Search results

Introduction -- ONE: Contesting Nazi Propaganda: David Bornstein in Hamburg and Others -- TWO: Verbal Protest Against the Persecution: Henriette Schäfer in Frankfurt and Others -- THREE: Defying Anti-Jewish Laws: Hans Oppenheimer in Frankfurt and Others -- FOUR: Protest in Writing Against Nazi Persecution: Benno Neuburger in Munich and Others -- FIVE: Acting in Physical Self-Defense: Daisy Gronowski in Urfeld and Others -- Conclusion

Review quote. A quote from a review of the product: "Dieses Buch erschließt uns mit hoher Fachkompetenz und erdrückendem Belegmaterial bis in den immer aussichtsloseren jüdischen Alltag in den Städten und Gemeinden hinein ein zentrales und deprimierendes Kapitel nationalsozialistischer Judenpolitik, das uns bislang nur in Umrissen bekannt gewesen ist." Bernd Jürgen Wendt, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 3/2003

The February 2006 issue of the European edition of Time magazine contained a DVD dedicated to the subject of the genocide of the Armenian people. The text introducing the documentary, produced by the French-German TV network arte, said, "'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' Hitler posed this rhetorical question on August 22, 1939, before embarking upon his campaign to exterminate six million European Jews and other groups." The introductory paragraph concluded, "His assumption that no one remembered the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey must have emboldened the Führer to perpetrate the Jewish Holocaust."

During the brutal factory raid at the end of February 1943, the Gestapo rounded up thousands of Berlin Jews at their forced labor sites and brought them to various collection points. The Gestapo immediately singled out two thousand Jews in "mixed marriages" and transferred them to a separate building in the Rosenstrasse. The traditional view of the events, which Stoltzfus promotes, is that after a week-long demonstration by their relatives, Goebbels ordered the release of the inmates on March 6, 1943. Based on a variety of hitherto overlooked documents, I provided the reader with a different interpretation in my Central European History article: that special Gestapo orders at this point still exempted the Jews in mixed marriages from deportation. I argue that the real purpose of the arrest was to facilitate the deportation of hundreds of employees of Berlin's Jewish institutions who would be replaced by the Jews in mixed marriages. This interpretation forces us to reconsider key elements of the traditional account.

On 27 February 1943 in Nazi Germany the Gestapo brutally arrested more than ten thousand Jewish men and women. Martin Riesenburger, later the Chief Rabbi of the German Democratic Republic, recalled that day as "the great inferno." This large-scale raid marked the beginning of the final phase of the mass deportations, which had been under way since October 1941. Also interned in Berlin were people who, according to NS terminology, lived in so-called mixed marriages. But new documents show that no deportation of this special group was planned by the Gestapo. In the past decade, in both the German as well as the American public, quite a bit of attention has been paid to the fact that non-Jewish relatives publicly demonstrated against the feared deportation of their Jewish partners. The scholarly literature as well has pictured this protest as a unique act of resistance that prevented the deportation of these Jews living in mixed marriages. The fact that during this raid an untold number of Jews, both women and men, fled and went underground has so far been ignored. Since we still know much too little, the following article will discuss all the events of the spring of 1943 and their background.

In many accounts the way the persecution of the Jews was carried out appears inconsistent, indeed contradictory. The common practice in historical research till now has been to separate national and local policies. This article endeavours to combine the two by showing that Reichsgesetze between 1933-1938 were introduced primarily to facilitate the persecution of German Jews and that the interests of local officials determined what was actually done. A number of National Socialist mayors appointed in 1933 introduced anti-Jewish measures which went beyond political guidelines and the new laws promulgated by the government. At first such practices occurred at random, but soon the Gemeindetag, founded in 1933, sought contact with the ministries of the Reich and began to coordinate such actions as the expulsion of Jews from public swimming pools and other bathing facilities, as well as, the banning of Jewish business throughout the Reich. Although the National Socialist leadership condemned these "random acts" again and again, behind the scenes these initiatives undertaken by local authorities were supported. In short, local policies supplemented, indeed, replaced national policies. Till 1938, anti Jewish segregation at the municipal level provided the impetus for anti-Jewish government measures. After the November pogrom that year, however, the National Socialist leadership concluded that its expulsion policy had failed. Therefore, the decision was taken to shield the pauperized Jewish population from German society. Local authorities thereby lost their "innovative" role in creating separate Aryan/Jewish worlds. Within this framework of persecution, however, they did take over the responsibility for establishing ghettos for the Jews. (Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte / FUB)