Jewish Life in Nazi Germany: Dilemmas and Responses (27 page)

The yellow star signaled the beginning of the mass deportations to the east. Six months later, in April 1942, another stigma similar to the
Judenstern
was introduced and it marked all
Judenhäuser
: a black star printed on white paper was to be displayed next to the entrance door or nameplates of inmates
.
Reinhard Heydrich was confident “that now there is not further possibility of concealment.”
⁵⁵
Indeed, as he had predicted after the November pogrom, the colorful symbols of identification and stigmatization attracted the attention of the public and allowed surveillance by the “vigilant eyes of the population.”
⁵⁶
within their neighborhoods, Germans could see the last remaining Jews and recognize their segregated living quarters, especially young Germans who, in many plac-es, continued to insult and abuse Jewish youngsters wearing the star.

f
Igure
5.1.:
Jews from Hattingen, who were deported on 28 April 1942, lived for almost one year in an empty rifle factory that had served as a “Jewish House” (Judenhaus). To the right and above, one sees the Jewish star designating the building as a Judenhaus.
Courtesy
: Stadtarchiv kerpen.

f
Igure
5.2.:
Until their deportation in 1942, the Jews of kerpen were forced to live in a “Jewish House” (
Judenhaus
) on Hindenburgstrasse. on 18 July 1942, the last thirty-one Jews in kerpen were deported from here.
Courtesy
: Stadtarchiv kerpen.

Judenhäuser
also served as convenient holding and assembly centers for those
Sternträger
who were moved by the Gestapo from rural areas into larger cities as part of the preparations for deportation. Jews from North Hesse were brought to kassel and were housed at five collection points that were classified as
Sammelunterkünfte
(collective accommodations) or
Sammellager
(collective camps).
⁵⁷
A horticultural college in Ahlem confined Jews from Hannover and neighboring villages.
⁵⁸
In May 1941, the Gestapo in Bonn transformed a confiscated Benedictine Monastery, Zur ewigen Anbetung (At the Place of eternal Adoration), into a large
Judenhaus
. Three collection points were set up in nearby Cologne. In Frankfurt am Main, the Grossmarkthalle, located at the main railway station, functioned as a central place for the arrival and departure of Jews from the city and its surroundings.
⁵⁹
Jews in Franconia were brought to Nuremberg, würzburg, and kitzingen. In Berlin, five Jewish buildings were required to process the final removals—a synagogue, a rabbinical meeting center, an orthodox community cen-ter, a home for the aged, and a hospital. Mario offenberg has described each of these collection points as a
Zwischenstation,
“a stopover between home and rail carriage . . . an extraterritorial—though generally known—outpost of the death camps in the midst of Berlin.”
⁶⁰

In view of the forthcoming mass deportations and introduction of general forced labor, several cities and communities adopted the Austrian model by setting up
Judensiedlungen.
The Ulm city council set about ridding the city of its Jews as quickly as possible.
⁶¹
A dilapidated castle in oberstotzingen offered the solution. The council was prepared to spend 6,000 to 10,000 Reichsmarks on necessary renovations, mindful of the effects the removal of Jews had on its housing market. officials had calculated that the cost of clearing
Judenhäuser
and renovating the castle was much lower than the construction of new dwellings. In essen, Jews were taken to Hollbeckshof, a camp erected on the site of a former coal mine. Nine barracks awaited them, each fifty meters by fifteen meters, divided into small rooms. Fifteen inmates shared one room. In Cologne, 2,000 Jews were crammed into barracks constructed for Russian prisoners of war during world war I.
⁶²
In November 1942, when the city of Dresden was declared
judenfrei,
the remaining 279 Jews were incarcerated in seven newly established huts at Hellerberg.
⁶³
The camp was set up just outside the city but adjacent to the Zeiss Ikon’s Göhle plant, which urgently required
Rüstungs-Juden
(armament Jews) for the manufacture of fuses for the navy. More than 300 Jews were housed in one wing of the Vincentine Convent in Berg am Laim, Munich. The Nazis referred to this detention center as a
Heimanlage
(housing estate), a model soon to be refined for the establishment of an “old people’s ghetto” in Theresienstadt. They also praised their second
Judensiedlung
as a “model . . . for emulation” by other such developments.
⁶⁴
It was a camp constructed by Jewish forced labor on a 14,500 square meter site in Milbertshofen, seven kilometers from the city center. By october 1941, eighteen wooden barracks designed to accommodate a maximum of 1,100 inmates were ready for occupation. The number was soon exceeded and eventually reached 1,374.

From
Judenhäuser, Juden-Sammelstellen
, and
Judensiedlungen
, Ger-man Jews set out on the last stage of their journey to the forced ghettos and death factories in the east after enduring departure procedures marked by thoroughness, humiliation, and terrorization. once they had crossed the border, the Denaturalization Law of November 1941 came into effect to legalize the automatic confiscation of property from all Jews permanently removed from Germany.
⁶⁵

Judenhäuser
and
Juden-Sammelstellen
existed until the collapse of Hitler’s regime in 1945. Serving as temporary detention centers, they also housed a diverse group of people who had lived among Germans and Jews, in a German-Jewish milieu. There was no longer a place for these people in the German “Housing Community” and “Folk/People’s Community,” and therefore they had to be eliminated. Never-ending debates focused on the classification and treatment of the so-called
Mischehen
(mixed marriages) and
Mischlinge
(mixed breeds), groups that grew out of the processes of Jewish emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation. In the end, the status the Nazis allocated to them meant life or death to them. Beate Meyer’s pioneering studies have revealed the Nazi policies pursued against these unwanted groups and have shed light on the ways in which their daily lives were marked by constant anxiety and fear.
⁶⁶

Initially, the
Sonderrecht
of 1939 sanctioning the termination of the cohabitation of Germans and Jews incorporated only “non-privileged”
Mischehen.
Local communities hastened to drive them out of their homes, intending not only to concentrate and control them, or to boost the housing market, but also—and above all—to break up their marriages within the confined space of the
Judenhäuser.
Since the National Socialists were reluctant to introduce forcible divorce, they hoped that under increased pressure, one of the spouses would seek “voluntary” divorce. Separation and divorce rescinded the privilege granted to the Jewish partner. They were removed from
Judenhäuser
and deported to the east. The same applied to Jewish widowers whose partners had died. An example of what life was like during these times can be found in the words of the victims, such as in the diaries of Victor klemperer, a Jew in Dresden. As early as May 1940, the klemperers were forced to vacate their home in Dresden
.
The diaries describe the long harrow-ing journey through several
Judenhäuser,
depicting daily life in ghettos without walls.

From 1942 on, “privileged”
Mischehen
and
Mischlinge
were herded into
Judenhäuser—
in some places they also became known as
Mischehenhäuser
(mixed marriage houses)
.
once Jews had received the eviction order, they had to apply for a room. A few dared to protest, but to no avail. In Hamburg, a Jew wrote a letter to the authorities: “I have made no application whatsoever, but I am being forcibly moved into a single room.”
⁶⁷
A non-Jewish spouse refused to vacate her home, announcing that her husband would commit suicide.
⁶⁸
In September 1942, a Jewish husband sent a special request to the authorities: My wife, who is suffering a nervous breakdown because of the anti-Jewish laws, will not and cannot live in a mixed Jewish milieu, and wants to stay in her flat with my agreement. I therefore request that I alone be accommodated in a furnished room, since I have neither furniture nor a bed.
⁶⁹

The request fell on deaf ears. when the wife applied for divorce, the husband endorsed her decision and moved into a
Judenhaus.
Soon afterwards he was called up for deportation and was murdered in the east.

The Nazis did not succeed in confining all
Mischehen
in
Judenhäuser.
what they achieved was an intensification of the pressure, especially on the non-Jewish spouses, to seek divorce. Based on the figures in Hamburg and fragmentary data from other regions, Beate Meyer estimates that the general divorce rate increased from 10 to 20 percent.
⁷⁰
This increase also reflects the readiness of the courts to hand down verdicts as quickly as possible, in order to secure the immediate incorporation of the divorced Jew into the process of the “final solution.” The same pressure, however, kept the vast majority of the German Jewish families together, for the sake of the Jewish partner and the “half-Jewish” children. From 1944, some local Gestapo officials hastened to clear their regions and
Judenhäuser
of
Mischehen
and
Mischlinge
by deporting Jewish and non-Jewish spouses and “half-Jews” to Theresienstadt. The vast majority survived—unlike the situation in the conquered territories in the east, where the executors of the “final solution” introduced forced divorce and, if this offer of survival for the non-Jewish spouse was rejected, then murdered entire families.
⁷¹