Jews and the Year 1933: German Jews and the Question of Resistance

Abstract

The article is based on a research of Jewish journals in the German language written in the 30s of the last century. It deals with the response of Jewish institutions, but mainly of Jewish journals (Many newspaper are archived under DigiBaeck https://www.lbi.org/collections/digibaeck/) to the assumption of power by the Nazis in 1933. It especially focuses on the Jewish Culture League and its umbrella union, the Reichsverband der jüdischen Kulturbünde (=Reich Association of Jewish Culture Leagues, from 1937). It is written from a perspective of understanding the historical context without adopting the position of a distanced spectator; it closely follows Marion Kaplan [8] by telling the story of Jews from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. The paradoxical partnership that emerged between the Kulturbund theatre and the Nazis is emblematic of the complexities and concessions that mark the broader phenomenon of “art-making under duress” [13] Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, the questions remains if the Holocaust was possible to foresee. Fundamental ethical issues are raised, and questions of utilitarian ethics emerge, e.g. choices between a greater or lesser evil [1]. Are some of the responses a hard-won victory for the Jews, making life bearable and being a moral support, or was the non-resistance a deal with the devil that lulled the Jewish population into a false sense of security (Alan Steinweis). Were the Jews led to believe that Nazi-Germany could still be a home, and were some Jews falsely pacified, being stopped from seeking emigration while slowly a ghetto was built around the majority to be transported to the gas chambers? Is the way of manoeuvring through acceptable? Or has this compromising furthered the agenda of the Nazis? Would less cooperation between the Jewish organizations and the Nazi authorities have made possible for more Jews to have been saved, as stated most prominently by Hannah Arendt? Can we judge on this evidently life-supporting institution without considering the subsequent murder of many of its functionaries (e.g. Kurt Singer) and subsequent mass-murders? Were the Jewish leaders simply, as Arendt suggested, in the grip of ideology or did they act out of pure stupidity?