Jewish refugees from Nazism

Jewish refugees from Nazism are Jews who were forced to leave their place of residence due to persecution by the Nazis, their allies (the Axis powers) and Nazi collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

Starting in the 1930s, right-wing regimes with anti-Semitic policies came to power in Germany and some other European countries. This led to the flight of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees. Between 350,000Migrations and 400,000Yehuda Bauer. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Wayne State University Press, p. 26. 1981. . Jews left Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia before the start of World War II. Of the 235,000 Jewish immigrants to Palestine from 1932 to 1939,The fifth wave of repatriation (1932–1939) approximately 60,000 were German Jews.From a Minority Movement to a National Movement: The Fifth Aliyah (1929–1939). Methodological materials on the history of Zionism. Jewish Agency for Israel

During World War II, millions of Jews were forced to evacuate areas occupied by the German army and its allies, and most of those who remained were forcibly moved to ghettos and then either killed on the spot or deported to extermination camps.

Many countries, fearing the influx of refugees, created obstacles and did not grant them entry permits. Even news of the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis did not become a reason to reconsider this policy. After the war, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the desire of the surviving victims of the genocide to go to Palestine caused a conflict with the anti-immigration policy of the British Mandate authorities. In the 1950s and later, questions of material compensation for victims of persecution were addressed.

1933–1939

The idea of expelling Jews from Germany was one of the most important programmatic points of the National Socialists.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, Vol. 3. p. 17. 2001. .Basin, Yakov Zinovievich. The Jewish Question and the Emigration Policy of Germany and the USA in 1933-38. Notes on Jewish History: Magazine. October (issue 16 (119)). 2009. At the time the Nazis came to power, 523,000 Jews lived in Germany, making up less than 1% of the population.German Jewish Refugees, 1933–1939. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. At the first stage, populist measures (boycotts, insults, etc.), discriminatory legislation, and economic sanctions were used as anti-Jewish policies.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, p. 205. Vol. 2. 2001. . Subsequently, violent pressure was applied to force Jews to emigrate, as well as direct deportations. The expulsion of Jews was accompanied by their almost total robbery during emigration. The Nazi policy of confiscating property intensified from 25% in 1933 to almost 90% by 1938.

Anti-Jewish legislation 1933–1937

The mass persecution of Jews in Germany began on April 1, 1933, when the first nationwide boycott of all Jewish businesses in the country was carried out.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 176-178. Vol. 2. 2001. . The main instrument of anti-Jewish policy in 1933–1935 was anti-Jewish legislation.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, p. 185. Vol. 2. 2001. .

On April 7, 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was adopted, which ordered the dismissal of all non- Aryan officials, with rare exceptions. Anyone who had at least one Jewish ancestor was considered a non-Aryan.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 185-188. Vol. 2. 2001. . Then, from April to December, several regulations and measures were adopted aimed against the Jewish intelligentsia with the goal of eliminating the influence of Jews on public life. Thus, on April 25, quotas were introduced for the admission of Jews to educational institutions, and on May 10, a public burning of books by Jewish and anti-Nazi authors took place. Racial restrictions affected doctors, lawyers, notaries, professors, editors and others.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 189–190. Vol. 2. 2001. . A stream of anti-Semitic publications appeared in the press, especially in the weekly Der Stürmer edited by Julius Streicher.Samuel Ettinger. Part Six. The Newest Period. Chapter Six. The Nazis' Rise to Power in Germany and the Genocide of European Jewry during World War II. History of the Jewish People. Jerusalem: Aliya Library, p. 543. copies. 2001. . The result of this policy was the flight of 60,000 Jews from Germany in 1933–1934, of which 53,000 ended up in France, Belgium and Holland.Lilly Mousse. A Call to the Nations. Minsk: Encyclopedics, p. 29. 500 copies. 2007. .

The pinnacle of anti-Jewish legislation was the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws adopted on September 15, 1935. Jews were deprived of German citizenship; mixed marriages were prohibited. Subsequently, amendments were adopted to the laws, and all other racist legal norms were drawn up as an addition to these laws.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 191–198. Vol. 2. 2001. . At the economic level, a policy of Aryanization was carried out - the transfer of property into the hands of people of German origin. At this stage, Aryanization was not associated with the forced seizure of property, but direct and indirect pressure was exerted on Jews to sell their property.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 203–204. Vol. 2. 2001. .

From 1933 to 1937, 130,000 Jews emigrated from Germany.

International reaction

In October 1933, the League of Nations Assembly created a special office for Jewish refugees from Germany, the High Commissioner for Refugees Arriving from Germany. Its head was the American professor and journalist James Grover McDonald. He began to fight for the unification of efforts to finance aid, since the League of Nations did not directly finance this work, and against restrictions on the immigration of refugees. In two years of work, he helped to settle 80 thousand Jewish refugees in Palestine.Morgun Yu. Refugees are a global problem of the 21st century. Belarusian Journal of International Law and International Relations. No. 2. 2001.Introduction to International Refugee Protection 6. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. MacDonald tried to convince the League of Nations to intervene directly, but these attempts were unsuccessful. On December 27, 1935, MacDonald resigned in protest. In an open letter on this matter, he noted:

In 1936, the "British Committee for Aid to German Jews" was created. It developed active lobbying activities in Great Britain.Samuel Ettinger. Part Six. The Newest Period. Chapter Six. The Nazis' Rise to Power in Germany and the Genocide of European Jewry during World War II. History of the Jewish People. Jerusalem: Aliya Library, p. 546. copies. 2001. .

Forced emigration 1938–1939

The year 1938 was a turning point in the attitude towards Jews in Germany. After the dismissal of the pragmatist Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics at the end of 1937, the influence of the radical Nazis, in particular Hermann Göring, increased. Historian Dan Michman notes a direct connection between the accelerated preparations for war and the tightening of anti-Jewish policies.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 211-212. Vol. 2. 2001. . Beginning in 1938, this policy was intensified with the aim of achieving the emigration of Jews from German territory. It included means of psychological pressure in the form of further discrimination and separation of Jews and non-Jews, economic discrimination and police pressure.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, p. 213. Vol. 2. 2001. .

Several measures were carried out throughout Germany, the purpose of which was to pit Jews against non-Jews, such as the separation of postal items and forced name changes. From June 1938, after the mandatory registration of "Jewish property", forced "Aryanization" began. Dan Michman writes that police pressure actions to force Jews to emigrate were carried out by both the SS and the police system as a whole and were distinguished by particular cruelty.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 214–217. Vol. 2. 2001. . Professor Marion Kaplan notes that Jews were literally robbed bare during their emigration, even to the point of having their gold teeth removed.

According to Michman, the apogee of forced emigration was the so-called Polish Action at the end of October 1938, when 17,000 German Jews with Polish passports were arrested and forcibly deported across the Polish border.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 221–222. Vol. 2. 2001. .

Anschluss of Austria and the establishment of the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration

The annexation of Austria was part of the official foreign policy of the Nazis from 1933.Abarenkov V. P. et al. Brief political dictionary. 4th ed., suppl. Moscow: Politizdat, p. 23. p. 512. 750,000 copies. 1987. On March 12, 1938, German troops entered the country, and on March 13, the Law on the Reunification of Austria with the German Empire was published, according to which Austria was declared one of the states of the German Empire under the name Ostmark. At the time of annexation to Germany, the Jewish population of Austria was 181,778 people, of whom 165,946 (91.3%) lived in Vienna. After the Nuremberg Laws were implemented in Austria, 220,000 people were considered Jews in Austria.Austria. article from the Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia After the Anschluss, which was accompanied by spontaneous pogroms,Evan Burr Buckey. Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945. UNC Press Books, p. 133, 336. 2002. . Jews became the object of organized persecution. This prompted many Austrian Jews to flee the country, mainly to Italy and Switzerland. From March 26 and throughout April, Jews were forcibly expelled from entire regions of the country - to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Yugoslavia.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, pp. 218–219. Vol. 2. 2001. .

The Anschluss was an important stage in Heinrich Himmler's activities - in the part that concerned anti-Jewish policy. A forced reorganization of Jewish communities was carried out, this process was led by Adolf Eichmann. In August 1938, Eichmann founded the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna to speed up the emigration process.Dan Michman. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. - 1. - Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, p. 220. Vol. 2. 2001. . In November 1938, Hermann Göring created a similar institution in Berlin. In 1939, Adolf Eichmann founded a similar bureau in Prague.Adolf Eichmann.

Before the war, 100 thousand Jews left Austria.

The Evian Conference