(For information only, not for distribution)
Delft, the 22nd November 1938
On 13.11. I arrived in Amsterdam from Berlin by aeroplane with my wife and in the following am trying to give an account from memory of circumstances which I have experienced myself in recent months or of which I have received authentic reports. As it was impossible to make notes about these events, despite everything they must be written down with certain reservations.
The desire to bring the Jewish problem to an ultimate liquidation in Germany has been evident since the beginning of 1938 and found its first decisive expression in the statement of assets at the beginning of this year. The ways and means in which the information was demanded from Jews and in which the capitalisation of small and even smaller incomes formed an integral part, shows a determination to place as high a value on Jewish assets as possible. There followed the removal of taxation reliefs of every kind for Jews (allowances for children, taxation for Jewish welfare institutions etc.), the removal of public body status from Jewish communities, and in connexion with this the compulsory collection of Jewish taxes, which became a voluntary payment, was no longer possible. The introduction of the so-called "gelben Bänke" was only a small pinprick. The radical movement received its own impetus through the invasion of Austria. The growth of the Jewish population, and the fact that all the measures which had been introduced into the Altreich over the course of 5 years were brought in there in a few weeks in the "flush of victory", encroached on the Altreich. It came through the well-known revival of the boycott, the marking out of Jewish shops by inscribing the full name of the Jewish proprietor on the windowpanes, and publication of lists at the Polizeirevieren. The next blow was the business of the arrests in the middle of June [see Juni-Aktion], in which about 3,000 people were sent to the concentration camp, of whom 146 alone died before 30th September in Buchenwald camp near Weimar. Further measures led to the barring of Jewish doctors from the profession, of whom in total about 1,200 (400 of them from Berlin and Vienna) were, or are going to be, re-registered as Jewish Krankenbehandler and of whom a large number have now been arrested again. The withdrawal of the so-called Legitimationskarte, Stadthausierschein etc. wiped out the living of thousands more families. On 1st December followed the barring of the legal profession, on 1st January the ban on shops and commercial enterprises. At the same time measures of an administrative nature were in operation, such as the withdrawal of passports, the stamping of Auswanderungspässe with a red capital J, the removal of weapons, the special registration numbers for cars in Jewish ownership, the compulsory introduction of the forenames Sara and Israel and the introduction of the Kennkarte with fingerprints and clearly visible left ear.
In this statement a large number of less important measures have without doubt not been included. I will proceed at this point to outline the crucial development of recent weeks. The Czechoslovakian problem, which at the same time promised to bring in its wake a new "burden" of Jews through the existing Jewish Gemeinden in the Sudeten German region, has obviously led to deterrent measures in order to induce a voluntary evacuation by the Jewish population. From a reliable source comes news that in the event of a mobilisation the SA was to be granted a "Night of the long knives" on the day of mobilisation. The decisions about this are said to have been taken at the Party conference in September. That this news is well-founded is evident from the fact that on the planned mobilisation day, namely during the night of 28th-29th September, there were pogrom-like riots in smaller places where the news of the cancelled mobilisation had obviously not come through in time, which were particularly severe in Bavaria (Rothenburg ob der Tauber) and in the region of Hesse and Hesse-Nassau. In Rothenburg and other places in Bavaria and also in Hesse there were serious cases of mistreatment. The Jews were expelled within 24 hours from Rothenburg and other places and found refuge with friends and relatives in larger towns in the Reich. In a small town near the border the synagogues were completely destroyed and the whole Gemeinde, consisting of 21 families, was arrested and only released again 8 days later. It was thought that the measures sought to prevent news of this reaching the foreign press. In Langen near Frankfurt am Main the synagogue was broken into at night, the religious objects were stolen and the entrance was bricked up. The next morning a policeman went to the Vorsteher of the Gemeinde and informed him that a master bricklayer had been given the task of opening up the door again, and the Vorsteher should hand over the key to the iron door. This is what happened. A short time later the Staatspolizei appeared and arrested the Vorsteher because he had had the synagogue reopened without authority. There are no grounds to think that the police were working hand in hand with the Stapo. It appears much more likely that the police were well intentioned throughout. In another place near Frankfurt am Main, Seligenstadt am Main if I am not mistaken, on Friday evening a rope was stretched across the street the Jews used to go to the synagogue, so that they stumbled and fell over to the amusement of the adolescent spectators. At the same time, particularly in the Bavaria region, the more or less compulsory seizure of plots of land began for the most ridiculous prices. Some supposed purchaser or other was sent to the Jewish owner of the land in question, forcing him to sell his land at the given price, with the threat that otherwise he would be arrested. These methods were even used in a town like Würzburg. Numerous plots of land belonging to the Jewish Gemeinde were also expropriated in this way. Synagogues were seized and used as storehouses for grain etc. In Berlin during those days a special method was devised to keep the Jewish population in continual unrest and to wear them down. One day numerous raids took place on coffee houses, also a raid on the only open-air swimming pool near Berlin (Stölpchensee), which still allowed Jews entry. People who could prove their identity were generally not bothered, however what was considered valid identification varied completely. In many cases producing even out of date passports sufficed. In other cases this was seen as a serious offence which led to arrest, although an order to surrender expired passports had not yet been issued at that time; it only took effect on 15th October. Those people who were arrested were in general released again 2-3 days later. The head of the Polizeirevier in Grolmannstrasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg, a police captain Schneider, was particularly active in respect of such raids; it is said of him that he is a brother-in-law of the head of the German police, General Daluege. He was also the first to set up the so-called Verkehrsfallen for pedestrians. They were situated in places where traffic was particularly heavy, such as the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Uhlandstrasse, the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Leibnitzstrasse, and the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Wilmersdorferstrasse. Pedestrians who wrongly, or as was usually the case, were alleged to have wrongly crossed the road, were stopped and asked whether they were Jewish or non-Jewish. If they were non-Jewish, then they were allowed to go or the usual police fine of RM. 1.- was imposed on them. If on the other hand they were Jews, then they were taken to the police station, held for at least half a day and then fined between RM. 50.- and RM. 300.-, which counted as a previous conviction against them, and they lived in constant fear of arrest as a "criminal" during a raid. These were the same grounds for the arrests in June of this year, which were based on a law under which Verbrecher can be taken into Schutzhaft at any time. Those arrested then had to sign a form to this effect! The same scrutiny extended to Jewish cars, which had been given numbers over 350000 in order to make them immediately recognisable. As a result most Jewish car owners abandoned their cars, which meant considerable inconvenience given the distances in Berlin business traffic. These Verkehrsfallen became the accepted thing in the west and new ones were set up, typically on Antonplatz in Weißensee, where visitors to the Jewish cemetery had to cross the road, and in Iranische Strasse in front of the Jewish Hospital. It is easy to imagine how numerous the violations against the traffic regulations were here, when people overcome with sorrow and worry were going to or returning from the cemetery. Even the introduction of the gelben Bänke led to an escalation. Whereas on the squares where there were no such benches the Jews had still been able to use the public benches, that now changed and signs were put up with the following inscription, "For Jews in the administrative district...only those gelben Bänke designated with J are available for use." In this way they were therefore ordered to use the few gelben Bänke.
When it came to the incident in Antwerp [see press reports of an alleged attack upon some German passengers from the steamer Cordilleras on 26 October 1938 who were taking photographs in the Jewish district], it already seemed at that time that this occasion was to be used to set in motion the planned large operation. This was restricted at first however to the prohibition of all Jewish events. Included amongst these were the classes and language courses at the Lehrhäuser, where the autumn term was just about to start and to which numerous students had already travelled from the provinces to the towns. These were principally so-called intensive courses, where work is done for 8 hours a day for 4 weeks. Only the theatre of the Kulturbund was permitted to continue giving performances. The operation to issue eviction notices also started. They were given to thousands following the pattern in Vienna and caused the greatest confusion in Jewish circles, as substitute homes were hardly available with the current lack of accommodation. An operation was taking effect, which the Arbeitsfront introduced and which made matters particularly difficult, to place the owners of Jewish guest houses under more or less pressure to sell, so that numerous elderly people in particular became homeless, and so that temporary refuge in guest houses was made almost impossible for the numerous doctors who, as is well known, had been given eviction notices on their homes within 6 weeks through a special law. All these measures had already led to complete despair amongst the Jewish population. The office hours of the Jewish aid organisations (Hilfsverein, Central-Verein Palästina-Amt) were overflowing with people to whom scarcely any advice could be given, as in the meantime the destination countries had withdrawn one after the other, because of the intensified pressure to emigrate and because of the forced illegal emigration. Advisers in the Jewish institutions increasingly became counsellors who had to prevent people from taking dubious measures. In this situation it proved not unfortunate that the three institutions named above, although aligned with each other in their work, were still able to continue working.
The last act of the Jewish tragedy was heralded by the Polenaktion. On the night of 27th to 28th October between 4 and 7 o'clock in the morning all the male Polish-Jewish nationals of about the age of 16 upwards were arrested (in parts of the provinces also women and children) and moved to the border in Sammeltransporten. The German Jews saw this merely as a prelude to their impending fate. It is even more astonishing that within a few hours this same society made it possible for thousands of Polish Jews to be fed before their transport left for the border, e.g. in Berlin and Hamburg at the railway stations, and that the same thing happened when some of these unfortunate people were transported back again in a state of complete exhaustion due to the measures introduced in the meantime by the Polish government. The Jewish Gemeinde of Berlin even undertook to raise part of the transport costs (if I am not mistaken RM. 60,000.-) and to allow these people to return to their homes. It must have been almost unprecedented in Jewish history that a willingness to help manifested itself in such a way, although it should also not be forgotten that the different standards between west and east European Jews and the tension that existed because of this had of course also not disappeared in Germany in any way.
The assassination in Paris fell into this troubled atmosphere. No Jew in Germany was in any doubt that henceforth the most serious events were to be expected. No Jew however could anticipate too that the consequences would be so brutally devastating. The first days after the assassination passed quietly as is well known. There were no riots of any kind. The speech that Hitler made on the evening of 8th November in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich did not mention a word about the Jewish problem, so that it could be hoped that although the expected measures would indeed not fail to materialise, they would be dictated on reflection, not in the first excitement. On Thursday the 8th November followed the ban on the entire Jewish press in Germany, which on that day consisted of the three major newspapers, CV Zeitung (circulation 40,000), Jüdische Rundschau (circulation 26,000), Israelitisches Familienblatt (circulation 25,000), about 25 community periodicals, amongst them one from Berlin with a circulation of 40,000, 4 of the Jüdischer Kulturbund periodicals (Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne), the Jüdischer Frauenbund and the Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten periodicals, "Morgen", the historical "Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland", "Makkabi" and some other small periodicals. Such banning of the Jewish press used to precede antisemitic excesses generally, because through this the Jews' means of communication between themselves was removed, every opportunity to acquire information prevented. On Wednesday the 9th November the editors-in-chief of the Jewish newspapers published in Berlin were ordered to the Stapo on Alexanderplatz on the morning of Thursday 10th November. On Wednesday evening vom Rath died. On Wednesday evening and during the night of Wednesday to Thursday the organised mob in plain clothes moved from east Berlin into the centre and towards the west and systematically destroyed all the Jewish shops. As they were marked, this destructive vandalism was easily carried out without any danger to non-Jewish shops. The destruction was thorough. No item remained in place. The goods were flung into the streets, they were torn and most of them were stolen. At almost the same time the synagogues in Berlin and in the Reich went up in flames. The fire brigade restricted itself to protecting the surrounding buildings and everywhere where the rampaging crowd appeared, the police vanished so as not to hinder the looters from going about their business. The public reacted completely silently in most cases, i.e. critically. There were occasional expressions of disapproval. These were stopped as such people were arrested. On Thursday the destructive rage continued in Berlin and in the Reich. It was replaced by the wave of arrests, in which in my estimation at least 10,000 Jewish men aged between 16 and 60 were affected.
On Thursday morning the Jewish organisations in Berlin had voluntarily closed their offices after forced entry during the night into the Palästina-Amt and the offices of the Zionistisches Vereinigung für Deutschland and had partially destroyed them. Only the Central-Verein with about 15 people preserved an emergency service. Of its heads of department that morning Dr. Alfred Hirschberg, Dr. Ernst G. Loewenthal, Frau Dr. Eva Reichmann-Jungmann were ordered to the Staatspolizei as representatives of the press as described above. The reporter as well as the Syndicus of the Verein, Dr. Hans Reichmann, and his colleagues Dr. Werner Rosenstock, retired Amtsgerichtsrat Dr. Fritz Goldschmidt, retired Regierungsdirektor Friedländer took over their duties. Reports increased hourly of serious, even violent, riots in the provinces, sometimes with fatal consequences. Shortly after 13.00 hours 3 plain clothes officers from the Staatspolizei appeared, took over the telephone switchboard and called those present out of all the offices. They had to put on their hats and coats, were briefly searched and then released individually. The offices of the CV were sealed, the keys to the offices and the keys to the safe were handed over to the officers. None of those present was arrested. The tone in conducting the operation was forceful but proper. There were merely here and there words such as, "You'll see further details," "You'll soon be laughing on the other side of your face" (of course nobody had laughed) and similar. The reporter went to the home of Dr. Hirschberg and waited there for his return. It came at about 16.00 hours. All the other editors had also been released. They had been held from 8 o'clock in the morning until this point in time without any interrogation or anything else, then sent home and ordered to report on Friday morning at 10 o'clock.
In the meantime it turned out that numerous arrests had taken place of mainly affluent people, of lawyers, doctors and leading Jewish personalities. Thus the intention was evidently to remove all the people who would have advised or been able to reassure the Jewish people in these agitated days. The flight of Jewish men from their homes began. They slept mostly in households where there were no men, went away into the provinces, stayed hidden in the woods, travelled here and there through the night on the undergroud and tram.
On Friday morning the editors were released at about 13.00 hours. They had had to sign a declaration that their newspaper was banned for 3 months. Whilst we were waiting in Dr. Hirschberg's home for his return, relieved because he had just telephoned, the Kriminalpolizei appeared, to arrest him. Whilst we were still dealing with them and were personally searched in turn, Dr. Hirschberg appeared in the home. He explained that he had just been released, and on his arrival the officers telephoned the chief of police. But in vain. Dr. Hirschberg was arrested. Already the previous day Dr. Hans Reichmann, who had been released that morning, had been taken from his home. In the course of Friday despite this the Kriminalpolizei still twice came to his home searching for him.
In Berlin not all men between the ages of 16 and 60 had been arrested. It also appears that this time as in June it had been made a requirement for the Polizeirevieren to arrest a certain number of men from their district, and this time to restrict them to intellectuals and the wealthy. This perception was confirmed by the following incident amongst other things: one of my colleagues was sought in his home on Friday and not found there. His Aryan wife was threatened with arrest if her husband did not report by the next morning. On my advice the man also went home and waited to be arrested. He was not taken however, and I have received a letter from him here dated 20th November. Probably they took another man in his place in order to fill the quota.
Blind Jews, even those blinded in war, lost their concessions on public transport soon afterwards. The Jüdische Blindenanstalt in Berlin had to dismiss its Jewish city representatives who sold basket and wickerwork to Jewish customers, as they no longer received a Legitimationskarte. The Blindenanstalt was required to engage Aryan representatives.
The surrender of weapons, which was only ordered across the board by law after 9th November, occurred in various forms from about the beginning of October. Generally a summons was served to appear at a set time at the Polizeirevier. Many Polizeirevieren however summonsed several hundred people at once and made them wait for hours in sports halls or yards until the question was put to each about a weapon, driving licence for cars and other identity papers. One Polizeirevier in north east Berlin summoned the men to report several times daily at the time of the Jewish High Holidays in September, in the mornings at 7, midday at 12 and in the afternoon. Because of this, people with smaller businesses who naturally had to close their shops at this time, often were unable to carry on their businesses for days. With the surrender of weapons, which also covered fencing épées, sporting sabres and army revolvers, which must have been forcibly taken from the owners during the war, a declaration had to be signed that they were being surrendered voluntarily. Any compensation was obviously not paid. It goes without saying that every Jew who was still in possession of a weapon possessed the necessary licence for it.
It is essential to make clear that the laws of 12th November meant the complete material ruin of German Jewry. How this collapse itself took effect in detail can be shown through an example. Emigrating families as a rule used to sell their furniture. From the proceeds they would acquire either small pieces of new furniture especially for emigrating or they would use it to pay passage and freight to the new country. The breaking up of households in the hitherto traditional structure had alone in recent years pushed down prices considerably in the old furniture market. A renewed slump occurred because of the Polenaktion. In these days in Germany probably thousands of households must have suddenly broken up, unable to realise any price whatsoever for furniture, books, paintings, carpets etc, so that in numerous families the material basis for emigration was destroyed. Based on this example, it is easy to visualise parallel cases in other regions.
I am aware of the following details concerning the demolition of the Munich synagogue and of the Munich Gemeindehaus in Herzog-Maxstrasse. Oberstlandesgerichtsrat Neumeyer at the supreme district court was called to the Innenministerium, where it was disclosed to him that the demolition of the synagogue would begin on the following day. A declaration was required by the evening from him and from the Gemeinde respectively that the Gemeinde was in agreement with the demolition of the synagogue. This declaration was not provided in the desired form. There were barely 12 hours that night in which to remove the sacred objects from the synagogue. Then the Gemeinde was offered a selling price for the synagogue and the Gemeindehaus in the region of, as far as I remember, RM. 300,000.-, whereas the building costs of the synagogue alone without the land had at the time amounted to RM. 1 million. As these buildings are situated in a particularly desirable part of the city the value of the plot had risen from year to year. The demolition of the synagogue itself was completed in barely 14 days and a car park was built there for the opening of the German art exhibition.
Voice from the crowd: on one of the Holidays in September a young Jewish woman left the synagogue and stroked a little dog on the street. At this, the woman dog owner shouted, "Waldi, don't have anything to do with the Jews and be a good dog."
In recent months cases have increased in which the Aryan wives of Jewish men were summoned to the Stapo in order to put them under varying degrees of pressure there to get divorced from their husbands. Here is a little example of this too: At Rosenhain, the well-known shop on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, when it was Aryanised it had been arranged for the Aryan employee with a Jewish husband, who had converted to Judaism on marriage, to renounce Judaism again so that she could keep her job. A few days later she was dismissed nevertheless, because she had not dissolved her marriage and consequently the sign could not be put up at the business "We march united in the Arbeitsfront". Her admission into the Arbeitsfront therefore could not ensue because she was still married to a Jew. On the other hand the Jewish Gemeinde had declined to give the Jewish man a temporary job because his wife had renounced Judaism. With regard to the Jewish Gemeinde the matter could of course be resolved after a while.
Herr Oppenheim, now (1945) New York