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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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24

SATURDAY

24

At the mercy of Nazi authorities

Bureaucratic requirements for emigration

“At the request of Mr. Ernst Aldor, born 05.30.1904 in Wr. Neustadt [a district of Vienna], right of residence in Wr. Neustadt in Vienna, resident at 3 Weimarer Street, it is hereby confirmed, for the purpose of obtaining his American immigration visa, that no adverse information is on record against him.”

Vienna

Not long after power was handed to the Nazis, the motto “Police – your friends and helpers,” which already during the Weimar Republic often reflected a hope rather than reality, lost any hint of meaning for opponents of the regime and for the country’s Jews. A law introduced as early as February 1933 stipulated that police officers who resorted to the use of firearms against people perceived as enemies of the regime were to go unpunished. As part of an unholy trinity, in tandem with the SA and SS, the police quickly became an instrument of Nazi terror. Therefore, obtaining a police clearance certificate was probably not the easiest of the requirements of would-be immigrants applying for US visas. On December 24th, 1938, this important document was issued to Ernst Aldor, a resident of Vienna.

TAGS: December 24, document, emigration, immigration procedures, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, Vienna, visa application, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Renee Aldor Collection, AR 10986

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

Source available in English

22

SATURDAY

22

Resistance by Jews in exile

In the United States, Toni Sender warns of the dangers of National Socialism

BERLIN

Since 1920, Toni Sender was a delegate of the Social Democratic Party in the parliament of the Weimar Republic. Early on, she began to oppose National Socialism and warned of the dangers it posed to democracy. Exposed to hostility and threats as a social democrat and a Jew, she fled in March 1933 first to Czechoslovakia and then to Belgium, continuing her struggle against the Nazis in exile. In 1935, she emigrated to the United States. There too, as an orator and journalist, she tried to inform the public abroad about the criminal character of National Socialism. As this letter from the Secret State Police (Gestapo) to the investigating judge at the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), dated October 22nd, 1938, demonstrates, her resistance did not go unnoticed.

TAGS: antisemitism, Berlin, displacement, emigration, letter, October 22, persecution, politics, public sphere, refugees, resistance, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Die Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

Original:

Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde; R3018 NJ-15413

28

WEDNESDAY

28

“For the last time”

Farewell at a Bar Mitzvah

They celebrated nonetheless. Many of the families with members whose Bar Mitzvah was taking place during this September would not be in Berlin much longer. However, on this day they all came together in the synagogue for one last time.

BERLIN

It was more of a wistful farewell than a joyful Bar Mitzvah: Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky seemed to be fully conscious of the situation in which his congregants at the Prinzregentenstraße Synagogue in Berlin found themselves. In his address on the occasion of the Bar Mitzvah of 15 teenagers, he captured the mood of this day of celebration: everything clearly bears “the stamp ‘for the last time.’” Many families, whose sons celebrated their Bar Mitzvah on this day, sat on packed suitcases. One family was departing the very next day. The synagoge, in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf neighborhood, had been one of the only synagogues first built during the Weimar Republic. It had also quickly developed into a center of Jewish culture. Now, at the end of September 1938, it was clear to the rabbi that his congregation was facing major changes: “In a few years, much of what’s here today will be gone and perhaps also forgotten.”

TAGS: Bar Mitzvah, Berlin, cultural life, emigration, Jewish Community, public sphere, rabbis, refugees, religion, September 28, Sermon, Synagogues, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Gerhard Walter Collection, AR 11826

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

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

21

WEDNESDAY

21

Anti-Semitic Postcards

The circulation of stereotypes makes them socially acceptable

GERMANY

“He offered a steed, you bought a hack, the Jews are a deceitful pack” is what is written on this postcard, postmarked on September 21, 1938. Mocking, anti-Semitic postcards were common already during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic and, as an easily replicable means, gained influence on the way people thought. One of the oldest stereotypes may be that of the greedy Jew. In whatever part of the economy Jews were active, anti-Semites would impute usury and fraud. The use of anti-Semitic postcards to impart private messages gave anti-Jewish stereotypes far-reaching societal acceptance and thus created the breeding ground for the solution of the “Jewish question,” which was soon to become a terrible reality.

TAGS: antisemitism, Hate speech, persecution, postcard, propaganda, September 21, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Deutsches Historisches Museum

Original:

Anti-Semitic Postcard; Inv.Nr.: PK 96/417

10

WEDNESDAY

10

Alfred Döblin in exile

Now a citizen of France, the author celebrates his 60th birthday

Paris

Barely one month after the collapse of the Weimar Republic, a “democracy without a user’s manual,” as he called it in “The German Masked Ball,” and one day after the Reichstag fire, the writer and Social Democrat Alfred Döblin left Germany. After a brief interlude in Switzerland, he moved to Paris with his wife and three sons in September 1933. Occasional publications with the German-language “publisher-in-exile” (Exilverlag) Querido (Amsterdam) yielded minimal income, and Döblin’s lack of French language skills were a major stumbling block to his gaining a foothold professionally. From 1936 on, the Döblins were French citizens. The 10th of August was the author’s 60th birthday.

TAGS: artists, August 10, displacement, emigration, family, immigration, impoverishment, Language skills, Paris, photo, prominent people, refugees, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Portrait of Alfred Döblin

Original:

F 2087A

26

DONNERSTAG

26

Paperwork

Emigrants must overcome a sea of bureaucratic and financial hurdles

LÖRRACH

Since 1937, Lina and Siegmund Günzburger of Lörrach in southwest Germany and their son, Herbert, had been preparing their paperwork for emigration. The requirements amounted to nothing short of a nightmare. Prospective emigrants had to procure numerous personal documents, letters of recommendation, and affidavits. They were also required to prepare an inventory of all their belongings and to document that they had paid all their taxes. Apparently, the required documents also included this copy of the marriage certificate for Siegmund’s grandparents. Especially perfidious was the so-called “Reich Flight Tax.” Originally introduced in the waning days of the Weimar Republic to prevent capital flight in reaction to the government’s austerity policy, under the Nazis, it became a tool to cynically punish the Jews for leaving a country that was doing everything it could to make it unbearable for them to stay.

TAGS: affidavits, antisemitism, bureaucracy, displacement, document, economic persecution, emigration, family, immigration procedures, Lörrach, May 26, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, refugees, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Herbert Guenzburger Collection, AR 5947

Original:

Box 1, folder 2

5

SATURDAY

5

Homosexual Relations with a Jew

A tennis star is arrested

Berlin

The handsome, blond, and athletic scion of a noble family in Lower Saxony, Gottfried von Cramm had all the features sought by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, the two-time winner of the French Open tennis tournament (1934 and 1936) explicitly refused to be used as a poster boy for Nazi ideology and never joined the NSDAP. After repeatedly spurning opportunities to ingratiate himself with the regime, it was another issue that got him into trouble. On March 5, 1938, von Cramm was arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which prohibited homosexual conduct. He was alleged to have had a relationship with a Galician Jew, the actor Manasse Herbst. Reformers had nearly succeeded in overturning the statute during the Weimar republic, but the Nazis tightened it after their ascent to power.

TAGS: Berlin, March 5, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, photo, prominent people, Sports, Weimar Republic

SOURCE

Institution:

Das Digitale Bildarchiv des Bundesarchivs

Collection:

Gottfried von Cramm (l.) with Irish opponent George Lyttleton Rogers before their Davis Cup match in Berlin, June 1932.

Original:

Bild 102-13555

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