Corruption
One of the most noticeable phenomena in Germany is the corruption amongst civil servants and other officials, which can be said to increase daily.
To start with a few examples:
I myself visited the Polizeirevier 156, Schaperstraße in December to apply for Auswanderungspässe. There the civil servant asked questions about our financial circumstances in order to fill in a form. “You see, now you will have to bring all that money to the bank, but nobody ever thinks about us civil servants.” I was baffled somewhat and asked: “Excuse me, what do you mean?” In response he repeated his earlier statement, and I replied by saying: “What do you mean by this – as far as it is possible, I am very happy to do what I can.” In response, he said that “he had not entirely meant what he said.” Then he left the room and I did the same. Outside he told me his name (Kusch) and said: “Well, when you emigrate, you will think of me, won’t you?” I told him to let me know his wishes, and that I would be very happy to see what I could do. A few hours later, when I was sitting at the table in my home, the bell rang and the official appeared (in uniform with a coat over it). As I opened the door to him with some amazement he said that “he only wanted to tell me that he would like a round table and a rug measuring 2 by 3 metres.” Incidentally, the Auswanderungspässe were issued surprisingly quickly.
One of my friends, lawyer W., to whom I told this story, rang me up a couple of days later to tell me that what had been “the round table” in my case had been “the typewriter” in his.
With regard to another case, I know of the following.
An elderly Polish Jewish woman visited the Fremdenamt in Karlstraße to deal with a passport matter. One of the officials told her: “Isn’t it good that we are all honest here. We don’t take any money.” The old lady, Frau Th., replied: “That is because you still belong to the old school”, whereupon the official declared: “You put that very well.”
Apart from these telling anecdotes, the following has to be said: corruption is particularly thriving when it comes to the dispatch of removal goods and luggage belonging to Jewish emigrants. The different hauliers dealing with the shipping of the emigrants’ property are known for either having good connections with the authorities or not. This question is much more important than the estimates of removal costs for Jewish emigrants. A company like Franzkowiak, for example, enjoys an excellent – and for itself very lucrative – reputation because of its influence amongst officials. Since there are no binding rules at all with regard to what can be taxed and how much can be charged, arbitrary behaviour is left completely unchecked (as is corruption). The following is typical in this regard.
The conditions vary from place to place. In Berlin, emigrants generally manage to take all their belongings with them, although for newly bought goods (from the year 1938) a fee of 100% must usually be paid. On very rare occasions people are not allowed to take with them particularly expensive or valuable items. In contrast, authorities elsewhere act much more strictly. In some cities, for example in Nuremberg or Magdeburg, their practice is extremely harsh and very valuable newly bought goods are almost never allowed to be taken, whilst for other valuable goods fees of up to 500% may be charged. Moreover, it is known that a lot of people use large banknotes to pay the small clearance fees due at the foreign currency office and that they usually leave the change behind.
Possibilities for cultural life in Germany
At the moment there are neither Jewish bookshops nor publishers. Everything has been transferred to the book publishing dept. of the Jüdischer Kulturbund. From what I have heard, this leads to an enormous body of Jewish antiquarian books having to be pulped, since the Kulturbund has nowhere near enough space to store things. Moreover, the new law has had the following consequences:
- Until now Jewish companies had been allowed to print Jewish publications; this has stopped.
- Now everything has to be printed at a particular company, whose name I cannot remember right now, but whose owner is a PG with a golden Party badge.
This goes so far that, for example, the new South America journal of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden (the new edition of the 1936 journal), which had already been fully set at the Lichtwitz company, can no longer be printed there but must now be printed at the new company. All future editions will have to be printed at the new company.
“Joci causa” [for the sake of a joke] the following detail:
The old publisher of the Hilfsverein, Herr Schmoller, who used to be in charge of advertisements, appears at the Hilfsverein with a completely unknown second gentleman who had been made head of thebook publishing dept. of the Jüdischer Kulturbund. He introduces this gentleman to the editor of the journal Jüdische Auswanderung as his successor: “You did not want this, Herr X. did not want this, and I had also not wanted to give up the business, but now you will have to work together.”
Moreover, the sale and even the free distribution of Jüdische Auswanderung was prohibited for at least six weeks, despite the fact that the correspondence review is needed at every emigration advice centre and very obviously serves to promote emigration which is wanted by the government.
The Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, the one remnant of the Jewish press still in existence, is published under a system of double censorship. One censorship, that of the office of [Hans] Hinkel, is considered to be harmless. On the other hand the second censorship, carried out by the Reichsführung-SS, in fact the editor [Leo] Kreindler, is subject to so much pressure that a whole range of articles give the impression that they had been written directly by the Gestapo. In particular it is being said e.g. that a letter that was published in the second or third issue of the paper, which complained bitterly that the foreign Jews were doing nothing for the German Jews, and that the emigrating intellectuals etc. only pursued their own interests etc., had come into the paper as a result of the following circumstances:
A copy of the letter had been sent to the Gestapo at the same time, which had insisted on it being published. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this claim, since Herr Kreindler has for a long time avoided entering into discussion with me.
Concerning the migration situation
The situation is currently characterised by the fact that of the 30 to 35,000 people who had been arrested at the end of November, all have been released – with the exception of approximately 2,000. I cannot guarantee these numbers. However, these tens of thousands of people were only released under the strict condition that they must emigrate as soon as possible. The time limit set for emigration varies. In very many cases it is three weeks. A limit that normally does not give enough time to organise any kind of orderly emigration even technically, given the complicated nature of passport and customs rules etc., the difficulties of obtaining an Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung etc. In reality, the contradictory nature of this situation is evident. However, the conclusions which are drawn from this are entirely contradictory:
The Gestapo tries to simplify all formalities related to emigration in accordance with the “Vienna model”, i.e. the Gestapo itself centralises the Devisenabfertigung, the issuing of passports etc. in one process. Of special importance in this regard is the famous article published in the Essener Nationalzeitung. The adoption of this procedure would indeed make it technically possible to carry out emigration more quickly. It is also very clear that currently the pressures to emigrate are not matched by immigration opportunities and that therefore mass emigration enforced by whatever means must, under some circumstances, quickly lead to the further decrease of existing opportunities. In any case, the Gestapo does not seem to be interested in this. On the other hand, the Reichsstelle für Wanderungswesen is very familiar with these issues, and therefore it basically supported and forwarded a petition of the Hilfsverein, which requested the extension of the period granted for emigration after release from concentration camps. The office even took the stand that (in accordance with the request of the Hilfsverein) basically a period of three months should be granted for emigration. Moreover, should emigration not have taken place within this period, a further extension should be granted, if the local emigration advice centre confirms that the departure has so far been impossible. Thus the Reichsstelle demands the opposite of what the Gestapo wants, not a simplification of the formalities, but an extension of deadlines. Politically, this means of course that the Reichsstelle wants to ensure that its offices are in a position to intervene. The Reichsstelle is very much afraid of the reorganisation with which it is threatened, and has even asked Jewish organisations about what is supposed to happen. “We are completely in the dark.” – “We don’t know anything other than what was published in the article in the Essener Nationalzeitung and naturally this is not applicable to the situation in Germany. The circumstances here are, of course, completely unlike in Austria.” (Remark made by a member of staff of the Reichsstelle on the telephone to the Hilfsverein)
The above only highlights a part-extract of the fight of the Gestapo against all other authorities.
The situation with migration policies is that the Gestapo creates such a strong pressure to emigrate through the concentration camps and the releases at short notice, and through the expulsion of stateless persons, and even nowadays of Germans, that any meaningful orderly activity of the Reichsstelle is no longer possible. Other issues, e.g. the arrest of advisers working for the Hilfsverein, which is not uncommon (during the Novemberaktion at least half a dozen advisers were put into concentration camps), show that the Gestapo is no longer interested in any regulated form of emigration. One consequence of this amongst others is that taking action against private companies, especially travel agencies and the numerous secret agents, etc. which exploit the misery of emigrants, becomes almost impossible. One of the travel agents, who contributes most shamelessly to taking advantage of emigrants and to the destruction of immigration opportunities by sending migrants out with completely insufficient visas, declared with a smile, after it was pointed out that it would be possible to bring legal actions against it for the misuse of Auswanderungspässe, that the relevant authority was the one that is now sending the clients in the first place. Because of the immense pressure to emigrate and the very limited visa possibilities, people queue for hours in front of travel agencies to buy the most dubious of visas. No description of the misery of refugees in Shanghai or Bolivia will stop them from booking. They become abusive towards the Hilfsverein when the organisation tries to resist this urge to emigrate at any price.
Where the current developments will lead to, no one can imagine. Even if one only counts the 30,000 men who were in concentration camps and add their relatives to this number, i.e. ignoring all other urgent categories of emigrants, i.e.:
a) those stateless persons or Poles, Rumanians and Hungarians etc. who have received their deportation orders,
b) those who with the Genehmigung from the Stadtpräsident who took part in re-orientation courses and now press for emigration, and
c) finally the great mass of those who just want to leave because they have lost all opportunities to earn a living and also frequently have been evicted from their homes;
even then, one will arrive at a figure of 100,000 people who really have to emigrate urgently and leave Germany within six months. Compared to this, as is well known, the possibilities to settle in other countries are very limited: around 2,000 people can go to the USA (in total), further 300 to 400 per month to Australia, further perhaps 500 people in total to Argentina, Brazil and Chile (in all monthly) – this exhausts the number of existing concrete possibilities to emigrate in a more or less orderly fashion and just leaves certain areas where people could only be deported to en masse, places like Shanghai or Bolivia, which do not allow for large-scale migration. Moreover, there are limited possibilities of being granted Transitaufenthalt to European countries, with all the associated financial and other consequences. Without doubt the situation would be different if generous resettlement plans had been prepared in a timely manner. For the moment it will be necessary to improvise without any preparation, if at least some of the people are to be rescued in one way or another.