increases in measures to expel the jews

8/13/2019 Increases in Measures to Expel the Jews

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Increases in Measures to Expel the Jews

With its efforts in the latter half of 1936 to expel the Jews from the economic

sphere, the National Socialist regime was pursuing two main goals: the financing

of rearmament and the expulsion of the Jewish minority from Germany. Eco-

nomic pressure was intended to increase the Jewish populations willingness to

emigrate and to improve the incoming flow of capital for the state.

After the first wave of emigration in 1933, when some 37,000people of Jewish

origin left Germany, 1934 saw approximately 23,000 leave; in 1935 there were

21,000 and in 1936 some 25,000.79 In the latter half of 1937 it became more andmore difficult for German Jews to find a place that would take them. On the one

hand, after the announcement of British plans to divide Palestine and, after the

Arab revolts of April 19368, the number of Jews leaving for the British Mandate

went down; on the other, there were increasing signs that countries that had so far

been willing to accept Jews who wished to emigrate were becoming more restrict-

ive in their immigration policies, as South Africa and Brazil had already shown in

1937. Whilst it is true that some23,000Jews left Germany in 1937, the reports of the

Jewish Reich National Association indicate that the numbers emigrating began to

stagnate in the third quarter of1937.80

During the whole of1937, representatives of the National Socialist regime were

occupied with the question of whether increased emigration to Palestine was

desirable from a German perspective if this were to improve chances for the

foundation of a Jewish state. The regime had to decide whether it wished to

continue its policies intended to drive out the Jews without taking account of the

international situation or of their consequences for German foreign policy.At the beginning of the year the Reich governments policy on the Palestine

question seemed clear: on 16 January 1937, the Reich Minister of the Interior

informed the German Foreign Office that it was planning to continue to support

the policy of Jewish emigration regardless of the destination countries.81 But after

it began to emerge in early 1937 that Britains Peel Commission might opt for a

Jewish state in Palestine, on 1June the Foreign Minister, Neurath, sent guidelines

to the embassies in London and Baghdad and to the Consul General in Jerusalem

in which he made it crystal clear that he was against the formation of a Jewish state

or anything resembling a state. Such a state would not be sufficient, he said, to

receive all the Jews, and like the Vatican for the Catholic Church or Moscow for

the Komintern, it would serve as an internationally recognized power base for

world Jewry.82 As formulated in a general order sent to all German consulates by

the Foreign Office on22June, in contrast to the expected recommendations of the

Peel Commission, there was significant German interest in making sure that the

fragmented condition of the Jews was preserved

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of Himmlers operational orderof1July1937: all matters in principle concerned

with the Jewswere thenceforth to be dealt with by the SD, whereas all individual

cases or implementation measures were to be the province of the Gestapo.88 By

proceeding skilfully the SD could harness the state apparatus for its own measures

concerned with principle.

The Division made a first attempt to break into the direction of Jewish

persecution in May1937at the point when the international Upper Silesia Accord

signed in 1922was due to expire and when, after a two-month transition period,

the German anti-Jewish laws were due to come into force; this had previously

been prevented by minority protection measures set out in the Accord. Eichmann,

who had been sent to Breslau, now set about seizing all the Jewish civil servants,lawyers, doctors, artists, and others who were to be removed from their positions

so that measures against them could be set in train as soon as the transition period

had expired.89

In the last months of1937, the position taken by the SD, according to which an

increase in economic pressure on the German Jews and limited support for

Zionists would force the pace of emigration, in particular to Palestine, underwent

something of a crisis. Unrest in the Arab countries meant that emigration to

Palestine was decreasing, and at the same time many countries were tightening uptheir immigration policies, not least because of the impression made abroad by the

rigour of German activity in Upper Silesia and because of a widespread fear of

mass exodus by German Jews that had been prompted by the intensification of

anti-Jewish policy.90

The SD reacted to the developing crisis in its deportation policy by sending its

specialists Hagen and Eichmann on anot particularly successfulfact-finding

mission to Egypt and Palestine,

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and by setting up a conference in Berlin inNovember 1937for the Jewish specialists of the higher echelons of the SD.92 The

essence of the papers given at this conference was that the persecution of the Jews

needed to be intensified and that further measures were needed to enforce Jewish

emigration. The SD felt it could resolve the dilemma that support for emigration

to Palestine producedthe wholly undesirable emergence of a Jewish stateby

calling a halt immediately after the conference to the limited support (or toler-

ance) it had hitherto shown for Zionist ambitions. This change of direction was

not to be declared to Jewish organizations, since, in the words of a workingdirective issued by the Division, it was wholly and exclusively a question of

convincing the Jewish population of Germany that its only way out is emigra-

tion.93 They were to be driven out at all costs, even if it was not certain where they

were to go.

Segregation and Discrimination, 19357 69

increases in measures to expel the jews

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