The “Racialization” of Jewish Self-Identity: The Response to Exclusion in Nazi Germany, 1933–1938

Abstract

While excluded from society and subjected to discrimination under government measures, German Jews under the Nazi regime during 1933–38 had conducted a public discourse regarding their collective identity. Acknowledging the failure of emancipation, Zionist and Orthodox Jews used racial vocabulary and concepts to produce an independent stance and to define political ends. Such an effort, however, did not begin during the 1930s. It was a reinforcement of racial ideas prevalent among German Jewish scientists since the late 19th century. In the 1930s, though, this “racialization” turned into a popular one, thus forming Jewish public opinion and political aspirations. It functioned as a means to respond to the inferior racial status and exclusion imposed on German Jewry by the Nazis.