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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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6

SUNDAY

6

Émigrés on ice

The rich social-life of German-Jewish refugees in New York includes winter sports.

Yonkers, New York

Among the many kinds of physical activity offered to the readers of the Aufbau by the German-Jewish Club, such as ping-pong, skiing, swimming and even a Katerbummel (a morning stroll after a night of heavy drinking), there was also an invitation to go ice-skating in Tibbetts Brook Park in Yonkers, New York. A familiar activity among sympathetic fellow German-speakers at a venue featuring a Tudor revival bathhouse may have awakened memories of better days in Europe. Despite their traumatic experiences under Nazism and their forced departure, many German Jews continued to feel a profound cultural connection to the country they had called their home.

TAGS: advertisement, cultural life, displacement, emigration, February 6, Jewish Community, New York, refugees, Sports, Yonkers NY

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

“Februar-Programm des deutsch-jüdischen Clubs,” Aufbau, Vol. 4, no. 3, p. 3.

5

SATURDAY

5

Career change

Archeologist seeking work as a nurse

“I remembered an old acquaintance and wrote a letter which was answered very nicely, and I hope he'll get in touch with me within the next few days. I'd like to hear some advice regarding our old man and old lady and the like [...].”

Turin/Rome

In this short missive from Turin, written in a casual, sisterly tone to her sister Anneliese in Rome, Elsa Riess communicates her worries about their parents, who have remained in Berlin. Elsa is concerned about her father’s employment situation and declares her intention to find out about possible ways to help their parents, from whom she hasn’t heard for a while. Anneliese had come to Italy in 1933 to study archeology, earning her PhD in 1936. Because of her own uncertain material situation, she was not in a position to help her parents financially. Unemployable as a foreigner in Italy and hoping to increase her opportunities by adding a practical skill, she had decided to take a course as a baby and child nurse in Geneva in 1937.

TAGS: Berlin, displacement, economic persecution, emigration, family, family separation, February 5, Geneva, impoverishment, letter, refugees, Rome, Turin

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Anneliese Riess Collection, AR 10019

Original:

Box 1, folder 9

Chronology of major events in 1938

Law on Alteration of Family and Personal Names

Page from a ledger book of the Gesellschaft der Freunde in Berlin, 1792 - 1793.

The new Law on Alteration of Family and Personal Names regulates the change of names of German citizens and individuals without citizenship who live in the German Reich. The law empowers the Interior Minister to issue rules concerning given names and unilaterally change those names that do not conform to the rules, including names which were changed before the Nazis seizure of power in 1933. This primarily affects assimilated Jews who adopted less apparently Jewish names, which the Nazis viewed as an attempt to camouflage their Jewishness. The new law is the Nazis’ first step toward marking Jews by forcing them to adopt ‘typical’ Jewish names.

View chronology of major events in 1938

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

1

TUESDAY

1

Palestine

Tranquil landscapes and bloody unrest

Haifa

This painting by the artist Hermann Struck, a resident of Haifa and one of the relatively small number of German Jews who emigrated to Palestine already before 1933, shows one of the iconic landscapes of the Holy Land, the Dead Sea. It does not, however, reflect the difficult social situation in Palestine in the late 1930s. Due to the growing influx of Jewish immigrants in general and, after 1933, German Jews in particular, tensions between Jews and Arabs as well as between Arabs and the British mandatory administration were increasing. In 1936, an Arab uprising began which was still in full swing in February 1938.

TAGS: art, artists, emigration, Febuary 1, Haifa, immigration, Palestine, politics, prominent people, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Hermann Struck, Palestine, 1938

Original:

78.437

28

FRIDAY

28

Stopover in Venice

Europe remains of great importance for Jewish emigrants in Palestine.

Palestine/ Venice/Essen

When Julius Ostberg visited Palestine in January 1938, his daughter Ilse had been living in the country for four years. She was born in 1912 and spent her first 22 years in Essen. After emigrating from Germany to Palestine in 1934, she, like many other German Jewish emigrants to Palestine, continued to visit Europe in the following years. The photos shown here were taken in 1937 during a stopover in Venice on the way back to Palestine.

TAGS: displacement, emigration, Essen, family separation, January 28, Palestine, photo, refugees, Venice

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ilse Gamper Collection, AR 25243

Original:

Box 1, folder 29

26

WEDNESDAY

26

A forced move

Leo Perutz shortly before his emigration to Palestine

“For it’s human nature even in the direst extremity to see a spark of hope and blow it into flames” ― Leo Perutz, By Night Under the Stone Bridge

Vienna/Tel Aviv

There are many ways to describe Leo Perutz: novelist, mathematician, native of Prague, chess lover—to name but a few. He was admired by his colleagues and millions of readers. His success as a writer was so great that he decided in 1923 to give up his bread-and-butter job as an actuary. The Great Depression hit him hard, since the crisis not only negatively impacted the bookselling trade but also rendered the family company, in which he had a share, less profitable. To make matters worse, after the Nazis’ rise to power, his Jewish publisher, Paul Szolnay, lost his largest market in Germany. This is one of the last photographs taken before Perutz’s emigration from Vienna to Tel Aviv, Palestine in 1938.

TAGS: economic persecution, emigration, Great Depression, January 26, Palestine, photo, Prague, prominent people, Tel Aviv, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Portrait of Leo Perutz, AR 6898

Original:

F001

Chronology of major events in 1938

Aktion “Arbeitsscheu Reich”

Poster for the Reich Labor Service, 1938.

Heinrich Himmler orders a “one-time, comprehensive, surprise attack” on Arbeitsscheue. This designation, which means “work-shy” or “indolent,” includes men of working age who have rejected two job offers or who quit after a short period of time. The Gestapo, the secret police force of the National Socialists, was tasked with the endeavor and collected the necessary information in collaboration with employment offices. From April 21 through April 30, between 1,500 and 2,000 men are arrested and brought to the concentration camp Buchenwald. Hearings are not scheduled to take place until the second half of the year.

View chronology of major events in 1938

23

SUNDAY

23

The American dream

A Jew who has taken the leap calls upon a friend to follow suit.

“My most beautiful dream is that all the people I like should live near me.”

New York/Berlin

As the number of Jewish emigrants from Germany was constantly growing, so was the number of letters exchanged between friends and relatives who had already left and those who stayed behind. In his handwritten letter from January 23, Mikloś Ehrenfeld suggests to his friend Kunibert in Berlin that it would be a good idea for him to leave Germany in spite of his good position and come to America, as Ehrenfeld himself did. Self-actualization and the fulfillment of personal dreams, Ehrenfeld wrote, were possible in America but hopeless in Germany.

TAGS: Berlin, displacement, emigration, January 23, letter, New York, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Rolf David Collection, AR 6994

21

FRIDAY

21

Counting refugees

The Decline in Numbers of German Jewry

“The Jewish population of Germany has declined by one-third since the beginning of 1933, the Union for Scientific Study of Population Problems reported today. A total of 135,000 Jews left Germany up to the end of 1937, according to the computation of Dr. Kurt Zielenziger, published in the Union’s organ, Population.”

Amsterdam

After the Nazis’ rise to power, the economic historian and journalist Kurt Zielenziger fled to Amsterdam with his wife and son. There he co-founded the “Jewish Central Information Office,” the goal of which was to document the persecution of Jews by the Nazis and to spread the information. In this release, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency quotes his computation of Jewish emigrants from Germany according to destination countries. According to Zielenziger, by the end of 1937, a total of 135,000 Jews had left the country.

TAGS: Amsterdam, displacement, emigration, January 21, Journalism, JTA, media coverage, persecution, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Reich Jewish Population Declined One-third; 135,000 Left in 5 Years”

Source available in English

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

18

TUESDAY

18

Nowhere safe to go

Dramatic events in Palestine

Last Sunday in a Jerusalem suburb, one Jewish auxiliary police man, Samuel Levi, was killed and another injured. In front of a Jewish workers' restaurant on Ben Yehuda Street, a bomb was dropped, exploding without doing damage.

Jerusalem

When German Jews considered the various emigration options in January 1938, Palestine might have seemed a dangerous destination. As the Jüdische Rundschau reported, in the same month, attacks against Jewish inhabitants and clashes between Jews and Arabs occurred in numerous places in Palestine. Apart from local resistance, the paper mentioned Syrian terrorists, the smuggling of weapons from Libya, and the refusal of the Egyptian government to conduct direct Arab-Jewish negotiations. In light of these facts, emigrating to Palestine could appear to the prospective emigrants like jumping from the frying pan into the fire rather than finding a safe refuge.

TAGS: emigration, January 18, Jerusalem, Journalism, media coverage, Palestine, politics, press article, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Compact Memory, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main

Collection:

"Das Neuste in Kürze." Jüdische Rundschau (Berlin)

Original:

Vol. 43, no. 5: 4

16

SUNDAY

16

The noose tightens

The Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden appeals to the government

A considerable part of Jewry in Germany, in which older classes predominate, is incapable of emigrating and will end its days in Germany. If it is not to become a burden on the public welfare system, means for obtaining a livelihood must not be completely closed to it. Even the continuation of ordered emigration—and only that keeps the emigrating doors open—is possible only if the economic existence basis of Jews in Germany is not further curtailed.

Berlin

The “Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden” (Reich Representation of German Jews) was established in Berlin in September 1933 as an advocacy group. After the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, it had to change its name to “Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland” (Reich Representation of Jews in Germany). Its president was Rabbi Leo Baeck. As a result of the increasing pauperization of the Jewish population, whose possibilities to earn a living were systematically taken away, the Reichsvertretung appealed to the government in January 1938 to desist from additional limitations depriving Jewish professionals of their jobs. The Reichsvertretung argued that not only was the increasing unemployment a burden on the welfare system, but it also made emigration impossible.

TAGS: advocates, antisemitism, Berlin, economic persecution, emigration, impoverishment, January 16, Journalism, JTA, media coverage, persecution of Jewish professionals, prominent people, rabbis, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

"Reich Jews Appeal to Government Against Further Economic Curbs"

Source available in English

15

SATURDAY

15

Suited up

German Jews at the beach in Palestine

Daddy's visit.

Essen/Palestine

Julius Ostberg was the owner of a uniform and coat factory in Essen. In January 1938, he visited his daughter Ilse in Palestine. Similar to other German Jews in Palestine, Ostberg did not think about giving up his outfit – associated among German Jews with correctness and good taste and often ridiculed by Jews of other nationalities. In this picture, taken on the beach, despite the casual environment, Mr. Ostberg presents himself in formal attire consisting of a suit and a tie.

TAGS: emigration, Essen, family, family separation, January 15, Palestine, photo

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ilse Gamper Collection, AR 25243

Original:

Box 1, folder 29

13

THURSDAY

13

Advice from New York

Remittances to Jewish recipients in Nazi Germany

We wish to point out that when using Haavaramark for your remittances you further the Jewish emigration from Germany.

New York

A representative of the New York office of Intria International Trade & Investment Agency Ltd., London, advises a client in New York to use the “Haavaramark” for “transfers to persons of Jewish descent residing in Germany.” The Haavara (transfer) Agreement had been made between Zionist representatives and the Nazis in 1933. It enabled emigrants to deposit money in a German account, which was used to pay for the import of German goods to Palestine. The proceeds from the sales of these goods in Palestine, after the deduction of costs, was disbursed to the new immigrants.

TAGS: document, economic persecution, emigration, Haavara, impoverishment, January 13, letter, New York, Palestine, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ludwig Rosenberger Family Collection, AR 5824

Original:

Box 1, folder 25

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

10

MONDAY

10

One-way ticket

The travel agency on Meineke Street: South America, Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile

“To South America (West Coast), Columbia-Equador-Bolivia-Peru-Chile”

Berlin

If advertisements in newspapers reflect the main needs of society, then the Berlin Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt (Jewish Community Paper) from January 1938 can serve as a perfect example of such needs in times of crisis. By January 1938, when the majority of German Jews were preparing for emigration or actively looking for ways to leave the country, advertisements for travel agencies and shipping companies dominated the commercial space of the newspaper. The main destinations of German-Jewish emigrants were Palestine as well as North- and South America.

TAGS: advertisement, Berlin, emigration, January 10, Jewish Community, Journalism, Palestine, South America

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin, MF B427/ 1

Original:

Vol. 28, no. 2: 7

8

SATURDAY

8

Doing fine under the circumstances

A letter from prison

“Under the circumstances I am doing fine, and when I think that it will be already two weeks tomorrow, I can hardly believe it. One must not think and brood too much, that’s the only way to keep one’s spirit up. And that’s what I want!”

Fürth

Preparing for emigration to the United States, Alfred Rahn sold the family business, the M.S. Farrnbacher Ironmongery, in November 1937 without the consent of the Nazi authorities. Instead of leaving for the US at the end of December as planned, he therefore had to serve a 14 month prison term. From his prison cell in Fürth, Alfred Rahn expresses gratitude to his wife for gifts already received and asks for further necessities. His wife Lilly was a literary scholar and the last Jewish doctoral student to have graduated from the University of Erlangen (in 1934).

TAGS: economic persecution, emigration, family, family separation, Fürth, imprisonment, January 8, letter, Nazi policies

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Rahn Family Collection, AR 25538

Original:

Box 1, folder 10

5

WEDNESDAY

5

Crisis management

Factory owners navigating the needs of the day

“None of us can predict how things will turn out, no one can take offense at our holding on for as long as possible to what we have built together, and whether what we do now or in the near future is correct, cannot be judged by any one. Perhaps everything was wrong and too late.”

Göppingen

On January 5, 1938, Kuno Fleischer wrote to the shareholders of his family’s paper factory in the small Baden-Wurttemberg town of Eislingen about a recent business dispute and alluded darkly to a time when “grave decisions will have to be made swiftly.” He told his fellow owners—his brother and nephews—that he would soon travel to the United States to “orient himself” adding, “No one of us can predict how things will turn out, and no one can take offense at our holding on for as long as possible to what we have built together.”

TAGS: commentary, economic persecution, emigration, Göppingen, January 5, letter

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Fleischer-Steiner Family Collection, AR 25083

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

Chronology of major events in 1938

Law on Alteration of Family and Personal Names

Page from a ledger book of the Gesellschaft der Freunde in Berlin, 1792 - 1793.

The new Law on Alteration of Family and Personal Names regulates the change of names of German citizens and individuals without citizenship who live in the German Reich. The law empowers the Interior Minister to issue rules concerning given names and unilaterally change those names that do not conform to the rules, including names which were changed before the Nazis seizure of power in 1933. This primarily affects assimilated Jews who adopted less apparently Jewish names, which the Nazis viewed as an attempt to camouflage their Jewishness. The new law is the Nazis’ first step toward marking Jews by forcing them to adopt ‘typical’ Jewish names.

View chronology of major events in 1938

3

MONDAY

3

Excellence in exile

The Shared Fate of German Jewish Emigrants: Albert Einstein and Lotte Jacobi

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” —Albert Einstein

Princeton, New Jersey

The people on both sides of the camera shared a fate that was common to many thousands of German Jews: shortly after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Albert Einstein decided to immigrate permanently to the United States. He took the position of professor of theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where this picture was taken five years later. In light of the increasing difficulties after the Nazi seizure of power, the photographer Lotte Jacobi also left Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1935. Jacobi was unpersuaded by the Nazis’ offer to grant her the status of “Honorary Aryan.” She left behind a studio in Berlin which she had run together with her sister, Ruth, also an accomplished photographer. Among the many prominent figures Jacobi photographed were Marc Chagall, Martin Buber, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Mann, and Kurt Weill.

TAGS: antisemitism, artists, emigration, January 3, Nazi policies, photo, Princeton NJ, prominent people

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Jacobi, Lotte. "Albert Einstein in the Study of His Princeton Home," 1938. Albert Einstein Collection, AR 136

Original:

F 3136C

2

SUNDAY

2

Correspondence across the ocean

German-Jewish families separated by immigration restrictions

"Meanwhile the new year has arrived. What will it bring?"

Columbus, Ohio/Mannheim

This letter was written by Otto Neubauer, who had recently arrived in America from Mannheim, to his father Maximilian and his brother Ernst back home. Since the rest of the family was unable to emigrate despite years of trying, Otto wrote them regularly. The rich exchange of letters between the members of the Neubauer family reflects, as in the case of many other German Jewish emigrants in the 1930s, deep longing and attempts to describe every aspect of the new life in America.

TAGS: Columbus OH, displacement, emigration, family separation, January 2, letter, Mannheim, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Otto Neubauer Collection, AR 25339

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

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