Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 01: The Years of Persecution

by Saul Friedlander

  II

  On the morning of November 12, Goebbels summed up the events of the previous days in the Völkischer Beobachter. “The Jew Grynszpan,” so the last paragraph ran, “was the representative of Jewry. The German vom Rath was the representative of the German people. Thus in Paris Jewry has fired on the German people. The German government will answer legally but harshly.”37 The German government’s legal answers were hurled at the Jews throughout the remaining weeks of 1938; they were accompanied by three major policy interpretations: the first on November 12, at the top-echelon conference convened by Göring; the second on December 6, in Göring’s address to the Gauleiters; the third on December 28, in a set of new rules also announced by Göring. All of Göring’s initiatives and interpretations were issued on Hitler’s explicit instructions.

  It has often been assumed that Göring had lost much of his influence since the summer of 1938 as a result of his relatively moderate attitude in the Sudeten crisis.38 The new star among Hitler’s underlings was Ribbentrop, the presumptuous new foreign minister, who was convinced that the British would continue to back down from crisis to crisis. It may well be, however, that within the new scheme of things following Munich, Göring’s role as coordinator of Jewish matters had become essential for Hitler’s plans. Göring was to orchestrate all measures that would make Jewish life in Germany untenable and accelerate Jewish emigration. The constant threat of further anti-Jewish violence and the need to find places of refuge for the fleeing Jews would mobilize “world Jewry” and convince it to tone down its anti-German incitement; this in turn would persuade the Western governments that compromise solutions to Hitler’s new demands were a necessity. In other words, Hitler may well have thought that anti-Jewish pressure in Germany would ensure the success of Nazi foreign aggressions, due to what he believed to be the influence of world Jewry on the policies of the Western democracies. And Hitler’s forthcoming declarations about settling Jews in some Western colonies, and his public threats to exterminate them in case of war, also indicate that his belief in the influence of world Jewry in Paris, London, and Washington was an essential part of his worldview.

  The conference of high-ranking officials that Göring convened on November 12 at the Air Transport Ministry has become notorious. “Gentlemen,” Göring began, “today’s meeting is of decisive importance. I received a letter that Bormann, the Führer’s Deputy’s chief of staff, wrote to me on instruction from the Führer, according to which the Jewish question should now be dealt with in a centralized way and settled in one form or another. In a telephone call which I received from the Führer yesterday, I was once again instructed to centralize the decisive steps to be taken now.”39

  The concrete discussions that took place on November 12 at Göring’s headquarters dealt not only with various additional ways of harassing the Jews and further economic steps to be taken against the Jews but also, and at length, with the immediate problem of insurance compensation for the damages inflicted on Jewish property during the pogrom. A representative of the German insurance companies, Eduard Hilgard, was called in. The windowpanes alone destroyed in Jewish shops were insured for about six million dollars, and because the glass was Belgian, at least half of this amount would have to be paid in foreign currency. That prompted an aside by Göring to Heydrich: “I wish you had killed two hundred Jews and not destroyed such property.” Heydrich: “Thirty-five were killed.”40 Göring issued the orders secretly given by Hitler two days before: The Jews would bear all the costs of repairing their businesses; the Reich would confiscate all payments made by German insurance companies. “The Jews of German citizenship will have to pay as a whole a contribution of 1,000,000,000 RM to the German Reich.”41

  On the same day Göring ordered the cessation of all Jewish business activity as of January 1, 1939. The Jews had “to sell their enterprises, as well as any land, stocks, jewels, and art works. They could use the services of ‘trustees’ to complete these transactions within the time limit. Registration and deposit of all shares was compulsory.”42 Göring’s main policy statement, again delivered after consultations with Hitler, was yet to come, in a meeting with the Gauleiters on December 6. But more than for its major executive decisions, the November 12 conference remains significant for its sadistic inventiveness and for the spirit and tone of the exchanges.

  Still carried away by the flurry of his activities the days before, the propaganda minister had a whole list of proposals: The Jews should be compelled to demolish the damaged synagogues at their own expense; they should be forbidden public entertainments (“I am of the opinion that it is impossible to have Jews seated next to Germans at variety shows, cinemas, or theaters; one could eventually envisage later that here in Berlin one or two movie houses be put at the disposal of the Jews in which they could present Jewish films”).43 At that point a notorious debate arose between Goebbels and Göring on how to segregate Jews on trains. Both agreed on the necessity of separate compartments for Jews but, Goebbels declared, there should be a law forbidding them to claim a seat even in a Jewish compartment before all Germans had secured one. The mere existence of a separate compartment would have the undesirable effect of allowing some Jews to sit at their ease in an overcrowded train. Göring had no patience for such formalities: “Should a case such as you mention arise and the train be overcrowded, believe me, we won’t need a law. We will kick him [the Jew] out and he will have to sit all alone in the toilet all the way!” Goebbels insisted on a law, to no avail.44

  This minor setback did not paralyze Goebbels’s brainstorming: the Jews, he demanded, should absolutely be forbidden to stay in German resorts. The propaganda minister also wondered whether German forests should not be made out of bounds for them (“Nowadays, packs of Jews run around in Grunewald; it is a constant provocation, we constantly have incidents. What the Jews do is so annoying and provoking that there are brawls all the time”). This gave Göring an idea of his own: Some sections of the forests should be open to Jews, and animals that resembled Jews—“the elk has a crooked nose like theirs”—should be gathered in those sections. Goebbels continued; he demanded that parks should also be forbidden to Jews, as Jewish women, for instance, might sit down with German mothers and engage in hostile propaganda (“There are Jews who do not look so very Jewish”). There should also be separate benches for Jews, with special signs: FOR JEWS ONLY! Finally, Jewish children should be excluded from German schools (“I consider it as out of the question that my son be seated next to a Jew in a German school and [that the Jew] be given a German history lesson.”).45

  At the end of the debate on the economic issues, Göring made it clear that the decisions taken would have to be “underpinned by a number of police, propaganda, and cultural measures, so that everything should happen right away and that, this week, slam-bang, the Jews should have their ears slapped, one slap after the other.”46

  It was Heydrich who reminded those present that the main problem was to get the Jews out of Germany. The idea of setting up a central emigration agency in Berlin on the Viennese model was broached (Eichmann had been specially summoned from Vienna for the occasion). But in Heydrich’s opinion at the current rate it would take some eight to ten years to achieve a solution of the problem, which, it will be remembered, was also Hitler’s assessment in the meeting with Goebbels on July 24. How, then, should the Jews be isolated in the meantime from the German population without their losing all possibility of a livelihood? Heydrich was in favor of a special badge to be worn by all those defined as Jews by the Nuremberg Laws (“A uniform!” Göring exclaimed. Heydrich repeated: “A badge.”) Göring was skeptical: He himself was in favor of establishing ghettos on a large scale in the major cities. For Heydrich ghettos would become “hiding places for criminal activities” uncontrollable by the police, whereas a badge would allow surveillance by “the vigilant eye of the population.” The debate on the introduction of a badge or the creation of ghettos went on, concentrating on the ways the Jews would pursue
their daily life (“You can’t let them starve!” Göring argued).47 The difference of opinion remained unresolved, and, three weeks later, Hitler was to reject both badges and ghettos.

  Like Goebbels earlier, Heydrich had more suggestions on his list: no driver’s licenses, no car ownership (“the Jews could endanger German life”), no access to areas of national significance in the various cities, no access to cultural institutions—along the lines of Goebbels’s suggestion—none to resorts and not even to hospitals (“a Jew cannot lie in a hospital together with an Aryan Volksgenosse”). When the discussion moved to what the Jews could do to counter the financial measures about to be taken against them, Göring was sure that they would do nothing whatsoever. Goebbels concurred: “At the moment, the Jew is small and ugly and he will remain at home.”48

  Shortly before the last exchange, Göring commented, as if an afterthought: “I would not like to be a Jew in Germany.” The Generalfeldmarschall then mentioned that on November 9 Hitler had told him of his intention to turn to the democracies that were raising the Jewish issue and to challenge them to take the Jews; the Madagascar possibility would also be brought up, as well as that of “some other territory in North America, in Canada or anywhere else the rich Jews could buy for their brethren.” Göring added: “If in some foreseeable future an external conflict were to happen, it is obvious that we in Germany would also think first and foremost of carrying out a big settling of accounts with the Jews.”49

  On the same day that Goebbels forbade Jews access to cultural institutions, he also banned the Jewish press in Germany. Shortly afterward, Erich Liepmann, director of the Jüdische Rundschau, which by then had been closed down, was summoned to the propaganda minister’s office: “‘Is the Jew here?’ Goebbels yelled by way of greeting,” Liepmann recalled. “He was sitting at his desk; I had to stand some eight meters away. He yelled: ‘An informational paper must be published within two days. Each issue will be submitted to me. Woe to you if even one article is published without my having seen it. That’s it!’”50 Thus the Jüdisches Nacbricbtenblatt was born: It was designed to inform the Jews of all the official measures taken to seal their fate.

  But sometimes, it seems, even Goebbels’s eye wasn’t sharp enough. In early December, some six weeks after Kristallnacht, the Nachrichtenblatt reviewed the American film Chicago: “A city goes up in flames and the firefighters stand by without taking any action. All the hoses are poised, the ladders have been prepared…but no hand moves to use them. The men wait for the command, but no command is heard. Only when the city has burned down and is lying in cinders and ashes, an order arrives; but the firefighters are already driving away. A malicious invention? An ugly tale? No. The truth. And it was revealed in Hollywood.”51

  The law of November 12 compelling the Jews to sell all their enterprises and valuables, such as jewels and works of art, inaugurated the wholesale confiscation of art objects belonging to them. The robbery that had already taken place in Austria now became common practice in the Reich. In Munich, for example, the procedure was coordinated by Gauleiter Wagner himself who, in the presence of the directors of state collections, gave the orders for “the safekeeping of works of art belonging to Jews.” This “safekeeping” was implemented by the Gestapo: An inventory was duly taken in the presence of the owners (or their “delegates”) and a receipt issued to them. One of these documents reads: “25 November 1938. Protocol, recorded in the residence of the Jew Albert Eichengrün, Pilotystrasse 11/1, presently in protective custody. The housekeeper, Maria Hertlein, b. 21/10/1885, in Wilpolteried, B.V., Kempten, was present. Dr. Kreisel, Director, Residenzmuseum, and criminal investigators Huber and Planer officiated.”52

  On November 15 all Jewish children still remaining in German schools were expelled.53 In a letter the same day addressed to all state and party agencies, Secretary of State Zschintsch explained the minister of education’s decision. “After the heinous murder in Paris one cannot demand of any German teacher to continue to teach Jewish children. It is also self-evident that it is unbearable for German schoolchildren to sit in the same classroom with Jewish children. Racial separation in schooling has already been accomplished in general over the last few years, but a remnant of Jewish children has stayed in German schools, for whom school attendance together with German boys and girls cannot be permitted anymore…. I therefore order, effective immediately: Attendance at German schools is no longer permitted to Jews. They are allowed to attend only Jewish schools. Insofar as this has not yet happened, all Jewish schoolchildren who at this time are still attending a German school must be dismissed.”54

  On November 19 Jews were excluded from the general welfare system. On November 28 the minister of the interior informed all the federal state presidents that some areas could be forbidden to Jews and that their right of access to public places could also be limited to a few hours a day.55 It did not take long for the Berlin police chief to move ahead. On December 6 the city’s Jews were banned from all theaters, cinemas, cabarets, concert and conference halls, museums, fairs, exhibition halls, and sports facilities (including ice-skating rinks), as well as from public and private bathing facilities. Moreover Jews were banned from the city districts where most government offices and major monuments and cultural institutions were located: “the Wilhelmstrasse from the Leipzigerstrasse to Unter den Linden, including the Wilhelmsplatz, the Vossstrasse from the Hermann Göring-Strasse to the Wilhelmstrasse, the Reich Commemorative Monument including the northern pedestrian way on Unter den Linden from the University to the Arsenal.” The announcement indicated that in the near future the banning of Jews would probably be applied to “a great number of Berlin streets.”56

  On December 3, on Himmler s orders, the Jews were deprived of their driver’s licenses. The access of Jewish scholars who possessed a special authorization to university libraries was cancelled on December 8. On December 20 Jews were no longer allowed to train as pharmacists, and a day later they were excluded from midwifery.57 On the twenty-eighth, besides further measures of segregation (access was prohibited that day to dining and sleeping cars on trains, and also to public swimming pools and hotels that usually catered to party members), the first indications of a potential physical concentration of the Jews (to be discussed further on) appeared.58 On November 29 the minister of the interior forbade Jews to keep carrier pigeons.59

  In the meantime, following Heydrich’s order of November 9, the Gestapo started to impound all Jewish communal archives. The police and SA did the preliminary work, even in the smallest towns. In Memmingen the criminal police arrested the local Jewish religion teacher who also dealt with all of the community’s official correspondence. He was forced to lead the inspectors to the archives, which were kept in “three old closets” in the synagogue and in “a wooden case” in the attic of his house. The closets and the case were locked and sealed, the key of the synagogue deposited at the police station.60 In large cities the procedure was basically the same. According to a report by the state archives director in Frankfurt, he was ordered by the mayor on November 10 to take over all Jewish communal archives. When he arrived at the Fahrgasse synagogue, he found “broken windowpanes, unhinged gates, paintings cut to pieces, smashed exhibit cases, files and books scattered all over the floors, and so on.” On the twelfth, a small fraction of the files were removed to the state archives for examination by the Gestapo. On the fifteenth, two Gestapo officials started cataloging, with the historical material destined to be added to the ever-growing collection of plundered Judaica being assembled in Frankfurt for the new Research Institute on the Jewish Question. In passing, the state archives director mentioned that among the files there was a complete list of the (some 23,000) Jews living in Frankfurt;61 for the Gestapo such a list must have been of particular interest.

  Göring s main policy statement was delivered on December 6, following the instructions given him by Hitler on December 4. This time he was addressing the inner core of the party, the Gauleiters, and alt
hough the speech, in the usual Göring style, was relaxed in tone, there could have been no doubt in the minds of the audience that he was conveying clear orders backed by Hitler’s authority. These were to be followed strictly to the letter. As Göring put it (regarding Hitler’s decision that the Jews would not be marked by any special sign), “Here, gentlemen, the Führer has forbidden it, he has expressed his wish, he has given the order, and I think that this should entirely suffice for even the lowliest employee not to get the idea that the Führer actually wishes it but maybe he wishes even more that I do the opposite. In terms of the Führer’s authority, it is clear that there is nothing to change and nothing to interpret.”62

  What is striking in Göring’s address is his constant reference to the fact that these were Hitler’s orders, that all the steps mentioned had been discussed with Hitler and had his complete backing. The most likely reason for this repeated emphasis was that some of the measures announced would not be popular with the assembly, since they would put an end to the profits party members of all ranks, including some Gauleiters, had derived from their seizure of Jewish assets. It seems that this was why Göring repeatedly linked the Jewish issue to the general economic needs of the Reich. Party members were to be fully aware that any transgression of the new orders was harmful to the Reich’s economy and an outright violation of the Führer’s orders. In concrete terms, after stressing the fact that the party and the Gaue had taken Jewish assets, Göring made it clear that, on Hitler’s orders, such unlawfully acquired property would have to be transferred to the state: “The Party should not engage in any business…. A Gau leadership cannot set up an Aryanization office. The Gau leadership has no authority to do this, it is not allowed to do it…. The Fuhrer has issued the following guidelines: obviously, Aryanization has to take place locally, because the state itself cannot do it…but the benefits from all the Aryanization measures belong exclusively and solely to the Reich, i.e., to its authorized representative, the Reich Finance Minister, and to no one else in the whole Reich; it is only thus that the Führer’s rearmament program can be accomplished.”63 Previously Göring had made it clear that deals already made by party members in order to enrich themselves were to be cancelled. It was not the fate of the Jews that mattered, Göring added, but the reputation of the party inside and outside Germany.64 The other internal party issue dealt with at some length was that of punishment for deeds committed on November 9 and 10: Whatever was undertaken on purely ideological grounds, out of a justified “hatred for the Jews,” should go unpunished; purely criminal acts of various kinds were to be prosecuted as they would be prosecuted under any other circumstances, but all publicity liable to cause scandal was to be strictly avoided.65