Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1 by Saul Friedlander

Author:Saul Friedlander [Friedlander, Saul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IV

For Jews and Germans alike, the fundamental criterion for measuring the success of the anti-Jewish segregation policies was the level of Jewish economic presence in Germany. Some local occurrences seemed, on occasion, to point to unexpected resilience. Thus, on February 2, 1937, the Stuttgart NS-Kurier published a lengthy article on a particular instance of “wretchedness and lack of character.” The wife of the director of a city enterprise (whose name was withheld) had been seen buying laundry soap in the Jewish department store Schocken.75 Still worse, on March 20 that same year, the NS-Kurier must have deeply angered its readers when it reported that the Munich Jewish-owned fashion house Rothschild had presented its designs at the Marquardt Hotel, and that “some German women, rich and accordingly devoid of convictions,” had accepted the Jewish invitation to attend.76

Sometimes silence was a safer option for the local party press. No Munich newspaper published anything about the four-hour visit paid in 1936 by Goring, accompanied by his adjutant, Prince Philipp von Hessen, to Otto Bernheimer’s carpet and tapestry store. Although Bernheimer’s was well known as a Jewish-owned business, Goring paid 36,000 Reichsmarks for two rare carpets, which were duly sent to their lofty destination in Berlin.77

Indeed, Goring was no exception, nor were the Stuttgart society ladies. Gestapo reports from various parts of the Reich indicate that at the end of 1935 and in 1936, many Germans were still not hesitating to do business with Jews. Despite the party’s growing concern, the cattle trade in rural areas remained largely Jewish; according to a Gestapo report on the month of November 1935 “the Jews almost totally control the cattle trade [in Hesse]. They have transferred their activities to the late evening hours or to night time. Sometimes it even happens that Volksgenossen put themselves at the Jews’ disposal as hidden representatives, i.e., under their own name but for the benefit of the Jews, and do business for them in the large markets of cattle for slaughter in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, and Koblenz.”78 Almost one year later, a report from the Franconian district of Hipoltstein sounded the alarm: “The peasants’ business relations with Jews have assumed such a dimension that the political leadership felt prompted to intervene energetically.”79

In the cities the annual late-winter sales at Jewish stores were big occasions. Thus in February 1936, the Munich police directorate reported that the sale at the Jewish-owned textile house Sally Eichengrün had drawn “large crowds.” At times as many as three hundred eager female customers stood in line on the street outside the store.80 And various SD reports indicate that even in 1937 economic relations between Germans and Jews still remained active in several domains, with, for example, members of the aristocracy, of the officer corps, and of the high bourgeoisie still keeping their assets in Jewish banks.81

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.