29. Walter Gross (1904–1945) died in combat during the Battle of Berlin on April 25, 1945.
30. For a thoroughgoing discussion of Nazi films in support of sterilization, “euthanasia,” and other eugenic measures, see “Killing Films of the Third Reich,” in Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 183–219; Ulf Schmidt, Medical Films, Ethics, and Euthanasia in Nazi Germany: The History of Medical Research and Teaching Films of the Reich Office for Educational Films, Reich Institute for Films in Science and Education, 1933–1945 (Husum, Germany: Matthiesen, 2002).
Document 7-7A. Excerpt from a children’s textbook in the Third Reich: “You Are Carrying the Load!” (“Hier trägst Du mit!”), in Jacob Graf, Biologie für höhere Schulen (Biology for Secondary Schools) (Munich: Lehmann Verlag, 1943), table 25.
Document 7-7B. Excerpt from a children’s textbook in the Third Reich: A story problem in Arithmetic for Volksschulen: Governing District Cologne and Aachen, School Years in Seven and Eight, 1941, quoted in Ute Hoffmann, Todesursache “Angina”: Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” in der Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg (Magdeburg: Eigenverlag des Ministeriums des Innern des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, 1996), 24 (translated from the German).
The costs for one hereditarily ill patient today amount to 4.5–6 RM per day. Calculate the total sum of the cost per day, per month, per year. In the year 1930, approximately 1 billion RM were spent for the hereditarily ill. In contrast, only 730 million RM were spent for the German army in 1930 and only 713 million RM for the whole Reich administration. How many farm settlements, of which each should cost 32,000 RM, could have been constructed with the amount used for the hereditarily ill? How many homesteads could have been erected with this sum, if the aggregate building cost was 6,000 RM per house?
Few facets of German life remained free of the propagandists’ gloss. Reich Minister Josef Goebbels and his propaganda ministry used every available venue—the news media, film, radio, and the popular press—to convey the party’s ideological message. Even the arts and sciences were harnessed to help proclaim the virtues and principles of the National Socialist state. To reach young audiences, Nazi propagandists employed particular means to convey their ideological agenda. Children’s books served as a ready conduit to distill the Nazi worldview for young people. Story books such as Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) and Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Trust No Fox in a Green Meadow Nor a Jew by His Oath), both distributed by Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer publishing house, elaborated the regime’s antisemitic tenets in such a way that young minds might accept and adopt them.
Document 7-8. German school children read the antisemitic children’s story Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), c. 1938, USHMMPA WS# 69561/E 39 Nr. 2381/7, courtesy of the Stadtarchiv Nürnberg.
Another successful vehicle that Nazi propagandists employed to direct their ideological values to young people included children’s toys and games. Toy figurine enterprise OM Hausser Elastolin experienced a burgeoning business not only in its traditional production line of toy soldiers and military paraphernalia but also in figurines from every major Nazi Party paramilitary organization, including the Schutzstaffel (SS), SA, and Hitler Youth. Figurines representing personalities of the Third Reich, such as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Göring, also proved popular items. One German stuffed animal manufacturer created a version of its Teddy Bear dressed in full Nazi regalia.31 In 1936, the Dresden-based concern Günther & Co. produced and distributed a board game called “Juden raus!” (“Jews, Get Out!”). Based on the classic game Parcheesi and representing a variant of today’s American versions, “Sorry!” and “Trouble,” “Juden raus!” clearly intended to instill in young children the basest tenets of Nazi antisemitism. According to the roll of the dice, children moved their play pieces the designated number of spaces along the game board, illustrated to depict the walls and streets of a medieval city. The wooden game pieces themselves represented highly caricatured “Jewish” figures with exaggerated features. The first person to drive all six of his or her “Jews” from the city and to the area ominously termed the “collection point” was the winner. “Show skill in rolling the dice,” the instructions enjoined, “so that you collect many Jews!” In most editions, the game board bore the caption “Auf nach Palästina” (“Off to Palestine!”), reflecting the Nazis’ then current policy of encouraging Jewish emigration from Germany. The game reportedly sold well in 1938, the year in which an accelerated antisemitic policy ended in Kristallnacht.
31. German toy manufacturers are credited with popularizing the world-famous “Teddy Bear,” named for Theodore Roosevelt, in 1902.
Document 7-9. Game board “Juden raus!” (“Jews, Get Out!”), Günther & Co., 1938, USHMMPA WS# 11894, courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.
Perpetrators and Victims
Through propaganda, Nazi leaders attempted to capture the imagination and loyalty of Germany’s younger generation. Fully exposed to the suggestive force of Nazi ideology, young people were highly susceptible to Nazism and its message and accepted its influence perhaps more uncritically than did their adult counterparts. Early antisemitic propaganda efforts often aimed at the marginalization of Jews in their own communities and regularly stressed popular participation in circumscribing their participation in economic, professional, and social spheres. Especially in the early years of the regime, local leaders of the Nazi Party and its auxiliary organizations, such as the SA and the Hitler Youth, instigated acts of violence and aggression against Jewish citizens and Jewish-owned property. Sometimes, too, “wild” boycotts of Jewish-owned stores and businesses, vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, and other antisemitic excesses sprang from individual initiative, spurred on by deep-seated personal or professional antagonisms or fanned by concentrated regional or national propaganda campaigns. Children often followed where adults led, introducing themes of exclusion and prejudice within their own milieus. Before legislation in November 1938 definitively banned them from attending “German” schools, Jewish pupils endured public humiliation, scorn, and bullying from many of their classmates. Adults too could figure as the objects of children’s malice. At a trade and vocational school for boys in Frankfurt, one Jewish instructor, exempted from the civil service purge by dint of his military service in World War I, remained among the faculty in the autumn of 1935. Heightened antisemitic rhetoric had flooded the media since the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws the month before, reminding German citizens of the need to root out Jewish influence from public life. When the school’s administration seemed oblivious to this imperative, members of the student body decided to take matters into their own hands.
Document 7-10. Letter from the director of the Trade and Vocational School for Boys to the Department of Education, Frankfurt am Main, October 1, 1935, in Kommission zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, eds., Dokumente zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Waldemar Kramer, 1963), 111 (translated from the German).
Yesterday, September 30, [1935,] Herr Fröhlich alerted me that in the classroom of Herr Kromer, in which he has been assigned to teach shorthand, someone had hung a sign with the inscription, “Jews are not wanted here” [“Juden sind hier unerwünscht”]. So I went alone to the class, explained to the students that the swiftest solution to the “Jewish Question” for our school would emanate from school officials and until then, unauthorized actions must remain prohibited. Then I had the sign with the aforementioned slogan removed.
Today, on October 1, many pupils appeared conspicuously in uniform, and I learned that “something was planned.” “When the school director takes Jews under his protection, then we’ll proceed against him as well!” After recess the boys did not go back to their classrooms. A large throng collected in the hallways, and one could see that a demonstration was underway. I had already spoken with the municipal councilor, Mr. Beiling, an
d school inspector Müller on the telephone and received permission from the latter to suspend Mr. Fröhlich immediately if necessary. Mr. Fröhlich had already told me yesterday that he would rather be pensioned off. He promised, on my counsel, to put in a request for retirement today, as well as a suspension with pay in the meantime, upon which I released him provisionally from his duties.
I announced this measure to the pupils who had gathered in the gymnasium, reminded them of the dangers that may arise in our foreign policy when we undertake such arbitrary and unauthorized actions, and admonished them to abide by order and discipline. I succeeded in restoring calm to the situation, and the instruction could go forward until the end of the day as planned.
When properly motivated, children could prove a formidable force for National Socialist agitation. Such was the case with a group of Deutsches Jungvolk (German Young Volk), the division of the Hitler Youth created for ten- to fourteen-year-old boys, ubiquitously known as Pimpfe.32 When a handful of Pimpfe became involved in an altercation with a Jewish shop owner in Schivelbein, a small city in Pomerania, the youths in question used the incident to ignite public sentiment against the town’s Jewish residents. Enlisting the aid of their Hitler Youth cell and the local citizenry, the boys succeeded in precipitating the arrest of the “offending” shopkeeper and the closure of the municipality’s Jewish businesses. In a report to the Berlin office of the Centralverein (Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, or CV),33 a local CV administrator gave an account of the proceedings.
32. The word “Pimpf” (pl. Pimpfe) has an interesting etymology. It actually derives from an onomatopoetic device for audible flatulence. Just as English speakers might use the colloquial expression “little fart” for a young child, German speakers used “Pimpf” humorously to describe a prepubescent boy. In the 1920s, the word came to denote the youngest members of the German Youth Movement. The term migrated to the Hitler Youth organization in the 1930s and was used semiofficially to describe members of the Deutsches Jungvolk.
33. The CV was founded in 1893 to defend the rights of German Jews while fostering the “cultivation of German sentiment” among its members. The radicalization of the German political landscape in the final years of the Weimar Republic prompted the use of more aggressive means for combating the Nazi threat, an effort coordinated from the CV head office in Berlin. The CV spearheaded the formation of the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland in September 1933 and played a leading role in that organization’s practical work. Renamed in September 1935 as Centralverein der Juden in Deutschland and one year later as Jüdischer Centralverein, the organization was abolished by the Gestapo in the wake of Reichskristallnacht.
Document 7-11. Report of the Centralverein Landesverband Pommern (Pomerania), signed Michelsohn, to the Central Office of the Centralverein, in re Schivelbein, August 16, 1935, USHMMA, RG-11.00, Osobyi Archive Moscow, 721-1-3019, Centralverein Records, 91 (translated from the German).
Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, e.V.34
34. The abbreviation “e.V.” indicates a registered (nonprofit) society.
Provincial Association [Landesverband] Pomerania
Stettin, August 15, 1935
Re: Schivelbein
To the Central Office Berlin
The recently reported occurrences in Schivelbein may be reported as follows:
On Sunday the 10th (August) a Pimpf purchased a pound of flour from the store owner Kronheim in Schivelbein. The Pimpf was in uniform. As he left the store, he was accosted by five Pimpfe who had ascended the three steps to the store; these boys demanded to know why he was buying goods at a Jewish-owned store. Kronheim saw this through the windowpane and yelled to the boys, “Get out of here!” [“Macht, dass Ihr hier wegkommt!”]. A member of the SA Sports School in Schivelbein, who was coincidently standing on the other side of the street, yelled something at Kronheim and threatened him. K[ronheim] as a consequence immediately shut the door.
As a result of the menacing tone which Kronheim had taken with the boys, an enormous agitation immediately manifested itself among Schivelbein’s local cell of the Jungvolk (Pimpfenschaft). Approximately forty Pimpfe assembled outside Kronheim’s store. The police came. The crowd pushed its way into the building, took hold of Kronheim, who had hidden himself, dragged him out, hung a placard around his neck which read, “The Jew Kronheim wanted to strike a Pimpf,” and took him off to the police station. In the end the gang of Pimpfe forced the closure of all the Jewish businesses [in town]. A unit of Pimpfe came into the store of Mr. Fritz Jacobus, intending to provoke him, and one of them yelled to him, “Come on and hit me, come on and hit me!” But Fritz Jacobus restrained himself.
The forced closure of Jewish-owned businesses occurred in full view of the police.
Towards evening a large protest demonstration was called. Large posters were hung with the announcement “Gathering of Pimpfe and Jungvolk. Protest demonstration against the Jew Kronheim, who wanted to strike a Pimpf. All residents are invited.”
The assembly then took place with significant participation from among the local population. A high school student [Unterpriminar35], a local leader of the Hitler Youth, addressed the crowd. That night several windowpanes were shattered at the homes of Jewish residents.
35. This denotes a high school student, usually sixteen to eighteen years of age, equivalent to a pupil in the sixth form in British secondary schools or a senior in high school in the United States.
Kronheim spent the night in protective custody.36 On the next day he was sent for a physical examination to the Johanniter Hospital in Bad Polzin. On Wednesday he was again brought from there under policy custody to Schivelbein, interrogated, and released early on Thursday. His business is closed; a large placard has been nailed to the metal blinds of the store window so that it cannot be opened. The family has gone to stay with relatives in the area.
36. In German, the term is Schutzhaft; it is by definition a type of police custody used to protect an individual from harm, either from outside sources or, if the individual is already in custody, from other prisoners. In Nazi Germany, the term was increasingly employed euphemistically to describe the practice of extralegal arrest and confinement of Jews and other real or perceived “enemies” of the Reich. Here the legal fiction suggested that the custody was necessary to protect the individual in question from the “righteous anger” of the German population.
Early yesterday I reported the incident to the State Police37 in Köslin. They were already informed there from the interrogation protocol taken by the police department in Schivelbein. I shared with them the inside facts of the matter. Because neither the mayor of Schivelbein nor the incumbent district magistrate [Landrat] will extend permission for the business to be reopened and for Kronheim to return to Schivelbein, it was my goal to secure this permission, which I succeeded in doing. Since yesterday morning the shop was open again; Kronheim may return to Schivelbein on the evening of the 18th. It remains to be seen whether a renewal of such incidents will occur.
37. This is the Staatspolizeistelle, or Stapostelle, the local branch of the Gestapo.
During its twelve years in power, the Nazi dictatorship targeted individuals whom its ideology defined as biological enemies—most significantly Jews but also Roma and Sinti (Gypsies)—for discrimination, for disenfranchisement, and finally for systematic destruction. Yet, even within their own Volksgemeinschaft—the German racial community envisioned by Nazi ideologues—National Socialist authorities identified real and perceived enemies of the regime whom they singled out for persecution. Among these were Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious group whose members, from religious conviction, refused to swear loyalty to any temporal government, to participate in its civic activities, or to serve in its armed forces. Founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by American religious leader Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916)
in 1872, the International Bible Study Society began missionary work in Europe in the 1890s. A first German branch of the group’s Watch Tower Society was established in Elbersfeld in Westphalia in 1902. In 1931, the international association changed its name to Jehovah’s Witnesses. By 1933, when the Nazis came to power, some thirty thousand Germans were Witnesses.38
Children during the Holocaust Page 38