The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (38 page)

Even in the much larger jurisdiction of the special court in Munich, designed especially to deal with all kinds of critical remarks, there was a total of only just over seventy persons tried between 193 3 and 1944 for making comments which in some, often remote, way could be construed as `negative' concerning the topics of Jews and Jewish policy. (Included in this number were at least three Jewish persons.) Almost half of the cases (thirty-four) were dropped."
Of course, the special courts did not handle every case of such `treasonous' statements; and the police and Gestapo dealt with more than those sent to
trial. Even so, the scale of negative remarks about the regime's approach to the Jews must be termed so small as to be almost insignificant.69

Paula Klein from Wurzburg stands out as a rare case of someone who refused to buckle under and adjust. A down-to-earth working woman ('without profession'), born in Frankfurt a.M. in 1893, she had long been used to speaking her mind. Reported by a truck-driver in October 1933 for having said that Hitler 'was as much a scoundrel and crook' as the people he had replaced, she was apparently let off, as she was in April 1936, when she was turned in by an NSV nurse for having said she would give nothing to the Nazi charity Mother and Child because 'people who cannot feed children should not have any'. She managed to avoid getting into serious trouble until May 1940, when she was again denounced, this time by her neighbour, who in a letter asked the Gestapo to keep her identity a secret 'because I live in the house'. This time Klein was put in gaol for two months for saying, among many other things, that the Jews should be left in peace, that the cost of living was too high, Germany should get out of the war, the 'bloody' Italians got the coal and Germans did not, and so on. It was bound to be a difficult business to transform the behaviour and habits of such an unconventional person, and had the regime lasted longer she would probably have been declared an 'asocial element' or perhaps 'enemy of the community' and put in a camp somewhere.'"

Most 'negative' remarks reported to the police hardly represented serious opposition to anti-Jewish policies. Wurzburg's theatre-director, overheard in a local restaurant, was turned in to the police on 1o October 1933 for criticizing the government and for having said that the whole anti-Semitic thing was nonsense.71
On 17 May 1938 the gendarme in Esselbach was informed that in the local pub Peter Meister had said that the boycott against the Jews 'wasn't right either, because Jews have to pay their taxes as well'.72
Hans Griewalt, a local leader of the Nazi Peasants' Association, turned in a 53-year-old man he overheard in a Thungersheim cafe on io January 1938 saying that he and his family would continue to visit their Jewish medical doctor in spite of the regime's policies: 'For me it's strictly a matter of his ability.''
1 A Frankenheim woman turned in her neighbour for remarks on the 'Jewish question' she overheard through the kitchen window: while the Gestapo itself felt that the complainant was unreliable, the tip-off was checked and, more or less as expected, found to be a baseless act of hostility aimed at a despised neighbour
.71

In several cases handled by the Wurzburg Gestapo throughout the period down to 1939 someone suggested that it was possible to get a better deal in Jewish businesses.7
A statement overheard in a Wurzburg restaurant got Wilhelm Knetebeck into trouble. It was claimed that Knetebeck had said, 'I would rather buy from the dirtiest Jews than from the current National Socialists. You can't do business without Jews. Conditions are terrible!' Knetebeck insisted at his interrogation that he had only said, 'I would just as soon purchase from Jews as from a bad peasant or Christian.''
`' Karl Horn stated in an Aschaffenburg pub on , September 1937 that you could not hold it against someone who shopped at the Jews' stores, 'because the Jews sell everything cheaper'. Horn was reprimanded for the remarks and tried to get out of responsibility for them by implying that he did not care less about the Jews one way or another, but simply meant that he did not feel like paying for the regime's anti-Semitic policies by being forced to pay higher prices in non-Jewish stores."
On 15 October 1938 a Nazi Party member reported having overheard a peasant in a Mosbach pub say that the 'policies against the Jews are not right' because earlier he had had no trouble trading in cows with them, but now they were gone
.78

Throughout this particular group of files the idea recurs that the persecution of the Jews would, directly or indirectly, be repaid with war and destruction. At the end of May 1937 a man was reported for saying in a Wurzburg restaurant that Hitler's persecution of the Jews was making the foreign political situation worse.79
At a wedding on 27 June 1938 farmer Michael Stechner from Grettstadt, near Schweinfurt, made some incautious remarks which were overheard by the deputy mayor of Grettstadt, who reported them to his superior. Eventually ordered to the police station in Gochsheim, Stechner was accused of having said that it 'was impossible to have any faith in the government' and that 'the entire leadership of the state is built on a completely mixed-up basis. Mishandling the Jews so terribly will lead in no time to chaos in the German Reich. You can see it already in the case of Czechoslovakia.'"0

On 30 September 1938 a woman in the dairy business reported to the local NSDAP in Castell that one Heinz Auer had said Germany would not be in such a mess if Hitler had not persecuted the Jews, and that Hitler would have to take the responsibility if war came."'
Two soldiers who had quarters in the home of an Ergoldsbach woman, Betty Kneisel, were reported in mid-March 1938 to the NSDAP Ortsgruppe because they had said that 'Hitler made a great mistake when he laid hands on the Jews; they ought to have been left in peace.' Kneisel felt that such attitudes from these people, on their way to Austria, represented a 'danger' to the state.82 A Wurzburg man was reported two days after Christmas 1939 for implying that Germany had enough on its hands already without getting involved in the persecution of the Jews.83 Even as late as August 1943 some Germans (for example, one woman in Gerolzhofen) were of the opinion that the increasing air attacks against the country were 'a reprisal for the burning of the synagogues and for driving the Jews out of the country'. 'Dear God,' she added, 'we ordinary folk now have to pay the price; we didn't want the war and never had anything against the Jews.'84

The one event that did spark off negative comment in Lower Franconia, which is registered in this set of sources, was the 'night of broken glass' of 9-io November 1938. In fact, the mild reactions to that pogrom, based on all kinds of considerations, spilled over into the following weeks and months, not only in this part of Germany, but in many other areas as well."s The charges brought before the Munich special court (above) reflect a similar pattern of reluctance to express reservations about the events. Some Germans were disgusted by it, but they tended to focus primarily on its utter wastefulness. A particularly crass example comes from Augsfeld, near Hassfurt, where Georg Werner was involved in a late-night card-game at the local pub on 23 November 1938. As midnight approached, he said (it was recalled by a witness), 'If they had hanged all the Jews together it wouldn't have bothered me. But property of the people ought not to be destroyed.' Brought in to account for what was said (along with the other five card-players), Werner told the police that 'the Jews belonged in a workhouse', and that he had 'absolutely no sympathy' for them. However, in so far as the pogrom had destroyed their property-which was part of the 'German people's goods', it had gone too far." Similar remarks were attributed to Anton Konrad just after the pogrom during a Sunday-evening visit to a pub in Oberthulba. In a state of considerable agitation, and under the influence of alcohol, this farmer confronted SA man Bruno Schultz over the issue. Schultz promptly reported that Konrad (born 1891, father of eight) had said, 'It should not have been done, destroying i billion marks worth of the Jews' stuff. The Sudeten Germans ought to have got the Jews' things; now they won't get it because
it's been wrecked. Just today you saw that the people won't give anything more to your collections.''

In general, across Lower Franconia the reactions to the regime's pogrom were negative, while people still remained hostile to or at least unsupportive of the Jews. In his monthly report on the situation the chief administrative officer of the area wrote that it was 'regretted by a great part of the population, especially in the rural areas, that in the event valuables were destroyed which, in respect to our raw-material situation, might have been put to more useful purposes for the people as a whole'. He also reported that 'many Volkcomrades declared, after so much valuable property was aimlessly destroyed, that they could not bring themselves to give anything to the collections. Fears about lack of generosity in giving to the winter assistance work have also been raised in other jurisdictions.""

There are other indications that a few people had begun to feel troubled by the events. Johannes Weber, a worker, entered a Jewish firm in Klingenberg (owned by his neighbour Israel Berliner) on the day following the pogrom, and found a group of acquaintances already there; when the conversation turned to what had happened, Weber stated that he could not get any sleep during the night because of what was happening to his Jewish neighbour, Herr Berliner, who lived across the street. Though Weber 'did not actually say anything', according to one witness, his gestures made it clear that what had happened to the Jews 'did not suit him'. Still another witness insisted that Weber had said, 'What kind of thing is this, destroying everything? Haven't you people read the Fiihrer's decree that nothing more should be done to the Jews?' The next day at work in the local docks he twice said, 'You are scoundrels!'-a reference, according to the denouncer, to Nazis who supported such an action. Weber was arrested and given a warning to watch his step in the future."
The Arnstein gendarme was informed on 13 December 1938 that farmer Peter Heinecke (born 1913) yelled at some SA members in the local pub as follows: 'You want to exterminate the Jews, well to hell with you; you're the ones who should be exterminated. I much prefer them. With them you can do something; you people belong against the wall and should be chopped up.' Heinecke was put on trial, but the general amnesty quashed the proceedings.9°
A Wurzburg man got into trouble when, on 16 February 1939, upon hearing of a Jewish woman's recent suicide, he exclaimed in the neighbourhood vegetable store, within earshot of the wife of an NSDAP member, 'It's no wonder, seeing how they are treating the Jews: shame on the Third Reich!'91

That the 'Jewish question' reached a particularly acute stage after the pogrom can be seen from another case. Two days after Christmas 1938 three different people were denounced in the Hassfurt area: Frau Muller (a restaurant-owner, born 1879), for giving a Jew a loaf of bread; Herr Ringer (mover/shipper, born 1880), for saying to a Jewish man 'Until later' (a normal valediction); and Herr Vogel (a trader, born 1892), because he obtained wares from a Jewish firm. Local officials were even more attentive than usual to the most trivial of accusations in the days following the pogrom.92
Some Germans were scandalized by the events of the 'night of broken glass', but if these cases are any guide it would seem that the regime decided to clamp down on dissent harder than ever in the aftermath.

6. DEPORTATIONS OF THE JEWS FROM LOWER FRANCONIA

In early July 1944 a woman was reported by her close friend for saying (in the privacy of the apartment they shared), among other things, that one SS man had told her that he was once up to his knees in blood during the shooting of 40,000 Jews.93
But it is exceedingly rare for the Gestapo case-files to contain references to the murder of the Jews in the east. There were no reports of reactions to forcing the Jews to wear the yellow star, nor, for that matter, to their deportation.

The Gestapo was the major institution responsible for carrying out the deportations. The ever-tightening guide-lines for conducting them were followed in mind-numbing compliance with eleven separate regulations. Everything was registered, including family pets. Jews were not simply herded together, but the process had to follow precise plans right up to the lastminute checks to see whether they were carrying something prohibited. Making each transport 'ready for shipment' was the task of the Gestapo. All dwellings were to be left in a clean and tidy fashion. Each person to be deported was informed of all these stipulations, and simultaneously assigned a call-up number, which on the appointed day was to be written on a card (4 x io cm.) and attached to the upper clothing.94
On departure (for which two days' notice was given) the Jews-many of them from homes which had been in the family for generations-left behind all they owned, and, to stop any thefts, the police demonstrably sealed the doors.

The first transport from Wurzburg left with 202 Jews (including 40 children and young people) on 27 November 1941. Before departure they were assembled and searched and detained for the night; on the day of the transport
they were marched to the railway station. The next transport, with 208 persons, left on 24 March 1942 from Kitzingen; Jews from fifteen different towns in the area were collected and kept overnight, probably in three different small hotels. Another shipment took place on 25 April 1942, when a large number from all across Lower Franconia, some 850 people, left from Wiirzburg."
Jews were held in the specially lighted 'Platz'schen Garten'; this was a large restaurant and beer-garden, taken over by the Gestapo and reorganized to 'process' the Jews. On io and 23 September two further transports left the area; the first had 177 people, the second 562 from more than a dozen cities, including larger numbers of sick and infirm. The last transport, of some 64 persons, departed on 17 June 1943. Altogether some 2,063 Jews had been deported to various destinations in six different trans- ports.96