Marked CONFIDENTIAL, Frick’s letter tersely indicated his subject: “The Jewish Question and Denunciations.” It related that—on the occasion of a conference with Göring regarding the necessity of eliminating the Jews from the German economy and of using their assets for the goals of the Four-Year Plan—the Generalfeldmarschall had mentioned “that it had been recently noticed that German Volksgenossen were being denounced because they had once bought in Jewish shops, inhabited Jewish houses, or had some other business relations with Jews.” Göring considered that a very unpleasant development, which, in his opinion, could hurt the realization of the Four-Year Plan: “The GeneralFeldmarschall wishes therefore that everything be done to put an end to this nuisance.”54
Frick’s order probably did not reach party member Sagel of Frankfurt. On January 14, 1939, a grocer named Karl Schué complained to his local group leader that female party member Sagel had berated him for having sold butter to a Jew (the last one, wrote Schué, “who still buys his butter in my store”) and told him that she had informed the local [party] leader accordingly. Schué used the occasion to unfold the tale of his economic woes as a the owner of a small store and then returned to Sagel: “Maybe you could inform female Party Comrade Sagel that I do not wear any uniform, as she told me that I should take off my uniform. It is really sad,” he concluded, “that even today, in Greater Germany, such incidents could occur, instead of help being provided to a struggling businessman to allow him to get on his feet and spare his family serious worry.”55
It could be that denunciations were forbidden only when they concerned events in the distant past. Recent occurrences were another matter. On Sunday, June 25, 1939, Fridolin Billian, a local party cell leader and teacher in Theilheim, in the Schweinfurt district of Main-Franken, reported to the local police station that a sixteen-year-old Jew, Erich Israel Oberdorfer, a horse dealer’s son, had perpetrated indecent acts on Gunda Rottenberger, a workingman’s ten-year-old daughter. The story had been told to him by Gunda’s mother, supposedly because Gunda had admitted that Erich Oberdorfer had lured her to the stable and told her that she would get five Pfennig if she took off her underpants. Oberdorfer denied the accusation; Gunda herself said that he had made the offer, but that nothing happened when she refused, except that they had eaten cherries in the stable and, in order to explain their prolonged absence from home, decided to tell Gunda’s mother they had been counting the hens.56
After the Theilheim police proved unable to obtain confirmation of a sexual misdeed from Gunda Rottenberger herself, the Gestapo took over and produced one Maria Ums, who readily admitted that some years (she could not remember how many) earlier, Erich, who was her own age, had touched her genitals and even inserted his member into her “sexual parts.” Then a certain Josef Schäfner came forward. He remembered that Siegfried Oberdorfer, Erich’s father, had told him that during the war he had hit a lieutenant with his pistol butt (because the lieutenant had called him a dirty Jew) and killed him. Siegfried Oberdorfer denied it all; according to him, it was a tale invented by Schäfner, who spread it in the local inns when he was drunk.57
The hearings in young Erich Oberdorfer’s case were over by 1940: He was sentenced to one year in prison. In 1941, on his release from the Schweinfurt jail, he was sent to Buchenwald as a race defiler.58 His dossier was closed and his short life, too, possibly reached its end.
In April 1939 the Ministry of Religious Affairs reached an agreement with the Evangelical Church Leaders’ Conference on further relations between the Protestant churches and the state. The agreement was strongly influenced by German-Christian ideology, but nonetheless not opposed, at least not formally, by a majority of German pastors; the Godesberg Declaration of the same month gave its full weight to this new statement.
“What is the relation between Judaism and Christianity?” it asked. “Is Christianity derived from Judaism and has therefore become its continuation and completion, or does Christianity stand in opposition to Judaism? We answer: Christianity is in irreconcilable opposition to Judaism.”59
A few weeks later, the signatories of the Godesberg Declaration met at the Wartburg near Eisenach, a site sacred to the memory of Luther and hallowed by its connection with the German student fraternities, to inaugurate the Institute for Research on Jewish Influence on the Life of the German Church. According to a historian of the German churches, “a surprisingly large number of academics put themselves at the disposal of the institute, which issued numerous thick volumes of proceedings and prepared a revised version of the New Testament (published in an edition of 200,000 copies in early 1941). It omitted terms such as “Jehovah,” “Israel,” “Zion,” and “Jerusalem” which were considered to be Jewish.60
Cleansing Christianity of its Jewish elements was a Sisyphean task indeed. Just at the time of the Godesberg Declaration, when the Eisenach Institute was being set up, an urgent query was addressed to the SD by the party’s Education Office: could it be that Philipp Melanchthon, possibly the most important German figure of the Reformation after Martin Luther himself, was of non-Aryan origin? The Education Office had discovered this piece of unwelcome news in a book by one Hans Wolfgang Mager, in which, on, the author stated: “Luther’s closest collaborator and confidant, Philipp Melanchthon, was a Jew!” The SD answered that it could not deal with this kind of investigation; the Reich Office for Ancestry Research would possibly be the right address.61
Whether or not Melanchthon’s case underwent further scrutiny, it seems that the great reformer was not excluded from the fold. It was easier to eliminate lesser servants of the church, such as pastors and the faithful of Jewish origin. On February 10, 1939, the Evangelical Church of Thuringia forbade its own baptized Jews access to its temples. Twelve days later the Saxon Evangelical Church followed suit; the ban then spread to the churches of Anhalt, Mecklenburg, and Lübeck. In the early summer, all pastors of non-Aryan ancestry were dismissed. The letter sent on July 11, 1939, to Pastor Max Weber of Neckarsteinach in Hesse-Nassau by the president of the Land Church Office used a standard formula: “The mandate you received on January 10, 1936—No. 941—to administer the parish of Neckarsteinach, under condition of a possible cancellation at any time, is hereby revoked; you are dismissed from your position as of the end of July this year. The director of the German Evangelical Church Office has ordered on May 13, 1939—K.K. 420/39—that the provisions of the German Civil Service Law of January 26, 1937 [excluding all Mischlinge from the civil service], be administratively applied to all clergymen and employees of the Church. According to the provisions of the German Civil Service Law, only a person of German or related blood can be a civil servant (see para. 25). As you are a Mischling of the second degree [one Jewish grandparent], not of German or related blood and thereby according to the meaning of the German Civil Service Law cannot be a clergyman or remain one, your dismissal has had to be declared.”62
The Eisenach Institute dealt with Jews and traces of Judaism in Christianity; the project to establish a research institute on Jewish affairs in Frankfurt, on the other hand, was concerned with the comprehensive task of submitting all matters Jewish to scientific Nazi scrutiny. The existence of a large research library on Jewish affairs at the University of Frankfurt, along with the rift between Walter Frank and Wilhelm Grau—which led to Grau’s dismissal from his position as director of the Jewish section of the Institute for the History of the New Germany—enabled the mayor of Frankfurt, Fritz Krebs, to suggest, in the fall of 1938, that the new institute be set up, with Grau as its director.63 The minister of education and Hess approved the project and preparations began: The festive opening was to take place two years later, in 1941.
Goebbels was also active in this effort to identify non-Aryans in the various cultural areas—and in the purges that followed. Since 1936, the Propaganda Ministry had been compiling and publishing lists of Jewish, mixed, and Jewish-related figures active in cultural endeavors64 and prohibiting their membership in non-Jewish organizations an
d the exhibition, publication, and performance of their works. But Goebbels evidently felt that he had not yet achieved total control. Thus, throughout 1938 and early 1939, the propaganda minister harassed the heads of the various Reich chambers to obtain updated and complete lists of Jews who had been excluded from pursuing their professions.65 One list after another was sent to the Ministry of Propaganda with the admission that it was still incomplete. (A sample of one such, sent by the Reich Music Chamber on February 25, 1939: “Ziegler, Nora, piano teacher; Ziffer, Margarete, private music teacher; Zimbler, Ferdinand, conductor; Zimmermann, Artur, pianist; Zimmermann, Heinrich, clarinetist; Zinkower, Alfons, pianist; Zippert, Helene, music teacher;…Zwillenberg, Wilhelm, choir conductor.”)66
The Rosenberg files contain similar lists. One document contains part 6 of a list of Jewish authors—those with names beginning with the letters S through V—including three Sacher-Masochs and six Salingers, followed by Salingré and Salkind, and ending with Malea Vyne, who, according to the compiler, is the same person as Malwine Mauthner.67
IV
In the fall of 1938, when Tannenhof, an institution for mentally ill patients (belonging to the Evangelical Kaiserswerth Association) was formulating its new statutes, the board decided that they “must take into account the changed attitude of the German Volk to the race question by excluding the admission of patients of Jewish origin…. The institution’s administration is instructed that from now on it should not admit patients of Jewish origin and…with the aim of freeing itself as soon as possible of such patients…it should give notice to private patients of Jewish origin at the earliest possible date and, in the case of regular patients [of Jewish origin], should ask the district administration to transfer them to another institution.”68
Other Evangelical institutions had already started practicing such selection several months earlier. Thus, on March 7, 1938, Dr. Oscar Epha, director of the Evangelical Inner Mission in Schleswig-Holstein, wrote to Pastor Lensch in Alsterdorf: “I have informed the Hamburg public welfare authorities that we can no longer take in any Jewish patients, and we have asked [them] to transfer to Hamburg the four Jewish patients we still have.”69 The Inner Mission’s initiative thus preceded the Interior Ministry decree of June 22, 1938, according to which “the accommodation of Jews in medical institutions is to be executed in such a way that the danger of race defilement is avoided. Jews must be accommodated in special rooms.”70 How this decree was to be carried out was not always clear: “We ask you to inform us,” the hospital administration in Offenburg wrote to its sister institution in Singen on December 29, 1938, “whether you accept Jews and, in case you do, whether you put them together with Aryan patients or whether special rooms are kept ready for them.” The Singen colleagues answered promptly: “As there is no Jewish hospital in this region, and as to this day we have not received any instructions in this matter, we cannot refuse to accept Jewish emergency patients. But, as there are only a few of them, we accommodate the Jewish patients separately.”71 In the Hamburg area, on the other hand, the instructions from the Health Office were unambiguous: “Because of the danger of race defilement, special attention should be devoted to the accommodation of Jews in institutions for the sick. They must be separated spatially from patients of German or related blood. Insofar as Jews who are not bedridden have to remain in institutions for the sick, their accommodation and arrangements regarding their movements inside or on the grounds must make certain to exclude any danger of race defilement…. I therefore demand that this danger be prevented under all circumstances.”72"
Dead Jews were no less troublesome than sick ones. On March 17, 1939, the Saxon office of the German Association of Municipalities wrote to the head office in Berlin that, since the Jews had their own cemetery nearby, the mayor of Plauen intended to forbid the burial or cremation of racial Jews in the municipal cemetery.73 The letter writer wanted to be assured of the legality of this decision, which was obviously directed against converted Jews or those who had simply left their religious community. In his answer two months later, Bernhard Lösener wrote that “the burial of Jews can be forbidden in a municipal cemetery when there is a Jewish cemetery in the same district. The definition of a Jew has been established by the Nuremberg Laws and is also applicable to converted Jews…. The owner of the Jewish cemetery is not allowed to forbid the burial of a converted Jew.” Lösener also informed the Association of Municipalities that a cemetery law was in preparation. Whether access to a municipal cemetery could be refused to Jews who had already acquired graves there or who wished to take care of the tombs of deceased relatives was, according to Lösener, still under consideration.74
V
The Polish crisis had unfolded throughout the spring and summer of 1939. This time, however, the German demands were met by an adamant Polish stand and, after the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, by new British resolve. On March 17, in Birmingham, Chamberlain publicly vowed that his government would not allow any further German conquests. On March 31 Great Britain guaranteed the borders of Poland, as well as those of a series of other European countries. On April 11 Hitler gave orders to the Wehrmacht to be ready for “Operation White,” the code name for the attack on Poland.
On May 22, Germany and Italy signed a defense treaty, the Steel Pact. Simultaneously, while Great Britain and France were conducting hesitant and noncommittal negotiations with the Soviet Union, Hitler made an astounding political move and opened negotiations of his own with Stalin. The Soviet dictator had subtly indicated his readiness for a deal with Nazi Germany in a speech in early March and by a symbolic act: on May 2, he dismissed Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov and replaced him with Vyacheslav Molotov. Litvinov had been the apostle of collective security—that is, of a common front against Nazism. Moreover, he was a Jew.
The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact was signed on August 23; an attached secret protocol divided a great part of Eastern Europe into areas to be eventually occupied and controlled by the two countries in case of war. Hitler was now convinced that, as a result of this coup, Great Britain and France would be deterred from any military intervention. On September 1, the German attack on Poland started. After some hesitation the two democracies decided to stand by their ally, and on September 3, France and Great Britain were at war with Germany. World War II had begun.
In the meantime other events were occurring in Hitler’s Reich. Soon after the handicapped Knauer baby had been put to death in Leipzig, Hitler instructed his personal physician, Karl Brandt (who had performed the euthanasia), and the head of his personal chancellery, Philipp Bouhler, to see to the identification of infants born with a variety of physical and mental defects. These preparations were undertaken, in the strictest secrecy, during the spring of 1939. On August 18, doctors and midwives were ordered to report any infants born with the defects that had been listed by a committee of three medical experts from the Reich Committee for Hereditary Health Questions. These infants were to die.75
Another initiative was taken at the same time; it was, as we have seen, one about which religious authorities at first kept prudent silence. Sometime prior to July 1939, in the presence of Bormann and Lammers, Hitler instructed State Secretary Leonardo Conti to begin preparations for adult euthanasia. Brandt and Bouhler quickly succeeded in getting Conti out of the way and, with Hitler’s assent, took over the entire killing program. Both the mass murder of handicapped children and of mentally ill adults had been decided upon by Hitler, and both operations were directed under cover of the Führer’s Chancellery.76
None of this could yet have had any impact on the popular fervor surrounding Hitler or on the public’s ardent adherence to many of the regime’s goals. Hitler’s accession to power would be remembered by a majority of Germans as the beginning of a period of “good times.” The chronology of persecution, segregation, emigration, and expulsion, the sequence of humiliations and violence, of loss and bereavement that molded the memories of the Jews of Germany from 1933 to 1939 was no
t what impressed itself on the consciousness and memory of German society as a whole. “People experienced the breakneck speed of the economic and foreign resurgence of Germany as a sort of frenzy—as the common expression has it,” writes German historian Norbert Frei. “With astonishing rapidity, many identified themselves with the social will to construct a Volksgemeinschaft that kept any thoughtful or critical stance at arm’s length…. They were beguiled by the esthetics of the Nuremberg rallies and enraptured by the victories of German athletes at the Berlin Olympic Games. Hitler’s achievements in foreign affairs triggered storms of enthusiasm…. In the brief moments left between the demands of a profession and those of the ever-growing jungle of Nazi organizations, they enjoyed modest well-being and private happiness.”77
It was in this atmosphere of national elation and personal satisfaction that, on April 20, 1939, some four months before the war, eighty million Germans celebrated Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. During the following weeks hundreds of theaters showed avid audiences the pageantry and splendor of the event. Newsreel No. 451 was a huge success. Terse comments introduced the various sequences: “Preparations for the Führer’s fiftieth birthday/The entire nation expresses its gratitude and offers its wishes of happiness to the founder of the Greater German Reich/Gifts from all the Gaue of the Reich are continuously brought to the Reich Chancellery/Guests from all over the world arrive in Berlin/On the eve of the birthday, the Inspector General for the Construction of the Capital of the Reich, Albert Speer, presents to the Führer the completed East-West Axis/The great star of the newly erected victory column shines/Slovak Premier Dr. Josef Tiso, President of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Emil Hacha, and the Reich Protector Freiherr von Neurath…/The troops prepare for the parade/The Third Reich’s greatest military spectacle begins/For four and a half hours, formations from all branches of the armed forces march by their Supreme Commander…!”78
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