Judios 1933-1939

NAZI GERMANY
AND THE

JEWS
VOLUME I The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939

SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER

To Omer, Elam, and Tom

I would not wish to be a Jew in Germany. HERMANN GÖRING, NOVEMBER 12, 1938

Contents

Epigraph Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: A Beginning and an End One: Into the Third Reich Two: Consenting Elites, Threatened Elites Three: Redemptive Anti-Semitism Four: TheNew Ghetto Five: The Spirit of Laws Part II: The Entrapment Six: Crusade and Card Index Seven: Paris, Warsaw, Berlin—and Vienna Eight: An Austrian Model? Nine: The Onslaught Ten: A Broken Remnant Notes Bibliography Index About the Author Praise

iii vii 1 7 9 41 73 113 145 175 177 211 241 269 306 335 407 441

Other Books by Saul Friedländer Cover Copyright About the PublisherAcknowledgments

In my work on this book I have been assisted in many different ways. The Maxwell Cummings Family of Montreal and the 1939 Club of Los Angeles have endowed chairs, at Tel Aviv University and at UCLA, that facilitated the implementation of this project. Short stays at the Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine (1992) and at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in LosAngeles (1996) provided me with the most invaluable of all privileges: free time. Throughout the years, I have greatly benefited from the vast resources and the generous help offered by the Wiener Library at Tel Aviv University, the University Research Library at UCLA, the Leo Baeck Institute Archives in New York, and the library and archives of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. Friendsand colleagues have been kind enough to read parts or the totality of the manuscript, and some have followed it throughout its various stages. From all of them I received much good advice. At UCLA I wish to thank Joyce Appleby, Carlo Ginzburg, and Hans Rogger; at Tel Aviv University, my friends, colleagues, and coeditors of History & Memory, particularly Gulie Ne’eman Arad, for her remarkablejudgment and constant assistance in this project, as well as Dan Diner and Philippa Shimrat. I also wish to express my gratitude to Omer Barton (Rutgers), Philippe Burrin (Geneva), Sidra and Yaron Ezrahi (Jerusalem), and Norbert Frei (Munich). Moreover, I am very much indebted to my research assistants: Orna Kenan, Christopher Kenway, and Gavriel Rosenfeld. Needless to say, the usual formula holds:Any mistakes in this book are my own. The late Amos Funkenstein unfortunately could not read the entire manuscript, but I shared with him my many thoughts and doubts until nearly the end. He gave me much encouragement, and it is infinitely more than a usual debt of gratitude that I owe the closest of my friends, whom I miss more than I can say. Both Aaron Asher and Susan H. Llewellyn contributed tothe editing of this book, which is the first I wrote entirely in English. Aaron, my friend and former publisher, brought his intellectual insights and linguistic skills to bear on a manuscript studded with gallicisms; Sue applied her own stylistic sensibility to a deep understanding of the text. My editor at HarperCollins, Hugh Van Dusen, was a highly experienced and attentive

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guide whose expert eye followed every phase of this process. The assistant editor, Katherine Ekrem, demonstrated an impressive efficiency, always in the kindest way. And, from the first book I published in the United States, Pius XII and the Third Reich (1964), I have been represented by Georges and Anne Borchardt, who became friends. For thirty-seven years now, Hagith has given me thewarmth and the support that are vital to everything I do. This support has never been more decisive than during the long time spent in the preparation of this book. Years ago I dedicated a book to our children, Eli, David, and Michal; this book is dedicated to our grandchildren.

Introduction

Most historians of my generation, born on the eve of the Nazi era, recognize either explicitly or...