The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933-1943 (Part A)
Source: A. Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation, The Economic Struggle of German Jews 1933 - 1943, Hanover & London 1989, pp. 37 - 53, 77 - 92, 106 - 109.
The Jewish Reaction: Struggle for Legal Rights?
How then did Jews in Germany react to this sudden onslaught and new reality? In answering this question, it is necessary to distinguish between (a) individual reaction and (b) those of the new Jewish organisations that now came into being and began to adjust to the new situation. After the first shock had been weathered, Jewish individuals attempted to come to terms somehow with the new state of affairs - each in his own way, in keeping with his personal situation and based on individual attitudes and convictions, individual strength of resistance, or ability to accommodate. In 1933, nearly forty thousand Jews left Germany, most more or less in great haste. They were generally younger or unmarried persons; whether still employed or jobless, they enjoyed greater economic and social mobility. Those who emigrated in 1933 also included wealthier Jews who had been able to sell their property quickly. This first wave of emigration, which remained the largest emigration in a single year until the November 1938 pogrom, presumably also included an appreciable number of politically active Jews fleeing Germany as a result of their justified fear of the concentration camps 63 .
However, for the great majority of German Jews, the situation was different. Whoever had a family and children of school age, a shop or some other business, a house or other property found himself unable - unless he was immediately threatened - to arrive so easily to a decision to take leave of his homeland. After the first shock waves of the Nazi take over and April boycott had passed, people began to get used to the situation. Many clung to the illusion that things would perhaps not turn out all that badly. After all, there had been a rapid turnover of governments in the final years of Weimar, and it was thought that Hitler too would not last in power for very long. Others assuaged their fears with a belief in the continued existence of the constitutional state, in which legal norms would finally win out despite all of the revolutionary upheaval of the early weeks of the new regime. In this connection, they were able to point to the numerous declarations by the government denouncing 'individual actions', declarations whose real purpose was to help calm down and stabilise the economy.
This attitude is reflected in the many complaints lodged by Jewish individuals and firms preserved in the files of national and municipal government offices. The style and tone of such formal complaints differ substantially. Some of those lodging a grievance point confidently to the civil rights anchored in the constitution. Others cite statements by the government against arbitrary unlawful 'individual actions' in the economy. Yet there are also overly zealous assertions of one's contribution the fatherland and protestations of the strength of one's 'national patriotic outlook'. In some instances, there are denials that one belongs to Jewry. Half a century after full legal emancipation, those letters reflect the diverse complexity of the Jewish minority in Germany: the attitudes expressed run the gamut from intense assimilationism to the point of self-denial all the way to a proud insistence on one's own identity and the rights that had been won.
A typical example is represented by correspondence between the Dortmund department store concern Gebr. Kaufmann and the local mayor in October 1933 64 . After prior verbal discussion, the mayor's office was supplied by the firm with extracts and copies of government regulations, declarations by the Trustee for Labour ( Treuhaender der Arbeit ), and decrees and circulars issued by the Economy Ministry in order to demonstrate that the Trustee of Labour, in matters pertaining to economic measures, is authorised to provide government offices with orders to be passed on to the various agencies'. Apparently, the mayor had rejected this, quite in keeping with the sense of Gauleiter Buerckel's position as quoted above. The letter of the Jewish department stores requested the municipality to inform the firm whether it was prepared to rescind the prohibition to purchases by municipal employees, the freeze on placing ads, the exclusion of the firm from bidding for public contracts, and its exclusion as a firm where welfare vouchers could be redeemed.
The reply by the mayor of Dortmund to this very objective and respectful letter is symptomatic of the situation at the time: Returning your enclosed supporting documents', the mayor informed the firm that all central government ministerial decrees regarding the cancellation of the boycott against Jewish department stores, prohibitions on their placing public advertisements, and so on had also led in Dortmund to a cancellation of local prohibitions. However, the mayor chose to add his own comments regarding each individual point of the complaint 'personally, as a National Socialist'. As a National Socialist, he found it difficult to understand how a civil servant could do his shopping in a Jewish department store.' He could not imagine that any newspaper in Dortmund would accept ads from Jewish businesses.' Although the firm was free to bid for tendered contracts of the municipality, you cannot demand from me as a National Socialist that I approve your bid.'
One could cite a great many similar letters and grievance from the year 1933, some of which went all the way to the Reich Chancellery. A Jewish meat wholesaler in Wanne-Eickel in Westphalia, for example, appealed directly to Hermann Goering after his local protestations and a complaint to the district governor in Arnsberg had produced no results. Referring to Goering's orders that prohibited 'interference in the economy,' the petitioner enclosed a letter written by his battalion commander during World War I and stressed his wartime achievements. He then went on: self-employed here in this town since 1900, I have never been accused of any wrongdoing and have always fulfilled my duties toward the municipality and the state.'
In this case as well, the reaction of the authorities was typical. The local Gauleiter replied by threatening physical violence regarding a number of similar grievances that involved sanctions against the Jewish cattle and meat trade in particular. On September 27, 1933, the district governor in Arnsberg wrote to the Reich Interior Minister requesting that he look once again into the matter of the Jewish question, in detail, and if possible in co-operation with the national head office of the NSDAP and the top command echelon of the SA.... Because, first of all, the heads of the local agencies... do not see any possibility for doing full justice to the decrees and secondly, it is highly likely that there will be a serious disturbance of public law and order if the decrees are implemented, judging from opinions that have been transmitted to me by party officials.' Such statements cannot be viewed as proof of the existence of a contradictory 'dualistic' Jewish policy, as the following section of the same letter shows. The district governor indicated his understanding of the need for a 'calming down of the economy' and the 'struggle against unemployment' yet requested that another aspect be borne carefully in mind: the extent to which, specifically during the struggle to gain power, the demand was raised for an elimination of the disproportionate influence of Jews in various areas of the economy, and the fact that opposition to Jewry is the emotional foundation of the movement 65 .'
In the light of such experiences, it is understandable that the stream of personal grievances submitted by Jews to the local and central authorities was gradually reduced to a trickle as 1933 wore on. Jews had come to recognise the hopelessness of any appeals to norms of constitutionality in the 'new Germany' and attempted instead to cope with mounting difficulties on their own and with the assistance of the Jewish community.
Building a Network of Jewish Self-Help
Before 1933, the Jewish Gemeinden in Germany had not yet federated into a general representative body to promote their interests. This fact was characteristic of German Jewry, which was dispersed in hundreds of Gemeinden throughout the entire expanse of Germany and which was likewise far from unified in any philosophical or religious sense. It is true that there was a State Federation of Jewish Gemeinden in Prussia, but that body was more an organisation appendage of the Jewish Gemeinde in Berlin, where more than half of all Jews in Prussia lived in 1925 66 . It was also in the Berlin Gemeinde that the first foundations were laid for the establishment of an extensive system of self-help for German Jews.
The nucleus around which this organisation crystallised was a respected group of young social workers, active for many years in Jewish welfare, whose organisational and ideological centre was within the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der deutschen Juden (Central Welfare Agency for German Jews). By the 1920s, they had developed an impressive network of modern social welfare services in the poorer Berlin neighbourhoods and had successfully applied progressive methods of social work. Their accumulated experiences, after an admirably swift readjustment to the new circumstances, were now utilised for the benefit of a broad and ever expanding circle of German Jews. Among these Jews were many who, just a few short months before, would never have imagined in their wildest dreams that they would someday have to rely on the services of any institution of social welfare 67 .
A call for contributions by the welfare office of the Jewish Gemeinde in Berlin in April 1933 can serve to convey something of the attitude that accompanied these first fledgling steps down the path to creating a network of Jewish self-help. The call quoted from an essay by Ismar Elbogen, head of the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, which had appeared on April 4 in the C.V. Zeitung, the weekly paper of the Centralverein:
Tens of thousands have been stripped of their source of livelihood and forced out of their profession. Many who were self-employed are now uprooted. It is meaningless to ask today about reasons and causes. There is no sense in accusing ourselves or others. There is but one dictate of the hour: to word and to help!
They can condemn us to hunger, but they cannot condemn us to starvation! They can squeeze the space that remains to us for living ever tighter, yet in its constricted confines we must join together, and each must try to support his fellow.... Think of the history of our forefathers-repeatedly, they experienced such catastrophes, yet did not surrender their will to live! Unperturbed, they searched out and found ways and means for continued arrival and the building of a new existence, albeit more modest, in place of that which had been lost. And so we too must, after the paralysing stupor of these past weeks, once again regain our senses and undertake all possible efforts to create bread and work for our sisters and brothers' 68 .
After difficult negotiations on the bridging of regional, political, and even personal differences, an organisation representing all German Jews officially came into being in the autumn of 1933 in the form of the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden 69 . However, the urgency of the need for economic self-help was recognised at an early point, so that a national Zentralauschuss der deutschen Juden fuer Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee of German Jews for Relief and Rehabilitation) was formed as early as April 13. It was later integrated into the Reichsvertretung 70 . The various individual Jewish Gemeinden soon put the existing and newly established organisations to work in helping to provide crucially needed assistance. The largest of these organisations was the Zentralstelle fuer juedische Wirtschaftshilfe (Central Bureau for Jewish Economic Relief, hereafter Wirtschaftshilfe) opened the beginning of April in Berlin 71 . In its first few days, the offices of the Wirtschaftshilfe were stormed by hundreds of persons seeking assistance, since rumours had spread that the bureau had large sums of money for support at its disposal.' 72 Its actual possibilities were far more modest in scope, yet the extent of relief assistance available at that time appears surprising from a present-day perspective.
The university graduates and civil servants hard hit by the Civil Service Law were in particular and pressing need of assistance. For this reason, their problems also shaped the character and the approach of the Wirtschaftshilfe in this early first stage of its activity. Attempts were made, in a demonstratively legalistic manner, to have 'illegal' dismissals reversed by the submission of grievances to competent government offices and, if need be, by the filing of a suit with the labour court. If reinstatement was not possible, an attempt was made at least to assure that the legally stipulated compensation and dismissal notification periods were adhered to. Special legal advice columns were started in all Jewish newspapers. These columns published the full text of new laws and regulation, commented in detail on basic court rulings, and encouraged those affected to insist on their legal rights. Among other things, this may have been a product of the greatly enlarged legal-aid sections in all Jewish organisations: a kind of internal Jewish employment scheme to give work to the large numbers of jobless Jewish attorneys and judges. In addition, this practice reflected a view that was also predominant at the time in Jewish leadership circles: namely, that it was possible to defend economic positions by juridical means and methods. Only in this way can one explain the suggestion advanced then-though soon abandoned-to form a Jewish organisation for protecting the interests of Jewish blue-collar and white-collar workers who had been barred from membership in the DAF (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) 73 .
During the first stage of development, the other sections of the economic relief network structured along the lines of occupational groups also operated according to the principles described earlier. The Commercial Advisory Office attempted to have the municipal regulations on purchasing restrictions for civil servants and the ban on granting public contract to Jewish firms rescinded by means of protest and intervention by the courts. In general, such attempts met with just as little success as complaints filed by individuals and firms. Consequently, one soon shifted out of necessity, to an approach that stressed the practical provision of financial relief aid. These measures, still regarded at the time as temporary, were dubbed 'economic first aid'. Alexander Szanto, who was active in the Berlin Wirtschaftshilfe, has left a very vivid description of this 'constructive first aid':
For many years, a Jewish restaurant owner had been operating a small pastry and coffee shop, whose clientele consisted mainly of Christians....Since the Boycott Day, [customers] had hardly dared to venture to his shop.... At the same time, difficulties started to crop up with the Christian waiter in his employ, and the authorities harassed him with all sorts of chicanery. He became indebted, was unable to find a buyer for his shop and had to close it.... The Wirtshafshilfe assisted him in opening an ice-cream parlour in a completely different neighbourhood of town.... The ice-cream machine was purchased for him by the Wirtschaftshilfe from a Jewish manufacturer....
The Jewish merchant Y. was a competent and hardworking travelling salesman dealing in textile goods. Since he was on excellent terms with his network of customers - both Jewish and Christian - he initially was able to successfully continue his trips in the rural countryside. But he ran into difficulties in finding a hotel room in the small provincial towns, where hotels and inns tended more and more toward a policy of refusing a room to guests. The Wirtschaftshilfe provided a car for him, and later on a delivery van. In this way, it proved possible for him to organise...his strips in such a way that in the evening... he could manage to get to a larger town, where accommodations were still available. When this became impossible as well, he used to spend the night in his van by the side of the road, preparing a meal from canned goods he had brought along....
The press photographer Z. was fired as a non-Aryan from his well-paid job with a newspaper publisher. The Wirtschaftshilfe provided him with a loan for the purchase of his own high-quality photographic equipment, and helped him set up his own studio.... When he decided to emigrate and the loan had not as yet been completely repaid, he returned part of the equipment to the Bureau, which then was able to utilise that equipment in its own retraining courses' 74 .
In view of the economic structure of German Jewry, it was likely that the Commercial Advisory Office would soon become the most often consulted section of the Wirtschaftshilfe. The discussion regarding the legal situation and the juridical struggle for every position it was still possible to salvage went on for a time, but practical assistance became an ever more important focus.
It was the 'little guys' - the craft artisans, tradesmen and shop owners - upon whom the Commercial Advisory Office bestowed its assistance... on the assumption that even in the framework of the National Socialist state it would be possible for Jews to survive economically.... In answer to all those who criticise the fact that we wished from 1933 to 1941 to give economic assistance to persons who were in any event condemned to annihilation after 1941, one thing must be said: such a criticism rests on an interpretation after the fact. To be wise in hindsight is an easy matter! For us then it was simply a matter of aiding Jews threatened by hunger and worry and in distress' 75 .
The principle of self-help also was adopted within individual occupational groups. In the spring of 1933, Jewish lawyers and doctors spontaneously organised internal collections among themselves for colleagues who had been affected by the Civil Service Law and were without any income. Special gala functions, such as the Jewish 'Doctors' Ball' in Berlin, were dedicated to raising contributions for the various relief funds. A Jewish Artists' Relief Organisation founded by middle-class women supported needy artists by organising lectures and artistic performances in restaurants and private homes. In addition, the Artists' Relief supported its own soup kitchen and a club, from private contributions, before the Juedischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural League) that was established in Berlin and other cities was able to offer jobs to artists. Ernst Loewenberg, a teacher and member of the board of directors of the Jewish Gemeinde in Hamburg, reports about this type of assistance:
In April 1933, Jewish lawyers, doctors and teachers set up special committees in order ... to help colleagues affected.... As a co-ordinator for the teachers, I ... probably interviewed in my office all those teachers who had been forced in Hamburg to leave the school system...[in order to] place colleagues from Hamburg in newly established Jewish schools via contacts with the school section of the Reichsvertretung....
Among the many visitors...the memory of one in particular remains vivid. In the autumn of 1933, a haggard old woman teacher came to me and explained straightaway that she had never had anything to do with Jews, but that she was desperate. She had been a village teacher for many years in Schleswig-Holstein...and was from a strict Protestant family.... However, she had discovered when trying to prove her Aryan descent that her father - who himself was the son of a Protestant minister - was Jewish by race. So she had been dismissed from her job. Distant friends had taken in the totally destitute woman. Her brothers lived abroad. She found it impossible to grasp the idea that Jews, with whom she had never had anything to do, should now help her, a German Protestant.... I gave her the streetcar fare to go to the advisory office. Later on, her passage to America was paid by a general foundation and from Jewish sources' 76.
This Professional Self-Help Section was also involved in trying to locate jobs abroad to make it possible for persons trained in the free professions and now unemployed to emigrate. In those days, that was a difficult task even when it came to doctors because very few of them were willing to relocate to underdeveloped countries and areas where they could gain entry and acceptance. Palestine was an exception. Many Jewish doctors chose to emigrate there and made outstanding contributions to the establishment of a modern health system. Other Western countries placed the greatest obstacles in the path of doctors wishing to immigrate and obtain a work permit 77 . Thus, in its first few weeks the Wirtschaftshilfe in Berlin had to deal with almost four thousand doctors in need of support, half of whom no longer had any income whatsoever. Only gradually were some of those doctors who remained in Germany able to find work in Jewish Gemeinden , schools, and sport associations or to earn something by substituting for doctors on vacation or by temporary employment in the offices of Jewish doctors still able to practice. In a similar fashion, many attorneys also found employment in the administrative bureaucracy of Jewish Gemeinden and other organisations 78 .
In all of these measures, the borderline between 'constructive help' and actual welfare assistance remained fluid. Until that time, the welfare activities of the Jewish Gemeinden had been a well-developed system geared to providing financial support to poor or low-income marginal groups in the Jewish population, though such groups had increased in number dramatically during the Depression. Most individuals in these groups were already recipients of public welfare assistance, and relief funds provided by Jewish welfare were meant as supplementary assistance. The Jewish Gemeinden maintained special institutions for such assistance, and it was on these that they expended the largest proportion of their welfare budget: day-care and convalescent homes for children, clinics and old-age homes for the indigent elderly, and so on. There was need for an immediate response to the sudden distress in which many Jewish families, who previously had never had any contact with welfare offices, now found themselves. That privation was ameliorated by financial relief to assist with daily needs, although initially there was not a large amount of funding available for such types of aid. This was compounded by the fact that the Jews dependent on public welfare, who were subject to various harassment's and restrictions, also had to be supported by Jewish welfare as well. As a consequence of these heavy burdens, many Gemeinde -linked institutions, such as nursing and convalescent homes, now found themselves in economic straits and were forced to close down 79 . In the past, the public welfare agencies had even assigned non-Jewish needy persons to these homes, and they had been able in this way to help cover part of their operating costs.
References:
63.A. Margalioth, 'Rescue,' p. 247f.; Rosenstock, p. 377; Strauss 1981, p. 348f.
64.Knipping, p. 161ff.
65.StaA Muenster, Reg. Arnsberg, IG/573.
66.Letschinsky, Schicksal , p. 63. On the Prussian State Association, see Birnbaum, passim.
67.On the activities of the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle, see its publication Juedische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik ( JWSP ; until 1930: Zeitschrift fuer juedische Wohlfahrtspflege ). The volumes of this journal are an indispensable source of information for all social-historical research in this area.
68. Gemeindeblatt der juedischen Gemeinde zu Berlin 23 (1933), no. 4. Elbogen's essay in C.V. Zeitung , 4 April 1933, quoted here according to Juedische Emigration , p. 42.
69.See Ball-Kaduri, p. 136ff.; Herzfeld, p. 11ff.; Max Gruenewald, 'The Beginning of the Reichsvertretung,'' YLBI I(1956): 57ΓÇô67.
70.Gruenewald, op. cit.
71.On the first organisational efforts, see Adler-Rudel, p. 10ff.; Haavera-Transfer , pp. 11, 15f.
72. Gemeindeblatt der juedischen Gemeinde zu Berlin 23(1933), no. 5 (May).
