Jewish Life in Nazi Germany: Dilemmas and Responses (39 page)

In a dictatorship political dissent must be expressed subtly and indirectly. Therefore, the Church struggle, the cultural battle between the Propaganda Ministry and the independent intellectuals and artists, and the conflict between the economic radicals and the economic conservatives in the Nazi camp, are symbolic of more fundamental political unrest. Now that the Saar plebiscite is over, the Catholics are taking the lead in expressing their indignation at certain developments in the Third Reich. It is probable that before the Saar vote was held, an agreement was made with the Catholic Church for support in that predominantly Catholic territory. The result has strengthened the hand of the Church and has given it a right to demand certain concessions. Car-dinal Faulhaber delivered a stirring sermon in the Munich Cathedral protesting against paganism and the un-Christian nature of certain governmental policies. The Catholic Archbishop of Freiburg recently gave a striking address in which he rejected all Nazi racial theories. “we Catholics,” he declared, “know of only one Father, who is also the Father of all peoples and races. we do not know of the German God and of a German National Church and we swear fidelity to our only leader, our Holy Father in Rome.” A full and enthusiastic Protestant meeting in Hirschberg, Silesia, was addressed by Herr von kirchbach, who for the last ten months has not been permitted to occupy his pulpit in Dresden Cathedral. “we welcomed the Nazi revolution with fervor,” he said, “but when it began to meddle with the Church we rose against it. we reject the theory of Race and Blood. The Gospel is to all men, and those who spread it first were Jews.” He gave as an example of the extremes to which racialism was leading, the governmental request that a sculptor in Saxony be asked to remove the figure of Moses from a marble altar piece, representing the old and the New Testaments and transform the figure so that it would become St. Paul.

Despite the reactions of the religious and liberal elements to these extremes, the Jews of Germany are none too sanguine in their hopes for the future. The compliment paid by Chancellor Hitler to Julius Streicher in visiting him on the occasion of his recent birthday, seems to indicate that the anti-Semitic nature of the Hitler government is no less fundamental to it now than it was in March 1932.

POSTSCRIPT

In an important address before the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin on February 26, Dr. Julius Lippert, State Commissar for Ber-lin, attributed the fall in German exports to the United States to the “so-called Jewish boycott movement in the commercial world center of New York.” The boycott movement, he claimed, proceeded on the false assumption that the German government has destroyed the “economic existence of the Jews in Germany.” According to Dr. Lippert, “not a single dispossession or destruction of the so-called Jewish enterprise has taken place.” Then, he pleaded for increased trade with the United States. This statement, although a most authoritative pronouncement on the Jewish question by one of the highest Nazi officials, does not indicate any changed or more realistic policy with regard to the Jews of Germany. It is but another attempt to blame the boycott for all of the difficulties of German trade, to stir up resentment against the Jews in the United States, and to paint a false picture of the condition of the Jews in Germany.

Source
: Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem: S7–200, Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine, Report of the American Jewish Committee, New York, 1 March 1935. The American Jewish Committee compiled this internal report in 1935 on the conditions of Jewish life in Germany. It was based on information that the Committee, in its own words, “is receiving periodically from authoritative sources.”

a
PPendIx
d

r
eiCh
C
itizenshiP
L
aw

15 September 1935

The Reichstag has unanimously enacted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

§ 1

1. A subject of the State is a person who enjoys the protection of the German Reich and who in consequence has specific obligations towards it.
   
2. The status of subject of the State is acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Reich and State Citizenship Law.
   

§ 2

1. A Reich citizen is a subject of the State who is of German or related blood, who proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit faithfully to serve the German people and Reich.
   
2. Reich citizenship is acquired through the granting of a Reich Citizenship Certificate.
   
3. The Reich citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the Law.
   

§ 3

The Reich Minister of the Interior, in coordination with the Deputy of the Führer, will issue the Legal and Administrative orders required to implement and complete this Law.

Nuremberg, 15 September 1935

at the Reich Party Congress of Freedom

The Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler

The Reich Minister of the Interior Frick

Source
: Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds.,
Documents on the Holocaust
, 8
^th
ed. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 1999), 77.

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e

L
aw for the
P
roteCtion of
G
erman

B
Lood and
G
erman
h
onor

15 September 1935

Moved by the understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German Nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following Law, which is promulgated herewith:

§ 1

1. Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law.
   
2. Annulment proceedings can be initiated only by the State Prosecutor.
   

§ 2

extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood is forbidden.

§ 3

Jews may not employ in their households female subjects of the state of German or related blood who are under 45 years old.

§ 4

1. Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich or National flag or to display the Reich colors.
   
2. They are, on the other hand, permitted to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of this right is protected by the State.
   

§ 5

1. Any person who violates the prohibition under § 1 will be punished by a prison sentence with hard labor.
   
2. A male who violates the prohibition under § 2 will be punished with a prison sentence with or without hard labor.
   
3. Any person violating the provisions under §§ 3 or 4 will be punished with a prison sentence of up to one year and a fine, or with one or the other of these penalties.
   

§ 6

The Reich Minister of the Interior, in coordination with the Deputy Füh-rer and the Reich Minister of Justice, will issue the Legal and Administrative regulations required to implement and complete this Law.

§ 7

This Law takes effect on the day following promulgations except for § 3, which goes into force on 1 January 1936.

Nuremberg, 15 September 1935

at the Reich Party Congress of Freedom

The Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler

The Reich Minister of the Interior Frick

The Reich Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner

The Deputy Führer

R. Hess

Source
: Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds.,
Documents on the Holocaust
, 8
^th
ed. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 1999), 78–79.

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f

Issued by 1 June 1937 American Jewish Committee

461 Fourth Avenue New York, N.Y.

The Jews in Germany Today

A Survey of the Current Anti-Jewish Campaign Conducted by the National Socialists

The deadly monotony of relentless persecution that has characterized the plight of the German Jews in the past few months was smashed recently when the Nazi regime suddenly descended on the German branches of the B’nai B’rith, dissolved the organization, and took over its sanatoria and homes for the aged, flinging their Jewish inmates into the street.

The mass arrests and expropriations that followed marked another new twist in the tortuous Nazi policy toward the Jews in Germany. It ended the period of “cold pogrom,” and brought home once again the day-to-day brutality in the life of the nearly 400,000 Jews still remaining in Germany.

La Guardia Incident Marks New Trend

The new and vigorous trend was made dramatic in typical Nazi fashion following the curious German press attack on New York’s mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia for a remark no more vigorous than many others he has uttered. The acrimony that marked the Nazi attack on the American mayor was the signal for the renewed anti-Jewish outburst in the Reich. As has been their practice before, the Nazis insisted that they were insulted. They ended by revenging themselves—upon the Jews.

In recent months there has been a paucity of news concerning persecution of Jews in the Reich. It appeared as though the Hitler government was satisfied that the Nuremberg laws of 1935 had gone as far as any anti-Jewish program could go, short of physical terror, to accomplish the Nazis’ aims—as though a
status quo
had been established under which the complete elimination of the Jews from German life was to become a routine affair.

But this routine, which had grown so commonplace that it no longer aroused special comment in the world outside, involved the continued boycott of those Jewish businesses which still existed in the German Re-ich; the continued stirring up of mob hatred against a tiny minority; the unceasing attacks on the morals of the German Jews; and the continuation and enforcement of all the systematic laws, decrees, regulations, and promulgations which have emanated from the Brown House in Munich.

Routine Persecution Too Slow For Nazis

The more recent events in Germany indicate, however, that the Nazis have decided to abandon this routine as too slow and that they will no longer abide even by their own laws in the conduct of their anti-Jewish campaign. Any law, no matter how harsh, the Nazis have apparently decided, offers some measure of protection to their victims; therefore the methods of “legal procedure” against the Jews are to be abandoned.

Thus, the recent raids on the B’nai B’rith lodges, the banning of Jewish meetings, the closing down of Jewish institutions, and the dissolution of Jewish clubs, all mark a new shift in Nazi tactics. The extermination of German Jews is to be speeded up. The job has been turned over to the Gestapo, the Secret State Police.