JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

were immediate and made Jews feel deeply uncomfortable.
In 1933 the Nazi boycott (April 1) affected Jewish shop owners;
April 7th legislation against non-Aryans led to dismissal
of Jewish professionals and civil servants, including physicians
and professors; while “aryanization” of Jewish firms
and the dismissal of their Jewish employees was carried out
by the exertion of steady economic pressure. The response of
the community was mixed. There was a wave of suicides but
also an attempt by the community to respond to deteriorating
conditions. Economic assistance was provided to those in
need; new vocations were found for youth, legal counseling
and housing advice was provided. In response to the April 1st
boycott of Jewish businesses,Robert Weltsch wrote an editorial
in the Judische Rundschau called “Wear the Yellow Badge
with Pride.” Synagogue attendance increased, as did Zionist
activities. Still the community did not formally encourage
emigration. It thought of Germany as the land of its fathers
and its children, a perspective that was to dramatically change.
Eight new Jewish elementary schools were founded in 1933.
Jewish officials – “Jewishness” was soon defined to refer to
one’s parents and grandparents and not one’s own identity –
not affected by these early measures were eventually ousted
under the provisions of the *Nuremberg Laws (1935). During
this early period, such incidents as the murder of a Jewish
physician, Dr. Philippsthal (spring 1933), and the suicide of
Rudolf S. Mosse after mistreatment in prison (fall 1933), the
first such instances of their kind, caused great consternation
among the Jews. In these initial years, when the members of
the Jewish community were being methodically deprived of
their economic standing and civil rights, Jewish religious and
cultural life in Berlin underwent a tremendous upsurge. Jewish
children, most of them excluded from the public schools,
attended schools set up and maintained by the Jewish community
or private schools. In addition to the eight Jewish elementary
schools that were maintained at one period to meet the
community needs, the famous college for Jewish studies, the
*Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums, was sustained
to train leadership and its program greatly expanded.
Jews were later forbidden to attend theaters and public places
of entertainment. The Juedischer Kulturbund (“Jewish Cultural
Society”) was established. In the summer of 1935 yellow
benches for the segregation of Jews were set up in parks and
inscribed nur fuer Juden (“only for Jews”). Signs inscribed
Juden unerwuenscht (“Jews not wanted”) were displayed in
public places. The economic condition of Jews in Berlin deteriorated
rapidly. By 1935 welfare assistance was a significant
responsibility of the community. Signs discriminating against
Jews were removed for the duration of the Olympic Games
held in Berlin (summer 1936). Antisemitic propaganda was
reduced only to return with a vengeance once the Games
were over and the tourists had returned to their native lands.
Throughout this period from 1933 to 1938, raids and arrests
became frequent occurrences and were accelerated in 1938.
Until November 1938 Jewish newspapers and books were published
on an unprecedented scale. Notable among the news-
berlin
papers was the Berliner juedisches Gemeindeblatt, a voluminous
weekly published by the community. Zionist work was
in full swing, especially that of He-Ḥalutz, and in February
1936, a German Zionist convention was held in Berlin (the last
to meet there), still reflecting in its composition the vigorous
party life of German Zionists. From March 28, 1938, the Jewish
community was deprived of its status as a recognized public
corporate body. The Berlin community was made a “private”
organization, denied the right to collect dues from the community,
and renamed the Juedische Kultusvereinigung Berlin
(“Jewish Religious Society”).
In June 1938, mass arrests of Jews took place on the
charge that they were “asocial,” e.g., had a criminal record,
including traffic violations, and they were imprisoned in the
*Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On November 9–10,
*Kristallnacht marked a turning point in the affairs of Berlin
Jewry: synagogues were burned down, Jewish shops destroyed,
Jewish institutions were raided and closed, including libraries
and museums, and Jewish manuscripts and documents were
destroyed. In the wake of *Kristallnacht, 1,200 Jewish businesses
were put up for Aryanization and 10,000 Jews from
Berlin and other places were arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen.
The “Bannmeile” was decreed, which restricted
Jews to an area within a certain radius from their place of residence;
banished them from most of the main thoroughfares,
and the area in which government offices were located; and
evicted Jews from their apartments, a step which had begun
earlier, but was now accelerated. Jewish newspapers had to
cease publication. The only paper was the new Das juedische
Narchrichtenblatt which was required to publish Gestapo directives
to the Jews. Meetings of bodies of the Jewish community
were no longer permitted, and the Jewish community’s
executive council had to conduct its affairs from then on without
consulting any representative group. Religious services,
when resumed, were now restricted to three synagogues (on
Levetzow, Luetzow, and Kaiser Streets) and a few small halls.
The pace of Aryanization accelerated as did the rate of emigration.
Most of Berlin’s rabbis left Berlin before Kristallnacht:
the last three rabbis to stay were Felix Singerman (died in Riga
in 1942), Martin Salomonski (died in Auschwitz in 1944), and
the most prominent of all, Leo *Baeck, who was offered the
opportunity to leave but decided to stay with his flock and was
sent to Theresienstadt camp in early 1943. As the Germans arrived
in his home, Baeck asked for half an hour, during which
time he posted a letter to his daughter in England and with an
unyielding sense of honor paid his gas and electric bills. At the
end of January 1939, the Gestapo established a Zentralstelle
fuer juedische Auswanderung (“Central Bureau for Jewish
Emigration”) in Berlin. The Berlin community, presided over
by Heinrich *Stahl, was the largest and most dynamic German-Jewish
community, and was incorporated along with the
Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden into the Nazi-imposed
Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland – the change in
name from German Jews to Jews in Germany was essential,
not incidental – established on July 4, 1939. After its incor-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 449