As could be expected, the German Christians reacted to the new measure with glee. A few weeks beforehand, they had published a manifesto praising the anti-Bolshevik campaign in the East: “We are opposed,” they declared in their message, “to a form of Christianity which allies itself with Bolshevism, which regards the Jews as the Chosen People, and which denies that our Volk and our Race are God-given.”157 For them the introduction of the star allowed barring “Jewish Christians from attending services, entering church buildings, or being buried in Christian cemeteries.”158
When the deportations from the Reich started, the controversies within both the Protestant and the Catholic churches sharpened. In November 1941 the most prominent personality of the Confessing Church, Bishop Theophil Wurm, tried to convince Goebbels that the measures taken against the non-Aryans could only be grist to the mill of Germany’s worst enemies, particularly “Roosevelt and his accomplices.”159 The propaganda minister noted that Wurm probably aspired to play among the Protestants the role held by Galen for the Catholics: “His letter goes to the wastebasket.”160 On December 10 Wurm, in the name of the assembly of church leaders [of the Confessing Church], handed a memorandum addressed to Hitler to State Secretary Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger; a short paragraph also alluded to the fate of the Jews: “Much has happened that can help enemy propaganda: we include in this the measures taken to eliminate the mentally ill and the growing hardness in dealing with the non-Aryans, also those who adhere to the Christian faith.”161 There is no known answer.
Thereupon, on December 17, the German Christian church leaders of Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, Thuringia, and Lübeck announced their position regarding Jews in general and converted Jews more specifically: “The severest measures were to be taken against the Jews,” who were “to be expelled from German territories…. Racially Jewish Christians have no place and no right in the church.” The undersigned church leaders had “discontinued every kind of communion with Jewish Christians.”162
The German Christian manifesto demanded a response; it came from the highest authority of the Evangelical Church—the Church Chancellery, the mouthpiece of mainstream German Protestantism. An open letter addressed to all provincial churches, published two days before Christmas 1941 and signed by the deputy director, Dr. Günther Fürle, in the name of the chancellery and its spiritual advisory board of three bishops, took an uncompromisingly anti-Semitic stand: “The breakthrough of racial consciousness in our people, intensified by the experience of the war and the corresponding measures taken by the political leadership, has brought about the elimination of Jews from the community of us Germans. This is an incontestable fact, which the German Evangelical Churches, which serve the one eternal Gospel within the German people and live within the legal domain of this people as corporations under public law, cannot heedlessly ignore. Therefore, in agreement with the Spiritual Council of the German Evangelical Church, we request the highest authorities to take suitable measures so that baptized non-Aryans remain separate from the ecclesiastical life of the German congregations. The baptized non-Aryans will have to find the ways and means to create their own facilities to serve their particular worship and pastoral needs. We will make every effort to help obtain permission for such facilities from the responsible authorities.”163
Bishop Wurm responded in the name of the Confessing Church. He remained very prudent in his criticism of the chancellery’s stand, adding a fair amount of anti-Semitism to his reservations about the discrimination between Aryan and non-Aryan Christians.164 The Provisional Church (the Confessing Church) Administration was more forthright: “Together with all the Christians in Germany who stand on the ground of the Scripture and the Confession, we are compelled to declare that this request from the Church Chancellery is incompatible with the confession of the church…. By what right do we desire to exclude, for racial reasons, Christian non-Aryans from our worship services? Do we want to be like the Pharisees, who renounced communion with the “tax collectors and sinners” in the worship service and, because of this, reaped Christ’s judgment?”
To be consistent, the Provisional Church Administration noted, the chancellery would have to “expel…all the Apostles and, not least of all, Jesus Christ himself, the Lord of the church, because of their racial membership in the Jewish people.” The Provisional Church Administration did not contest, however, that the state could take measures against the Jews and, as in Wurm’s case, its statement was not devoid of anti-Jewish comments.165 The controversy persisted for several months, while an increasing number of regional churches adopted the chancellery’s attitude.166
Klepper, who in the meantime had been dismissed from the Wehrmacht on account of his Jewish wife, had resumed his diary recordings. On Christmas Day 1941, he noted: “No solution has yet been found [in K.’s church] for the carriers of the star [his wife and daughter, although both Protestants by then, had to display the star, of course]…. Today no Jew with the star was present at the Christmas service” [Heute war kein Jude mit dem Stern in der Weihnachtskirche].167
The lack of public response of the German Catholic church to the deportations and to the growing awareness of the mass exterminations in the East was calculated. A small group of bishops (Gröber, Berning, and Preysing) had drafted a pastoral letter that bore the date November 15, 1941; it listed and denounced in clear and courageous terms the hostile measures taken by the state and party authorities against the church and its institutions, as well as against the basic rights of Germans to life, freedom, and property; the Jewish issue was not included in the text.168 The reason adduced for this omission is to be found in an unsigned memorandum dated November 25 found in Cardinal Faulhaber’s archives; in setting the guidelines for the publication of the pastoral message, it indicates the reason for this omission: “(2) Simultaneously with the reading [of the message], the Reich government will be informed of its content; it will be told that this public way had to be chosen, as none of the petitions or memoranda [addressed to the authorities] were adequately answered. Moreover, some further issues are to be presented to the government that could not be dealt with in the pastoral letter without hurting the reputation of the people and the government (Jewish question, treatment of Russian prisoners, atrocities of the SS in Russia, etc.).”169
There may have been several reasons for avoiding the “Jewish question”: a tactical show of moderation despite what could have appeared as a public confrontation with the regime, or the avoidance of issues that may have found little echo among the churchgoing part of the population. Whatever the reasons may have been, Cardinal Bertram opposed the publication of the letter “in principle and for practical reasons.”170
The exclusion of the “Jewish question” from the draft letter was of particular significance given that it was decided by two out of the three bishops who usually showed the greatest concern for the fate of converts and even of Jews as such (Preysing and Berning). It was even more significant in light of the declaration of these same bishops that the success or failure of the letter was not the essential issue, and that all that mattered was: “What is our duty in the present moment? What does conscience require? What does God, what do German believers expect of their bishops?”171 Finally, as the letter was still being debated in early 1942, the exclusion takes on an even more ominous significance in light of what was becoming known about the fate of the deportees.
Margarete Sommer, in charge of relief work at the Berlin archdiocese, was informed in early 1942 by Lithuanian Catholics and also, it seems, by Hans Globke, a high official of the Ministry of the Interior, of the mass killings in the Baltic countries of Jews deported from the Reich.172 After meeting with Sommer, Bishop Berning of Osnabrück noted on February 5, 1942: “For months no news arrived from Litzmannstadt. All postcards are returned…. Transports from Berlin arrive in Kovno, but it is doubtful whether anybody is still alive. No exact news from Minsk and Riga. Many have been shot. The intention is to exterminat
e the Jews entirely” [Es besteht wohl der Plan die Juden ganz auszurotten].173
At the Paderborn conference of November 24 and 25, 1941, the German episcopate dealt with one further “Jewish” issue: separation from the spouses of mixed marriages on the demand of the Aryan partner. The bishops decided to deal with each case individually, according to “pastoral wisdom.”174
Two months before the debates about the pastoral letter, an anonymous German Jew addressed a letter to Bishop Galen. He expressed his admiration for the bishop’s stand on euthanasia and reminded him of what was happening to the Jews in Germany, even to deeply patriotic Jews like himself who were no longer allowed to be Germans. “Only the senseless wish, the mad hope,” the letter ended, “that somewhere a helper will stand up for us incited me to address this letter to you. May God bless you!”175 Galen went on preaching throughout the war and his patriotic and anti-Bolshevik exhortations carried no less fervor than his defense of the mentally ill.176 About the persecution of the Jews, however, even in private letters he never uttered one single word.
Bernhard Lichtenberg, prior of Saint Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin, was a lone exception. Like Pastor Grüber on the Protestant side, Lichtenberg was helping non-Aryan Catholics. And from November 1938 on, during every evening service he prayed aloud for the Jews. On August 29, 1941, two women parishioners denounced him to the Gestapo. He was arrested on October 23, 1941, interrogated, and sentenced to prison on May 29, 1942. He died on his way to Dachau on November 3, 1943.177
VIII
In late 1941, as details about the fate of the Jews in the East were seeping back into the Reich, British high officials were also becoming aware of the mass murders on Soviet territory, from decoded German messages. However, any such information remained strictly secret to protect the most precious trump card of the war: the possession of a German “Enigma” encoding machine that gave access to a large number of enemy radio communications.178
In the meantime the leadership of American Jewry and that of the Jewish community in Palestine seemed rather unconcerned about the European situation, both because of inadequate information and more pressing and immediate challenges. For American Jews their veneration of Roosevelt and their fear of anti-Semitism added to the reticence regarding any interventions that might have displeased “the Chief” and the higher levels of the administration. At times, however, these Jewish leaders may have overstepped the limits of subservience by taking measures that, unwittingly no doubt, added to the hardship of ghetto inhabitants.
In the spring of 1941 Rabbi Wise had decided to impose a complete embargo on all aid sent to Jews in occupied countries, in compliance with the U.S. government’s economic boycott of the Axis powers (whereby every food package was seen as direct or indirect assistance to the enemy). The “patriotic” surrender to the boycott also stemmed from political considerations regarding postwar relations of the American Jewish leadership with Britain, mainly on the question of Palestine.179 Strict orders were given to World Jewish Congress representatives in Europe to halt forthwith any shipment of packages to the ghettos, despite the fact that these packages did usually reach their destination, the Jewish Self-Help Association in Warsaw. “All these operations with and through Poland must cease at once,” Wise cabled to Congress delegates in London and in Geneva, “and at once in English means AT ONCE, not in the future.”180
The display of unconditional Americanism became particularly loud after Lindbergh’s anti-Jewish attack in Des Moines, in September 1941. “We will not put even what he [Lindbergh] considers our ‘interests’ before those of our country,” the American Jewish Committee responded, “since our interests and those of our country are one and indivisible.” The American Jewish Congress was no less decisive in tone and content: “Surely it is needless to state that we [Jews] are of and for America as truly as any other group within the nation…. We have no view or attitude in relation to foreign affairs that is not determined solely by American interests, the needs and interests of our own free country.”181 Official American Jewry was paralyzed.
More perplexing in many ways was the attitude of the Jewish leadership in Palestine. At the beginning of the war, the Jewish Agency Executive had established a four-member committee to monitor the situation of European Jewry. The head of the committee, Itzhak Gruenbaum, himself a former member of the Polish parliament, did not instill much energy or sense of purpose into the activities of his group. Nobody, it must be added, seems to have prodded him on or questioned his ability to fulfill the (undefined) task. In the first months of 1941 for example, the Committee of Four published an overview of the situation in Europe that defined the German policy in Poland as aiming at the destruction of Jewish economic life in that country; “the Jews,” it added, “were fighting for their dignity with all their strength, refusing to give up.”182
At the time the strongest political party of the Yishuv was Mapai (“Party of the Workers of Eretz Israel,” in other words the “Labor Party”); it was the major political force in all the central institutions of the Jewish community in the country and particularly in the most important of them—its highest executive body, The Jewish Agency. The one political leader who, in turn, held a dominant position in Mapai in general and on the Jewish Agency Executive in particular (although he had formally resigned as its chairman at that time), was David Ben-Gurion.
In February 1941 Ben-Gurion returned to Palestine after a lengthy stay in Great Britain and in the United States. His comments at a meeting with his Mapai colleagues offer an indication of what had been and would be his approach to the events in Europe: a uniquely Zionist perspective. After mentioning that the Yishuv was not fully aware of the scope of the war, he ‘turned to the situation of the Jews: “No one can estimate the enormity of the destruction of the Jewish people [“destruction” was not meant as physical extermination.]…Of course there is information available on all this, but people here are not living out these matters…. What we must do now, more than anything, above all and before anything, for ourselves and for the Diaspora, that same small Diaspora still left to us…is [create] Zionist commitment.”183 In other words, for Ben-Gurion there was but one way of helping European Jewry: achieving the goals of Zionism. And simultaneously such help would eventually allow a Jewish state in Palestine to survive.
Notwithstanding Ben-Gurion’s exhortations, no concrete plans emerged from the Yishuv throughout most of 1941. The Jewish Agency hardly dealt with the situation in Europe, and the common opinion was that nothing much could be done to alleviate whatever suffering there was.184 Between August and December 1941, the Mapai Central Committee did not address the plight of European Jewry even once.185
Richard Lichtheim, the delegate of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, whose reports had been a steady series of warnings about the looming catastrophe, himself seemed to hesitate about possible developments in view of the first German setbacks on the Eastern Front. In the final lines of a report sent to Jerusalem on December 22, 1941, about the fate of German Jews, he considered two contrary yet possible developments: “The turn of the tide on the Eastern Front may have the effect that the expulsions of the Jews from the Reich will cease, at least temporarily, owing to transport difficulties and to the necessity of employing all available labor in the German factories; it may also lead—and that is a tragic probability—to further persecutions and pogroms in Germany and in the occupied territories if the wounded beast of prey feels that the end is near.”186
IX
Throughout the Reich and the Protectorate, the local Jewish community offices were informed well in advance of the date of deportations from their area. The local Gestapo station received the lists of names from the district office of the Reichsvereinigung and decided whom to include in the upcoming transport. Those designated for departure were given a serial number and informed by the Reichsvereinigung or by the Gestapo about the procedures regarding assets, homes, outstanding bills, the amount of cash allowed, the authorized weight of the lug
gage (usually fifty kilograms), the amount of food for the journey (three to five days, and so on), as well as the date by which they had to be ready. From then on they were forbidden to leave their homes—even briefly—without permission from the authorities.187 For some Jews, the summons seems to have come more suddenly; thus, in Breslau, Willy Cohn interrupted his diary in midsentence. On November 17, he started to describe his visit to the community offices and his conversation with the chairman, Dr. Kohn: “First, he told me, that at the Secret State Police [Gestapo] there was no possibility….”188
On the departure day these Jews were assembled by the Schutzpolizei and marched or driven in trucks to a waiting area where they would be kept, sometimes for several days, before being marched again or driven to the railway station, often in broad daylight and in full view of the population. According to Herta Rosenthal, then sixteen years old, deported from Leipzig to Riga in January 1942, when the Jews were taken by truck from the school where they had been assembled to the railway station, “Everybody saw it, and they were screaming bloody murder. All the Jews were leaving Leipzig and they [the Germans] were happy, a lot of them. They were standing there laughing…. They brought us up during the day, not at night. There were both SA and ordinary citizens there.”189 Rosenthal’s testimony is confirmed by various contemporary reports. As the twelve Jews of Forchheim were taken from the Paradeplatz (“parade square”) to the railway station on their way to Bamberg, Nuremberg, and Riga, on November 27, 1941, “a great number of inhabitants gathered [in the square] and followed the evacuation [Abtransport] with interest and great satisfaction.”190 A minority reacted differently, and in Bremen, for example, ten members of the Confessing Church were briefly arrested in early December of that year as they were taking up a collection for the Jews about to be evacuated.191
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