The Long Path to Auschwitz – Part 2

Racial Hate Laws One Step at a Time, with Family Notes: An Article in Three Parts

Part II: 1936 to 1938: The Nuremberg Laws, Aryanization, Emigration, and the Anschluss.

DESPITE THE MANDATED QUIET during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, sporadic outbursts of anti-Jewish episodes occurred in various places in Germany. In smaller cities and rural towns, local governments sometimes initiated, encouraged, or, at least, overlooked targeted boycotts of Jewish businesses or random violence against Jews.

The Nuremberg Laws: A biological solution to assimilation.

Less than a month after the closing ceremonies of the Berlin Olympics, the eighth annual Nuremberg Rally attracted roughly 800,000 enthusiastic participants. For a week they celebrated the recent remilitarization of the Rhineland, marched, waved flags, chanted, and listened enraptured to der Führer’s speeches.

On the final day, Hitler announced the now-infamous Nuremberg Laws. These race laws addressed his obsession with the pollution of German blood by Jews through intermarriage and stripped Jews of their citizenship rights. (*2) The landmark Nuremberg Laws were passed by the Reichstag two days later.

One section of the legislation stated that “extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of pure German blood” were henceforth a crime. This law broke my aunt Edith’s heart. She could no longer imagine living in a country where her love for an Aryan man, the love of her life, was now a crime. In the spring of 1936, Edith fled Germany and found refuge in London as a domestic worker.

Following the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, edicts established a definition of Jewishness. This definition, though occasionally updated, became the basis for who could be deprived of rights or arrested. (*3) Nazi stalwarts assumed that once everyone agreed on what made a Jew a Jew, executing Jewish policy would be simplified. However, one specific problem soon became evident.

Relying only on a law that forbade intermarriage, thus hopefully eliminating future mixed-blood children, would require decades to completely separate German blood from the taint of Jewish mixing. Thousands of mixed-blood children already existed, and the “removal” of new “illegal offspring” was not on the table.

This slow pace was unacceptable to Jew-haters such as Julius Streicher, the publisher of the tabloid Der Stürmer (translated as the Stormtrooper), and Gerhard Wagner, who headed a group of German doctors who were intent on identifying a specifically Jewish blood type. Nazi extremists wanted Jews to be eradicated from Germany much faster and more completely than was possible simply by outlawing intermarriage.

Additional plans were essential to deliver Hitler’s campaign promise of a Judenfrei (free of Jews) Germany. But, after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, legal methods faltered. To the displeasure of many fanatics, Hitler chose to step back from Jewish policy and concentrate on the economy, international diplomacy, and rearmament. Ideas from ministry officials who hoped to further anti-Jewish policy were still encouraged, but all proved to have unintended consequences that limited their usage. This push and pull between moderate Nazis and their more zealous cohorts was an ongoing problem during the pre-war years.

Aryanization: The confiscation of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews.

Efforts to Aryanize Jewish businesses were stymied by the complexity and instability of the German economy, and the weak economy created a vicious circle.

The health of the German economy was affected by unemployment. If major Jewish-owned businesses dissolved, countless workers would be left without jobs. Rearmament also depended on economic recovery. Some Jewish companies held government contracts or supplied essential goods to the military. Destroying those firms would negatively impact rearmament, just as the boycott had done earlier.

Hitler’s military needed raw materials essential for rearmament but not found in Germany (rubber for tires, steel for tanks, lead for bullets, oil, and more). Scientists were hard at work trying to create synthetic substitutes, but results were in the future. Meanwhile, maintaining relationships with Britain, France, the US, and other foreign suppliers of these materials was of overriding importance to rebuilding the military.

Germany’s treasury had a shortage of foreign exchange, and the government feared the boycott of exports due to reports of violence against the Jews. Protecting the investments of German banks that held interests in Jewish companies was also a concern. All of these problems caused Hitler to be cautious. Thus, Aryanization proceeded slowly. Jewish firms essential to the general economy or that supplied the military were allowed to remain in business.

While the road toward Aryanization proceeded gradually, small Jewish companies were most vulnerable to takeover. A café would be closed for minor health ordinance infractions, or local Nazis intimidated customers so that a shop’s sales dipped. Aryan firms refused to sell a craftsperson supplies, or customers worried about the appearance of being a “Jew lover” and spent their limited funds elsewhere. Sometimes municipalities published lists of Jewish-owned businesses and encouraged boycotts. A café would be closed for minor health ordinance infractions or local Nazis intimidated customers so that a shop’s sales dipped. Aryan firms refused to sell a craftsperson supplies, or customers worried about the appearance of being a “Jew lover” and spent their limited funds elsewhere. Sometimes municipalities published lists of Jewish-owned businesses and encouraged boycotts.

Under these pressures, a small Jewish business could easily edge toward bankruptcy and become ripe for purchase at bargain-basement prices.

Between 1934 and 1937, most of the takeovers were “voluntary.” This meant only that the sale included a legal contract, and Jewish owners were compensated, usually at a rate somewhere between 10% and 50% of the valuation of their holdings. Of course, laws prevented these owners from transferring what little currency they received outside of Germany, leaving them with no liquid funds to finance beginning a new life in a foreign place.

Gradual loss of sales affected the company owned by my paternal grandfather’s family for three generations. “Lang and Son” leather wholesalers made it relatively unscathed through the depression and inflation years due to a generous dowry from Clara’s wealthy family when my grandparents married. However, after the Nazi takeover, many customers avoided Jewish-owned suppliers, and the company began having serious financial difficulties. This led to the forced sale of the business to an Aryan interloper in 1935. With the loss of his family business, my grandfather had nothing to do besides worry about what was happening politically in his beloved homeland. He descended into depression and died, either from a heart attack or by suicide—we will never be sure which.

Aryanization of Jewish holdings proceeded slowly until about 1937. As the German economy began to revive and rearmament became a reality, the takeover of Jewish companies accelerated.

Emigration: Forcing Jews to leave Germany

Hitler and his Nazi government always hoped that if life was made difficult enough for German Jews, they would flee elsewhere. Emigration of Jews was encouraged in propaganda, but in reality, there was no easy pathway to leave the country.

Most of the Jews who left Germany in the early years of the Reich were the young, the adventurous, Zionists, and the wealthy. By 1938, those who remained were overwhelmingly past mid-life. Most of the Jews still in Germany were workers, middle class, or had suffered financial difficulties. (*4)

Anyone who wanted to leave Germany had to go through the Interior Ministry, but for Jews the requirements were doubly complicated. The Reich’s Office of Emigration demanded security clearances from local police, financial clearances, and finally an exorbitant “flight tax.” Only a limited amount of Reichsmarks could be taken out of Germany. In 1933 a person leaving Germany could take 200 RM. By 1937, the maximum was lowered to 10 RM. Bank accounts were frozen on a person’s departure, and “flight taxes” rose to 25% of a person’s net worth. Eventually, by 1939, exit taxes were at 95% for Jews.

At the end of April 1938, a government decree required Jews to register all their assets if the combined value was over 5,000 Reichsmarks, or approximately $2,000 USD, a fairly large amount at the time. This made confiscation of valuables and real estate far easier.

The stripping of Jewish assets was a “catch 22” in the regime’s efforts to get Jews to flee the country. Impoverished Jews lost their ability to pay for travel expenses or offer assurances of financial independence to countries where they applied for visas. German Jews found potential host countries refused visas to refugees who would arrive without funds.

Despite Nazi propaganda that encouraged Jewish emigration, the number of Jews leaving declined. In the first year after the Nazis came to power, 37,000 Jews left Germany. In 1938, only 20,000 fled, and the total number for the first six years of the Third Reich stood at 149,000. Subtract this figure from the 503,000 Jews counted in the 1933 census, and approximately 354,000 Jewish persons remained in Germany by the time WWII began.

The Anschluss: The annexation of Austria

In one day, March 12, 1938, the annexation of Austria added 200,000 Jews to Germany. This more than replaced the German Jews who had fled. The Anschluss added to the size of the German nation, but it also added to the Jewish problem. Ominously, Austria was used to test new ideas for achieving a Judenfrei Germany.

Adolf Eichmann and the SS, a paramilitary enforcement organization, set up headquarters in Vienna and initiated an efficient central office to handle Jewish emigration. After a long day standing in lines, a Jewish family could emerge with all the needed paperwork but no money. By November 1938, more than 50,000 Jews had fled Austria.

*

As financial problems multiplied for the Jewish population remaining in Germany, legal action against them escalated too. In March of 1938, a new law removed rights and protections from Jewish religious congregations. Soon after, the SS began arresting and incarcerating Soviet Jews living in Germany. In June, the SS targeted Jewish antisocial and criminal elements. This included homosexuals, prostitutes, pickpockets, and those who were behind paying their taxes. The new concentration camps were rapidly filling with anyone the Third Reich deemed an enemy of the state.

All this was only a prelude to Kristallnacht, the spate of rioting and violence against Jews that erupted in November of 1938.

*2 – see How German Jews Lost Their Citizenship

*3 – see Nazi Policy and the Intermarriage and Mischling Dilemma

*4 – (see Why Did Jews Stay So Long in Nazi Germany?)

• To be continued next week.

Note to readers: This article makes no attempt to cover all aspects of Germany’s Jewish policy or the Holocaust. I have not dealt with the plight of Gypsies, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, or the many others persecuted during the Nazi years. I have left out the horror visited on the Jews of Eastern Europe. I have not dealt with the execution of the Final Solution. My intention is to show the incremental aspect of Jewish persecution from 1933 to 1941 in the German homeland. Specifically, I have concentrated on aspects of Jewish policy that affected my family and thus affected the characters, both real and fictional, in my novels, Immigrant Soldier and Ashes and Ruins.