East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The Case of Paul Merker

Abstract

Before 1945 most German communists, and after 1945 most East German communists, viewed 'the Jewish question', that is, the whole complex of anti-semitism, the Holocaust and the place of the Jews in Germany and Europe, as peripheral to the main drama of class struggle and anti-fascism.' Before and after 1945, there existed a minority communist tradition in which the Jewish question was central. By January 1953, following Paul Merker's arrest the previous month, the East German dictatorship had crushed this tradition. As the East German communists sought, after 1945, to establish their legitimacy as German leaders, they rejected association with the Jews, still the great 'other' and pre-eminent outsider of German nationalism.