City on the shores of the Baltic Sea, held alternately over the centuries by Germany and Poland. After World War I, Danzig was made a "free city" under the auspices of the League of Nations, thus providing Poland with access to the Baltic Sea, via a border that cut off East Prussia from the Reich. Ninety-six percent of the city's population was Germans. Their militant nationalism contained elements of anti-Semitism. Thousands of Jews settled in Danzig, increasing the local Jewish population from 2,500 to 12,000, despite the senate's curtailment of Jews' civil rights.
Danzig Becomes Nazi
In May 1933, the Nazis became the leading power in Danzig, and the Christian conservative, Hermann Rauschning, became head of the senate. For practical as well as ideological reasons, he was opposed to racial anti-Semitism. In November 1934, he was dismissed by the Nazi Gauleiter Albert Forster. Rauchning's successor, Arthur Greiser, felt he must also honour Danzig's international obligations and refrain from complete identification with the politics of Nazi Germany.
Early Anti-Jewish Acts
The Jewish community, fighting for its life, appealed in 1935 to the weakened League of Nations, but to no avail. The League's High Commissioner for Danzig, Carl Jacob Burckhardt (1937-1939), tried to postpone actions against the Jews to avoid international complications. In September 1937, he obtained Adolf Hitler's consent to postpone the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws in Danzig for reasons of foreign policy. Nevertheless, a pogrom broke out from October 20-23, 1937. On November 21, 1938, following Kristallnacht, the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated, with certain modifications.
Toward Deportation
In the meantime, the Jewish community had shrunk to about 4,000, mainly through emigration. The Jewish community and the senate came to an agreement to facilitate emigration, which was contingent upon a Jewish announcement of December 17, 1938 that the Jews were willing to leave the city. When the war broke out on September 1, 1939, and Danzig declared its unification with Germany, 1,600 Jews remained in the city. Emigration continued until the last group left in the autumn of 1940 on the ill-fated Patria. At the end of February 1941, the deportation of the city's last six hundred Jews to Poland and Theresienstadt began.
