Jewish Life in Nazi Germany: Dilemmas and Responses (22 page)

Beginning in 1934, the main points of the Revisionist attack against the ZVfD included many of the old contentions from its struggles with the ZVfD leadership during the 1920s. These included arguments that the ZVfD promoted Jewish assimilation in Germany, that it was a thoroughly Marxist organization, and that it opposed the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. while these themes were not entirely new, they were significantly different in emphasis and intensity, and possessed far more dangerous implications for the ZVfD in an environment of Nazi hatred and persecution. In particular, public charges against any Jewish organization that it encouraged Jews to re-main in Germany, or that it was Marxist, were dangerous in light of the ideological foundations of Nazism and Hitler’s regime.

From the very beginning of Nazi rule, however, the Zionist movement in Germany was faced with specific problems and dilemmas rendering problematic its quest to transform German Jewry and secure its orderly and economically viable departure from Germany. while

Nazi authorities were soon satisfied that emigration in general, and Zionism in particular, were being embraced by more and more Jews in Germany,
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the growing position of Zionism among Jews in Germany only generated complications that, in the end, impeded effective Zionist work. The ZVfD, while noting its significant membership growth and its prominent role in the functioning of the Reichsvertretung
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nevertheless fretted over the difficulties caused by the combination of rapid growth and the anti -Jewish measures of the regime
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.
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one such problem was the loss of prominent Zionist leaders in Ber-lin who began emigrating to Palestine in greater numbers after 1933. This leadership exodus occurred at a time when competent and experienced Zionist leaders were needed even more to cope with the sud-den growth of the German Zionist movement. In 1933 alone, officials such as kurt Blumenfeld and Georg Landauer emigrated to Palestine, and Martin Rosenblüth temporarily moved to england. The ZVfD in Berlin described this problem in greater detail in a circular letter to its local branches in February 1934: “The danger of this sudden progress in many areas should not be missed. As a result of emigration, the core of German Zionism has dwindled considerably. The organization, as large as it has become, nevertheless finds itself today in an amorphous condition.”
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This problem intensified as the decade wore on and as more and more Zionist officials departed from Berlin. In December 1935, Robert weltsch, editor of the
Jüdische Rundschau,
wrote with regret from Berlin to kurt Blumenfeld in Jerusalem that: “The departure of leading Zionist personalities is having a negative impact. The question whether the new generation and the new Zionists are capable of doing the job is not entirely clear. I doubt they can.”
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In May 1938, shortly after the 26 April decree making it compulsory for Jews to register their property in Germany and abroad, the ZVfD in Berlin reported unusually large numbers of Jews at the Jew-ish Agency’s Palestine office, housed in the ZVfD headquarters at Meineckestrasse 10 in Berlin.
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The report mentioned the impossibil-ity of effectively serving the growing number of people interested in emigration to Palestine, given the shortages of personnel and resources. The personnel problem was only compounded by the limits that Nazi authorities had imposed on foreign Jews entering Germany to assist in preparing Jews for emigration. This problem became particularly acute after the
Kristallnacht
pogrom of November 1938 as Benno Cohn, president of the ZVfD, reported in a letter from Berlin to Georg Landauer in Jerusalem: “once again the problem of personnel and the

leading people is very difficult. At this time, all want to leave and there is hardly anyone to take over.”
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Moreover, periodic arrests of Jewish leaders by the authorities, a common occurrence in Germany during the 1930s, often included prominent members of the ZVfD. In reporting the release from police custody of Zionist leaders Franz Meyer and Benno Cohn in Berlin in early october 1936, Martin Rosenblüth of the London office of the Central Bureau for the Settlement of Ger-man Jews in Palestine expressed his frustration over never being quite sure of the reasons that prompted such arrests, notwithstanding Zionist cooperation in overall Nazi emigration policy.
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Moreover, during the November pogrom, Zionist officials and others connected with the Jewish Agency’s Palestine office in Berlin were arrested along with thousands of other Jews. They were soon released by the police and were permitted to re-open the office in order to continue the work of Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine.
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Contact between the ZVfD in Berlin and the Jewish Agency in Lon-don and Jerusalem became more infrequent and difficult to maintain. of course, the ZVfD, like all Jewish organizations in Germany, was under constant police surveil lance and thus exposed to considerable potential danger from any exchange of correspondence between Germany and the outside world. In october 1936, the ZVfD complained to the executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine in Jerusalem that German Zionism was virtually cut off from information concerning the situation in Palestine and in the larger Zionist movement worldwide, which impeded the effectiveness of Zionist work.
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In July 1938, Franz Meyer of the ZVfD wrote to the executive of the Jewish Agency in London: “with regret I must once again state how deficient the contact is between you and Zionists working in Germany.”
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Later that month, in another letter to the Jewish Agency in London, Meyer reiter-ated the concern of the ZVfD over its isolation. After expressing his understanding for the communication difficulties between Germany and the outside world, he insisted nevertheless: “I beg you to make every effort in the future, in spite of the existing impediments, not to desist from sending us all necessary materials.”
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Finally, and perhaps most important, the spate of anti-Jewish legislation between 1933 and 1938, designed to achieve the political, social, and cultural dissimilation of the Jewish community, had severe economic repercussions for all Jews and their institutions. The negative economic consequences of the anti-Jewish legislation and the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses during the 1930s included unemployment and loss

of livelihood for tens of thousands of Jews, which meant, of course, a growing dependence on Jewish welfare agencies both inside and outside of Germany.
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while exceptions were made for Jewish war veterans at least until the Nuremberg Race Laws of September 1935, none were made for the Zionists, despite their central role in the emigration policy of the regime. That the activities of Zionist and other Jewish organizations in Germany had always depended on the financial support of their members goes without saying; but the steady pauperization of the entire Jewish community after 1933, coupled with the dramatic growth in membership, activity, and responsibi lity, created enormous and unprecedented new strains on the German Zionist movement.

The erosion of the economic position of Jews in Germany was in many ways the most difficult burden with which the ZVfD and other Jewish organizations had to cope, even with the extraordinary self-help efforts of the entire Jewish community. As early as october 1933, in a letter to Martin Rosenblüth in London, Michael Traub, the Director of the keren Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund) in Berlin and a member of the Reichsvertretung, observed: “Regarding the situation in Germany, it can only be said in a letter that the process of economic deprivation which is inexorably and systematically being pursued is worse than all acts of violence (which have recently subsided) . . . And since this process encompasses not only large concerns . . . but also medium-sized ones, we must face a very strong decline in Jewish wealth in the next few months.”
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The economic disintegration of the Jewish community during the 1930s constituted a significant brake on effective Zionist work in Germany. of course, all of the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi state between 1933 and 1939, particularly the expulsion from the economy, were designed to encourage Jews to leave Germany, albeit under conditions that made effective Zionist work in Germany extraordinarily difficult. By the end of 1935, Salomon Adler-Rudel of the ZVfD and the Reichsvertretung reported on the negative impact of the growing economic crisis of the Jewish community on Zionist activity in Germany.
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He observed that the rapidly growing economic deprivation of the Jewish community was contributing to the emigration of those with means and to the flood of prospective emigrants at the Jewish Agency’s Palestine office in Berlin. These realities placed enormous burdens on declining Jewish communities throughout Germany, on the Zionist movement, and, in general, on the relief efforts of various Jewish agencies in Berlin:

These factors which have been outlined briefly have resulted in an enormous increase in the emigration requirements of the Jews, and it is now not only the younger and poorer people who have decided to emigrate, but also the well-off and prosperous families see themselves as forced to leave . . . the Palestine offices are so flooded with people willing to emigrate that they can hardly manage the numbers streaming to them . . . The economic collapse, the increase in the number of the needy, demand from the Jewish communities the greatest effort and sacrifice in order to be able to satisfy the enormous need for relief.

The rapid departure of the Zionist leadership, a problem referred to above, was in part a natural consequence of ever-worsening economic conditions for all Jews. In a letter to Georg Landauer in Jerusalem in August 1938, Benno Cohn of the ZVfD warned: “This very anarchistic emigration will have grave consequences.”
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Cohn was referring to the economic crisis of German Jewry as a natural cause of this problem and warned of the far greater difficulties that would soon result from the coming Nazi onslaught on the remaining Jewish stake in the economy: “In view of the new economic measures, we face massive unemployment in the winter, which is estimated to be 30,000 wage earners, thus affecting about 100,000 family members. Therefore we will not be able to get by with previous methods of social work.”

Georg Landauer, General Secretary of the ZVfD in Berlin before his emigration to Palestine in 1933, visited Berlin in February 1939 to assess Zionist efforts and the emigration process. This letter is briefly referred to above, in the Introduction to this book. writing from Ber-lin to his colleague Arthur Ruppin in Jerusalem on 17 February 1939, Landauer described the situation for Jews in Berlin as grim, and for Zionist efforts there as very difficult.
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The disastrous economic situation had resulted in the impoverishment of the remaining Jewish community, and he related that to the organizational problems afflicting the Zionist movement, especially the Jewish Agency’s Palestine office in Berlin, in the following way:

All competent Zionist functionaries have emigrated or will emigrate this week. The re-staffing of the offices is virtually impossible. Representing Zionist interests in the Reichsvertretung has been difficult lately . . . our friends in the Meineckestrasse believe that even their second-level people have all left as well, and that they fear they will have to turn things over to incompetent bureaucrats who themselves

would prefer to emigrate today rather than tomorrow . . . who knows what will happen.

Landauer was clearly pessimistic about the retraining and reeducation programs and about moving substantially more Jews safely out of Germany.

Conclusions

From the beginning of Hitler’s regime in 1933, the ZVfD attempted to convince Nazi authorities of the need to maintain suitable conditions for Jewish life in Germany, at least until the emigration process ran its course. For instance, Martin Rosenblüth’s general memorandum of 13 September 1933 to the membership of the ZVfD addressed this question in some detail.
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He reasoned that German Zionism had little choice but to seek conditions that would best ensure orderly Jewish emigration, and that those conditions were possible only with the cooperation and support of the Nazi state. In other words, there was no alternative to working with Nazi authorities to facilitate Jewish emigration safely and effectively from Germany. He elaborated on the conditions that he hoped would prevail for the Jews in the new Germany during the emigration process. These included preservation of the civil equality of Jews and the avoidance of restrictions on their economic livelihood. He also appealed for state support for the occupational retraining of German Jews in order to ensure a livelihood while still in Germany and to prepare them for a new life in Palestine once they emigrated. Protection for autonomous Jewish religious institutions, schools, sports organizations, welfare agencies, and emig ration offices was also proposed, and Rosenblüth called for the free emigration of at least half of German Jewry with its assets. Three months earlier, the ZVfD had addressed a direct appeal to Hitler to allow the continued economic and political freedom of Jews in Germany until the emigration process was completed.
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Hitler never responded, and the regime’s ideology would preclude Zionist requirements almost entirely. Instead, Nazi policy imposed onerous conditions on all Jews, making the desired reeducation and economically viable departure, mostly to Palestine, problematic.