Public Welfare and the German Jews under National Socialism (Part C)
Anti-Jewish Policies of the Municipal Administrations, the German Council of Municipalities and the Reich Ministry of the Interior (1933 - 1942), 1
Source: Wolf Gruner, International conference: German Society's Responses to Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy 1933-1941, Yad Vashem, 10-13 February 1995.
At the same time, welfare associations in the Rhineland and Silesia were now pressuring the Reichsvereinigung to backdate their payments for the housing of Jews in nursing and mental homes to as far back as the beginning of 1939. In Silesia, at least, they were successful 95 . It was only on 12 December 1940 that the Ministry of the Interior ordered the isolation of mentally impaired Jews in the Bendorf-Sayn institution in the district of Koblenz 96 . According to demands by various welfare associations and cities in the German Council of Municipalities since 1938, all Jewish patients should have been isolated in a single facility maintained by the Reichsvereinigung .
While all the large cities had handed over the entire responsibility for welfare to the Jewish agencies by the end of 1939, this only took place in the capital one year later. By the end of 1940, Berlin too joined the fray, and the city welfare administration reneged on its obligation to provide support for over 3,000 needy Jewish families 97 . After this it became the exception in Germany for Jewish families to take advantage of public welfare services.
But the success of the exclusionary measures taken since 1933 was not enough for the welfare associations. Now attention focused on the Jewish partners in ΓÇ£privileged mixed marriages.ΓÇ¥ Since these individuals were not members of the Reichsvereinigung , they had to be supported by the state welfare associations. In addition, the welfare authorities started to increasingly train their sights on the ΓÇ£German-bloodedΓÇ¥ partners in these mixed marriages. In early 1941 the German Council of Municipalities was in agreement with the town authorities that both groups should be induced to join the Reichsvereinigung 98 . On 9 May 1941 the Munich welfare office appealed to the Ministry of the Interior to come to a decision as to whether German Jews could be forced into membership of the Reichsvereinigung by denying them all financial support 99 . Mayor Karl Fiehler also brought his full weight to bear as head of the Council of Municipalities and likewise pressed the Ministry for a verdict on the matter 100 . Although the RSHA could have blocked such new initiatives out of concern for the Reichsvereinigung 's budget and ability to operate 101 , it had already lost the battle. By summer 1941 no more than 250 Jewish families were still being supported by German state welfare associations - so few that once the deportations had begun in autumn 1941 the quarterly Reich Welfare Statistics discontinued its ΓÇ£Jew CategoryΓÇ¥ both in the big cities and in the separate German states 102 .
For Jews, this meant that their welfare offices were in need of funds to an unprecedented degree in order to be able to finance both closed and now also open welfare. Along with the increased funds given to the Jewish communities and district offices by the Reichsvereinigung , funds were also taken from the so-called ΓÇ£Emigration ContributionΓÇ¥ which was actually earmarked for helping Jews leave the country 103 . Financial restrictions were certainly also a reason for a new general regulation on welfare guidelines, passed by the Ministries of Labour and the Interior on 31 October 1941, instructing the Reichsvereinigung to reduce the allowances made by Jewish welfare institutions to twenty percent below the local level for general welfare 104 . In Berlin as a result, the community was only permitted to pay an average of RM24 to the needy instead of the previous RM 30 105 . Nonetheless, following the deportations that had begun in autumn 1941, the number of people receiving welfare benefits from the Reichsvereinigung declined at an ever-quickening rate. From autumn 1942 onwards, the receiving of welfare benefits from Jewish offices even became one of the Gestapo's criteria in its selection of Jews for deportation 106 .
Finally, in December 1942 the Ministry of the Interior forbade government welfare associations from providing social services to Jews 107 . By this stage there was no longer any state support necessary or possible - even in emergency cases. The exclusion of Jews in the welfare sector was formally completed with this act, even though this could hardly have any further effect since this goal had largely been attained by the welfare authorities years before 108 .
Exclusion from Public Welfare Services as a Dynamic ProcessΓÇöInitial Conclusions
A few months after the pogrom in November 1938 the chairman of one of the district committees responsible for public welfare recommended to all mayors in the Idar-Oberstein district that public assistance services to German Jews be terminated with the following justification:
I have become familiar with a number of cases where public welfare has been terminated by the administrative authorities months ago. Nevertheless, I have not learned of any case where a Jew has starved to death. In local mayors' reports I hread that they continue to be well-dressed and appear to be well-nourished' 109 .
In light of the foregoing descriptions, the attitude of this civil servant cannot be regarded as an isolated incidence but rather has to be seen as a more or less institutionalised rule. The frequent efforts by local welfare offices to treat the Jewish poor worse than ΓÇ£Aryan needyΓÇ¥ can be traced back to the mid-1930s, when there was scarce evidence of resistance. This behaviour may be seen as part of a general socio-political reorientation. The public welfare associations gradually abandoned the principle of ΓÇ£care for the individualΓÇ¥ 110 which originated in the period of the Weimar Republic, and reorganised their policies based on racist criteria into National Socialist ΓÇ£care for peopleΓÇ¥ ( Volkspflege ), from which German Jews and other groups were excluded 111 . The anti-Semitic exclusionary process continued until the November 1938 pogrom, without ever having been sanctioned by law from the Reich government or covered by ministerial decree. Moreover, the cities and their respective welfare offices, in carrying out their practices, did not even cause a conflict of interests between the local and federal levels.
The municipalities not only planned how exclusion from public welfare services would be carried out, they also discussed the social and political ramifications of such measures. The German Council of Municipalities served as the forum for these questions, all of which were relevant for municipal authorities throughout the country. This is where local exclusionary plans and ideas could be presented and co-ordinated. With the aid of the communication and co-ordination that existed within the German Council of Municipalities, the National Socialist administration was able to break through the traditional vertically structured hierarchy of the civil service apparatus in order to realise their political strategy for domestic policy. The Ministry of the Interior thus made direct studies of the locally developed models of discrimination and their practical application. The Ministry developed its Exclusionary Ordinance of November 1938 based on this experience and later groundwork. After anti-Semitic policy on the state level was thoroughly redefined following the pogrom in 1938 and the complete isolation of the remaining Jews in a ΓÇ£forced communityΓÇ¥ was achieved, the significance of the German Council of Municipalities as a source of ideas and proposals for the government waned considerably but, nonetheless, remained relevant for certain issues. The Council of Municipalities co-ordinated local initiatives after the anti-Jewish ordinance was passed.
The ΓÇ£legalΓÇ¥ attempt by many cities to unload their responsibility for welfare services failed in 1939-40 due to the financial problems of Jewish welfare institutions and the veto powers exercised by the then controlling Gesta. However, from the end of 1938 the weight of the Council of Municipalities had shifted with regard to centralised discrimination in the social sphere, just as the fronts between the institutions that were involved. At this point, the Ministry of the Interior, the German Council of Municipalities, and the municipalities with their respective welfare associations were commonly opposed to the RSHA and the Gestapo. The latter controlled the separate Jewish welfare system. The former not only pressed for a quick take over of welfare organisation and costs through the Reichsvereinigung , but also insisted on rapid exclusion of other groups such as Jews in ΓÇ£mixed marriages.ΓÇ¥ The RSHA was reticent on this point, since it was solely interested - with a view to absolute authority over the functioning of the Jewish mandatory organisation and wanted to avoid any financial or organisational encumbrance to the Reichsvereinigung . This selective conflict of interests led to absurd reproaches - seen from today's vantage point - such as that expressed by the leadership of the German Council of Municipalities. It was said that Reinhard Heydrich 'apparently was interested in securing the greatest possible protection of the privileged Jews.' 112 The German Council of Municipalities as an institution may thus be described as a functional relay between local and state persecution planning in the social sphere.
The above description of the development of persecutory strategies in the social welfare system provokes a rethinking of ΓÇ£familiarΓÇ¥ topographies such as the often stated difference between the NSDAP and the rest of society, or that of a quasi natural distance between the administrative authorities of the old school and the prevailing ideology, or even the conception that local authorities were only involved in passive implementation of decisions made by the Nazi leadership. Thus several questions arise: How can the often-observed precursory activism on the part of individual civil servants be explained? What is actually reflected here - radical ideology, bureaucratic estrangement or simply zeal? Clearly, several factors played a role - the forced anti-Semitism that derived from the new social reality after 1933, new concepts of racism, and traditional authoritarian views of the relationship between the state and the individual 113 . Not to be underestimated is also the influence of the respective authorities on the behaviour of their members of staff.
At the same time the Nazi party positioned its personnel. A key figure in this regard was the chairman of the German Council of Municipalities, Karl Fiehler. Functionaries like himself who occupied multiple positions incorporated varying group interests in one person, such as those of the cities, the state and the party. Thus the NSDAP was able to target its discriminatory policies much more effectively to municipal affairs; at the same time municipal interests could influence central policy creation within the leading committees of the NSDAP than was possible via a local NSDAP organisational group.
It is clear from the developments presented here that the process of exclusion in the area of public welfare services cannot be explained in terms of exclusive state orchestration or spontaneous local developments. It would be more accurate to speak about a mutual dynamic interaction. An increasingly radical public consensus developed in favour of the exclusion from German society of the weakest section of the Jewish population - the Jewish poor. It was precisely this rapidly growing group, created as a result of persecution and consequently dependent on the Nazi regime, and unable to emigrate because of the lack of financial resources, that constituted an essential hindrance to the policy of expulsion. This development was one of the cardinal reasons for the National Socialist leadership's decision of a new double strategy of persecution in 1938 - forced expulsion and isolation of the remaining Jews in a ΓÇ£forced community.ΓÇ¥
References:
95 NW-HStA Duesseldorf, RW 53, no. 413, unnumbered: Rundschreiben Oberpraesident der Rheinprovinz, 23 September 1940; BAP, 75 C Re 1, no. 761, fol. 138-140: RV/Abt. Fuersorge (Cohn), an Oberpraesidenten/LFV in Breslau, 18 April 1940. BAK, R 36, no. 1022, fol. 96: Oberpraesident/LFV Schlesien an DGT Berlin, 29 August 1940; Ibid . , fol. 99: RV/Abt. Fuersorge an Oberpraesidenten/LFV Schlesien, 4 June 1940; Ibid . , fol. 117: Vermerk des DGT Berlin, 29 October 1940.
96 Reichsministerialblatt der inneren Verwaltung, 1940, p. 2261.
97 Gruner, 'Reichshauptstadt,' p. 245.
98 YV, M1DN, no. 109, fol. 242: Schlueter (DGT), an OB/Wohlfahrtsamt Muenchen, 2 April 1941.
99 BAK, R 36, no. 1022, fol. 150-151: OB/Wohlfahrtsamt Muenchen an RMdI, 9 May 1941; compare YV, M1DN, no. 109, fol. 90: OB/Wohlfahrtsamt Muenchen an Ruppert (RMdI), 9 May 1941.
100 BAK, R 36, no. 1022, fol. 149: Vorsitzender des DGT und OB Muenchen an DGT Berlin, 22 May 1941; Ibid . , fol. 150-151: OB Muenchen/Wohlfahrtsamt an RMdI, 9 May 1941 (draft),; Ibid., fol. 154-155: DGT an RMdI, 10 June 1941.
101 Until October the Ministry of the Interior made no decisions on this matter; BAK, R 36, no. 1022, fol. 156: DGT Berlin an Fiehler (October 1941).
102 Statistisches Reichsamt, Die offene Fuersorge der Bezirksfuersorgeverbaende im Halbjahr April-September 1941 , Berlin 1941, pp. 6-7;Idem, Die von den Bezirksfuersorgeverbaenden in bar unterstuetzten Parteien am 31 Dezember 1941, Berlin 1942, pp. 2-5.
103 StA Hamburg, 522-1 JG, no. 985 c, Fol. 26-29: Besprechung zwischen Dr. Lilienthal, RV-Vorstand Berlin und Vorstand Juedischer Religionsverband Hamburg, 15 December 1940.
104 Reichsministerialblatt der inneren Verwaltung, 1941, p. 1951. Compare BAP, 75 C Re 1, no. 759, fol. 1: Vermerk der RV/Abt. Fuersorge, 19 August 1942.
105 BAP, 75 C Re 1, no. 759, fol. 2: Tabelle mit Richtsaetzen der RV-Bezirksstellen als Anlage zum Vermerk (19 August 1942).
106 BAP, 75 C Re 1, Film 52407-23, fol. 83: Notiz Henschel (RV), ueber Ruecksprache bei Gestapo Berlin, 28 September 1942.
107 Reichsministerialblatt der inneren Verwaltung, 1942, p. 2377.
108 The decree affected only the group of ' Geltungsjuden. '
110 On the principles of the ' Reichsfuersorgeverordnung' (1923), see Schoen, Armenfuersorge, pp. 28-31.
111 See on a similar thesis Schoen, Armenfuersorge , p. 96. For an analysis of the ' Volkspflege' concept see Hans-Uwe Otto and Heinz Soenker, 'Volksgemeinschaft als Formierungsideologie des Nationalsozialismus,' in: Politische Formierung und soziale Erziehung im Nationalsozialismus , Hans-Uwe Otto and Heinz Soenker, eds., Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 50-77.
112 YV, M1DN, no. 109, fol. 118: DGT Berlin Zeitler an Fiehler, 13 October 1941.
113 On the ' Gleichschaltung ' of the female welfare staff see Emilija Mitrovic, 'Fuersorgerinnen im Nationalsozialismus,' in: Opfer und Taeterinnen , Angelika Ebbinghaus, ed., Hamburg, 1987,
