“Ostjuden” as Predetermined Targets

Abstract

Abstract This chapter concentrates on the roots of animosity against “Ostjuden.” Discriminated against already during the Empire, mistrust and enmity toward “Ostjuden” skyrocketed in the wake of the 1918 revolution, when revolutionary unrest and charges that they bore responsibility for “stabbing the German army in the back” were squarely laid at their doorstep by organizations of the German Right. Roots of prejudice even go back to nineteenth-century popular novels, such as Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben. The chapter also investigates the extent of popular violence against Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the Weimar Republic, their incarceration in camps in Pomerania and Bavaria during the early 1920s, and pogrom-like popular violence against them during the so-called Scheunenviertel riots in November 1923. Another section of this chapter explores, on the basis of archival sources, their difficult paths to German citizenship during the Weimar Republic. Successful naturalization applications were often nullified by a stroke of the pen in 1933. This leads to closer scrutiny of the official policies of the Hitler/Papen government toward this minority, as well as Hindenburg’s and Hitler’s personal views of “Ostjuden.” The chapter concludes with a brief synopsis of the difficult relationship between German Jews and “Ostjuden.”