Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (42 page)

V

At the beginning of 1938, Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy as head of the Security Police Main Office, had signed an expulsion decree for approximately five hundred Jews of Soviet nationality living in the Reich.
¹⁰⁸
This was a measure requested by the Wilhelmstrasse in retaliation for the expulsion of some German citizens from the Soviet Union. As these Soviet Jews were not granted entry permits into the USSR, the expulsion order was twice prolonged—without any result. On May 28, 1938, Heydrich ordered the incarceration of the male Soviet Jews in concentration camps until they could provide proof of immediately forthcoming emigration. In May expulsion orders were also issued to Romanian Jews living in Germany. All of this was but a prologue to the new expulsion drive that was to start in the fall.

During the months immediately following the Anschluss, however, there was a development that threatened to hamper these Nazi plans for rapid forced emigration: the measures taken by Switzerland. Almost all details of the policy followed by the Swiss Confederation with regard to Jewish refugees, before and during the war, were made available in a 1957 report that had been demanded by the Swiss Federal Assembly and was prepared by Federal Councillor Carl Ludwig.
¹⁰⁹
And the 1994 publication of Swiss diplomatic documents of the prewar period has added the finishing touches to the picture.

Two weeks after the Anschluss, in its meeting of March 28, 1938, the Swiss Federal Council (the country’s executive branch) decided that all bearers of Austrian passports would be obliged to obtain visas for entry into Switzerland. According to the meeting’s minutes: “In view of the measures already taken and being prepared by other countries against the influx of Austrian refugees, we find ourselves in a difficult situation. It is clear that Switzerland can only be a transit country for the refugees from Germany and from Austria. Apart from the situation of our labor market, the present excessive degree of foreign presence imposes the strictest defense measures against a longer stay of such elements. If we do not want to create a basis for an anti-Semitic movement that would be unworthy of our country, we must defend ourselves with all our strength and, if need be, with ruthlessness against the immigration of foreign Jews, mostly those from the East. We have to think of the future and therefore we cannot allow ourselves to let in such foreigners for the sake of immediate advantages; such advantages would undoubtedly soon become the worst disadvantages.”
¹¹⁰
This was to remain the basic position of the Swiss authorities during the coming seven years, with one additional point sometimes being added in the various internal memoranda: The Swiss Jews certainly did not want to see their own position threatened by the influx of foreign Jews into the country.

Once all Austrian passports were replaced by German ones, the visa requirement was applied to all bearers of German travel documents. The Swiss knew that their visa requirement would have to be reciprocal, that from then on Swiss citizens traveling to Germany would also have to obtain visas. On both sides the dilemma seemed insoluble. For Germany to avoid having visa requirements imposed on its Aryan nationals traveling to Switzerland would mean inserting some distinctive sign into the passports of Jews, which would automatically make their emigration far more difficult. Various technical solutions were considered throughout the summer of that year. At the end of September 1938, undeterred by the Sudeten crisis, a Swiss delegation headed by the chief of the Police Division at the Ministry of Justice, Heinrich Rothmund, traveled to Berlin for negotiations with Werner Best. According to their own report, the Swiss envoys described to their German colleagues the constant struggle of the federal police against the influx of foreign immigrants, particularly those who did not easily assimilate, primarily the Jews. As a result of the Swiss demands, the Germans finally agreed to stamp the passports of Jews with a “J,” which would allow the Swiss police “to check at the border whether the carrier of the passport was Aryan or not Aryan” (these were the terms used in the Swiss report). On October 4 the Bern government confirmed the measures agreed upon by the German and the Swiss police delegates.

The Swiss authorities had not yet solved all their problems: Jews who had received an entrance permit before the stamping of their passports might attempt to make early use of it. On October 4, therefore, all border stations were informed that if “there was uncertainty whether a person traveling with a German passport was Aryan or non-Aryan, an attestation to his being Aryan should be produced. In doubtful cases, the traveler should be sent back to the Swiss consulate of his place of origin for further ascertainment.”
¹¹¹
But would all precautions thereby have been taken? The Swiss thought of one more possible way of cheating. A report from their Federal Center for Printed Matter, dated November 11, 1938, announced that, at Rothmund’s request, they had tried to erase the “J” in a German passport acquired for a test. The report on the test was encouraging: “Effacing the ‘J’ stamped in red did not succeed entirely. One can recognize the remaining traces without difficulty.”
¹¹²
While this was going on, the Jews of the Sudetenland had come under German control.

Austria had barely been annexed when Hitler turned to Czechoslovakia: Prague must allow the Sudetenland, its mainly German-populated province, to secede and join the German Reich. In May the Wehrmacht had received the order to invade Czechoslovakia on October 1. A general war appeared probable when, formally at least, the French declared their readiness to stand by their Czech ally. After a British mediation effort had come to naught, and after the failure of two meetings between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler, European armies were mobilized. Then, two days before the scheduled German attack, Mussolini suggested a conference of the main powers involved in the crisis (but without the presence of the Czechs—and of the Soviet Union). On September 29 Britain, France, Germany, and Italy signed an agreement in Munich: By October 10 the Sudetenland was to become part of the German Reich. Peace had been saved; Czecho-Slovakia (the newly introduced hyphen came from a Slovak demand) had been abandoned; its new borders, though, were “guaranteed.”

As soon as the Wehrmacht occupied the Sudetenland, Hitler informed Ribbentrop that, in addition to the expulsion of those Sudeten Jews who had not yet managed to flee into truncated Czecho-Slovakia, the expulsion of the 27,000 Czech Jews living in Austria should be considered. But the immediate expulsion measures mainly affected the Jews of the Sudetenland: The Germans sent them over the Czech border; the Czechs refused to take them in. Göring was to describe it with glee a month after the event: “During the night [following the entry of the German troops into the Sudetenland], the Jews were expelled to Czecho-Slovakia. In the morning, the Czechs got hold of them and sent them to Hungary. From Hungary back to Germany, then back to Czecho-Slovakia. Thus, they turned round and round. Finally, they ended up on a riverboat on the Danube. There they camped. As soon as they set foot on the river bank they were pushed back.”
¹¹³
In fact several thousand of these Jews were finally forced, in freezing weather, into improvised camps of tents situated in the no-man’s land between Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia, such as Mischdorf, some twenty kilometers from Bratislava.

In early October 1938 this now commonly used method was planned against some Viennese Jews. An SD memorandum of October 5 indicated that at a meeting of leading party representatives at the local Group “Goldegg,” the head announced that, in accordance with instructions from the Gau, a stepped-up operation against the Jews was to take place through October 10, 1938: “Since many Jews have no passports, they will be sent over the Czech border to Prague without a passport. If the Jews have no cash money, they will be given RM40—by the Gau, for their departure. In this operation against the Jews, the impression is to be avoided that it is a Party matter; instead, spontaneous demonstrations by the people are to be caused. There could be use offeree where Jews resist.”
¹¹⁴

Throughout the summer and autumn, Austrian Jews attempted to flee illegally to various neighboring countries and farther on, to England. The Gestapo had shipped some groups to Finland, to Lithuania, and to Holland or pushed them over the borders into Switzerland, Luxembourg, and France. Yet, as foreign protests grew, illegal entry or expulsion westward became increasingly difficult.
¹¹⁵
Thus, on September 20, the chief of the Karlsruhe Gestapo informed the regional authorities that Austrian Jews were arriving in great numbers in Baden, often without passports or money. “As the emigration of Austrian Jews has for the time being become practically impossible,” the Gestapo chief went on, “due to corresponding defense measures taken by foreign countries, particularly by Switzerland, a prolonged stay of these Jews in Baden…can no longer be tolerated.” The Gestapo did not suggest that the Jews be forcibly compelled to cross any of the western borders; the order had been given for “the immediate repatriation of the Jews to their former places of residence in Vienna.”
¹¹⁶
Within days, however, it was the Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany who became the overriding issue.
¹¹⁷

The census of June 1933 had indicated that among the 98,747 foreign Jews still residing in Germany, 56,480 were Polish citizens. The Polish Republic showed no inclination to add any newcomers to its Jewish population of 3.1 million, and various administrative measures aimed at hindering the return of Polish Jews living in Germany were utilized between 1933 and 1938. But, as it did in other countries, in Poland too the Anschluss triggered much sharper initiatives. On March 31, 1938, the Polish parliament passed a law establishing a wide array of conditions under which Polish citizenship could be taken away from any citizen living abroad.

The Germans immediately perceived the implications of the new law for their forcible emigration plans. German-Polish negotiations led nowhere, and, in October 1938, a further Polish decree announced the cancellation of the passports of residents abroad who did not obtain a special authorization for entry into Poland before the end of the month. As more than 40 percent of the Polish Jews living in the Reich had been born in Germany, they could hardly hope to liquidate their businesses and homes within less than two weeks. Most of them would therefore lose their Polish nationality on November 1. The Nazis decided to preempt the Polish measure.

Whether or not Hitler was consulted about the expulsion of the Polish Jews is unclear. The general instructions were given by the Wilhelmstrasse, and the Gestapo was asked to take over the actual implementation of the measure. Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Heydrich must have sensed, like everyone else, that given the international circumstances after the Munich agreement—the craving for peace and its consequence, appeasement—no one would lift a finger in defense of the hapless Jews. Poland itself was ultimately dependent on German goodwill; had it not just grabbed the Teschen region of northeastern Czecho-Slovakia in the wake of Germany s annexation of the Sudetenland? The timing of the expulsion could not have been more propitious. Thus, according to Himmler’s orders, by October 29 all male Polish Jews residing in Germany were to be forcibly deported over the border to Poland.

The Reichsführer knew that the women and children, deprived of all support, would have to follow. On October 27 and 28, the police and the SS assembled and transported Jews to the vicinity of the Polish town of Zbaszyn, where they sent them over the river marking the border between the two countries. The Polish border guards dutifully sent them back. For days, in pouring rain and without food or shelter, the deportees wandered between the two lines; most of them ended up in a Polish concentration camp near Zbaszyn.
¹¹⁸
The rest were allowed to return to Germany.
¹¹⁹
(In early January Jews who were then in Poland were allowed to return temporarily to sell their homes and businesses.)
¹²⁰
About 16,000 Polish Jews were thus expelled.
¹²¹

The Grynszpans, a family from Hannover, were among the Jews transported to the border on October 27. Herschel, their seventeen-year-old son, was not with them; at the time he was living clandestinely in Paris, barely subsisting on odd jobs and on some help from relatives. It was to him that his sister Berta wrote on November 3: “We were permitted to return to our home to get at least a few essential things. So I left with a ‘Schupo’ [
Schutzpolizei
, the German gendarmerie] accompanying me and I packed a valise with the most necessary clothes. That is all I could save. We don’t have a cent. To be continued when next I write. Warm greetings and kisses from us all. Berta.”
¹²²

Young Herschel Grynszpan did not know the details of what was happening to his family near Zbaszyn, but he could well imagine it. On November 7 he wrote a note to his Paris uncle: “With God’s help [written in Hebrew]…I couldn’t do otherwise. My heart bleeds when I think of our tragedy and that of the 12,000 Jews. I have to protest in a way that the whole world hears my protest, and this I intend to do. I beg your forgiveness. Hermann.” Grynszpan purchased a pistol, went to the German Embassy, and asked to see an official. He was sent to the office of First Secretary Ernst vom Rath; there he shot and fatally wounded the German diplomat.
¹²³

CHAPTER
9

The Onslaught

I

On the morning of November 10, 1938, at eight
A.M.
, the farmer and local SA leader of Eberstadt, Adolf Heinrich Frey, accompanied by several of his cronies, set out for the house of the eighty-one-year-old Jewish widow Susannah Stern. According to Frey, the widow Stern took her time before opening the door, and when she saw him she smiled “provocatively” and said: “Quite an important visit this morning.” Frey ordered her to dress and come with them. She sat down on her sofa and declared that she would not dress or leave her house; they could do with her whatever they wanted. Frey reported that the same exchange was repeated five or six times, and when she again said that they could do whatever they wanted, Frey took his pistol and shot Stern through the chest. “At the first shot, Stern collapsed on the sofa. She leaned backward and put her hands on her chest. I immediately fired the second shot, this time aiming at the head. Stern fell from the sofa and turned. She was lying close to the sofa, with her head turned to the left, toward the window. At that moment Stern still gave signs of life. From time to time she gave a rattle, then stopped. Stern did not shout or speak. My comrade C. D. turned Stern’s head to see where she had been hit. I told him that I didn’t see why we should be standing around; the right thing to do was to lock the door and surrender the keys. But to be sure that Stern was dead I shot her in the middle of the brow from a distance of approximately ten centimeters. Thereupon we locked the house and I called Kreisleiter Ullmer from the public telephone office in Eberstadt and reported what had happened.” Proceedings against Frey were dismissed on October 10, 1940, as the result of a decision of the Ministry of Justice.
¹

In the course of the prewar anti-Jewish persecutions, the pogrom of November 9 and 10, the so-called Kristallnacht, was in many ways another major turning point. The publication in 1992 of Goebbels’s hitherto missing diary accounts of the event added important insights about interactions among Hitler, his closest chieftains, the party organizations, and the wider reaches of society in the initiation and management of the anti-Jewish violence. As for the reactions of German and international opinion to the anti-Jewish violence, these raise a host of questions, not least for their relation to events yet to come.

The idea of a pogrom against the Jews of Germany was in the air. “The SD not only approved the controlled and purposeful use of violence, but explicitly recommended it in a memorandum of January 1937.”
²
Early in February 1938 the Zionist leadership in Palestine received information from “a very reliable private source—one which can be traced back to the highest echelons of the SS leadership, that there is an intention to carry out a genuine and dramatic pogrom in Germany on a large scale in the near future.”
³
In fact, the anti-Jewish violence of the early summer of 1938 had not entirely died down; A synagogue had been set on fire in Munich on June 9, and another in Nuremberg on August 10.
⁴
For the American ambassador, the anti-Jewish incidents of the early summer of 1938 indicated, as had been the case in 1935, some forthcoming radical anti-Jewish legislation.
⁵
Finally, shortly before the pogrom, during an inspection journey to Vienna at the end of October 1938, Hagen discussed the “Jewish situation in Slovakia” with his Vienna colleague SS-Obersturmführer Polte. Hagen instructed Poke to indicate to the representatives of the Slovak government that “this problem had to be solved, and that it seemed advisable to stage an action of the people against the Jews.”
⁶

By then Hitler’s hesitations of June 1938 had disappeared. His totally uncompromising position on Jewish matters found another expression in early November. On November 4, in a letter addressed to Frick, Lammers indicated that due to repeated requests for exemption from diverse anti-Jewish measures (such as additional first names, identification cards, and so on), he himself had raised the fundamental aspect of the issue with Hitler. “The Führer is of the opinion,” wrote Lammers, “that exemptions from the special regulations valid for the Jews have to be rejected without any exception. Nor does the Führer himself intend to grant any such marks of personal favor.”
⁷

On November 8 the
Völkischer Beobachter
published a threatening editorial against the Jews, closing with the warning that the shots fired in Paris would herald a new German attitude regarding the Jewish question.
⁸
In some places local anti-Jewish violence had started even before the Nazi press brandished its first threats. An SD report of November 9 described events that had taken place in the Kassel and Rotenburg/Fulda districts during the night of November 7–8, presumably as an immediate reaction to the news. In some places Jewish house and shop windows had been smashed. In Bebra a number of Jewish apartments had been “demolished,” and in Rotenburg the synagogue’s furniture was “significantly damaged” and “objects [were] taken away and destroyed on the street.”
⁹

One of the most telling aspects of the events of November 7–8 was Hitler’s and Goebbels’s public and even “private” silence (at least as far as Goebbels’s diaries are concerned). In his November 9 diary entry (relating events of November 8), Goebbels did not devote a single word to the shots fired in Paris, although he had spent the late evening in discussion with Hitler.
¹⁰
Clearly, both had agreed to act, but had probably decided to wait for the seriously wounded Rath’s death. Their unusual silence was the surest indication of plans that aimed at a “spontaneous outburst of popular anger,” which was to take place without any sign of Hitler’s involvement. And, on that same evening of November 8, in his speech commemorating the 1923 putsch attempt, Hitler refrained from any allusion whatsoever to the Paris event.

Rath died on November 9, at 5:30 in the afternoon. The news of the German diplomat’s death was officially brought to Hitler during the traditional “Old Fighters” dinner held at the Altes Rathaus in Munich, at around nine o’clock that evening. An “intense conversation” then took place between Hitler and Goebbels, who was seated next to him. Hitler left the assembly immediately thereafter, without giving the usual address. Goebbels spoke instead. After announcing Rath’s death, he added, alluding to the anti-Jewish violence that had already taken place in Magdeburg-Anhalt and Kurhessen, that “the Führer had decided that such demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupted spontaneously, they were not to be hampered.” As later noted by the chief party judge Walter Buch, the message was clear.
¹¹

For Goebbels there had been no such occasion to display his leadership talents in action since the boycott of April 1933. The propaganda minister, moreover, badly wanted to prove himself in the eyes of his master. Hitler had been critical of the ineffectiveness, in Germany itself, of the propaganda campaign during the Sudeten crisis.
¹²
Besides, Goebbels was in partial disgrace as the result of his affair with the Czech actress Lida Baarova, and his intention to divorce his wife, Magda, one of Hitler’s very special protégées. Hitler had put an end to the romance and the divorce, but his minister was still in need of some major initiative. Now he held it in his hands.

“I report the matter to the Führer,” wrote Goebbels on the tenth, alluding to the conversation at the dinner the evening before. “He [Hitler] decides: demonstrations should be allowed to continue. The police should be withdrawn. For once the Jews should get the feel of popular anger. That is right. I immediately give the necessary instructions to the police and the Party. Then I briefly speak in that vein to the Party leadership. Stormy applause. All are instantly at the phones. Now the people will act.”

Goebbels then described the destruction of synagogues in Munich. He gave orders to make sure that the main synagogue in Berlin, on Fasanenstrasse, be destroyed. He continued: “I want to get back to the hotel and I see a blood-red [glare] in the sky. The synagogue burns…. We extinguish only insofar as is necessary for the neighboring buildings. Otherwise, should burn down…. From all over the Reich information is now flowing in: 50, then 70 synagogues are burning. The Führer has ordered that 20–30,000 Jews should immediately be arrested…. In Berlin, 5, then 15 synagogues burn down. Now popular anger rages…. It should be given free rein.”

Goebbels went on: “As I am driven to the hotel, windowpanes shatter [they are being smashed]. Bravo! Bravo! The synagogues burn like big old cabins. German property is not endangered. At the moment nothing special remains to be done.”
¹³
The main Munich synagogue, on Herzog-Max Strasse, was not among those Goebbels saw burning. Its demolition had been started a few months before, on Hitler’s explicit orders.
¹⁴

At approximately the same time as the propaganda minister was gleefully contemplating a good day’s work, Hitler gave his instructions to Himmler and informed him that Goebbels was in overall charge of the operation. On that same night Himmler summed up his immediate reaction in writing: “I suppose that it is Goebbels’s megalomania—something I have long been aware of—and his stupidity which are responsible for starting this operation now, in a particularly difficult diplomatic situation.”
¹⁵
The Reichsfuhrer was certainly not opposed to the staging of a pogrom; what must have stung Himmler was the fact that Goebbels had been the first to exploit the shots fired at Rath to organize the action and obtain Hitler’s blessing. But he may indeed also have thought that the timing was not opportune.

The propaganda chief concluded his November 10 diary entry by alluding to some of the events of that morning: “Throughout the morning, a shower of new reports. I consider with the Führer what measures should be taken now. Should one let the beatings continue or should they be stopped? That is now the question.”
¹⁶

Still in Munich on the eleventh, Goebbels kept writing about the previous day: “Yesterday: Berlin. There, all proceeded fantastically. One fire after another. It is good that way. I prepare an order to put an end to the actions. It is just enough by now…. Danger that the mob may appear on the scene. In the whole country the synagogues have burned down. I report to the Führer at the Osteria [a Munich restaurant; Hitler later left for the Obersalzberg]. He agrees with everything. His views are totally radical and aggressive. The action itself took place without the least hitch. 100 dead. But no German property damaged.”

What follows shows that some of the most notorious orders given by Göring during the conference that was about to take place on November 12 were decisions made by Hitler on the tenth: “With small changes, Hitler agrees to my decree concerning the end of the actions,” wrote Goebbels, and he added: “The Führer wants to take very sharp measures against the Jews. They must themselves put their businesses in order again. The insurance companies will not pay them a thing. Then the Führer wants a gradual expropriation of Jewish businesses…. I give appropriate secret orders. We now await the foreign reactions. For the time being, they are silent. But the uproar will come….
¹⁷

“Information arrives from Berlin about enormous anti-Semitic riots. Now the people move ahead. But now one has to stop. I give the requisite instructions to the police and the Party. Then everything will be calm.”
¹⁸

The pogrom was much less coordinated than Goebbels claimed. According to one reconstruction of the sequence of events, after Goebbels’s initial order “the Gauleiters started around 10:30
P.M.
They were followed by the SA at 11:00, by the police shortly before midnight, by the SS at 1:20 in the morning, and again by Goebbels at 1:40.”
¹⁹
Heydrich’s orders to the Gestapo and the SD were precise. No measures endangering German life or property were to be taken, in particular when synagogues were burned down; Jewish businesses or apartments could be destroyed but not looted (looters would be arrested); foreigners (even when identified as Jews) were not to be molested; synagogue archives were to be seized and transferred to the SD. Finally, “inasmuch as in the course of the events of this night the employment of officials used for this purpose would be possible, in all districts as many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing jails. For the time being only healthy men not too old should be arrested. Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as fast as possible. Special care should be taken that the Jews arrested in accordance with these instructions are not mistreated.”
²⁰

The November 10 telephone report from SA Brigade 151 in Saarbrucken was concise and to the point: “During the past night, the synagogue in Saarbrucken was set on fire; the synagogues in Dillingen, Merzig, Saarlautern, Saarwillingen, and Broddorf were also destroyed. The Jews were taken into custody. The fire brigade is engaged in extinguishing the fires. In the area of Brigade 174, all synagogues were destroyed.”
²¹

On November 17 Hitler attended Rath’s funeral in Düsseldorf.

Only a few hundred Jews lived in the Gau Tyrol-Vorarlberg. Like all other Jews of the Austrian province, they had to leave the country by mid-December or move to Vienna. In October, Eichmann had arrived in Tyrol’s main city, Innsbruck, and issued a personal warning to the community’s three leading Jews: Karl Bauer and Alfred and Richard Graubart. Gauleiter Franz Hofer and the local SD office meant to fulfill Himmler’s orders and have the Gau
judenrein
within weeks. The night of November 9 to 10 offered an unexpected opportunity. Hofer rushed back from the Alte Kampfer dinner in Munich and set the tone: “In response to the cowardly Jewish assassination of our embassy counsellor vom Rath in Paris, in the Tyrol too the seething soul of the people should, this night, rise against the Jews.”
²²