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The Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin presents the year 1938 through the eyes of Jews, whose personal documents detail their experiences and the hardships they suffered as well as the growing tensions in Europe and diminishing hope for Jews in Germany and Austria.

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14

SUNDAY

14

A super woman

Woman entrepreneur turned housewife takes charge

“I think I write to the children of Emanuel and Victoria Magen and I beg you to help us to come to America.”

Berlin

Gusty Bendheim, a Berliner, had never met the American branch of her family. As a 42-year-old divorcee, she had no other choice but to turn to her overseas relatives. She asked these quasi-strangers for help facilitating emigration for herself and her children, Ralph (13) and Margot (17). Gusty was an enterprising sort: by the time she got married to Arthur Bendheim, a businessman from Frankfurt/Main, around 1920, she had established three button stores. After the wedding, Arthur took over management and Gusty became a housewife. In spite of the increasingly alarming anti-Jewish measures taken by the Nazi government, Arthur was not willing to leave. After the couple’s divorce in 1937, Gusty took matters into her own hands. In this August 14th, 1938 letter to her unknown relatives, in addition to her request for help, she states that her former husband is ready to pay the costs of travel for her and their children to the United States.

TAGS: affidavits, antisemitism, August 14, Berlin, children, emigration, family, immigration, immigration procedures, letter, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, Women

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Margot Friedlander Collection, AR 11397

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

Source available in English

11

THURSDAY

11

Individual hakhsharah

17-year-old Marianne suffers alone in England

“And now to the point that is most important to you at the moment. Daddy has already written you his views, we are very much concerned that you stay in England, and much as we feel sorry for you, you'll have to get through this somehow.”

Teplitz

In July 1938, 17-year-old Marianne Pollak traveled all by herself from Teplitz/Teplice (Czechoslovakia) to England. Not accustomed to the climate there, the young girl developed rheumatism and was in generally miserable condition. Every few days, her mother wrote her caring, supportive letters. While clearly vexed by Marianne’s unhappiness, Mrs. Pollak and her husband made sure to communicate to her the importance of her staying in England. Apparently, Marianne was in an individual hakhsharah program, meaning that she was acquiring skills preparing her for pioneer life in Palestine. In Eastern Europe, the Zionist Pioneer organization “HeChalutz” (“The Pioneer”) had been offering agricultural and other training courses for prospective settlers in pre-state Palestine since the late 19th century. A German branch was established in 1923, but the concept gained traction in western Europe only during the Great Depression and had its broadest reach during the years of persecution by the Nazis. Instead of being prepared collectively on farms, youngsters could also get their training individually, as seems to have been the case with Marianne.

TAGS: August 11, children, displacement, emigration, family, family separation, Great Depression, hakhsharah, immigration, letter, Palestine, refugees, Teplitz, transnational networks, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

John Peters Pinkus Family Collection, AR 25520

Original:

Box 2, folder 22

5

FRIDAY

5

Kisses and best wishes

A sweet note to grandmother in Breslau

“I hope your pain has gotten better. Lots of kisses and best wishes, and a good שבת [Shabbes], also to the Blumenthals, your grandson, Michael”

Oldenburg/Breslau

Based on his handwriting and style, it seems that Michael Seidemann was quite young when he wrote this postcard to his grandmother, Louise Seidemann, in Breslau. Interestingly, the address from which he sent it was identical to that of the synagogue of the town, Oldenburg. Even though the earliest records of Jewish presence in Oldenburg are from the 14th century, it was only in 1855 that the congregation opened its first synagogue built specifically for this purpose. As a result of Emancipation, Jews came to contribute to Oldenburg’s commerce by selling shoes, books, bicycles, and musical instruments, as cattle dealers and in agriculture, among other things. Their share of the population rarely exceeded 1%. Nevertheless, in the 1920s, antisemitic thugs began attacking Jewish businesses. In 1933, the town had 279 Jewish inhabitants, out of a total of 66,951. By the time Michael wrote this postcard, only two out of dozens of Jewish shops and businesses remained in the town.

TAGS: antisemitism, August 5, Breslau, children, displacement, economic persecution, emigration, family, Jewish Community, Nazi policies, Oldenburg, persecution, postcard, refugees, religion, synagogue, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Herta Seidemann Collection, AR 25060

Original:

Box 1, folder 6

2

TUESDAY

2

No strength to write

A father's despair leaves him unable to keep a journal

“Helen has become a big girl. In the last few months, there would have been more to write than ever, but the times are so serious that I have neither the strength nor the leisure to write."

Hamburg

Ruth and Wilhelm Hesse, residents of Hamburg, had two little girls, Helen (b. 1933) and Eva (b. 1936). Wilhelm kept diaries for both girls. Between the May 3 and August 2 entries, there is a long gap (a very brief notice regarding Helen’s birthday on June 30 seems to have been added later). As Wilhelm writes, the seriousness of the times made it hard to write, so much so that 5-year-old Helen, who had been in a children’s home in Wohldorf-Duvenstedt since the middle of May, complained that she was not receiving any letters from her parents. While Wilhelm is generally pleased with his daughter’s development, he mentions that Helen and three of her little friends had taken a beating for picking 20 unripe peaches from a tree and biting into them. Perhaps the children’s blissful lack of awareness of what was brewing around them and their innocent transgression provided the young father with a minimal sense of normalcy.

TAGS: August 2, children, diary, family, Hamburg, photo

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

26

TUESDAY

26

The League for Human Rights

“These Dogs of Hitler and Göring will never succeed”

“The Jewish sense of charity will not die, and these bastards Hitler and Göring will never get their wish to see the emigrants die in the gutter.”

Brünn/Rishon LeZion

Hugo Jellinek was a man of many talents. The outbreak of WWI forced him to quit medical school in Vienna. As a soldier, he was severely wounded in Samarkand and fell in love with his nurse, who later became the mother of his three daughters. The couple settled down in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His young wife having died in 1926, he fled the Soviet Union in 1930 and ultimately returned to Vienna, where he utilized his knowledge of 8 languages as a translator and also worked as a freelance journalist. Thanks to a warning about impending arrest by the Nazis, he was able to escape to Brünn (Czechoslovakia) in June 1938. His eldest daughter, eighteen year-old Gisella Nadja, departed for Palestine the same day. In this colorful letter, Hugo shows fatherly concern for Nadja’s well-being, but also talks at length about the hardship he himself has faced as a refugee and reports that his cousin’s son is interned at the Dachau Concentration Camp. He mentions with gratification what he calls the “League,” probably referring to the aid center of the “League for Human Rights,” which was looking after the refugees, defying Hitler’s sinister goals. Ultimately, however, the most important thing for him was the fight for a country of one’s own.

TAGS: advocates, Brünn, children, commentary, Concentration Camps, Dachau, displacement, emigration, family, family separation, imprisonment, July 26, Language skills, letter, Palestine, refugees, Rishon LeZion, welfare organizations, WWI, WWI veterans, Youth Aliyah, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Letters, Documents and Images of the Jellinek Family Confronting the Holocaust, created by Paulette Jellinek

Collection:

Letter from Hugo Jellinek to Gisella Nadja Jellinek

10

SUNDAY

10

Papers in order

Even 10-year-old Hans must certify his taxes are paid

“I do not have any reservations regarding the emigration of Hans Weichert (10 years old) [...].”

Vienna

Jews wishing to escape the chicanery and physical danger under the Nazis by emigrating had to procure a large number of documents to satisfy both the Nazi authorities and the authorities in the country of destination. In order to obtain permission to leave Germany, applicants had to prove that they did not owe any tax money to the Reich. In addition to the taxes levied on all citizens, prospective emigrants had to pay the co-called “Reich Flight Tax.” Originally introduced during the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the original purpose of the tax was to prevent capital flight from further depleting the national coffers. Under the Nazis, its main purpose was to harass and expropriate Jews. The tax authorities under the Nazi regime certainly did a thorough job. When the Weichert family of Vienna, consisting of the lawyer Joachim Weichert, his wife Käthe, and the couple’s two children, Hans and Lilian, prepared to leave, a tax clearance certificate was issued even to the ten-year-old son. The document was valid for one month. Having all required documents ready and still valid by the time their quota number came up was an additional challenge faced by those wishing to emigrate.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, bureaucracy, children, dispossession, document, economic persecution, emigration, Great Depression, immigration procedures, Jewish property, July 10, persecution of Jewish professionals, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Weichert Family Collection, AR 25558

Original:

Box 1, folder 2

9

SATURDAY

9

It will get easier

Encouragement for a seventeen-year-old

“Of course it takes a while to warm up to one another, especially if one does not know the language.”

Teplitz

Mrs. Pollak in Teplitz (Teplice), Czechoslovakia, was vacillating between relief that her daughter was safely out-of-reach from the Nazis reach and worry about 17-year-old Marianne’s physical and emotional wellbeing. After changing her initial plans to go to Palestine on Youth Aliyah, the young girl was now in England all by herself. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany had heightened fears of a similar fate in Czechoslovakia. Refugees were kept out of the country, and local Jews had double the reason to worry – both as Czechs, and as Jews. With news from Vienna and Palestine bleak and Czechoslovakia’s future uncertain, Mrs Pollak made a loving effort to reassure Marianne that things would get easier for her in the new country over time.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, children, displacement, emigration, family, family separation, July 9, letter, Munich Agreement, Palestine, refugees, Teplitz, transnational networks, Youth Aliyah

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

John Peters Pinkus Family Papers, AR 25520

Original:

Box 2, folder 22

30

THURSDAY

30

A 5th birthday

Little Helen turns a year older

Hamburg

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.

TAGS: children, diary, Hamburg, Jewish Community, Jewish holidays, June 30, photo, politics, prominent people, rabbis, religion, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

18

SATURDAY

18

Planted evidence

The Gestapo visits Adolph Markus

“If they wanted to arrest me, they also would have to take my two small boys, who otherwise would be without care, or they should wait approx. six weeks, until my wife is back from the hospital.”

Linz

Since discussing the possibility of emigration with his relatives in Vienna on April 20, Adolph Markus of Linz had taken up English lessons at the synagogue twice to three times a week. On April 29, his brother-in-law had been picked up by the Gestapo, and the Markuses’ tension and nervousness was beginning to rub off on the children. Two weeks later, Mrs. Markus was questioned by the Gestapo about the value of a house she owned and all her other property. Finally, on June 18, two Gestapo officers appeared at the family’s home: While going over the contents of some boxes, one of them tried to frame Adolph Markus by sneaking in a communist leaflet. Markus mustered the calm and self-assurance to point out to the officers that he had never been politically active in any way. His allusion to his frontline service in World War I, combined with the remark that if they were to arrest him, they would have to take along his two little boys, since their mother was in the hospital, made them change their mind. They left – threatening to return after six weeks if he wasn’t going to leave the country on his own accord.

TAGS: antisemitism, children, commentary, Communists, diary, economic persecution, emigration, family, Jewish Community, June 18, Language skills, Linz, persecution, Synagogues, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Diary, February 1938–December 1939, Adolph Markus, ME1090

Source available in English

12

SUNDAY

12

Anne knows better

The Franks celebrate the 9th birthday of their daughter

Amsterdam

Leaving behind an increasingly antisemitic Germany, the Frank family of Frankfurt am Main fled to the Netherlands shortly after the Nazis rose to power. They settled on Merwedeplein in Amsterdam’s River Quarter, where more and more German-speaking immigrants were finding refuge. So large was the influx of Jews that some in the Dutch Jewish community were worried it would affect their standing in society and cause antisemitism. The Franks’ older daughter, Margot, went to school on Jekerstraat. Anne attended the Sixth Montessori School, a mere 5 minutes away from the family home. Fifteen of her classmates were Jewish. She loved telling and writing stories. Anne was curious, demanding, interested and very articulate. As her good friend Hanneli Goslar’s mother would say, “God knows everything, but Anne knows better.” In 1938, Anne’s father, Otto, applied for immigration visas to the United States. June 12 was her 9th birthday.

TAGS: Amsterdam, antisemitism, children, displacement, emigration, Frankfurt am Main, immigration, immigration procedures, June 12, photo, prominent people, refugees, visa application

SOURCE

8

WEDNESDAY

8

You never write, you never call…

Lili reminds her stepson to stay in touch

“We really have enough to worry about as is and have no need to also lose sleep over the fact that you are not writing. You can believe me that I was seriously worried before deciding to give you a call.”

Neustadt, Upper Silesia/Brünn

Hans Joseph Pinkus was a direct descendant of Samuel Fränkel, founder of a textile factory in Neustadt (Upper Silesia), which for a while was the primary employer in the entire region and one of the world’s foremost producers of linens. His grandfather, Max, had been a personal friend and patron of the Nobel Prize-winning author Gerhart Hauptmann. His great-uncle, the scientist Paul Ehrlich, had been a Nobel laureate, too. Lili, Hans Joseph’s stepmother, was hardly intimidated by this pedigree. In this letter, written on June 8, 1938, she gives him a major dressing down for having neglected his correspondence with his parents and sternly inquires whether he flunked his exam in the Czech language. At this point, 16 year-old “Pipo,” as the family called him, was staying with his step-grandmother in Brünn (Brno, Czechoslovakia) and attending school there. His parents and half-sisters lived in Neustadt: the directorship of the the S. Fränkel company had been handed down to male members of the Pinkus family for several generations and was now held by his father, Hans Hubert.

TAGS: Brünn, children, economic persecution, family, June 8, letter, Neustadt, prominent people

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

John Peters Pinkus Family Papers, AR 25520

Original:

B 2, F 16

5

SUNDAY

5

Jewish schools

A safe space

“In his essay ‘Halakha and Aggada,’ Bialik passes on an interpretation which he has heard from Achad Haam: ‘He who heeds the spirit will hear from between its [this Mishna's] lines the murmur of the heart and the trembling concern for the future of a people which ‘walks the path’ and holds in its hands none of its possessions but a book, and whose entire inner connection to any one of its countries of residence is based only on its spirit.”

Berlin

For many Jewish children, going to public school turned into hell under the Nazis. Just getting there could mean running a gauntlet of anti-Jewish slights. At school, exclusion by fellow students and teachers was the rule. In order to spare their children this ordeal, parents who could afford it sent their children to Jewish schools. Before 1933, most assimilated German Jews attended public schools. However, in the hostile climate of the Nazi regime attendance at Jewish schools grew. Dr. Elieser L. Ehrmann, a pedagogue and employee of the school department of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany had developed curricula for teachers at Jewish schools which aimed to deepen the knowledge of Jewish holidays and the customs accompanying them and thus instill a positive Jewish identity. The excerpt shown here is from Ehrmann’s “Curriculum for the Omer and Shavuot [Feast of Weeks],” published in 1938 by the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany. That year, the first day of Shavuot fell on June 5.

TAGS: antisemitism, Berlin, children, document, Jewish Community, Jewish holidays, June 5, religion, schools, segregation, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ehrmann, Eliezer L., and Reichsvertretung Der Juden in Deutschland, Berlin Schulabteilung. Arbeitsplan Fuer Omerzeit Und Schawuot. Berlin: Reichsvertretung Der Juden in Deutschland, 1938.

31

TUESDAY

31

Adoption in Germany

Mrs. Rosenbaum from New York travels to meet her new child

“A local family interested in our work has kindly offered to host you and the child chosen by you in their home for a while so that you will have the opportunity to help the child get used to you, which will certainly be easier in the friendly atmosphere of a private home than if you had to live in a hotel with the child.”

WUPPERTAL-ELBERFELD/NEW YORK

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.

TAGS: children, family, Jewish Community, letter, May 31, New York, prominent people, transnational networks, welfare organizations, Women, Wuppertal-Elberfeld

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Frederick Rosenbaum Collection, AR 6707

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

Chronology of major events in 1938

Law on the Confiscation of Degenerate Art

"Boys on a Playground" by Otto Möller, date unknown. Otto Möller was an artist labeled degenerate by the Nazis. His work was removed from museums in Germany under this new law. Some was auctioned off in forced sales, and other works destroyed. Leo Baeck Institute.

The “Law on the Confiscation of Degenerate Art” legalizes the plunder of artworks deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis. This applies primarily to modern art that does not conform to the racial or aesthetic criteria of National Socialist ideology, and of course, it applies to all works by Jewish artists. By the end of May, 1938, the Nazis have already confiscated works from museums and other public art collections. With the passage of this law, the confiscated works became legal property of the state. Except in a few cases of “financial hardship,” the owners receive no compensation. Amazingly, this law legalizing the arbitrary looting of artworks will remain in force until 1968. The Allies will fail to remove the law from the books when they excise other elements of Nazi law from the German legal code after the war. The Monuments and Museums Council of Northwestern Germany will even reinforce the law in a September 1948 decision to replace the works rather than demanding their return.

View chronology of major events in 1938

27

FRIDAY

27

Henry Kissinger turns 15

The teenager suffers from blatant antisemitism in his home town Fürth

FÜRTH

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.

TAGS: antisemitism, children, emigration, family, Fürth, immigration procedures, May 27, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution of Jewish professionals, photo, prominent people, public sphere, schools, segregation, Sports

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Portrait of Henry Kissinger, Henry Kissinger Collection , AR 4041.

Original:

F 3558

21

SATURDAY

21

A silly ditty

Heinz Neumann celebrates his bar mitzvah with a song

“May God grant you all health, contentment and happier times again.”

Berlin

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.

TAGS: Bar Mitzvah, Berlin, children, family, Jewish Community, May 21, photo, religion

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Neumann and Jacks Family Collection, AR 25580

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

Chronology of major events in 1938

The National Socialists in Austria adopt the Nuremberg Laws

A diagram explaining the Nuremberg Laws. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Hitler issued the laws at the 7th Congress of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) in September 1935. The Reichsbürgergesetz (Reich Citizenship Law) defines who shall be considered a Jew. The law furthermore differentiates mere citizens from Reichsbürger (citizens of the Reich). Reichsbürger are those citizens which have German or near-German blood. The Blutschutzgesetz (Law to Protect German Blood and German Honor), prohibits marriage between Jews and non-Jews. These laws codify the core elements of the Nazis’ antisemitic ideology. With their implementation in Austria, discrimination against Jews is not merely permitted, but integral to all state functions.

View chronology of major events in 1938

3

TUESDAY

3

Segregation in Kindergarten

A Hamburg lawyer reports on his young daughter's education

“The times have become very serious. We are depressed and despondent, and therefore there is little leisure and inclination to write and take photographs as elaborately as before.”

Hamburg

Even though he professes to be in low spirits due to the serious situation and therefore hardly inclined to write and take photographs as regularly as before, Wilhelm Hesse, a lawyer in Hamburg, describes the development of his daughter Helen in some detail in his diary. He reports on her capacity to think logically and a desire to learn so strong that the parents feel they have to make her slow down a bit. Hesse also writes with satisfaction about Helen’s progress in a Jewish kindergarten, but he does not fail to mention that she must learn to get along better with her little sister, Evchen. Since the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935—Helen was two years old at the time—Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend non-Jewish kindergartens, and Jewish kindergarten teachers were prohibited from taking care of non-Jewish children. The Hesse family was religiously observant and might have opted for a Jewish institution even under normal circumstances.

TAGS: children, commentary, diary, family, Hamburg, May 3, Nazi laws, religion, segregation

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

19

FRIDAY

19

A letter from home

Maria Wolf writes to her husband, Arthur, away on business in Czechoslovakia

Vienna/Tannwald

For Arthur Wolf, a fervent Austrian patriot and veteran of WWI, the Nazi takeover of Austria in March meant the collapse of his world, the loss of his homeland and equal rights. Wolf was the manager of a textile factory in Tannwald (then Czechoslovakia). His Russian-born wife, Maria, had stayed behind in Austria with the couple’s son, Erich (b. 1923). Given recent events, the tone of Maria’s April 19 letter to Arthur is remarkably playful. She marvels about 15 year-old Erich’s poetry, speaks warmly about their mother-son relationship and expresses longing for Arthur, avoiding any obvious references to current events.

TAGS: Anschluss, April 19, children, family, family separation, letter, Tannwald, Vienna, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Arthur Wolf Papers, AR 25270

Original:

Box 2, folder 5

14

THURSDAY

14

Persecution in Austria, release from Dachau

Nazis in Austria pass a series of laws and directives

Vienna

Little more than a month after the Nazi takeover of Austria, a cascade of new regulations and actions taken by the new regime leaves little room for optimism. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports for April 14 from Vienna that Jews within 50 kilometers of the Czechoslovak border are to be expelled. Nazi commissars will be put in charge of Austrian businesses at the latter’s expense. According to the JTA, in the case of hundreds of Jewish-owned businesses, this provision has already been enforced. Finally, a law has been introduced establishing new procedures for determining the racial status of illegitimate children. The one positive item in this substantial dispatch is the prospect that all Jews currently interned at the Dachau concentration camp will not only be released but will also receive permits to enter Palestine.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, April 14, Aryanization, children, Concentration Camps, Dachau, dispossession, economic persecution, expulsion, Journalism, JTA, media coverage, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, Palestine, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Jews Along Entire Czechoslovak Border Slated for Expulsion by Nazis”

Source available in English

13

WEDNESDAY

13

A special 70th birthday gift

The children from the Ahawah orphanage thank Heinrich Stahl for his commitment

Berlin

Heinrich Stahl, chairman of the Berlin Jewish Community since 1934, was heavily involved in the work of the various Jewish relief organizations, for which there was growing need as Nazism took hold. On April 13, 1938, his 70th birthday, he received a gift from the Ahawah Children’s Home, a photo album which showed the wide range of activities pursued by the charges of this exceptional institution (see March 17). The album included several photographs from the Ahawah’s new branch, which had been opened in Palestine in 1934. A heartfelt warmth and gratitude shine through this rhymed dedication thanking Stahl for his service to the community.

TAGS: April 13, Berlin, children, document, Haifa, Jewish Community, Palestine, prominent people, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ahawah Children's Home, Collection AR 6427

Original:

ALB 78

11

MONDAY

11

Rose Luria Halprin Celebrates her Birthday

The American Zionist leader worked to rescue young German Jews through the Youth Aliyah

Jerusalem/Berlin

As a leading functionary in various Zionist organizations, most notably the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of North America, Rose Luria Halprin had moved to Jerusalem in 1934, where she worked as the liaison between the local Hadassah branch and the National Office in the US. Having befriended Henrietta Szold, who led the Youth Aliyah in Palestine, Halprin, too, became involved in efforts to rescue German-Jewish youth by bringing them to Palestine. The Youth Aliyah had been founded by the prescient Recha Freier, wife of a Berlin-based rabbi, on the very day the Nazis were voted into government, January 30, 1933. In the years 1935 to 1938, Halprin repeatedly visited Berlin. April 11, 1938 was her 42nd birthday.

TAGS: April 11, Berlin, children, Jerusalem, Jewish Community, Palestine, photo, prominent people, rabbis, transnational networks, Women, Youth Aliyah, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

American Jewish Historical Society

Collection:

Rose Halprin in 1934. Haddassah Archives at the American Jewish HIstorical Society.

27

SUNDAY

27

Parental Pride

Family life in the shadow of the Nazi regime

“Helen is growing fast, looks healthy and lively and is a pretty girl. She is mentally agile and is already beginning to count, write and read.”

Hamburg

Wilhelm Hesse was the son of an orthodox business man. He resided in Hamburg with his wife Ruth and his two little daughters, Helen and Eva, whose early years he recorded in diaries that he kept for the children. The entries are interspersed with references to Jewish holidays and photographs of the children. In this entry, he documents proudly and in detail the progress of his daughter Helen, who is not yet five years old at this time. A lawyer with a doctorate, Hesse had been laid off already in April 1933.

TAGS: children, diary, family, Hamburg, Jewish holidays, March 27, persecution of Jewish professionals, religion

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

26

SATURDAY

26

Denaturalized

Jewish immigrants in Germany lose their citizenship

Worms

The passage in July 1933 of a law allowing the government to revoke the citizenship of those naturalized after the end of WWI had given Nazi officials a tool to deprive “undesirables” of their citizenship. The law targeted the Nazis’ political adversaries as well as Jews; 16,000 Eastern European Jews had gained German citizenship between the proclamation of the republic on November 9, 1918 and the Nazi rise to power in January 1933. Among those whose names appear on the expatriation list dated March 26, 1938 are Otto Wilhelm, his wife Katharina and the couple’s three children, residents of Worms and all five of them natives of Germany.

TAGS: children, document, expulsion, family, March 26, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, Polish-born Jews, Worms, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Carl Misch, Gesamtverzeichnis der Ausbürgerungslisten, 1933-1938, Paris 1939, List 38.

23

WEDNESDAY

23

Soma Morgenstern

A man of letters meets an old friend in exile

Vienna/Paris

Soma Morgenstern held a doctorate in law, but he preferred making a living as a writer, authoring feuilletons on music and theater. Born in Eastern Galicia and fluent in several languages, including Ukrainian and Yiddish, he chose German for his journalistic and literary endeavors. After his dismissal in 1933 from the Frankurter Zeitung, whose culture correspondent he had been while based in Vienna, he barely managed to stay afloat with occasional journalistic work. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany made his situation entirely untenable. He was forced into emigration, leaving behind his wife, a child, and many manuscripts. By March 23 he had made his way to safety in Paris, where he stayed at the Hôtel de la Poste with another famous Galician exile, his old friend, the author Joseph Roth.

TAGS: Anschluss, children, displacement, emigration, Journalism, March 23, Paris, persecution of Jewish professionals, photo, prominent people, refugees, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Portrait of Soma Morgenstern, Photograph by Otto E. Nelson, undated. Soma Morgenstern Collection, AR 6350

Original:

F 001

17

THURSDAY

17

House of love

A Jewish home for children in Berlin—and beyond

Berlin

The notoriously authoritarian Prussian education system had traditionally aimed for obedience and discipline, often breaking children’s wings early on. In the “Ahawah” (Hebr. for “love”) Children’s Home on Auguststraße in Berlin’s central borough, a different spirit reigned: children shared in decision-making through a “Children’s Council”, the goal being to transform them into citizens rather than subjects. Corporal punishment was forbidden and employees were encouraged to create the atmosphere of a home. Beate Berger, a nurse and head of the children’s home since 1922, took a group of children with her when she emigrated to Palestine in 1934 and returned to Germany many times in the ensuing years to rescue more children. The photos show costumed children at the Purim celebration of the children’s home.

TAGS: Berlin, children, emigration, Jewish Community, Jewish holidays, March 17, Palestine, photo, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ahawah Children's Home, Collection AR 6427

Original:

ALB 78

16

WEDNESDAY

16

Colleagues across continents

A teacher from Frankfurt connects with a colleague in the United States

“We would like to meet people over there with whom we can also discuss our plans—not our personal plans but the Jewish-social ones. After all, the situation of Jewish youth is getting more serious from day to day, and we feel obligated to seize all possibilities that we see over there.”

Frankfurt am Main/Bonn

Having barely begun his career as a teacher at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Frankfurt/Main, Hans Epstein lost his job shortly after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. After a brief intermezzo as a teacher at the famous “Philanthropin” in Frankfurt/Main, a progressive Jewish school with the motto “For Enlightenment and Humanity”, he became a co-founder of the “Anlernwerkstatt”, which prepared Jewish youngsters for emigration to the US. The mathematician Otto Toeplitz, a passionate educator who had lost his position at the University of Bonn in 1935, was now teaching children and organizing the emigration of students to the United States. In this letter, Epstein asks Toeplitz for a letter of recommendation and for contacts in the United States that might be useful for his endeavors.

TAGS: Bonn, children, emigration, Frankfurt am Main, Jewish Community, letter, March 16, persecution of Jewish professionals, schools, transnational networks

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Hans Epstein Collection, AR 6362

Original:

Box 1, folder I.13

10

THURSDAY

10

Preparing for Motherhood

Congregations add gender-specific gifts for girls

“The bestowal is made under the same conditions as that of the bar mitzvah gifts for the boys: upon request, congregations comprising fewer than 1000 souls receive the book free of charge.”

Berlin

In response to numerous requests, the Prussian State Association of Jewish Congregations, a voluntary association founded in 1921, decided to provide gifts to girls in parallel with the religious books given to boys upon becoming B’nai Mitzvah. While the books given to boys were aimed at deepening Jewish knowledge, the book offered to girls, Jewish Mothers by Egon Jacobsohn and Leo Hirsch, offered biographical sketches of the mothers of Jewish luminaries including Theodor Herzl, Walter Rathenau, and Heinrich Heine. As early as the the 19th century, reform-oriented synagogues in Germany began offering a collective “confirmation” for boys and girls. In some places, an individual ceremony for girls was customary, but there was no such thing as the modern bat mitzvah ceremony in 1938.

TAGS: Bar Mitzvah, Berlin, children, Jewish Community, letter, March 10, religion, Synagogues

SOURCE

Institution:

New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum

Collection:

Memorandum of the Prussian State Association of Jewish Congregations to member congregations regarding gifts of books for girls on the occasion of their confirmation and graduation from school as well as bar mitzvah gifts for boys

Original:

CJA, 2 A 2, No. 2749

17

THURSDAY

17

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine!”

Children set out on their journeys to Palestine with Youth Aliyah

“Joy and pain are fighting against each other, as are courage and fear, mourning and hopefulness. One cries, the other laughs. Here the pain of separation is stronger, there the self-painted picture of the future outshines all grief of separation.”

Berlin

Immediately after the Nazis seized power, on January 30, 1933, Berlin-based Recha Freier founded the Jüdische Jugendhilfe (“Committee for the Assistance of Jewish Youth”) soon to be known as Jugend-Alija (“Youth Aliyah”). The organization’s goal was to bring Jewish children past the age of elementary school to safety in Palestine. In the youth supplement of the Israelitisches Familienblatt of February 17, 1938, the children’s feelings are described as they depart for Palestine: Not only did they have to cope with the separation from their parents and families, but also with the uncertainty about their future.

TAGS: Berlin, children, emigration, family separation, February 17, Journalism, media coverage, Palestine, press article, refugees, welfare organizations, Youth Aliyah, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

“Aufbruch der Jugend”, B1032

Original:

Vol. 4, no. 2

2

WEDNESDAY

2

Second opinion

An intentional misdiagnosis remedied

“It is therefore mystifying how a previous examiner could reach the assumption of a tuberculous lung disease in this perfectly healthy young person.”

Zurich

Months after leaving Germany, 12-year old Herbert Friedmann (later Freeman) was still in Zurich waiting to reunite with his family already in the USA. Because of the previous, apparently intentional, misdiagnosis at the US consulate in Stuttgart stating that the boy was a “carrier of tuberculosis,” he had not been able to immigrate with his mother and brother. Finally, on February 2, 1938 a local physician attested to the boy’s “significantly above average” state of health, ascribing the previous diagnosis to an error. Ironically, the physician who issued this critical medical certificate was Dr. Ernst Hanhart, a geneticist and eugenicist who during the Nazi period published extensively on “racial hygiene” and wrote articles in support of the forced sterilization of deaf-mutes.

TAGS: bureaucracy, children, emigration, family separation, February 2, immigration procedures, medical record, visa application, Zurich

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Herbert Freeman Family Collection, AR 25346

Original:

Box 1, folder 7

19

WEDNESDAY

19

Markus becomes Mischa

The 15th birthday of a German Jewish refugee in Moscow

Moscow

Markus Wolf (center in the photo above), one of the sons of the communist physician and writer Friedrich Wolf (right), was born in 1923 in Hechingen in the Swabian Alps. After the Nazi seizure of power the family initially emigrated to Switzerland, then to France, and in 1934 to the Soviet Union. The Wolf family resided at the Hotel Lux in Moscow where a large number of communist refugees from Germany had been given shelter. During the years of the Great Terror (1936–38), deeply suspicious of the foreigners, in whom it saw potential spies for the Reich, Stalin’s regime tortured and interrogated many of the German emigrants. Among the approximately 600,000 victims of the purge were 178 German communists, most of them residents of the Hotel Lux. The Wolf family survived.

TAGS: children, Communists, displacement, emigration, Hechingen, January 19, Moscow, persecution, photo, prominent people, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Friedrich Wolf Gesellschaft

Collection:

Private Collection of the Wolf Family

12

WEDNESDAY

12

An arbitrary ordeal

Little Herbert waits for a visa

Does Papa remember the “dung beetle”, when Mr. M. said that he would never leave Germany and that a “Jewish Colony” should be built in Germany? Apparently he has been having second thoughts. The first proof was that he took his son out of the Kaiser Friedrich Gymnasium, and the second that he is sending his son to America.

Zurich/New York

Herbert Freeman was born Herbert Friedmann on December 13, 1925 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. His father, Leo Friedmann, immigrated to the United States first. Herbert, his mother, and his brother applied for a US visa in Stuttgart. During the obligatory health check-up, the perfectly healthy Herbert was diagnosed as a “tuberculosis carrier” and was unable to join his mother and brother on their journey to the United States in 1936. After repeated unsuccessful attempts, in order to circumvent the Stuttgart US Consulate, 12-year-old Herbert was sent to Zurich (permission to file an application outside Germany was obtained in no small part thanks to the intervention of Albert Einstein). The letter was written during Herbert’s stay in Switzerland. He mentions his upcoming visit to the US Consulate and reapplying for the visa, and describes his days while separated from his relatives.

TAGS: bureaucracy, children, emigration, family separation, Frankfurt am Main, immigration procedures, January 12, letter, New York, prominent people, visa application, Zurich

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Herbert Freeman Family Collection, AR 25346

Original:

Box 1, folder 4

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