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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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5

MONDAY

5

Ungrateful fatherland

A former front-line soldier loses his business

Hamburg

All six sons of the Hamburg industrialist, S. Anker, were among the 85,000 Jewish soldiers who went to battle for Germany in World War I. Two of of them, Heinrich and Richard, belonged to the 457 Hamburg residents among the 12,000 Jewish fallen. Otto Anker, b. 1883, survived, badly wounded. After the Nazis had been voted to power in 1933, his sons left the country and tried to get their parents to do the same. However, decorated with the Iron Cross and married to a non-Jewish woman, Otto Anker felt safe. The gratitude of the Fatherland kept within limits: in 1938, Otto Anker’s business was “aryanized.” This ID, stamped on December 6th, is marked with a conspicuous “J.”

TAGS: Aryanization, December 5, dispossession, economic persecution, emigration, Hamburg, ID, Jewish property, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Anker Family Collection, AR 5424

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

29

MONDAY

29

Resistance through passport forgery

The postal ID of Felix Perls

Berlin

The Jewish businessman Felix Perls was born in Beuthen (Upper Silesia) in 1883. By April 1st, 1938, following Nazi regulations, he had to relinquish his position as director of the Upper Silesian Lumber Industry Corporation. Two months later, he and his wife, Herta, moved to Berlin-Grunewald, in order to escape the hostility in Beuthen. Perls tampered with his 1938 postal ID. He changed its date of issue and its validity period. Postal ID cards were needed for receiving confidential mail but were accepted as identification documents elsewhere too.

TAGS: antisemitism, Aryanization, August 29, Berlin, Beuthen, displacement, document, ID, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution of Jewish professionals

SOURCE

Institution:

Die Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

29

FRIDAY

29

Rough sea and swell

After seven days of travel, Anton Felix Perl arrives on a new continent

„Civil Examination Stamp“

QUEBEC

In the eyes of the Nazis, the fact that both his parents had converted to Catholicism in the year of his birth, 1912, and that he was baptized as an infant, did not make Anton Felix Perl any less of a Jew. After attending a Catholic high school in Vienna, the Schottengymnasium, he went to medical school, from which he graduated in 1936. Two years into his residency at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, he was dismissed on racial grounds. In this stressful situation, Dr. Perl contacted high-ranking Catholic clergymen in Canada. With the help of the archbishops of Winnipeg and Regina, his immigration was arranged, and after a seven-day voyage from Liverpool, he arrived in Canada and got his civil examination stamp from the immigration office in Quebec on July 29, 1938. Canada’s immigration policy was extremely restrictive, especially towards those persecuted for religious or “racial” reasons. For once, Dr. Perl’s baptism certificate proved useful.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, Church, document, emigration, ID, immigration, immigration procedures, July 29, persecution of Jewish professionals, Quebec, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Perl Family Collection, AR 25190

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

Source available in English

23

THURSDAY

23

Interview at the US-Consulate

Heinz Ries is finally allowed to immigrate

Havana

After his first official attempt to immigrate had failed under adventurous circumstances, 20 year-old Heinz Ries of Berlin made another effort to get permission to live in the US permanently and legally. For months, he had struggled in the shadows as an undocumented immigrant in New York. After obtaining an affidavit of support, Ries traveled to Havana and visited the US consulate there on June 23, 1938. Finally, he was admitted legal entry into the United States. After the war he returned to Germany for some time, first in the employment of the Allies, then as a photo journalist for the New York Times. The photographs of the Berlin Blockade and the Airlift, taken during these years, made him world-famous under the name Henry Ries.

TAGS: affidavits, artists, Berlin, bureaucracy, document, emigration, Havana, ID, immigration, immigration procedures, June 23, New York, prominent people

SOURCE

Institution:

Deutsches Historisches Museum

Original:

Immigrant Identification Card Issued by the US Department of State for Heinz Ries ; Inv.No. Do2 2009/488

Source available in English

1

WEDNESDAY

1

Gestapo in the house

The regime fears the art of Lea Grundig

DRESDEN

Her paintings were political accusations and constituted a threat to the Nazi regime. Lea Grundig, born in 1903 as Lina Langer, was arrested with her husband, Hans, by the Dresden Gestapo on June 1, 1938, and not for the first time. The explanation given on the form was “Suspicion of subversive activity.” What was meant was her art. With picture cycles like “Under the Swastika” or “It’s the Jew’s Fault,” Grundig, who since 1933 had been barred from her profession, hauntingly documented the brutality of the persecution of Jews and communists by the Nazis. In 1935, she gave one of her paintings the portentous title, “The Gestapo in the house.”

TAGS: artists, Communists, Dresden, ID, imprisonment, June 1, persecution of Jewish professionals, prominent people

SOURCE

Institution:

Deutsches Historisches Museum

Original:

Memorandum of the Dresden office of the Gestapo ordering the provisional arrest of Lea Grundig; Inv.No. Do 62/1126.3

10

SUNDAY

10

Forgone conclusion

Austrians (except for Jews) ratify the Anschluss

“A person who exercizes the right to vote even though he is barred from the right to vote, or is aware of descending from three fully Jewish grandparents, or as a person of mixed blood (at least two Jewish grandparents) married to a Jewish person, must immediately return this voter ID to the city hall and abstain from voting. Otherwise, he will be subject to severe punishment.”

Vienna

The entry of German troops into Austria on March 12 had preempted Chancellor Schuschnigg’s planned plebiscite on unification with Germany on March 13. The Nazis rescheduled the referendum for April 10 in conjunction with the first all-German Reichstag elections. Catholic bishops, under the leadership of Archbishop Theodor Innitzer, had issued a “solemn declaration” in which they called upon Catholic voters to cast their ballots in favor of the “Anschluss.” According to official figures, close to 100% of voters affirmed what was already an established fact. The document presented here is a voter ID to be used only by the addressee named on the front page. It explicitly excludes Jews from participating.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, April 10, Church, document, ID, Nazi policies, politics, prominent people, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Collection:

Voter ID for referendum on April 10, 1938 (no. 225)

Original:

Inv. No. 26028/9

7

MONDAY

7

Tie Game

Hakoah Wien and Jewish sports culture

Vienna

The soccer team Hakoah Wien’s match against SV Straßenbahn Wien, the sports club of the Vienna tramway company, ended in a 2:2 tie on March 7, 1938. Hakoah was part of the famous Viennese Jewish sports club, Sportverein Hakoah Wien. The club had been established in 1909 as a result of the changing attitude towards the body and health in the liberal Jewish community. This membership card belonged to one of the club’s foremost coaches, the swim coach Zsigo Wertheimer. Wertheimer had coached Ruth Langer, who famously refused to join the Austrian Olympic team in 1936, when she was just 15 years old.

TAGS: Anschluss, ID, Jewish Community, March 7, politics, prominent people, Sports, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Collection:

Membership card of Fatherland Front of Zsigo Wertheimer

Original:

Inv. No. 16776

7

FRIDAY

7

Improvisation impinged

Werner Dambitsch and his “Excentric [sic] Jazz Orchester”

This ID grants permission to participate in Jewish events. The holder is permitted to work, but the Reich Association does not guarantee employment.   

Breslau/ Berlin

Werner Wilhelm Dambitsch was born on June 23, 1913 in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland). Werner was interested in music from an early age, but he had to purchase his first instrument, a saxophone, with money he had earned himself. He did this in 1932 at the age of 19 and founded with four friends the ‘Excentric [sic] Jazz Orchester’. In order to perform, the combo had to join the “Reichsverband der jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland” (Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Federations) and was forced to change the name to “Erstes Jüdisches Jazz-Orchester” (First Jewish Jazz Orchestra). While the association did not guarantee steady income or employment, at least it allowed the artists to perform at events attended by Jewish audiences. This image shows Werner Dambitsch’s Kulturbund membership card.

TAGS: Berlin, Breslau, cultural life, document, ID, January 7, Kulturbund, musicians, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, public sphere, segregation

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Werner Dambitsch Collection, AR 11719

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