The Jewish community in the face of Nazism

Isolated by anti-Semitic laws, driven out of 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 these courses see their chances of obtaining an emigration visa increased. These structures are however gradually banned from 1938. The Jewish community creates a central assistance committee in order to provide for the needs of the needy and to take charge 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 turns to Zionism and begins to learn Hebrew, preparing to leave for Palestine. Due to anti-Semitic laws, excluded schoolchildren join Jewish schools and community sports associations. The synagogues are experiencing a resurgence of attendance, as well as cultural and political activities.

Emigration

From 1933, with the arrival to power of the Nazis, 37,000 Jews leave Germany; then emigration stabilizes at a rate of 25,000 Jews per year until 1938. Nearly half of the 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 blocking of fortunes, placed under the control of the Ministries of Economy and Finance and the constant increase in emigration taxes contribute to dissuade 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 comes into little consideration. As the Jews begin to leave Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom exercise strict control over immigration. The Jewish Agency (executive of the Zionist movement) negotiates and signs in August 1933 an agreement with the Nazis, 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 within the Zionist movement itself, allows however 60,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

The Jewish press is developing to exclude Jews from the German press. Germany, year 1930.
Cr said photographic: Shoah Memorial/CDJC.

C.V. SEITUNG
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums
Germany, 2 february 1933.
Editorial: Die neue Regierung.
The new government
Collection: Shoah Memorial.

German Jews wait in front of a b timent to obtain a migration visa, Berlin. Germany, 1933-1939.
Cr said 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.