A girl leads the way | NOVEMBER 4
The arrival of Gertrude Münzer’s first letter from Palestine was a cause for joy, relief and hope to her family that had remained behind in Austria. The Münzers were a well-integrated family, but after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, the tide turned and they had to endure increasing hardship, starting with their eviction from their home and Moses Münzer losing his job. With parental encouragement, Gertrude was the only member of her family to go to Palestine with a Zionist youth group. Inspired by her example, her older brother, Benno, had gone on hakhsharah. In his reply to Gertrude, dated November 4th, her father pleads with the 15-year-old girl to recruit support for him at the kibbutz or elsewhere to enable him to follow with the rest of the family.
From bank teller to celebrated Hollywood composer | NOVEMBER 3
Mr. Wachsmann, an industrialist in Königshütte, Upper Silesia, tried to talk his gifted son, Franz, out of embarking on an unprofitable career as a musician. He imagined a more solid career for the youngest of his seven children. But Franz would not be dissuaded. While briefly working as a bank teller, he used his salary to pay for his real interests: piano; music theory; and composition lessons. After two years in this disagreeable position, he went to Dresden, later to Berlin to study music. Recognizing the young man’s talent, the composer Friedrich Hollaender asked him to orchestrate his score for the legendary 1930 movie, “The Blue Angel” with Marlene Dietrich. When in 1934, Franz was beaten up by Nazi hoodlums, he needed no further persuasion to leave the country and boarded a train to Paris the same evening. In 1935, he moved on to the United States, where, under the name “Waxman,” he quickly became a sought-after composer of film music. On November 3, 1938, Richard Wallace’s movie “The Young in Heart” was launched, with a soundtrack by Franz Waxman.
The expulsion of Polish Jews | OCTOBER 29
Fearing a massive influx of Polish Jews from Nazi-annexed Austria, the Polish parliament had passed a law in March 1938 allowing for the possibility of revoking the citizenship of anyone who had lived outside the country for at least five years. On October 15th, a decree was published according to which only persons with a valid control stamp in their passports would be allowed into the country. The decree was to go into effect on October 30th. In light of the presence of well over 70,000 Polish Jews in Reich territories, the regime acted fast: within the framework of the so-called “Polenaktion” (“Polish Action”), from October 27 to 29, thousands of Polish Jews were expelled by the Nazis. Many of these Polish citizens had little or no connection to their country of origin and they had nothing and no one to return to. One of the victims of the decree was Ida, the housekeeper of the Schönenberg family in Cologne. On October 29th, Dr. Schönenberg, Ida’s employer for the past three years, writes to his son Leopold in Palestine and describes how she had to report to the police with barely 3 1/2 hours prior warning. Ida was a native of Cologne and had a fiancé in Germany.
China as a place of refuge | OCTOBER 28
In the early years of the Nazi regime, Jews had sought refuge mainly in neighboring European countries, but also in Palestine and the United States. With the Nazis’ reach expanding and options for immigration diminishing, China increasingly turned into a destination for Jews seeking to escape. The SS Conte Verde was one of the steamers that brought refugees to Shanghai from the Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste. The voyage to China took one month and was quite costly – a challenge for German Jews whose financial situation had been severely eroded under the Nazis.
Fired without pension | OCTOBER 27
Nobody contested Martin Lachmann’s exceptional success as an insurance agent for Allianz. Nevertheless, after 31 years of dedicated work, the company decided “under the pressure of the circumstances” to terminate his contract. In recognition of Lachmann’s achievements, efforts were made to have him transferred to Zurich. But their success depended on immigration authorities in Switzerland. To make matters worse, Lachmann had been informed that he was no longer eligible for the pension stipulated in his contract. It was inconceivable to him how a contract written long before the political sea change in Germany could suddenly be declared void. The pension “voluntarily” offered by Allianz to its outstanding employee amounted to just one-third of his salary and did not begin to cover his needs.
Sudeten Jews under attack | OCTOBER 25
On September 29, 1938, the signatories of the Munich Treaty had decreed that Czechoslovakia was to cede to Germany its northern and western border areas, the Sudetenland, which was inhabited predominantly by Germans. Immediately after the incursion of German troops, there were eruptions of violence against Jews. Of the 25,000 to 28,000 Jews living in the area, thousands were driven to flee. On October 25, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports on the catastrophic material effects of the mass flight: the losses were estimated at 7 billion crowns at least in wages and property left behind. To make things worse, since Munich, open expressions of antisemitism had also proliferated on the Czech side—both by the populace and those representing the government.
Discrimination of mixed couples | OCTOBER 24
Ernst Patzer, an employee of the criminal investigation department of the Berlin police and seriously disabled in World War I, had lost his job in March 1938. The reason was the Public Service Law of 1937 which barred those married to Jews from public service – and Patzer had been married to a German-Jewish woman for 25 years. This additional move of the Nazi regime to push Jews and their relatives out of all spheres of life hit the Patzers very hard: he was the sole wage earner and, after 25 years of service, lost not only his position but also any claim to his pension. This letter of October 24, 1938, shows how step by step, Ernst Patzer was excluded from civic participation. In vain he wrote, as a former frontline soldier, to Hitler and Göring, in order to obtain continued employment with a government agency. The marriage lasted, and he finally found work as an auditor with AEG (a producer of electrical equipment). The Patzers survived National Socialism.
A joyous occasion in difficult times | OCTOBER 23
In a year marred by numerous alarming anti-Jewish measures, the wedding of Frieda Ascher and Bernhard Rosenberg on October 23rd in Berlin must have provided a much needed reprieve for their families and friends. The officiant at the ceremony was Dr. Moritz Freier, an orthodox rabbi. Many young Jews, unable to find work as a result of the intensification of antisemitism in Germany, approached Rabbi Freier since his wife Recha had already come up with the idea of helping Jewish youth to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine and settle in Kibbutzim, a project known as “Youth Aliyah,” in January 1933.
Resistance by Jews in exile | OCTOBER 22
Since 1920, Toni Sender was a delegate of the Social Democratic Party in the parliament of the Weimar Republic. Early on, she began to oppose National Socialism and warned of the dangers it posed to democracy. Exposed to hostility and threats as a social democrat and a Jew, she fled in March 1933 first to Czechoslovakia and then to Belgium, continuing her struggle against the Nazis in exile. In 1935, she emigrated to the United States. There too, as an orator and journalist, she tried to inform the public abroad about the criminal character of National Socialism. As this letter from the Secret State Police (Gestapo) to the investigating judge at the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), dated October 22nd, 1938, demonstrates, her resistance did not go unnoticed.
Looking toward Palestine | OCTOBER 21
This photograph, taken in October 1938, shows Moses Münzer, a tailor in Vienna, and his wife Lisa, with their five children, Elfriede, Benno, Nelly, Gertrude and Siegfried. After the “Anschluss,” Moses Münzer, like many Jews, lost his job. Lisa Münzer started working as a cook in the soup kitchen of the Brigittenauer Tempel on Kluckygasse, sometimes assisted by her children. By October 21st, 15-year-old Gertrude was on her way to Palestine on Youth Aliyah, an organization founded by Recha Freier, the wife of an orthodox rabbi in Berlin, before the Nazi rise to power. Its goal was to help Jewish youth escape anti-Semitism in the Reich and settle in Palestine. Gertrude left on her own, but the intention was for the family to reunite in Palestine.
Kicked out of the family business | OCTOBER 20
Hans Joseph Pinkus’s great-grandfather had married into the Fränkel family in Neustadt, Upper Silesia, in the 19th century. The two families joined forces in running the “S. Fränkel” Company, a successful textile factory that became one of the world’s largest manufacturers of linen. Under normal circumstances, Hans Joseph might have followed three generations of Pinkuses in running the affairs of the company, but he was only 16 years old and in boarding school when it was “Aryanized.” On October 20th, 1938, his stepmother, Lili, wrote him a letter to let him know that his father was about to quit and that she would follow him. She didn’t let on as to whether “cooking and ironing at home” was an attractive alternative to her and kept her feelings to herself.
“Race” and blood vs. humanity | OCTOBER 15
In her diary entry of October 15th, 1938, the non-Jewish Berlin journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich reminisces about her many Jewish friends who have left Germany since 1933. “This desperate rebellion against laws based on race and blood! Can’t everybody be at home where he wishes to be at home?” In her childhood, she writes, people were divided into good and bad, decent and not decent, lovable or worthy of rejection. But now, even among dissenters, “Jew” and “Aryan” seem to have replaced evaluation based on human qualities. And all the anti-Jewish chicanery – who even knows about it? Those who have no Jewish acquaintances remain clueless.
Dwindling paths of escape | OCTOBER 13
Since the “Anschluss,” Czechoslovakia had enormously tightened its policy towards refugees from Austria, specifically Jewish ones. The official border crossings were closed to Austrian Jews – many had no choice but to enter Czechoslovakia via the dangerous paths of what was known as the “Green Border,” stretches of land not secured by checkpoints along the course of the border. Even international diplomatic interventions, such as those of the International League of Human Rights (as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on October 13th, 1938), couldn’t sway Czechoslovakia from its restrictive course. Sir Neill Malcolm, the Commissioner of Refugees for the League of Nations, had called on the Czechoslovakian prime minister to reconsider the practice of deporting Austrian refugees. Without success.
Doctors become “caregivers of the sick” | OCTOBER 12
The dimensions of the triangles of the Star of David which Jewish “caregivers of the sick” were to add to the signs for their offices was from now on to be 3 1/2 cm. The specifications in the letter dated of October 12th, 1938, from the Berlin Reich Physicians’ Chamber were meticulous. And they did not end with specifications down to the millimeter: The background color was to be “sky-blue,” and the Star of David in the top left corner was to have a “lemon” color. On September 30th, according to the Reich Citizen Law, licenses for Jewish doctors had expired. Only a few got permission to continue to practice as “caregivers of the sick” of Jewish patients exclusively. The authors hinted that the patronizing had not yet reached its peak: in order to do justice to the requirements of the “Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names” (coming into force Jan. 1, 1939), it was advisable to add the name “Israel” or “Sara” to the practice sign already now, to avoid future costs.
Anti-Semitism in Italy too | OCTOBER 9
The Fascist Grand Council of Italy, a central organ of the Mussolini regime, published a “Declaration on Race” at the beginning of October which in many places was reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws. Anti-Semitic through and through, the document codified many regulations regarding marriage, Italian citizenship, and the employment of Jews in civil service in Italy. On October 9th, only a few days after its publication, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported about this Fascist body of legislation. “Intermarriage” between “Aryan” Italians and “members of the Hamitic (North African), Semitic or other ‘non-Aryan’ races” would henceforth be forbidden. Another regulation hit those Jews who had emigrated to Italy from Austria and Germany especially hard. All Jews who had settled in Italy after 1919, were to lose their Italian citizenship and be expelled.
Finally, a reply! | OCTOBER 8
The importance of personal correspondence for a family that was scattered all over is shown by that of Lili Pinkus and her relatives. Through weekly letters, for example, she kept in touch with her 16-year-old stepson, Hans Joseph, nicknamed Pippo, who was going to school in her home town of Brünn (Brno), Czechoslovakia. The same regularity, however, was expected of him. Her letter from October 10th demonstrates what it must have meant when his replies were delayed: “Infinite relief” is how she describes what she felt when, after a long time, two postcards from the 16-year-old finally arrived. Lili Pinkus writes to her stepson about the everyday life of their family. However, she omits the worries with which she and her husband must have been struggling. The family’s textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (“S. Fränkel”), was one of the largest manufacturers of linen in the world. Lili Pinkus’ husband, Hans Hubert, had been in charge of the family business since 1926. But now, the “Aryanization” of the company was imminent.
Closed doors | OCTOBER 3
A central goal of “National Peace Action Week,” planned by the Canadian League of Nations Society, was to raise awareness among the Canadian public of the suffering of persecuted Jews. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on October 3rd, 1938 on the plan to establish a national committee of Jewish and other Canadian leaders for the purpose of sensitizing the public to the Jewish refugee crisis and requesting that appropriate measures be taken by the government. Because Canada had enforced restrictive isolationist policy against immigrants since at least the Great Depression, the country had no refugee policy. This already made it difficult for Jewish refugees to immigrate to Canada. An additional problem was widespread anti-Semitism among the public.
Upheaval hits home and work | OCTOBER 2
In August 1938, Irma Umlauf’s life had begun to unravel: she had been notified that the Jewish-owned company in Breslau for which she worked was going to be liquidated, leaving her jobless. And her landlord had terminated her lease. While there was no law in October 1938 stipulating that non-Jews could not have Jewish tenants, some landlords were eager to get rid of them. In Irma Umlauf’s case, the problem was that her Jewish co-tenants could no longer afford the place and had moved out. The non-Jewish landlord, according to Irma, was afraid to accept other Jewish tenants, and since Jews and non-Jews weren’t allowed to share living space, she had no choice but to leave. Among the other topics broached by Irma in this letter to her friend Hilde Liepelt in Berlin, is her job situation. Luckily, the Landesverband in Berlin gave her permission to do language lessons in the Jewish communities of Münsterberg and Fraustadt, both near Breslau, providing her both with means to live as well as allowing her to continue caring for her mother. A little extra income was generated by singing engagements.
A distant relative | SEPTEMBER 30
It must have taken quite an effort for Eva Metzger-Hohenberg to write an imploring letter to her distant relative in Manhattan, Leo Klauber, a complete stranger to her. Her situation was precarious. There was no place for Jews in Germany anymore. Maria Metzger-Hohenberg appealed to Leo Klauber’s “humanity” and his “sense of a blood bond” and begged him to issue affidavits to her and her family. This letter from Vienna shows not only the desperate measures to which Jewish families had to resort, in order to make their emigration possible, but also drew a vivid picture of the situation in which many Jews found themselves in the Fall of 1938. Maria’s parents and her brother had to give up their butcher shop. Her husband’s wholesale business, which employed more than 140 staff members, was “aryanized.” In actuality, that meant it had to be sold for much less than its value. The fate of the Metzger-Hohenbergs was also that of countless other Jewish families during this time.
Stateless from now on | SEPTEMBER 24
Alfred Basch, born September 27th, 1915, in Magdeburg, was henceforth stateless. With the publication of his name in the Gazette of the German Reich, he was deprived of German citizenship. The basis for this was the “Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Deprivation of German Citizenship.” It had been valid for five years. Yet in recent months the number of denaturalizations had clearly risen, often affecting persons and families, who after World War I thanks to the comparably liberal naturalization policy of the Weimar Republic, had become German citizens. On the basis of this law, in September 1938 alone, 116 families became stateless from one day to the next. And that wasn’t enough. The publication of their full names and places, as well as dates of birth, set them up as targets for discrimination, making it impossible for them to go on living a normal life, even if only temporarily.
Anti-Semitic Postcards | SEPTEMBER 21
“He offered a steed, you bought a hack, the Jews are a deceitful pack” is what is written on this postcard, postmarked on September 21, 1938. Mocking, anti-Semitic postcards were common already during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic and, as an easily replicable means, gained influence on the way people thought. One of the oldest stereotypes may be that of the greedy Jew. In whatever part of the economy Jews were active, anti-Semites would impute usury and fraud. The use of anti-Semitic postcards to impart private messages gave anti-Jewish stereotypes far-reaching societal acceptance and thus created the breeding ground for the solution of the “Jewish question,” which was soon to become a terrible reality.
When the private becomes political | SEPTEMBER 20
Dr. Ernst Schaumberger was a doctor specializing in skin and sexually-transmitted diseases, a virtually apolitical occupation. However, National-Socialist ideology concerning race and morals interpreted sexual relations as a matter of political interest. Therefore, Dr. Schaumberger’s area of work became political. The confidential request, which he received from the agency of public health in Stuttgart on September 20th, is noteworthy in many ways. He was asked to report whether he had treated any girls or women who were infected with sexually-transmitted diseases due to sexual relations with Italians. So-called “racial hygiene” in National Socialism didn’t shy away from violating medical confidentiality. When Dr. Schaumberger received this letter, his days as a practicing doctor were numbered. He’d already been identified as a “Jewish doctor” in July, and an amendment to the Nazi Reich Citizenship Law decreed that, on the 30th of September, 1938, the licenses of Jewish doctors would expire. Nonetheless, he was still expected to cooperate with the Nazis.
Worldwide networks of aid | SEPTEMBER 19
Jewish refugee organizations had wide networks. This was due to individuals such as Kurt Grossmann, who steadily made more connections with contacts and developed cooperation on an international level. Kurt Grossmann, a journalist and General Secretary of the German League of Human Rights from 1926 until 1933, had escaped from Berlin just before an arrest. He fled to Prague, where he established and developed Democratic Relief for Refugees. Grossmann knew how to use his network for the increasing number of Jewish refugees, who had reached Prague. Even in Paris, where he had lived since 1938, he campaigned for support from the local refugee aid organizations. For example, in a letter from Grossmann on September 19th, 1938, he urges M. Gaston Kahn of the Parisian Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés juifs to help Erna Winter and her child.
By oath to do no harm | SEPTEMBER 18
An astonishing number of German physicians apparently not only had no qualms about being co-opted by the Nazi regime but actively subscribed to its racist and eugenic doctrines, conveniently ignoring their ostensible commitment to the Hippocratic Oath with its stipulation to do no harm. On top of propagating an ideology which declared Jews to be a danger to the “German race,” medical organizations in Germany expelled Jews, making it harder and harder for them to make a living. Under such circumstances, it’s not surprising that Dr. Max Schönenberg, a physician in Cologne, and his musician wife, Erna, supported their son Leopold’s emigration to Palestine in 1937, even though the boy was only 15 years old at the time. In this September 18th, 1938 letter to his son, Dr. Schönenberg touches upon various weighty topics, among them the regime’s recent decision to revoke Jewish doctors’ medical licenses and his uncertainty about his professional future (some Jewish physicians were given permission to treat Jewish patients).
Mrs. Martha Braun, for now | SEPTEMBER 16
The passport of Martha Braun, a Viennese housewife, was issued on September 16, during the brief time window between the passing of the Executive Order on the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names (August 17, 1938) and its entry into force (January 1939). According to this executive order, Jews were to add the middle name “Sara” or “Israel” to their given names. With the date of issue falling in September, Mrs. Braun received a passport without the stigmatizing addition – for the time being.
Bad prospects | SEPTEMBER 15
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency described the situation of Austrian refugees in Czechoslovakia with far-sightedness. If none of their precarious circumstances changed (work ban, impoverishment, missing prospects…) the situation could soon become “a psychological problem as well as an economic and political one.” The JTA estimated that in the middle of September 1938 there were more than 1,000 refugees in Czechoslovakia, most of them in Brno, less than 50 kilometers from the Austrian border. Now a police measure stipulated a bail of 2,000 Czech crowns (70 dollars) for persons who had already spent more than two months in Czechoslovakia. Otherwise they would face deportation. Who could pay this money on their behalf was completely unclear. Neither the Jewish community of Brno nor the League of Human Rights had the means to do so.
Urgent: seeking sponsors | SEPTEMBER 14
Not a long letter, only a brief postcard was sent to Ludwig Guckenheimer from his old friend Kurt. Yet these few lines give a vivid impression of the situation in which his friend found himself. Kurt had sent the postcard from Genoa on the 14th of September. He’d been trying to prepare his emigration from there for some time. Kurt knew “that it’s time to rush.” Until now he’d failed for lack of money, but most of all from lack of sponsors. Many countries had massively heightened financial and bureaucratic hurdles to immigration in recent years. The United States for example expected, alongside numerous official certificates, at least two affidavits from close relatives. But Kurt wasn’t discouraged. Hope lay in efforts by his brother-in-law in Dallas.
Schoenberg’s exile | SEPTEMBER 13
Arnold Schoenberg was a pioneer of modern compositional techniques. However, his music also polarized listeners. Some freneticially celebrated it, other rejected it as noise. On September 13th, the Vienna native celebrated his 62nd birthday. At this time the musician had been living in the United States for almost five years. Schoenberg, a son of Jewish parents, lost his position at the Prussian Academy of Art soon after the Nazis took power. Thereafter he fled first to Paris, then emigrated to the United States. In Los Angeles, he was able to resume his teaching at the University of California.
Fake generosity | SEPTEMBER 12
“Free-of-charge”: it may seem like a generous “offer,” but behind this “free-of-charge” offer was ice-cold calculation. The Nazis’ evil intent was that all Jews still remaining in Burgenland, Austria, should leave the region. In Nazi jargon, this was called cleansing. After the “Anschluss,” Burgenland was the first Austrian region in which they had begun to systematically dispossess and expel the Jewish population. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on September 12th that out of the 3,800 Jews, who had previously lived in Burgenland, 1,900 had already been expelled, 1,600 people had fled temporarily to Vienna, and another 300 were interned in ghettos in Burgenland. According to JTA, the “offer” of the emigrant-smuggling group was financed by the Gestapo with 100,000 marks from the assets of the recently dispossessed Jews of the region.
A former sanctuary | SEPTEMBER 11
Rome is the paradise of every ancient historian, a city rife with history. However, for Herbert Bloch, since 1935 a Ph.D. in Roman History, it was something more, a sanctuary from Nazi Germany. The native Berliner had come to the University of Rome as a student shortly after Hitler took over. In 1938, he was part of the team that excavated and examined much of the area of Ostia Antica, the ancient seaport of Rome. The photo shows Bloch on September 11th, 1938, in front of parts of the excavations. But 1938 was also the year in which the previously latent yet tangible anti-Semitism of fascist Italy officially became state policy. Just a few days before this photo was taken, Mussolini had passed the first of many anti-Semitic race laws. The “Measures for the Defense of the Race in the Fascist School” of September 5th, 1938 had especially hit home for Herbert Bloch. The law – among other matters – barred all Jewish teaching staff from schools and universities. Rome could no longer be Bloch’s place of refuge.
Not noted for panhandling | SEPTEMBER 10
At first glance it may seem abstruse. A certificate of good conduct from the police confirms to an employee of an insurance company, Franz Resler of Vienna, that he has not made himself suspicious, especially “not by panhandling.” At second glance, however, it is exactly the emphasis on panhandling that points to all the existential crises in which many Austrian Jews increasingly found themselves in 1938. With the “Anschluss” the Nazis had massively increased the economic pressure on Jews living in Austria. “Aryanisation” of companies and occupational bans deprived numerous people of their livelihood. As a result, Franz Resler and his wife Anna planned their emigration to Argentina, where Franz Resler’s sister Fanny had been living since the 1920s.