"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (38 page)

The Berlin Court of Appeal was called upon to decide whether the plaintiff, the famous German motion picture company UFA, could withdraw from a contract with a Swiss company on a manuscript, thereby acquiring all the rights to the novel
Odysseus
by the Jewish film director Eric Charell and his work on the scenario. In this contract, which had been concluded after the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the plaintiff had reserved the right to withdraw if the contract could not be fulfilled or if the director could not take over the management for reasons of illness, death, or “similar” circumstances. The court ruled that the plaintiff was entitled to withdraw in accordance with sections 346, 133, and 157 of the Civil Code. According to section 10 of the First Implementing Decree to the Reich Chamber of Culture Law, participation in a film production was reserved to Aryans, because the term
aptitude
(to participate in a movie production) was not to be understood exclusively in a technical sense. In a sophisticated argument, the court stated that it was not “the Jewish religion or the non-Aryan descent” of the Jewish director that was of consequence but the significance that the racial question had taken on for public life in Germany in the wake of the revolution of March 1933. In its ruling of June 27, 1936, the Reich Supreme Court confirmed this decision, seeing no “legal objections” to this interpretation of the clauses of the contract. Such an interpretation was consonant with the law and the “prevailing philosophy” on the racial question. With unparalleled frankness, the highest German court “without compunction” compared the racial descent of the director with death or illness as provided for by the clause on withdrawal:

The former [“liberal”] concept of the substance of a legal subject made no difference among human beings with a human face in terms of the similarity or difference of blood; it refused, therefore, a legal division and classification of people according to racial criteria. In line with the National Socialist ideology, however, only persons of German descent (and any others legally assimilated to them) can be treated as having full legal rights in the German Reich. With this, the basic demarcations of the former law on foreigners are revived and concepts taken up again that were defined by a distinction between persons having full legal capacity and those with lesser legal capacity. Complete deprivation of rights was formerly assimilated … to physical death. If in point 6 of the manuscript contract of February 27, 1933, there is a question of Charell’s not being “able to fulfill his contract as director by reason of illness, death, or a similar circumstance,” this clause can without hesitation be assimilated to a change in the legal validity of the personality on the ground of legally accepted racial viewpoints, insofar as it prevents Charell from carrying out his stage manager activities in the same way as death or illness would.
¹¹

This “removal of Jewish influence in the spiritual field” was accompanied by limitations and expulsions of the Jews from the general education institutions
¹²
(later extended to other non-Aryan children). They were, of course, also excluded from the colleges and universities (after 1943, when the military situation was deteriorating, groups such as Slovenians and Ukrainians were exempted).
¹³
Jewish citizens were thus forced to return to the private Jewish schools and institutions,
¹⁴
which were definitively closed down in 1942.
¹⁵
The rabbinical seminars and Jewish libraries were closed or dissolved, and the land on which synagogues were built was expropriated. On an instruction by Goebbels, all paintings, collections, and books in Jewish hands that had “antique value” had to be declared and presumably surrendered.
¹⁶

In addition, Jews were subject to numerous discriminations and prohibitions concerning free movement in public places and visits to cultural or sports events.
¹⁷
Jews were excluded from almost all state benefits such as public welfare, compensation benefits,
¹⁸
and so on, with the aim of gradually forcing them out of general economic and cultural life so as to achieve their complete impoverishment and psychological demoralization.
¹⁹

In the streets, Jews were easy to recognize by their pale features and shabby clothes.
²⁰
These humiliating measures by the administration in the cultural field were preceded by countless acts of discrimination in the public sector. From 1934 on, the notice “Jews not wanted” was to be seen on the doors of restaurants, at sports grounds, and on park benches. Social relations between Aryans and non-Aryans had almost completely ceased by this time. In effect, the Jewish citizens were in a total spiritual ghetto. Firms that had Jewish clients were pressed upon to abandon them.
²¹
From 1938 on, taxi drivers refused to transport Jewish passengers; schoolchildren bombarded the houses of Jews with stones and other projectiles under the guidance of their teachers; the names and addresses of Jewish citizens were posted on public bulletin boards and in newspapers (e.g., in Frankfurt/Main).
²²
According to eyewitnesses, these measures often evoked pity and a general unease rather than hatred for those affected.
²³

VII. Commercial and Property Law

To accelerate this process of deprivation and humiliation of Jewish citizens, the political leadership was determined to get its hands not only on the work income of Jews but also on their resting assets. This meant to deprive them of all subsistence, to exclude them from the general law, and thus to provoke their “civil death” (
bürgerlicher Tod
, a term from the Middle Ages signifying the loss of all civil rights on entering a cloister).

1. Measures for Dispossessing Jews of Their Property

The central element of the “special treatment” of non-Aryans was in the field of commercial and property law. It had always been a long-term goal of the political leadership to expropriate all Jewish property and to incorporate it into the National Socialist state. Hitler himself had early decided to confiscate Jewish assets for the benefit of the Reich. The Jews served as hostages against feared boycotts by the Western countries (some did occur), and from the start their property was potentially subject to seizure. When there was nothing left to take away from the Jews, the “precious Jewish life” could serve as a means of reprisal, that is, through hostage-taking.
¹
The discriminatory treatment of the Jews, which had worsened since 1938, had thus long since been determined. The November 7, 1938, assassination of a member of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by a Jew served as a convenient opportunity to move seriously to the drafts and suggestions for the dispossession of Jews and deprivation of their rights that had been slumbering in the drawers of the bureaucrats.
²
The Nazi leadership had the most radical ideas in this regard: as Göring stated at the important conference of Reich ministers of November 12, 1938,
³
the aim was to reduce the Jewish population to the status of pensioners by the expropriation (“Aryanization”) of all their property, so that they would be dependent on state support, “which of course should be kept as low as possible.” The sale to Aryans of Jewish businesses and property by the trustees at the current market value would bring in great riches to the German economy. In order to achieve this total impoverishment of the Jews, numerous regulations were issued,
⁴
so articulated among themselves that they could not help but achieve the desired aim.

a. Dispossession Measures Following the
Reichskristallnacht

Before the beginning of systematic expropriation of Jewish property, the
Reichskristallnacht
provided an opportunity to calm down the agitation among the public caused by the devastation of Jewish shops and synagogues initiated by the SA and the NSDAP in the course of the anti-Jewish pogroms of November 9, 1938.
⁵
By the decree of November 12, 1938, Jewish citizens became subject to an “expiatory tax” of RM 1 billion for the assassination of the German diplomat vom Rath by the Jew Herschl Grynszpan. This decree, which was apparently inspired by the compulsory payments imposed under medieval martial law, was accompanied by a decree on the “restoration of the appearance of the streets” (which were in a dreadful state after the devastation of Jewish shops) of the same date,
⁶
requiring the Jewish victims of the outrages to restore all damage; at the same time they were refused all insurance claims (these accrued to the Reich)—a harbinger of the expropriation policy that was to take hold in the weeks to come and a further demonstration of the National Socialist method of giving “legal” sanction to illegal practices by legislation after the fact.

b. The Decree on the Registration of Jewish Property, April 26, 1938, and the Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property, December 3, 1938

In preparation for the “legal” sanctioning (of these illegal actions), the Decree on the Registration of Jewish Property was passed on April 26, 1938,
⁷
subjecting all assets of Jews and their spouses (with the exception of household effects and personal belongings) to notification, in order “to safeguard Jewish property in accordance with the needs of the German economy” (sec. 7).
Safeguarding
was nothing other than a euphemism for the seizure of all Jewish property for the benefit of the Reich. The property owned had to be declared in detail on lengthy questionnaires. Any property not declared was subject to seizure.
⁸
The free disposal by Jewish employers of their own businesses had already been abolished by Göring in spring 1938, when the sales of all businesses were made subject to a permit from the state authorities
⁹
(to prevent employers from saving their property). The aim of the decree of April 26, 1938, the seizure of Jewish assets, was finally legalized through the Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property of December 3, 1938,
¹⁰
issued by the minister of the economy and the Reich minister of the interior.

All Jews running a business (Jews’ enterprises had had to be listed and registered since June 1938, according to the Third Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of June 14, 1938)
¹¹
could be obliged by the authorities to sell or close their businesses within a set time limit. The same was true of agricultural and forestry undertakings or property, for all real estate, and other types of property (secs. 1 and 6).
¹²
Severely punished (generally by penitentiary) was the offense of “concealment of the Jewish character” (i.e., Jewish ownership) of a business.
¹³
This decree was the basis for the horrendous profits made by the German economy and the public authorities, and especially the offices of the plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, through the Aryanization of Jewish businesses.

The procedure was set up as follows: when a Jewish businessman or tradesman was ordered to sell his business, the authorities established state trustees to administer the transaction (sec. 2 of the Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property). The trustees were to evaluate the business or the estate and to fix a compensation, which “had of course to be as low as possible.”
¹⁴
Such administration by trustees offered German comrades unlimited opportunities to enrich themselves or “settle old accounts”; the trustees were then to transfer the item in question into Aryan hands at the normal price (needless to say without any possibility of legal protection for either the Jewish owner or those German competitors who were not successful in the race for acquisition).
¹⁵
This procedure caused enormous sums to be wasted, since the businesses sold were often not well run and were allowed to go to ruin. The net profit (the difference between the minimal compensation accorded the Jewish owner and the normal price paid by the German purchaser) was scooped up by the administration.
¹⁶

The Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property contained further discriminatory provisions, namely, that the acquisition of real estate was forbidden to Jews (sec. 7) and that all other dispositions of estates required authorization (sec. 8). In this regard, too, the decree merely rubber-stamped long-established practice. Jewish property owners were subject to enormous pressures from all sides (for example by Aryan competitors, creditors, etc.) to sell their land, especially when larger properties were at stake and when local notables, leading Party officials, or members of the police forces had their eye on the property. Extortion was resorted to without qualm: Jewish prisoners were released from concentration camp on condition that they sell their estates at a price to be fixed “later” by the government.
¹⁷

Movable property, too, was subject to certain restraints. All securities in Jewish hands were made subject to compulsory deposit in a bank for foreign exchange, and all dispositions had to be licensed by the state (secs. 11 and 12). Any acquisition, whatever its legal basis, was forbidden, including donations
¹⁸
and all sales of objects of gold, precious metals, precious stones, or pearls of a value of more than one thousand reichsmarks (sec. 14). In spring 1939 all jewelry and precious-metal objects in Jewish hands had to be surrendered without compensation.
¹⁹
Since 1933 it had been generally forbidden to take along any money, securities, jewelry, or precious metals when emigrating.
²⁰
If the individual did not have an emigration permit (when fleeing the country), such valuables were seized in accordance with the foreign exchange regulations, which were always applied more strictly to Jews.
²¹