The Jewish community in the face of Nazism

Isolated by anti-Semitic laws, expelled from all sectors of economic life, many Jews experience misery. Of the 150,000 Jews residing in Berlin in 1937, 60,000 live on grants from philanthropic organizations. The Jewish community is setting up a vocational retraining program for agricultural and craft trades. Those who follow this training see their chances of obtaining an emigration visa increased. However, these structures were gradually banned from 1938. The Jewish community creates a central assistance committee to provide for the needs of the needy and take care of medical care, retirement homes and orphanages.
Paradoxically, this exclusion imposed by the Nazis provokes a renewal of Jewish life.

A renewal of Jewish life

The youth turned to Zionism and began to learn Hebrew, preparing to leave for Palestine. Due to anti-Semitic laws, excluded schoolchildren join the community’s Jewish schools and sports associations. Synagogues are experiencing a resurgence of attendance, as are cultural and political activities.

Emigration

From 1933, with the coming to power of the Nazis, 37,000 Jews left Germany; then emigration stabilized at a rate of 25,000 Jews per year until 1938. Nearly half of emigrants settle in Western Europe, a quarter in Palestine and 27,000 in the United States. The worsening of legislation on the transfer of funds abroad, the freezing of fortunes, placed under the control of the Ministries of the Economy and Finance, and the constant increase in emigration taxes contribute to dissuading the majority of candidates from leaving. Between 1933 and 1938, Western governments sought to accommodate Hitler, preferring appeasement to confrontation, while some saw in him a solid force capable of fighting communism. In this context, the persecution of Jews is hardly relevant. As the Jews begin to leave Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom exercise strict control over immigration. The Jewish Agency (an executive of the Zionist movement) negotiates and signs an agreement with the Nazis in August 1933, at the end of which a certain percentage of the property of German Jews is released in the form of German goods exported to Palestine. This agreement, contested even within the Zionist movement, nevertheless allowed 60,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

The Jewish press is developed by the exclusion of Jews from the German press. Germany, Year 1930.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC.

C.V. SEITUNG
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums
Germany, 2 February 1933.
Editorial: Die neue Echa.
The new government
Collection: M morial de la Shoah.

German Jews wait in front of a b timent to obtain a migration visa, Berlin. Germany, 1933-1939.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC

Learning agricultural work with a view to migration to Palestine . Germany, 1935.
Cr says photographic: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.