by The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 1-3 (Third Edition) Yale University Press (2003) (pdf)
18. Ibid., p. eii.
19. Emperor Frederick II, excluding Jews from public office, stated in 1237: “Faithful to the duties of a Catholic prince, we exclude Jews from public office so they will not abuse official power for the oppression of Christians." Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 149.
20. The following is a passage from a fifteenth-century German lawbook, the municipal code of Salzwedel, par. 83.2: "Should a Jew assault a Christian or kill him, the Jew may not make any reply, he must suffer in silence what the law appoints, for he has
no claim on Christendom and is God’s persecutor and a murderer of Christendom."
Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 268. Kisch points out that earlier German lawbooks contained no such discrimination.
The poisoned wells legend (fourteenth century) and the ritual murders legend (thirteenth century) were both condemned by the Popes. Scherer, Die Rechtsverháltnisse der Juden, pp. 36-38. On the other hand, the thirteenth-century Castilian code “Las siete
partidas.” partida séptima, titulo XXIV (de los judíos), ley 11, makes reference to the
capital crime of crucifying Christian children or wax figures on Holy Friday. Antonio G.
Solalinde, ed., Antología de Alfonso X el Sabio (Buenos Aires, 1946), p. 181. As for the
legal view of usury, see Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, pp. 191-97.
21. The Fourth Lateran Council expressly called upon the secular powers to "exterminate f exterminare) all heretics. Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 203. This provision was the basis for a wave of stake burnings during the inquisitions.
The story of the tenth plague, the slaying of the first-born, has given rise to the ritual
murder legend, in accordance with which Jews kill Christian children at Passover time to
use their blood in matzos. See also the provision in the partida séptima, in which the
tenth plague is combined with the Gospels to produce the crucifixion of children.
22. Reichstag, Stenographische Berichte, 53. Sitzung, March 6,1895, p. 1296ff. lb
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Germanic peoples, and that every Jew who at this moment has not done
anything bad may nevertheless under the proper conditions do precisely
that, because his racial qualities drive him to do it.
Gentlemen, in India there was a certain sect, the Thugs, who elevated
the act of assassination to an act of policy. In this sect, no doubt, there
were quite a few people who personally never committed a murder, but the
English in my opinion have done the right thing when they exterminated
[. ausrotteten] this whole sect, without regard to the question whether any
particular member of the sect already had committed a murder or not, for
in the proper moment every member of the sect would do such a thing.
Ahlwardt pointed out that the anti-Semites were fighting the Jews not
because of their religion but because of their race. He then continued:
The Jews accomplished what no other enemy has accomplished: they
have driven the people from Frankfurt into the suburbs. And that's the
way it is wherever Jews congregate in large numbers. Gentlemen, the Jews
are indeed beasts of prey. . . .
Mr. Rickert [another deputy who had opposed the exclusion of the
Jews] started by saying that we already had too many laws, and that's why
we should not concern ourselves with a new anti-Jewish code. That is
really the most interesting reason that has ever been advanced against
anti-Semitism. We should leave the Jews alone because we have too many
laws?! Well, I think, if we would do away with the Jews [die Juden
abschaffen], we could do away with half the laws that we have now on the
books.
Then, Deputy Rickert said that it is really a shame—whether he actually said that I don't know because I could not take notes—but the sense of it was that it was a shame that a nation of 50 million people should be
afraid of a few Jews. [Rickert had cited statistics to prove that the number
of Jews in the country was not excessive.] Yes, gentlemen, Deputy Rickert would be right, if it were a matter of fighting with honest weapons against an honest enemy; then it would be a matter of course that the
Germans would not fear a handful of such people. But the Jews, who
operate like parasites, are a different kind of problem. Mr. Rickert, who is
not as tall as 1 am, is afraid of a single cholera germ—and, gentlemen, the
Jews are cholera germs.
(Laughter)
Gentlemen, it is the infectiousness and exploitative power of Jewry
that is involved.
Ahlwardt then called upon the deputies to wipe out “these beasts of
prey [Rotten Sie diese Raubtiere at«]", and continued:
If it is now pointed out—and that was undoubtedly the main point of
the two previous speakers—that the Jew is human too, then I must reject
Paul Massing belongs the credit for discovering this speech and including it in his book
Rehearsal for Destruction (New York, 1949).
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Chat totally. The Jew is no German. If you say that the Jew is bom in
Germany, is raised by German nurses, has obeyed the German laws, has
had to become a soldier—and what kind of soldier, we don't want to talk
about chat—
(Laughter in the right section)
has fulfilled all his duties, has had to pay taxes, too, then all of that is not
decisive for nationality, but only the race out of which he was bom [aus
der er herausgeboren isi) is decisive. Permit me to use a banal analogy,
which I have already brought out in previous speeches: a horse that is bom
in a cowbarn is still no cow, (Stormy laughter) A Jew who is bom in
Germany, is still no German; he is still a Jew.
Ahlwardt then remarked that this was no laughing matter but deadly
serious business.
It is necessary to look at the matter from this angle. We do not even
think of going so far as, for instance, the Austrian anti-Semites in the
Reichsrath, that we demand an appropriation to reward everybody who
shoots a Jew [dass tvir ein Schussgeld fur die Juden beantragen wollten],
or that we should decide that whoever kills a Jew, inherits his property.
(Laughter, uneasiness) That kind of thing we do not intend here; that far
we do not want to go. But we do want a quiet and common-sense separation of the Jews from the Germans. And to do that, it is first of all necessary that we close that hatch, so that more of them cannot come in.
It is remarkable that two men, separated by a span of 350 years,
can still speak the same language. Ahlwardt's picture of the Jews is in
its basic features a replica of the Lutheran portrait. The Jew is still
(1) an enemy who has accomplished what no external enemy has accomplished: he has driven the people of Frankfurt into the suburbs; (2) a criminal, a thug, a beast of prey, who commits so many crimes
that his elimination would enable the Reichstag to cut the criminal code
in half; and (3) a plague or, more precisely, a cholera germ. Under the
Nazi regime, these conceptions of the Jew were expounded and repeated in an almost endless flow of speeches, posters, letters, and memoranda. Hitler himself preferred to look upon the Jew as an
enemy, a menace, a dangerous cunning foe. This is what he said in a
speech delivered in 1940, as he reviewed his “struggle for power”:
It was a battle against a satanical power, which had taken possession of
our entire people
, which had grasped in its hands all key positions of
scientific, intellectual, as well as political and economic life, and which
kept watch over the entire nation from the vantage of these key positions.
It was a battle against a power which, at the same time, had (he influence
to combat with the law every man who attempted to take up battle against
them and every man who was ready to offer resistance to the spread of this
power. At that time, all-powerful Jewry declared war on us.” 23
23. Speech by Hitler, German press, November 10-11, 1940.
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Gauleiter Julius Streicher emphasized the contention that the Jews
were criminal. The following is an excerpt from a typical Streicher
speech to the Hitler Youth. It was made in 1935.
Boys and girls, look back to a little more than ten years ago. A war—
the World War—had whirled over the peoples of the earth and had left in
the end a heap of ruins. Only one people remained victorious in this
dreadful war, a people of whom Christ said its father is the devil, That
people had ruined the German nation in body and soul.
But then Hitler arose and the world took courage in the thought that
now
the human race might be free again from this people which has wandered
about the world for centuries and millennia, marked with the sign of Cain.
Boys and girls, even if they say that the Jews were once the chosen
people, do not believe it, but believe us when we say that the Jews are not
a chosen people. Because it cannot be that a chosen people should act
among the peoples as the Jews do today.
A chosen people does not go into the world to make others work for
them, to suck blood. It does not go among the peoples to chase the peasants from the land. It does not go among the peoples to make your fathers poor and drive them to despair. A chosen people does not slay and torture
animals to death. A chosen people does not live by the sweat of others. A
chosen people joins the ranks of those who live because they work. Don't
you ever forget that.
Boys and girls, for you we went to prison. For you we have always
suffered. For you we had to accept mockery and insult, and became
fighters against the Jewish people, against that organized body of world
criminals, against whom already Christ had fought, the greatest anti-
Semite of all times.“
A number of Nazis, including the chief of the German SS and
Police
Himmler,
the
jurist
and
Generalgouvemeur
of
Poland
Hans
Frank, and Justice Minister Thierack, inclined to the view that the
Jews were a lower species of life, a kind of vermin, which upon contact
infected
the
German
people
with
deadly
diseases.
Himmler
once
cautioned his SS generals not to tolerate the stealing of property that
had belonged to dead Jews. “Just because we exterminated a bacterium,” he said, “we do not want, in the end, to be infected by that bacterium and die of it.”53 Frank frequently referred to the Jews as
“lice.” When the Jews in his Polish domain were killed, he announced
that now a sick Europe would become healthy again.56 Justice Minister
Thierack once wrote the following letter to a worried Hitler:
24. Speech by Streicher. June 22, 1935, M-l.
25. Speech by Himmler, October 4, 1943, PS-1919.
26. Generalgouvemement Health Conference, July 9, 1943, Frank Diary, PS-2233.
Remarks by Frank recorded verbatim.
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A full Jewess, after the birth of her child, sold her mother’s milk to a
woman doctor, and concealed the fact that she was a Jewess. With this
milk, infants of German blood were fed in a children’s clinic. The accused
is charged with fraud. The purchasers of the milk have suffered damage,
because the mother's milk of a Jewess cannot be considered food for
German children. The impudent conduct of the accused is also an insult.
However, there has been no formal indictment in order to spare the parents—who do not know the facts—unnecessary worry. I will discuss the race-hygienic aspects of the case with the Reich Health Chief.1’
The
twentieth-century
Nazis,
like
the
nineteenth-century
anti-
Semites and the sixteenth-century clerics, regarded the Jews as hostile,
criminal, and parasitic. Ultimately the very word Jew (Jude) was infused with all these meanings.3 But there is also a difference between the recent writings and the older scripts that requires explanation. In
the Nazi and anti-Semitic speeches we discover references to race.
This formulation does not appear in the sixteenth-century books. Conversely, in Luther’s work there is repeated mention of God’s scorn, thunder and lightning worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, frenzy, blindness, and raging heart. Such language disappeared in the nineteenth century.
There
is,
however,
a
close
functional
relationship
between
Luther’s references to divine blows and Ahlwardt’s reliance upon race
characteristics, for both Luther and Ahlwardt tried to show that the
Jew could not be changed, that a Jew remained a Jew. “What God does
not improve with such terrible blows, that we shall not change with
words and deeds.”3 There was some evil in the Jew that even the fires
of God, burning high and hot, could not extinguish. In Ahlwardt's time
these evil qualities, fixed and unchangeable, are traced to a definite
cause. The Jew “cannot help himself” because his racial qualities drive
him to commit antisocial acts. We can see, therefore, that even the race
idea fits into a trend of thought.
Anti-Jewish racism had its beginning in the second half of the
seventeenth
century,
when
the
“Jewish
caricature”
first
appeared
in
cartoons.“ These caricatures were the first attempt to discover racial
characteristics in the Jew. However, racism acquired a “theoretical” 27 28 29 30
27. Thierack to Hitler, April 1943, NG-1656. The expert in charge of the case was
Ministerialrat Dr. Malzan.
28. See entry under Jude in Deutsche Akademie, Trübners Deutsches Wörterbuch.
Alfred Götze, ed. (Berlin, 1943), Voi. 4, pp. 55-57. Stereotypes are often unoriginal and
they are easily attributed to a variety of nations. Note, for example, the rumor during the
First World War that the Germans crucified a Canadian soldier. Paul Fussell, The Great
War and Modern Memory (New York, 1975), p. 117.
29. Luther, Von den Jueden. p. Aiii.
30. Eduard Fuchs, Die Juden in der Karikatur (Munich, 1921), pp. 160-61.
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basis only in the 1800s. The racists of the nineteenth century stated
explicitly that cultural characteristics, good or bad, were the product of
physical characteristics. Physical attributes did
not change; hence social behavior patterns also had to be immutable. In the eyes of the anti-Semite, the Jews therefore became a “race.”’1
The destruction of European Jewry was fundamentally the work of
German perpetrators, and hence it is to them that we must devote our
primary attention. What happened to the Jews cannot be understood
without insight into decisions made by German officials in Berlin and in
the field. Yet, every day German exertions and costs were being affected by the behavior of the victims. To the extent that an agency could marshal only limited resources for a particular task, the very
progress of the operation and its ultimate success depended on the
mode of the Jewish response.
The Jewish posture in the face of destruction was not shaped on
the spur of the moment. The Jews of Europe had been confronted by
force many times in their history, and during these encounters they had
evolved a set of reactions that were to remain remarkably constant
over the centuries. This pattern may be portrayed by the following
diagram:
Resistance Alleviation Evasion Paralysis Compliance
■1 ii ii iiii 31 32 33 *
Preventive
attack,
armed
resistance,
and
revenge
were
almost
completely absent in Jewish exilic history. The last, and only, major
revolt took place in the Roman Empire at the beginning of the second
century, when the Jews were still living in compact settlements in the
eastern Mediterranean region and when they were still envisaging an
independent Judea.” During the Middle Ages the Jewish communities
no longer contemplated battle. The medieval Hebrew poets did not
celebrate the martial arts.55 The Jews of Europe were placing themselves under the protection of constituted authority. This reliance was legal, physical, and psychological.
31. For a Nazi discussion of race, including such formulations as "racial substance”
(Rassekern), “superior race" (Hochrasse), and “racial decline” (Rasseverfall), see Konrad Dürre, “Werden und Bedeutung der Rassen,” Die Neue Propyläen-Weitgeschichte (Berlin, 1940), pp. 89-118.
32. The rebellion, in a.d. 115-17 under Tb^jan (following the Roman destruction of
the Temple in a.d. 70 and preceding the rising of Bar Kochba in a.d. 132-135), had
broken out in Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Cyprus, and its ferment was spreading to