1938 was a fateful year for German Jewry. As the Nazi state strengthened and consolidated itself, and as the last remaining moderates in the government and the army were expelled or forced to retire, anti-Jewish policies within all agencies dealing with Jewish affairs escalated. The series of events and developments that took place throughout the year, coming to a peak with the Kristallnacht' pogrom of November 9-10, made 1938 a watershed in the fate of German Jewry. Screen 1. The radicalisation of anti-Jewish policy applied to all aspects of life and involved all bodies, which dealt with Jewish matters. The background continued to be marked by conflicts of interests between the various players.
High-Profile Actions
High-profile actions - boycotts and violence - which were meant to aggravate the isolation of the Jews, intensified in the course of 1938. Jews were barred from a long list of public places; new regulations were introduced to with the aim of identifying the Jews and segregating them. In July, Jews were ordered to carry identification cards marked with the letter J, and at year's end a new law required them to take on additional middle names: "Israel" for men and "Sarah" for women.
Economic Measures
When Hjalmar Schacht was ousted from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Goering, as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan - which aimed at preparing the German economy for war - became the person responsible for directing anti-Jewish policy. This reinforced the economic assault on the Jews: preparations were made to dispossess the Jews and to eliminate them from the German economy. Thus, in April 1938 Jews were ordered to file statements listing their possessions. In July, an addendum to the Nuremberg Laws defined a "Jewish business"; at this point, the area of economic activity open to Jews was systematically reduced.
Police Measures
The security forces, the police, and the SD sought to prompt greater numbers of Jews to leave Germany. To this end, they began to use internment in concentration camps as a means of pressure. In the summer of 1938, preparations were begun to make the camps ready to receive large numbers of Jews. Lists were compiled of well to do Jews who were to be interned at a future time. Their desire to encourage Jews to emigrate led the police and the SD into a degree of conflict with the economic ministries. They feared that a sweeping economic expropriation might make emigration economically unfeasible for many Jews, and would leave those who remain without the resources they would need to live on.
Anschluss - Annexation of Austria to the Reich
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Upon being annexed to Germany, Austria erupted in a frenzy of street violence against Jews, and Nazi activists began to seize Jewish property. The real turning point, however, came from a different direction. Whereas in Germany, the SS and police had to compete with other authorities in Jewish affairs, in Vienna they were the first to take control of this field of activity and were able to establish themselves as the principal authority. For the first time in its history, the Jewish department of the SD, headed by Adolf Eichmann, was given executive powers.
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After his arrival in Vienna on March 15, Eichmann reorganised the Jewish community according to his approach, which sought to force Jewish emigration. He set up the "Central Office for Jewish Emigration", so that Jews who wished to leave could make all arrangements at one location. The violent atmosphere, combined with the elimination of bureaucratic red tape, induced one-half of Austria's Jews to emigrate penniless within half a year. Eichmann's methods and policies would later serve as a model for activity in Germany itself. Leaving For Any Destination. From the testimony of Ezra Peri, son of a Jewish shoemaker from Vienna. In the street - they did not know I was Jewish, but my father was caught there and was ordered to clean flagstones with a toothbrush. They humiliated him in the street along with the Orthodox Jews. The inhabitants stood around and laughed. Father continued to work at home; at first his Christian customers still came, but afterwards they were not allowed to hand over shoes for repair and SA people made sure of it. Some continued to come in through the back door. Our neighbours were absolutely all right, relatively speaking: they said, Our Jews are OK'. We made efforts to emigrate to any place that might take us in - Colombia, Panama, Ethiopia. People with money could buy visas. There was an activist in Hashomer Hatzair - he says that they did think about Palestine but didn't really intend to go there. Father refused to think about Palestine. Only after the Nazis came in did people think about leaving for any destination.'
The World's Response
The Evian Conference
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The economic and social problems which had originated in the world economic crisis of the 1930's, combined with increased antisemitism in many countries, led to reluctance among many governments to oppose Hitler's anti-Jewish policies, lest they be perceived as siding with the Jews. The long lines of visa applicants queuing up in front of all foreign consulates, were in themselves a troublesome concern to the respective governments. There was no willingness on their part, however, to approach the root causes of the problem by taking a stand against Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Governments referred not to the "Jewish problem" but to a general problem of refugees.
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US Immigration Policy US immigration policy was based on the 1921 Immigration Act, which set annual quotas for each country of origin. Germany's quota was 27,000 per annum. America was loathe to admit large numbers of immigrants because of its economic crisis, high unemployment, a wave of antisemitism in the 1930s, and its isolationist policy. The result of this policy, which was exacerbated by bureaucratic obstacles created by consuls, was that, up until 1938, even the annual immigration quota for Germany was not filled; about 47,000 persons from Germany immigrated to the United States in 1933ΓÇô1938.
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The Evian Conference As the problem of refugees from Germany grew increasingly acute, President Roosevelt called for an international conference. The parley began on 6 July 1938, in Evian, on the shores of Lake Geneva. Thirty-two countries participated, but none was willing to revise its immigration policy. The delegates did express regret about the refugees' suffering but stated that their countries could not take in any more. (World map with notes on various countries' attitudes)
USA: Some millions of people, as this meeting convenes, are, actually or potentially, without a country…My Government's invitation to this meeting stated specifically that whatever action was recommended here should take place within the framework of the existing laws and practices of the participating Governments…The American Government has taken steps…so that now a total of 27,370 immigrants may enter the United States on the German quota in one year…'.
Great Britain: 'The United Kingdom is not a country of immigration. It is highly industrialised, fully populated and is still faced with the problem of unemployment…Many overseas territories [of the British Empire] are already overcrowded, others are wholly or partly unsuitable for European settlement …No thickly populated country can be expected to accept persons who are deprived of their means of subsistence before they are able to enter…'.
France: 'France has hitherto solved the problem on her own territory, at her own risk and expense…She has herself reached, if not already passed, the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees…Like America, France considers the refugee problem to be an international political problem, which can only be finally solved by the joint and collective action of the Governments of the world…'.
Belgium: 'We have already taken in many refugees and have reached our saturation point.'
Netherlands: 'We can admfurther refugees if those presently in out go elsewhere.'
Australia: 'We do not wish to encourage further immigration because we have no real racial problems, we are not desirous of importing one.'
New Zealand: 'For economic reasons we can take in only a very small number of refugees.'
Canada: 'Our economic crisis leaves us with almost no room for immigrants. We can take in farmers only.' (Canada imposed severe limits on immigration and admitted only immigrant who possessed $10,000 or more.)
Chile: 'We have no need whatsoever for lawyers and doctors.'
Brazil: 'The imminence of unemployment must always be borne in mind…80% of each quota has to be earmarked for agricultural immigrants…and that no member of these latter categories may change his occupation until four years after his arrival in the country…'.
Venezuela: 'We are not interested in rocking our demographic equilibrium; we have no desire to take in Jewish merchants and intellectuals.'
Dominican Republic: 'The Dominican Government, which for many years past has been encouraging and promoting the development of agriculture…would be prepared to make its contribution by granting especially advantageous concessions to Austrian and German exiles, agriculturists with an unimpeachable record who satisfy the conditions laid down by the Dominican legislation on immigration…'.
Colombia: '…Can a state, acting in this way, flood other countries with the citizens of whom it wishes to get rid?… It would be useless for us today to find homes for the present political refugees and to hear the grievances…of those who have come to voice their complaints before this modern Wailing Wall…The worst thing is that the bad example of the Old World may be copied in other countries, and the world will then become uninhabitable…'.
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The Intergovernmental Committee.
The only result of the Evian Conference was the creation of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. Its tasks were twofold: to explore with the various governments possibilities of refugee resettlement; and to attempt to obtain Germany's co-operation in regulating the outflow of refugees. The chair of the committee, George Rublee, met several times with Hjalmar Schacht, the former German Minister of Economic Affairs, to work out an agreement that would allow emigrants to take more property with them when leaving Germany, thereby making it more likely for them to find destinations. These discussions ended when the war began.
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The Marking of Jewish Passports.
A tide of Jewish refugees from Austria to Switzerland prompted the Swiss to require holders of Austrian and German passports to obtain entrance visas. The head of the Swiss Police, Dr. Heinrich Rothmund, suggested to the Germans to mark Jews' passports with the letter J, so that the Swiss border police could identify them upon arrival. On October 5, Jews were required to present their newly marked passports.
Deportation of Jews with Polish Citizenship
Screen 1 The forced-emigration policy was first put into effect by the SS in late 1937. The expulsion of various groups of Jews from the Reich peaked in October 1938. The Government of Poland issued a regulation that had the effect of revoking the passports of the Polish Jews who were living in Germany. This, in effect, made them stateless, and practically ruled out any possibility they might have had of emigrating. In response, the head of the German security police, Reinhard Heydrich, ordered his forces to arrest some 17,000 Jews and deport them to Poland.
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Detention in Concentration Camps.
In September 1937, Himmler ordered the release of Jews from detention if they could prove that they would emigrate. Starting at the end of that year, attempts were made to deport all Jews who held Soviet citizenship; in 1938, men in this category were sent to concentration camps and informed that they would not be released until their departure from Germany was assured. In June, 2,200 Jews who had been convicted of any offence at any time - even parking violations - were arrested and sent to concentration camps as ":asocial elements". Here, too, their release was conditioned on emigration.
Screen 2 On October 28-29, 1938, some 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship were arrested - some dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and not allowed to take any belongings - and were delivered to the Polish border in sealed trains. Not all of them managed to cross the border; thousands remained for days in the no-man's-land near Zbaszyn. In discussions between the governments of Poland and Germany, it was agreed that the Jews would be re-admitted to Germany for four weeks to liquidate their property and prepare for final departure.
More The Deportation to Zbaszyn. (The testimony could also be a part of screen 2)
Everyone…was loaded onto the wagons…Crying women and children, heartrending scenes…Arriving at the border at 5 p.m., we were shoved across it…for three days we were on the platform and in the train station, 8,000 people. Women and children fainting, unconscious, incidents of death, faces yellow as wax…On the fourth day help finally came…from the Warsaw Jewish committee…'.
The Kristallnacht ' Pogrom of November 1938
Screen 1 Anti-Jewish violence erupted again in the summer of 1938, coupled with demands to expel the Jews once and for all. An intent to induce the forced emigration of Jews took shape, but so did the realisation that the possibilities of emigration were steadily contracting. These factors combined to bring the situation to a boil.
Screen 2 On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jew of Polish origin whose family had been banished from Germany to Zbaszyn, shot the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath. When news of the assassination spread, anti-Jewish violence broke out in several locations in Germany. After Rath died on the evening of November 9, Goebbels delivered an acrid speech in which he called for an outlet for the "people's rage" against the Jews. In the wake of the party's mobilisation to attack the Jews, Heydrich issued orders to exploit the action for expropriation of the archives of the Jewish community and for arrests of Jewish men for internment in concentration camps.
Screen 3 On the night of November 9-10, most synagogues across Germany were set on fire. More than 1,000 synagogues were destroyed; sacred implements and Torah scrolls were burned and vandalised. Fire-fighters stood aside until the flames threatened to engulf nearby houses. Members of the SA and Hitler Youth, joined by some of the population, destroyed and looted homes and shops and beat and abused their Jewish owners. The pogrom acquired the name Kristallnacht' because of the shattered shop windows that filled the streets with fragments of glass. Ninety-one Jews were murdered, scores of others committed suicide, and more than 26,000 were sent to concentration camps. Most were released over subsequent months under orders, backed by threats, to sell their property and leave the country; others perished in the camps.
