National Socialist Persecution Research Articles

Space and Place in the German-Jewish Experience of the 1930s – Introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction offers the theoretical and historical framework of the volume’s articles. In highlighting aspects of the German-Jewish experience during the 1930s, in Germany and in transit, it provides a starting point for the ensuing chapters’ discussions of the relationships between ‘place,’ ‘space,’ history and identity. It underscores the significance of ‘space’ as a category for the study of Jewish life during National Socialist persecution. It argues that the divergent interests and processes which constitute (the notions of) places, and the intricacies between places and identities, facilitate a reconsideration of German-Jewish experiences and self-perceptions in a time of extreme uncertainty.

‘I think he will be able to adjust’. Letters of Recommendation Accompanying Jewish Refugees in Transit during National Socialism

Abstract Letters of recommendation are a specific subgenre of professional writing that both have their own history and shape the histories of the people they recommend. In the context of National Socialist persecution, recommendations typically accompanied well-educated German-Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany. Such letters can be seen as relics of an established support system, trying to enable and/or ease the period of internal transit into new and mostly unknown territories. Many Jews experienced a phase of internal transit as they adjusted to new demands and new social structures. This phase was usually a difficult one, as they not only had to adjust to a new country but also to process the events leading up to their forced migration, as well as navigating the psychological and often financial difficulties of organizing refuge. This article aims to show what kinds of information such letters of recommendation contained about transit. Focusing on the United States and on Palestine, the article challenges the understanding of these countries purely as ‘destination countries’, and shows how immigrants had to live through processes of internal transit. It also asks what content was the most useful to include in letters of recommendation—what kind of armour of good words was needed in transit—and how that content may have differed between the United States and Palestine.

Proveana – Eine Datenbank für die Provenienzforschung am Deutschen Zentrum Kulturgutverluste

Abstract The Proveana database for provenance research is a new service of the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg. Complementing the Lost Art database for the documentation of cultural assets which were displaced or relocated as a result of the events of World War II, the centre has released the new database in 2020 to support provenance research through documenting historical information from four different provenance research areas on cultural assets seized due to national socialist persecution (Nazi-looted art), cultural assets displaced during wartime (war booty), cultural assets seized in the Soviet-occupied zone and the GDR, as well as cultural assets and collections from colonial contexts, thereby making it more transparent and contributing to the solution of unresolved cases.

"…no reservations against the dismissals": the expulsion of neuroscientists from Berlin

Before 1933 Berlin was considered acenter of clinical neurology and neuroscientific research in the German Reich. Using agroup biographical approach and drawing upon scattered secondary literature as well as upon various archival documents, this article provides an overview of 12 less well-known physicians and researchers who were forced into exile during the nationalsocialist (NS) era, primarily for racist reasons. Among those affected by NS persecution were Franz Kramer and Fredy Quadfasel (Charité), Ernst Haase, Carl Felix List, and Lipman Halpern (Moabit Hospital), Paul Schuster (Hufeland Hospital), and Clemens Ernst Benda (Augusta Hospital). Others who were forced to emigrate were Franz Josef Kallmann (Herzberge Sanatorium), Max Bielschowsky, and Hans Löwenbach (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research), Otto Maas (Berlin-Buch Clinic), and Kurt Löwenstein (Lankwitz). A total of 6 neurological departments at municipal hospitals were run by (in NS terminology) "non-Aryans" in 1933. With their expulsion, the existence of neurological treatment and training centers outside the university ended and did not resume until the 1960s.

Visual Collective Memories of National Socialism: Transatlantic HIV/AIDS Activism and Discourses of Persecutions

Abstract Focusing on Bavarian policies and analysing the pages of gay and lesbian written-communication networks, this article demonstrates how a memory of the national socialist persecution of homosexualities fed a collective fear of state repression in homosexual circles in the 1980s and 1990s. It argues that comparisons between HIV/AIDS policies and National Socialism not only originated in a German national context, but were also anchored in a transatlantic story, linking queer emancipation movements in Europe and North America. It furthermore underlines how this history of queer political thought goes beyond the textual. In order to make this claim, the article traces a genealogy of the Pink Triangle in the northern transatlantic world. The symbol was originally used to brand non-heteronormative men in concentration camps, but it was recuperated in the 1970s both in Europe and in North America. AIDS activists reinterpreted the symbol for a new political context in the 1980s. All in all, using examples and analysis emanating from queer history, the article shows how the history of social movements needs to be understood in a global perspective. This analysis further proves the role of images and symbols as third idioms for the flow and translation of ideas across the Atlantic.

The Warburgian Narrative on the "Survival of the Classics" as a Jewish Construct in a Christian World

The exclusion of German-Jewish scholars from the German scientific community already at the time of the Weimar Republic before the National Socialist persecution caused the art historian Aby Warburg and his circle to look for a new and positive positioning in German intellectual life. In my paper I want to show that Aby Warburg's Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek with its interdisciplinary program of collection and research on the "survival of the classics", including the fields of art and culture, history of philosophy and religion, is constructed as a very original competing narrative in contrast to the predominant Christian "Heilsgeschichte". Whereas Aby Warburg himself showed the 'survival of the classics' in the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, the philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the historian of philosophy Raymond Klibansky made apparent the continuity of the Platonic tradition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Stereotypes and Jewish Musical Topics in East German Film: Ambiguities and Allosemitism in Hotel Polan und seine Gäste

Abstract The miniseries Hotel Polan und seine Gäste tells the story of three generations of a Jewish family of hoteliers in Bohemia from 1908 to National Socialist persecution. Produced by GDR television in the early 1980s, the series was subsequently broadcast in other European countries and met with a mixed reception. Later on, scholars evaluated it as blatantly antisemitic and anti-Zionist. This essay seeks to re-evaluate these prerogatives by centring the analysis of the miniseries on a close reading of its music—a method not often used in Jewish studies, but a suitable lens through which to interrogate the employment of stereotypes, especially in film, and in light of textual sources from the Cold War era often being reflective of ideologies rather than facts. Employing critical theories of cultural studies and film music, it seeks to identify stereotypes and their dramatic placement and to analyse their operation. It asserts that story, image, and sound constitute both synchronous and asynchronous agents that perpetuate various stereotypes associated with Jews, thereby placing Hotel Polan in the liminal space of allosemitism. Constructed through difference from a perceived norm, Hotel Polan ultimately represents a space in which the egregious stereotype and the strategic employment of types meet. Its deployment of Jewish musical topics specifically shows that it is less their dramatic function that is of relevance, but the discourse that they have the power to enable.

The City of Angels through the Lens of Female Austrian-Jewish Exile Scriptwriters Vicki Baum, Salka Viertel, and Gina Kaus

This article provides insight into the lives and works of Gina Kaus (1893–1985), Vicki Baum (1888–1960), and Salka Viertel (1889–1978), three understudied Austrian-Jewish authors who fled to the US to escape National Socialist persecution. Upon settling in Los Angeles, they all found employment as screenwriters at various Hollywood studios, such as Warner Brothers, Fox, Paramount, and MGM. The article aims to consciously reinsert Vicki Baum, Gina Kaus, and Salka Viertel’s often overlooked social and filmic accomplishments into the larger exile history and position them within the German-speaking exile community in Southern California. The three women’s autobiographies are the basis of this article’s investigation of their perception of Hollywood, and offer a female perspective of work in the film industry from the 1930s through the 1950s. A look at some of their film scripts reveals how their individual experiences as female exiles and their new surroundings impacted their writing.

Crossing Borders in the Summer of 1935: Fritz Fürstenberg’s Photographs of Persecution in National Socialist Germany

Abstract While there are hundreds of written accounts of the Holocaust, there are only a few photographs known to document the fate of the persecuted from their own point of view. This article presents the case study of a photographic series taken inside Germany by Jewish businessman Fritz Fürstenberg in order to provide evidence of National Socialist persecution beyond its borders. After a close reading that reveals where and under which circumstances Fürstenberg took his photographs, the article broadens its scope to discuss how the images were eventually used in the Netherlands as a means of documenting National Socialist persecution. In the process, the article’s authors add another layer to the ‘integrated history’ famously advocated by Saul Friedländer, and call attention to the astonishing fact that research into such private photographs is still a desideratum—and as such a promising field for future research.

On Chapman, Ellin, and Sherif's <em>Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima</em>

On Chapman, Ellin, and Sherif's Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima Liat Steir-Livny Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima: Persecution, Genocide and the Atomic Bomb. By Jane L. Chapman, Dan Ellin, and Adam Sherif. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. 95 pp., ISBN 978-1-137-40723-8 (hc), US $67.50; ISBN 978-1-137-40725-2 (ebook) US $49.99. Jane Chapman, Dan Ellin, and Adam Sherif's Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima: Persecution, Genocide and the Atomic Bomb focuses on graphic novels that reference World War II, the Holocaust, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book covers a long period, ranging from graphic novels published during World War II up to the present. These graphic novels were written by artists who had personally witnessed or been the victims of these catastrophes and by those who had heard about the events from afar. The volume aims to prove that graphic novels have value as historical resources, and that they can contribute to the fields of memory studies, trauma studies, and cultural studies. The varying roles of graphic novels are introduced in different chapters that describe how they add to the "historian's palette" (11) and how they can be used to enhance comprehension of the past (77). They possess an ability to transform images into narratives, expose emotions and experiences, explore the space between reality and representation, and represent the incomprehension experienced during and after traumatic events (9), with the visual working as a translation of the trauma (72). [End Page 246] Leaning on the research of Hayden White and others, the authors rightfully claim that every historical narrative is mediated: "There are no ideal sources. Every source will pose problems and must be assessed critically with proper acknowledgement of its limitations" (77). Graphic novels (which are referred to as "Comics"), they correctly argue, can revive subjective perceptions, represent events that were not recorded, and reflect the inner worlds of the protagonists. Chapters 1 and 5 (the introduction and conclusion) bookend the three main chapters of the volume, which discuss different types of graphic novels. Chapter 2 analyzes fictional stories about life under Nazism that were published in the United States by the Quality Comics Group between 1939 and 1945. Chapter 3 offers an analysis of the Paroles d'Etoiles (2009), which rely on testimonies and memories of survivors who were children in Vichy France during the Holocaust. The chapter discusses the way the graphic novel reflects the survivors' inner worlds, which are host to haunting guilt, feelings of abandonment, and identity crises. Chapter 4 analyzes Barefoot Gen and I Saw It, both by Keiji Nakazawa, in which he reveals his memories of being saved from the bombing of Hiroshima. Nakazawa's work is first-hand testimony that was recorded at a time considerably later than the events it describes, and his novels are analyzed as representations of post-traumatic stress disorder. The use of the graphic novel medium to complement trauma, memory, and cultural studies provides important insights. But the authors' goal of proving that the graphic novels are a "historical tool that derives its strength from the text/image relationship for representation" (75) reduces the vast differences among the different works. The authors would have done well to highlight more carefully the differences between primary and secondary sources and their "historical" meaning: Some graphic novels were written during the 1940s, and some many years later; some were written by people who had vaguely heard about World War II atrocities, and others were written by survivors of these events. Another problem regarding the historical perspective of the book is apparent in the way the various historical events are all lumped together as traumas visited on "innocent victims" (70). The book refers to both the atomic bomb attacks on Japan and the Holocaust as being equivalent traumas: "National Socialist persecution and genocide in Europe, and the U.S.'s use of the atomic bomb against Japan—aspects of extreme trauma that took place between 1939 and 1945" (2). The book's goal is to explore [End Page 247] how "comics" capture and address these "breaches of humanity in the Second World War" (2). According to the writers...

Physicians as Experts of the Integration of war invalids of WWI and WWII

After the First World War the large number of war invalids posed a medical as well as a socio-political problem. This needed to be addressed, at least to some extent, through healthcare providers (Versorgungsbehörden) and reintegration into the labour market. Due to the demilitarization of Germany, this task was taken on by the civil administration, which was dissolved during the time of National Socialism. In 1950, the Federal Republic of Germany enacted the Federal War Victims Relief Act (Bundesversorgungsgesetz), which created a privileged group of civil and military war invalids, whereas other disabled people and victims of national socialist persecution were initially excluded. This article examines the continuities and discontinuities of the institutions following the First World War. A particular focus lies on the groups of doctors which structured this field. How did doctors become experts and what was their expertise?

Zwischen Verehrung und Entzauberung: Hans Kohns, Robert Weltschs und Hugo Bergmanns Wahrnehmung Martin Bubers im Spiegel ihrer Korrespondenz

AbstractBased on the published and unpublished correspondence between three prominent members of the Zionist Prague Student Association Bar Kochba, Hugo Bergmann, Hans Kohn and Robert Weltsch, the article explores their complex and fluctuating relationship with Martin Buber between 1910 and 1965. Fascinated as they were by Buber’s three Speeches on Judaism before World War I, the three intellectuals embraced his vision of a humanistic version of Jewish nationalism and became leading interpreters of his religious-political views both in Germany and Palestine. However, as their letters reveal, the political developments of the 1920s up to the 1940s, and in particular the conflict with the Arab population in Palestine and the National Socialist persecution in Europe, led them to a growing sense of disenchantment with Buber and their own youthful cultural Zionist convictions, which prompted all three of them to make divergent biographical choices.

Networks of Nazi persecution: bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust

List of Figures List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Holocaust as Division-of-Labor-Based Crime-Evidence and Analytical Challenges Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel PART I: RIVALRY AND COMPETITION Chapter 1. Introduction to Rivalry and Competition Christian Gerlach Chapter 2. The SS Security Service and the Gestapo in the National Socialist Persecution of the Jews 1933-1939 Wolfgang Dierker Chapter 3. Aryanization and the Role of the German Banks, 1933-1938 Dieter Ziegler Chapter 4. The Looting of Jewish Property and Franco-German Rivalry, 1940-1944 Philippe Verheyde Chapter 5. Seizure of Jewish Property and Inter-Agency Rivalry in the Reich and in the Occupied Soviet Territories Martin C. Dean Chapter 6. The Polycratic Nature of Art Looting: The Dynamic Balance of the Third Reich Jonathan Petropoulos Chapter 7. The Holocaust and Corruption Frank Bajohr Part II: SMOOTH COOPERATION Chapter 8. Introduction to Smooth Gerhard Hirschfeld and Wolfgang Seibel Chapter 9. The Looting of Jewish Property and the German Financial Administration Alfons Kenkmann Chapter 10. Organized Looting: The Nazi Seizure of Jewish Property in the Netherlands, 1940-1945 Gerard Aalders Chapter 11. Perpetrator Networks and the Holocaust. The Spoliation of Jewish Property in France, 1940-1944 Marc Olivier Baruch Chapter 12. Ethnic Resettlement and Inter-Agency Cooperation in the Occupied Eastern Territories Isabel Heinemann Chapter 13. Der reibungslose Holocaust? The German Military and Civilian Implementation of the Final Solution in Ukraine, 1941-1944 Wendy Lower PART III: DECENTRAL INITIATIVE AND VERTICAL INTEGRATION Chapter 14. A Bureaucratic Holocaust: Toward a New Consensus Micheal Thad Allen Chapter 15. Local Initiatives, Central Coordination: German Municipal Administration and the Holocaust Wolf Gruner Chapter 16. The Reichskristallnacht and the Insurance Industry: The Politics of Damage Control Gerald D. Feldman PART IV: STRUCTURE, AGENCY, AND THE LOGIC OF RADICALIZATION Chapter 17. More than Just a Metaphor: the Network Concept and Its Potential in Holocaust Research Joerg Raab Chapter 18. Restraining or Radicalizing? Division of Labor and Persecution Effectiveness Wolfgang Seibel Notes on Contributors Index

Emigration as Rescue and Trauma: The Historical Context of the Kindertransport

Why did the majority of German Jews not escape the impending catastrophe caused by Hitler and the National Socialists by fleeing from Hitler's sphere of influence? Those who ask this naive question neither think about the economical and administrative difficulties which stand in the way of emigration nor do they consider the political hurdles put in the way of German, and later other European, Jews by potential receiving countries. Loss of status, almost always incurred by emigration, and a lack of professional qualifications for the country of immigration proved further difficulties. Assimilated German Jews' identification with Germany was a significant, maybe even the most significant reason, which stood psychologically in the way of emigration.(1) Very few German Jews reacted to the new German government with thoughts of emigration. The realization that the basis for Jewish life in Germany was lost was not widespread among Jews in the spring of 1933. The difficulties of emigration (these ranged from the Reichsfluchtsteuer emigration tax and progressive economic harassment to pillage and plunder before emigration) were one hurdle; the problems posed by the immigration authorities (proof of available means, professional qualifications, affidavits and guarantors) were the other.(2) At the time of Hitler's rise to power 550,000 Jews lived in Germany. Only 38,000 left in 1933. In 1934 the number of emigrants came to 23,000, whereas in 1935 20,000 German Jews emigrated. The Nuremberg Laws, which classified the Jews of Germany as second-class citizens without political rights, caused a small increase (25,000). During the year of the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, emigration declined again. The biggest exodus, amounting to 40,000 emigrants, took place in 1938 and was caused by antisemitic harassment following the Anschluss of Austria, which had a Jewish population of 190,000, and following the November pogrom in Germany. In 1939, 75,000 to 80,000 Jews left the National Socialist sphere of influence. By 1939 it was clear that anti-Jewish policies were being stepped up; this became apparent in the violent expulsion of 17,000 Polish Jews, in the pogroms of Kristallnacht, and in numerous laws and policies including required registration of Jewish possessions and the compulsory addition of Sara and Israel as additional forenames for Jews. To start with, France was the most favored country of exile; Austria (until 1938), Czechoslovakia, and the Saarland, which was under a mandate by the League of Nations, were the first stages. Up to the autumn of 1938, 11,000 Jews fled to Great Britain, but after the November pogrom another 40,000 found refuge there. Palestine and the U.S. were the most popular destinations for exile. Because of the restrictive quota system introduced by Britain in Palestine, which it held under a League of Nations mandate, only a small number of the Jews wishing to immigrate there were allowed to do so. The British tried to prevent illegal immigration by all possible means. A quota system also regulated entry to the U.S.A., and this was coupled with the requirement to provide an affidavit from a U.S. citizen guaranteeing that the immigrant would not become a burden to the welfare system. Less than 50,000 German Jews found refuge in Palestine, whereas 130,000 made a new home in the U.S.A. All in all, only half of the German Jewish population succeeded in escaping National Socialist persecution by emigrating.(3) Until 1939 the National Socialist government both encouraged and hindered emigration simultaneously. Forcing Jews out of the economy increased their desire to emigrate, but the plundering of Jewish capital and high taxes hindered them from doing so. The insidious nature of the regime revealed itself in its hope of exporting antisemitism. This could be achieved, it was calculated, if the expelled impoverished Jews became a social problem in their country of exile. After the Anschluss of Austria and annexation of the Sudeten German regions, the flight of Jews from the National Socialist sphere of influence became the main focus of attention in the neighboring states. …

Between Silence and License: The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film

Between Silence and License: The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film

Between Silence and License: <em>The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film</em>

Between Silence and License: <em>The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film</em>

The Diplomacy of Wiedergutmachung: Memory, the Cold War, and the Western European Victims of Nazism, 1956–1964

Abstract In 1956 a number of Western European states demanded from the Federal Republic of Germany compensation for victims of National Socialist persecution. West Germany eventually concluded eleven bilateral compensation agreements between 1959 and 1964. The long, acrimonious negotiations were conducted with the Federal Republic's key allies at a time when their support was crucial for West Germany's international rehabilitation, the process of European integration, and the Cold War struggle. This article analyzes to what extent the day-to-day politics of the Cold War were intertwined with the politics of the past. It examines German negotiations with France and with Britain in more detail to illustrate that the eleven agreements were far from uniform.

The Wehrmacht and the National Socialist persecution of the Gypsies

The present paper explores the role played by the Wehrmacht in the National-Socialist persecution of the Gypsies. Inside the Reich, the Wehrmacht Supreme Command was actively involved in the social exclusion of Sinti and Roma. In the Netherlands and Belgium Gypsies were removed from the military 'security zone' along the coast 'in order to combat espionage.' In France, some 3,000 persons stigmatized as nomades or tsiganes were incarcerated in camps, often under appalling conditions; such camps were ultimately under the control of the German military administration. In Serbia, the Wehrmacht contributed substantially to establishing mass shooting as the principal policy toward both the Jews and the Roma. In the USSR the military police, secret military police, and the rear area Sicherungsdivisionen in particular handed over 'itinerant Gypsies' to the SS Einsatzgruppen to be shot. Over and above, Wehrmacht units provided considerable organizational and technical assistance in conjunction with the executions ...

Reinheit und Verfolgung: Männerbünde, Homosexualität und Politik in Deutschland (1900-1945)

The National Socialist persecution of homosexual men has repeatedly been linked to fascist racist ideology and eugenics. In this article an alternative explanation is presented, describing it as a result of the tension between homosocial and homoerotic tendencies in German nationalism. lt is argued, that the Nazi leadership regarded homosexuality primarily as an internal problem. The fear that the male comradeship necessary for the cohesion of military organisations would degenerate into homosexuality contributed powerfully to the preoccupation of some party officials with same sex behaviour and a diversity of remedies against it. The severe penalties which were supposed to have a deterrent effect, were in the eyes of several leaders of the movement indispensable to guarantee the purity of and the discipline in the National Socialist Mannerbund.

International Tracing Service

The International Tracing Service (ITS), which has been based in Arolsen, Germany, since 1946, has the task of centralizing information on victims of National Socialist persecution in order to enable them or their rightful claimants to obtain compensation. In 1955, the ITS was placed under the supervision of a ten-country International Commission and responsibility for its day-to-day management was entrusted to the ICRC. In 1990, the number of requests made to the ITS rose again, by 14.27%, and application was made for the fourth time to the Federal German Ministry of the Interior for additional staff. As at 31 December, 398 persons were working either full-time or part-time to fill 340 posts at the ITS.