Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany
352
Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781860648854 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication date: | 01/17/2004 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.46(w) x 8.83(h) x 1.22(d) |
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Introduction
Growing Up between Weimar and Hitler
* * *
When Hitler came to power in 1933, about half a million Jews lived in Germany. Their number had been declining because of both a decrease in the birth rate and a movement away from the community, through conversion to Christianity or simply through religious indifference and the erosion of ties. For more than a century, German Jews had moved from villages and little towns to the big cities; over one third lived in the capital, Berlin. The demographers, amateur and professional, predicted the disappearance of German Jewry in the not too distant future. Of this half million, less than one-fifth belonged to the generation that will be the focus of our story, those in their teens and early twenties. All generalizations about age cohorts are bound to be imprecise, and this will be true for our group. Some of them came from rich families, others from poor; some had a strongly Jewish background be it religious or Zionist, whereas, for others, the fact that they were born Jewish was of no vital importance and certainly not of paramount interest. The families of some had lived in Germany for many generations, whereas others were of Eastern European origin, their parents, and in some cases they themselves, having arrived in Germany only within the previous decade or two.
But there were also common patterns, and it is to them that we shall turn first. According to its social structure, German Jewry was predominantly middle class: there were quite a few artisans but not many manual workers and virtually no farmers. But the German middle class had suffered as much as the rest of the population from the inflation of 1922/23 and the great depression after 1929. The living standards of many families had gone down, and Jewish social services had to deal with an increasing number of needy people. The political tensions of the late twenties and early thirties had affected young Jews as much as, if not more than, the rest of the population; they had created an interest and involvement in politics among young people who in other times would have preferred other pastimes. It manifested itself in a Jewish re-awakening, an interest in things Jewish that had not existed to the same extent for the last hundred years. Zionism, which did not initially have a strong following in Germany, attracted many new supporters after 1933, more among young people than among the older generation.
The main formative influences on young people were home, school, and the youth movements. Families had traditionally played a central role in Jewish life, and though ties had loosened throughout the nineteenth and especially the twentieth century, and there had been a generational revolt, family links were still important. They became more important as the situation worsened for Jews; because they were under siege, people were looking for protection in groups. Whether a family could emigrate after 1933 often depended on whether one or more of its members, close or more distant, had settled in other countries and were willing to assist those who had remained behind. Families, whenever possible, would emigrate together.
School and University
Most Jewish schoolchildren in Germany attended German schools. The number of Jewish elementary schools had been steadily declining since the end of the nineteenth century, and by 1932, it was little more than a third of what it had once been. This was the result (as Michael Brenner has pointed out), on the one hand, of the urbanization of German Jewry, since the smaller communities that remained could no longer sustain schools of their own, and, on the other, the growing belief among liberal Jews that abolishing separate schools would help further integrate Jews into German society. It should be added that, whenever their numerical presence warranted it, Jewish children in German schools received Jewish religious tuition, usually from a local rabbi. The quality of these lessons was in my own experience fairly high, but the students were not particularly interested, except perhaps when they had truly charismatic teachers.
There were considerable differences from town to town and region to region. In some cities, such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Cologne, every second Jewish child attended a Jewish school, whereas in Berlin, the biggest community by far, at most one in five attended. These figures do not tell the whole story, however, and to some extent they are even misleading. Most of the established Jewish schools that had closed down in the decades before 1933 had been very small or private, whereas the new schools that opened after World War I were more substantial. And, on the other hand, what did it mean to attend a Jewish school? How Jewish in character were they? Less so than commonly believed. Specific Jewish subjects (including the teaching of Hebrew) constituted only a small segment of the curriculum, partly, no doubt, because these schools had to be accredited by the state authorities, and their diplomas had to be recognized by institutions of higher learning. Attending a Jewish school certainly had a major impact on the social life of the students—most of their friends would have been Jewish—but the knowledge imparted to them would not have greatly differed from what children were taught in German schools.
How comfortable did Jewish children feel in non-Jewish schools? Again, conditions varied from place to place. There were incidents of antisemitism, but probably not more than in, say, Britain or France, and probably considerably less than in state schools in Eastern Europe. Most Jewish children growing up in Germany, except perhaps those from strictly Orthodox families, had non-Jewish friends, shared their interests and experiences, fought and competed with them in sports. Cases of blatant discrimination or persecution were few. While a majority of German teachers sympathized with the nationalist parties of the right, not many were Nazis prior to 1933, and, in any case, as state employees they were forbidden to take part openly in political activities. There were no doubt in every school, probably in every class, a few rabid antisemites, but for the great majority of non-Jewish pupils the presence of Jewish classmates in their midst was not a matter of vital concern.
All this began to change, in some cases quite suddenly and drastically, in 1933, and it is precisely because relations earlier on had been more or less harmonious that discrimination, broken friendships, and gradual isolation often had a major impact on Jewish schoolchildren. It was frequently worse in the smaller towns than in the big cities. When Zvi Aharoni, born Hermann Aronsheim in Frankfurt (Oder) in 1921, was invited many years later to be a guest at the three hundredth anniversary of the school he had attended as a youngster, he wrote in his reply that there were too many unhappy memories, and that he preferred not to come. (After joining a kibbutz, Aharoni became an officer in the Israeli army and eventually one of the top officials of Mossad, the Israeli secret service; he was the man who identified Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.) But Georg Iggers in Hamburg was advised by well-meaning classmates to join the Hitler Youth; why did he have to mention the fact that he was Jewish? Peter Levinson, who attended a famous school in Berlin, the Grey Monastery (Graue Kloster), when Hitler came to power, reports that he was treated well. Levinson studied for the rabbinate in Berlin under Leo Baeck as late as 1940/41, and he returned as a rabbi to Germany after World War II.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who later became Germany's leading literary critic, participated in 1963 in the twenty-fifth reunion of his Berlin class. "Why," he asked, "did you not treat your fellow Jewish students much worse, conforming with Nazi propaganda?" They answered that they could not possibly believe in Nazi propaganda concerning Jewish inferiority if the one who knew most about German literature was a Jew and also the best sprinter. But Reich-Ranicki was not altogether happy with this answer—what if a Jew had not excelled in athletics and another in German literature? He thought that the true answer was that his fellow students behaved as they did because the teachers, who included a fair number of Nazis, treated the Jews relatively decently, and that in the milieu from which the non-Jewish students came, the educated upper middle class, the crasser forms of antisemitic attack were frowned upon. But he also noted that the general attitude vis-à-vis the fate of the Jews was one of indifference. They did not want to know about the fate of the Jews at the time, or twenty-five years later.
The Exodus from German Schools
After 1933, there was an exodus of Jewish schoolchildren from German schools and of Jewish students from German universities, and new Jewish schools were founded in Berlin, Breslau, and other cities. But the laws aiming at the expulsion of Jewish schoolchildren were by no means consistently applied. Children of Jewish war veterans were permitted to stay on, as well as those of non-German nationality and a few other categories; only in 1938 did the last Jews graduate from senior high school (Gymnasium)—I was one.
In the universities, the exclusion was more rigorously applied, with only a very few exceptions, mainly of foreign nationals; the great majority was thrown out the year Hitler came to power. Nazism was widespread in German universities, more than in the country at large; there had been violent demonstrations against Jewish and left-wing professors even before 1933. Since there were few universities and the total number of students was relatively small, it was easier from an administrative point of view to expel the Jews. However, there was inconsistency even in the universities, and while most Jews could no longer graduate, a few were permitted to attend lectures up to 1938. Among the "anomalies" was Heinz Kellermann, later a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials and an American diplomat, who graduated in 1937 from the law faculty of Berlin University.
Youth Movement
Every Jewish boy and girl went to school, but not everyone belonged to a Bund a youth group; only about half of this age group did after 1933. And yet these countrywide organizations had a considerable formative influence on two generations of young Jews in Germany. The youth movement was a specific Central European phenomenon. Similar in some ways to the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, it was in some respects quite different: it had come into being as a protest movement against established social conventions, and so, was far more ambitious in its aims, and it was led not by adults but by young people. The German youth movement (the Wandervogel) had come into existence shortly before the turn of the century; young Jews wanted to join it but were often rebuffed, and, therefore, they created their own organizations.
By 1933 only a small minority of Jews belonged to German Buende; the great majority were members of Jewish youth groups, which existed in every, kind of ideological orientation, style, and social composition. The Zionists had their own organization, originally called Blau Weiss, which educated its members toward life in Palestine with emphasis on work in a kibbutz. It taught them Hebrew, Jewish history, and traditions, but at the same time the organization was steeped in German culture. There were weekly discussion meetings, and members went on hiking trips on weekends and during school holidays. In the early thirties when Blau Weiss ceased to exist, there were various successor groups—Kadima, Maccabi Hatzair, and Habonim—and also party political youth organizations of the left (Hashomer Hatzair) and of the right (the "revisionist" Betar). The most influential non-Zionist group in the 1920s was Kameraden (the Comrades), which eventually split into three groups. The Werkleute (a name chosen under the influence of Buber and Rilke) became more Jewish in outlook and, eventually, strongly Zionist. The assimilationists, while not ignoring Jewish heritage, put more stress on being German, politically as well as culturally. The smallest faction opted for the extreme left, be it the Communist party or one of the many Communist opposition groups that existed at the time.
Furthermore, religious Jews had their own youth groups, and there were active sports associations, again divided along ideological lines. The Zionist groups were called Bar Kochba or Maccabi, according to the national heroes in early Jewish history. The more German-oriented youth belonged to the sports clubs sponsored by the association of Jewish war veterans (RJF). Competitive sports and interest in sports played an important role in the life of Jewish youth in Germany, and perhaps even more in Austria, where the swimmers and waterpolo players of Hakoah Vienna won many national championships, as well as playing important roles in soccer, fencing, and other sports.
Such a brief summary cannot possibly convey an impression of what it meant to belong to a group of this kind. It certainly involved much more than being a member of a group of young philatelists or a synagogue choir. The Buende wanted the whole human being, a far-reaching commitment. They propagated ideas and ideals, and they wanted their members not just to pay lip service to them, but to live according to them. "Verwirklichen" was a key word of this time. It meant, to give an obvious example, forgoing one of the traditional Jewish professions, such as trade or academe, to become a farmer and join a kibbutz in Palestine. In brief, some Buende wanted not to entertain their members, not just to have them enjoy themselves in the company of like-minded contemporaries. They wanted a commitment for life.
Not all Buende made such total demands, and, as mentioned earlier on, not everyone was a member of a Bund; in the smaller communities they hardly existed. But they were still very important as part of growing up, they made it easier to confront the tensions of the time as members of a group, provided leadership in an era of great confusion, and gave cohesion and camaraderie in situations in which a single young person was finding it exceedingly difficult to make his or her way in the face of growing pressures of every kind.
Joining a certain Bund was usually accidental—one went because a friend or a relation belonged—so the ideological element should perhaps not be overemphasized. Young people would move from one group to another, from left to right and vice versa. At a reunion in Israel fifty years after their exodus, an American professor noted if he had not at age twelve been persuaded by an acquaintance to join a non-Zionist organization, he would probably now be a worker in a kibbutz; some of his contemporaries in Israel could just as easily be teaching history or sociology in the United States. As much depended on the personality of the group leader as on other considerations. In some communities only one or two Buende existed and the young generation had little choice. Despite all these accidental factors, the Buende played a very important educational role. And it should also be mentioned that after 1933 there was a marked increase in their membership. When members of such a group would meet many years later there would often be an instant feeling of having things in common, based on shared experiences, on books read and songs sung, on holiday camps and campfires and adventures long ago, on common friends and acquaintances. The bond was something between an old school tie and membership in a Masonic lodge.
Under the impact of the rapidly deteriorating situation, the assimilationists among the young Jews quickly lost their patriotic enthusiasm. As more and more countries closed their doors, radical young Zionists found their way to America, whereas not a few previously ardent German-Jewish patriots came to what was then Palestine and over the years turned into staunch Israeli patriots. With radicalization in the general political situation, young Zionists went over to Communist groups, preaching that only world revolution could solve the Jewish question and that in the meantime admiration and support for all things Soviet was the commandment of the hour. But this infatuation with Communism too, was rarely deep and lasting. Having read the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin in illegal study circles did not prevent many from following in their later lives careers and activities far removed from the dreams of radical politics.
Youth in Germany Remembered: Soccer and Avant-garde Culture
How in later years did the generation of 1933 remember the early days in Germany? It depends to a considerable extent on age and background. Some were at the time of the Nazi takeover in primary school, others in secondary school, and yet others were at university or underwent an apprenticeship in one profession or another. The older ones would remember the rich cultural life of the last years of the Weimar Republic, especially if they happened to live in Berlin or another major town. It was a time of unprecedented blossoming in the German theater, music, and the plastic arts; virtually every evening (if one could afford it) there was some performance or exhibition or concert of interest. With the exception of the plastic arts, which still had their mecca in Paris, Germany was the cultural center of the world, and for a young person to witness and partake of it was a matter of great excitement, even if he or she was a radical critic of society or a Zionist dreaming about a new homeland far away from the shores of the Spree, the Elbe, and the Rhine.
The cultural interests of the younger ones were by necessity more limited, more in line with the usual preoccupations of their age groups. For them the magic names were not Max Reinhardt, Piscator, and Furtwaengler; they followed with bated breath the results of the soccer games each Sunday between Hertha BSC (of Berlin) and Schalke 04, the leading club in the Ruhr. Their heroes were not Elizabeth Bergner or Emil Jannings or Albert Bassermann but Hanne Sobeck and Richard Hofmann, the leading goal scorer of the day. Just as the older ones would grow sentimental in later years when recalling a historic performance of Jedermann or a revival of a classical play, younger ones such as Henry Kissinger or Peter Gay or Zvi Yavetz (a distinguished professor of classics at Tel Aviv, New York, and Munich) would be able to recite fifty years later the composition of a leading German or Austrian soccer team confronting England or Hungary or Italy.
Alfred Grosser, who came to France as a boy, relates in his autobiography that he remembers by heart the names of all the players of the soccer team of the Racing Club, Paris, the French champions at the time; and Abraham Ascher, now teaching Russian history in New York, has the same expert knowledge for the first division of the British soccer league for several decades. This is the generation that followed with passionate interest whether Helene Mayer, Gretl Bergmann, and Rudi Ball, sportsmen and sportswomen of Jewish descent (even though uninvolved in Jewish affairs), would be permitted to represent Germany in the Olympic games of 1936. However grave the political situation, sports were still of absorbing interest.
It was an exciting period, and in this respect, at least as onlookers, the involvement of young German Jews was total. Such involvement in and identification with the general culture, high and low, of their country, existed perhaps for young Jews in the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands, but less frequently in France and Britain and seldom in Eastern Europe. To realize this is to understand the rootedness of most young German Jews in their country of origin, even if it was usually a one-sided love affair, despite discrimination and the persecutions after 1933.
The psychological attitudes, the mental makeup of the young Jews in Germany cannot be understood if one regards them merely as the reaction to Nazi Germany. They were the children of Weimar Germany, a democratic country with free institutions; they were the products of its educational system and its specific culture. For them emigration meant a poorer life not just materially but also culturally. This is true primarily for their parents' generation, but it also applies to a considerable degree to the younger ones and it explains their difficulty adjusting once they left the country in which they grew up.
A Happy Youth?
In later years, when the children of 1933 had become parents and grandparents, they wrote a great many memoirs about their early years in Germany and Austria. There is, of course, a well-known tendency to embellish in old age events that happened long ago, to show them in a rosy light and to suppress less pleasant occurrences. There is an inclination to forget that growing up is often, even in ideal conditions, a painful process, full of problems with oneself and one's surroundings, of failures and disappointments. But it is still remarkable that the picture that emerges from the overwhelming majority of recollections of pre-Nazi Germany is a happy and sometimes even idyllic one. Not everyone lived in comfort; Ignaz Bubis, later the head of the Association of Jews in Germany, the son of Polish immigrants, tells a grim tale of life in a Breslau suburb, of six or seven people living in two rooms, of grinding poverty and general misery. (The family moved back to Poland in the mid-thirties and Bubis was the only one of a big family to survive.) But unhappy memories of poverty, while not unique, had much more to do with the economic than the political situation.
On the other extreme there is the story of Angelika Schrobsdorff, whose erstwhile Jewish mother had married into a well-to-do, almost aristocratic Prussian family. Part of Angelika's childhood was spent in a family mansion in the countryside, she had a pony of her own, and whatever toys and dolls she and her sister wanted would be given by doting parents and grandparents. Henry Wallich was the scion of a famous and very rich Berlin banking family, his father was Jewish but his mother "Aryan"; the chauffeur would drive him each morning to school in an impressive car. Being a little self-conscious about the family wealth, Henry would alight from the car in a side street and make the rest of the way on foot. In 1932 he was sent for a year to Oriel College, Oxford, to polish his tennis stroke (in the words of his biographer) and to get acquainted with sherry. (Henry Wallich became a Yale professor and a member of the Federal Reserve Board.)
Angelika and Henry were technically merely half Jews; they were not candidates for Auschwitz. In their families the Jewish origins were not mentioned, even though the grownups were all aware of it; Henry's father committed suicide by jumping in the Rhine after Kristallnacht. Angelika had not the faintest notion that she was of Jewish origin, and when everyone else was hoisting red flags with the swastika in 1933, she was very unhappy that her parents, for once, did not instantly fulfill her wish—to have her own swastika hanging from the window of her room. Only much later, when hiding with her mother in Bulgaria, did she learn the truth.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from GENERATION EXODUS by Walter Laqueur. Copyright © 2001 by Brandeis University Press. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Growing Up Between Weimar and Hitler
• Escape
• Resistance
• Israel: Immigration Jeckepotz
• United States: Golden Country behind Paper Walls
• World Revolution, or the Dream that Failed
• Britain: Forever Refugees?
• The Great Dispersal: Hotel Bolivia and Hotel Shanghai
• Returning to Germany
• Portrait of a Generation
What People are Saying About This
In Generation Exodus