Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (27 page)

In the same source, approximately 57 percent of the denunciations came from people who were not party members, and between 30 and 40 percent of the charges were false.
⁶⁰
Sometimes hotel employees would denounce a couple, neither of whom was Jewish; others were arrested because of information about ties that had ended long before 1933. There were instances of couples whose intimate relations extended back many years now avoiding sexual intercourse, and many cases of women proclaiming readiness to undergo medical examinations to demonstrate that they were virgins.
⁶¹

Goebbels was unhappy with the press reports of race defilement. In March 1936 he asked the press department of the Ministry of Justice to avoid giving undue publicity to
Rassenschande
verdicts against Jews as, in his view, it offered material to anti-German foreign newspapers. Moreover, the releases “were often written so clumsily that the reader did not understand the verdict and rather felt compassion for the accused.”
62

IV

Did public opinion fall further into step with the anti-Jewish policies of the regime after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws? According to Israeli historian David Bankier, a majority of Germans acquiesced in the laws because they accepted the idea of segregating the Jews: “The Potsdam Gestapo fully captured these feelings. The general belief was, it stated, that with the stabilization of the regime the time was ripe to realize this item on the Party’s agenda. At the same time, the Gestapo official added, the public hoped that other points of the Nazi program would be acted upon, especially those related to social issues. In Kiel, too, there was approval of the anti-Semitic laws, and people expected the status of the churches to be resolved in an equally satisfactory way.”
⁶³

According to the same analysis, people in various cities and areas of the Reich seemed to have been particularly satisfied with the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, on the assumption that enforcement of the law would put an end to the anti-Jewish terror of the previous months. Tranquility would return, and with it the good name of Germany in the eyes of the world. People believed that under the new laws, the relation to Jewry in Germany was now clearly defined: “Jewry is converted into a national minority and gets through state protection the possibility to develop its own cultural and national life”;
⁶⁴
such was the common opinion reported from Berlin.

For the party radicals, the laws were a clear victory of the party over the state bureaucracy, but many considered the new decrees to be “too mild.” The Dortmund Nazis, for instance, regarded the fact that the Jews could still use their own symbols as too much of a concession. Some activists hoped that the Jews would offer new pretexts for action, others simply demanded that the scope of some of the measures be extended: that for example, no German female of any age should be allowed to work in a Jewish (or mixed-marriage) family—or even in the household of a single Jewish woman.
⁶⁵

The laws were sharply criticized in opposition circles, mainly among the (now underground) Communists. Some Communist leaflets denounced the Nazis’ demagogic use of anti-Semitism and demanded a united opposition front; others demanded the freeing of political prisoners and the cessation of anti-Jewish measures. According to Bankier, however, Communist material at the time, despite its protests against the Nuremberg Laws, continued to reiterate such longtime standard assertions as: “Only poor workers were arrested for race defilement, while rich Jews were not touched by the Nazis,” and, “There were no racial principles behind the ban on keeping maids under forty-five years of age; rather, the clause was simply an excuse for firing thousands of women from their jobs.”
⁶⁶

The churches kept their distance, except for the strongly Catholic district of Aachen and some protests by Evangelical pastors, for instance in Speyer. The Evangelical Church was put to the test when the Prussian Confessing Synod met in Berlin at the end of September 1935: A declaration expressing concern for both baptized and unbaptized Jews was discussed and rejected, but so was too explicit an expression of support for the state. The declaration that was finally agreed on merely reaffirmed the sanctity of baptism, which led Niemöller to express his misgivings about its failure to take any account of the postbaptismal fate of baptized Jews.
⁶⁷

To return to the attitudes of the general population, Nazi reports pointed to expressions of anxiety and even protests from Germans employed by Jews—be they German clerks working in Jewish firms or maids employed by Jewish families. But all in all, Bankier leaves little leeway for equivocation and doubts: “To sum up, the vast majority of the population approved of the Nuremberg Laws because they identified with the racialist policy and because a permanent framework of discrimination had been created that would end the reign of terror and set precise limits to anti-Semitic activities.”
⁶⁸

Although his cases are roughly the same as those later treated by Bankier, the study by another Israeli historian, Otto Dov Kulka, leaves the impression of a more diversified set of reactions. He too mentions Communist opposition as well as Catholic disapproval in some cities such as Aachen and Allenstein, and notes the criticism of some Protestant pastors, particularly in Speyer. He too refers to party activists who find the measures insufficient. In addition he comments on the disapproval that manifested itself among an upper bourgeoisie worried, among other things, about the possibility of economic reprisals in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the overall impression this study gives is that the majority of the population was satisfied with the laws because they clarified the status of Jews in Germany and, it was hoped, would put an end to indiscriminate disorder and violence. A contemporary report from Koblenz seems to reflect the most widespread reactions:

“The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor was mainly received with satisfaction, not least because not only will it psychologically hinder unpleasant individual actions [against the Jews] but even more, it will lead to the desired isolation of Jewry…. The question as to how far Jewish blood should be excluded from the German national body is still the object of animated discussions.”
⁶⁹

The reference to
Mischlinge
is unmistakable. Thus, both studies agree that a majority of Germans were more or less passively satisfied with the laws. In other words, the bulk of the population disliked acts of violence but did not object to the disenfranchisement and segregation of the Jews. It meant, further, that as segregation was now legally established, for a majority of the population the new situation allowed the individual to divest him- or herself of any responsibility for the measures regarding the Jews. The accountability for their fate had been taken over by the state.
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There were exceptions, and relations with Jews were maintained, as has already been noted with regard to the period preceding the Nuremberg Laws. On December 3, 1935, the Gestapo sent a general instruction (to all Gestapo stations) indicating that “recently announcements by Jewish organizers and former bandleaders of forthcoming dance events have increased to such a point that it is not always possible for Gestapo stations to control them in an orderly way.” And then comes the more interesting piece of news: “It has been repeatedly noticed that Aryans are also allowed to participate in such events.”
⁷¹

It seems, incidentally, that the Gestapo was encountering ever greater technical difficulties in controlling Jewish events. The explanation may be simple: The Jews reacted to growing persecution and segregation by intensifying all possible aspects of internal Jewish life, which explains both the number and the diversity of meetings, lectures, dances, and so on; these offered some measure of sanity and dignity, but meant more trouble for the Gestapo. As early as 1934, the State Police complained that many Jewish meetings, particularly those of the Central Association of German Jews, took place in private homes, which made control almost impossible;
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then, at the end of 1935, Jewish events were allegedly often moved from Saturdays to Sundays and to the Christian holidays, “obviously,” according to the Gestapo, “on the assumption that on those days the events would not be controlled. It was difficult to forbid meetings in private homes, but events taking place on Sundays or Christian holidays were, from then on, to be authorized in exceptional cases only.”
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The last straw came in April 1936: the Gestapo stations reported an increasing use of the Hebrew language in public Jewish political meetings. “Orderly control of these meetings,” wrote Heydrich, “and the prevention of hostile propaganda have thereby become impossible.” The use of Hebrew in public Jewish meetings was therewith forbidden, but the language could continue to be used in closed events, for study purposes, and to prepare for emigration to Palestine.
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Incidentally, the reports on the use of Hebrew remain somewhat mysterious unless (and this is very unlikely) only meetings of the small minority of East European, Orthodox (though not ultra-Orthodox), and ardent Zionist Jews are being referred to. Any sort of fluency in Hebrew among the immense majority of German Jews was nil.

Among those who may have considered the laws as not being extreme enough there was a hard core of Jew haters who did not belong to the party and were even enemies of National Socialism: Their hatred was such that, in their eyes, even the Nazis were instruments of the Jews. They were not necessarily marginal types. Adolf Schlatter, for example, was a distinguished professor of theology at Tübingen. On November 18, 1935, he published a pamphlet entitled “Will the Jew Be Victorious Over Us?: A Word for Christmas” (
Wird der Jude über uns siegen? Ein Wort für die Weihnacht
). Within a few weeks, some fifty thousand copies had been distributed. “Today,” wrote Schlatter, “a rabbi can say with pride: ‘Look how the situation in Germany has changed; indeed we are despised, but only because of our race. But until now we were alone in trying to erase from public consciousness the mad message preached at Christmas that Christ has come. Now, however, we have as allies in our fight those who carry the responsibility for the education of the German people, in other words, those to whom the German owes obedience….’ One cannot deny to the Jew that in the German sphere the situation has never been as favourable for his world view as it is now.”

But there was hope in the closing lines of Schlatter’s pamphlet: “It is indeed possible that in the immediate future the Jew will win a powerful victory over us; but his victory will not be final. The Jew did not bring belief in God into the world, and this belief the Jews and the Jew-companions cannot destroy. They cannot destroy it because they cannot cancel the fact that the Christ has come into the world.”
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Schlatter’s antiregime hatred of Jews had its built-in limits in Nazi Germany. On the face of it, the possibilities should have been greater for a member of the SS. Riding as a third-class passenger on the express train from Halle to Karlsruhe on October 22, 1935, SS officer Hermann Florstedt, according to his later testimony, badly needed sleep. As his ticket did not allow him access to a sleeping car, he moved through second class in search of a vacant seat. All the compartments were fully occupied, except for two that, according to Florstedt, were each occupied by a Jew. “I was in uniform,” wrote Florstedt in his letter of complaint to the Railways Directorate in Berlin, “and had no desire to spend this long journey in the company of a Jew.” Florstedt found the conductor and demanded a place in second class. The conductor led him to the compartments occupied by the Jews; Florstedt protested. “The conductor,” wrote Florstedt, “behaved more than strangely. He told me among other things that I had not seen these gentlemen’s certificates of baptism and that, moreover, for him, Jews were also passengers.”
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It seems that in October 1935 an SS uniform did not yet inspire terror. Besides, the conductor’s awareness that he was obeying existing administrative rules (an August 1935 decree specifically allowed Jews to use public transportation)
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must have given him enough self-confidence to answer as he did. The retort that Jews were passengers too can also be associated with the current of opinion (the Jew is human too) Goebbels had attacked in his June 1935 speech.

In Florstedt’s complaint to the Railways Directorate, he demanded the name of the conductor, with whom he wanted “to discuss the matter in the
Stürmer
.” The letter landed on the desk of Gruppenführer Heissmeyer, head of the SS Main Office, who vindicated the behavior of the railway official and did not take kindly to Florstedt’s threat to go public in the
Stürmer
.

Florstedt was soon transferred to the concentration camp administration. Early in the war he was deputy commander of Buchenwald, and in March 1943 he became commandant of the Lublin extermination camp.
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V

“Not only are we taking leave of the [Jewish] year, which has come to an end,” the
CV Zeitung
announced some two weeks after the proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws, “but also of an epoch in history, which is now drawing to its close.”
⁷⁹
But this apparent understanding that the situation was changing drastically did not lead to any forceful recommendations. Many German Jews still hoped that the crisis could be weathered
in
Germany and that the new laws would create a recognized framework for a segregated but nonetheless manageable Jewish life. The official reaction of the
Reichsvertretung
(which was now obliged to change its name from National Representation of German Jews to Representation of Jews in Germany) took at face value Hitler’s declaration of the new basis created by the laws for relations between the German people and the Jews living in Germany, and thus demanded the right to free exercise of its activities in the educational and cultural domains. Even at the individual level, many Jews believed that the new situation offered an acceptable basis for the future. According to a study of Gestapo and SD reports on Jewish reactions to the laws, in a significant number of communities “the Jews were relieved precisely because the laws, even if they established a permanent framework of discrimination, ended the reign of arbitrary terror. There was a measure of similarity in the way average Germans and average Jews reacted. The Germans expressed satisfaction while the Jews saw ground for hope. As the author of the report put it: the laws finally defined the relation between Jews and Germans. Jewry becomes a
de facto
national minority, enjoying the possibility of ensuring its own cultural and national life under state protection.”
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