[3.6. The discussion in the Joint about the strategy for
the Jews in NS Germany: Stay and fight
or emigration]
[JDC supports emigration - many
German Jews don't want emigration]
Yet the problem of whether to support emigration from Germany, and to
what extent, was to be an ongoing one for the Jewish organizations
outside the country. JDC, as well as other organizations, had to come
to grips with the emigration problem. The official position of JDC was
to support an organized and orderly emigration and oppose a panicky and
disorderly flow.
Yet its emigration work was not universally accepted by its lay leaders
in America. These voices were echoing their German counterparts. Thus
the Reform group in Berlin stated on May 1, 1933: "We have absolutely
no intention of cutting ourselves off from our German national
community and our national ties and of changing over to a Jewish
national or folk community."
(End note 20: Mitteilungen an die jüdische Reformgemeinde zu Berlin,
5/1/33 [1 May 1933], 26-Gen & Emerg. Germany, "J")
[9 May 1935: CV-Zeitung reports
over 50 % of German Jews look Germany as their home yet]
The liberal paper
CV-Zeitung
in Germany echoed this sentiment as late as May 9, 1935, when it asked
why the Jews should help the German government to liquidate the Jewish
problem by organizing their own exodus while more than half of the
German Jews still looked upon Germany as their home and would remain
there.
(End note 21:
-- CV-Zeitung, 5/9/35 [9 May 1935], and
-- Jewish Chronicle, 5/24/35 [24 May 1935])
Many Jews in Great Britain and America held a similar view.
[11 Oct 1935: Jewish Chronicle
says support Jews in their fight]
On October 11, 1935, the Jewish Chronicle in London asked whether
(p.115)
we are to confess ourselves, as
well as the cause of tolerance, beaten, and evacuate the German Jews,
nearly half a million of them, to God knows what other country. ...
Repulsive? Yes, indeed it is scuttling! ... Jews will fight on. There
is no other cause. Better help them than beckon them to a surrender
which would disgrace them in the eyes of history and be denounced by
all lovers of progress - even, perhaps, by a future regenerate Germany
- as a betrayal of humanity."
(End note 22: Jewish Chronicle, 10/11/35 [11 October 1935], p.11)
[JDC: Marshall and Rosenberg are
against emigration - it would be a concession to Hitler - and economy
in other countries can be worse than in Germany - and other groups
suffer more than the Jews]
The chief proponents of such opinions in JDC councils were James
Marshall and James N. Rosenberg. Marshall thought that emigration was
"a concession to the Hitler theory that the Jews must get out."
Emigration "helped only a few people, whereas the bulk of the problem
has to be handled in Germany itself."
(End note 23: Memorandum, Hyman to Paul Baerwald, 4/23/35 [23 April
1935], 14-46)
In light of the economic difficulties that prevailed in other
countries, JDC was only aggravating the Jewish situation there by
encouraging emigration, without substantially alleviating the situation
in Germany.
Moreover, there were other groups
in Germany that have seriously suffered. Mr. Marshall felt that in
trying to emigrate, German Jews tended to set themselves off from other
groups who in the long run would be helpful to them.
These were issues of fundamental importance, and it was not worth the
price of losing out on them to get a few thousand Jews out of Germany;
[JDC voices against Separatist
philosophy of Zionism - JDC voices for emigration]
neither was it helpful to bring large numbers of Jews into Palestine at
this time.
Rosenberg added that "he was not willing to accept the Nationalist
Separatist philosophy of Zionism, for he valued his American
citizenship too much for that."
To voices like these, Warburg had a simple answer: "The German Jews
want to leave and have come to JDC with their problems. JDC
contributors with to help reeducate and retrain German Jews and get
them out."
(End note 24: Executive Committee, 5/4/36 [4 Mai 1936])
The general line of JDC on the emigration issue was that there had to
be as much emigration as there were places that could be found for
immigrants.
(End note 25:
-- J.C. Hyman in annual report, 1934; and
-- Executive Committee, 10/9/35 [9 October 1935], speech by Hyman)
[The Joint sees: NS anti-Semitism
is a
system, not a temporary uprising]
Warburg, Baerwald, Hyman, and the majority of the lay leaders accepted
Kahn's view that German anti-Semitism was not "a passing violent
action, (p.116)
that comes with all revolutionary movements, or temporary legal
discrimination that may be abolished again, or may quiet down."
(End note 26: Executive Committee, 1/4/34 [4 January 1934], speech by
Dr. Kahn)
Anti-Semitism was the fundamental basis of the new German state. There
was no place there for German Jews. German policy was to get rid of the
Jews. When this would be achieved was hard to say. It could take a
generation or more if the present government stayed that long, or it
could come about sooner.
[1934: Joint without strategy
between help to emigrate and help in Germany]
There was no contradiction between that and the JDC view that "by the
hundreds of thousands they must remain there, and we must lend them our
sympathetic help", as Rosen stated. He added that it was very tragic to
be a German Jewish refugee in Paris in 1934, a place where he was
equally unwanted as in his German home and where he was not allowed to
earn a living. In these circumstances it was sometimes even better to
stay in Germany and to work out some salvation there.
(End note 27: J.A. Rosen at Board of Directors, 6/13/34 [13 June
1934])
[Rosen sees the problem of numbers
of visas]
Rosen's opinion was based on some harsh facts: because of the
difficulty of obtaining entry visas to various countries, not more than
15-20,000 Jews could hope to leave Germany yearly; over half the German
Jews would have to remain there, at least for ten more years, whatever
the conditions.
(End note 28:
-- Summary of Activities of JDC since 1933 (11/25/35 [25 November
1935]), pamphlet. Also
-- Jonah B. Wise: Report on the Situation of Jews in Germany;
February 1934, pamphlet, where he says: "The half million Jews still in
Germany realize that for the great mass of them, their fate and future
lie within Germany.")
[Early 1934: Wise thesis: No
future in Germany - not all can emigrate]
The consequences of this stand by JDC were sometimes rather confusing.
Jonah B. Wise stated early in 1934
(End note 29: Executive Committee, 1/4/34 [4 January 1934])
that
(a) there was no decent future for the Jews in Germany;
(b) some would have to remain and adjust there; and
(c) Germany had been and would continue to be a center of Jewish and
world culture. Palestine and emigration generally, were not the only
answer.
[1934-1935: The new laws against
Jews make clear: The strategy has to be emigration]
But slowly, inexorably, it became apparent that all other aspects of
German work, while necessary and important in themselves, were
secondary to the necessity of removing as many Jews as possible from
Hitler's grasp. This was not altogether evident in 1934, when many saw
a certain stabilization in the Nazi regime's attitude to the Jews; but
by 1935, and especially after the promulgation of the Nuremberg laws in
that year, the situation had become clear.
[May 1935: Kreutzberger announces
the exodus of the young Jewish generation in Germany]
In May 1935 Max Kreutzberger, secretary of ZA, declared to (p.117)
the members of the JDC's Executive Committee that while in the
beginning there might have been divergent views and opinions, by now
all elements of German Jewry regarded their condition as hopeless. The
younger generation had to be prepared for an exodus, and the only
course for those who remained was to let them live out their old age
and die in peace.
(End note 30: Executive Committee, 5/22/35 [22nd May 1935])
[Until 1935: JDC wants the fight
of the Jews for equality like Jews have equal rights in the "USA"]
JDC's leaders had always taken a clear stand in opposition to a program
like that. They had opposed mass emigration from countries where
anti-Semitism was rampant. Their argument had been that any such
emigration was a surrender to antiliberalism, and that Jews should
fight and strive to become equal and loyal citizens of their countries
of adoption, as they had in America.
[But Jews at these times are not equal in the "USA" in many aspects of
private law, admission in clubs prohibited etc.
In: Encyclopaedia Judaica: United States]
[1937: JDC Hyman states
anti-Semitism is only temporary]
This theoretical position was bravely defended as late as 1937 by
Joseph C. Hyman, when he said, in a letter to Prof. Oscar I. Janowsky,
that anti-Semitism was but as temporary setback to democracy and
liberalism. "We still believe that a way can be found to integrate the
Jew with his environment under a liberal and tolerant system of
society. ... I am not so sure that it is impossible, in this vale of
tears, to count on strengthening goodwill between the Jew and his
neighbors."
(End note 31: J.C. Hyman to Oscar Janowsky, 11/24/37 [24 November
1937], R13)
