Take a number | AUGUST 6
Jews were hardly the only “undesirables” the US Immigration Act of 1924 aimed to keep out of the country. When the law was introduced, efforts to exclude certain nationalities, especially Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian immigrants, had been going on for half a century. In the early 1920s, a quota system was introduced that favored immigrants from Northern Europe. The quotas were not adjusted to address the severe refugee crisis created by the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany. Even for nationals of the favored countries of origin, just doing all the paperwork to get on the waiting list for an American visa was a major headache, and the waiting could be demoralizing. As documented by this ticket issued to Helina Mayer in Mainz by the US Consulate General in Stuttgart, applicants could expect to be summoned for examination according to their number in line, provided they had submitted “satisfactory proof” that their livelihood in the US was secured.
Selective service | AUGUST 4
Article 1 of §15 of the Nazi Conscription Law (introduced on May 21, 1935) stipulated that “Aryan descent is a prerequisite for active military service.” In the 1936 amendment, the language was even clearer: “A Jew cannot perform active military service.” In order to get permission to leave the country, prospective male emigrants had to present a document to the local military authorities confirming their Jewish descent and thus proving that they were not simply seeking to shirk their duties by emigrating. On August 4, 1938, the registry of the Vienna Jewish Religious Community, based on the documentation available to them, attested to Bruno Blum’s Jewish ancestry on both sides as part of the paperwork he had to submit in order to get permission to emigrate.
Incremental Aryanization | AUGUST 3
The percentage of Jews among German physicians was so high that, initially, a comprehensive employment ban did not seem expedient to the Nazis. Instead, they issued the “Administrative Order regarding the Admission of Jewish Physicians” of April 22, 1933, which excluded “non-Aryan” doctors from working with the Statutory Health Insurance Funds unless they began their practice before WWI or could prove that they or their fathers had been frontline soldiers in the war. Starting in 1937, Jews could no longer obtain doctoral degrees. In an August 3, 1938 notice, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency draws attention to the fourth supplementary regulation added to the Reich Citizenship Law, passed days earlier, according to which, effective September 30, Jewish physicians were to lose their medical licences.
Out of respect for the “Volksgemeinschaft” | JULY 31
With the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) of March 24, 1933, the newly installed government of Adolf Hitler left little doubt about how it viewed the rule of law. The act allowed the government to suspend the constitution whenever it saw fit, to formulate laws and decrees without the involvement of parliament, and even to create treaties between Germany and other countries without parliamentary consent or compliance with the constitution. The arbitrariness and randomness of the legal system this created were intensified by the frequent evocation of the Gesundes Volksempfinden (“healthy popular sentiment”), a term that implied that the people’s putatively uncorrupted, natural instincts should be the basis of Germany’s jurisprudence. One such case was the “Law on the Creation of Testaments and Contracts of Inheritance” (§48) of July 31. Invoking “the needs of the Volksgemeinschaft“—code for racially conceived German national community—the law invalidated contracts through which a deceased person’s property was bequeathed to a Jew.
Glowing recommendation | JULY 30
Even though the NSDAP was illegal in Austria before the country’s annexation to Nazi Germany, cities like Linz were fertile ground for Nazi ideology. The Österreichischer Beobachter, an illegal but widely circulated Nazi paper published in the city, had called for a “Christmas boycott” of Jewish shops in 1937. The paper inflicted additional damage on Jewish businesses by publishing their names and those of their non-Jewish customers. When German troops marched into the city in March 1938 in the course of Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany, thousands of locals lined the streets and enthusiastically welcomed them. As if to make up for lost time, the Nazis immediately began taking over Jewish businesses, sometimes literally in a matter of days. When 24-year-old Melitta Sand was removed from her position as an office clerk with the now “Aryanized” Camise & Stock Brandy Distilleries, she received a surprisingly cordial letter of recommendation stating, among other things, that she had earned the unqualified confidence of her employers through her diligence and competence.
Excuses from Évian | JULY 23
After the Anschluss, the problem of refugees from Germany and Austria became even more pressing. In order to address the issue, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had called for an international conference in Évian in July, 1938. The conference was anticipated with great hopes by the German-Jewish community but, due to the refusal of the international community to adjust immigration quotas to actual needs, the impact of Évian was extremely limited. Nevertheless, the Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt für Rheinland und Westfalen (Jewish Community Newsletter for Rhineland and Westphalia) tried to present some positive results by pointing out the readiness of several South American countries to absorb Jewish refugees. Regardless of the palpable attempt to remain hopeful, the underlying tone of this front page article in the July 23 issue is not one of excessive optimism.
Counted and controlled | JULY 18
On July 18, the commissioner of Dillkreis county in Hessen instructed the mayors of the cities Herborn, Dillenburg, and Haigern as well as police officials of the county to conduct a statistical survey of the Jewish population in their communities every three months. An official of the city of Herborn received the memorandum ordering the count and made notes showing that 51 Jews lived in the city on June 30, 1938. Three Jews had left their homes in the prior quarter. These local censuses of the Jewish population complemented other surveys that tracked the movement of Jews on a national level. To monitor and control the Jews in the country, the National Socialists used a variety of administrative tools, such requiring Jews to declare their financial assets, carry identification papers at all times, or change their names.
An inappropriate insinuation | JULY 16
In May 1938, Betty Blum had contacted her nephew Stanley Frankfurt in New York. Her son Bruno had lost his position in Vienna, and it was unlikely that he would find other employment. She did not elaborate on the situation of Austria’s Jews in general since the country’s annexation by Nazi Germany but wondered whether Stanley could do something for Bruno. When Bruno received Stanley’s July 16 letter, he must have been both relieved and taken aback. While assuring him that he had been active on his behalf doing the paperwork necessary to prepare for his immigration to the US, his cousin in New York also saw fit to point out to him that if his intention was coming to America for the purpose of “living a life of ease,” he was on the wrong track. Was Stanley really so uninformed about the plight of Austrian Jewry under the new authorities? It can be assumed that his sincere efforts on his Austrian cousin’s behalf made up for the bafflement that must have been caused by his inappropriate insinuation.
No mountain high enough | JULY 13
Käthe Hoerlin and Regina Ullmann had at least three things in common: both had Jewish ancestors, both converted to Catholicism, and both had the trajectories of their lives impacted by the Nazi regime. Regina Ullmann, a poetess and writer, was expelled from the Association for the Protection of the Rights of German Authors (Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller) and left Germany to return to her native St. Gallen, Switzerland. Käthe Hoerlin’s first husband, the music critic Willi Schmid, was executed by the regime in 1934 in a case of mistaken identity. Days after this tragedy, Käthe, who was the secretary of the ill-fated Nanga Parbat expedition, got news that nine of its participants had died trying to climb the famed Himalayan peak. In 1938, thanks to the help of a Nazi official who had assisted her with her compensation claims after Schmid’s death, she got permission to get married to the non-Jewish alpinist and physicist Hermann Hoerlin (marriages between “half-Jews,” as she was classified, and “persons of German blood” required special permits which were rarely given). Hoerlin was highly critical of the regime’s interference in scientific research. This letter, which exudes sincere empathy and interest in her friend’s well-being in her new surroundings as well as groundedness in her Catholic identity, was written by Regina Ullmann just after the Hoerlins had emigrated to the United States.
Namesakes | JULY 12
When 28-year-old Kurt Kleinmann of Vienna wrote to the Kleinmans in America, he could not have hoped for a kinder, more exuberant response than what he received from 25-year-old Helen. After finding the address of a Kleinman family in the US, Kurt had asked the total strangers in a letter dated May 25 to help him leave Austria by providing him with an affidavit. He had finished law school in Vienna and was now running his father’s wine business. Helen readily adopts the theory that the Kleinmanns and the Kleinmans might actually be related to one another, promising her “cousin” to procure an affidavit for him within the week. Affably and vivaciously, she assures him that the Kleinmans will correspond with him to make the time until departure feel shorter.
No keeping up | JULY 3
This letter from a father to his children is dominated almost entirely by concerns about transferring people and goods out of Germany. According to the writer, regulations were changing so rapidly that it was hard to keep track. Lately it had been decreed that both for articles to be shipped and for personal baggage, itemized lists had to be submitted which were subject to authorization. This could be rather time-consuming. The writer of the letter points out that the speed with which answers are given is not keeping up with the speed of the changes necessitating inquiries.
A 5th birthday | JUNE 30
Wilhelm Hesse was a loving and profoundly involved father. Since the births of his daughters, Helen (1933) and Eva (1936), he had meticulously documented the girls’ development in diaries which he kept for them. In addition to little texts and poems he composed, he included numerous photographs as well as material referring to Jewish holidays. Occasionally, the frequently humorous, sometimes even childlike tone is interrupted by material documenting the political situation, such as a call by Rabbi Leo Baeck for Jewish unity and solidarity in the name of the Reich Representation of German Jews. But Helen and her sister Eva were lucky enough to be too young to grasp what was looming around them. June 30 was Helen’s 5th birthday.
Interview at the US-Consulate | JUNE 23
After his first official attempt to immigrate had failed under adventurous circumstances, 20 year-old Heinz Ries of Berlin made another effort to get permission to live in the US permanently and legally. For months, he had struggled in the shadows as an undocumented immigrant in New York. After obtaining an affidavit of support, Ries traveled to Havana and visited the US consulate there on June 23, 1938. Finally, he was admitted legal entry into the United States. After the war he returned to Germany for some time, first in the employment of the Allies, then as a photo journalist for the New York Times. The photographs of the Berlin Blockade and the Airlift, taken during these years, made him world-famous under the name Henry Ries.
Fire sale | JUNE 13
The Jewish community of Eisenstadt in the Burgenland region of Austria had never been a large one, but as the oldest Jewish community in the area, it dated back to the 14th century and had a rich cultural life. The moment Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938, Jews were vulnerable. Under the deeply racist Gauleiter Tobias Portschy, the Burgenland was the first part of Austria to expel its Jewish population. In June 1938, Hilde Schlesinger Schiff was in Eisenstadt helping her parents get ready to relocate. In a birthday letter to her daughter Elisabeth, Hilde calls Elisabeth “a true Jewish child, not settled, always ready to be on the move,” in contrast with her own emotional connectedness to Eisenstadt, from which she is now forced to uproot herself. Mrs. Schlesinger Schiff writes that she hopes her parents will soon be allowed to immigrate to Czechoslovakia, but bureaucratic hurdles remain. Meanwhile, she is clearly taken aback by the eagerness of non-Jews to snatch up the family’s property at a low price, calling it “grave robbery.”
Left in the dark | JUNE 3
Nobody saw fit to inform the worried wives of thousands of Jewish men arrested by the Nazis about their spouses’ whereabouts and the expected period of imprisonment. Many of them decided to go to the Rossauer Lände detention facility and the central police station in order to get information on the whereabouts of their loved ones. According to this June 3 report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the detainees had been taken away in overcrowded railroad cars, many of them forced to remain in uncomfortable positions for up to five hours before departure. While there were intimations that those sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany would be exploited as construction workers in order to enlarge the camp and subsequently be released, many had no idea where their husbands were. The author of the report sees the “extraordinary callousness with which police have withheld information” as “one of the most terrifying aspects of the situation.”
Adoption in Germany | MAY 31
The Central Office for Jewish Foster Homes and Adoption took its mandate for protecting mothers and children very seriously. When Frances and Bernard Rosenbaum of New York decided to adopt a German child, the agency offered Mrs. Rosenbaum accommodations in a private home while picking up the boy in Germany, so that the relationship would not have to begin in a hotel. The Central Office for Jewish Foster Homes and Adoption was part of the League of Jewish Women, founded in 1904 by Bertha Pappenheim in order to foster charitable activity while affirming Jewish identity. An outgrowth of this initiative was the development of professional social work.
Mindset | MAY 30
Herbert Mansbach, a German dentistry student temporarily based in Switzerland, was lucky. A friend of his worked for the “Sick Fund” (Kupat Holim) of the General Workers’ Association in Israel (Histadrut) and was able to share valuable information with him pertaining to acceptance as a kibbutz member and employment in Palestine. The main prerequisites for kibbutz membership were affiliation with the HeHalutz pioneer youth movement and some knowledge of Hebrew. However, in order to be hired as a dentist in Tel Aviv, total mastery of Hebrew was a must. Herbert’s friend painted a sobering picture of the mental state of the new immigrants. The majority, he writes, come without enthusiasm—determination to succeed is more important.
The Jewish Hospital in Hamburg | MAY 29
Depicted here is the facade of the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg. The photograph is part of an album preceded by the above inscription dated May 29, 1938. The hospital was endowed by merchant and banker Salomon Heine, also known as the “Rothschild of Hamburg,” in memory of his late wife Betty and inaugurated in 1843. The poet Heinrich Heine, Salomon’s nephew and beneficiary, honored the occasion with his poem Das neue israelitische Hospital zu Hamburg, in which he called it “A hospital for poor, sick Jews, for human beings who are thrice miserable, afflicted with three vicious ailments, with poverty, bodily pain, and Jewishness!” Even though the Nazi regime had been undermining the hospital’s finances since 1933, it had withstood these measures and was still able to take care of its patients in May 1938.
Brit Shalom | MAY 28
In 1933, the distinguished philosopher of religion Martin Buber decided to relinquish his honorary professorship at Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main in protest against the Nazi rise to power. Consequently, the regime forbade him to give public lectures. In the years to follow, Buber founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education and countered the Nazis’ efforts to marginalize and destroy German Jewry by strengthening Jewish identity through education. It was not until May 1938 that he followed a call to the Hebrew University to assume the new chair for Social Philosophy and moved to Jerusalem with his wife Paula, a writer. The couple settled down in the Talbiyeh neighborhood in the Western part of the city, which at the time was inhabited by both Jews and Arabs. It borders on Rehavia, then a major stronghold of immigrants from Germany. Buber was among those envisioning peaceful coexistence in a bi-national state.
Henry Kissinger turns 15 | MAY 27
On May 27, 15 year-old Heinz Alfred (later Henry) Kissinger celebrated his birthday in his native Fürth one last time. Heinz had attended the Jewish elementary school and a Gymnasium in his home town. From 1933, Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend public schools, so that only the Israelitische Realschule was open to him and his younger brother, Walter. Elsewhere, too, the new times made themselves felt in the children’s lives. Suddenly, they were no longer allowed to join the other kids and swim in the river Altmühl when they were visiting with their grandparents in Leutershausen. Heinz was an avid fan of the local soccer team and a player himself, but under the Nazis, Jews were prohibited from attending their games. Even though his father, Louis, had been put on permanent furlough from his job as a teacher at a girls school when the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service came into effect in 1933, he was inclined to stick it out in Germany. It was thanks to his resolute mother, Paula (née Stern), that in April 1938, Louis Kissinger applied for passports. By May, the family’s preparations for emigration were in full gear. Relatives of hers had emigrated to the US already before 1933 and were now helping with the bureaucratic groundwork.
Paperwork | MAY 26
Since 1937, Lina and Siegmund Günzburger of Lörrach in southwest Germany and their son, Herbert, had been preparing their paperwork for emigration. The requirements amounted to nothing short of a nightmare. Prospective emigrants had to procure numerous personal documents, letters of recommendation, and affidavits. They were also required to prepare an inventory of all their belongings and to document that they had paid all their taxes. Apparently, the required documents also included this copy of the marriage certificate for Siegmund’s grandparents. Especially perfidious was the so-called “Reich Flight Tax.” Originally introduced in the waning days of the Weimar Republic to prevent capital flight in reaction to the government’s austerity policy, under the Nazis, it became a tool to cynically punish the Jews for leaving a country that was doing everything it could to make it unbearable for them to stay.
More conflict in Palestine | MAY 25
Time and again, unsettling news about sectarian violence in Palestine reached Jewish readers in the diaspora. On May 25, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a prime source of information on the situation of the Jews under the Nazis and of developments in the Yishuv, reports under the headline “6 Deaths Added to Terror Toll in Palestine.” It writes about the latest victims in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tiberias—both Jews and Arabs—and the circumstances of their deaths.
Soldier, pacifist, cabaret artist | MAY 24
After three decades of making his fellow Austrians laugh, cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum’s career was brought to an abrupt end by the Anschluss. His politics alone would have sufficed to make him intolerable for the new regime: Grünbaum had returned from action in World War I not only a decorated soldier but also an avowed pacifist. As for Nazism, he did not mince words. Since 1933, he had been getting more political, and when during a 1938 performance a power outage caused the stage lights to go out, he commented glibly, “I see nothing, absolutely nothing. I must have accidentally gotten myself into National Socialist culture.” His last performance at the famous cabaret “Simpl” in Vienna just two days before the Anschluss was followed by an artistic ban on Jews. Grünbaum and his wife Lilly, a niece of Theodor Herzl, tried to flee to Czechoslovakia but were turned back at the border. On May 24, he was interned at the Dachau concentration camp. Grünbaum was also known as a serious art collector, mostly of modernist Austrian works, and a librettist.
Faster and faster | MAY 23
In April 1938, Rabbi Leo Baeck, the president of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany and as such the main representative of German Jewry, had presciently written, “And this year will be a difficult year; the wheel is turning faster and faster. It will really test our nerves and our capacity for careful thought.” Baeck had been an army chaplain in World War I and as a patriot must have been extremely pained by the persecution of German Jewry. With large parts of the community reduced to poverty, Jewish rights curtailed, Jews pushed to the margins of society, and no prospects for improvement, Rabbi Baeck’s 65th birthday on May 23 probably was quite a somber affair.
Ready for Germany | MAY 22
The writer of this letter was a young man from Hildesheim, Fritz Schürmann (later Frank Shurman), born in 1915. Even though he is said to have struggled with antisemitism well before the Nazis rose to power, he joined the Deutscher Vortrupp (“German Vanguard”) in 1934, a group of young, extremely nationalistic Jews whose slogan was “Ready for Germany” and who hailed National Socialism as a force preventing Germany’s downfall. Given these views, it must have been especially painful for him to confront the bitter reality of rejection by German society. In this letter, he thanks a Mr. Dilthey in Berlin for the distinction of having spent time with him and dramatically informs him of his Jewish identity. “I am a Jew! A Jew in a desperate position: a Jewish German who in spite of everything that has befallen him or perhaps because of it cannot shed his ties to Germany […].” Denied his identity as a German by the Nazi regime, the writer communicates the crippling effects of the political situation on his psyche and the absurd notion of having to leave Germany in order to be able to be German.
A silly ditty | MAY 21
It is hard to imagine that the guiding hand of an adult was not involved in writing the toast that Heinz Neumann made at his bar mitzvah celebration on May 21 in Berlin: the way in which the boy expresses his gratitude for having been granted a carefree life by his parents despite the difficult times scarcely comes across as the style of a 13 year-old. Heinz promises to “keep in mind the ethical commandments of Judaism” and wishes everyone health, contentment and happier times. Luckily, in order to brighten things up a bit, one of his grandmothers and an aunt had composed a song with light-hearted lyrics based on the melody of a familiar German oompah tune in honor of the bar mitzvah. It can be assumed that the festive meal, crowned by a “Fürst Pückler Icecream Cake,” also raised the celebrants’ spirits.
Pitiless | MAY 20
In today’s release, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the Deutsches Volksblatt in Vienna urges a “pitiless anti-Jewish boycott.” This, the paper argues, is the line demanded by Hermann Göring in his last speech in Vienna. Highly decorated in WWI as a fighter pilot, Göring had become a member of the NSDAP early on and was a member of its inner circle. He had established the Gestapo in 1933, was commander-in-chief of the German airforce (Luftwaffe) and as Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan, he also wielded power over the German economy. Other than that, he is known for his pivotal role in bringing about the Anschluss and his passion for collecting art, which he often acquired in dubious ways.
Conflict in Palestine | MAY 19
Nothing in this May 19 Jewish Telegraphic Agency report from its Jerusalem correspondent could provide German or Austrian Jews eager to leave for safer shores with the hope that life in Palestine would grant them peace and quiet. Between Arab attacks on Jewish workers or Jewish-built infrastructure and labor unrest among unemployed Jews, the only reassuring aspect of Palestine was its distance from the epicenter of Nazi activity. Since the beginning of the Great Revolt, Arabs, British, and Jews in Palestine had been embroiled in an often violent conflict—scarcely an attraction for weary Central-European Jews eager for peace.
Despite everything, music | MAY 18
After stints with various orchestras in Germany and Austria, in 1930, the conductor Erich Erck returned to Munich, where he had studied music. The Nazis forced him to relinquish his stage name and return to his family name, Eisner. His application for membership in the Reichsmusikkammer was rejected, since his Jewishness was seen as more damning than his combat service for Germany in WWI was redeeming. After he was banned from employment in 1935, he initiated the establishment of the Munich branch of the Jüdischer Kulturbund and became the executive director of its Bavarian State Association. He also took over the Orchestra of the Kulturbund (founded in 1926 as the “Jewish Chamber Orchestra”), in which capacity he appears on this photograph from the ensemble’s May 18, 1938 performance at Munich’s monumental Main Synagogue on Herzog-Max-Straße.
The first woman rabbi | MAY 17
A few inconspicuous lines in today’s issue of the Jüdische Rundschau advertise a lecture in Berlin’s “Ohel Jizchak” Synagogue by “Miss Regina Jonas” on the topic “Religious problems of the Jewish Community today.” Regina Jonas had studied with much dedication at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin and fought hard to reach her goal of becoming a rabbi. Not wishing to rock the boat in these troubled times, even liberal rabbis who might have been positively inclined toward the ordination of women, such as Leo Baeck, were not willing to ordain her. Her final thesis was a halakhic treatise on the topic “May a Woman Hold Rabbinic Office?” It was Rabbi Max Dienemann who in 1935 made her the first female rabbi in history. Interestingly, in spite of the passionate opposition in some quarters and doubts regarding the validity of Regina Jonas’s ordination, she enjoyed the respect even of some orthodox rabbis, who henceforth addressed her as Fräulein Rabbiner or “colleague.” The Jüdische Rundschau apparently preferred to play it safe.
Education disrupted | MAY 16
Ruth Wertheimer was born in Halberstadt (Saxony Anhalt) in 1915. Thanks to the revenue from a successful corset and lingerie shop with several branches, the family was living comfortably. However, in 1929, several years before the Nazis’ ascent to power, the family business had already suffered economic damage due to a libelous, antisemitically motivated claim against one of its proprietors, Ruth’s aunt Johanna. In 1932, while attending a business school in Berlin, where the family had moved in Ruth’s childhood, she was subjected to such intense antisemitism from teachers and classmates that she decided to quit before graduating. The passport displayed here was issued on May 16 in Paris and also lists Paris as Ruth’s place of residence. Her mother and stepfather had moved there in 1935. In Paris, Ruth resumed her studies.