Jewish Life in Nazi Germany: Dilemmas and Responses (28 page)

There are no statistics that indicate the exact number of Jews, those in
Mischehen
, as well as
Mischlinge
, incarcerated in
Judenhäuser
and
Mischehenhäuser
. Avraham Barkai suggests that by early 1943 almost all Jews and “half-Jews” lived in
Judenhäuser
or camps.
⁷²
when, in 1945, the inmates of
Judenhäuser
were liberated, almost all of them were Jews protected by a non-Jewish partner. There were 800 found in the Jewish hospital in Berlin, some 650 survived in Hamburg, fifty in Dresden, and a handful in other smaller cities. Most of the former Jewish homes lay in ruins. It often took some years before they were rebuilt, and even longer before the question of ownership was resolved.

From the first, Jewish homes were in high demand. The seizures were driven not only by ideological forces, but also by material interests. An army of Germans queued to stake their claim as tenants or buyers, together with a host of others seeking to benefit from the expulsions. The best sites were seized by the central command of the Nazi regime. Stra-tegically well-positioned sites were earmarked for clearance, especially in Munich and Berlin, where they hindered Albert Speer’s monumental redevelopment designs. In addition, buildings were required to accommodate the
Abriss-Mieter,
the German tenants also evicted from their apartments to make room for the construction of the massive edifices, which were to symbolize the glory and power of the thousand-year Reich
.
with the outbreak and spread of the war, the acute housing crisis reached catastrophic proportions. Jewish homes were also required to accommodate the growing number of
Ausgebombte
(air raid victims), the
Kriegsversehrte,
returned soldiers with serious injuries, and finally
vertriebene
Germans, or ethnic Germans displaced through war.

There were a few Germans who responded to the
Entjudung
of the housing market with disapproval. Landlords occasionally refused to turn Jewish tenants out into the streets. “Aryan” tenants ignored the appeals of the Nazis and stayed in Jewish-owned buildings. Some “Ary-ans” tried to relieve the plight of the Jews crammed into
Judenhäuser
and
Judensiedlungen.
They offered their services as suppliers of extra food and other valuable, almost unattainable, items, or they served as couriers conveying greetings and messages to relatives and friends who were inaccessible. others went even further, urging Jews to go into hiding and then securing their “illegal” existence on the “Aryan” side. These “Righteous Neighbors” were vastly outnumbered by those scrambling to stake a claim to Jewish homes. But once the decision for deportation had been made at the “center,” and clear guidelines handed down, pressure at the “periphery” increased to speed up the process of
Entjudung
. Under the heading “The Jews and the Housing Shortage,” a report from the Lübeck NSDAP in october 1941 states: The housing problems in the district of Lübeck . . . can only be described as catastrophic. It has, for example, not escaped our attention that the local police station here has more than 200 families on record as occupying unsatisfactory living quarters, some of which are totally unsuited for human habitation . . . on the other hand, some of the Jews still occupy highly desirable quarters. It should be considered whether these unpleasant creatures should not be deported to the east and disappear from the towns in our area once and for all.
⁷³

Initially, the
Entjudung
of the housing market provided over 2,000 cities, towns, and villages with a welcome addition to their real estate. By 1942, the Viennese had been offered some 70,000 dwellings. In Berlin, the Nazis seized more than 30,000 homes, in Munich about 3,000, and in Düsseldorf, 700. Moreover, the seizure of Jewish homes provided a low-cost reserve to satisfy the expectations and greed of Nazi leaders and institutions,
Parteigenossen
(members of the NSDAP—Par-ty comrades) and
Volksgenossen
or
Genossen
(comrades of the Party and the Folk). The experiences gained and the profits made encouraged the Nazis to continue the pillage throughout europe. waging a racial war enabled them not only to rule and to exploit the conquered countries, but also to eliminate the Jews once and for all through the “final solution.” The acquisition of Jewish homes, however, was far outweighed by the massive loss of housing incurred in the Allied air raids. Frank Bajohr has shown that in Hamburg prior to September 1942, only 900 families were presented with Jewish homes. Considering that 1,200 dwellings were vacated while 260,000 homes were destroyed, the proportion of Jewish homes allocated made up less than one percent of the total housing shortfall.
⁷⁴

The surrender of their homes affected the Jews deeply. They were forced to uproot themselves from places they had lived in for years, of-ten for generations. In the early years of Hitler’s rule, they had at least been able to escape public anti-Semitic violence by withdrawing into the relative security of their homes. This refuge was no longer available. The loss gave rise to the growing feeling of homelessness. Plagued by homesickness after their evictions, some Jews made pilgrimages back to their old addresses, to gaze at their old apartments and houses from outside. Years later, those who had found sanctuary in exile and returned to Germany to search for their old homes, schools, and the cemeteries where relatives and friends had been buried echoed such feelings of sorrow and anguish. The poet Gertrud kolmar, driven from her cozy country home near Berlin in early 1939, referred to a “paradise” she had lost in Finkenkrug. It was a “paradise” without neighbors. In a letter to her sister she wrote: “I became homesick for Finkenkrug. I did not like the people there—on the contrary—but I loved the meadows, the forest . . . the animals, the flora.”
⁷⁵
After six months spent living in a
Judenhaus
in the Berlin district of Schöneberg, she wrote her sister again: “I just cannot seem to develop some sort of relationship, whether tolerable or intolerable, to this area. I feel as strange here now as I did the first day.” In another letter weeks later she confessed: occasionally I would like to take my hat and coat and go far away. Now I think more than ever that I should go to Finkenkrug once snow has fallen, and go out in the moonlight the way I used to and tramp through the forest.
⁷⁶

with the eviction from their homes came the abandonment of familiar pieces of furniture and household items, books and pictures, along with the memories of childhood and schooldays, of profession and family. Belongings for which there was no place in the new, small, room in the
Judenhaus
, were given away for almost nothing, placed in storage, or given to trustworthy neighbors. As it often turned out after the war, in Germany and other countries, their belongings no longer existed when they attempted to claim them from those same neighbors, or they surfaced on the black market. Sometimes, when the “evacuation” order arrived, and comprehensive declaration forms had to be filled out, Jews no longer had possessions sufficient for the 50kg allowance as hand baggage on the last journey. The final belongings were removed upon arrival at the execution sites or gassing installations, or even after the murder. The items—ranging from glasses to artificial limbs, from clothing and hair, to spare change and gold fillings—were registered and stored, distributed and recycled.

Moving into
Judenhäuser
involved an adjustment to new heteroge-neous communities and survival in wretched physical and psychological conditions. Jews who had retained the privilege of temporary residence in their own apartments had to take in new housemates: unmarried or divorced individuals, married couples, or families with children. often confined in one room within a crowded apartment under one roof, or herded together in halls, sharing joint kitchens, washing, and toilet facilities, there was hardly any space left for movement, let alone privacy. overcrowding and competition for shared facilities often gave rise to irritability and nervousness, tensions, and conflicts among inmates. In September 1941, on the eve of mass deportations, the Gestapo had instructed local authorities: “The Jews are to be assigned only the dirtiest and worst accommodation, whilst current sanitary regulations must be observed. Care should also be taken that not all houses are adjacent [in light of] the ban on ghettoization. The Jewish living space thus vacated is to be made available to those of German blood, without causing expense to the Reich or local councils.”
⁷⁷
In most places, poor hygienic and sanitary conditions prevailed, and, in time, deteriorated, since the local councils saw no reason to maintain these temporary Jewish housing estates properly or to supply them with sufficient fuel, essential for heating and for the supply of warm water.

The Liebmanns, an elderly couple, found refuge in a room in a Jewish boarding house on Munich’s Akademiestrasse
.
one visitor recalled:

The living area . . . was quite uncomfortable. Not that it was dirty or even untidy . . . But the innumerable cases, cardboard boxes and small chests, wardrobes and cupboards piled on top of each other, took up every inch of space and stood in the way. The furniture they hadn’t known what to do with after being driven out of their previous home had been stored with a removal firm; there was no place for it in the furnished room in the
Pension.
everything that they had previously kept in drawers and cupboards—clothes, underwear, shoes, books, all their painting and drawing materials—was packed away in this pile of parcels and boxes. Alexander Liebmann referred to his new residence ironically as the “night refuge.” one day, with tears in his eyes, he showed me his German war decorations, and asked me the question: “And suddenly I am ‘not supposed to be a German any more’?”
⁷⁸

Joel könig visited his parents in Berlin at the beginning of 1940. They had sublet the apartment of a former Jewish businessman, close to the Hansaplatz: The one and a half rooms . . . were so cramped that one literally had to worm one’s way between the furniture. Titian’s
Lavina
gazed at us from the corner of the room where mother cooked lunch on a primus stove. There was not enough coal to keep the room warm. My father had a flannel blanket draped about his shoulder, and tried to stay close to the lukewarm stove. Despite the cramped conditions and the cold, my parents were happy to have this apartment.
⁷⁹

Ruth klüger recalls the dark, insect-ridden room she shared with her mother: “You turn off the light and imagine the bugs crawling out of the mattress. Then you get bitten, turn on the light and wail loudly, because the disgusting vermin are actually walking around in the bed.”
⁸⁰
Theodor Tuch describes the situation in Hamburg: All Jews must now live in buildings that belong to a Jew, mostly in the Grindel area. whole districts of the city are
judenfrei.
Usually, people in one or two rooms. Dora, for example, moved in with Paul’s mother-in-law. The room is about 3 by 4 meters. You can work out for yourselves how much freedom of movement they have. Sleeping, eating, washing. Pick up the bed cushions, but where can they be stored? . . . In the kitchen, the washing is drying. Four wardrobes stand in the narrow hall, holding the remains of those possessions, which the people were allowed to keep. everything had to be auctioned off.
⁸¹

There were
Judenhäuser
that were even more wretched. In Hannover, almost 100 Jews were crammed into a house in Bergstrasse 8 known as the “old synagogue.” An inmate, deported to Riga in December 1941, who survived the Holocaust, remembers the distress and suffering caused by lack of space: So many people were packed into the hall that there was only a tiny path left between the beds. everyone had to climb over neighbors to reach his or her bed. There was a gallery—occupied too. From there one could see what was going on the ground floor. Men, women and children all mingled together. The sanitary conditions defy description. There were no tables or chairs. Life took place on beds. The mood among the inmates was one of deep despair. Some committed suicide. As women we suffered more than men, the more since [there was no other way] we had to undress and wash ourselves in the presence of men.
⁸²

Conditions were also agonizingly cramped in the
Judenhaus
located in ohestrasse 8/9, which had once served as the main office of the Jewish welfare service, as well as a soup kitchen and crèche. “Two hundred Jews were confined to sections marked off by blankets . . . It was like a terrible refugee camp.” Also in Hannover, one hundred and fifty men, women, and children were incarcerated in the funeral parlor of the Jewish cemetery. “Squeezed together like sardines, they had to vegetate in one room filled with iron beds.”
⁸³