Jewish Life in Nazi Germany: Dilemmas and Responses (9 page)

1. CVZ,
   25 August 1938. See also
   IF
   , 13 January 1938: 13–14, and
   IF
   , 14 July 1938: 12.
   
2. Nevertheless, the employment and economic situation of all Jews was bleak. whereas in the census of 1933, 46 percent of Jews were registered as “independent” in the occupation Status section, by 1939, only 15 percent came under that heading. Conversely, only 8 percent of Jews were manual workers in 1933, but 56 percent fell into that category by 1939. As unemployment increased, so too did poverty. Berlin saw concentrated poverty. In 1937, the Jewish community there supported fifteen soup kitchens and provided used clothing for 42,900. By 1939, in Germany
   

   as a whole, Jewish winter Relief would subsidize 26 percent of a greatly diminished and aging population.
   

   19.
   IF,
   36, no. 29 (19 July 1934): 20.
   

   20.
   BJFB
   10, no. 1 (1934): 11. See also:
   BJFB
   , 10, no. 10 (1934): 5.
   

   21.
   IF
   , 25 June 1936.
   

   1. IF
      , 27 February 1936;
      CVZ
      , 24 February 1938: 17.
      
   2. CVZ
      , 27 February 1936, see also
      IF
      , 19 March 1936. 24.
      IF
      , 21 May 1936.
      

25.
IF
, 21 May 1936. See also
Frankfurter Israelisches Gemeindeblatt,
January 1936: 137.

26.
IF
, 14 July 1938: 12.

1. Helmut krueger, memoirs, LBI: 5, 16, 24, 41.
   
2. Jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik
   (hereafter
   JWS
   ), Berlin, 1935: 185–189. 29.
   JWS
   , 1937: 140–143.
   

1. In early 1937, one report on vocational training for youth suggested that 70 percent of girls leaving school refused any sort of training. Parents kept them at home to assist with household chores. The report noted that in 1936, the proportion of girls at training sites was only 25 percent. Clemens Vollnhals, “Jüdische Selbsthilfe bis 1938,” in
   Die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945,
   ed. wolfgang Benz (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1989), 391.
   
2. ezra Ben Gershom,
   David: The Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor
   (oxford and New York: Berg, 1988), 56.
   
3. See for examples: Jacob Ball-kaduri, memoirs, LBI: 30; Lisa Brauer, memoirs, LBI: 43, 57.
   
4. Liselotte kahn, memoirs, LBI: 23.
   
5. Ann Lewis, memoirs, LBI: 26.
   
6. Lore Steinitz about her mother, Irma Baum. Note to the author entitled “The first ‘sit in’.” 7 January 1995, also deposited at the LBI.
   
7. Ruth Abraham, memoirs, LBI: 2.
   
8. Gerta Pfeffer in
   Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein; Jüdischer Alltag in Selbstzeug-nissen 1933–1938
   , ed. Margarete Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1990), 141.
   
9. Rosy Geiger-kullmann, memoirs, LBI: 72. echoing these fears, the League of Jewish women worried about the prohibition of its railroad station shelters for young women who might be accosted by men who would take advantage of their situation. Bundesarchiv, Coswig: 75C Jüd. Frauenbund Verband Berlin, folder 37—“Protokoll der Arbeitskreistagung vom 2. November 1936 re. Gefährdung der Jugendlichen.” The records of the former Coswig branch of the Bundesarchiv are now housed at the Centrum Judaicum Archiv, Stiftung Neue Synagoge, in Berlin.
   
10. edith Bick interview (born 1900, interviewed 1972), 18. Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration, New York (hereafter Research Foundation).
    
11. Hilde Honnet-Sichel, ms., Harvard: 72–73.
    
12. Vollnhals, “Jüdische Selbsthilfe bis 1938,” 332. 42. Ibid., 333.
    

1. See: Claudia Huerkamp, “Jüdische Akademikerinnen in Deutschland, 1900– 1938,”
   Geschichte und Gesellschaft,
   19 (1993): 327. See example of matriculation book at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, washington, DC.
   
2. Aralk in Limberg and Rübsaat,
   Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
   , 230.
   
3. erna Segal, memoirs, LBI: 78–79. Some children were forced out of schools as often as three times even before the war. See Aralk in Limberg and Rübsaat,
   Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
   , 230.
   
4. Verena Hellwig, ms., Harvard: 29–30. See also Monika Richarz, ed.,
   Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte 1918–1945
   (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982)
   ,
   234.
   
5. Steve J. Heims, ed.,
   Passages from Berlin: Recollections of the Goldschmidt Schule, 1935–1939
   (South Berwick, MA: Atlantic Printing, 1987), 73, 76.
   
6. Hanna Bernheim, ms., Harvard: 50–51. eventually, they decided to send their son to a Jewish school in Berlin and their daughter to england.
   
7. ernst Loewenberg in Limberg and Rübsaat,
   Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
   ,
   

   217–218.
   

8. Paula Salomon-Lindberg, quoted by Mary Felstiner,
   To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era
   (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 52.
   
9. Joachim Meynert, “‘Das hat mir sehr weh getan!’ Jüdische Jugend in ostwestfalen-Lippe,” in
   Opfer und Täter: Zum nationalsozialistischen und antijüdischen Alltag in Ostwestfalen-Lippe,
   ed. Hubert Frankemölle (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalge-schichte, 1990), 63. The pastry that the Jewish child ate was a
   Mohrenkopf
   , a racist term, still used in Germany today: “a Moor’s head,” referring to a chocolate pastry. In addition, see Margot Littauer, ms., Harvard: 14–l5.
   
10. Verena Hellwig, ms., Harvard: 30.
    
11. Joachim Meynert, “‘Das hat mir sehr weh getan!’” in Frankemölle,
    Opfer und Täter
    , 62.
    
12. ernst Loewenberg in Limberg and Rübsaat,
    Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
    , 217–218.
    
13. Limberg and Rübsaat,
    Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
    , 208.
    
14. Toni Lessler, memoirs, LBI: 22.
    
15. Mally Dienemann, ms., Harvard: 23a.
    
16. Limberg and Rübsaat,
    Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
    , 210–211.
    
17. werner A. Stein, chair of the
    Aufbau
    newspaper, in
    New York Times
    , 10 November 1992, B3 (a story on the kaliski School in Berlin).
    
18. She left in January, 1939. Ruth eisner,
    Nicht wir allein: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Berliner Jüdin
    (Berlin: Arani Verlags-GmbH, 1971), 8.
    
19. Herbert Strauss, “Jewish emigration from Germany I,”
    Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook
    

    xxV (1980): 318;
    JWS
    , 1937: 163.
    

20. See also Martina kliner-Fruck, whose interviews support this point:
    “Es ging ja ums Überleben”: Jüdische Frauen zwischen Nazi-Deutschland, Emigration nach Palästina und ihrer Rückkehr
    (New York and Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1995), 79.
    
21. Richarz,
    Jüdisches Leben
    , 237.
    
22. Ulrich Baumann, “Jüdische Frauen auf dem Land” (referring to Baden-württem- berg), University of Freiburg, 1992, unpublished manuscript, 40.
    
23. of course, there were also women who were too fearful to move, as Peter Gay describes his own mother, but in all of the memoirs and interviews I have read, they are in the miniscule minority. Peter Gay, “epilogue: The First Sex,” in
    Between Sor-row and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period
    , ed. Sibylle Quack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 364.
    
24. Quack,
    Zuflucht Amerika
    , chs. IV and VI.
    
25. Lore Segal,
    Other People’s Houses
    (New York: Harcourt, Brace & world, 1964). See also Quack,
    Between Sorrow and Strength.
    
26. Claudia koonz, “Courage and Choice among German-Jewish women and Men,” in
    Die Juden im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland / The Jews in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945
    , ed. Arnold Paucker (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1986), 285. Also, see Claudia koonz,
    Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics
    (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), chap. 10.
    
27. Avraham Barkai,
    From Boycott to Annihilation: the Economic Struggle of German Jews 1933–1945
    (Hanover and London: University Press of New england, 1989), 2–3, 6–7.
    
28. Quoted by Barkai,
    From Boycott
    , 80–83.
    
29. Marianne Berel, “Family Fragments,” memoirs, LBI: 16.
    
30. After his arrest and release from a concentration camp in November 1938, they managed to escape to Shanghai, where their new skills helped them survive. Lecture by evelyn Rubin, their daughter, at Queens College, December 1988. See also:
    The Long Island Jewish Week
    , 188, no. 25 (19 November 1978). This article points in a different direction from Claudia koonz, who argued that women with strong business ties judged the situation much as men did. koonz,
    Mothers
    , 364.
    
31. Peter wyden,
    Stella
    (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 47.
    
32. Leo Gompertz, memoirs, LBI: 7.
    
33. even women who remained in Germany in order to work in the Jewish community rarely used this kind of argumentation.
    
34. elsie Axelrath, ms., Harvard: 37. She and her husband spent twelve years (1927– 1939) in Hamburg. They were the only Jews in the US colony.
    
35. Claudia koonz, “Courage and Choice among German-Jewish women and Men,” in Paucker,
    The Jews in Nazi Germany
    , 287.
    
36. else Gerstel, memoirs, LBI: 7l.
    
37. elisabeth Drexler, Harvard, no ms., just summary. Her husband remained optimistic because of President Hindenburg; Charlotte Hamburger, memoirs, LBI: 40–41; Marga Spiegel,
    Retter in der Nacht: Wie eine jüdische Familie überlebte
    (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 1987), 15. Spiegel’s husband insisted that “no one will lay a hand on me” because he had been decorated in the war.
    
38. erna Segal, memoirs, LBI: 45–46, 61.
    
39. Hilda Branch recalled that her father, who had been an officer in the Prussian army, was “more nationalistic” than she or her mother and wanted to remain in Germany, whereas the women were prepared to leave in January 1933. Sylvia Rothchild, ed.,
    Voices from the Holocaust
    (New York: New American Library, 1981). Ruth eisner also reported that her father, a world war I veteran, insisted on staying. See eisner,
    Nicht wir allein
    , 8.
    
40. Ruth Fleischer in Douglas Morris, “The Lives of Some Jewish Germans who Lived in Nazi Germany and Live in Germany Today: An oral History,” BA the-sis, wesleyan University, 1976, 93; Carol Gilligan,
    In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development
    (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
    
41. erna Segal, memoirs, LBI: 45–47, 61.
    
42. G.w. Allport, J.S. Bruner, and e.M. Jandorf, “Personality under Social Catastrophe: Ninety Life-Histories of the Nazi Revolution,”
    Character and Personality: An International Psychological Quarterly
    , 10 (September 1941): 3.
    
43. Carol Gilligan’s psychological theories may apply again here: men tend to view and express their situation in terms of abstract rights, women in terms of actual affiliations and relationships. Gilligan,
    In a Different Voice
    . See also: elizabeth Bamberger, memoirs, LBI: 21.
    
44. Alice Nauen interview, 8, Research Foundation.
    
45. Hanna Bernheim, ms., Harvard: 53.
    
46. Charlotte Hamburger, memoirs, LBI: 41, 46. She decided to flee after her husband and children faced public abuse.
    
47. Hilde Honnet-Sichel in
    Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein
    , 184. For example, on
    

    26 July 1933, the government demanded the
    Reichsfluchtsteuer
    . on 11 September 1935, Jews were issued passports valid only within Germany, making their flight more difficult. on 11 october 1935, Jews could take foreign securities with them only if they could prove that they had them before 1 January 1933. This was intended to prevent Jews from taking their money with them. on 2 April 1936, emigrés had to place their money in blocked accounts and were not given the use of their own cash to take information trips abroad. on 1 December 1936, the Law against economic Sabotage declared the death penalty for anyone caught sending money abroad or leaving it there, thereby hurting the German economy. In May and June of 1938, Jews had to inform the government of everything they took with them and requests from Jews to bring valuables abroad were to be denied. Laws list-ed in: Joseph walk, ed.,
    Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien—Inhalt und Bedeutung
    (Heidelberg: Müller Juristischer Verlag, 1981).
    

48. Charlotte Stein-Pick, memoirs, LBI: 2 and 38. elizabeth Bamberger, memoirs, LBI: 5. See also, Vera Deutsch [only reader’s comments, no ms.], Harvard.
    
49. John Foster, ed.,
    Community of Fate: Memoirs of German Jews in Melbourne
    (Sydney
    

    and Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 28–30. See also, elizabeth Bab, memoirs, LBI: 180. In the rare cases in which husbands followed their wives’ assessment and emigrated, the wives either brought in other male friends to help convince the husbands or were themselves professionals whose acumen in the public world was difficult to deny. Marie Bloch, who had read Hitler’s
    Mein Kampf
    in 1929 and insisted on sending her children out of the country in 1933, constantly urged her husband to emigrate. After the Nuremberg Race Laws, she knelt in front of his bed, begging him to leave. He said he could not leave his factory and could not “give up the thought that the Germans would see in time what kind of a man Hitler was.” Driven to despair, she asked him whose opinion he would respect and invited that friend to consult with them. The friend told them to flee to the United States where he, himself, was heading. only then did her husband agree to go. Marie Bloch interview (born 1890, interviewed 1971), 6, 8. Research Foundation.
    

50. else Gerstel, memoirs, LBI: 71.
    
51. Felstiner,
    To Paint Her Life
    , 74.
    
52. Ilse Strauss, memoirs, LBI: chap. 8, 44. (Her parents and young brother were deported and killed).
    
53. Hanna Bernheim, ms., Harvard: 45.
    
54. Verena Hellwig, ms., Harvard: 25–26. A Protestant, she was 43 years old in 1940. She had married in 1920 and lived in a town of 150,000 in Baden. Peter edel’s “Aryan” mother also took the lead, attempting to rescue him and her Jewish husband. But the war broke out and she was expelled from england. See Peter
    

    edel,
    Wenn es ans Leben geht: meine Geschichte
    (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1979), 149–150.