The Mixed Marriage - A Guarantee of Survival or a Reflection of German Society? (Part C)
Source: Beate Meyer , International conference: German Society's Responses to Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy 1933-1941, Yad Vashem, 10-13 February 1995.
Just as a long internment in a concentration camp had led to a three-year separation, in other cases it was the emigration of the Jewish partner: some of the Jewish spouses, mostly the men, had emigrated alone if their wives had not wanted to follow them into the economic uncertainty of a foreign country. In the judgements of these divorces after a three-year separation, every "racial" reason, which was not required by this criterion, is missing. Only rarely was the reality of a marriage apparent through the veil of insubstantial reasons. Often only the address of the Jewish spouse, given as somewhere abroad, "address unknown," a concentration camp or a Judenhaus - reflects the reason for the separation 72 . In the case of the Jewish partners being interned, they were taken from the concentration camp and brought before the judge; in the case of them having emigrated, the petition was sent to them via the consulate, or during the war simply inserted in the Reichs- und Staatsanzeiger .
There were, also, conjoint divorces during the Nazi regime - those that took place under extreme pressure and those that occurred as a result of bad advice given not only by the Gestapo, but also by representatives of the Reichsvereinigung, for example, Max Plaut, chairman of the organisation. Some of the wives who had been subjected to pressure by the Gestapo asked for his advice in such a tricky situation. Who else could they have turned to? Lawyers, acquaintances and representatives of the Reichsvereinigung unanimously advised the wives to obtain a quick divorce and made every effort to ensure this happened as speedily as possible, especially if the Jewish husband had been interned. By doing so, they all helped to accelerate his deportation. In a report made after the war, the daughter of a Jew murdered in a concentration camp describes her mother's dilemma as follows:
Members of the Gestapo, employees of Jewish centres as well as other victims of persecution told my mother time and time again that if she did not have her marriage dissolved, it would have severe consequences for my father. If this state of Rassenschande , as it was made out to be, did not change, then my father would be sent to a concentration camp where, they thought, he would probably die. If the marriage were dissolved, then my father could expect better treatment. He would at the worst be evacuated. We had already heard from the relatives of people evacuated that it ...was more a question of re-housing. It had been possible to send post after some months and those evacuated were also allowed to receive parcels.' 73
Relatives did not know that Theresienstadt often was only a stopover on the way to KZ Auschwitz.
Of the 130 divorces investigated, there were 103 Jewish men and 27 Jewish women involved (Table 1). Many of them had been married for decades (Table 2). More than a third of the petitioners filed for divorce when it was obvious that the Jewish partner would be deported (Table 1). More than 70 percent of those who remained in Germany after their divorce were murdered, that is, sixty-three men and six women. At the end of the war there were still 647 Jews in Hamburg, more than half of whom were women (358 women to 289 men) 74 .
Pressure from all sides was put on those couples seeking a divorce (though mainly on the "German-blooded" wives) - pressure from employers, clerks at the employment exchange, professional associations, welfare workers, landlords, the Gestapo, neighbours, and superiors in the Wehrmacht. At least the representatives of the RVJD , the lawyers (including the Jewish legal advisers) and often the family played a supportive role. Apart from the authorities already mentioned, people involved in the persecution included the non-Jewish wives and, to a much lesser extent, the non-Jewish husbands. An objection has to be raised here against Nathan Stoltzfus who, in an attempt to locate a potential for resistance in the German people, defines the low divorce rate for mixed marriages in general and the much-cited protest by the wives of those Jews arrested in the Fabrik-Aktion in the Rosenstrasse in particular, as "acts of political opposition.ΓÇ¥ 75 External factors may well have prejudiced the decision to divorce, for example, the forced move to a Judenhaus, or the husband's internment and the inescapable fate of "evacuation,ΓÇ¥ added to the decline in social status and the economic hardships during the war. Moreover, the women were often confronted with the dilemma: whether or not to accompany their husbands on the final journey, having already suffered the difficult years from 1933 to 1942-43. Divorce seemed to be the only way of surviving. However, the decision to renounce one's partner was mostly taken by non-Jewish women, who, although not perpetrators, by doing this nevertheless became involved in the process of exclusion and persecution and consequently assumed a role they did not like to be reminded of when the war was over 76 . Indeed, far more "German-blooded" women obtained divorces from their Jewish husbands than "German-blooded" husbands from their Jewish wives - even after taking into consideration the proportionally larger number of such marriages with Jewish husbands. The initial materialistic reasons for the marriage, and the high level of pressure exerted on these marriages at an early stage by the Gestapo and non-Jewish society had a negative effect on the marriage. In contrast, the emotional reasons for the marriage between "German-blooded" men and Jewish women, together with the lower level of pressure that was exerted at a later stage from the surroundings, probably had a stabilising effect that sustained the marriage. However, even if a couple fought to keep their marriage intact in order to give the Jewish partner protection, this was by no means a guarantee that he or she would not be deported. A small number of people living in both dissolved and intact mixed marriages had on several occasions been deported to Theresienstadt between the summer of 1943 and January 1945, y, more than two hundred people - mostly living in "privileged" mixed marriages - were deported to Theresienstadt in February 1945 77 .
The protection offered by a "privileged" mixed marriage was always only temporary, even if many people survived in this constellation. In many marriages the external pressure led to internal disintegration. It evoked both the wish to struggle through together, to save the other one, to escape the persecution, just as much as it evoked base feelings. A "privileged" mixed marriage was no guarantee of survival - it was merely a reflection of German society.
Table 2. Duration of Marriage among divorced mixed couples
Length of marriage
Number of divorces
0 - 5 years
12
6 - 10 years
38
11 - 15 years
25
16 - 20 years
19
21 - 25 years
15
26 - 30 years
12
More than 30 years
4
No data
5
Total
130
Table 1 Divorces among ΓÇ£racially mixed marriagesΓÇ¥ in Hamburg 1937-45
Year
Number of divorces
Jewish men
Jewish women
Total of mixed marriages
1937
4
3
1
1938
20
16
4
1939
22
19
3
1940
14
9
5
972
1941
19
15
4
1,036
1942
21
17
4
1,122
1943
23
20
3
1944
6
3
3
874
1945
1
1
-
647
Total
130
103
27
4,651
References:
72.Locations of the Jewish spouses at the time of the divorce included 59 residing in Hamburg or elsewhere in Germany, 28 imprisoned in a jail or concentration camp, 25 had emigrated, 6 were living in a Judenhaus in Hamburg, 6 had emigrated with their non-Jewish spouses, 2 lived in a nursing home or hospital, 2 lived with the non-Jewish spouses in occupied eastern territories, and 2 whose whereabouts were unknown.
73.Archives of the Justizbehoerde Hamburg, Eheanerkennungsverfahren 346 E 1 i/3/5, Letter of G.W. to Landesjustizverwaltung Hamburg, 5 August 1956, p. 1f.
74.Fst, Sign. 6262, Report on the Jewish Community of Hamburg, undated (probably sum1945), p. 1 and 3. The New York newspaper Aufbau published lists of Jews who had survived in Hamburg. See Aufbau of 20 and 27 July 1945.
75.Nathan Stoltzfus, ΓÇ£Widerstand des Herzens. Der Protest in der Rosenstrasse und die deutsch-juedische Mischehe,ΓÇ¥ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2 (1995), 1994, p. 221. See also Nathan Soltzfus, Resistance of the Heart. Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany , New York, 1996.
76.A law "Gesetz ueber die Anerkennung freier Ehen rassisch und politisch Verfolgter" of 23 June 1950 ( Bundesgesetzblatt, p. 226), enabled, among other things, the revision of divorces after the war. It is certainly no coincidence that 22 women from Hamburg (all ΓÇ£German-bloodedΓÇ£ except for one Jewish woman), but no divorced man made applications secured for them benefits and the right of inheritance.
77.Gruner, Arbeitseinsatz , p. 328. In Hamburg, this deportation, declared throughout the Reich as "labour in another area," affected - after exemptions and postponements - 128 men and 66 women mainly from "privileged" mixed marriages. Fortunately, almost all of them
