The Autobiography of Willy Katzenstein. Part Two, 1933–1939^*

EDITED AND ABRIDGED BY SUSAN HAMLYN FROM A TRANSLATION BY LINDA GAUS

Late in 2020, while sorting through a cupboard at the home of her mother, Eva Roberts (née Katzenstein), Susan Hamlyn—the abridger of this piece—discovered two fat folders. Each contained carefully typed documents in German. One was the 292-page diary kept by Eva’s father, the lawyer Dr Willy Katzenstein (1874–1951), during his four years of service in the Landsturm during the First World War. The other was the 212-page autobiography he wrote shortly after arriving in England as a refugee in June 1939. The second part of this autobiography, published here, chronicles the personal and professional effects of National Socialist persecution on Katzenstein’s family and the wider Jewish community, as well as his extensive work helping to support German Jews as the regime’s oppression intensified. Katzenstein was a classicist, poet, essayist, traveller, a lover of music and art, and a devoted husband and father. He died in London in 1951.

THE CATASTROPHE, 1933

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was named Reich Chancellor by von Hindenburg.¹ Things in Germany changed at once. The constitutional black-red-gold flag became taboo.² Soon one saw columns of brownshirts and civilians marching through the streets, carrying torn and soiled flags, mocking and burning them. The S.A. and S.S. ruled the streets.³ Antisemitic agitation and attacks were rampant. German Jews were very worried, but they still believed that their constitutional rights as citizens would be upheld, despite a National Socialist Party programme that excluded Jews from all such rights. German Jews had lost their fair share of ‘Gut und Blut’ [‘assets and blood’] in the [First] World War and in previous German wars, and had made the most valuable of contributions to the sum of German knowledge and the economy. It was also hoped that an awareness of the wider world’s opinion would inhibit the new lords from acting in ways that would severely damage Germany’s reputation.

At the end of March, the National Socialist newspapers suddenly began to publish bloodthirsty, hate-filled attacks against the ‘Weltfeind Juda’ [‘world enemy Jew’], and ‘Fight Jewish atrocity propaganda’ became a slogan overnight. On 1 April, S.A. troops occupied the entrances of Jewish stores and put up signs with slogans such as ‘Anyone buying from a Jew is a traitor to the people’. Customers were prevented from entering through the use of verbal insults or brute force. Signage was torn from the offices of Jewish lawyers—including mine. The forcible closure of my office was only averted by the energetic presence of my Aryan office manager.

Like many others at the time, I tried to counteract this smear campaign and accusations that we were promoting atrocity propaganda abroad by any means possible. I arranged for foreign friends to send telegrams asserting that they had seen no such Jewish propaganda and even managed to have these printed in a local newspaper. We weren’t yet familiar with the techniques used by National Socialist propaganda merchants, where truth played no part and refuting their claims was futile.

On 3 April, I received a letter from the President of the District Court, which stated:

In accordance with the decree of the Prussian Minister of Justice on 1 April 1933, I hereby strongly recommend that you, for your own good, refrain from further exercising your office as notary. Furthermore, I wish to point out that should you refuse, given the agitated mood of the people, you will be subjecting yourself to grave danger…

The self-abasement of German justice had begun.

On 7 April 1933, the Reichsgesetz über die Zulassung zur Rechtsanwaltschaft [Law on Admission to the Legal Profession] announced that the admission status of non-Aryan lawyers could be revoked by 30 September. The Beamtengesetz, which came into force on the same day, determined who was ‘non-Aryan’.⁴ The legendary ‘Jewish grandmother’ popped up, for she was now enough to cause a lawyer or civil servant to be regarded as non-Aryan. Exceptions were made for lawyers who had started practising by 1 August 1914 and for Frontkämpfer.⁵ But the majority of Jewish or non-Aryan lawyers were forbidden to appear before the courts; only a very small number were allowed to do so.

In Bielefeld, I was one of these exceptions. Nevertheless, my position had become as uncertain as that of all the others. According to a decree issued by Prussian and Reich Minister of Justice [Hanns] Kerrl on 5 April, we all had to make immediate submissions requesting that the court allow us to continue practising our profession. The prerequisite for the processing of such requests was ‘the exemplary and unreserved recognition on the part of the applicant that the current situation is recognized by the individual applicant as legally binding for himself’. Individual requests could only be processed if the ‘loyalty of the applicant to the Regierung der nationalen Erhebung [‘Government of the National Rising’] is proven and confirmed by such an admission’. Here, the blackmail tactics of the National Socialists were clearly visible for the first time. Only individuals who made this application and gave the declaration of loyalty, whether ‘front-fighter’ or not, had any prospect of being able to remain a lawyer according to this decree from Minister Kerrl, a one-time court treasury official.

What happened next? Nothing. The Ministry of Justice and the appellate courts were swamped by such an unbelievable flood of paperwork that processing it all became impossible. It was reported that senior officials at the Ministry of Justice were simply laughing at the ‘whining’ of Jewish lawyers. Mockery added to the brutality—the cat playing with the mouse before eating it. Although this first attempt by the justice minister came to nought, we were given no peace. Soon after, a ministerial decree of 25 April 1933 demanded that non-Aryan lawyers in Prussia submit a new application for admission to the profession together with supporting facts and documents. These applications were scrutinized by various authorities, including of course National Socialist Party officials, who were to decide, in particular, whether the lawyers had ever been involved in Communism. However, it wasn’t necessary for the lawyer to have been a member of the Communist Party or to have maintained friendly relations with it. If he had defended a Communist in a professional capacity just once years earlier, this was enough to have him thrown out of the profession.

Documentation was demanded to support these applications. We attempted to get written declarations from respected professional colleagues and from government offices, in which our ‘harmlessness’ and our ‘trustworthiness and good character’ were confirmed. For a lawyer like me, who in thirty years of practice had always maintained a good reputation and upheld that of the profession, it was an ordeal to have to ask colleagues and other authorities for references of good character which, of course, were willingly supplied. I will never forget those days. The intention was clearly to humiliate us.

This mortification was followed by another. The National Socialist authorities changed their minds and declared at the beginning of May that all non-Aryan lawyers who had not been explicitly proscribed could once again practise law. However, the collegiality that had previously bound practitioners of the profession had been destroyed; all Nazi Party offices and their voluntary helpers in the citizenry worked together to boycott Jewish lawyers, and many judicial offices began to exclude Jewish lawyers from approvals for legal aid work. Jewish defence lawyers were no longer appointed.

For pardon applications in criminal matters, a Gnadenanwalt [pardon lawyer]—a representative of the bar appointed by the President of the District Court—had to offer an advisory opinion. I had been assigned this task in 1923 and had performed it up until the beginning of 1933. Now, of course, this was no longer possible. A self-aware Jewish lawyer could now derive hardly any satisfaction from court proceedings—quite apart from the palpable embarrassment when sessions opened with the so-called ‘German greeting’ [Hitler salute], or when we had to enter official rooms without uttering the words ‘Heil Hitler’, as was required of all others.

According to the Ministry of Justice, at the beginning of April 1933 there were 11,814 lawyers in Prussia: 8,299 Aryans and 3,515 non-Aryans (not just Jews). Of the non-Aryan lawyers, 1,911 were based in Berlin alone. This shows that the non-Aryan portion of the legal profession in the Reich, aside from in a few big cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt, was not especially high. As a result of the law passed on 7 April 1933, the number of non-Aryan lawyers had declined in the space of just one year to 2,158, and the percentage of non-Aryan to Aryan lawyers declined from approximately 30 per cent to 17.5 per cent. The hardship, desperation, and bitter injustice contained in these figures can only be suggested here.

It became clear what my real task was, and thus I increasingly devoted myself to Jewish aid work. In April 1933, in Berlin, the so-called ‘Reichsvertretung’ [‘Reich Representation’] of local associations—for at the time there was no Reich-wide representation of German Jews—had been established with the cooperation of the Zentralausschuss der deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau [Central Committee of German Jews for Aid and Development]. Its heart and soul was the unforgettable Dr Ludwig Tietz, who continued this work until his untimely death. Shortly beforehand in Berlin, the Zentralstelle für jüdische Wirtschaftshilfe [Central Office for Jewish Economic Assistance] had been established, whose remit—professional advice, training, and retraining—extended across the Reich. It had emerged from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Wirtschaftsfragen der Juden in Deutschland [Working Group on Economic Issues for Jews in Germany], established in 1932.

The Berlin Liberal leader, Bruno Woyda, did particular service in bringing about the urgently required cooperation of every part of the Jewish community to combat economic need. Since possibilities for economic activity threatened to become scarce, and emigration seemed the only option open to our youth, there was no more important task for German Judaism than training young people so that they could survive in a foreign country. The hardship of the time urged prompt action, and, as always, Westphalia did not wish to fall behind. I therefore invited representatives of the Westphalian communities to meet in Bielefeld, with the result that the Provinzialstelle für jüdische Wirtschaftshilfe in Westfalen [Provincial Office for Jewish Economic Assistance in Westphalia] was established on 21 May under my leadership. I made office space available for its work in my house.

From then on, I devoted myself primarily to carrying out this work, thanks to which many hundreds of young people received appropriate professional training. I was supported by capable employees and, first and foremost, my wife, Selma. From the establishment of the office until our own emigration in May 1939, she spent a large portion of her time and energies serving our cause and, in particular, took scrupulous care of the ever more complex bookkeeping. The work soon increased to such an extent that we could no longer manage it without the help of a welfare worker assigned by the central Berlin office.

My work for the Bielefeld community and the Westphalian Provinzialverband [provincial association] continued; I was in constant correspondence with the Preussische Landesverband jüdischer Gemeinden [Prussian State Association of Jewish Communities] and other central Berlin bodies, especially those for economic assistance and welfare. In these turbulent times, it was valuable not only for me but also for the Westphalian associations I represented that I had maintained the friendliest of relations with leading individuals in the Preussische Landesverband and the Zentralstelle für jüdische Wirtschaftshilfe. Here I must gratefully acknowledge the Honourable President of the Preussische Landesverband, Leo Wolff, his deputy the Zionist leader Dr Alfred Klee, and most especially my friend Dr Arthur Lilienthal, who both in his relationship with me and in his wide-ranging Jewish work, continued the tradition of his father, the outstanding Justizrat Leo Lilienthal.⁶ I am also thankful for the economic assistance of many Berlin friends, among whom are Dr Georg Lubinski and Friedrich Ollendorf, the sisters Frieda Weinreich and Frau Samuelsdorff, as well as Gertrud Blanck—now all in Palestine. In Westphalia, I am especially grateful to my tireless colleague, Bielefeld community rabbi Dr Hans Kronheim, Bochum rabbi Dr David, and deputy head Emanuel Goldschmidt of Dortmund. The latter two sat on the community association’s administrative committee for many years; Herr Goldschmidt, in particular, had deep experience of community management and was assisted by his numerous personal contacts with many Jewish communities in Westphalia. Always ready to do anything asked of him, he was a valued friend and colleague.

All of this Jewish community work could not distract attention from one urgent issue—namely the ongoing failure to consolidate all German Jews into a tight and powerful organization. This tale is truly one of woe, a tragicomedy of errors and deficiencies. The only ray of light in the darkness had been 23 January 1921—which saw the creation of an association for the entire Reich—one that was not actually implemented. From then on, despite the urgency of the times, it took more than twelve years for German Jews to truly unite. It seemed impossible to reach agreement on questions relating to the constitution, or on the tasks, nature, purpose—and even the name—of the association. A big hurdle was the particularism of the southern Germans, for whom it was an absolute condition that the Reich association, instead of becoming a uniform, independent organization as was proposed in 1921, should only form an umbrella organization. Due to these obstacles, all of our efforts prior to 1933 ended in failure.

On 4 March 1928, as one of the eight representatives of the Preussische Landesverband, I had participated in a meeting in Nuremberg at which the temporary Arbeitsgemeinschaft der jüdischen Landesverbände Deutschlands [Working Group of the Jewish State Associations of Germany] was founded, and thus the first practical step toward effective overall representation seemed to have been taken. Among the people who worked tirelessly up until 1933 to establish Reich-wide representation—though with the strictest regard for southern German reservations—was Dr Alfred Neumeyer of Munich. The architect of the agreement in Nuremberg was the unforgettable Liberal leader Dr Julius Blau of Frankfurt, a master of reconciling opposites and finding a redemptive formula for balance. But neither Nuremberg nor the subsequent annual conferences brought about anything more than a fairly unimpressive alliance with many ambiguities and difficulties, which wasn’t truly recognized as a union of state associations by any Jewish entity, but was finally given the name of ‘Reichsvertretung’. The southern Germans did not want to deviate from their position that a unification could only take place [at a level] above the state associations; the Liberals were concerned that the national association should not serve the purpose of appearance rather than function, which would extend its framework beyond a purely religious community. The Zionists fought harder than the Liberals against the undemocratic principles of the various constitutional drafts. And in addition to all of these differences, there was the fear that a strong national association could cause other large Jewish organizations to cease their activities. Thus, most people working for this cause only did so half-heartedly. These concerns continued to predominate until the middle of 1933, when in principle, it must have been clear to any reasonable person that the immediate and close cooperation of all Jews in the German Reich was the task of the hour.

Three men decided to act. The chair of the Essen synagogue association, Dr Georg Hirschland, the Essen community rabbi, Dr Hahn, and Essen lawyer Dr Salomon Herzfeld exerted their weighty influence on German Judaism to advocate the quick elimination of all obstructive formalities in order to create a ‘Reichsvertretung’. On 23 July 1933, they called a meeting of like-minded friends in Essen. The meeting was led by the chair of the Centralverein,⁷ Dr [Julius] Brodnitz of Berlin, in the synagogue association building on Alfredstrasse. We unanimously approved the plan to create a ‘Reichsvertretung’ by establishing a committee representing Jewish people of all stripes, which simultaneously, as the representative of the large Jewish organizations, would have the vast majority of German Jews behind it.

From then on, I corresponded regularly with these men in Essen. The formal vote of approval on 23 July was immediately followed by a statement that resulted in complete agreement, especially concerning the individuals who were to lead the new association. During these talks there was still great resistance from certain people, who, for their own protection, I will not name here; they opposed the unification efforts in a number of ways.

On 20 August 1933 another meeting was held in Essen, where, in addition to the Essen gentlemen and the leaders of the southern German associations, the attendees included three representatives of the Berlin community, along with Leo Wolff (President of the Preussische Landesverband), Max Warburg, Justizrat Brodnitz, and Dr Leo Löwenstein (Chair of the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten).⁸ This meeting empowered a committee to select the leaders of the Jewish national association. It was also decided to expand the committee with a few Zionists. Dr Herzfeld was named chair of the committee.

On 19 September, with great joy, Dr Georg Hirschland informed me that the process of bringing together German Jews under a unified leadership had finally been achieved. There was still a series of discussions and very difficult negotiations to follow before the work could be considered done. However, in a session on 17 September in Berlin, the final constitution of the new Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden [Reich Representation of German Jews] under the presidency of rabbi Dr Leo Baeck, with the involvement of a board of directors under the chairmanship of Dr Otto Hirsch of Stuttgart, was agreed. All resistance and counterattacks were unable to hinder the completion of this critical work.

The Jewish newspapers announced the establishment of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden. They named the following as founding organizations: the state associations formed of Jewish synagogue communities, the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland [Zionist Federation of Germany], and the Vereinigung für das liberale Judentum in Deutschland [Association for Liberal Judaism in Germany]. All of the large Jewish organizations in Germany were members; only the wholly insignificant Verband nationaldeutscher Juden [Association of German National Jews] refused to participate.

The news of the non-partisan Reichsvertretung and its leaders, as well as its programme, was received with great satisfaction. Unfortunately, however, not all German Jews were aware of the gravity of the situation at that time. The Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten felt it necessary to emphasize that it would gladly join an ‘aid front’ but it would defend ‘the German front of our souls’ with every fibre of its being. Later, when it was no longer possible to see ‘the goal of our desires and our future’ in Germany, the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten significantly revised its position on aid work beyond Germany, especially in Palestine.

Some, in certain Liberal Berlin circles, did not baulk at calling the establishment of the association ‘a crime against German Judaism and its future’. And in the Mitteilungen der Jüdischen Reformgemeinde zu Berlin (No. 6, 15 October 1933), a leader article appeared that ended with the words: ‘There is no Jewish unified front and therefore there can be no Reich Representation of German Jews. Only Jewish Germans who are fully conscious of their Germanness have a right, but also a duty, to be active in questions relating to German Jews’.

The Reichsvertretung’s achievements during the years of National Socialist persecution are demonstrated in its regular annual reports, which constitute first-class cultural documents and are priceless materials for future Jewish historiography on the destruction of Judaism in Germany.

On 22 October 1933, I participated in a Berlin conference called by the Zentralstelle für jüdische Wirtschaftshilfe for those involved in professional retraining. The following day I paid an extended visit to Dr Ludwig Tietz in Kantstrasse. I found him in the midst of a huge pile of work, which he was handling with his usual elasticity and creativity. I was devastated when, not two weeks later, I received news of this wonderful man’s sudden death on 4 November.⁹ His memory shall live on in me and in the memory of all good Jews forever. 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937 1934 brought a brief respite. The Gleichschaltung¹⁰ of Jewish businesses and the exclusion of Jews from all existing institutions continued, and the unequal treatment of Jews under German law grew, but people also seemed to realize that an overly strict and rushed exclusion of Jews from the German economy could have its disadvantages. Prominent people asserted that the economic participation of Jews should not be challenged, and many optimists believed it would be possible to maintain Jewish economic life in Germany, and that it was worth fighting for this whenever a threat was perceived.

The Centralverein, to whose board I belonged, did an astonishing amount of tireless and sometimes successful legwork in this area. It was a comfort to oppressed people to know that there was a Jewish office to which they could turn in an emergency, to seek advice, support, or even just a sympathetic ear.

In October 1934, the Zentralausschuss für Hilfe und Aufbau in Berlin decided to create state committees in order to intensify its work. I was to assume the chairmanship of the state committee in Westphalia. That same year in Berlin, I established, with the friendly cooperation of Dr Paul Eppstein (Chair of the Zentralstelle für jüdische Darlehnskassen¹¹ in Berlin), a regional Jewish savings and loan association for Westphalia, and headed it until its dissolution at the beginning of 1939. Half of the required capital was provided by several—unfortunately only a few—Westphalian communities, the other half by the Berlin central office from an American aid fund (the American Joint Reconstruction Foundation). When approving loans, we were bound by specific guidelines but otherwise had a free hand when it came to selecting the borrowers and deciding the scope of individual loans.

Evaluating the numerous loan applications was an unpleasant task. Only some could be approved. I will admit that I was not well suited to this work, especially since I believed that it was futile in the long run. I thought, and often said, that the monies used here could be used more sensibly for other purposes. But despite all of the factors that spoke against it, the following must also be recognized: by preventing rushed liquidations and business failures in some individual cases, the Jewish savings and loans associations contributed to heading off avoidable losses and to keeping assets in Jewish possession.

On holiday with my family near Ostend in Belgium, we read the foreign newspapers with particular pleasure, for their content was so different to what we were used to in our unfree German press. With shock, we read of the murder of the Austrian Chancellor [Engelbert] Dollfuss, which so closely followed the bloodbath of 30 June.¹² Along with many others at the time, I believed that a regime which availed itself of such bloody, malicious methods could not last long.

On 12 September, I celebrated my sixtieth birthday in Bielefeld. I will resist describing the honours with which I was surprised and gratified. However, the countless demonstrations of friendship and recognition that came from near and far—from the many Westphalian associations to leading Jewish personalities from Berlin and the Reich—moved me greatly.¹³

On the evening of 8 December 1934, something happened that demonstrated on what shaky ground we stood. A number of community members were gathered in the function room of the Catholic Association building for a Hanukkah celebration. It was the only room in the city still available to us for such events. At around ten o’clock, the room was stormed by a large group of uniformed S.A. men and the guests were ordered to leave. Young people who found themselves outside the room were badly beaten up. Rocks, pieces of iron, and so forth were thrown through the windows. Those who succeeded in escaping were not given any help by the police. For about an hour and a half, the guests, deprived of their freedom and fearing that worse was to come, had to sit silently in the room until they were released. Those responsible were never punished by the courts. Already then we felt that here in Germany, our home, we had no rights and were outside the protection of the law.

On 7 June 1935, I received a message from the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, signed by its president, Dr Leo Baeck, saying that the Executive Committee had elected me a member of the Zentralausschuss der deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau. The committee aimed to meet several times a year in order to discuss, together with the appropriate Berlin working groups and the Reichsvertretung, all types of social and economic aid work, and the annual state of these areas. I gladly accepted this appointment and attended sessions in Berlin, but the central committee ceased to meet after 1937.

With a violent cannonade of invective, the Nuremberg Party Congress announced the Reichsbürgergesetz of 15 September 1935, which stipulated that only people of German or related blood could be citizens of the Reich, and thus the sole bearers of full political rights. Another law was passed the same day that called itself the Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre [The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour]. This law forbade marriages and any relationships between Jews and nationals of German or related blood, on pain of imprisonment. Furthermore, it was stipulated that Jews could not employ in their households female citizens of German or related blood who were under forty-five years of age. We were required, as of 31 December, to relinquish our long-time household help, who would never have dreamed of leaving us and with whose parents our younger daughter had spent many lovely holidays.

Another ugly innovation was the exclusion of Jews from all associations of which they were members. Rather than wait, I voluntarily resigned from the German-Austrian Alpine Association to which I had belonged for more than thirty years. Our Jewish bowling club, where I had spent many happy hours socializing, was forced to disband, as permission to use the bowling alley where we had played for decades was withdrawn, and there was none other available.

Worse still were the attacks that subsequently took place on our professional lives. On 14 November 1935, while working on the certification of a notarial contract, I learned via a telephone call from the courts that I had ceased to be a notary and, effective immediately, could no longer handle notarial documents. On 21 January 1936, I received an official letter from the Reich Minister for Justice that stated: ‘Based on Article 3 of the Reichsbürgergesetz in conjunction with Article 4, Para. 1 of the first directive from 14 November 1935, Dr Willy Katzenstein has been removed from his office as notary, effective 14 November 1935’.

My legal practice was fated to die. How many Aryan clients would dare to come to me, if, due to consulting or commissioning a Jewish lawyer, dangers threatened them from all sides? Even if most of the judges, as must be recognized, allowed Jewish lawyers to represent clients before the courts and made no distinctions, there was still palpable fear on the part of the public, and there was no shortage of pronouncements and judgements from judges who fed this fear. For example, the Reichsgericht [Reich Court of Justice] decreed that commissioning a non-Aryan lawyer in a divorce case represented an offence that justified the other side’s request for divorce. Employment courts took the view that even for Jewish litigants, only the admission of Aryan lawyers would be allowed. Jews acting as lawyers for the poor became increasingly rare.

Until the beginning of 1936, my Jewish work had been in the service of economic aid and welfare. In particular, the scope of the work undertaken by the Provinzialstelle für jüdische Wirtschaftshilfe in Westfalen, which I headed, had constantly grown. The office employed three highly competent women, who worked full-time alongside the welfare worker provided by the Reichsvertretung. Up to then, I had only concerned myself with emigration—which was increasingly a focus of Jewish interest—through the training or retraining of young people for suitable professions. However, in December 1935, the Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland [Relief Organization of Jews in Germany], as it was now called—for we were no longer allowed to call ourselves ‘German Jews’—decided to expand its work on promoting Jewish emigration from Germany. In a meeting of the board of trustees under the chairmanship of Max Warburg, it was decided, in addition to the existing emigration advice offices in Hamburg and Bremen, to establish eleven new offices throughout the Reich. Their task was to assist those wishing to emigrate and to relieve the central office of some of its growing volume of work.

According to data collected by the Reichsvertretung together with the Hilfsverein and the Palästinaamt,¹⁴ but which relied to a large extent on estimates, Jewish emigration from Germany between February 1935 and 1 April 1936 was as follows:

Of those who migrated overseas, approximately 9,500 went to the United States.

The Hanover emigration office was responsible for Westphalia. The Cologne office was assigned the Rhineland and the Ruhr. The whole region of Westphalia, with a Jewish population of 16,000, was thus without its own representation in the Hilfsverein and was required, instead of turning to its own trusted office, to consult ones that were remote. I could not let this situation persist and, as soon as the new structure was announced, visited the General Secretary of the Hilfsverein, Dr Mark Wischitzer, in Berlin. The matter was soon resolved. An emigration advice office for Westphalia was set up and assigned to me. Starting on 1 March 1936, I thus become an emigration advisor in the service of the Hilfsverein and was confirmed as such by the Reich Minister of the Interior.

It soon became clear that I had been right to advocate an individual office for Westphalia, for the other offices in Hanover and Cologne had so much work that it would have been impossible for them to advise the Westphalian masses desperate to emigrate. I, however, had to find my way in an area about which I knew nothing. An emigration advisor had to know about German passport, currency, and transfer regulations, and also to have good legal knowledge in order to answer all of the questions directed at him. He had to be familiar with the immigration laws of numerous foreign countries, and to be able to provide information about the prospects for emigration to such countries; about their political, social, and economic relations; the most suitable professions to practise there and many other matters. He had to know about shipping lines, their conditions of passage and schedules; he had to pioneer new emigration options and be equipped to provide satisfactory answers to questions—whether about settlement possibilities in Brazil, voltage in Bolivia, or the prospects for cigar manufacturing in Australia. But that wasn’t all. The constantly expanding volume of work produced a multitude of new and increasingly complicated forms, statistics, reports, and calculations, especially in connection with the Berlin central office, and later, also, with the Gestapo.¹⁵ The processing of group settlements such as the ICA settlement in Argentina was made more difficult by an unbelievable welter of formalities.¹⁶

During these most brutal years of National Socialist persecution, dealing with those seeking advice was painful. These poor, persecuted people, robbed of their existence and forced to emigrate, were frequently unable to control their emotions, and there were often heated conversations, instances of verbal abuse, and actual attacks. It was thus not an easy task, and took up most of my time and energies. But it was also a gratifying activity, which gave one the feeling of standing right at the point where one could do the most useful Jewish work. Even now, looking back, living in another, freer country, I have to say that the years in which I worked for Jewish emigration, often beyond the bounds of my strength, were the most difficult but also the most valuable and satisfying years of my life.

However, the threatening shadow of emigration began to fall on us as sufferers, not just as workers. In August 1936, we had to say farewell to our dear friends, Paul and Lene Wertheimer, who moved with their children to England. For years, the German authorities had bullied them in their superlatively well-run factory with the aim of finding some reason to snatch it from them—until they could stand it no more. Taking leave of our friends was painful.

The situation for Jewish lawyers continued to deteriorate. It was stipulated that the courts should strive to administer justice according to the National Socialist viewpoint and altered public sentiment, and to implement National Socialist thinking. With ‘gesundes Volksempfinden’ [‘a healthy attitude on the part of the people’] and the National Socialist world view, an ambitious judge could do anything. He could interpret the wording of a law as he pleased, for example to preclude a properly qualified lawyer from representing a Jewish company in front of the employment court, even though this was not justifiable by law. He could identify a severe and punishable offence when it was said of someone that he bought from Jews. He could extend his ‘law-making’ activity far beyond the wording of all existing laws as long as he called upon ‘the will of the Führer’. Even the sanctity of signed contracts meant nothing to these judges if one of the contract parties was a Jew. As a result, I came to see the disappearance of my legal practice as less of a loss. In my mind, another jurisprudence lived on, like the one Germany had once had, and like all of those recognized by cultured peoples around the world as ‘fundamentum regnorum’.

For years, my aid work had been supported by donations which were used primarily for the cost of training young people and for welfare purposes. Donations for charitable and non-profit purposes had always been tax-free in Germany, regardless of whether the recipients were Jewish or Christian. The so-called Steueranpassungsgesetz [Tax Adjustment Law] of 16 October 1934 stated in Article 1 that tax laws should be interpreted according to the National Socialist world view, but then went on to define charitable purposes as those intended to support residents in need. According to this, the donations made to me for the benefit of needy Jews were still tax-free. But National Socialist Germany was no longer prepared to tolerate this. A law passed on 1 December 1936, which called itself the Einführungsgesetz zu den Realsteuergesetzen [Introductory Law for Property Tax Laws], smuggled in a paragraph that read: ‘Charitable are only such purposes intended to support German national comrades in need’. So Jewish welfare activity was no longer tax-free. Now according to Article 32, the new law came into force on 3 December. This meant that it could only apply to welfare donations that were made after 3 December 1936. However, the Reichsfinanzhof [Reich Fiscal Court] then decided that the law said nothing new; it merely clarified something that had been self-evident, namely that freeing Jews from taxes did not correspond to the National Socialist world view. For me, this change in the law and its application by the Reichsfinanzhof meant that I had to report all welfare donations made to me thus far, even though I had long since spent them, and led to them being heavily taxed as gifts. I immediately had to pay more than 7,000 Reichsmarks to the tax office, an amount that I, along with the help of friends, was only able to cover thanks to contributions by Jewish organizations.

31 March 1937 brought a circular from the Reich Minister of the Interior, according to which Jews could no longer be citizens of their places of residence. Thus, I no longer had citizens’ rights in a city where my family had lived for more than a hundred years—citizens’ rights which were granted to anyone new who moved there.

I will never forget 19 April 1937. Early in the morning, while we were still in bed, the doorbell rang. We heard loud voices, then the maid stumbled up the stairs to our bedroom: ‘State police!’ Men at our bedroom door ordered me to make myself ready as they had come to arrest me. No reasons were given. Downstairs in the hallway, there were seven or eight other men, whose appearance didn’t exactly inspire trust. I was taken by car to the police jail. Once there, I had to empty all my pockets in the reception area and hand over their contents, and was then locked in a cell with two Aryan prisoners. Shortly afterwards, I was taken to an interrogation room. There I found the Gestapo official Pützer, whom I knew well and who was well-disposed towards me. He whispered that this was part of an operation against the Jewish lodges and that I would be home by evening. Then I was asked in great detail about my relationship to the lodge and my other Jewish activity, and my statement was taken down; I was also asked if I intended to emigrate.

At the time, I was on the advisory council of the Westphalia lodge. After my interrogation, I was taken back to my cell and remained there until six in the evening. Only then was I led back to the reception area, reunited with my possessions—I had to pay 1.50 Reichsmarks for food I hadn’t requested (rice soup and bread with liver sausage)—and then released. When I got home, I learned that the Gestapo had searched my rooms for hours, and seized mountains of files, books, and correspondence.

Of course, neither the searches of papers at my home nor elsewhere in the Reich produced anything incriminating. The purpose was to gain possession of the considerable assets of the lodges. Everywhere, the property of Jewish lodges was seized, whether land or buildings, cash assets or money, furniture, or merely outstanding membership dues. The incredibly beautiful Berlin lodge house in Kleiststrasse, with its magnificent conference and function rooms, was simply ransacked. No legal action was needed for this. What did the unpleasant experience of one person mean compared to all of these outrages? Thousands were arrested that 19 April, just as I had been, but not all of them were treated as leniently as I was. The robbing of the lodges was one of the great crimes on the charge sheet of the National Socialists in power. However, worse crimes were to follow.

Since spring 1937 my work as an emigration advisor had expanded, in that I held regular office hours in Dortmund, Münster, and Paderborn every month. The Dortmund days were always crowded—usually more than sixty people seeking advice.

I spent August 1937 with my family in the mountains, this time in Riezlern in the Kleines Walsertal. We were inspired to go there not just because the Walsertal enjoyed a reputation for the beauty of its landscape, but also because it was still an Austrian enclave at the time, albeit one that belonged to the German customs and currency area. Thus, we could go there unhindered without needing our passports, which had already been taken from us in April of that year. The character of the place was still Austrian. One saw Austrian uniforms, but there were no pictures of Hitler in public offices or inns, and Austrian stamps were used on letters and postcards. One could purchase Swiss newspapers that were forbidden in Germany; many of the summer tourists eagerly availed themselves of these. We rounded off the trip with a few days in Munich. With a feeling that is difficult to describe, I showed my children the city in which I had spent the most wonderful years of my youth and that since then had always been close to my heart, even if now, as the ‘Capital of the Movement’, it was marred by pretentious National Socialist buildings and other showpieces of the party, and had sacrificed much of its earlier beauty and congeniality.

On 28 March 1938, Jewish communities lost their status as corporations under public law. Many valuable privileges were lost, especially regarding taxes. However, the legislation had one positive effect: it advanced the efforts of all Jewish associations in Germany to form a central body. Previously, the southern Germans had stubbornly resisted such a union. Now, however, the path was clear to form the Reichsverband der Juden in Deutschland [Reich Association of Jews in Germany], which was created in Berlin by reshaping the previous Reichsvertretung. The most important innovation was that individual members and the leaders of the Reichsverband were now part of a far greater grouping than individual Jewish communities had previously been: every member of a community that was part of the Reichsverband thus automatically became a member of this new Reichsverband themselves. The Preussische Landesverband had thus fulfilled its purpose, and could, as its functions were now performed by the Reichsverband, be disbanded. The southern German associations would continue to exist as regional organizations within the Reichsverband. In my work on the new Reichsverband statute, I paid special attention to achieving the goal of incorporating every Jew in Germany for the fulfilment of our duties—welfare, school, professional training, emigration. This became increasingly urgent as the process of dissolving German Judaism advanced.

However, as an emigration advisor, my constant focus was on the search for suitable emigration destinations and steering would-be emigrants in the most appropriate direction. As long as emigration took place without immediate police pressure, one could make a reasonable assessment of the best destination country given the individual’s personal and professional circumstances. However, this became harder when, one after another, the emigration countries either excluded the Jewish community or tightened their conditions—for example, by stipulating that only a small number of people in specific categories would be allowed in.

It was an almost inconceivable and oft-observed phenomenon that this National Socialist government, which had as its goal the elimination of the Jews, did almost nothing to ease emigration, but rather did everything possible to make it more difficult, using a wide variety of legal and police trickery, such as rabble-rousing against Jews around the world. Clearly the desire to destroy the Jews was stronger than the desire for Jewish emigration.

One of the most difficult problems facing Jewish emigration was the question of individual or group emigration. It is understandable that the thought of retraining Jews for agriculture, and then sending them abroad to colonies as farmers or settling them in family groups was attractive. Young Jewish men and women were encouraged to learn agriculture, and in particular it was the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten that made professional retraining a part of its programme and declared ‘spiritual orientation toward agricultural group settlement abroad’ an educational goal for the younger generation.

The result was that nearly everyone seeking advice thought he just needed to call himself a farmer in order to be entitled to emigrate and settle abroad. For this was what had been said in Schild¹⁷ or at some meeting: that agricultural group settlements were being established in Brazil, Argentina, or Australia. In actual fact, agricultural Jewish emigration had limited prospects, for reasons partly rooted in the nature of Jews themselves, partly due to circumstances in the destination countries, and partly due to economic difficulties. In 1937, of one hundred Jewish emigrants from Germany, 30.6 per cent were merchants and clerks, 8.4 per cent artisans, assistants, and workers, and 3.7 per cent farmers (including everyone who called themselves such).¹⁸

The ICA settlement in Argentina that had been established with so much hope had long since come to a standstill and resulted in many bitter disappointments. In 1936, only about one hundred families from Germany had settled there—no more than six hundred people in total. Other settlement projects existed only on paper and never materialized. That’s why, in an article entitled ‘Are Jewish Group Settlements Possible?’, which appeared in the newspaper Jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik in August 1938, I tried to put our settlement prospects in perspective and concluded that our future did not lie in retraining for agriculture.¹⁹ I granted Palestine, where it was only ever possible for only a small portion of Jews to consider settling, special status.

As was to be expected, this article had reverberations. In the October issue of the same newspaper, the chair of the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, Dr Leo Löwenstein, refuted my assertions. In the same issue, Hilfsverein board member Dr Arthur Prinz discussed the problem in detail and confirmed my doubts about the significant obstacles to agricultural settlement. Others, such as the chair of the Reichsvertretung’s Emigration Committee, Dr Paul Eppstein, expressed their support for my opinion. My abiding conviction is that there will never be large-scale Jewish emigration on an agricultural basis.

A law passed on 22 April 1938 threatened imprisonment for anyone who concealed that a contracting party in a business deal was a Jew. On 24 April, a decree stated that any Jew who had assets valued at more than 5,000 Reichsmarks had to report these to the authorities with precise details by 30 June 1938.

A law of 6 July 1938 forbade Jews to practise a whole series of trades, thereby robbing many Jewish merchants and itinerant traders of their livelihoods. The decree of 23 July introduced mandatory identity cards for Jews—a sophisticated kind of insult. All Jews had to apply to the police by the end of the year for an identity card, which included a photo of them in a prescribed posture, their personal details, and a fingerprint. It was also marked with a big letter ‘J’. All Jews in possession of the identity card were obliged, under threat of severe punishment, to specify the number on the card in all applications to the authorities and to show it unasked when visiting the authorities’ offices. Sometimes Jews who already knew officials believed they could forego presenting the identity card and were punished. However, an official of the state police whom I knew well, and to whom I once presented my identity card, said to me, ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that—but show me the thing anyway, I’ve never seen one before’.

The ordinance of 25 July revoked Jewish doctors’ licences from 1 October. The same happened to lawyers with the decree of 27 September, effective as of 1 December. There was an especially ‘charming’ decree on 17 August 1938. Its goal was to regulate Jewish first names, stipulating that from 1 January 1939, every male Jew would have to bear the additional first name ‘Israel’ and every female Jew the first name ‘Sara’. If someone did not want one of these names, he was presented with a ‘lovingly’ formulated list that contained a series of other first names, including attractive ones such as Chamor or Lupu for men, and Chaile, Pesschen, or Reitzge for women. Anyone who assumed one of these special names was forced to give up their previous first name. Of course, the National Socialist state didn’t give Jews anything for free; not even such nice new first names. Anyone who was prepared to exchange the name given to him by his parents for one offered by the National Socialists had to make a payment calculated according to his assets.

Unfortunately, there were a number of Jews who did not believe it was unworthy to enter into such transactions. However, let it be said that the majority understood the nature of the decree correctly and had only a mocking smile for this attack. While we were able to bear the names Israel and Sara with pride, they were also and would remain like the yellow symbol of hatred that was forced upon us, and so, as a matter of course, we shed them as soon as we were beyond German borders.

But in August 1938, in the middle of all of these never-ending shocks and worries, there was one last bright spot for me on German soil, when my family and I spent almost four weeks holidaying in beautiful Kitzbühel in the Tyrol. Since Germany’s brutal ‘annexation’ of Austria in March 1938, the Tyrol was no longer a foreign country, and so going there presented no passport difficulties. Nevertheless, the area, which was known to be antisemitic even before 1933, was a place we would not have considered visiting if it hadn’t been for an Aryan friend who was enjoying a holiday there, who told us that she had already rented rooms for us and that we could come without any misgivings. The external signs of antisemitism shouldn’t scare us away, for people thought very differently and we would be well-received.

Arriving in Kitzbühel, we were greeted by a huge sign bearing the slogan ‘Kitzbühel doesn’t want any Jews’. For a moment we considered turning right around, but thanks to the warning from our friend, we didn’t do so, and we didn’t regret it. Our hosts welcomed us warmly and told us that they loved all their guests equally, no matter what their origin was. We had magnificent rooms in the Villa Erna with a view, perched up on a hill, and soon felt entirely at home. We had no unpleasant experiences in the weeks that followed, and were able to enjoy the beauty and peace of the wonderful mountain landscape undisturbed. Our daughter, Marianne, was happy to be able to swim in the tree-lined lake nearly every day, which helped to make up for the fact that the swimming pool back home had been forbidden to her. Evi, the younger one, the ‘Gemsli’,²⁰ liked to climb the mountains, just like her father. Once more, probably for the last time, we roamed the heights, forests, and meadows of this lovely landscape to our hearts’ content.

After our return home, there was another farewell. My friend since childhood, Dr Felix Dreyer, emigrated with his wife and daughter to Johannesburg in South Africa, where both of his sons already lived. Like family to us, hardly a day had passed when we did not see each other. Many other acquaintances were preparing to leave. It became lonelier and lonelier, and we increasingly felt that Germany would not be our home for much longer. But my love for my homeland persisted, work and duty held me fast in many respects, and when the Czech crisis and the immediate threat of war in September passed without incident, I continued to hope for a period of peaceful family life and work in Germany.

NOVEMBER POGROM, 1938

On 7 November, news of the attack by a young Polish Jew on Legation Secretary [Ernst] vom Rath at the German Embassy in Paris greatly frightened us all. We realized that this incident, especially if Herr vom Rath died, could have grievous consequences for Jews in Germany. On the evening of 9 November, however, when his death was confirmed, nobody foresaw the horror of the next few hours.²¹

On the morning of 10 November, we were awakened by cries in the house: ‘The synagogue is burning!’ It hit me like a thunderbolt that something sinister and previously unheard-of was about to happen. I hurried outside and soon saw the high dome of the synagogue and the adjacent community centre engulfed in flames. The streets were packed with people, including school pupils whose lessons had been interrupted in order to give them the opportunity of seeing ‘the magnificent drama’.

Firemen were standing in the galleries that surrounded the high roof of the synagogue and were clearly encouraging the spread of the fire. The hoses of the firemen on the street were directed exclusively at the houses opposite the synagogue, in order to prevent the jumping of sparks. No rescue work was taking place, and when I asked the firemen to help me save important files they flatly refused. I was corralled by two officials in civilian dress, who informed me that I was under arrest and took me down to the police jail. I found more than thirty other men from the Jewish community already there, all of whom had been dragged from their homes. We spent the whole day together in a big room for prisoners. Towards evening, I alone was called forward and told I would be released. I was to stay at home for a few days and not show my face on the streets. Over the following days, a few more men were released; all of the remaining men, more than thirty in total, were transported with nearly three hundred people in an unspeakably crude way to the concentration camp of Buchenwald, near Weimar.

The beautiful synagogue—a jewel of the city—and its community centre were completely destroyed by the fire. We never saw or heard of the Torah scrolls, silver religious objects, books, files, and furniture that had been in the buildings again. However, there is reason to believe that the majority of these objects were not burned but rather carefully taken away by the state police before the fire.²²

It was as if my heart and the heart of the community had been torn out. Our magnificent place of devotion and edification, the location of so many precious memories, the meeting point for community life and convivial gatherings, had been destroyed. At the sight of the smoking ruins, I knew for the first time that I had irrevocably lost my homeland and that I now needed to think about preparing to leave.

However, we in Bielefeld were spared the worst. Only afterwards did we learn of the horrors that had occurred in so many other cities. Men shot in their beds, others dragged into the street in their nightclothes and drowned in the nearby river, still others who were taken away, deathly ill, and who died during transports. The German armed forces, formerly so proud and conscious of their honour, allowed such horrors to happen and thereby dishonoured themselves. More than a few Aryan people told me at the time, ‘Believe me, I am ashamed to be a German’. And outrage was widespread when Minister Goebbels and other government officials tried to pretend that the pogrom was something all Germans had wanted as a justified punishment of the Jews.

Of course, this lie of the Jews’ guilt, in true National Socialist fashion, had a very practical purpose. The initial aim was to shift responsibility for the Jews’ lost assets to the affected Jews themselves. This was the purpose of the decree of 12 November 1938, whose opening paragraphs read as follows:

§ 1) All damage inflicted on Jewish businesses and dwellings on 9 and 10 November 1938 as a result of the national indignation about the rabble-rousing propaganda of international Jewry against National Socialist Germany must at once be repaired by the Jewish proprietors or Jewish traders.

§ 2) The costs of the repairs will be met by the proprietors of the Jewish businesses and dwellings affected.²³

On the same day, a ‘Decree Concerning Reparations from Jews of German Nationality’ imposed a contributary payment of one billion Reichsmarks to the German Reich with the following justification: ‘The hostile attitude of the Jews towards the German people and the Reich, which does not shy away from cowardly acts of murder, requires decisive resistance and rigorous atonement’. These decrees bore the signature of Field Marshall Göring, who was responsible for the Four-Year Plan.²⁴

On 18 November I received a letter from the President of the District Court: ‘The Higher Regional Court President in Hamm has just communicated to me the following order from the Reich Minister of Justice, dated 15 November 1938. Jewish lawyers may no longer appear before the court. I herewith inform you of this.’

That was the end of my career as a lawyer, a profession that I had practised honourably for more than thirty-four years.

Right after 10 November, my daughters and all other Jewish children were barred from their schools. Their Aryan piano teacher was no longer allowed to teach them. Their Aryan school friends, apart from a very small number who remained loyal, withdrew from them, even those who had previously played in our home. Acquaintances avoided greeting us on the street or simply hurried by. At the entrances of hotels and restaurants, more and more ‘No Jews’ signs appeared, so that in Bielefeld and in Berlin it was almost impossible to find somewhere to eat or to drink a glass of beer.

EMIGRATION, 1939

Luckily, my sister in England was determined to bring us over as soon as possible. England was greatly prepared to expand its provision for immigration. Most immigrants had to prove they had an opportunity for further emigration within a specified period. However, permission to immigrate was also granted without this condition for children of up to sixteen years, for women and girls who could prove they had a position in a household, for young men who wished to work in agriculture, and for people of sixty and older, from whom no competition within the labour market was expected. For some individuals, the prerequisite was that someone in England had to be prepared to make a sufficient guarantee of maintenance for the immigrant. My children, as well as my wife and I belonged to this category. We will never forget the human kindness that the English people showed us.

Our daughters found places on a Kindertransport to England organized by the London Jewish Aid Committee. Our older daughter, who was sixteen, was able to live with an English family we had known for many years; our younger daughter had the great fortune to find a generous patron in a woman previously unknown to us, who made it possible for her to attend a school on the south coast of England. This woman had declared that she was especially pleased to be able to help the daughter of a lawyer, for both her late husband and her late father had been lawyers.²⁵

The time between November 1938 and May 1939 was the most exciting and work-filled period of my entire life. From morning to night, my house overflowed with visitors; even in the middle of the night they came for help or advice. The usual work and waiting rooms were no longer sufficient—we had to start using some of the family rooms. Our home was effectively turned into a public office. In the first weeks, especially, it was the distraught wives of the men taken to concentration camps who asked for support and for whom I had to draft numerous release applications.

Since the condition for release from the camp was usually proof of prompt emigration, the most important thing was to find them an opportunity to emigrate, and this was fraught with intractable difficulties. Then, in December, after releases from the camps, there was a new wave of people needing help—often sent by the state police. It was heart-rending to witness the physical and psychological condition of these unhappy people. Frequently shockingly emaciated, with shorn heads and exhausted, fearful eyes in whose gaze the inferno still burned; with clothing and boots dirty beyond recognition—this is how they sat hunched before us, and only a few seemed fresh and unbroken. They spoke only a little about their experiences in the camp, but enough to suggest the horrors they had experienced, and there wasn’t one who didn’t say that he would rather die than go back to the camp.

The men released from the camps, often all of the male Jews from one place, were summoned by the German authorities and, under threat of renewed imprisonment, forced to sign a written declaration that they would emigrate within a specific timeframe of four to eight weeks. When they came to us, some of these tortured people lost their self-control in their desperate need and were sometimes even driven to physical violence.

I had a weekly consultation day in Dortmund, the largest city in my region, and held monthly office hours in Münster and Paderborn. In addition to advising others in person, I sometimes wrote as many as a hundred letters a day. I couldn’t have managed this without my secretary, Claire Langendorf. The knowledge she acquired in my office also allowed her to keep giving emigration advice in 1939, until she herself emigrated. But we couldn’t do it all on our own, and so, in January 1939, with the approval of the Hilfsverein’s central office in Berlin, I engaged a younger assistant, Herr Werner Hoffmann of Herford, who became my successor after my emigration.

Our task became more difficult as one country after another closed its borders just as the German authorities were urging an acceleration of emigration. Apart for England, hardly any other European country was open. Of the overseas countries, only the United States was still accepting a substantial number of people, and it has to be said to the honour of American Jews that when it came to granting affidavits they demonstrated a touching generosity. Finally, there remained only the part of Shanghai that was ruled by European countries, which accepted immigrants without visas and formal permission to settle. A whole stream of emigrants went there in the first few months of 1939; they faced a largely uncertain fate.

The tormented masses were grasping at every straw to save themselves, which meant unscrupulous advisors had a field day. It was frequently difficult to make clear to those wanting to emigrate that their hopes would be dashed with regard to certain settlement projects in Brazil or Australia, or the many visas being offered at hefty prices for the Dominican Republic and Syrian Hatai.²⁶ Often, people were told at state police offices that we had to help them,²⁷ which encouraged them to give us abrupt commands and to doubt the correctness of our advice. As a result of this pressure from the state police, our emigration work deteriorated. Instead of genuine advice about emigration destinations, with professional preparation and an assessment of suitability in individual cases, there was a desperate attempt to get people out quickly whenever and wherever an opportunity arose, without any consideration of how they could make a living there.

The state police increasingly took an interest in our work. They saw in us a certain kind of aid office for their own work, which was to send Jews abroad. They also demanded regular statistical reports of all emigration during a particular period. This had its advantages, as it was possible for us to use our connections for the benefit of individuals in some cases. A few people were released from the concentration camps in this way, and harassment on the part of other authorities, such as passport refusals or threats of imprisonment could be remedied. On the other hand, it was ever more unbearable to have to work under the control and pressure of a hostile, non-Jewish authority. For decades I had devoted myself to Jewish work due to my innermost feelings, as our Jewish principles prescribed. But it was entirely different when the Gestapo intervened in our affairs. It was an uncomfortable experience to be subjected to almost daily requests or commands from the state police.

One could experience the strangest things. One senior Gestapo officer loved to visit me and other Jewish men ‘privately’ in order to discuss Judaism and Jewish matters for hours on end. We could never quite fathom whether he merely wished to learn or whether he wanted to sound us out. Perhaps he was also ambitious to be recognized by his superiors as an expert in Jewish matters. During these discussions, he always seemed to have a great understanding of our way of thinking and our current situation. He was of the view that the coexistence of Germans and Jews would be disastrous for both sides due to their differences. After a complete separation, they would be able to live in mutual admiration. It was unclear how this official, who even had friendly relations with individual Jews, was able to reconcile his attitude with the realities of National Socialism, or whether for him everything was just a means to a particular end.

On 1 January 1939, Herr Göring could triumphantly report to his Führer that the German economy was free of Jews. Now increased might was applied to liquidating Jewish land holdings. It became clearer to us that we should, even without immediate duress, sell our houses and other land holdings as cheaply as possible, in order to avoid the kinds of scenario we feared more with each passing day—that sale prices would be dictated [by the state] or that property would be subjected to forced seizure. Countless people tried to profit from our situation. Nearly every day, people contacted me saying they had heard that I intended to sell my house, frequently noting that I would not be able to keep it anyway. This assumption was not without justification, for according to the decree of 3 December 1938, the authorities could force a Jew to sell his land within a certain period.

I did not hesitate for long, and was happy to find a decent buyer for my house and land in my long-time neighbour, the owner of a printing company; this relieved me of further harassment. It was wonderful that my buyer was prepared to purchase the land, house and garden in its entirety, even though he really only wanted a strip of my garden for his own purposes. He was therefore prepared to let me remain in my house for an indefinite period. Thus, on 14 December 1938, I signed the notarial contract with which I sold 24 Viktoriastrasse in Bielefeld to the firm Julius Opitz for a price that was still above the officially set value of the land. I thus surrendered land that had belonged to my family without interruption since 1873, where I myself had been born and spent many happy years. We remained living there quietly and left the house only on 24 May just prior to our emigration, after the notarial conveyancing was successfully completed on 22 May. Thanks to the revenue from the sale, I was able to make all the payments that emigrating as a Jew entailed.

I lost at least twenty per cent of my assets due to the ‘Sühneabgabe’ [‘atonement fee’] for the murder of Herr vom Rath in Paris. Then, in accordance with Göring’s decree of 21 February 1939, we Jews had to deliver all objects in our possession made of gold, platinum, or silver, as well as precious stones and pearls to certain purchasing offices by 31 March. Anyone emigrating before February 1939 had been able to take his silver and jewellery with him. But no more. With the exception of individual objects of low value—two sets of silver cutlery per person, silver items that weighed no more than forty grams, but no more than two hundred grams in total per person—we had to hand over everything we possessed.

It hurt to part from so many things that were dear to our hearts: wedding presents, old family possessions, reminders of parents and grandparents, things that had been handed down for generations. For most of these objects, the sentimental value for each of us was incomparably higher than the value calculated in Reichsmarks.

Now we had to organize the export of the personal possessions we were permitted to take with us. As was to be expected, the financial authorities started to make export approval expensive. A new National Socialist source of income had been discovered and would now be thoroughly exploited. According to a decree by the Reich Economics Minister on 13 May 1938, emigrants wishing to move goods abroad had to communicate this to the relevant currency office at least fourteen days before packing and loading. A precise list of the items to be exported had to be attached to the notification. The list had to be divided into 1) items that were the property of the emigrant before 1 January 1933, 2) items acquired since 1 January 1933, and 3) items purchased explicitly in connection with the emigration. The purchase price had to be specified for each item. The currency office, in cooperation with the so-called customs office, would decide which items could be taken abroad and under what circumstances.

The currency office calculated how much the emigrant should pay to take his goods abroad. This price was higher for newer objects and for those items with a greater chance of resale abroad. Thus, for example, if one wanted to take furs or stamp collections, ten to twenty times their specified or estimated value was demanded. The export of certain newly purchased objects was not permitted. The obligation to submit the lists a few weeks before emigration made things difficult, in that one was only allowed to take the items on the list. Also, no one knew how much would be demanded for the export of items, and this when the already significant costs associated with emigration required precise consideration and calculation.

We submitted our lists on 19 April and received approval on 14 May, having paid a fee of approximately 1,100 Reichsmarks. This relatively small amount was due to our listing almost no new acquisitions.

A few days before the approval was confirmed, I received a ‘Sicherungsanordnung’ [‘protection order’] from the Oberfinanzpräsident [Chief Finance President] dated 10 May 1939, stating that all of my assets would be removed from my control. I was now only allowed to dispose of the assets listed individually in the order with the approval of the Devisenstelle [Foreign Exchange Office]. The reason given for the protection order was that I had declared my intention to emigrate. Since I, foreseeing the seizure, had retained several thousand marks from earlier payments, this order did not hurt me too much. However, I was still waiting for permission from the Devisenstelle to receive the proceeds from the sale of my house.

By then, we didn’t want to lose a single day. Hitler’s destruction of Czechoslovakia and the Munich Agreement of September 1938 represented a new breach of faith, and signalled Hitler’s intention of attacking Poland. It became increasingly clear that Great Britain and France would counter further attacks by Hitler with armed force. The thought of a new war deeply disturbed me, especially after our daughters departed for England on 10 May. The idea that we might be separated from our children by a war that could break out at any moment was unbearable. We already had our English immigration permit, obtained through Dr Mattuck’s Refugee Committee, and the guarantee made by my sister, but made no use of these until we knew that our children had arrived safely in England.

I no longer owned a house, most of our land had been sold. A few hundred steps from my home, the sad, smoke-blackened ruins of the synagogue and community centre stared back at me. There were no more Jewish businesses; they had either been handed over to other owners, who conspicuously trumpeted their German-Aryan character, or they had been closed. Old acquaintances fearfully tried to avoid greeting me. And ever more signs saying ‘No Jews’ appeared on once beloved restaurants.

On Thursday 11 May, the synagogue community of Bielefeld held a farewell party for me. The table and chair intended for me were festively decorated, but the mood of the event was serious and melancholy. My wife and I felt deeply how difficult it was for the community to take leave of us, and the thought of leaving my beloved community was painful. I was presented with a kind farewell gift and a wonderfully written speech.

On 12 May, immediately after the departure of our children, we were visited by my seventy-five-year-old uncle, Justizrat Moritz Kirschbaum of Berlin, with his wife, our aunt. This last visit was both beautiful and sad, for we had to accept that we would probably never see each other again.

The most pressing task now was to obtain our English visas. On Sunday 14 May, my wife and I travelled to Elberfeld and, from there, to Cologne and the British Consulate General. On Monday 15 May, we received our English visas and returned home. The path to England was now clear for us.

What remained to be taken care of was the packing and loading of our possessions. All current taxes needed to be settled. I had to pay a Reichsfluchtsteuer [Reich Flight Tax] of twenty-five per cent of my assets, and later a newly introduced Judenauswanderungsabgabe [Jewish Emigration Fee] that totalled a quarter of the Judenvermögenssteuer [Tax on Jewish Assets]. This emigration fee had been imposed upon the Jewish community in Germany as a tax on every emigrant and was supposed to cover the emigration costs of needy Jews along with other Jewish community tasks. The fees were paid to and managed by Jewish community offices in the name of the Reichsvertretung der Juden. It remained an open question whether the National Socialist government would not someday seize the funds collected by the Reichsvertretung. Due to these taxes and fees, I lost more than half of my remaining assets.

On 25 and 26 May our household goods were packed and loaded. The first to appear, early in the morning, was the customs office official who was to monitor the loading. Then came the packers from the moving company, five stout men. I cannot describe the bitterness I felt as strange people blithely emptied my old birthplace with businesslike speed. The men’s zeal for their work was inspired by the consumption of unbelievable quantities of beer and cigars and, by the evening, some of these strong men were no longer steady on their feet. Sad and thoughtful, I wandered through the house and garden the next morning, taking my leave. Then I handed over the keys of the house to the buyer and left, never to return.

On Wednesday 24 May, my wife and I had taken a room in the Hotel Bielefelder Hof. We stayed there until Sunday 28 May, made our last travel preparations, and took leave of a few loyal friends. We experienced touching proof of friendship from both Jewish and Aryan friends. We admired the courage these good people demonstrated. Had they been observed their very existence would have been at risk.

On Sunday morning, we visited the cemetery to take leave of the graves of my parents and some other graves that were dear to us. At about one o’clock in the afternoon, Aryan friends accompanied us to the station, and the train bore us rapidly away from the city of my birth, in which I had latterly felt almost like a stranger. Our destination was Hamburg, for we had booked a passage on the American liner Washington on 30 May.

We then spent two pleasant days in Hamburg. Aside from the allotted ten Reichsmarks per person, we were not allowed to take any cash across the border. We knew that we would be penniless in England, so we enjoyed the comforts of money for the last time in Hamburg, and did not scrimp when it came to hotel, food, and drink. Even the ‘No Jews’ signs that greeted us almost without exception at the entrances of restaurants and coffee shops no longer disturbed us, and made taking our leave easier. On a warm Whitsun afternoon, we sat amidst a happy crowd on a high garden terrace in Blankenese, gazing peacefully at the broad Elbe with its never-ending stream of steamships and boats. This—viewed from the outside—was the good old strong and comfortable Germany, a Germany that I had loved and felt a part of, but which was now lost to us forever.

And so, on the afternoon of 30 May, we were driven in a United States Lines car to Hamburg harbour, where the Washington lay at anchor behind a huge customs shed. First we had to pass through German passport, currency, and customs controls. One of the passport officials showed us the ugly face of National Socialist Germany for the last time. When an answer was not precise or subservient enough for him, he thundered: ‘You can allow yourself such impertinence in America! But not here! Arrogant people!’ We were wise enough not to respond. The currency control and customs baggage inspection went smoothly, and a moment later we stood in front of the huge American liner. In the middle of the gangway, we paused and hugged each other with happiness and joy.

‘Now we have escaped hell!’

The stewards received us in a friendly fashion and we were led to the cabin where our hand luggage was waiting, still sealed by customs. Oh, we felt so safe there, and so abruptly transported into a completely different atmosphere of politeness, kindness, and freedom. Since we had been able to pay for the passage with German money, we had booked first-class accommodation. In our delightful cabin with its ensuite toilet and shower, and in the magnificent lounges of the ship, we enjoyed, probably for the last time, two days of cosy enjoyment and comfort paid for from our own pocket.

When, half an hour after boarding the ship, we sat at a table covered with a white tablecloth in the large, glittering dining room, served attentively by our table steward, we thought we were dreaming. Was it possible that the German customs shed, with all its hatred and vulgarity, was just a few steps away from this paradise?

A journey of two days with magnificent sunshine and smooth seas took us to Southampton via Le Havre. Along the way, almost overwhelmed by the happiness of the moment, I wrote the following verses:

On the evening of 1 June, we sailed up the lively Solent, past the broad Isle of Wight, and set foot on English soil in Southampton. We reached London at about midnight. My sister and her two daughters wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to meet us at the train station for anything, even at such a late hour. It was a profoundly serious but happy reunion.

Footnotes