A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (45 page)

The translation of this sign is, “Jews are not welcome here.” Included in the Nazis’ campaign against the Jews were children’s books that depicted Jews as dangerous outsiders who threatened Germany.

Before the month was over, Jewish doctors who worked in the national health system lost their jobs. At about the same time, the government sharply limited the number of Jews who could attend a public high school or teach in one. As a result of these and similar laws, about 20 percent of all German Jews were soon out of work.

By April, Hitler’s ideas about “race” were being applied to the nation’s Protestant churches. More than 65 percent of the German people considered themselves Protestants, and most attended Lutheran churches. Although Hitler never intervened directly in the operation of those churches, he did appoint a “Reich bishop” to lead a “German Christian” movement that tried to link Protestant traditions to Nazi beliefs—including the notion that Jesus was not a Jew but an enemy of the Jews. Hitler also maintained that conversion did not turn a Jew into a Christian. He therefore targeted Christians of Jewish descent as well as Jews.

Protestants who opposed some of those ideas organized the “Confessing Church.” Its leaders insisted on the right to be independent on religious issues but did not oppose Nazi “race laws.” As a result, Christians of Jewish descent could no longer attend some churches and were segregated in others. Only a few ministers raised even timid objections to the new laws.

About 30 percent of Germany’s population was Catholic. As a minority, Catholics were sometimes accused of not being “true Germans” because they “took orders from Rome.” Over the years, they had protected their rights by organizing and supporting the Catholic Center Party and the Bavarian People’s Party. In the 1920s, a number of Catholic bishops had openly opposed the Nazis, but in 1933, Pope Pius XI and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, a
nuntius
, or ambassador, to Germany and later secretary of state of the Vatican, signed an agreement with Hitler to protect the freedom and rights of Catholics in Germany. That agreement was one of Hitler’s first foreign-policy successes, and it greatly enhanced his prestige.

Edith Stein was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in 1922. She later became a nun and a respected Catholic educator. In April 1933, she wrote a letter to the pope. In it, she argued:

Everything that happened [in Germany] and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself “Christian.” For weeks not only Jews but also thousands of faithful Catholics in Germany, and, I believe, all over the world have been waiting and
hoping for the Church of Christ [the Roman Catholic Church] to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name. Is not this idolization of race and governmental power which is being pounded into the public consciousness by the radio open heresy?… Is not all this diametrically opposed to the conduct of our Lord and Savior, who, even on the cross, still prayed for his persecutors?
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Pius XI did not respond to the letter, nor did his successor, Cardinal Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII in 1939. As for Stein, the Nazis considered her a Jew because she had Jewish grandparents. She was murdered as part of the “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.”

Hitler enacted 42 anti-Jewish measures in 1933 and 19 more the following year. Each aimed at protecting “Aryan blood” from contamination with “Jewish blood.” Then, in September 1935, Hitler announced two new laws at a party rally in Nuremberg. These laws were designed to turn Germany into a “racial state”—a country in which “race” determined citizenship. The first law defined a German citizen as a person “of German or kindred blood who proves by his conduct that he is willing and suited loyally to serve the German people and the Reich.”
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The second statute, called the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, outlawed marriages between Jews and those of “German or kindred blood.”
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People of “German blood” who were already married to Jews were encouraged to dissolve those marriages.

A third decree, dated November 14, addressed the question of who was a Jew. A Jew was now defined as a person with three Jewish grandparents. A person with one Jewish parent was not considered a Jew unless he or she belonged to a Jewish community, the non-Jewish parent was dead, or the state did not approve of his or her behavior. According to some estimates, Germany was home to as many as 300,000
Mischlinge
—persons of “mixed race”—and another 100,000 who were affected to some extent by racial laws.
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In the years that followed, the government dissolved Jewish businesses. Jews who owned large companies had to turn over their holdings “in trust” to “Aryans.” Jews could no longer work as physicians, dentists, lawyers, or accountants in Germany. Between 1933 and 1937, more than 129,000 Jews left the country. Of those who remained, one in every three had been reduced to extreme poverty by 1939. Jews were not the only people targeted by the German government. They also singled out the Sinti and Roma (the so-called “Gypsies”), individuals with physical, mental, or social disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexual men.

As Jews and others were scrambling to leave Germany, Hitler began to take over neighboring countries. In March 1938, he annexed Austria, his homeland, and almost immediately applied German racial laws to Austrian Jews. He then turned his attention to the western part of Czechoslovakia. By 1939, it had become a German protectorate, and Slovakia, the eastern part of the country, was an “independent state” allied to Germany. Here, too, racial laws went into effect almost immediately. As a result, the number of Jews desperate to emigrate skyrocketed. However, most had nowhere to go. In the 1930s, the Nazis were not only ones who viewed Jews as an evil “race.”

In July 1938, delegates from 32 nations met in Evian, France, to discuss the growing “refugee crisis.” None of the delegates referred to it as the “Jewish refugee crisis,” even though everyone there knew the truth. The delegate from Australia set the tone when he bluntly told the group, “As we have no real racial problem in Australia, we are not desirous of importing one.”
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Others were less openly hostile but equally reluctant to admit more “refugees.” Golda Meir, who later became prime minister of Israel, attended the conference as the Jewish observer from Palestine. As an observer, she was not permitted to speak. She later wrote:

I don’t think that anyone who didn’t live through it can understand what I felt at Evian—a mixture of sorrow, rage, frustration, and horror. I wanted to get up and scream…. “Don’t you know that these so-called numbers are human beings, people who may spend the rest of their lives in concentration camps, or wandering around the world like lepers, if you don’t let them in?” Of course, I didn’t know then that not concentration camps but death camps awaited the refugees whom no one wanted.
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Hitler responded to the meeting in Evian by accelerating his campaign against Jews. He began by expelling Russian Jews who had lived in Germany for decades. Poland feared that the 70,000 Jews with Polish passports would be the next to go. To keep them from returning, the Polish government required a special stamp on their passports. Although few wanted to return to Poland, they needed valid passports. Yet when they tried to get stamps, they were turned away.

The crisis came to a head when Poland announced that no stamps would be issued after October 31, 1938. On October 26, the Germans
expelled all Jews with Polish passports. When Poland refused to accept them, thousands ended up in makeshift camps along the border between the two nations. Among them were the parents of Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old student in Paris. Frustrated by his inability to help his family, he marched into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, a low-level embassy official.

Ernst vom Rath died on November 9, two days after the shooting. That night, the Nazis claimed, the German people rose “spontaneously” to avenge his death. In fact, the Nazis had planned the violence. Police officers watched as Nazi storm troopers looted thousands of Jewish homes and businesses, set fire to more than 300 synagogues in Greater Germany (Germany and Austria), and killed about 90 Jews. The government also shipped approximately 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

This pogrom was called
Kristallnacht
(“the night of broken glass”), because of the destruction it brought. Years later, many Jews would recall that night as a turning point in their lives. When they asked non-Jewish friends for help, most were turned away. This convinced even Jews who were reluctant to emigrate that they had no future in Germany.

Non-Jews also made choices. Some secretly came to the aid of their Jewish neighbors but feared speaking or acting openly on their behalf. More vocal were Germans who supported the Nazis but disapproved of the violence. One wrote:

Far be it from me to disregard the sins that many members of the Jewish people have committed against our Fatherland, especially during the last decades; also, far be it from me to deny the right of orderly and moderate proceedings against the Jewish race. But not only will I by no means justify the numerous excesses against Jewry that took place on and after November ninth of this year… but I reject them, deeply ashamed, as they are a blot on the good name of the Germans
.

First of all, I, as a Protestant Christian, have no doubt that the commitment and toleration of such reprisals will evoke the wrath of God against our people and Fatherland, if there is a God in heaven. Just as Israel is cursed and on trial because they were the first who rejected Christ, so surely the same curse will fall upon each and every nation that by similar deeds, denies Christ in the same way.
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The writer thought Jews were rightly suffering for “rejecting Christ” but drew the line at killing them or destroying property.

In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of the few world leaders to recall his ambassador to Germany in order to express outrage at the pogrom. This is the traditional way that one nation shows disapproval of the policies of another. Despite the recall, Roosevelt did not offer to take in additional Jewish refugees from Germany. According to opinion polls, most Americans shared his disgust at the burning of synagogues but opposed even a small increase in immigration. Still suffering in the Great Depression, they feared that refugees might take American jobs.

By the end of 1938, Jews in Germany had been fined one billion marks for the damage done to them on the night of the pogrom. In addition, they could no longer own or even drive a car; attend theaters, movie houses, concert halls, or events at sports arenas; or use public parks and swimming pools. The Gestapo, the German secret police, even went door to door confiscating radios. Jewish children were banned from public schools, and every Jew had to adopt a “Jewish” middle name—Israel for the men and Sarah for the women.

Hitler also continued to eye neighboring countries. In the summer of 1939, his focus was on Poland. In preparation for an invasion, he signed a treaty with Joseph Stalin, the head of the Soviet Union. The two dictators vowed not to attack one another even if one declared war on an ally of the other. They also secretly agreed to divide up Poland.

After years of anti-Communist propaganda, many Germans were stunned by the pact. (So were many Russians.) Although Goebbels claimed that Hitler was opposed only to German Communists, not to Russian ones, many Germans felt uneasy. The uneasiness grew on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany: World War II had begun. On one side were the Allies. In 1939, they included not only Britain, France, and Poland but also the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. On the other side were the Axis powers. In Europe, the Axis powers included Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria; in Asia, Japan was part of the Axis. (The Soviet Union, despite its treaty with Germany, was not part of the Axis and did not declare war on the Allies.)

Between September 3, 1939, and October 1941, the Axis powers enjoyed an almost unbroken string of military victories. Within months of conquering
western Poland (the Soviets took over eastern Poland), the Germans defeated Denmark and Norway and then moved west to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. By June 1940, the Germans were marching triumphantly through the streets of Paris. That summer, Britain was Hitler’s only remaining opponent. Yet despite daily bombings, the British refused to yield.

In every country the Germans occupied, they waged a “racial war” against Jews and other “racial enemies.” They began by stripping Jews of all rights and confiscating their property. Hermann Göring, the head of the Gestapo until 1934, viewed these measures as essential. “In the final analysis,” he argued, “it is about whether the German and Aryan prevails here, or whether the Jew rules the world.”
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Jews were a small, powerless, and increasingly poverty-stricken minority almost everywhere in Europe. Yet the Nazis maintained that their “removal” was essential to Germany’s future. Earlier, the Nazis had tried to make life so difficult for Jews that they would have little choice but to leave the country. With the conquest of Poland in 1939, however, the number of Jews under German rule more than doubled. At that time, Poland was home to more than three million Jews, and about two million of them were living in what had become German-occupied Poland. (The rest lived in what was now the Soviet-controlled part of Poland.)

In 1939, the Nazis addressed the “Jewish question” by calling for a new Pale of Settlement, a reservation to contain and isolate Jews much like the one in Russia in the 1800s (see
Chapter 11
). It would be located near the German-occupied city of Lublin, Poland. There, Germany would dump Jews from all of the areas it occupied. But within a month or two, the deportations suddenly stopped. According to a German report, officials in Lublin “were unable to cope with the difficulties which arose from the continuous dumping of thousands of Jews without any provision having been made for their housing and maintenance.”
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Those difficulties included a typhoid epidemic that could easily have spread to other parts of Poland and to Germany itself.