Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews by Peter Longerich (booksvooks TXT) 📕

dropped slightly; within the SD a crisis in ‘Jewish policy’ was anticipated:

But it must not be forgotten that the possibilities of emigration have declined just as the pressure to emigrate has risen. The mounting exclusion of Jews from German economic

life, which had taken a very strong upturn under the pressure of the conditions outlined, is at the same time causing a drop in the income of the Jewish community, and of the political and aid organizations from which to a large extent the emigration funds for less affluent Jews and Jews without means are drawn.

On the other hand, however, ‘excessive reliance on foreign aid for the Jews contains the risk that emigration is made dependent on the goodwill of international aid organizations’. 21

But with the Anschluss of Austria, which increased the number of Jews living

under the Nazi regime by 200,000, the emigration chances of the ‘Old Reich’ Jews

became even smaller, and from the perspective of the Jewish department of the SD

the balance between ‘pressure to emigrate’ and possibilities of emigration would

inevitably be lost. However, if emigration fell again, the massively advancing

‘exclusion of Jews from economic life’ would lead inevitably to the impoverish-

ment of Jews still living in Germany, and thus to a further decline in emigration.

Added to this threatening dilemma was the fact that in March 1938, immediately

after the Anschluss of Austria, the Jewish Department of the SD learned of a

decision by Himmler that called the existing emigration policy into question and

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Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

clearly made the ‘Jewish experts’ of the SD deeply insecure. Having received an

application to enter Germany from a German Jewish woman living abroad, the

Reichsführer SS had ruled that the woman in question had permission to enter the

country, ‘in so far as she undertook to stay in Germany, as Germany did not want

to let go of the Jews, its most valuable collateral’. As this instruction ‘fundamen-

tally altered previous “Jewish policy” ’, the Jewish Department asked, in a docu-

ment intended for Himmler, for agreement on the following principles of

emigration policy:22

(a) Those who are to emigrate are

1. The anti-social Jewish proletariat without means . . .

2. other old and young Jews, frail and without means, to free up the

German welfare authorities for more worthwhile tasks and avoid

trouble spots

(b) Those who are not to emigrate are

1. all wealthy Jews

2. all Jews who are famous or otherwise suited to acting as collateral.

The draft, the suggestions of which contradicted existing emigration practice,

which had had the emigration of affluent Jews as its priority, was passed on to

Himmler on 31 March and returned to the SD Department II in early June, signed

by both Heydrich and Himmler, without a more detailed statement on the subject

from either of them. It was not until the beginning of July that the responsible

Gestapo specialist informed the Jewish department that Himmler had said the file

was now redundant. 23

In the spring and early summer of 1938, then, ‘Jewish policy’ faced a compli-

cated dilemma: in the medium term the forced emigration of the Austrian Jews

had to be to the detriment of the chances of emigration of the German Jews,

particularly since the mass exodus prompted strong resistance in the potential

countries of immigration. But that meant that because of the speedily advancing

process of eliminating the Jews from the economy a subproletarian class would

come into being, one which was barely capable of emigration and needed some-

how to be supported, and yet which was to be expelled as a matter of priority

according to the note sent by the Jewish Department in March. In the light of this,

a willingness grew within the Party not only to use economic measures, but

immediately to heighten ‘the pressure to emigrate’ through mass anti-Jewish

rioting.

The Riots of Spring 1938: Dry Run for the Pogrom

This new wave of riots began in Berlin in May 1938. The Berlin events deserve

particular attention, since it was here that the dialectic of agitation and subsequent

Deprivation of Rights and Forced Emigration, late 1937–9

103

large-scale state intervention typical of Nazi Jewish persecution occurred in

exemplary fashion, and it is possible to observe patterns of action that are already

very close to those of the November pogrom.

In May 1938 the Berlin Commissioner of Police, Count Helldorf, in response to

a request from Goebbels, presented a ‘Memorandum on the treatment of the

Jews in the Reich capital in all areas of public life’24 that contained suggestions for a programme of the almost complete segregation of the Berlin Jews. These

were predominantly suggestions that were to be realized over the coming years,

including labelling (by special ID cards), exclusion from public schools and cultural

and leisure institutions, the marking of Jewish businesses, the concentration of

Jews in particular areas of the city, and so on.

When the Jewish Department of the SD was briefly given access to the memo-

randum, it responded with alarm. 25 It raised the criticism that the memorandum did not embed the planned measures in a Reich-wide concept, and that it contained no references to emigration. Goebbels reacted to these objections, which

had been presented to him along with the memorandum, 26 by recommending that the points particularly characteristic of Berlin be turned into general Reich-wide

statutory regulations. 27 But he had by no means abandoned the idea of developing, in Berlin, a model for a future ‘Jewish policy’ throughout the Reich.

During the discussions about the memorandum, early in May 1938 individual

local groups of Gau Berlin had begun daubing Jewish shops at night and sticking

posters on them. 28 On 31 May, when the Gestapo arrested more than 300 Jews in a major raid on a café on the Kurfürstendamm, presumably in response to the

growing ‘popular anger’, Goebbels criticized this action as ‘a complete waste of an

opportunity’ and demanded more radical measures from the Police Commis-

sioner. 29 On 10 June, a day before he was presented with the memorandum, Goebbels invited the heads of the Berlin police to the Ministry of Propaganda,

where he took the opportunity to call for a more radical approach in the ‘Jewish

question’:30 ‘I am really going all the way. Without any sentimentality. The watchword is not law, but harassment. The Jews must leave Berlin. The police

will help me