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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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26

MONDAY

26

No new arrangement for siblings

Argentina tightens immigration requirements

“I always feel miserable when I have to write you letters destroying hopes on your side time and again. It makes me feel guilty, even though I can't do anything about it with the best will in the world.”

Buenos Aires/Berlin

Due to the perception prevalent since the middle of the 19th century that immigrants, preferably from Europe, were needed to populate the vast expanses of Argentina, the country’s immigration policy was comparatively generous. But already following WWI, the country’s needs for manpower were perceived as saturated, and by the 20s, administrative barriers to immigration were put up. With victims of Nazi persecution seeking refuge, immigration policy was tightened even more. Nevertheless, many thousands of German Jews as well as political adversaries of the regime found refuge in Argentina. Among them was Max Busse. His sister, Anna Nachtlicht, had heard about plans of the Argentine government to ease immigration and make it possible to request permits for siblings. Max immediately went to make inquiries, but the results were sobering. In this December 26th letter, he is forced to tell her that no such plans seem to exist. Relatives in France had offered the Nachtlichts to stay with them to wait for their visas for a third country. Perhaps, Max suggests, it would be easier to apply from there.

TAGS: Berlin, Buenos Aires, commentary, December 26, displacement, emigration, immigration, immigration procedures, letter, politics, refugees, visa application, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Nachtlicht Family Collection, AR 25031

Original:

Box 1, folder 7

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

22

TUESDAY

22

Banned from his art

Not suited for the advancement of German culture

“According to the results of my examination of the facts grounded in your personal circumstances, you do not possess the requisite aptness and reliability to participate in the advancement of German culture with responsibility towards the people and the Reich.”

Berlin/Dresden

The works of the Expressionist painter and graphic artist Bruno Gimpel were classified as “degenerate” during the Third Reich. Neither his voluntary service as an aide in a military hospital during World War I nor his “mixed marriage” with an “Aryan” woman spared him the usual repressive measures. On November 22nd, 1938 he received a letter from the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste, the Nazi authority in charge of the visual arts, which yet again denied him membership and banned him from all branches of his profession. In 1935, this institution of the Third Reich had once before rejected a request for admission by the Dresden artist. Since 1937, he had no choice but to make a living by giving drawing lessons to Jewish children.

TAGS: antisemitism, artists, Berlin, children, cultural life, document, Dresden, impoverishment, letter, Nazi policies, November 22, persecution, persecution of Jewish professionals, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Deutsches Historisches Museum

Collection:

Letter of Bruno Gimpel's membership application, issued by the president of the "Reichskammer der bildenden Künste" (the Third Reich's Imperial Chamber of Fine Arts)

Source available in English

24

MONDAY

24

Discrimination of mixed couples

Dismissal after 25 years in service

BERLIN

Ernst Patzer, an employee of the criminal investigation department of the Berlin police and seriously disabled in World War I, had lost his job in March 1938. The reason was the Public Service Law of 1937 which barred those married to Jews from public service – and Patzer had been married to a German-Jewish woman for 25 years. This additional move of the Nazi regime to push Jews and their relatives out of all spheres of life hit the Patzers very hard: he was the sole wage earner and, after 25 years of service, lost not only his position but also any claim to his pension. This letter of October 24, 1938, shows how step by step, Ernst Patzer was excluded from civic participation. In vain he wrote, as a former frontline soldier, to Hitler and Göring, in order to obtain continued employment with a government agency. The marriage lasted, and he finally found work as an auditor with AEG (a producer of electrical equipment). The Patzers survived National Socialism.

TAGS: Berlin, economic persecution, family, impoverishment, letter, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, October 24, segregation, welfare organizations, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Deutsches Historisches Museum

Collection:

Inv.Nr. Do 89/102II

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

6

TUESDAY

6

Don’t give up

The physician Max Wolf wishes to escape the imminent occupational ban

“According to your request, we confirm to you that from 1924 until the 30th of September 1938, you were a full member of the Society of Physicians in Vienna.”

Vienna

Dr. Max Wolf had already found his area of expertise years ago. Since 1922 Wolf practiced as a dermatologist in the Vienna Polyclinic as well as published numerous scientific essays in this field. The Vienna native had studied at the time of the First World War, and shortly thereafter he served on the Italian front as a M.A.S.H. doctor. Now, however, his career was about to end. After the “Anschluss,” the Nazis barred Jewish lawyers and judges in Austria from working. A ban for Jewish doctors was imminent. Meanwhile, Max and his wife Margarata Wolf prepared their emigration. The certificate about Wolf’s membership in the Viennese Society of Physicians makes it clear: Max Wolf did not intend to give up his profession while in exile.

TAGS: Anschluss, emigration, immigration, letter, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution of Jewish professionals, September 6, Vienna, WWI, WWI veteran

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Max and Margareta Wolf Collection, AR 10699

Original:

Box 1, folder 4

12

FRIDAY

12

Evicted

Housing woes reach Jews in Vienna

“The tenant, whose lease was terminated, is a Jew, and fellow tenants can no longer be expected to live side-by-side with him.”

VIENNA

Until 1938, about 60,000 Jews lived in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna, a fact that earned it the moniker “Isle of Matzos.” Between the end of World War I and the rise of “Austrofascism” in 1934, the Social-Democratic municipal government began to create public housing. By the time of the Anschluss in March 1938, there was a massive housing shortage in the city. The Nazis began to evict Jewish tenants from public housing. In light of the tendency of the police to ignore encroachment on Jewish property, it was easy for antisemitic private landlords to follow this example. Being a Jew was enough of a reason for eviction. When house owner Ludwig Munz filled in the eviction order form for his tenants Georg and Hermine Topra, he came up with as many as three reasons: his own purported need for the place, back rent, and consideration for the neighbors, who could not be expected to put up with having to live side-by-side with Jews.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, August 12, bureaucracy, document, Fascism, Jewish property, Nazi policies, persecution, Vienna, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Original:

Inv. No. 5171/2

3

WEDNESDAY

3

Incremental Aryanization

Jewish doctors lose their accreditation

“The number of Jews this new decree affects is estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000.”

Berlin

The percentage of Jews among German physicians was so high that, initially, a comprehensive employment ban did not seem expedient to the Nazis. Instead, they issued the “Administrative Order regarding the Admission of Jewish Physicians” of April 22, 1933, which excluded “non-Aryan” doctors from working with the Statutory Health Insurance Funds unless they began their practice before WWI or could prove that they or their fathers had been frontline soldiers in the war. Starting in 1937, Jews could no longer obtain doctoral degrees. In an August 3, 1938 notice, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency draws attention to the fourth supplementary regulation added to the Reich Citizenship Law, passed days earlier, according to which, effective September 30, Jewish physicians were to lose their medical licences.

TAGS: antisemitism, Aryanization, August 3, Berlin, Journalism, JTA, media coverage, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution of Jewish professionals, press article, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Purge of Lawyers, Dentists Expected to Follow Ousting of Jewish Doctors in Reich”

Source available in English

26

TUESDAY

26

The League for Human Rights

“These Dogs of Hitler and Göring will never succeed”

“The Jewish sense of charity will not die, and these bastards Hitler and Göring will never get their wish to see the emigrants die in the gutter.”

Brünn/Rishon LeZion

Hugo Jellinek was a man of many talents. The outbreak of WWI forced him to quit medical school in Vienna. As a soldier, he was severely wounded in Samarkand and fell in love with his nurse, who later became the mother of his three daughters. The couple settled down in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His young wife having died in 1926, he fled the Soviet Union in 1930 and ultimately returned to Vienna, where he utilized his knowledge of 8 languages as a translator and also worked as a freelance journalist. Thanks to a warning about impending arrest by the Nazis, he was able to escape to Brünn (Czechoslovakia) in June 1938. His eldest daughter, eighteen year-old Gisella Nadja, departed for Palestine the same day. In this colorful letter, Hugo shows fatherly concern for Nadja’s well-being, but also talks at length about the hardship he himself has faced as a refugee and reports that his cousin’s son is interned at the Dachau Concentration Camp. He mentions with gratification what he calls the “League,” probably referring to the aid center of the “League for Human Rights,” which was looking after the refugees, defying Hitler’s sinister goals. Ultimately, however, the most important thing for him was the fight for a country of one’s own.

TAGS: advocates, Brünn, children, commentary, Concentration Camps, Dachau, displacement, emigration, family, family separation, imprisonment, July 26, Language skills, letter, Palestine, refugees, Rishon LeZion, welfare organizations, WWI, WWI veterans, Youth Aliyah, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Letters, Documents and Images of the Jellinek Family Confronting the Holocaust, created by Paulette Jellinek

Collection:

Letter from Hugo Jellinek to Gisella Nadja Jellinek

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

27

MONDAY

27

Deportation within 24 hours

The situation is precarious for Jewish immigrants in Yugoslavia

“I am telling you one thing: antisemitism won't stop in Germany, or in Austria, or in Hungary, or in Romania, or Yugoslavia, if no miracle will happen or people will be stirred up by a catastrophe.”

BELGRADE/NEW YORK

While antisemitism was by no means a new phenomenon in Yugoslavia—as a matter of fact, especially since World War I, the entire political spectrum found reasons to attack Jews—under the impact of events in Germany, the situation deteriorated in the 1930s. Fritz Schwed from Nuremberg was under no illusions regarding his and his family’s temporary refuge. In this lengthy letter to his old friend from Nuremberg days, Fritz Dittmann, who had fled to New York, Schwed describes the dismal situation of emigrants in Yugoslavia, who are routinely expelled with just 24 hours’ notice. Even older people who have resided in the country for decades are not exempt from this cruel policy. Emigrants are forbidden to work, and when they are caught flouting the prohibition, they have to be prepared for immediate expulsion. Concluding that “There no longer is room for German Jews in Yugoslavia, and it seems to me, nowhere else in Europe, either,” Schwed explores possibilities to immigrate to Australia or South America.

TAGS: antisemitism, Belgrade, displacement, emigration, expulsion, immigration, impoverishment, June 27, letter, New York, Nuremberg, politics, refugees, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Gerda Dittmann Collection, AR 10484

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

26

SUNDAY

26

Shattered existence

How does one come to terms with National Socialism?

New York

The first major rupture in artist Gustav Wolf’s biography had occurred during World War I. He had volunteered for frontline duty and was badly injured. His brother Willy was killed in combat. The works in which he processed his wartime experiences leave no doubt about his feelings. Instead of glorifying war, he shows its horrors. His confrontation with antisemitism during and after the war led him to an increased awareness of his own Jewishness. In 1920 he accepted a professorship at the Baden Art School in Karlsruhe, trying to realize his ideal of an equitable partnership between teacher and student. After a year, he quit this “dead activity,” referring to the school as “an academy of schemers.” In 1929, he designed the set for Fritz Lang’s silent film “Woman in the Moon,” an early science-fiction movie. Upon the Nazi rise to power in 1933, he canceled his memberships with all the artists’ associations to which he had belonged. In his letter to the Baden Secession, he explained his decision with the following words: “I must first get my bearings again. The foundations of my existence have been called into question and shaken.” After extended stays in Switzerland, Italy and Greece, he returned to Germany in 1937. In February 1938, he boarded a ship to New York. June 26, 1938 was his 49th birthday.

TAGS: antisemitism, artists, emigration, June 26, Karlsruhe, New York, photo, prominent people, schools, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Portrait of Gustav Wolf with a pipe, 1938. Gustav Wolf Collection AR 3676

Original:

F 3513

25

SATURDAY

25

Liver dumplings, Christmas stollen, matzo balls

National Socialism destroys what was grown over centuries

Krumbach

In Anni Buff’s personal recipe book, dated June 25, 1938, traditional Bavarian dishes, like liver dumplings, Christmas stollen, and cottage cheese doughnuts, certainly outweighed traditional Jewish ones, such as matzo balls. The Jewish community in her native Krumbach was well integrated. Since its peak in the early 19th century, when it constituted about 46% of the population, its ranks had declined considerably, and by 1933, only 1,5% of Krumbachers were Jewish. In spite of this negligible presence of Jews, National Socialism with its rabidly antisemitic message took hold fast, and even before it became national policy, Jews in the little town were harassed by SA men. By 1938, the abuse had become so unbearable that Anni’s father Julius, who dealt in upholstery material, began to explore possibilities to find a new home on safer shores, such as the US, the Dominican Republic, or Shanghai. Not even the fact that he had lost a brother in WWI and had himself served in the 16. Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment—along with a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler—did anything to improve his standing with Nazi authorities.

TAGS: antisemitism, document, economic persecution, emigration, Jewish Community, June 25, Krumbach, Nazi policies, persecution, prominent people, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Anni Krantz Collection, AR 11284

Original:

Box 1, folder 2

2

THURSDAY

2

No Jews allowed

Bad Ischl restricts Jews to specific hotels

„Ghetto Hotels to be established at Austrian Resort“

BAD ISCHL

In 19th century, the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith began to publish lists of spas and hotels at which Jewish guests were not welcome. Some resorts even advertised themselves as judenfrei (“free of Jews”). After World War I, the phenomenon known as Bäder-Antisemitismus (“spa antisemitism”) increased, and with the Nazi rise to power in 1933, it became official policy. By 1935, Jews had been effectively banned from the Northern German bathing resorts, and from spas in the interior of the country by 1937. It was not until the Anschluss in March 1938 that Jews were pushed out of Austrian spas as well. Bad Ischl and other locations in the Salzkammergut region were particularly popular with Jews, to the point that in 1922, the Austrian-Jewish writer Hugo Bettauer quipped that “it caused a stir when people suspected of being Aryans showed up.” In a notice from June 2, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that at the behest of the Nazi commissioner in charge, Jews were to be “segregated in Jewish hotels and pensions” and were no longer permitted to attend cultural events in Bad Ischl.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, Bad Ischl, cultural life, Journalism, JTA, June 2, media coverage, prominent people, public sphere, segregation, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Ghetto Hotels to Be Established at Austrian Resort”

Source available in English

24

TUESDAY

24

Soldier, pacifist, cabaret artist

Fritz Grünbaum interned at Dachau

“I see nothing, absolutely nothing. I must have accidentally gotten myself into National Socialist culture.”

DACHAU

After three decades of making his fellow Austrians laugh, cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum’s career was brought to an abrupt end by the Anschluss. His politics alone would have sufficed to make him intolerable for the new regime: Grünbaum had returned from action in World War I not only a decorated soldier but also an avowed pacifist. As for Nazism, he did not mince words. Since 1933, he had been getting more political, and when during a 1938 performance a power outage caused the stage lights to go out, he commented glibly, “I see nothing, absolutely nothing. I must have accidentally gotten myself into National Socialist culture.” His last performance at the famous cabaret “Simpl” in Vienna just two days before the Anschluss was followed by an artistic ban on Jews. Grünbaum and his wife Lilly, a niece of Theodor Herzl, tried to flee to Czechoslovakia but were turned back at the border. On May 24, he was interned at the Dachau concentration camp. Grünbaum was also known as a serious art collector, mostly of modernist Austrian works, and a librettist.

TAGS: Anschluss, artists, Concentration Camps, cultural life, Dachau, imprisonment, May 24, persecution of Jewish professionals, photo, politics, prominent people, refugees, Vienna, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Original:

Fritz Grünbaum at roll call in Dachau; Inv. No. 24631

23

MONDAY

23

Faster and faster

Leo Baeck turns 65

“And this year will be a difficult one; the wheel is turning faster and faster. It will really test our nerves and our capacity for careful thought.”

Berlin

In April 1938, Rabbi Leo Baeck, the president of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany and as such the main representative of German Jewry, had presciently written, “And this year will be a difficult year; the wheel is turning faster and faster. It will really test our nerves and our capacity for careful thought.” Baeck had been an army chaplain in World War I and as a patriot must have been extremely pained by the persecution of German Jewry. With large parts of the community reduced to poverty, Jewish rights curtailed, Jews pushed to the margins of society, and no prospects for improvement, Rabbi Baeck’s 65th birthday on May 23 probably was quite a somber affair.

TAGS: antisemitism, Berlin, commentary, economic persecution, impoverishment, Jewish Community, May 23, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, photo, prominent people, rabbis, religion, segregation, welfare organizations, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Lucian Loeb, Leo Baeck in his library, Berlin, 1935. Leo Baeck Collection, AR 66

Original:

F 12073

20

FRIDAY

20

Pitiless

Göring calls for a strict anti-Jewish boycott

“(...) a ‘pitiless anti-Jewish boycott’ until the last Jew is forced to emigrate from Austria.”

Vienna

In today’s release, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the Deutsches Volksblatt in Vienna urges a “pitiless anti-Jewish boycott.” This, the paper argues, is the line demanded by Hermann Göring in his last speech in Vienna. Highly decorated in WWI as a fighter pilot, Göring had become a member of the NSDAP early on and was a member of its inner circle. He had established the Gestapo in 1933, was commander-in-chief of the German airforce (Luftwaffe) and as Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan, he also wielded power over the German economy. Other than that, he is known for his pivotal role in bringing about the Anschluss and his passion for collecting art, which he often acquired in dubious ways.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, economic persecution, Hate speech, Journalism, JTA, May 20, media coverage, Nazi policies, Nazi propaganda, prominent people, public sphere, Vienna, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“‘Pitiless Boycott’ of Jews Urged by Vienna Paper”

Source available in English

11

WEDNESDAY

11

Antisemitic premises

Hungarian nobleman criticizes a proposed bill that would restrict freedom of Jews

“The bill restricting Jews in the nation's economic and cultural life was sharply attacked in the Chamber of Deputies today by Count Aponyi [sic], who declared that apart from its inhumanity it contained unjustified libels and reflections against the Hungarian Jews.”

Budapest

From its inception, the Horthy government had made no secret of its antisemitism. As a matter of fact, in 1920, Hungary was the first European country after World War I to introduce a numerus clausus to limit Jews’ access to higher education. First in reaction to territorial and demographic losses in WWI, later in the wake of the Great Depression, there was a striking proliferation of fascist and right wing extremist movements in Hungary, some calling themselves “national-socialist.” One such group was the rabidly antisemitic Arrow Cross Party, founded in 1935. In 1938 a bill was introduced to restrict the economic and cultural freedom of Jews in the country. This May 11 report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency describes Count Apponyi’s vehement critique of the bill in the Chamber of Deputies. Dr. Istvan Milotaj, deputy of a right-wing party, defended the bill, claiming that Jews could not be assimilated and that even figures such as Disraeli and Blum had “spiritually remained Jews.”

TAGS: antisemitism, Budapest, economic persecution, Fascism, Great Depression, Journalism, JTA, May 11, media coverage, persecution, politics, prominent people, segregation, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Bill Curbing Jews Assailed in Hungarian Parliament”

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.

24

THURSDAY

24

An ordinary eulogy in a time of immeasurable loss

Max Kirschner honors Hedwig Waller

Frankfurt am Main

A mere 20 years had passed since the end of World War I, during which Dr. Max Kirschner, a Frankfurt physician, had been decorated with the Iron Cross—remarkably, for extending aid to enemy infantrymen. Yet the fact that Kirschner had fought in the War as one of 100,000 German Jews, 12,000 of whom lost their lives, did not in the long run improve his standing with the authorities. In his eulogy for Hedwig Wallach, scion of an old Frankfurt family, he praised the deceased’s quiet devotion to her husband, her lively interest in her children and the quiet bravery with which she had borne her illness.

TAGS: Frankfurt am Main, March 24, persecution of Jewish professionals, Speech, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Berlin

Original:

Speech of Max Kirschner on the occasion of Hedwig Wallach's funeral, Kirschner Family Collection

4

FRIDAY

4

Atmosphere of hopelessness

A once-celebrated public health official writes in his diary

„One company after another founded by Jews is ,aryanized‘ – so goes the euphemistic term; Jews are being forced out of the other businesses and pushed into the arms of the welfare agencies. The Sperrmark is rising uncontrollably, so that the emigration of the few capitalists is being made even harder.“

Berlin

“May you continue for a long time to be granted the opportunity to dedicate your tried and tested skills to the welfare and benefit of the city.” With these words, Berlin mayor Heinrich Sahm congratulated Prof. Erich Seligmann, Director of Scientific Institutes at the Public Health Department and an eminent authority on issues of public health, on his 25th year of service in 1932. Barely half a year later, in March 1933, Seligmann was dismissed, despite his recognized scientific achievements and his outstanding knowledge in the field of epidemics control, which he had demonstrated inter alia as a staff surgeon in World War I. In this diary entry dated February 4, 1938, Seligmann writes about “widespread confiscation of passports from Jews” and “an atmosphere of hopelessness.” Seligmann was planning a trip to Rome, where he and his wife Elsa hoped to meet their son Rolf.

TAGS: Aryanization, Berlin, commentary, diary, economic persecution, family, family separation, February 4, persecution of Jewish professionals, prominent people, Rome, WWI, WWI veteran

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Erich Seligmann Collection, AR 4104

Original:

DM 79, Diary 2

24

MONDAY

24

The Fifth Column

Antisemitic decrees in Romania

Foreign Minister Micescu declared in Geneva that the the Romanian government does not intend to bring the Jewish resp. the minorities problem before the League of Nations, since Romania is not in need of advice regarding its domestic politics from abroad, and that the Minorities Treaties refer only to those nationalities living in separate territories which used to be part of the Hapsburg Monarchy and do not apply to Jews residing in the Old Kingdom.

Geneva/Bucharest

In the 78th and last year of its existence, the orthodox weekly Der Israelit reports on measures of the anti-semitic, pro-German Goga-Cuza government in Romania: The country’s Jews were subjected to various chicaneries and occupational bans similar to those in Germany. As a result of gains in territory and population in WWI, about 30% of Romanians belonged to minority groups, who were seen as a “Fifth Column.” Jews especially were the object of fears and suspicions which easily turned into violent hatred.

TAGS: antisemitism, Bucharest, Geneva, January 24, Journalism, League of Nations, media coverage, persecution of Jewish professionals, politics, press article, Romanian Jews, WWI

SOURCE

Institution:

Compact Memory, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main

Collection:

“Die neue jüdische Lage in Rumänien.” Der Israelit (Frankfurt am Main)

Original:

Vol. 1938, No. 4: 6–7

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