The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (20 page)

On the Monday following the boycott (3 April) business returned to normal in Wiirzburg, but many Jews remained deeply shocked and disappointed at the turn of events. In a number of ways pressure continued to be exerted against them. By late 1933, in several villages across Lower Franconia mayor and council formally denied Jews not merely permission to live and work, but even to travel through on their way to another place. Eight separate places were mentioned in a letter of complaint from the Bavarian Jewish self-help association to the Bavarian Ministry of Economics in October 193 3. The letter stated that some mayors were being requested by the Nazi Party to post signs that prohibited entry to all but locally resident Jews. It is worth noting that the association did not feel that it was in a position to object to the blatant prejudice and racial discrimination, and hoped to move the authorities by pointing out how the signs were hurting the economy and ran contrary to the `law for the protection of retail trade' of 15 September 1933.70

Such harassment of the Jews was meant to force them out of the economy, to alienate them from their neighbours, to push them out of the villages and towns, and ultimately out of Germany. Between 1933 and 1939, as a kind of mirror of the persecution of the Jews, the number of Jews living in Bavaria declined by more than 50 per cent (from 35,452 to 14,684); in Lower Franconia the decline was 59.4 per cent (from 8,520 to 3,461)."
The worstaffected areas in all of Bavaria were the Protestant rural areas of Middle Franconia, which had a stronger anti-Semitic tradition; there the Jewish population dropped from 11,631 to 3,523 between 1933 and 1939.

Official records show that a more or less unrelenting campaign of harassment was allowed to continue, and was, moreover, encouraged by the Party, notwithstanding the occasional pious statements of leaders that such `individual actions' should cease. Jews were made to feel that they could expect little help from their neighbours and that anti-Jewish policies would increase in number and be enforced down to the smallest detail. Any sympathy that might be shown for their plight or reserve about the efficacy of anti-Semitic policies could be treated by anyone who wished as cause for a report to the authorities. The ways in which barriers were drawn between the Jews and everyone else in Germany are treated in the remainder of this book, but here it is important to recall that they left the country, especially the rural areas, primarily out of a fear of violence to their persons or property. News of a beating, arrest, or damage to property travels fast in the rural and small-town milieu.

In the early years of the dictatorship, when eliminating high unemployment
and getting the economy going again were the priorities, the new leadership in Berlin gave no priority to anti-Semitic policies. The Reich Ministry of Economics even thought it ill-advised to draw up lists of Jewish and nonJewish businesses with the aim of some sort of indirect boycott, because the effort was bound to cause economic disruptions.12
While the efforts of local hotheads could be appreciated, it might be surmised, their actions had to be kept within certain bounds, lest the economy collapse. For the most part the instigators of the actions against the Jews belonged to one or another of the Nazi Party organizations, SA or SS. The Hitler Youth was also frequently involved, especially as local nuisances.

However, there was a kind of limited semi-official quarantine placed on the Jews' economic activities. Nazis or their relatives who frequented Jewish businesses-or were attended to by Jewish doctors, dentists, or other professionals-were taken to task whenever such behaviour was brought to light. In April 1935 the authorities in Wdrzburg reported that there had recently been a concerted effort to boycott Jewish department stores, doctors, and lawyers; on 20 April 200 people gathered in front of the Jewish department store Ruschkewitz in order to identify any members of the NSDAP who might be shopping in the store. While the police moved them away without incident, members of the Nazi Party, SA, and SS were involved in an attempt to enforce their own form of 'silent boycott'."
Before the end of the year, however, Ruschkewitz sold out to Joseph Neckermann, who thereby founded what became after 194 5 a department-store empire. Many others took advantage of these 'Aryanization' procedures; such actions could be seen elsewhere, not just in Wiirzburg.14

Local records give the distinct impression that the SA and Party were determined to boycott the Jews, but more than one source suggests that, in spite of it all, Catholics in Bavaria, as well as in the country as a whole, were slower to respond. A selection of Gestapo reports for all of Prussia, which survives for the first years of the dictatorship, makes this clear. Of the Catholic population, the Gestapo reported in mid-1935 that those in Recklinghausen, Westphalia, had 'no proper understanding for the fact that in the last while the Jewish question has been placed in the foreground and, because of its religious views', the population of the area did 'not accept the nature of the struggle against the Jews'. However, the view which predominated within the 'movement' and the SA was that the time had come to 'solve the Jewish question radically'. The idea 'was to wind up the Jewish problem from below', to take hold of it in such a way that, eventually, 'the government must follow'.''

Once the unemployment was reduced and power consolidated, the early official brakes on Nazi anti-Semitism which was aimed at the economic activities of the Jews were gradually released, and at all levels the effort was focused on getting rid of Jewish entrepreneurs, whether bankers or newspaper-owners or the lowliest cattle-dealers in Bavaria. Where necessary, intimidation was applied-for example, against peasants, to put a stop to their ingrained and persistent habit of dealing with Jewish traders. Even late in 193 5, when such acts were officially taboo, hop-growers from communities around Hersbruck (Middle Franconia) who dared sell to Jewish traders were branded as traitors and marched through the villages with signs round their necks."
Such measures hardly met with instant success, for as late as mid1937 long lists of those who kept on dealing with the Jews were drawn up and direct pressure applied.
1 The situation was the same across Bavaria; districts with a tradition of Jewish cattle-dealers (which included even antiSemitic areas such as in Middle Franconia) had to be forced to give them up, and when, by 1938, Jews were finally driven from the trade altogether, the mutterings of the peasants indicated that they were missed."

In addition to efforts to drive the Jews out of the villages and towns of the area, there was a campaign led by local hotheads in the Nazi movement to put up anti-Jewish signs as a social reinforcement. At the entrances of many villages, as well as in certain establishments like restaurants and hotels, signs appeared that features slogans such as 'Jews not wanted here' or 'Entry forbidden to Jews'. Dr Rosenthal from Wurzburg wrote to the 'Association of Bavarian-Israelite Communities' in October 1934 (as he had done at roughly the same time in 1933) to complain again that across Lower Franconia there was an increasing number of such signs posted at the entrance to villages. Each village could decide for itself whether to allow such signs, he maintained, and the regional authorities had no jurisdiction in the matter. Rosenthal wanted some lobbying done by the Bavarian association with the Bavarian Ministry of Economics to change things, because every day the signs caused 'public defamation of rural Jews'.19
Although this was mainly the work of people in the Nazi movement, there were times when a placard was displayed on the initiative of a pub- or restaurant-owner, either to curry favour with such people or to protect himself from the charge of being a friend to the Jews after he had been denounced to the Party for letting them in.

There was no law or regulation which denied Jews service in restaurants
and pubs, but where owners were 'soft' on the issue local hacks were quick to organize mini-boycotts."'
People involved in tourism or business in the numerous spa centres in Bavaria worried about the impact on trade, and many of these concerns were expressed to the authorities. While the legality of the signs remained unclear, no one seemed to know how to handle the situation. The people who put them up in Middle Franconia (Streicher territory) were not prosecuted, and this response in that area left the authorities in Lower Franconia in a quandary about what should be done. While the police in Wdrzburg itself officially banned such placards on 27 April 1934, they not only continued to appear but actually spread, with the result that on 29 January 1936 Rudolf Hess wrote to all local Party branches instructing them to avoid placards which incited violence, such as 'Jews enter this village at their own risk'; he saw nothing wrong with those that declared 'Jews are not wanted here'.2'

These official and semi-official actions had a considerable impact in reinforcing negative attitudes towards the Jews, even when the violence, and especially the requirement to cut useful economic ties with Jews, were far from being approved. In some parts of Lower Franconia, including areas which were reticent in supporting the Nazis before 1933, people began to turn their backs on the persecuted, and more than anything else wanted to see them leave.zz

2. THE NUREMBERG LAWS

The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 provided legislative support for harassment of the Jews, which was already well under way. Over the preceding spring and summer a wave of anti-Jewish excesses had swept the country, though one leader after another officially 'regretted' them and gave notice that they should stop, particularly as they were having an adverse effect on the economy."
3 Reich Bank President Hjalmar Schacht, disturbed at the economic repercussions, called a meeting of the relevant ministers for 20 August 1935, but no binding decision was taken.24
Yet another call went out to end the 'spontaneous actions', and Schacht met Hitler for conversations on 5 September, just ten days before the Party rally. There is insufficient evidence to settle the long-standing debate as to whether there was a direct
connection between calling off the radicals and offering a 'legal' resolution of the problem. Hitler's speech to the Nuremberg Party rally suggests such a link. On this occasion he declared that it was necessary to adopt a 'legal regulation of the problem', which was justified in order to head off spontaneous 'defensive actions of the enraged population'.'

The Nuremberg Laws declared illegal all further marriages and sexual relations outside marriage 'between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood'. Jews could no longer employ 'German' women as domestic servants, nor were they permitted to raise the national flag."
The Times of London waited until its edition of 8 November to deliver its 'interim report' on the impact of these laws. Under the heading 'Persecution in a new pitch, a cold pogrom' it spoke of the 'irreparable injustice and harm' being perpetrated because of the laws, and added that 'perhaps the most pertinent comment, which can be heard expressed with understandable bitterness and disgust in circles by no means fully "non-Aryan", is that the new laws are making Nazi Germany more than ever into a paradise for blackmailers'. Especially troublesome were the confusion in the regulations and the question of enforcement:

Nobody can yet say to what extent, if any, they will check the pioneer process by which individual fanatics and-still worse-subordinate authorities, with subtle guidance from higher quarters, endeavour to blaze the trail. The law still lags far behind realities, and every day that passes enables its amateur interpreters to win fresh ground from which it will not be easy to dislodge them. No regulations are likely to bring dismissed Jews back to their posts, and none can bring suicides back to life.

The author of The Times article remarked that the laws were bound to be more devastating for the Jews than the 'individual actions'.

But the Nuremberg Laws, in the absence of interpretative regulations, are being used to justify every sort of indignity and persecution, not only by individuals, but by the established authorities. The intimidation system of the Nazi revolution, with its indefinite 'protective' or 'preventive' custody, its concentration camps, its pillorying, and other social and economic pressure, led from the first to the rapid growth of the loathsome practice of denunciation, which has not yet been stamped out despite many pious declarations by public authorities. The opportunities offered by the new laws are unlimited, as any lawyer can bear witness who has tried to look after the interests of 'non-Aryans' or political suspects. Any individual can report his Jewish enemy or competitor as having been seen in the company of an 'Aryan' woman, or trump up alleged business obligations from the past.

The article concluded that the Jews in Germany were without hope. 'Unless some attempt is made in high quarters to check the ferocity of the anti-Semitic fanatics', the Jews 'will be condemned, as it were, to run round blindly in
circles until they die. This is the process to which the term "cold pogrom" has been applied."'

German Jews, hitherto reluctant to join the Zionist cause for a homeland in the Near East, were undoubtedly shocked. The Tinies referred to the legislation as the `ghetto laws', and it was not a pleasant prospect to be subject to them. The majority, those in the non-Zionist camp, especially the assimilationists, saw the laws as a bitter set-back; these were Jews who were almost `more German than the Germans'.28
One of the major national Jewish organizations said the laws `constituted a severe blow for German Jewry', not least because overnight the hundred-year-long struggle for their emancipation was reversed, and they were turned into second-class citizens. The numerically smaller Zionist groups hoped to make the best of a bad situation."

The message in the Gestapo records and elsewhere for the period after September-October 1935 is summarized tersely by one, which states that 'because of the Nuremberg Laws, the Jews have been much reserved of late'.;"
The Gestapo in Bavaria said that 'many Jews appear, finally, to have come to the understanding that it is good and proper to behave cautiously as guests in a host land'.31
The underground Socialists' reports correctly saw that the laws had the effect of declaring the Jews 'outside the nation and legally unequal. It is an act of oppression and spiritual sadism.' In so far as it pertained to sexual relations, the Jews were declared 'inferior to all other peoples and races; they are ascribed a position, so to speak, outside humanity'
.3' The Government President of Lower Franconia reported for December-January 1935-6 that 'since the decreeing of the Nuremberg Laws the Jews have become very modest in their public appearances. The observation can be made that the Jews are making the switch, are selling off their businesses and preparing themselves for emigration.
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