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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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10

SATURDAY

10

Between a rock and a hard place

Fears mount near the border between Czechoslovakia and Poland

“Here with us near the border it is especially bad. In Ostrau alone, 8,000 Jews of Polish nationality were expelled within 3 days.”

Mährisch Ostrau, Moravia

Lilly and Sim, a married couple in Mährisch Ostrau (Moravia), had so far been spared major hardship – at least on a personal level. But fear was mounting in the city near the Czech-Polish border because new rumors came up on a daily basis about which cities the Germans would occupy next. The worst news was about the fate of fellow Jews: in this December 10th, 1938, letter, Lilly tells her friends abroad about no fewer than 8,000 Jews of Polish extraction, who within three days had been forced to leave the city, some of them after having lived there for 20, 30 or even 40 years. Her greatest wish – getting out – was hard to realize, and she simply could not face joining a refugee transport to a random country “with an impossible climate” to work as farm hands. Meanwhile, Sim was facing a promotion, but given the total uncertainty of the future – with an agreement between Czechoslovakia and Poland pending, the couple did not even know which nationality they were at this point – the prospect did not occasion much joy.

TAGS: antisemitism, commentary, December 10, displacement, emigration, expulsion, letter, Mährisch Ostrau, Munich Agreement, Polish-born Jews, refugees

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Willy Nordwind Collection, AR 10551

Original:

Box 1, folder 32

19

SATURDAY

19

What is already bad gets worse

A dwindling circle of friends

Two weeks ago, the old Goldmanns disappeared without a peep. We don’t know where they are.

BERLIN

The Intrators had been forced to flee once before: the anti-Jewish climate in their native country, Poland, had caused Rachel (Rosa) and Jakob in 1905 to make Berlin their home. Their son Alexander, born the same year, later became a successful concert violinist. Gerhard, five years his junior, went to law school, but the Nazis had hardly been brought to power when they began to systematically push Jews out of the legal professions. In light of the hopelessness of pursuing a juridical career in Germany, the 27-year-old emigrated to the US in 1937. Now he was making massive efforts to bring his parents. On November 19th, his father reported on the arrival of the affidavit which was needed for immigration. However, he added, they did not expect to receive their visas any time soon. Meanwhile, their circle of relatives and friends was getting smaller and smaller. Some were being forced by the Nazis to return to Poland, others simply disappeared.

TAGS: affidavits, antisemitism, Berlin, displacement, emigration, family, family separation, immigration, immigration procedures, letter, musicians, Nazi policies, November 19, persecution of Jewish professionals, Polenaktion, Polish-born Jews, refugees, visa application, Zbaszyn

SOURCE

Institution:

Courtesy of Joanne Intrator

Collection:

Letter of Jakob Intrator to Gerhard Intrator

7

MONDAY

7

Murder in Paris

An act of despair

Paris

On November 3rd, 1938, Herszel Grynszpan, a young Jew of Polish extraction, had received a message saying that his parents and two siblings had been expelled from their home in Hannover to Poland. The Polish parliament had recently passed a law according to which citizens who had spent five or more years abroad could be stripped of their citizenship. Fearing to be left irrevocably with over 70,000 Polish Jews, the Nazi regime had deported about 17,000 of them just days earlier. Herszel, who had managed to enter France in 1936, was living with his uncle and aunt at this point. Upset about the fate of his fellow countrymen, he walked into the German embassy in Paris on November 7th, shot to death a German career diplomat, 29 year-old Ernst vom Rath, and was arrested immediately.

TAGS: antisemitism, children, expulsion, family, family separation, Hannover, imprisonment, kristallnacht, Nazi policies, November 7, November Pogrom, Paris, persecution, photo, Polenaktion, Polish-born Jews, politics, prominent people, refugees, violence, Zbaszyn

SOURCE

Institution:

Bundesarchiv

Collection:

Photograph of Herszel Grynzspan

Original:

Bild 146-1988-078-08

29

SATURDAY

29

The expulsion of Polish Jews

Die Vertreibung polnischer Juden

COLOGNE

Fearing a massive influx of Polish Jews from Nazi-annexed Austria, the Polish parliament had passed a law in March 1938 allowing for the possibility of revoking the citizenship of anyone who had lived outside the country for at least five years. On October 15th, a decree was published according to which only persons with a valid control stamp in their passports would be allowed into the country. The decree was to go into effect on October 30th. In light of the presence of well over 70,000 Polish Jews in Reich territories, the regime acted fast: within the framework of the so-called “Polenaktion” (“Polish Action”), from October 27 to 29, thousands of Polish Jews were expelled by the Nazis. Many of these Polish citizens had little or no connection to their country of origin and they had nothing and no one to return to. One of the victims of the decree was Ida, the housekeeper of the Schönenberg family in Cologne. On October 29th, Dr. Schönenberg, Ida’s employer for the past three years, writes to his son Leopold in Palestine and describes how she had to report to the police with barely 3 1/2 hours prior warning. Ida was a native of Cologne and had a fiancé in Germany.

TAGS: Anschluss, Cologne, expulsion, family, family separation, letter, Nazi policies, October 29, Palestine, persecution, Polenaktion, Polish-born Jews, politics, Zbaszyn

SOURCE

Institution:

NS-Dokumentationszentrum der Stadt Köln

Original:

Best. 46

7

FRIDAY

7

A household in 11 boxes

Sending the household ahead

Fee for official customs clearance on site and SS supervision committee three 1/2 days: RM 75

VIENNA

Already a few months back, the dentist Max Isidor Mahl and his wife, Etta, a textile worker, had submitted their visa application to the American consulate in Vienna. Ever since, they had been waiting. Etta was a native of Poland, Max Isidor a native of Ukraine. The American immigration quotas for both these countries were already filled. But time was of the essence: this bill shows that already in October, the Mahls had their entire household shipped to the United States in order to bring it to safety. Transportation from Vienna to Hamburg and then, on a freighter, to New York was expensive. It cost almost 800 Reichsmarks for the couple to send the 11 boxes containing their household effects out of the country.

 

TAGS: Anschluss, bureaucracy, document, emigration, immigration, immigration procedures, October 7, Polish-born Jews, refugees, Vienna, visa application

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Lucie Blau Family Collection, AR 25419

Original:

Box 1, folder 15

24

SATURDAY

24

Stateless from now on

The number of denaturalizations grows

Berlin

Alfred Basch, born September 27th, 1915, in Magdeburg, was henceforth stateless. With the publication of his name in the Gazette of the German Reich, he was deprived of German citizenship. The basis for this was the “Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Deprivation of German Citizenship.” It had been valid for five years. Yet in recent months the number of denaturalizations had clearly risen, often affecting persons and families, who after World War I thanks to the comparably liberal naturalization policy of the Weimar Republic, had become German citizens. On the basis of this law, in September 1938 alone, 116 families became stateless from one day to the next. And that wasn’t enough. The publication of their full names and places, as well as dates of birth, set them up as targets for discrimination, making it impossible for them to go on living a normal life, even if only temporarily.

TAGS: antisemitism, Berlin, document, family, immigration, Magdeburg, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution, Polish-born Jews, public sphere, September 24, Weimar Republic, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Gesamtverzeichnis der Ausbürgerungslisten, 1933-1938 : nach dem amtlichen Abdruck des "Reichsanzeigers"

Original:

f JX 4231 S8 M5 Copy 1

2

WEDNESDAY

2

Traitor!

Harsh judgment of Schuschnigg

“As I said before […] I consider Schuschnigg a traitor and if he were to fall into my hands today, instead of Hitler's, his fate would be even crueler.”

Paris

“A traitor!” The journalist and author Joseph Bornstein left no doubt with regard to his opinion of the former Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg. Indeed, with friendly but very pointed words, he made it clear in a letter to his friend Bosch that Bosch’s “faith in the good faith in Schuschnigg” is totally wrong. Many Austrian Jews had long placed their hopes in Schuschnigg, who had tried as Chancellor to defend Austria from the influence of National-Socialist Germany. After the sender of this letter, Joseph Bornstein, lost his German citizenship in 1933, he immigrated to Paris. There he very quickly joined the intellectual milieu of other German journalists and authors in exile. He continued his collaboration with Leopold Schwarzschild and was active as editor-in-chief for the intellectual journal “Das neue Tagebuch” (The New Diary).

TAGS: commentary, displacement, emigration, immigration, Jewish Community, Journalism, letter, Paris, Polish-born Jews, politics, prominent people, refugees, September 2

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Joseph Bornstein Collection, AR 4082

Original:

Box 2, folder 1

15

FRIDAY

15

Something to brighten your Sabbath

A note to the rabbi of a beleaguered congregation

Chemnitz

After the prohibition of Jewish settlement in Chemnitz in the Middle Ages, it was not until the late 1860s that Jews could legally settle in the Saxonian city. By the end of the 19th century, the community had grown so large that its synagogue on Neugasse 3 no longer sufficed, and in 1899, Rabbi Dr. Mühlfelder festively inaugurated a new building at Stephansplatz. A number of smaller prayer rooms accommodated the religious needs of the Eastern European Jews who had been coming to the city since the beginning of World War I and over time began to constitute more than half of the city’s Jewish population. On a Friday in what must have been the congregation’s most difficult year to date, a woman named Gerda gave this photograph of the Synagogue to the congregation’s Rabbi, Dr. Hugo Fuchs, with a note expressing her hope that it might brighten his Sabbath.

TAGS: Chemnitz, Jewish Community, Jewish holidays, July 15, photo, Polish-born Jews, rabbis, religion, Synagogues, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Chemnitz

Collection:

Exterior view of the Chemnitz Synagogue and street scene

Original:

F 1929

Chronology of major events in 1938

The Évian conference concludes without results

Lord Winterton speaking at the Evian Conference. Ullstein bild / Getty Images.

The Évian Conference concludes without results. Population density and unemployment, saturation with refugees, the economic Depression, and the fear that antisemitism might rise with the arrival of more Jews are among the excuses presented by the participants in the Évian-Konferenz for their refusal to take in more refugees (see entry from July 6). Only the Dominican Republic, the tiny island nation in the Caribbean, is ready to welcome additional refugees—in exchange for a substantial sum of money. Great Britain proposes the territories it has occupied in East Africa as a destination for a small number of refugees. The United States are willing to accept refugees as long as the total number does not exceed their regular quota of 27,370 German and Austrian immigrants. The conference concludes on July 15 without producing any real hope for those whose lives depend on escaping the Nazi regime. One of the few concrete steps to arise from the conference is a new commission, the Comité d’Évian, which is tasked with negotiating the conditions of Jewish emigration with German authorities.

 

View chronology of major events in 1938

8

SUNDAY

8

The Trial

Jewish Cultural Association features a play about Arab-Jewish reconciliation

Berlin

After Polish-born Shulamit Gutgeld’s return to Palestine from several years of study in Berlin with the greats of German theater, Erwin Piscator and Max Reinhardt, she changed her name to Bat Dori – “daughter of my generation” or “contemporary.” And that she certainly was in a very conscious way: her plays were highly political and attuned to the events of the day—so much so that the British mandatory authorities forbade the performance of her 1936 play, “The Trial,” which called for peace between Jews and Arabs and was critical of the British. The Berlin branch of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, however, decided to produce the play. The document shown here is an invitation to the May 8 performance at the Kulturbund-Theater on Kommandantenstraße under the direction of Fritz Wisten.

TAGS: artists, Berlin, cultural life, document, Kulturbund, May 08, Palestine, Polish-born Jews, politics, prominent people

SOURCE

Institution:

New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum

Original:

Invitation to the premiere of The Trial, a play by [Shulamit] Bat-Dori, adapted by Herbert Friedenthal, at the Theater of the Jewish Cultural Federation, Kommandantenstrasse 57; CJA, 1 D Gr 1, Nr. 10, #13322, Bl. 13

30

WEDNESDAY

30

No coming back

Polish parliament passes a new bill against Jewish returnees

“The law will affect thousands of Jews living in Austria, Germany, Palestine and elsewhere.”

Warsaw

In the wake of Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany, the Polish parliament (“Sejm”), fearing the return of up to 20,000 Polish citizens from Austria, passed a bill according to which Poles who had lived abroad for more than five years were to lose their citizenship. The situation of the Jews had improved somewhat under the Piłsudski government (1926–1935), but after the marshal’s death, especially in the atmosphere created by the “Camp of National Unity” (from 1937 onward), antisemitism was resurgent. Universities applied quotas to Jewish students and introduced “ghetto benches” for them, Jews were held responsible for the Great Depression, Jewish business were boycotted and looted, and hundreds of Jews were physically harmed, some killed.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, economic persecution, Great Depression, Journalism, JTA, March 30, media coverage, Polenaktion, Polish-born Jews, politics, public sphere, violence, warsaw, Zbaszyn

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Poland Enacts Law Denationalizing Thousands Living Abroad”

Source available in English

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.

14

MONDAY

14

Kibbutz Giv’at Brenner

German Jews find a new home in Palestine

Giv'at Brenner

Kibbutz Giv’at Brenner was established in 1928 by young immigrants from Poland and Lithuania who were soon joined by a group from Germany. As in many other kibbutzim, conditions at Giv’at Brenner were initially harsh, causing some members to leave. In the 1930s, due to the absorption of new immigrants, the kibbutz grew. Over time, a thriving agriculture and various industrial enterprises, including a cannery and a factory for irrigation equipment developed. The picture presented here shows the carpentry shop of the kibbutz in 1938. A unique feature was Beit Yesha, a vegetarian convalescent home established in the mid thirties—the first of its kind in a kibbutz.

TAGS: emigration, February 14, Giv'at Brenner, immigration, Palestine, photo, Polish-born Jews, refugees, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Manager of cabinet making factory at Givath Brenner Kibbutz, Gertude van Tijn Collection

Original:

F 19577

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