German Jewish Immigration to the USA - Essay Example

Running head: German Jewish Immigration to the USA German Jewish Immigration to the USA [The of the appears here] [The of institution appears here] January 30, 1933, was a black day in the history of humanity. Upon that day Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of the German Republic, and so placed in position to spread over Europe and over the whole world the evil which he had brought upon the German people. Today every child knows that the name of Hitler denotes the incarnation of perjury, the enslavement of all peoples (including the German), and cold-blooded mass murder. Hitler conceived it his mission to persecute Jews with a persistent and relentless hatred. Since he was guided not by principles but by expediency, he was able upon occasion to moderate his tactics, if not his Jewish policy, when diplomatic or economic considerations made it advisable to do so. Von Hindenburg, the aged president; von Neurath, the Foreign Minister; and Dr. Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank and later Minister of Economics, could occasionally win some concessions. But then came Hitler's evil spirits, such as the demonic Dr. Joseph Goebbels, his Minister of Propaganda; the sadist Julius Streicher, his pornographer; and the enemy of mankind, Heinrich Himmler, his executioner. All of these men served to fan the flame of his hatred. The baseness and the villainy, the lying and deception which were concentrated upon the Jews beggar description. Never was so intense and persistent a drumfire directed towards the destruction of a mighty army as these strategists found it necessary to use in order to make it impossible for 550,000 Jews to exist in the midst of 65,000,000 Germans. "Even 'Aryan' children were stirred to spy upon Jews and Christian non-Aryans and to attack them, and to incite their own parents to extirpate the Jews altogether." From this specimen the world might have learned whither the destructive spirit of the Nazis was leading, but they were gullible and were persuaded that this treatment of the Jews was solely a matter of internal German policy. It was fatal to the world at large (and to the Jews) that the world relied upon the promises of the Reich Chancellor and Reich Leader, of which he kept not one, and did not rather refer to the conclusions of his Mein Kampf, in which the true nature of the revolutionary Hitler was expressed. (Hans W. Gatzke, 1973) The overall aim of Nazi policy in the 1930s was to pressure Jews to leave Germany, but there was no unanimity in the party on how this was to be accomplished. One faction, largely concentrated in the SA and typified by the fanatical Nuremberg Gauleiter Julius Streicher (1885-1946), editor of the bi-weekly anti-Semitic tabloid, Der Strmer, pressed for violent methods to oust the Jews from German society. Almost immediately after Hitler became chancellor, SA-sponsored street terror and hooliganism began, with Jews as primary targets. It was mainly to appease the disgruntled SA militants that Hitler authorized the national boycott against Jewish-owned stores, lawyers, and physicians in April 1933. Streicher was appointed by Hitler to head the committee planning the nationwide boycott, the announced purpose of which was to retaliate against Jewish-sponsored boycotts of German goods abroad. After the end of the official boycott physical assaults against individual Jews and Jewish businesses continued sporadically without official sanction. Perpetrators, however, almost always escaped arrest or prosecution. (Hans W. Gatzke, 1973) Some Nazis criticized the SA's campaign of physical violence, not on humanitarian grounds, to be sure, but because it undermined discipline and order, caused property damage, provoked Western charges of human rights abuses, invited retaliatory measures, and seemed an ineffective and counterproductive way of ridding Germany of its Jewish population. Hjalmar Schacht and later HermannGring in his capacity as chief of the Four-Year Plan deplored the adverse impact on the German economy of vandalism against Jewish stores and businesses. Some SS leaders also considered the terroristic activities of the SA and party hooligans to be crude and inefficient. They prided themselves on their superior professionalism and sought to promote emigration on a more rational and systematic basis. The greatest obstacles to Jewish emigration from Germany were the difficulty of obtaining entry permits to other countries and the stringent limitations on German currency, foreign exchange, and personal belongings that could be taken out of the country. Many European nations had instituted immigration barriers and currency restrictions in response to the Great Depression. A flight tax had already been introduced in Germany by Chancellor Brning at the height of the economic crisis to slow the outflow of German currency. The Nazis added further currency restrictions, which limited opportunities for Jews willing to emigrate and reinforced the reluctance of other countries to take in Jewish refugees. Even countries without anti-Jewish immigration quotas were unwilling to accept indigent Jewish refugees for fear they might become public charges. Paraguay, for instance, would only take refugees who were prepared to buy land. French and Belgian laws made it very difficult for foreigners to earn a living. This served the Nazi purposes well. They hoped to export anti-Semitism by making sure that Jewish refugees would be seen as a social problem in host countries. The Swiss government actually initiated the request that led the German authorities to put an identifying mark in the passports of German Jews in 1938. Even if they could afford the transatlantic passage, only Jews with proof of employment or guaranteed financial support could gain entry into countries such as the United States and Australia that had traditionally welcomed foreign immigrants. (Jonathan D. Sarana, 1989) Restrictive American practices in issuing visas meant that fewer than half of the annual quota of 26,000 immigrants from Germany were admitted to the United States in the years from 1933 to 1938. Failure to gain admission and inhospitable conditions in countries of destination forced or persuaded some 16,000 of the 53,000 Jews who had left Germany in the first great wave of emigration in 1933-4 to return to the Third Reich. Under pressure from his liberal supporters, President Franklin Roosevelt called an international conference to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees in 1938. However, aside from the creation of an Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees to negotiate more favorable emigration terms with the Nazis, the conference, held at the French resort Evian-les-Bains on the Lake of Geneva in July 1938 produced minimal results. Officials justified their inaction on the grounds that they did not want to give the Germans a reason to increase their pressure on Jews to leave. The United States refused to place the subject of US quotas on the agenda, while Britain refused to discuss the question of Palestine. The French, too, were more interested in finding a haven for their own refugees than in providing a haven for German Jews. Germany, which supported Jewish emigration to Palestine but opposed the creation of a Jewish state, stayed away from the conference. The evident reluctance of states to accept Jewish refugees may have emboldened the Nazis to escalate their persecution of Jews. (Hans W. Gatzke, 1973) Ruled by Britain under a League of Nations mandate, Palestine was the main destination of Jewish refugees from Germany before the British, under Arab pressure, restricted Jewish immigration in 1937. The British thus reversed their earlier support for Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in the ancient biblical land of Israel. The Jewish community in Germany was itself divided between a minority of Zionists and a majority of assimilationist Jews who continued to regard themselves, at least until 1935, as Germans of Jewish faith. By defining Jewishness in confessional terms, the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (Centralverein deutscher Staatsbrger jdischen Glaubens), the main organization of German Jews founded in 1893, hoped to invalidate the arguments of racialists who asserted that ethnic differences precluded full Jewish assimilation into German society. Assimilationist Jews thought they could negotiate with the regime to ensure their continued lawful existence in Germany. Jews who were not active on the left thought they might be safe from Nazi terror. The Federal Association of Jewish Soldiers at the Front (Reichsbund jdischer Frontsoldaten) pointed out that 12,000 German Jews had lost their lives fighting for Germany in the First World War. Up to 1938 some assimilationist Jews still hoped that a viable, if segregated, Jewish community could be maintained in Germany. The Nazis, however, favored the Zionists because they shared their central assumption that Jews constituted a separate national and ethnic group. The German authorities permitted Zionist activities in the Jewish community in the hope that Jews would be persuaded to emigrate to Palestine rather than to one of the neighboring countries in Europe. Up to 1935, however, the Zionist Organization, which operated the Palestine Office in Germany, accepted for immigration only younger Jews with the kinds of skills needed in the Jewish settlements. (Hans W. Gatzke, 1973) To promote Jewish emigration while at the same time restricting the outflow of Jewish capital, the German Economics Ministry signed the Ha'avara Agreement with the Jewish Agency in Palestine in August 1933 permitting emigrating German Jews to use a portion of their assets to purchase German products for export to Palestine. This agreement stimulated German exports and had the additional advantage of counteracting efforts to organize an international boycott of German goods in protest against anti-Jewish persecution. A similar agreement with Britain in March 1936 permitted Jewish immigrants to transfer a portion of their funds by contracting for German exports to Britain. The SS also supported efforts of Zionist leaders to arrange illegal immigration into Palestine. About 47,000 Jews found refuge in Palestine legally between 1933 and 1941, and several thousands more did so illegally. After Reichskristallnacht, restrictions for entry into the US were eased, but as war approached, increasing fear of the infiltration of Nazi spies added another obstacle to immigration from Germany. Ultimately, however, the US became the most important country of refuge, accepting more than 130,000 German and Austrian Jews. Britain took in the largest number of German Jews in Europe, over 50,000 by the start of the war. The British also organized a special children's transport to rescue Jewish children after Kristallnacht. In their anti-Jewish policies, during the 1930s the Nazis were constrained by certain practical realities, not least of which were the potentially adverse effects of anti-Semitic measures on the German economy and the potentially hostile reaction of foreign states. There were constraints on eugenic policies as well, foremost among them the likelihood of public opposition to institutionalized euthanasia. It was the war that freed the Nazis of all restraints on violence and provided the necessary cover to implement, first, their program to kill the disabled, and then their "final solution," the physical destruction of the Jews. War also gave spurious credibility to Nazi charges that the Jews constituted dangerous enemies of the Reich. According to Nazi conspiracy theory, propagated for two decades, the Jews had been responsible for the First World War, German defeat, and the Russian Revolution. Hitler probably hoped that his threat would put pressure on the West to make additional concessions to German expansionism. Already in the 1920s radical anti-Semites had proposed treating Jews as hostages to prevent Allied intervention to enforce the Versailles Treaty. But Hitler's threat was not intended only as a tactical move. Central to the paranoid Nazi vision was the myth that Jews had declared war on Germany and were bent on its destruction. Well before the German attack on Poland on 1 September 1939 Jews were officially stigmatized as the enemies of Germany and were treated as such. For the 350,000 Jews still remaining in the greater Reich the outbreak of war brought new and ever-increasing restrictions. Already before the war measures had been taken to concentrate Jews in residential blocks and apartment houses for easier surveillance. If before the war the official reason given was that Germans could not be expected to live in the same buildings with Jews, after the start of the war draconian measures could be rationalized as necessary for public safety. Suppression of the internal enemy was declared to be vital to victory in the war. A nightly curfew was imposed on Jews. All radios owned by Jews were confiscated on the pretext that they were needed for the war effort. Jews received reduced food rations and as of July 1940 were permitted to shop only at certain hours. They were no longer permitted to have telephone service, own household pets, or use public libraries. The invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 ushered in the final escalation of anti-Jewish measures in Germany. On 1 September 1941 all Jews in Germany over the age of 6 were required to wear the yellow Star of David. A similar decree had already been introduced in occupied Poland in November 1939. On 23 October 1941 all further Jewish emigration from areas controlled by the German Reich was prohibited, and the deportation of German Jews to the killing sites of the "final solution" began. After the war and throughout the balance of the twentieth century, Jewish history all over the world has been the scene of political, social, and ideological upheavals of revolutionary dimensions. American Jewry, although spared the most tragic consequences of these events, did not remain unaffected. After the dust of World War I had settled, Jewish immigration was renewed in quite considerable numbers, despite political and economic restrictions. In the 1920s it was mainly East European Jews who arrived in the United States. In the 1930s a new generation of German Jews, this time impoverished refugees from Nazi persecution, sought and found entry. During the interval of one generation or more in the course of German-Jewish migration, the differences between the two main centers of German Jewry had deepened. Different traits and outlooks were now probably far more characteristic than any similarities. Still, the earlier German-Jewish immigrants certainly played an important role in the immigration and absorption of the German refugees. In many cases they explicitly took upon themselves, by signing the legal affidavits required by the immigration authorities, the care of relatives or other Jews after their arrival in the United States. Later they assisted the newcomers in their first steps in the country. These acts of solidarity, although not confined to American Jews of German origin, took up the chain that had connected the branches of German Jewry since the start of their migrations. Now, after the Holocaust, German Jews are no more than a small and diminishing subgroup of any country's Jewry. In fact, they had for many centuries been but a small minority of the Jewish people dispersed all over the world. Neverless, they had long played a disproportionately large role in Jewish life, in the socioeconomic and political as well as cultural domains. This explains to some extent the immense interest in the history of German Jewry, which has in recent years yielded a host of scholarly publications. (David Farber, Beth Bailey, 2001) Reference: David Farber, Beth Bailey, The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s; Columbia University Press, 2001 Hans W. Gatzke, Hitler and Psychohistory; The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), pp. 394-401 Jonathan D. Sarana, JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888-1988; Jewish Publication Society, 1989 Read More