The Jews had to obtain the stars at their community offices. On delivery they usually signed a receipt that also included an acknowledgment of the related ordinances: “I certify hereby the receipt of 1 Jewish Star,” Gustav Israel Hamel from Baden Baden certified on September 20. “I am informed of the legal regulations regarding the display of the Jewish Star and of the prohibition to carry decorations, medals and any badges. I also know that I am not allowed to leave my domicile without carrying a written authorization from the local police authorities. I undertake to handle the identification sign with attention and care and to ensure that when sewing it on clothing, the fabric that surrounds the sign will be turned over.”206
In Goebbels’s mind the star allowed for total control over the Jews once they left their home and thus protected Germans from dangerous contact, mainly from the spreading of rumors and defeatist talk. But, as in the case of most anti-Jewish measures, the additional intent was the humiliation and degradation of the victims, and, of course, a further opening for the ongoing anti-Jewish propaganda campaign. Dietrich’s Tagesparole of September 26 was explicit: “On the occasion of the identification of the Jews there are possibilities to deal with the theme in the most diverse ways, to explain to the German people the necessity of these measures and mainly to point to the harmfulness of the Jews. From tomorrow on the information service will publish material that offers proof of the harm the Jews inflicted on Germany and the fate they planned and still plan for it” [the obvious reference here is to the Kaufman story and to the Diewerge pamphlet, which, as we saw, included commentary on excerpts of Kaufman’s book].207
“Today, the Jew’s star,” Klemperer wrote on September 19: “Frau Voss has already sewn it on, intends to turn her coat back over it. Allowed? I reproach myself with cowardice. Yesterday Eva wore out her feet on the pavements and must now go shopping in town and cook afterwards. Why? Because I am ashamed. Of what? From Monday I intend to go shopping again. By then we shall certainly have heard what effect it has” (Klemperer’s wife, Eva, not being Jewish, did not have to wear the star).208 How did the German population react?
As we saw, the opinion summaries of the SD for the early summer indicated widespread anti-Jewish hostility. Newsreels showing the arrest of Jews, their toil as forced laborers, and even lynch scenes from Riga, apparently received loud approval from movie audiences.209 As such footage regularly emphasized the Jewish “racial traits,” audiences expressed their disgust and often wondered aloud what should be done with these “hordes.”210
Did the introduction of the star change these attitudes? According to a September 26 SD report from Westphalia, the new measure was often greeted with satisfaction; criticism was directed, rather, at the existence of exceptions. Why were the Jewish spouses of Aryans exempted from wearing the tag? As the saying went, there were now “Aryan Jews” and “non-Aryan Jews.”211 An SD report from the previous day (from the same area) mentioned the general opinion that the Jews should also wear the star on the back of their clothes for better visibility: It would compel those still remaining in Germany to “disappear.”212
And yet, many witnesses also recorded different reactions. On September 20 Klemperer described what happened to Frau Kronheim: “The latter took the tram yesterday—front platform. The driver: Why was she not sitting in the car? Frau Kronheim is small, slight, stooped, her hair completely white. As a Jewess she was forbidden to do so. The driver struck the panel with his fist: ‘What a mean thing!’ Poor comfort.”213 The most extraordinary expression of sympathy was recorded on November 25: “Frau Reichenbach…told us a gentleman had greeted her in a shop doorway. Had he not mistaken her for someone else?—‘No, I do not know you, but you will now be greeted frequently. We are a group ‘who greet the Jew’s star.’”214 Yet, exactly a month beforehand, on October 25, Klemperer had written: “I always ask myself: Who among the ‘Aryan’ Germans is really untouched by National Socialism? The contagion rages in all of them, perhaps it is not contagion, but basic German nature.”215
It seems indeed that such expressions of sympathy were not infrequent: “The population in its majority disapproves of this defamation,” Elisabeth Freund, a Jewish woman from Berlin, wrote in her memoir.214 She noted incidents very similar to those mentioned by the Dresden diarist: “I am greeted on the street with special politeness by complete strangers, and in the streetcar ostentatiously a seat is freed for me, although those wearing a star are allowed to sit only if no Aryan is still standing. But sometimes guttersnipes call out abusive words after me. And occasionally Jews are said to have been beaten up. Someone tells me of an experience in the city train. A mother saw that her little girl was sitting beside a Jew: ‘Lieschen, sit down on the other bench, you don’t need to sit beside a Jew.’ At that an Aryan worker stood up, saying: ‘And I don’t need to sit next to Lieschen.’”217
A report sent by the United States consul general in Berlin Leland Morris, to the State Department, on September 30, confirmed the information described by Klemperer and Freund. “It may be noted that a very large proportion of Berliners have shown embarrassment and even sympathy rather than satisfaction at the display of Jewish badges under the recent decree. This may be due to the fact that the Jewish Question as a domestic issue has been deliberately kept out of the public notice since before the war and most ordinary people had willingly tried to forget it. Disapproval of this measure is so general that one of the justifications advanced for it…by those responsible is that Germans in the United States are obliged to wear a swastika with the letter ‘G.’ This preposterous lie is passed from mouth to mouth but finds little credence.”218
In fact the most diverse sources confirmed the disapproval of the badge among part of the German population.219 In David Bankier’s nuanced assessment, it was the visibility of the persecution that caused so many Germans to react as they did, at least for a while: “As long as anonymous Jews were persecuted, the population could remain emotionally distant from the moral consequences of the affliction they had helped to cause, easily coming to terms with persecution since shame and guilt were not involved. Labeling the victim, however, made him an accusing public witness who testified to the cost of conformity and adjustment in a murderous system…. These disturbing feelings obviously did not last long. As had happened with other measures, the penalties exacted from those who sympathized with Jews plus mounting insensibility to what became a common sight, produced increasing apathy and insensitivity.”220
Yet we also have to accept the possibility of an ongoing dissonance in attitudes and reactions, as was bluntly stated in a detailed report sent to the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm by Arvid Richert, the Swedish minister in Berlin, on October 31, 1941. After mentioning the “noteworthy courtesy” of the German population in its attitude to the Jews who had received their “decoration,” he expressed a warning: “In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to add that even if many Germans dislike the draconian measures against the Jews, anti-Semitism appears to be deeply rooted in the people.”221
Oral history confirms both the negative reaction of part of the population to the star and the approval of other Germans; it also confirms that, once the star was introduced, many Germans were astonished at the number of Jews still living in their midst, thus confirming a finding of the SD. According to Eric Johnson’s and Karl-Heinz Reuband’s study, it seems that “older people disapproved of the star much more than younger people, and that Catholics and women were more opposed to the measures than Protestants and men, as were people from urban than rural areas and midsize towns…. In general,…the pattern we found in this regard closely resembles that of Nazi supporters [analyzed in another part of the study.] Those who were least supportive of National Socialism were least positively disposed to the introduction of the Jew’s star.” The authors confirm that among critics of the measure, indifference took over after a while: “For a couple of days, one swallowed hard,” as a respondent put it, and then one accepted it. After all, “Th
ere wasn’t any changing it.”222
In fact all interpretations seem to confirm the fact that the negative reactions to the introduction of the star among part of the German population were ephemeral and did nothing to change overall acceptance and passivity. As for the Jews, not all felt unmixed gratitude at the early shows of compassion. Ruth Kluger, a Jewish girl of twelve in the late fall of 1941, born and living in Vienna, was given an orange by a stranger, as the subway they were riding entered a tunnel (for the gesture to pass unnoticed). “By the time we were back in the daylight, I had stowed it in my bag,” she wrote in her memoirs, “and gratefully looked at the stranger, who looked down on me with a benevolent smile. But my feelings were mixed…. I didn’t like the role of the passive victim who could be comforted with a small demonstration of kindness…. An orange, no matter what it stood for, was no help as my life became progressively more restricted and impoverished. It was a sentimental gesture, and I was a prop for the donor’s good intentions.”223 The memory of such mixed feelings in a twelve-year-old, may of course have been influenced by the events that followed: A year later, in September 1942, Ruth and her mother, a nurse and a physical therapist, were on their way to Theresienstadt; later on they would be sent to Auschwitz. The father, a physician, had performed an abortion on an Aryan woman; he had to flee to Italy, then to France, where he was arrested, deported to the Baltic countries, and murdered.
Whether as an afterthought in the wake of the star decree or as an early sign of decisions to come, on September 11, 1941, the Gestapo disbanded the Kulturbund. Most of its cultural activities had already been forbidden beforehand. Thus in July, the association’s musicians met for the last time to celebrate Verdi; then, their instruments were confiscated and handed out to SA and SS units, the pianos were sent to Nazi welfare organizations and Wehrmacht sanatoriums, and their records were recycled by the German record industry.224 In Germany the last remains of authorized Jewish cultural activity had been snuffed out.
XII
After the proclamation of the new statute of June 1941, the Vichy government forged ahead: On July 22, “Aryanization” was introduced in the nonoccupied zone according to the same criteria and methods used in the north. Businesses were liquidated or put under “French” control, assets were seized, and the proceeds were deposited in a special government bank, the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.225
For Darlan and Vallat this did not suffice. On the day the June statute was published, the registration of all Jews (according to the new definition) in the Vichy zone was mandated. According to Vallat’s estimate, approximately 140,000 Jews had been registered by the spring of 1942, although the head of the national office of statistics, René Carmille, had reached the much lower total of 109,000.226 The exact number of Jews living in the Vichy zone at that time is not clear.227 More immediately ominous was Darlan’s order of December 1941, to register all Jews who had entered France after January 1, 1936 (even those who had in the meantime acquired French citizenship); this identification was to become an essential element of the Franco-German agreements concerning the round-ups and deportations that were to come.228
On the morrow of the June statute, Lambert noted that Pétain had met Helbronner and told him that all the measures had been ordered by the Germans. The marshal supposedly commented: “These are horrible people!” (Ce sont des gens épouvantables!)229 After some further remarks about the new measures, Lambert naively added: “One gets the feeling that even the details of the law have been inspired or dictated by the German authorities—as the Reich now considers the way France will solve the Jewish question as a test of its sincerity in the policies of collaboration.”230 Lambert did not yet dare to acknowledge that the initiative was French and the anti-Jewish decrees were indeed meant as a proof—but one volunteered by Vichy—of its will to collaborate.
And while, during the summer and fall of 1941, the situation of the Jews in France looked more precarious by the month, the Germans made further attempts to convince the French population that the struggle against Jewry was a vital necessity. On September 5 a major anti-Semitic exhibition opened its doors in Paris. Officially it was organized by Sézille’s “Institute for the Study of Jewish Questions”: Thus, it appeared as a French exhibition organized by a purely French institution. On the seventh Biélinky commented: “An anti-semitic exhibition has just opened at the Palais Berlitz, on the Boulevards; a blustering advertisement campaign promotes it in the newspapers and on the walls. A Jewish female friend who does not look semitic went to the opening and heard in the crowd: ‘here at least, one is sure not to meet any Jews.’”231 The exhibition remained open through January 3, 1942, and drew more than three hundred thousand visitors (most of whom had to buy tickets), with indeed a few Jews among them. Apparently some of the Jewish visitors even dared to express open criticism.232
The Germans however, did not keep at propaganda campaigns. On August 20, 1941, on German instructions, the Paris police arrested a further 4,230 Jews, mainly in the eleventh arrondissement; they were sent to Drancy, the newly established concentration camp near the French capital. This second roundup was probably undertaken in reprisal for the anti-German demonstrations organized in the city on August 13 by communist youth organizations; the police had supposedly noticed a substantial number of Jews among the demonstrators (the French police had ready lists of these Jews, as many had served in the French army in 1939–40). This time some French Jews, mainly communists, were also arrested.233
In the autumn further attacks against German military personnel drew reprisals, but mainly against communists (Jewish or not) at first. Even the execution of fifty hostages after the killing of the field commander of Nantes, Lt. Col. Karl Holtz, on October 20, 1941, did not specifically target Jews.234 For Heydrich, Stülpnagel’s anti-Jewish reprisals were too mild, and it is against this background that French pro-Nazi militants perpetrated bomb attacks against three Paris synagogues on October 3, on Knochen’s instigation.235 Stülpnagel, soon informed of the origin of the attacks, lodged a complaint with the OKH against Heydrich, but to no avail. The commander in chief had no choice but to escalate his own anti-Jewish reprisals.
On November 28, 1941, another attack against German soldiers took place. This time Stülpnagel proposed to the OKH that, henceforth, the reaction should be the mass arrest of French Jews and their deportation to the East. On December 12, 743 Jewish men, mainly French and mostly belonging to the middle classes, were seized by the German police and sent to Compiègne, a camp under direct German command. Their deportation was scheduled for the following weeks; it was delayed until March 1942, when this group and additional Jewish prisoners (1,112 in all) were deported to Auschwitz.236 Thus, in France, it was the Army High Command that put into effect increasingly drastic anti-Jewish measures. While the execution of French hostages caused qualms, the deportation of Jews to their death (a fate increasingly known by the upper echelons of the Wehrmacht in Paris)237 was taken in stride and implemented by the largely non-Nazi military elite.
Simultaneously with the multiplication of anti-Jewish measures, with the arrests and the early deportations, Dannecker exercised growing pressure on the Jewish organizations to transform the “coordination committee” into a full-fledged Jewish Council. The Germans expected Vichy to take the initiative of imposing the new institution.238 In the fall of 1941 it became obvious to the Jewish leaders, natives and foreigners alike, that they would have to accept the Diktat. Yet, the common fate imposed upon all did not heal the rift between the two communities.239 Against this background of internecine squabbles, a group of French Jewish personalities—among whom Lambert came to play an increasingly important role—decided to go along with Vichy’s decisions and to participate in repeated consultations with Vallat, against the will of the Consistoire and that of the more activist elements of the “Federation.”240 On November 29, 1941, Vallat signed the decree establishing the Union Générale des Israélites de France. On January 9, 1942, the executive boa
rds of the UGIF-North (occupied zone) and UGIF-South (Vichy zone) were officially appointed. De facto, Lambert became the dominant personality of UGIF-South.
It has been argued that anti-Jewish measures were less readily applied in the countries and areas of Western Europe under direct German military authority than in those under civilian Nazi rule. While this was not the case in occupied France, it seems that in Belgium the commander in chief of the Wehrmacht, Gen. Alexander von Falkenhausen, was indeed reticent in regard to measures that could create unrest in the population. Yet the usual anti-Jewish measures enacted in Holland and in France were imposed in Belgium at approximately the same time.
Thus, on October 28, 1940, the military administration imposed a “Statut des juifs,” similar to the French and Dutch ones, on the 65,000 to 75,000 Jews living in Belgium at the time.241 Registration was ordered, identity cards marked, Jewish businesses listed, Jewish officials dismissed, Jews expelled from the legal professions and from journalism, as elsewhere in the West. In the spring of 1941 the registration of all Jewish property followed, as well as further segregation measures as implemented in neighboring Holland, and approximately at the same time. In the fall of that same year a Jewish Council, the Association des Juifs en Belgique (AJB), was imposed; a few days later the UGIF was established in France.242
There were some differences, however, between the situation of the Jews of Belgium and those of Holland and France. Whereas two-thirds of the Jews of Holland and half of the Jews of France were native or naturalized citizens in 1940, only 6 percent of the Jews of Belgium were Belgian citizens. Whereas in the three Western countries, small pro-Nazi movements had damaged Jewish property and attacked individual Jews once German presence eased the way, only in Belgium did large-scale pogromlike riots take place, on April 14 and 17, 1941. In Antwerp, several hundred militants of the VNV [Vlaamsch National Verbond] set fire to synagogues and to the chief rabbi’s house on Easter Monday after attending the screening of Jud Süss. And, as 1941 was coming to an end, neither the Belgian church dignitaries nor the resistance movements took a strong stand against the German anti-Jewish measures or against the violence of the Belgian (mostly Flemish) extreme Right. A liberal underground publication did protest against the Antwerp riots, concluding: “Dear readers—Do not think that we Belgians are pro-Jewish. No, far from it. Yet, even a Jew is a human being.”243
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