Voices from the Holocaust Read online

  ‘I have taken every precaution,’ answered Captain Göring. ‘The police are in the highest state of alarm, and every public building has been specially garrisoned. We are waiting for anything.’

  It was then that Hitler turned to me. ‘God grant,’ he said, ‘that this is the work of the Communists. You are witnessing the beginning of a great new epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning.’

  And then something touched the rhetorical spring in his brain.

  ‘You see this flaming building,’ he said, sweeping his hand dramatically around him. ‘If this Communist spirit got hold of Europe for but two months it would be all aflame like this building.’

  By 12.30 the fire had been got under control. Two Press rooms were still alight, but there was no danger of the fire spreading.

  Although the glass of the dome has burst and crashed to the ground the dome still stands.

  So far it has not been possible to disentangle the charred debris and see whether the bodies of any incendiaries, who may have been trapped in the building, are among it.

  At the Prussian Ministry of the Interior a special meeting was called late tonight by Captain Göring to discuss measures to be taken as a consequence of the fire.

  The entire district from the Brandenburg Gate, on the west, to the River Spree, on the east, is isolated tonight by numerous cordons of police.

  There would be many victims of Nazi injustice, but no one would suffer more than the Jews of Germany and Europe. With the Machtergreifung – the seizure of power – Hitler’s long-cherished dreams of purging the Jews from Germany could be put into effect. After bullying and cajoling the Reichstag to support his Enabling Act of 23 March, which gave a pseudo-legal basis to the dictatorship of the National Socialist Germany Workers’ Party, Hitler turned immediately to the ‘Jewish Question’, summoning Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, to his holiday retreat at Berchtesgaden. Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler’s view was:

  We shall only be able to combat the falsehoods abroad if we get at those who originated them or at those Jews living in Germany who have thus far remained unmolested. We must, therefore, proceed to a large-scale boycott of all Jewish business in Germany. Perhaps the foreign Jews will think better of the matter when their racial comrades in Germany begin to get it in the neck.

  The NSDAP leadership called for a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses on Saturday, 1 April 1933. Windows were daubed with anti-Jewish slogans, chiefly: Deutsche, kauft nicht bei Juden! Die Juden sind unser Unglück! (Germans, don’t buy from Jews! The Jews are our misfortune!). Pairs of armed SA guards stood outside and prevented ‘German’ customers from entering the emporia.

  Jewish doctors and professionals were also boycotted. Or worse. Members of the 400,000-strong Sturmabteilung – the Nazis’ private army – were well versed in terror tactics, and in March 1933 began the systematic physical intimidation of Jewish judges and lawyers. The SA objected not only to the ‘defiling’ of the German justice system by Jewish blood; they also feared that Jewish lawyers, and the courts as a whole, might halt the Nazi Revolution.

  The Brown Shirts Throw Out Jewish Judges, Berlin, 31 March 1933

  SEBASTIAN HAFFNER

  Sebastian Haffner was an articled clerk in the Berlin Kammergericht, the highest court in Prussia. Although himself an ‘Aryan’, Haffner’s best friend and girlfiend were Jewish:

  I went to the Kammergericht. It stood there, cool and grey as always, set back from the street in a distinguished setting of lawns and trees. Its halls were filled with the hushed fluttering of barristers in their bat-like, black silk gowns, carrying briefcases under their arms, with concentrated, serious expressions on their faces. Jewish barristers were pleading in court as though this day were a day like any other.

  Not being due in court, I went to the library (as though this were a day like any other), settled down at one of the long work tables, and started reading a document about which I had to give an opinion. Some complicated affair with intricate points of law. I carried the heavy legal tomes to my place and surrounded myself with them. I looked up decisions of the high courts of the Reich and made notes. As always, the high-ceilinged, spacious room was filled with the inaudible electricity of many minds hard at work. In making pencil marks on paper, I was setting the instruments of the law to work on the details of my case, summarising, comparing, weighing the importance of this or that word in a contract, investigating what bearing this or that clause would have on the matter, according to the precedents. When I scribbled a few words something happened, like the first cut in a surgical operation: a question was clarified, a component of a judicial decision put in place. Not the final decision, naturally: ‘It is thus irrelevant whether the plaintiff ... so it remains to investigate whether ...’ Careful, precise, silent work. Everybody in the room was similarly immersed in their own cases. Even the ushers, somewhere between beadles and policemen, moved more quietly here in the library, and seemed to try and make themselves invisible. The room was full of extreme silence, a silence filled with the high tension of deeply concentrated work. It was like a silent concert. I loved this atmosphere. At home I would have been unable to work; today, here it was perfectly easy. Your thoughts just could not stray. It was like being in a fortress, or better, a test-tube. No breath came in from the outside world; here there was no revolution.

  What was the first noticeable noise? A door banging? A distant sound like an order being given? Suddenly everybody raised their heads, and strained to hear what it was. The room was still utterly quiet: but the quality of the silence had changed. It was no longer the silence of concentrated work. It was filled with alarm and agitation. There was a clatter of footsteps outside in the corridor, the sound of rough boots on the stairs, then a distant indistinct din, shouts, doors banging. A few people got up and went to the door, looked out, and came back. One or two approached the ushers and spoke quietly with them – in here no one ever raised their voice. The noise from outside grew stronger. Somebody spoke into the silence: ‘SA.’ Then, not particularly loudly, somebody else said, ‘They’re throwing out the Jews,’ and a few others laughed. At that moment this laughter alarmed me more than what was actually happening. With a start I realized that there were Nazis working in this room. How strange.

  Gradually the disturbance took shape – at first it had been intangible. Readers got up, tried to say something to one another, paced about slowly to no great purpose. One man, obviously a Jew, closed his books, packed his documents and left. Shortly afterwards somebody, perhaps a superintendent, appeared in the doorway and announced clearly but calmly, ‘The SA are in the building. The Jewish gentlemen would do well to leave.’ Almost at once we heard shouts from outside: ‘Out with the Jews!’ A voice answered, ‘They’ve already gone,’ and again I heard two or three merry giggles, just as before. I could see them now. They were Referendars just like me ...

  The scouts later explained what had happened in the main part of the building. No atrocities, why, certainly not! Everything went extremely smoothly. The courts had, for the most part, adjourned. The judges had removed their robes and left the building quietly and civilly, going down the staircase lined with SA men. The only place where there had been trouble was the barristers’ room. A Jewish barrister had ‘caused a fuss’ and been beaten up. Later I heard who it was. He had been wounded five times in the last war, had lost an eye, and even been promoted to captain. It had probably been his misfortune that he still remembered the tone to use with mutineers.

  In the meantime, the intruders had arrived at the library. The door was thrust open and a flood of brown uniforms surged in. In a booming voice, one of them, clearly the leader, shouted, ‘Non-Aryans must leave the premises immediately.’ It struck me that he used the careful expression ‘non-Aryans’, but also a rather colloquial expression for ‘premises’. Someone, probably the same person as before, answered, ‘They’ve already left.’ Our ushers stood there as though they were
about to salute. My heart beat heavily. What should I do, how keep my poise? Just ignore them, do not let them disturb me. I put my head down over my work. I read a few sentences mechanically: ‘The defendant’s claim that ... is untrue, but irrelevant ...’ Just take no notice!

  Meanwhile a Brown Shirt approached me and took up position in front of my work table. ‘Are you Aryan?’ Before I had a chance to think, I had said, ‘Yes.’ He took a close look at my nose – and retired. The blood shot to my face. A moment too late I felt the shame, the defeat. I had said, ‘Yes’! Well, in God’s name, I was indeed an ‘Aryan’. I had not lied, I had allowed something much worse to happen. What a humiliation, to have answered the unjustified question as to whether I was ‘Aryan’ so easily, even if the fact was of no importance to me! What a disgrace to buy, with a reply, the right to stay with my documents in peace! I had been caught unawares, even now. I had failed my very first test. I could have slapped myself.

  Haffner eventually left Germany for Britain, where he worked for the Observer.

  In these early days of the Third Reich the boycotts and street hooliganism of the Nazis caused anxiety, even among those sympathetic to the swastika. Hindenburg himself complained to Hitler on 4 April 1933:

  In the last few days a whole series of cases has been reported to me in which war-wounded judges, lawyers and civil servants in the judiciary, with unblemished records of service, have been forcibly furloughed and will later be dismissed simply because they are of Jewish origin. For me personally, revering those who died in the war and grateful to those who survived and to the wounded who suffered, such treatment of Jewish war veterans in the civil service is altogether intolerable ... If they were worthy to fight and bleed for Germany, then they should also be considered worthy to continue serving the fatherland in their professions.

  Hitler replied that the solution to the Jewish problem ‘will be carried out legally, and not by capricious acts’. It was a half-truth, because ‘capricious acts’, cheered on by Julius Streicher’s racist Der Stürmer, were by now daily events.

  Throughout March and April gangs of SA and SS – the Schutzstaffel, the Nazis’ elite paramilitary guard – wandered the streets of Germany beating up Jews. Behind closed doors, the SA were getting away with murder. Among the dead was a young Jewish sportsman, Siegbert Kindermann, beaten to death in the SA barracks in Berlin and his corpse thrown out of the window. A large swastika had been cut into his chest. More ominous still, in March the regime had opened its first concentration camp, on the site of a former gunpowder factory at Dachau, outside Munich. By the last day of March more than 15,000 ‘enemies’ of the Reich had been rounded up in Prussia and put in ‘protective custody’ in Dachau and Oranienburg. They included Communists, Socialists, homosexuals and Jews.

  A year later a central command structure for Dachau and its imitations was formalized: all prison guards were organized into the Totenkopfverbände, the ‘Death’s Head’ units of the SS. By March of 1934 there were seven concentration camps in Germany.

  The Nazi terror was not confined to boycotts and beatings of adults. Jewish children found themselves having to endure bullying almost daily.

  ‘It was bullying all down the line’: A Jewish Childhood in Berlin, 1933

  JOHN SILBERMANN

  I was only seven years of age in 1933 and I had just started school a year before. There were warnings from parents and others not to get mixed up in fights with the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth). The Hitler Jugend, if you want to give it its kindest interpretation, was a sort of Boy Scouts. Of course the Jews were not wanted, Jews were to be chased and beaten up. After 1933 it was just accepted that if you were a Jewish child you were liable to be beaten up, bullied or whatever else they chose to do with you. It was no use appealing to policemen or teachers because they’re not supposed to interfere or even be interested in helping you because you are perceived as an enemy of the state. That was fed into my mind as a matter of self-preservation. One took care; travelling to the Jewish school on the public trains, we used to travel in groups of twos and threes together, which gave a certain amount of protection. However, one stayed clear of travelling large groups as that would be seen as provocative, and as we didn’t wear swastika badges or Hitler Jugend uniforms, we were clearly identifiable. The bullying and verbal assault was not confined to German children: it was quite common if some adult, who was nothing more than an ignorant thug, called you names, or kicked you. It was bullying all down the line and that was totally accepted.

  The one grain of truth in Hitler’s reply to Hindenburg of April 1933 was that, for all the beatings and baitings of Germany’s 500,000 Jews, the main thrust of Nazi anti-Semitism was initially channelled into legal sanctions. For the first five years of the Reich, the Nazi government concentrated on restricting the professional and economic activity of Jews through legislative means, beginning on 7 April 1933 with the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Article 3, section 1, specified that:

  Civil servants who are not of Aryan descent are to be retired; if they are honorary officials, they are to be dismissed from their official status.

  Due to the insistence of Hindenburg, war veterans were exempt. In case there was any confusion as to who was ‘non-Aryan’, an implementing decree appeared four days later defining the term:

  It is enough for one parent or grandparent to be non-Aryan. This is to be assumed especially if one parent or one grandparent was of the Jewish faith.

  A further battery of more than fifty discriminatory laws prevented Jews from entering government and the professions, as well as restricting the educational opportunities open to Jewish children, by firstly limiting their numbers in state schools (under the Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools), then by segregating them in Jewish-only schools.

  On 15 September 1935 a special sitting of the Reichstag, held during the Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg, passed two new laws which sent a cold shudder through European Jewry and civilized society collectively: the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which was further expanded by the First Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law.

  Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour, 15 September 1935

  THE FÜHRER AND REICH CHANCELLOR, THE REICH MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, THE REICH MINISTER OF JUSTICE, THE DEPUTY OF THE FÜHRER

  Imbued with the insight that the purity of German blood is prerequisite for the continued existence of the German people and inspired by the inflexible will to ensure the existence of the German nation for all times, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is hereby promulgated:

  § 1 (1) Marriages between Jews and subjects of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law.

  (2) Only the State Attorney may initiate the annulment suit.

  § 2 Extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of German or kindred blood is forbidden.

  § 3 Jews must not employ in their households female subjects of German or kindred blood who are under 45 years old.

  § 4 (1) Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich and national flag and to display the Reich colours.

  (2) They are, on the other hand, allowed to display the Jewish colours. The exercise of this right enjoys the protection of the state.

  § 5 (1) Whoever violates the prohibition in § 1 will be punished by penal servitude.

  (2) A male who violates the prohibition in § 2 will be punished either by imprisonment or penal servitude.

  (3) Whoever violates the provision of §§ 3 or 4 will be punished by imprisonment up to one year and by a fine, or by either of these penalties.

  § 6 The Reich Minister of the Interior, in agreement with the Deputy of the Führer and the Reich Minister of Justice, will issue the legal and administrative orders required to implement and supplement this law.

  First Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law, 14 Novembe
r 1935

  THE FÜHRER AND REICH CHANCELLOR, THE REICH MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, THE DEPUTY OF THE FÜHRER

  Pursuant to § 3 of the Reich Citizenship Law of 15 September 1935 (Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 1146), the following is decreed:

  § 1 (1) Until further regulations concerning the certificate of Reich citizenship are issued, subjects of German or kindred blood who on the effective date of the Reich Citizenship Law possessed the right to vote in Reichstag elections, or to whom the Reich Minister of the Interior, in agreement with the Deputy of the Führer, granted provisional Reich citizenship, will be provisionally deemed Reich citizens.

  (2) The Reich Minister of the Interior, in agreement with the Deputy of the Führer, may revoke provisional Reich citizenship.

  § 2 (1) The provisions of § 1 also apply to subjects who are Jewish Mischlinge.

  (2) A Jewish Mischling is anyone who is descended from one or two grandparents who are fully Jewish as regards race, unless he is deemed a Jew under § 5, Paragraph 2. A grandparent is deemed fully Jewish without further ado, if he has belonged to the Jewish religious community.

  § 3 Only a Reich citizen, as bearer of full political rights, can exercise the right to vote on political matters, or hold public office. The Reich Minister of the Interior or an agency designated by him may, in the transition period, permit exceptions with regard to admission to public office. The affairs of religious associations are not affected.

  § 4 (1) A Jew cannot be a Reich citizen. He is not entitled to the right to vote on political matters; he cannot hold public office.

  (2) Jewish civil servants will retire by 31 December 1935. If these civil servants fought at the front during the World War for the German Reich or its allies, they will receive the full pension according to the salary scale for the last position held, until they reach retirement age; they will not, however, be promoted according to seniority. After they reach retirement age, their pension will be newly calculated according to the prevailing salary scales.