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poration into the Reichsvereinigung, the Berlin community
maintained its autonomous function for some time.
1939–45
After the outbreak of war, some 82,000 Jews were living in
Berlin – about half having left between 1933 and 1939. The
living conditions and situation of the Jews worsened. Emigration
was still permitted and even encouraged, and existing
organizations and institutions (the Kulturbund, Jewish
schools) were able to continue functioning. However, Jews
were drafted for forced labor at wages far below the prevailing
rate and with no social benefits, but this at least provided
them with a minimum income and delayed their deportation.
Many were employed in armament industries, which
also slowed their deportation. On Jan. 31, 1940, a special Arbeitsamt
fuer Judenarbeiter (“Labor Exchange for Jew-Workers”)
was set up. In the spring of 1940 Stahl was removed from
his post in the Reichsvereinigung by the Nazi authorities and
replaced by Moritz Henschel, a former attorney. In September
1941, a drastic turn for the worse came about. First the
Judenstern (“Jewish star,” i.e., yellow *badge) was introduced.
Two weeks later, on the Day of Atonement, in the middle of a
sermon by Rabbi Leo Baeck, the president of the community
was summoned to the Gestapo and told that the community
would have to prepare for a partial evacuation from the city,
that large apartments still occupied by Jews would have to
be cleared, that many additional parts of the city would now
be out of bounds to Jews, and that the Levetzowstrasse synagogue
would be turned into a Sammellager (“assembly camp”)
for 1,000 persons. In due course more such assembly camps
were added. Legal emigration was prohibited on October 23.
The last transport of legal emigrants left Berlin on October 18
for Lisbon. In the preceding months (May–October), 1,342
emigrants had been permitted to leave. Between October 23
and the end of the year only 62 persons managed to leave, and
in 1942 only nine Jews were permitted to go abroad. To make
Berlin *judenrein, deportations began. There were five major
phases in the process of deportation, the destination of Berlin’s
Jews reflecting the changes in German policy from forced emigration
to resettlement in the East and then to murder by gassing:
(a) between fall 1941 and January 1942 the deportees were
sent to Riga, Minsk, Kovno, and Lodz, sometimes directly to
the killing fields; (b) those deported in spring 1942 were sent
to Lublin (Trawniki); (c) between summer 1942 and February
1943 their destination was Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Riga,
and Tallinn (Rasiku); (d) Auschwitz was the destination of the
deportees of March–April 1943; (e) those deported from spring
1943 until the end of the war were sent to Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrueck,
Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz. Altogether there
were 63 Osttransporte carrying some 35,000 victims to death
camps in the east, and 117 Alterstransporte, transporting some
15,000 (mainly older) persons to Theresienstadt. It is believed
that about 95% of the first and 90% of the second group perished.
(For lists of transport numbers, dates, numbers of deportees
and destinations, see bibliography, Sellenthin, 84–85.)
All through 1942 the deportations were kept up, although
community employees and persons employed on forced labor
were still excluded. In November and December 1942, the
infamous commissar Alois Brunner (see Adolf *Eichmann)
from Vienna was employed in Berlin and was responsible for
organizing the picking up of the candidates for deportation in
their homes, distinguishing himself by his extraordinary cruelty.
Eventually, the deportations came to include groups of
community employees, and from the fall of 1942, only those
Jewish laborers who were employed in vital war production
were still safe from deportation. At the beginning of 1943, the
Gestapo persuaded the military administration to relinquish
these workers, which resulted on February 27–28 in the socalled
“Fabrikaktion” – marked by exceptional cruelty – in
which all the workers were taken straight from the factories
and deported from Berlin. Those Jews arrested in this “action”
who had gentile wives were taken to a special camp for onward
deportation, but when their wives carried out violent street
demonstrations, the Gestapo yielded and set their husbands
free. Even at that late date, the Nazis were seemingly responsive
to public opinion. On May 13, 1942, an anti-Jewish exhibition,
Soviet Paradise, was opened in Berlin, and was attacked
by a group of Jewish communists, led by Herbert *Baum. The
group was caught and hardly any of them survived. The Germans
imposed collective – and disproportionate – reprisal.
Two hundred and fifty Jews – 50 for each German who had
been killed in the attack – were shot, and another 250 were
sent to Sachsenhausen and perished there. The community offices
were closed down on June 10, 1943, and six days later the
“full” Jews among the members of its executive council were
deported to Theresienstadt. The remaining Jews were looked
after by the Neue Reichsvereinigung, which took up its seat
in the Berlin Jewish Hospital, which together with the Jewish
cemetery were the two Jewish institutions that continued to
function throughtout the war. While the deportations went
on, many Jews tried to stay on illegally, a very difficult undertaking,
owing to the need for frequent change of hideouts and
the lack of ration cards; many were caught and deported. The
“illegals” were given temporary help on an organized basis, by
groups of people who were of mixed parentage (Mischlinge)
and as such were not liable for deportation themselves; there
were also some Germans who at the risk of their lives put their
apartments at the disposal of the Jews who were hiding out.
One group of Jewish youngsters and their instructor managed
to hide in Grunewald for an extended period, spending their
time in the study of Zionist subjects. No exact figure is available
for the number of “illegal” Jews who survived in Berlin,
and estimates vary from 2,000 to 5,000. Berlin became officially
“judenrein” (“clean of Jews”) on June 16, 1943. On June
30, 1943, there were in fact 6,700, and on March 31, 1945, 5,990
Jews, comprising 4,790 Jews who had non-Jewish spouses,
992 “Geltungsjuden” (persons of mixed parentage, professing
Jewish religion), 46 Jews from non-enemy countries, and 162
“full” Jews, most of whom were employed in the Jewish Hospital.
The Jewish cemetery had remained in use – several Torah
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