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Jewish Farmers in Hitler’s Germany: Zionist Occupational Retraining and Nazi "Jewish Policy"1
Saint Michael’s College
Nazi support for Zionist and non-Zionist occupational retraining programs for young Jews between 1933 and 1941 reflected a desire to facilitate the rapid emigration of Jews from Germany. But this policy encountered considerable opposition from several government and party agencies because the retraining process involved activities they deemed violations of Nazi racial teaching. The policy debates and disagreements among the various offices of the Nazi party and the state reflected the tension between ideology and pragmatism in Nazi Jewish policy, and its relative lack of central planning and direction during the early years of the Third Reich. Eventually, as it so often did, the regime opted for the pragmatic approach by supporting Jewish retraining programs as the most effective way to promote the total emigration of Jews from Germany.
1. This article is a much expanded version of a paper presented at the Eighth Lessons and Legacies International Conference on the Holocaust, "From Generation to Generation," at Brown University, November 4–7, 2004.
2. Since the publication of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), a substantial literature has developed out of the debates surrounding Goldhagen’s controversial theories, particularly about the nature of German antisemitism. See the numerous reviews of the book itself, as well as the following: Julius Schoeps, ed., Ein Volk von Mördern: Die Dokumentation zur Goldhagen-Kontroverse um die Rolle der Deutschen im Holocaust (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1996), and Robert Shandley, ed., Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Controversy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). See also Omer Bartov, Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), especially chapters 5 and 6.
3. See Francis R. Nicosia, "Zionism and Palestine in Antisemitic Thought in Imperial Germany," Studies in Zionism, 13 (1992): 115–31. See also Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
4. See for example the works of some of the major racist and antisemitic intellectuals and others in Germany before and just after the turn of the twentieth century, among them Eugen Dühring, Die Judenfrage als Frage der Rassenschädlichkeit für Existenz, Sitte und Kultur der Völker, 4th ed. (Berlin: Reuther und Reichard, 1892); Theodor Fritsch, Handbuch der Judenfrage, 26th ed. (Hamburg: Hanseat. Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1907); Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum: Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet (Bern: Rudolf Costenoble, 1879); Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., 27th ed. (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1941); Adolf Wahrmund, Das Gesetz des Nomadentums und die heutigen Judenschaft (Berlin: Reuter und Reichard, 1892); Paul de Lagarde, Juden und Indogermanen: Eine Studie nach dem Leben (Göttingen: Dieterichsche Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1887); Ludwig Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie: Eine Untersuchung über den Einfluss der Decendenztheorie auf die Lehre von der politischen Entwicklung der Völker (Jena: Diederichs, 1903). There are also biographies of some of these individuals and others—among them Jacob Katz, The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s Antisemitism (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986); Geoffrey Field, Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), and Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Antisemitism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
5. See Francis R. Nicosia, "Ein nützlicher Feind: Zionismus im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1933–1939," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 37 (1989): 367–400.
6. See Nicosia, "Zionism and Palestine"; and Alfred Rosenberg, Der staatsfeindliche Zionismus (Hamburg: Deutschvölkische Verlagsanstalt, 1922), 15–16, 25, 58–60, 62–63. Rosenberg often referred to the possibility that Palestine could become a "Jewish Vatican," an independent power base from which Zionists would direct the alleged world Jewish conspiracy against the German Reich. Yet he continued to support the idea of Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine through 1938.
7. Use of the term "assimilationist" to refer to those German Jews who were non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, who viewed themselves as Jewish by confession but German by nationality, and were very much assimilated into social and cultural life of their German homeland, is a sensitive issue. Certainly both the Zionists and the Nazis referred to them as "assimilationists." But we should remember that the great majority of these German Jews neither sought to deny their Jewish identity nor ever stopped believing that one could be both Jewish and German at the same time.
8. Another rich source for police reports on the activities of local Zionist and non-Zionist organizations and operations is the Sächsisches Staatsarchiv in Leipzig (hereafter SStA). See for example Francis R. Nicosia, "Der Zionismus in Leipzig im Dritten Reich," in Ephraim Carlebach Stiftung, ed., Judaica Lipsiensia: Zur Geschichte der Juden in Leipzig (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1994), 167–78.
9. Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage, Die Juden in Deutschland (Munich: Franz Eher, 1935), 8 ff. This institute in the Ministry of Propaganda should not be confused with Alfred Rosenberg’s Institute for Research on the Jewish Question (Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage), or Walter Frank’s Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany (Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands), both of which aspired to academic respectability.
10. Ernst Marcus, "The German Foreign Office and the Palestine Question in the Period 1933–1939," Yad Vashem Studies 2 (1958): 183.
11. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. (hereafter USHMM): 11.001M.01, 2–173, Abschrift aus der Jüdischen Telegraphen-Agentur (JTA), No. 70, vol. 13. (24 March 1934).
12. Founded in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1880, ORT was an international movement dedicated to changing the traditional professional structure of Jews by teaching young Jews the manual trades. Its programs, designed to prepare Jewish youth for emigration, were not meant specifically for Palestine, although some of those who completed the ORT program did go to Palestine. See Leon Shapiro, The History of ORT: A Jewish Movement for Social Change (New York: Schocken Books, 1980). See also Wolfgang Benz, ed., Die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945: Leben unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1989), 462.
13. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–137, "Jüdisches Umschulungslager Altkarbe," 23 July 1935; and 4–305, "Umschulungslehrgänge für Juden," from the magazine Der jüdische Handwerker 27 (9 September 1935).
14. Bundesarchiv, Potsdam (hereafter BAP): 75c Re 1–21, Informationsblätter 6 (Hrsg. von der Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland) (July–August 1938): 72–73, and VI (March–April 1938): 37.
15. See Osobyi Arkhiv (Special Archive), Moscow (hereafter Osb): 1325-1-81, "Was ist der Hechaluz? Einige Worte an jeden jungen Juden," May 1933.
16. Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (hereafter CZA): S25–9742, Report of the American Jewish Committee, "The German Jewish Problem," by Joseph L. Cohen (n.d.).
17. See Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 29–30, 146.
18. CZA: L13–138, ZVfD, Berlin an die Zionistischen Ortsgruppen und Vertrauensleute, 8 February 1934.
19. SStA: PP-V, 4532, Überwachungsbericht, Polizeipräsidium Leipzig, Abt. IV, 1 March 1936, and 13 September 1936.
20. SStA: PP-V, 4548, Überwachungsbericht, Staatspolizeistelle Leipzig, Bericht über den Verlauf des Elternabends des jüdischen Pfadfinderbundes Makkabi-Hazair, 11 October 1937.
21. In September 1933, the major Jewish organizations in Germany formally came together to form the Reich Representation of German Jews (Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden), which provided the Jewish community in Germany with a unified, representative body vis-à-vis the Nazi state. The organization assisted German Jews in education, vocational training, social and economic welfare, and emigration, and sought to defend the Jews in Germany in the face of the intensifying persecution of the 1930s. In 1935, in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws, it was forced to change its name to the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany (Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland). In July 1939, following the dissolution of all major Jewish organizations in Germany in the previous year, it was replaced by the Reich Association of Jews in Germany) (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland).
22. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–137, Staatspolizeistelle Hannover an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt in Berlin, 22 August 1935; SStA: PP-V, 4441, "Gehringshof-Rodges. Die älteste jüdische landwirtschaftliche Lehrstätte in Deutschland," (n.d.).
23. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–137 and 2–146 for a large collection of police questionnaires that were filled out at occupational retraining camps and submitted to the Gestapo during the 1930s. These forms contain answers to the eight questions that the Gestapo formulated in July 1935 for all Umschulungslager, and thus much of the relevant information about the size, scope, function, etc., of each camp.
24. The Gestapo encouraged the training of foreign and stateless Jews in the occupational retraining centers, recognizing an even greater interest in promoting the emigration of such persons from Germany. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–146, Geheime Staatspolizei Berlin an die Staatspolizeistelle in Potsdam, 18 January 1937, and Preussische Geheime Staatspolizei Breslau an die Geheime Staatspolizei in Berlin, 6 February 1937.
25. Michael Wildt, ed., Die Judenpolitik des SD bis 1935: Eine Dokumentation (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1995), 68.
26. The Bayerische Politische Polizei was the Gestapo in Bavaria, placed under Himmler’s control in March 1933 as part of the process of his expanding control over the state police forces in the federal states in Germany. See Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 37–41.
27. Bundesarchiv, Berlin (hereafter BAB): Schumacher File 240/I. Bayerische Politische Polizei an alle Polizeidirektionen, Staatspolizeiämter, Bezirksämter, Bezirksamtsaussenstellen, Stadtkommissäre, und Kreisregierungen, B. NR. 190 16/35 I 1B, 5 July 1935. These regulations were restated a year later by the Gestapo in Berlin. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Politische Polizeikommandeur Berlin an die Politischen Polizeien der Länder, II 1 B 2-J. 709/35, 25 June 1936.
28. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, 69.
29. Certainly by 1933, the Nazis and many non-Jewish Germans commonly used the term "Aryan" to differentiate themselves from Jews. Beyond the realm of Nazi racial fantasy, of course, it is a meaningless term when applied to Germany and Germans in the twentieth century. But given the historical context of the subject matter of this essay, and the significance of Nazi racial ideology to this particular story, the terms "non-Jews," "non-Jewish Germans," and "Christians" do not adequately reflect the attitudes, intentions, and language of the actors whose words and deeds are recorded in the documents.
30. See Werner T. Angress, Between Fear and Hope: Jewish Youth in the Third Reich (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 22–23.
31. For more on the sometimes awkward synthesis of socialism and Jewish nationalism, see Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), chap. 5. See also Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 416–37; and Robert Wistrich, "Marxism and Jewish Nationalism: The Theoretical Roots of Confrontation," The Jewish Journal of Sociology 17 (1975): 34–54.
32. See for example Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam (hereafter BLHA): Pr. Br. Rep. 2A I Pol 1171, Arbeitsdienst Brandenburg, Lager Belzig, an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt Berlin, 18 July 1933.
33. BLHA: Pr. Br. Rep. 2A I Pol 1171, Gau Mark Brandenburg im Reichsverband für Deutsche Jugendherbergen e.V. an den Herrn Regierungspräsidenten, Abteilung Schulen, Potsdam, 21 July 1933.
34. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–173, Der Regierungspräsident Frankfurt a.O. an den Herrn Preussischen Ministerpräsidenten, Geheime Staatspolizei, 3 L. 9/34, 31 January 1934.
35. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichsminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt, Berlin, IV/5–656, 26 February 1934.
36. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichsminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft an den Herrn Reichsarbeitsminister, IV/5–1861, 11 June 1934. Presumably Harmening signed this memorandum for Reich Minister of Agriculture Walther Darré.
37. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichs- und Preussische Minister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft an den Herrn Reichs- und Preussischen Arbeitsminister, IV/6.-2517, 29 July 1935.
38. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichsminister des Innern an den Herrn Reichsminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, IV 5012/11.5, 13 June 1934.
39. See Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage, Die Juden in Deutschland, 16–17.
40. See for example Konrad Kwiet, "Forced Labour of German Jews," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 36 (1991): 389–410; and Wolf Gruner, Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden: Zur Zwangsarbeit als Element der Verfolgung 1938–1943 (Berlin: Metropol, 1997).
41. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, II 1 B.2 68783, 3 December 1934.
42. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt Berlin an den Herrn Reichsarbeitsminister, II 1 B 2–64944/7625/35, 11 June 1935.
43. The Haavara agreement enabled German Jews willing to emigrate to Palestine to take a small portion of their assets (otherwise blocked in Germany) in the form of German export goods that were sold on the Palestinian market. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of those goods in Palestine were used to cover the immigration requirements established by the British Mandate in Palestine. See Werner Feilchenfeld, Dolf Michaelis, and Ludwig Pinner, Haavara-Transfer nach Palästina und Einwanderung deutscher Juden 1933–1939 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1972), 37–85. See also Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 2000), chap. 3.
44. See for example Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York: Owl Books, 2000), 225 ff.
45. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Preussische Geheime Staatspolizei an den Herrn Reichs- und Preussischen Minister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, II 1 B 2–64944, 27 July 1935. The same note was sent to the Ministry of Labor on the same date. See also: USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichs- und Preussische Minister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt Berlin, IV/6–2517, 29 July 1935; and Benz, Die Juden in Deutschland, 457.
46. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Preussische Geheime Staatspolizei Berlin an den Herrn Reichs- und Preuss. Arbeitsminister, mit Abschrift des Schreibens an den Herrn Reichs- und Preuss. Minister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, II 1 B 2–64944/Z625/35, 27 July 1935.
47. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Gauleitung Schlesien, an den Stellv. Gauleiter Bracht, Breslau, 1 August 1935.
48. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–173, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Hauptamt für Volksgesundheit, an die Geheime Staatspolizei, Berlin, 19 December 1935.
49. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 4–305, Die Deutsche Arbeitsfront, Zentralbüro, an das SS-Hauptamt, RFSS Berlin, B.Nr. 3687/35, 18 May 1935.
50. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178. Der Stellvertreter des Führers an den Herrn Reichs- und Preussischen Minister des Innern, Betr. Beschäftigung nichtarischer Arbeitnehmer in der Landwirtschaft, (n.d.). The likely author of this note was Martin Bormann. Copies were also sent to the Ministry of Labor, the Agriculture Ministry, and the Gestapo.
51. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichsführer-SS, Der Chef der Sicherheitshauptamtes, Nr. 27828/35, 1 August 1935.
52. See for example Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Magdeburg (hereafter LHSA): C 48 Ie, Nr.1171, 71–72, Staatspolizeistelle in Halle an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt, Berlin, II 1 8040/1318.35, "Bericht über das jüdische Umschulungslager im Gut Bomsdorf, Kr. Bitterfeld, 9 August 1935; USHMM: 11.001M.01, 1–173, Der Präsident des Geheimen Staatspolizeiamtes Sachsen an den Politischen Polizeikommandeur des Landes Sachsen, Betr. Jüdische Umschulungslager, II 3 A, 15 August 1935; USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–137, Staatepolizeistelle Hannover an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt, Berlin, I 2 2650/35, 22 August 1935, and Bayerische Politische Polizei München an den Politischen Polizeikommandeur der Länder, Berlin, II 1 B 2 J 709/35, 8 October 1935.
53. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–146, Bayerische Politische Polizei an den Politischen Polizeikommandeur der Länder, Berlin, 38287/36 II 1 B k, 2 October 1936.
54. BLHA: Pr. Br. Rep. 2 A I Pol. 1170, Staatspolizeistelle für den Regierungsbezirk Potsdam (Dr. Kraussoldt) an den Herrn Regierungspräsidenten Potsdam (Herrn Landrat Perleberg), 26 September 1934.
55. See USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Präsident der Reichsanstalt für Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversicherung, Gesch. Z. II 5590/621, "Beschäftigung nichtarischer Arbeitnehm- er in der Landwirtschaft," (n.d.).
56. See for example USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–173, Staatspolizeistelle für den Landespolizeibezirk Berlin an die Preussische Geheime Staatspolizei, Berlin, Stapo. 8 A 1777/36, 15 May 1936.
57. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Palästinaamt Berlin der Jewish Agency for Palestine an das Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, Berlin, 19 June 1936.
58. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, "Vereinbarung zwischen Reichsnährstand und Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland betreffend landwirtschaftliche und gärtnerische Ausbildung von Juden zur Vorbereitung der künftigen Auswanderung," (n.d.). The agreement was to run until 30 June, 1938. The Reichsnährstand was established by the NSDAP on 13 September 1933. Responsible for the supervision of production and distribution of agricultural products as well as for marketing regulations, it represented Germany’s agricultural population—both farm owners and farm employees. It operated under the authority of the Reich Ministry for Agriculture. See Angress, Between Fear and Hope, 25, fn. 52.
59. See Angress, Between Fear and Hope, 25.
60. See for example USHMM: 11.001M.01, 2–173, Preussische Geheime Staatspolizei, Staatspolizeistelle für den Landespolizeibezirk Berlin, an das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt, Berlin, Stapo.8 A. 1777/36, "Arische Lehrkräfte in jüdischen Lehrwerkstätten," 15 May 1936; and USHMM: 11.001:.01, 7–514, "Jüdisches Auswanderer-Lehrgut Gross-Breesen," 19 January 1938.
61. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Preuss. Geheime Staatspolizei, Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt Berlin an den Reichsnährstand, II 1 B 2—795/36, 16 July 1936.
62. See Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palästina, 78, 90.
63. See S. Adler-Rudel, Jüdische Selbsthilfe unter dem Naziregime 1933–1939 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1974), 216–19, 97–102. See also Angress, Between Fear and Hope, 36.
64. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin (hereafter PA): HaPol Abt.- Handakten Wiehl/Judenfrage, Der Reichs- und Preussische Minister des Innern an den Herrn Ministerpräsidenten Generalfeldmarschall Göring, den Herrn Reichswirtschaftsminister, den Stellvertreter des Führers, und den Reichsführer-SS und Chef der deutschen Polizei, betr. Juden in der Wirtschaft, I 1586/38 g, 14 June 1938.
65. See Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, 1938–1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS, vol. 2, "Jahreslagebericht 1938 des Sicherheitshauptamtes" (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984), 173–76.
66. USHMM: 11.001M.01, 3–178, Der Reichsminister des Innern an den Herrn Reichsminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, IV 5012/11.5, 13 June 1934