External links are disabled on the kiosk. Please visit archive links from desktop or mobile devices.

The following organizations have offered their materials for inclusion in the 1938 Projekt:
 
About Partners Education Contributors
Advanced Search

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.

BACK TO TIMELINE

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

21

TUESDAY

21

A weekly lifeline

The Aufbau provides advice for a new start

“575 W. 159th St., Apt. 22 - beautifully furnished front room for one or two persons, running water, inexpensive.”

New York

As the influx of refugees from Nazi Germany intensified, what had begun in 1934 as the anniversary brochure of the German Jewish Club in New York quickly turned into a professional publication and a lifeline for the uprooted. With its offer of a wide range of cultural and athletic activities, the monthly was an emotional anchor for the newcomers, but it also offered practical help getting settled in the new country. This issue of the Aufbau from June 1938 features a large number of rental ads, mostly for fully furnished rooms, often in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Northern Manhattan, thereby giving some extra income to the owners or main tenants while providing affordable housing to refugees who usually arrived with very little money and property.

TAGS: advertisement, cultural life, displacement, emigration, immigration, impoverishment, Journalism, June 21, New York, refugees, Sports

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Zimmernachweis, Aufbau, Vol. 4, no. 8, p. 6.

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

9

MONDAY

9

Abortion and politics

German-Jewish Club organizes lecture with physician from Germany

New York

On May 9, the Ärztegruppe of the German-Jewish Club (an informal association of physicians within the city’s main German émigré organization) in New York offered a lecture on the topic of abortion. During the Weimar Republic, repeated efforts had been made to abolish or at least reform the anti-abortion paragraph (§218). Its opponents pointed out that it put the working class at a disadvantage, since poverty was the chief motivation for abortion. In 1926, a member of the Reichstag representing a coalition of three right-wing parties, including the NSDAP, proposed legalizing abortion for Jews only. Under the Nazi regime, which promoted the production of “racially valuable” offspring, abortion was illegal unless it prevented the birth of children considered “undesirable.” In the US, the depression had led to an increased demand for abortion, and by the beginning of the 1930s hundreds of birth control clinics had sprung up. Poverty and the lack of access to qualified practitioners often led to the injury or death of pregnant women through self-induced miscarriage. The lecturer, Dr. Walter M. Fürst, was a recent arrival from Hamburg.

TAGS: advertisement, antisemitism, cultural life, Great Depression, Hamburg, Journalism, May 9, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, New York, politics, segregation

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

„Ärztegruppe der German-Jewish Club“, Aufbau, Vol. 4, Nr. 6, S. 4.

7

SATURDAY

7

A mother fights for her son

The Blums pin their hopes on America after job loss in Germany

“Bruno, my eldest son, has for many years contributed to our livelihood. Now, having lost his position and without any hope to get another one here, he intends to leave this country. But unfortunately, almost all countries close themselves against immigrants. Therefore I don’t see an other possibility as to try to get a permit to enter the U.S.A.”

Vienna/New York

Immediately after the Nazi takeover of Austria, Jewish shops and businesses had been put in the hands of “Aryan” provisional managers. In the course of this “Aryanization”—really the expropriation and theft of Jewish property—30-year-old Bruno Blum, a resident of Vienna, lost his job at the “Wiener Margarin-Compagnie” after little more than four years. Understanding that her eldest son’s chances to find a new job under Nazi rule were scant, Betty Blum approached her cousin Moses Mandl in New York for help with an affidavit. When she did not hear back from him, she wrote this letter to her nephew, Stanley Frankfurter, asking him to coax Moses Mandl into helping or turn to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) for assistance.

TAGS: affidavits, Anschluss, Aryanization, dispossession, economic persecution, emigration, family, immigration procedures, Jewish property, letter, May 7, Nazi policies, New York, persecution of Jewish professionals, refugees, Vienna, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Blum Family Collection, AR 25132

Original:

Box 1, folder 5

Source available in English

1

SUNDAY

1

Compass Travel Bureau

Emigrating is not as easy as it may seem

“Would you like to have your relatives here? Do you need help surmounting the difficulties?”

New York

In an ad in the Aufbau aimed at German immigrants, the Compass Travel Bureau in New York offered “expert advice in all matters related to immigration and the handling of all the formalities of traveling.” The reference to “formalities” elides the excruciating bureaucratic hurdles facing prospective emigrants. Jews desperate to leave Germany first had to obtain quota numbers and a plethora of documents from various German authorities and to contend with the slow postal service as they sought sponsors in America.

TAGS: advertisement, affidavits, bureaucracy, displacement, emigration, immigration, immigration procedures, Journalism, May 1, New York, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

“Announcement”, Aufbau, Vol. 5, no. 6, p. 8.

9

SATURDAY

9

Carnival jesters at the passover ball

Jewish National Workers Alliance offers temporary cheer in Washington Heights

NEW YORK

Usually the Jewish National Workers Alliance, as the Labor Zionist fraternal order was known, occupied itself with serious matters. Among other things, it strove to strengthen the working class and offered help in cases of economic hardship, illness, or death of its members. In 1911, it had established the first modern insurance system for Jewish workers. On April 9, 1938 it strayed from its core mission and held a Passover Ball in the German-Jewish stronghold of Washington Heights in New York. Among other items, the program featured “Cologne humorists.” German immigrants would have understood that this referred to Cologne carnival jesting, a tradition associated with the Catholic carnival season that dates back to the Middle Ages. The venue was the ballroom of the Paramount Mansion, which also housed several institutions that promoted the interests of German Jewish immigrants.

TAGS: advertisement, April 9, Cologne, cultural life, immigration, Jewish Community, Jewish holidays, Journalism, New York, politics, religion, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

“Pessach Ball”, Aufbau, Vol. 5, no. 5, p. 7.

14

MONDAY

14

A taste of home

German-Jewish newspaper advertises German sausage in New York

“Finally, what you have been wishing for: genuine, good, German sausage, made from premium beef and veal at the lowest daily price.”

New York

After the tribulations of their forced emigration, often accompanied by a loss of status, property, and basic faith in humanity, German Jews might not have been expected to feel particularly nostalgic for their former home. This ad from the Aufbau, the New York-based German-Jewish paper published by the German-Jewish Club, shows that nevertheless, Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were not necessarily in a hurry to give up their eating habits.

TAGS: advertisement, displacement, emigration, Jewish Community, Journalism, March 14, New York, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Advertisement, Aufbau, Vol. 4, no. 4, p. 9.

2

WEDNESDAY

2

End of “The Eternal Road”

Kurt Weill celebrates his 38th Birthday in New York

New York

Unwelcome in Nazi Germany as a Jew, a socialist, and a composer of music considered “degenerate” by the regime, Kurt Weill was able to celebrate his 38th birthday on March 2 in safety. After attacks in the Nazi press and targeted protests, Weill had already emigrated to France in 1933. Rehearsals for the premiere of his opera “The Eternal Road” (libretto: Franz Werfel) provided him with an opportunity to travel to the United States in 1935. Due to numerous technical difficulties, the premiere was postponed until 1937. Weill seized the opportunity and remained in America.

TAGS: cultural life, displacement, emigration, March 2, musicians, New York, photo, prominent people, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Kurt Weill Collection, AR 2754. Photo c. 1929

Original:

F 3483

27

SUNDAY

27

Three Jewish Mother Tongues

A Tel-Aviv born actor brings “new Palestinian poetry” to New York

“His Hebrew program numbers are especially likely to draw major attention, since it can safely be assumed that no actor in New York has ever rendered the Bible and modern poetry in Hebrew in so sublime a fashion.”

New York

Few among the immigrant New York audience expected to attend a trilingual event of the Theodor Herzl Society had ever encountered native speakers of modern Hebrew: Hence, it is no wonder the Aufbau assumed that the Hebrew part would constitute the greatest attraction. The featured artist of the evening, actor Albert Klar (Sklarz), born and raised in Tel Aviv, had begun his career in Berlin under renowned directors such as Reinhardt and Piscator. He had made his way to New York thanks to an invitation from the great Yiddish actor and director, Morris Schwartz, who hired him for his Yiddish Art Theater. The venue was Ansche Chesed, a synagogue on the Upper West Side founded by German immigrants.

TAGS: artists, Berlin, cultural life, February 27, Jewish Community, Journalism, Language skills, New York, Palestine, press article, prominent people, religion, Synagogues, Tel Aviv

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

“Hebräisch-Jiddisch-Deutsch,” Aufbau, Vol. 5, no. 3, p. 4.

22

TUESDAY

22

Coffee and cake in “Frankfurt on Hudson”

A New Life in Washington Heights, NYC

While enjoying coffee, cake, card games and a pleasant entertainment program, those present will have the opportunity to talk about their concerns.

New York

Between the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933 and the year 1938, about 16.000 Jews had immigrated to the United States. Many German Jews had made their home in New York, especially in the neighborhood of Washington Heights in northern Manhattan, gaining it the nickname “Frankfurt on the Hudson.” The event schedule of the German-Jewish Club lists a “Family evening with Kaffee-Klatsch” which offers “artistic and musical interludes.” The event is geared towards the needs of the older members of the community, as “a substitute for lodge, singing club, social club and other associations,” promising participants an opportunity to discuss what they had on their minds. In addition to cultural activities in German, the massive influx of German-speaking Jews to Washington Heights led to the establishment of numerous new synagogues, beginning with “Tikvoh Chadoshoh”—“New Hope.”

TAGS: advertisement, cultural life, displacement, emigration, February 22, immigration, Jewish Community, New York, public sphere, refugees, religion, Synagogues

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

“Februar-Programm des Deutsch-Jüdischen Clubs”, Aufbau, no. 3, 4

Original:

Vol. 3, no. 4: 3

11

FRIDAY

11

Sell the jewelry

Brothers in exile worry about their parents

“By the way, do you happen to have mom's jewelry with you? Because mom had asked me if you told me, because I advised them to sell it, so that they would have means to live.”

Chelles/New York

In February 1938, two brothers living in two different continents, Joszi Josefsberg in Europe (Chelles, France) and Arthur Josefsberg (New York) discuss in their correspondence how best to proceed to obtain affidavits to rescue their parents, who are still in Germany. But not only the fact that their parents’ emigration has not yet been secured worries Joszi—he is also concerned about their material survival. Such concerns were common among Jews who had left behind parents, siblings, and often spouses. Nazi efforts to force Jews out of numerous professions had made it harder and harder for those remaining in Germany to earn a living.

 

Several months after the 1938Projekt was completed, LBI learned that the letter was misdated while transcribed. Although it was written later than February 1938, LBI decided to keep it in the project under the same date because of the important content.

TAGS: affidavits, Chelles, economic persecution, emigration, family, family separation, February 11, immigration procedures, impoverishment, letter, New York, persecution of Jewish professionals

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Arthur Josefsberg Correspondence, AR 25590

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

Source available in English

7

MONDAY

7

Stateless and defenseless

Antisemitism in Romania

“Charles A. Davila, former Rumanian Minister to the United States, sailing yesterday on the Conte di Savoia, said the current antisemitic campaign was ‘just a passing phase.’ No program based on intolerance can bring a solution of the minority problem, he said.”

Iași

Already under the short-lived Goga-Cuza government, half of the Jews living in Romania had been condemned to statelessness by having their citizenship revoked. The city of Iași, where in 1855 Romania’s first Yiddish newspaper had been printed and in which Yiddish theater saw its beginnings with the opening of Goldfaden’s theater in 1876, had an especially high percentage of Jewish inhabitants. In February 1938, George Gedye, a reporter dispatched by the New York Times, reports on excesses against Jewish citizens by “a brutal and unscrupulous minority.”

TAGS: antisemitism, February 7, Iași, Journalism, JTA, media coverage, New York, politics, Romanian Jews, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

„Jassy Scene of Outrages, Observer Finds“

Source available in English

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.

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

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

BACK TO TOP

Curated by Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin © 2018 Leo Baeck Institute

Website and exhibition design by C&G Partners