Adler, Selig. "The United States and the Holocaust." Abstract

Adler, Selig. "The United States and the Holocaust." American Jewish Historical Quarterly 64, No. 1 (September 1974): 14-23.

Adler cites in footnote 1 several authorities who agree that "the United States could have done more to mitigate the catastrophe" (14). But the U.S. did not because of three factors: (a) Washington's incorrect assumptions about the Jewish plight in Europe and what the U.S. could do in order to alleviate it. (b) The refugee predicament came far behind other concerns of the time, especially the war. (c) The aid which did come was too little, too late (14). Most of the article concerns the political mistakes and misdeeds of the U.S. during the Holocaust which resulted in many, many more deaths.

The Berlin Anti-Jewish Riots of 1935 (3rd of 3)

In the previous two posts, I described the Berlin anti-Jewish riots of 1935. How to interpret such events from the past has been, and continues to be, a major question for those who study the Holocaust. Who was ultimately responsible?

In this particular case we know that, at the time, Hitler and the Nazi party had compelling reasons for creating at least the appearance of fairness for German Jews. For one thing, the leaders of the Third Reich did not want to risk a boycott of the next year’s Olympic Games, the threat of which was now renewed. [1] As early as mid-March 1933, Hitler had met with Dr. Theodor Lewald and Heinrich Sahm, president and vice-president of the German Olympic Committee. Following his conference with them, he “expressed great interest in the arrangements and said: ‘I will do everything possible to advance the Games, as well as all sports interests’.” [2] From that time until the successful production of the winter and summer Games of 1936, the regime did what was necessary in order to prevent a boycott. [3]

More-general economic concerns loomed as well. For example, on August 20, 1935 several ministers of the regime met in a conference called by Hjalmar Schacht, the Minister of Economics. Schacht emphasized to his peers “the damage caused by the anti-Jewish disorders and warned that the developing situation could threaten the economic basis of rearmament.” As one might expect, he was worried about present and future economic conditions. Of course, Schacht “agreed that the party program had to be implemented.” But he also insisted “that the implementation had to take place within a framework of legal instructions alone.” Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, and Gauleiter and Bavarian Minister of the Interior Adolf Wagner agreed with Schacht, and their conclusions were soon communicated to the Fuehrer.

Less than a month later, Hitler delivered a speech before the Reichstag, assembled at Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. He blamed international resistance to his regime for a supposed recent Jewish uprising in Germany. According to the Fuehrer, Jews living within the Reich sensed that they had strong support abroad. As a result, they had now concluded that the time had come for them “openly to oppose Jewish interests to those of the German nation.” Hitler continued with a general characterization and with a specific example from Berlin:

From numerous places vigorous complaints have been received of the provocative action of individuals belonging to this people, and the remarkable frequency of these reports and the similarity of their contents point to a certain system of operations. This attitude actually resulted in demonstrations which in a Berlin cinema were directed against a foreign film by which, though harmless in itself, certain Jewish circles felt themselves to be offended.

Having established the need for the German people to be protected from the supposed menace of an unresolved Jewish problem, Hitler then announced that a resolution was possible:

If this proceeding is not to lead to very determined action in its own defense by the outraged population—the consequences of which in any single case cannot be foreseen—the only way to deal with the problem which remains open is that of legislative action. The German Government is in this governed by the thought that through a single secular solution it may be possible still to create a level ground on which the German people may find a tolerable relation toward the Jewish people. Should this hope not be fulfilled and the Jewish agitation both within Germany and in the international sphere should continue, then the position must be examined afresh. [4]

And with that, Hitler initiated the so-called Nuremberg Laws which were then unanimously promulgated by the Reichstag.

Clearly, the Berlin riots of 1935 were connected to the enactment of the Laws. But more than that, they were a major part of the pretext for the Laws. To that extent, the riots represent a significant step in the long march from persecution to extermination. But exactly how significant were they? As I see it, Moshe Gottlieb oversimplified and overreached when he summarized the meaning of these events as follows: “The Berlin Riots mark the turning point in the final annihilation of German Jewry; for these attacks led directly to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, the Kristallnacht episodes of 1938, and the ‘final solution’ of the 1940’s.” [5]

Why should that statement be regarded as a stretch? For two main reasons. First, as the earlier parts of this paper show, the Berlin riots were especially notorious because they occurred in a section of the capital city that was full of visitors from other countries, press correspondents, and representatives of foreign governments. They were far from being the only major persecutions or the worst measures taken against German Jewry in 1935. Second, as Daniel Fraenkel explains, the Nuremberg Laws were indeed “an essential and logical step in the process of destruction unleashed against European Jews.” But he adds that “it would be a mistake to construe the enactment of the September laws as a direct prologue to the Final Solution.” Instead of “a frontal assault on the physical foundations of Jewish existence,” the Laws represented “an act of public and symbolic humiliation of German Jews.” [6]

Contrary to Gottlieb’s assertion, not even the Nuremberg Laws were decisive in any final sense. In my opinion, the complexity of the dynamic between expediency and the long-term goals of Hitler and other leaders of his party has been expressed quite well by Saul Friedlander:

The crimes committed by the Nazi regime were neither a mere outcome of some haphazard, involuntary, imperceptible, and chaotic onrush of unrelated events nor a predetermined enactment of a demonic script; they were the result of converging factors, of the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernable causes and chance. General ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always remained open to more radical moves as circumstances changed. [7]

The anti-Semitic riots in Berlin during the second half of July 1935 bear every indication of having been carried out, or at least permitted and controlled, by the leadership of the Nazi regime. It was in this way that Hitler and the party elite not only attacked the relatively-prosperous and significant Jewish population of the capital city, they also tested the resolve of the world community. Because they discovered an attitude that was unbelieving, lax, and even complicit, they then took the next steps along their ever-evolving but resolute path.
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[1] “Berlin riots mar Olympic planning,” New York Times, July 26, 1935. In the second half of 1935, the push for the U.S. Olympic team to abandon the games in Berlin intensified. See, for example, “Statement of non-Jewish advocates of boycott,” New York Times, October 25; “Jahncke asks ban on Olympic games,” November 27; and “N.A.A.C.P. asks A.A.U. to abandon Olympics,” December 14.

[2] “Hitler promises full support for the 1936 Olympic games,” New York Times, March 17, 1933. See also a piece that appeared in the Times two days earlier, “Hitler support expected for Olympics of 1936 in Berlin,” March 15, 1933. See also Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 138.

[3] In addition to the sources identified in the previous two notes, the pertinent literature on the story of the 1936 Olympic Games includes the following pieces from the New York Times: “Germany seeks 1936 Olympics for Berlin: government funds aiding 1928 campaign,” February 16, 1927; “Brundage’s views stir Berlin press,’ April 20, 1933; “Reich now says status of German Jews in next Olympics has not been settled, May 29, 1933; “Proposal to shift Olympics growing,” June 4, 1933. See also Moshe Gottlieb, “The American Controversy Over the Olympic Games,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 61, No. 3 (March 1972): 181-213; Bruce Kidd, “The Popular Front and the 1936 Olympics,” Canadian Journal of History of Sport and Physical Education 11, No. 1 (May 1980): 1-18; Allen Guttmann, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); “Olympic Games,” in Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, ed. Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedurftig, trans. Amy Hackett (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 2:669-71; David Clay Large, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 (New York: Norton, 2007).

[4] Adolf Hitler, My New Order, ed. Raoul de Roussy de Sales (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941), 339. I owe this quote to Moshe Gottlieb, "The Berlin Riots of 1935 and Their Repercussions in America," American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59, No. 3 (March 1970), 308, note 9.

[5] Gottlieb, 328.

[6] “Nuremberg Laws,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. Walter Laqueur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 454.

[7] Friedlander, 5.

The Berlin Anti-Jewish Riots of 1935 (2nd of 3)

The foregoing reports match up perfectly with dispatches issued during the spring and summer of 1935 by William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Dodd--pictured above with his wife in Berlin in 1935--wrote several lengthy reports for Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The gist of his communications was that the situation for Jews in Germany was then taking a turn for the worse. Ever since the early part of 1933, when Hitler and the Nazi party came to power and forced many Jewish professionals from their positions, the status of German Jews had actually stabilized. But now things were different. On April 1, Dodd wrote to Hull:

. . . there have been signs of an intensification of pressure upon the Jews in Germany. Fresh outbursts against the Jews in public speeches, additional discriminatory ordinances, and finally undercover work by the police all seem to furnish evidence that the State, profiting by the period of internal calm and by the strengthening of its hand through the declaration of military subscription, is engaged in a new anti-Jewish drive. [1]

Dodd noted, however, that compared to the obvious terror of 1933, the new campaign was being carried out, for the most part, “unobtrusively.” Furthermore, the recent measures seemed “to be directed at a further restriction of Jews’ legal rights.” Dodd said that he had no idea how far the regime might take the new measures, but he thought it was worth mentioning that an announcement had been made “of an early codification of the German citizenship laws and that in this connection many Jews here fear the worst.” By the end of April, things were much clearer. Dodd wrote to Hull:

Reichsminister of the Interior Frick, in an interview published in the Berlin Nachtausgabe of April 27, briefly outlined some of the details of the forthcoming citizenship law which, if they are ultimately incorporated in that law, will undoubtedly make it unique of its kind, inasmuch as it may be inferred from his remarks that citizenship shall be denied all non-Aryans and furthermore may only be acquired after the taking of a solemn oath to the Nazi State. [2]

By May 17, the situation had worsened. On that date, yet another dispatch from Dodd reported the following:

As the anti-Jewish campaign proceeds with official encouragement, it is only natural that, as is being continually reported by our consulates in various German cities, the instances of persecution should multiply in acts of personal humiliation of the Jews, press attacks against individuals, appeals to boycott Jewish stores, the changing of Jewish-named streets, and so forth. . . . The Consul General in Frankfurt has submitted a summary, enclosed as of possible interest, prepared by the National Society of Baptized Jews, showing the professions and callings barred to non-Aryan Germans. It will be seen that the disqualifications extend over practically the whole field of German life. . . . [3]

From these and other messages prepared for the U. S. Secretary of State and sent from Berlin, one can easily gather that the Nuremberg Laws, promulgated on September 15, 1935, had been in the planning for several months. What also seems clear enough is that the intensification of anti-Jewish measures that same year—even the ones blamed on rowdies or the public—were in fact well-coordinated. In yet another one of his communications to Hull, Dodd provides what appears to be independent evidence that the Berlin riots were not spontaneous. On July 17, two days after the outbreak of violence, Dodd wrote that the anti-Jewish campaign in the German press had “prepared the public mind” for the subsequent atrocities. Moreover, “[a]ccording to the best eye-witness accounts, outbreaks occurred at various times and places, but with a precision and common purpose evincing some sort of advance plan. . . .” [4] Significantly, Dodd’s communication was dispatched from Berlin on July 17, but was not received until July 26, nine days later. Moreover, it was apparently never answered. [5]
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[1] Moshe Gottlieb, “The Berlin Riots of 1935 and Their Repercussions in America,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59, No. 3 (March 1970), 309. For the Dodd correspondence, Gottlieb quotes from Foreign Relations of the United States, 1935, Vol. II: Germany, 392-95.

[2] Gottlieb, 310.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 311.

[5] Ibid.

The Berlin Anti-Jewish Riots of 1935 (1st of 3)

The next three posts will present some of my research on the 1935 anti-Jewish riots in Berlin. These events represent only one of the countless episodes in the unspeakable history of the Nazi regime. I say "unspeakable." And yet we must speak. Otherwise we fail to chronicle what fascist politics can do. If silent, we also run the risk of cooperating with those who, to this day and with increasing sophistication, deny the monumental atrocity of the Holocaust and downplay its horror.

I plan to eventually extend my study of this specific topic. And I want to improve the piece that follows here. So I welcome your comments, and am especially interested in hearing from those who are familiar with Holocaust studies. I thank you in advance for any feedback.

Abstract of the Entire Piece: My paper provides an overview of the atmosphere and activities of the anti-Jewish riots in Berlin in the summer of 1935. These incidents represent the pinnacle of the second major wave of disturbances following the Nazi takeover in early 1933. They were also significant because these events did not take place in a village in a remote part of Germany. Instead, they were perpetrated in the capital city, mostly along the Kurfuerstendamm, an elegant boulevard of Berlin. A major question—one that is difficult if not impossible to answer—is the degree to which Hitler and the Nazi high command were responsible for the Berlin riots. Had the regime simply set the tone? Or did they permit, or even commission, these atrocities? If the riots were permitted or even ordered, why did the leadership of the Third Reich disregard the possibility of losing the 1936 Olympic Games? Why would they come so close to an economic boycott? At any rate, what does seem certain is that in early-to-mid 1935, the regime decided to use the anti-Jewish disturbances throughout Germany, and especially the riots in Berlin, as a pretext for the promulgation of the notorious Nuremberg Laws. In fact, before he commended this legislation to the Reichstag, Hitler specifically mentioned the riots in Berlin as an example of why the races had to be separated. In that sense, then, we should understand the Berlin riots as a milestone in the road from persecution to extermination.

Conventions: I place short quotations within quotation marks. Block quotes appear as paragraphs in italics. In addition to the endnotes, where appropriate and when possible I provide links to pertinent Internet sources.

Sometime after 8 o’clock on the evening of Monday, July 15, 1935, anti-Semitic terror broke out along the Kurfuerstendamm, a well-known thoroughfare in Berlin. It was an unlikely scene for an outbreak of terrible violence. Known to many as Berlin’s "Great White Way,” the Kurfuerstendamm was brightly-lit and one of the most-fashionable places in the city’s West End. The area was also home to many of Berlin’s Jews who at that time still numbered as many as 150,000. [1]

According to that morning’s issue of the Voelkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the Nazi Party, a large number of Jews had booed at a recent showing of “Petterson and Bendel,” a Swedish anti-Semitic film. The newspaper account concluded with the words, “such insolence is not to be endured.” That afternoon’s edition of Der Angriff, founded by the notorious Joseph Goebbels, included a fiery editorial on the alleged Jewish response to the film. Not surprisingly, the riots that night began in front of the theater where the movie was showing. As they exited, those who appeared to be Jewish were seized, beaten, and chased. Victims were seen running down the street with blood streaming down their faces. Several area businesses owned by Jews were completely wrecked. Within hours, the Reich’s news bureau issued a statement: an attempt by Jews to disturb a presentation in a photoplay house on Kurfuerstendamm had resulted in spontaneous protests from “the public.”

The report went on to mention “minor accidents” and that “a window was broken” before police arrived and prevented further clashes. But according to a front-page story that appeared in the next day’s New York Times, the official statement had misreported the source, the extent, and the true nature of the events. In fact, an all-out riot, “which gave every evidence of careful planning,” was undertaken “by well-organized groups of young men who evidently had specific instructions.” Although these “rowdies,” around 200 in number, were dressed in civilian shirts, many of them were also wearing “Storm Troop boots and trousers.” At one point, “three men in Storm Troop uniform motored up and down the avenue giving orders to the rioters.” The growing crowds reduced the boulevard to a narrow lane, slowing traffic.

Every car that appeared to be driven by a Jew was greeted with shouts of ‘Out, Jew! Get out, Jew! Destruction to the Jews!’ Windshields were freely smashed.” The truckloads of police who eventually arrived seemed reluctant to intervene, unwilling to do much to restore order. To top it off, agents selling Julius Streicher’s notorious anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stuermer went from one café to the next wearing “placards that reached from their shoulders to their feet bearing the customary scurrilous caricatures." [2]

The Wednesday edition of the Times contained a story from the Associated Press that was almost entirely a first-person account provided by Varian Fry, the newly appointed editor of an American journal called The Living Age. Fry, a young, Harvard-educated journalist, had been in Germany on study tour for about a month. His account corroborated several details from the earlier story, including the time that the riots broke out on Monday night as well as how the crowd lined up on both sides of the street “forcing each car which came by to run the gauntlet.” He must have been jarred by the sheer ugliness of what he witnessed:

I saw one man brutally kicked and spat upon as he lay on the sidewalk, a woman bleeding, a man whose head was covered with blood, hysterical women crying, men losing their temper at the police or the Storm Troopers and being kicked or dragged off, women begging their men to keep out of the fight and crying and pleading.

Fry also remarked on the variety that he noticed among the perpetrators and enthusiastic onlookers:

Old men and young men, boys, Storm Troops, police, young girls of the domestic servant type, well-bred women, some even in the forties and over—all seemed to be having a good time. One youth told him, This is a holiday for us.

Yet another AP article that appeared in the Times told the story of a U.S. Navy midshipman, E. W. Wood Jr., who got into a fistfight with a man who had brutalized two women along the Kurfuerstendamm Monday night. [4]

The events of Tuesday, July 16, made it apparent that the Nazi regime was alarmed by what the Times called “the foreign and notably the British reaction” to what had happened the previous night. Reportedly, on Tuesday morning the commander of the Berlin Storm Troopers ordered members of the SA to avoid all questionable public demonstrations. For an indefinite period of time Troopers were to regularly wear their uniforms, except when at work in an office or factory. These precautions, it was said, would “deprive opponents of any opportunity to vilify or slander the party.” Also that morning, an official communiqué was released saying that “the beatings and destruction of property” the night before “were the work of ‘agents provocateurs’.” The story in the Times registered a strong doubt: “It should be noted that on previous occasions when similarly embarrassing events occurred, it has been, officially speaking on the morning after, the work of agents provocateurs.”

The local press in Germany did what it could to blame the victims. Tuesday’s edition of the Zwoelf Uhr Blatt remarked that the Jews considered themselves “again at home” and had assumed “the right to reject by whistling and whispering mocking remarks in a German photoplay house a film that had been declared ‘valuable for the interests of the State’.” It was the Jews “through their provoking behavior” who were responsible for “spontaneous demonstrations by German citizens.” Likewise, the Nachtausgabe said,

Certain Jewish groups began to regard themselves again as the masters of the situation. When ill feeling expressed itself yesterday on the Kurfuerstendamm, then that was simply evidence of how unendurable Jewish provocations had become. The responsibility lies with those who will not realize that the German people has no desire to return to Jewish rule.

Tuesday afternoon witnessed several aftershocks from the previous night’s earthquake. Customers at some of the ice cream parlors along the Kurfuerstendamm were harassed, and “a dozen young anti-Semites” chased one young man up the street yelling, “Traitor! Down with him!” That evening, supporters of Julius Streicher again came out in full force, wearing armbands that advertised Der Stuermer. Up and down the boulevard on windows and posts they placed stickers that bore the ominous slogan of the paper: “The Jew is the cause of all our troubles.” On certain shops they placed stickers that read, “I am a Jew. Aryans enter my establishment at their own risk.” [5] It was later reported that on Tuesday night, Adolf Hitler himself “patrolled the Kurfuerstendamm,” really or ostensibly, “to see that there was no new outbreak of anti-Semitic rioting.”

The Fuhrer twice rode up and down the fashionable thoroughfare in an automobile. He was dressed in a white raincoat and white traveling cap, and was accompanied by adjutants and Secret Service men. He made the personal survey, it was said, to assure himself that firm steps were being taken to prevent a repetition of the disturbances. [6]

The same piece also reported that the Nazi regime was pushing its sterilization program “despite Catholic protests,” and that the state-controlled press in Germany was devoting “entire columns to violent attacks on foreign reports of anti-Semitic disorders.” It went on to tell how the National Sozialistische Partie Korrespondenz, the Nazi party’s syndicate service, was now demanding that Jews, “on pain of death if necessary,” were thereby forbidden to rent an apartment to “Aryans.” Furthermore, no Jew was to engage Aryan domestic help, attend an Aryan physician, or accept an Aryan as a client.

Nonetheless, the article included the hopeful note that “a recurrence of Monday’s riots seemed unlikely.” [7] At the same time, it was noticed that in some towns and villages in Germany, the old signs reading “Jews are not wanted here,” had been replaced by new ones that said, “Jews enter at their own risk.” [8] Meanwhile, an official Nazi party bulletin insinuated that the press and the shapers of popular culture outside of Germany were guilty of communicating misinformation about life in the Third Reich. The bulletin asked why more attention had not been given to the plea issued by Reichsfuehrer Hitler in a recent foreign policy speech in which he had said:

The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts to achieve an effective lessening of the tension between individual States by means of international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent the poisoning of public opinion in the nations on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, in writing, in films and in theatre. [9]

By Thursday night of the same week, anti-Jewish rioting had broken out again in Berlin. Judging from the reports, though, these events were not nearly as severe as those of Monday night. [10] Nevertheless, the Times published many more stories over the next few days and weeks that indicated a relentless anti-Semitic drive in Germany. [11] They reveal something that Saul Friedlander has pointed out: though better-known than many of the other atrocities of 1935, the Berlin riots were only part of a much larger set of incidents. Most notably, as early as March of that year, Germany’s Ministry of the Interior announced that the new Wehrmacht would exclude Jews and that anti-Jewish legislation was in the offing. By the end of April, the city of Munich had witnessed several weeks of well-organized disturbances:

Jewish stores were sprayed nightly with acid or smeared with such inscriptions as JEW, STINKING JEW, OUT WITH THE JEWS, and so on. According to the report, the perpetrators knew the police patrol schedule exactly, and could therefore act with complete freedom. In May the smashing of window panes of Jewish shops began. The police report indicates involvement by Hitler Youth groups in one of these early incidents. By mid-May the perpetrators were not only attacking Jewish stores in broad daylight but also assaulting their owners, their customers, and sometimes even their Aryan employees. [12]

By Saturday, May 25 the attacks in Munich “had spread to every identifiable Jewish business in the city.” [13] Smaller cities and towns were also the scenes of attacks and locally-initiated measures against Jews. [14]

Yet another related article, published in the Times dated July 26, 1935, bolsters the idea that the wave of anti-Jewish incidents of that year were both planned and purposeful. By then, the aforementioned Virgil Fry had returned from Germany. Now he had a new twist to the story of the recent Berlin riots. While still in Berlin, he had spoken with Dr. Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, press advisor to Reichsfuehrer Hitler. In their interview, Hanfstaengl admitted to Fry that it wasn’t Jewish patrons who had hissed during the showing of the Swedish film “Petterson and Bendel.” A different group was responsible for the instigation. As Fry reported:

Dr. Hanfstaengle told me many things and asked me not to mention some of them, but he did not give me this information in confidence, and I see no reason why I should not tell you. . . . The original hissing took place on Friday, three days before the Monday rioting, which I witnessed. Dr. Hanfstaengle said he had reliable information that those who did the hissing were Storm Troopers. [15]

Not only that, on Tuesday, July 16, the day after the outbreak of the anti-Jewish riots along the Kurfuerstendamm, Fry had taken a walk down the boulevard to see some of the aftermath. Allowing himself to be seen as a foreigner who was nonetheless sympathetic to the events of the previous night, he asked two Berlin policemen if they thought that the rioting had been sponsored by the Nazi party. “The policemen,” said Fry, “replied in the affirmative.” [16]

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[1] The population number comes from “Berlin,” an unsigned article in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s online encyclopedia. The piece reports that the census of June 16, 1933 indicated that 160,000 Jews lived in Berlin. Some German Jews moved into the city during the pre-War years of the Nazi regime. Yet, by 1939, the total Jewish population of Berlin had dropped to 80,000.

[2] “Jews are beaten by Berlin rioters; cafes are raided,” New York Times, July 16, 1935. Evidently, something of this had already broken out as early as the previous Saturday, July 13. In his dairy on that date, Jochen Klepper, a Protestant author who had married a Jewish widow, wrote: “Anti-Semitic excesses on the Kurfuerstendamm. . . . The cleansing of Berlin of Jews threateningly announced.” Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 138 who cites Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Fluegel: Aus den Tagebuechern der Jahre 1932-1942, (Stuttgart, 1983), 269.

[3] “Editor describes rioting in Berlin,” New York Times, July 17, 1935. Varian Fry’s experiences in Berlin revealed to him the true Nazi spirit. In June 1940, he became one of the founders of the independent Emergency Rescue Committee. In August of that year, living in Marseilles, he created a clandestine network whose goal it was to smuggle refugees out of Nazi-occupied France. By August 1941, when Fry was expelled from the country, he and his associates had saved approximately 2,000 people from certain death. In 1976, nearly a decade after his demise, the United States awarded him the Eisenhower Liberation Medal. In 1993, he was honored by an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. And in a 1996 ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem declared him “Righteous Among the Nations.” Justus Rosenberg, “Fry, Varian,” in American National Biography, Supplement 2, ed. Mark C. Carnes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 183-85.

[4] “Midshipman tells of fight in Berlin,” New York Times, July 17, 1935.

[5] “Reaction to riots alarm Germans; baiting continues” New York Times, July 17, 1935.

[6] “Nazis tighten law on sterilization; answer Catholics,” New York Times, July 18, 1935.

[7] Ibid.

[8] “Signs of the new drive in Munich,” New York Times, July 18, 1935. See also an earlier piece, “Ban on Jews increased,” July 12, 1935, which reports how a German health resort had recently replaced signs that read, “Jews are not wanted” with different signs reading, “Jews are forbidden to enter the gardens.”

[9] “Boycott is pushed,” New York Times, July 19, 1935.

[10] “Anti-Jewish riots renewed in Berlin,” New York Times, July 19, 1935.

[11] See, for example, “Anti-Semite police chief named to ‘purge’ Berlin of Jews and Communists,” New York Times, July 20, 1935; “Nazi reich in throes of new ‘purification,” July 21; “New Nazi drives on ‘reactionaries’ spread to nation,” July 23; “Anti-Semites firm in the saddle as persecution spreads in reich,” July 24.

[12] Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I, 137.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., 138-39.

[15] “Editor holds riots inspired by Nazis,” New York Times, July 26, 1935.

[16] Ibid.

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1939

Historian Saul Friedlander first published Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 in 1997. Since then, the book has gone on to establish itself as a major contribution to Holocaust studies. Volume II, which covers the years of the War, 1939-1945, won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Friedlander was born in Prague and spent his boyhood in Nazi-occupied France posing as a Gentile, sheltered in a Roman Catholic monastery. In 1942, when he was nine, his parents attempted to escape to Switzerland but were captured and handed over to German authorities who sent them to Auschwitz. It was only after the War, in 1946, that the author learned the fate of his parents. Thus, his scholarship has always been an attempt to face and to deal with the world of his past.

In 1963, Friedlander completed the doctorate at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Since then, he has published a memoir as well as several major books and articles, all of them in some way related to the Holocaust. Today, he teaches at UCLA.

In the “Introduction” to Nazi Germany and the Jews, Friedlander notes that, as he sees them, many previous works on his topic tend to be lopsided. For example, books like Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, focus almost exclusively on the perpetrators, "the Nazi machinery of persecution and death." On the other hand, works like The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy Dawidowicz, concentrate almost completely "on the history of the victims." The goal of his book, says Friedlander, is to "convey an account in which Nazi policies are indeed the central element, but in which the surrounding world and the victims' attitudes, reactions, and fate are no less an integral part of this unfolding history" (1-2).

In his focus on Nazi anti-Jewish measures which ultimately led to the Final Solution, the author emphasizes the responsibility of Adolf Hitler. He is careful to note that he has no intention of going back to "earlier reductive interpretations, with their sole emphasis on the role (and responsibility) of the supreme leader." At the same time, he observes that some historians, attempting to explain the complexity of the events that led from persecution to extermination, have neglected one simple fact: "In all its major decisions the regime depended on Hitler" who took to its most extreme and radical limits a worldview that Friedlander calls "redemptive anti-Semitism" (3).

Here, the reader who knows the work of Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, instantly recognizes the unspoken critique of Goldhagen's comparatively-weak phrase, "eliminationist anti-Semitism." Friedlander, by using what he considers to be a more precise and appropriate adjective, goes beyond merely describing what Hitler's anti-Semitism did and what its intentions were. Instead, he indicates why the members of the Nazi high command, in spite of any remnants of a genuine humanity, found eliminationist anti-Semitism so appealing, why they deemed it a good thing. Indeed, with this telling phrase, he reveals how it was that the Holocaust could have happened at all: "It was this redemptive dimension,” he writes, “this synthesis of a murderous rage and an 'idealistic' goal, shared by the Nazi leader and the hard core of the party, that led to Hitler's ultimate decision to exterminate the Jews" (3).

The book that follows is comprised of two major parts, each one containing five chapters. In “Part I: A Beginning and an End,” Friedlander describes the Nazi regime from the time of Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933 to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws near the end of 1935. This was a time of shocking political and cultural change in Germany. The period saw so many radical anti-Jewish measures that by the time the Nuremberg Laws, which promised racial isolation, were announced even some of Germany’s Jews were themselves relieved. Behind all of this was Hitler’s redemptive anti-Semitism, which Friedlander partially describes as follows: “Whereas ordinary racial anti-Semitism is one element within a wider racist worldview, in redemptive anti-Semitism the struggle against the Jews is the dominant aspect of a worldview in which other racist themes are but secondary appendages” (87).

“Part II: The Entrapment” is made up of another five chapters which bring the story from 1936, a pivotal year according to the author, to 1939. The author reports the major events of this significant period of time. He includes telling descriptions of how, for instance, Hitler and the Nazis “achieved one of their greatest propaganda victories: the successful unfolding of the 1936 Olympic Games” (180). And he provides an account, of course, of the Kristallnacht pogrom during which 276 synagogues were destroyed, 7,500 businesses were vandalized, and hundreds of Jews committed suicide or were killed (276).

Throughout his work, Friedlander enlivens the story by providing details from government documents and first-person accounts, and by quoting from the diaries of both victims and perpetrators. He also manages to strike what I regard to be a good balance between intentionalist and functionalist interpretations of the Holocaust:

"The crimes committed by the Nazi regime were neither a mere outcome of some haphazard, involuntary, imperceptible, and chaotic onrush of unrelated events nor a predetermined enactment of a demonic script; they were the result of converging factors, of the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and chance. General ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always remained open to more radical moves as circumstances changed" (5).

Based on painstaking research among the best sources, Saul Friedlander’s work offers penetrating insight and judicious conclusions. Both the subject and the long sentences of the historian's style sometimes make for a difficult read. But the payoff is well worth the investment of time and effort.

Resources for Historians of the Holocaust

This semester I'm part of a graduate seminar at West Texas A&M University. The course, taught by Dr. Elizabeth Morrow Clark, is focused on the Holocaust.

Over the past few months, I've done a good bit of reading in the secondary literature on the subject. I've also spent a few hours identifying Web resources for those interested in exploring one of the most significant and defining events of the 20th century. Here's the best of the best of what I've discovered so far:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This nicely-done site is immense, yet easy-to-use. It includes a Holocaust encyclopedia, videos and photographs, transcripts of first-person accounts, lots of information about exhibits and events at the Museum located in Washington, D.C., and links to all sorts of related pages and sites.

Yad Vashem
The name of this museum located in Jerusalem comes from the Hebrew text of Isaiah 56:5, "And to them I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name . . . that shall not be cut off." Their site includes links to photo archives, podcasts, video lectures, a names database, and much more. First-rate.

Nazi Propaganda Archive
This site was put together by Professor Randall L. Bytwerk who teaches at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Bytwerk has written extensively on the subject of Nazi and East German propaganda. His site contains a wide array of translated texts as well as visual materials (posters, book covers and drawings, etc.) that give one a feel for the kinds of words and images that were common in Nazi Germany. Some, like Julius Streicher's anti-Semitic children's book, are downright chilling.

Gaps in the Christian Echo

Founded in 1902 by G. P. Bowser (1874-1950), the Christian Echo is the oldest periodical in circulation among African American Churches of Christ. . . . Unfortunately for historians, in 1946 archival materials on the early issues of the Christian Echo were destroyed in an automobile accident as G. P. Bowser was moving to Detroit. Therefore, early issues have been difficult to locate, complicating research. (Jesse Curtis Porter, in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, p. 191).

The question of whether the U.S. Olympic team should participate in the 1936 Summer Games at Berlin was a big issue in the black community in this country. A good number of those who qualified for the team were African-American. Because of Nazi Germany's racism, there were calls for an American boycott of the Games. Some people wondered about the safety of black as well as Jewish athletes in Hitler's Germany.

But there were several other parts to this story. For example, some of the leading members of the International Olympic Committee--which had, in 1931, extended the invitation to Berlin to host the Games--were American big shots. They were clearly embarrassed by the turn of events in Germany beginning in 1933, when Hitler had seized control. They didn't want to make any changes. Were some of them anti-Semites themselves?

At the same time, some in the black community wanted their athletes to go to Berlin and practically disprove racism by winning in their events. In retrospect, this position has been vindicated, above all, by the four gold medals won by Jesse Owens and the hero status he attained in Berlin.

Also, some people in the U.S. were saying, in effect, "Germany isn't any more racist than we are. So why not go?" This was an embarrassing admission, and had the effect of calling into question America's own history and condition.

Along this line, one of my current research interests is to find out whether the Christian Echo ever weighed in on these questions at the time. But the back issues of the Echo for the pertinent years are unavailable so far as I can tell. Can anyone help me out with this? I wonder if there' any chance that an unbroken set of the Echo can be put together? That, I think, would be a worthwhile project.

Can some of you Stone-Campbell historians be some assistance here? I need all the help I can get. Thanks!

Like a Dickens Novel Came to Life

Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy's Story of Survival 1941-1946 (New York: Pegasus, 2009), by Greg Dawson.

This fine memoir recounts the odyssey of Zhanna Arshanskaya and her sister, Frina. A true labor of love, it was written by Greg Dawson, Zhanna’s son, and a long-time columnist for the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.

Born in 1927, Zhanna, the author's mother, was the older of two sisters. The girls’ parents were Dmitri and Sara Arshansky, non-religious Jews who were raising a young family in Berdyansk, Ukraine, a resort town on the northern coast of the Sea of Avov. Dmitri, the father, was a candy-maker by day and an amateur violinist by night. Passionate about music, he had high aspirations for his two girls. His early dreams were fulfilled.

By the time she was six years old, Zhanna, a prodigy at the piano, was occasionally playing live on local radio. One such performance revealed the level of her skill and poise. As Zhanna played at the radio station, the lights in the studio suddenly went out. But there was no break in the music. Dmitri had always insisted that his daughter not only memorize a number, but that she never so much as look at her hands when she played. Anytime she learned a new piece, her father required Zhanna to perform it with the lights out. For her, a flawless recital in the dark was nothing unusual. But with the Stalinist crack-down in the Soviet Union, followed by the Holocaust, the blissful lives of the Arshanskys were changed forever.

Hiding in the Spotlight tells the story of how Zhanna and Frina survived the mass execution of more than 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar in December 1941, when their parents and grandparents were murdered; how they went on to become, of all things, German-sponsored entertainers living in Berlin, literally next door to the Nazis who had marked them and all "their kind" for death; and how, eventually, they became scholarship students at the Julliard School in New York after the War was over.

The Nazi regime murdered nearly 6 million Jews. This is the story of two Jewish girls who survived not in a camp or a cellar, but in the spotlight. Riveting stuff.

Neighbors, by Jan T. Gross

Gross, Jan T. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

In Neighbors, Jan Gross tells the story of a summer day when half the population of a small East European town murdered the other half (7). The author, a Polish Jew who now teaches at Princeton, gives special attention to the question of who did what in the town of Jedwabne [Poland] on July 10, 1941, and at whose behest (10).

As his title intimates, the evidence points to a shocking conclusion. Those who tortured and slaughtered nearly all of the 1,600 Jews of Jedwabne were apparently not the soldiers of the recently-arrived German army. They were, instead, the Polish residents of the town, the long-time neighbors of the victims.

The report of the trial of 22 people accused in 1949 as perpetrators has every appearance of being perfunctory and hastily done. By contrast, the 1945 testimony of Szmul Wasersztajn—one of only seven Jewish survivors of the massacre—provides many details of the hellish events that took place in Jedwabne in late June and early July of 1941. Gross insists that the first-person accounts of Wasersztajn and others must be taken seriously. The speakers, he points out, have no reasons to lie. Their stories corroborate one another and match up well with what the people of the region still say about that time.

Of course, the specific events described in the book took place within a set of contexts, and the author is careful to mention and discuss them as well. The totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler made every effort to exploit any sort of division or resentment. In that world, says Gross, a person living in a place like Jedwabne, completely disoriented by the events of the Second World War,

could simultaneously endear himself to the new rulers, derive material benefits from his actions (it stands to reason that active pogrom participants had first pick in the division of leftover Jewish property), and go along with local peasants’ traditional animosity towards the Jews.

Gross goes on to say that if

we add to this mix encouragement by the Nazis and an easily whipped-up sense that one was settling scores with the ‘Judeo-commune’ for indignities suffered under the Soviet occupation—then who could resist such a potent, devilish mixture? (162).

That someone of his background could make such observations indicates that in this book we have not only the work of a fine historian. We also have the mature and thoughtful reflections of someone who has managed to tell about a crooked world in a remarkably straightforward way.

Neighbors is a small book that can and should be read in a day or two. It is accompanied by several photographs of some of the victims and their families, two excellent maps, and several pages of endnotes. If you want to get a taste of the book, here is a pdf of the chapter entitled "Outline of the Story."

Hitler's Willing Executioners, by D. J. Goldhagen: An Overview

In Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, first published in 1996, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen sets out to understand "the actions and mind-set of the tens of thousands of ordinary Germans who . . . became genocidal killers" (p. 4). He begins with a premise that seems obvious enough: to explain why and how the Holocaust occurred, one must explore "the question of what impelled the perpetrators of the Holocaust to kill" (5). He claims that, in the vast literature on the the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, comparatively little has been written on this central question, a neglect he intends to remedy.

Goldhagen, a historian and political scientist at Harvard, emphasizes that it is too simple to say that the Holocaust was perpetrated by Hitler and other Nazi leaders. By definition, all leaders have followers; and without the tens of thousands who willingly followed, the Holocaust would never have occurred. So exactly who were those followers, and what made them tick? Specifically, what were the motivations that led them to not merely execute, but to demean and torture and slaughter, as many Jews as they could? The author reports that in the majority of the previous interpretations of the Holocaust, the motivations of the perpetrators of genocide have been explained along the following lines:

A. They were coerced by the threat of severe punishment or even death.

B. They were blindly following Adolf Hitler, their popular, charismatic leader. Another example of this type of obedience explanation says that people generally obey authority. They are even more likely to obey state authority, and this would be as true of Germans as anyone.

C. They were subjected to high levels of social pressure and expectation.

D. They were petty, callous bureaucrats who were out to make careers and to provide for themselves and their families.

E. Because the Holocaust was carried out by a series of acts that involved different people doing different things, the responsibility for such inhumanity was dispersed. According to this explanation, very few of the thousands of perpetrators, therefore, accepted that they were killing millions of Jews. Under these circumstances, they found it relatively easy to shift the blame.

Goldhagen says that these explanations or rationalizations are mostly, if not entirely, untrue. The fact is, millions of ordinary Germans knew exactly what the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem" was. Perhaps as many as 100,000 or more of these people became willing, responsible perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Coupled with this thesis is Goldhagen’s assertion that most of the previous interpreters of the Holocaust have not rightly understood the depth and the character of the antisemitism that motivated its perpetrators. Too often, he says, people have imagined that most Germans living under the Nazi regime were basically like most everyone else. They weren’t. Using anecdotes and statistics from primary sources, Goldhagen paints a portrait of Holocaust perpetrators who had very little of what might be called special exposure to Nazi propaganda. Nor were they a group of young, impressionable, hand-selected, highly-trained soldiers. Only small percentages of them were “SS men” or members of the Nazi party. Instead, the perpetrators were typical Germans, animated by what the author calls an "eliminationist antisemitism," a particular type that led the perpetrators of the Holocaust "to conclude that Jews ought to die" (14, original emphasis).

As Goldhagen attempts to demonstrate, this most-radical and hateful sort of antisemitism pervaded German society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And that, he says, is how and why the Holocaust occurred.

Places I've Been and What I'm Reading

When it comes to Genesis 1-3, a well-known American dichotomy says "It's either history or it's myth." But is that a faithful approach? I'm intrigued by how N.T. Wright responds to such questions in this video.

I don't particularly care for the expression, but it communicates something that many conservative Protestants think and debate about. We call it the question of "Women's Role in the Church." Whether you lean egalitarian (more liberal) or complementarian (more traditional), you might want to read Wayne Grudem's challenge: "An Open Letter to Egalitarians: Six Questions That Have Never Been Satisfactorily Answered."

I'm currently reading Hitler's Willing Executioner's: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. One of Goldhagen's most basic points emphasizes the word willing. In many of the previous interpretations of the Holocaust, the motivations of the German perpetrators of genocide have been explained along the following lines:

(a) They were coerced by the threat of punishment or even death.

(b) They were blindly following Adolf Hitler their popular, charismatic leader. Another type of this obedience theory is that, generally, people obey authority. They are even more likely to obey state authority, and this would be as true of Germans as anyone.

(c) They were subjected to high levels of peer pressure or social expectation.

(d) They were petty, callous bureaucrats who were out to make careers and provide for themselves and their families.

(e) Because the Holocaust was carried out by a series of acts that involved different people doing different things, the responsibility for such inhumanity was dispersed. According to this explanation, very few of the thousands of perpetrators, therefore, accepted that they were killing millions of Jews. Under the circumstances, it was relatively-easy to shift the blame.

Goldhagen says that these explanations or rationalizations are mostly, if not entirely, bunk. The fact is, there were many, many ordinary German people who knew exactly what the "final solution" to the "Jewish problem" was. These people were willing, responsible perpetrators. Coupled with this thesis is that most previous interpreters of the Holocaust have underestimated the depth and the strength of German anti-semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Too often, we have imagined that most Germans living under the Nazi regime were basically a lot like Americans living in the post-War years. Goldhagen seems to be saying, "No, they weren't. And if you don't get that, then you're bound to get the Holocaust wrong too." Has anyone else out there read this book?

And, by the way, what are you reading these days?