Putsch, which means revolution. Hitler was arrested for treason and sentenced to five years in prison. He only served nine months of his prison term. During his time in prison, he put his ideas into a book called
Mein Kampf,
or
My Struggle.

Many Germans were enchanted by Hitler’s magnetism and regarded him as their savior. He made it clear in
Mein Kampf
what he would do to create a new Germany. He intended to establish a New Order (the Third Reich) that would last a thousand years. Hitler said that Germany must rid itself of all Communists and Jews, whom he considered enemies of the state. He held a special hatred for the Jews and singled them out to bear the blame for all of Germany’s troubles. Hitler believed the Jews as a race were inferior to the Aryan (German) “Master Race.” Pure Aryans, he contended, were large-boned, blond, and blue-eyed, although Hitler himself was short and dark-haired. He believed that all Jews had to be eliminated because their blood was inferior to that of the German Aryans. He said Jewish blood would pollute the “master race.” The truth is all blood types occur in all races and all nations. Hitler’s brand of anti-Semitism would be the worst ever seen anywhere.

After Hitler was released from prison, he convinced the government that his party would respect the law. He rose steadily to power and gained support from labor unions, business, industry, and agriculture. In the New Order the swastika, or twisted cross, became the symbol of the Nazi Party.

In 1930 Hitler’s brown-shirted storm troopers, or Sturmabteilung (SA), marched through the streets with the Nazi swastika flag, singing, “Today we rule Germany, tomorrow the world!”

On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the ailing President von Hindenburg, who died eighteen months later. After von Hindenburg’s death, Hitler abolished the presidency and made himself the absolute ruler, or Fuehrer, of the nation. Crowds cheered him with cries of “Heil, Hitler,” which means Hail, Hitler. The Weimar Republic, which had lasted from 1918 to 1933, was over.

From the start, Hitler’s government was based on lies and deception. Hitler had a secret police called the Gestapo and a special security force known as the SS, for Schutzstaffel, also called the Blackshirts. He named Josef Goebbels chief of propaganda, assigning him to spread his doctrine, but Hitler himself was an excellent speaker and influenced both young and old. Hermann Goering became second in command to Hitler. Rudolf Hess was Hitler’s secretary, and Heinrich Himmler became the party’s chief executioner.

Two themes dominated Hitler’s dictatorship from beginning to end:
Lebensraum,
the belief that Germany needed more land and was entitled to invade her neighbors in order to get it; and
Judenfrage,
the theory that the entire Jewish race had to be eliminated. During the Hitler regime, the Nazis did their best to carry these ideas to their murderous extremes. Anti-Semitism became official government policy.

 

 

T
he first stage in Hitler’s plahned destruction of the Jews, from 1933 to 1938, was to deprive Jews in Germany of all rights. Decrees followed one another in rapid succession. The first decree was for a one-day boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. Then the ritual slaughter of animals in accordance with Jewish dietary laws was forbidden. There were public burnings of books written by Jews. The first German concentration camp—Dachau, located near Munich—was established in 1933.

Between 1933 and 1935 most Jewish teachers, public servants, and professionals lost their jobs. On August 2, 1934, Hitler was named president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The Third Reich had become a reality. On September 15, 1935, the so-called Nuremberg Laws, which were anti-Jewish racial laws, came into effect. Jews could no longer be German citizens. Those of mixed Jewish and Aryan backgrounds were called
Mischlinge,
or half-breeds, and were subjected to the same harsh laws. Jews were no longer permitted to fly the German flag. In 1938, Germany put its dream of world domination into action by annexing Austria. The takeover of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia followed soon afterward.

On July 6, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States of America invited people from thirty-three nations to meet at Evian, France. Thirty-two nations sent representatives to this conference to discuss how they could aid political refugees who wanted to emigrate from Germany and Austria. These refugees were mainly Jews, whose lives were becoming unbearable in those countries. The Evian Conference failed. A German newspaper ran this headline: “Jews for Sale—Who Wants Them? No One!”

On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a seventeen-year-old Polish Jewish student, walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, a minor German official. Grynszpan had been angered by the forced deportation of his parents from Germany to Poland. The Grynszpans, like many other Polish Jews, had lived in Germany for a long time without seeking citizenship and now were mercilessly thrown out of the country. Vom Rath died two days later on November 9, 1938.

This incident triggered a nationwide riot in Germany and Austria on the night of November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, continued for two days. Almost all Jewish houses of worship were put to the torch. Jewish homes and businesses were looted and destroyed. Many Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Those who resisted were shot.

Soon afterward, Jews were forbidden to attend German schools and to own property or businesses. The Nazi scheme was to make conditions for the Jews impossible by keeping them from making a living. This tactic, they hoped, would drive the Jews out of Germany.

Many Jews managed to leave Germany and Austria, but most of those who lived in Eastern Europe were stranded. Those Jews who remained in Germany, in spite of all humiliation, were still attached to the country they had lived in for so many years. Most of them thought this, too, would pass, not recognizing the danger they were facing. When they finally were ready to leave, they found that the doors of the outside world would not open. Escape routes were blocked because of immigration quota systems, unemployment, and general apathy in the countries of the free world.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun. Hitler, drunk with power, told his soldiers: “Close your eyes to pity! Act brutally!” His armies would conquer many countries in Europe before his defeat by the Allies in 1945. The fate of the remaining Jews in Europe was sealed. The Nazis were planning total extermination. The term Holocaust, which means complete destruction by fire, is often used when speaking of this period of slaughter and brutality.

The extermination of the Jews took place in stages. At first the Nazis resettled the Jews into ghettos and concentration camps, where many died of starvation and disease. The able-bodied were often forced to perform slave labor. The largest ghettos were in Poland, where many of Europe’s Jews lived. On November 15, 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto, containing approximately 500,000 Jews, was sealed off from the outside world.