Jews in Leipzig - The University of Texas at Austin

up with a circular to all the schools, asking their cooperation with the Gemeinde, and
enclosing a list of all Jewish students, together with a list of Seventh Day Adventists. 64
This relatively innocuous beginning was only that, of course: a beginning of a
much more violent regime of segregation. The wishes of men and women like Walther
Lange were soon to be fulfilled. Lange wrote to the school office in October, 1936,
asking that his daughter be transferred to another school, away from the Nordstrasse,
where there were too many Jews for a “Völkisch thinking person” like him. The school
office wrote back, telling him not to fret, since the expulsion of all Jewish students was
imminent. 65
Indeed it was. In September, 1935, the Saxon education ministry directed the
local school offices in all the big cities to begin preparing for the expulsion of all Jewish
students. Following a Reich level decision, the religious education facilities of the Jewish
communities were to take on all Jewish students. Educational officials all over town
were advised to set up meetings with their counterparts in the various communities to
deal with the transfer. 66
The Leipzig Gemeinde was overwhelmed; the old school facilities were designed
to take care of many fewer students than were now expected to flow into the system.
Officials from the Israelitischer Schulverein [the Jewish schools association] met with a
representative of the Schulamt [local school officals] and asked for state assistance, since
the influx was more than the existing infrastructure could bear, especially given the
difficult economic situation the Gemeinde was dealing with, overall. The Schulverein
also asked that only religious Jews should attend, not all of those declared non-Aryan.
64 Ibid., 24 April, 1933.
65 Ibid., 28 October, 1935.
66 Ibid., 17 September, 1935.
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