The Trial | MAY 8
After Polish-born Shulamit Gutgeld’s return to Palestine from several years of study in Berlin with the greats of German theater, Erwin Piscator and Max Reinhardt, she changed her name to Bat Dori – “daughter of my generation” or “contemporary.” And that she certainly was in a very conscious way: her plays were highly political and attuned to the events of the day—so much so that the British mandatory authorities forbade the performance of her 1936 play, “The Trial,” which called for peace between Jews and Arabs and was critical of the British. The Berlin branch of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, however, decided to produce the play. The document shown here is an invitation to the May 8 performance at the Kulturbund-Theater on Kommandantenstraße under the direction of Fritz Wisten.
A mother fights for her son | MAY 7
Immediately after the Nazi takeover of Austria, Jewish shops and businesses had been put in the hands of “Aryan” provisional managers. In the course of this “Aryanization”—really the expropriation and theft of Jewish property—30-year-old Bruno Blum, a resident of Vienna, lost his job at the “Wiener Margarin-Compagnie” after little more than four years. Understanding that her eldest son’s chances to find a new job under Nazi rule were scant, Betty Blum approached her cousin Moses Mandl in New York for help with an affidavit. When she did not hear back from him, she wrote this letter to her nephew, Stanley Frankfurter, asking him to coax Moses Mandl into helping or turn to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) for assistance.
“Finis Austriae” | MAY 6
While Sigmund Freud, the “father of psychoanalysis,” clearly did not underestimate the significance of the Anschluss—“Finis Austriae” was the succinct commentary he jotted down in his diary—even the search of his home and publishing house by the Nazis did not prompt him to explore emigration. As a matter of fact, he reportedly commented on the unsolicited visit of the Nazis, who had made off with a substantial amount of money, with the dry remark, “I have never taken so much for a single visit.” But when his daughter Anna, herself a renowned psychoanalyst, was interrogated by the Gestapo shortly thereafter, the usually restrained Freud’s reaction was highly emotional, and he began weighing the various offers of asylum he had received. May 6, 1938 was his last birthday in Vienna.
Leave the rest to the Kadosh Baruch Hu | MAY 5
In 1935, under mounting pressure, the orthodox Hamburg physician Henri Hirsch left Germany and joined his brother Sigmund in Genoa, Italy. Shortly thereafter, he was joined by his second wife, Roberta, and by some of his young adult sons, and moved with them to Merano. In 1938, Henri Hirsch died. In this letter to his nephew Julius, Sigmund Hirsch tries to assuage the young man’s worries about an impending war, exhorting him to put his faith in God and promising help. Since he had been based in Italy for a while, many seem to have pinned their hopes on him: with palpable regret, he relates how little he can do for the “thousands” of people asking him for help.
Monetary hurdles | MAY 4
Before Martha Kaphan could travel to Mandatory Palestine, she had to deposit the considerable amount of 800 Reichsmark at the Dresdner Bank. The Reich Office of Foreign Exchange Control, which played a major role in the exploitation of Jewish emigrants, demanded the sum for the issuance of her tourist visa. Thousands of Jews tried to enter Palestine illegally by means of tourist visas with the intention of applying for permanent visas later. Apparently, Martha Kaphan did not emigrate for long. The British Consulate confirmed her departure on December 24, 1938. The deposit was paid on December 29, 1938 in Breslau, and the account was closed on January 10, 1939.
Segregation in Kindergarten | MAY 3
Even though he professes to be in low spirits due to the serious situation and therefore hardly inclined to write and take photographs as regularly as before, Wilhelm Hesse, a lawyer in Hamburg, describes the development of his daughter Helen in some detail in his diary. He reports on her capacity to think logically and a desire to learn so strong that the parents feel they have to make her slow down a bit. Hesse also writes with satisfaction about Helen’s progress in a Jewish kindergarten, but he does not fail to mention that she must learn to get along better with her little sister, Evchen. Since the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935—Helen was two years old at the time—Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend non-Jewish kindergartens, and Jewish kindergarten teachers were prohibited from taking care of non-Jewish children. The Hesse family was religiously observant and might have opted for a Jewish institution even under normal circumstances.
Right of residence | MAY 2
Austrian municipalities were required by law to issue documents known as a Heimatschein to their inhabitants confirming their right of residence. These papers guaranteed their holders the right to live in a given area and were necessary to access social welfare support in case of need. In May 1938, the 1849 law establishing this system was still in force—at least on paper. The Heimatschein of Carl Grosser, a young Jewish businessman, was renewed on May 2, 1938. Grosser had graduated from the prestigious Wasagymnasium, with its strikingly high percentage of Jewish students (up to 70%), in his native Vienna in 1932. Afterward, he joined his father’s necktie business, spent time in Germany and England to expand his professional horizons, and traveled extensively throughout Europe.
Compass Travel Bureau | MAY 1
In an ad in the Aufbau aimed at German immigrants, the Compass Travel Bureau in New York offered “expert advice in all matters related to immigration and the handling of all the formalities of traveling.” The reference to “formalities” elides the excruciating bureaucratic hurdles facing prospective emigrants. Jews desperate to leave Germany first had to obtain quota numbers and a plethora of documents from various German authorities and to contend with the slow postal service as they sought sponsors in America.
Our name should perish with us | APRIL 24
The diary of Dr. Hertha Nathorff (née Einstein) paints a vivid and at times nightmarish picture of the Jewish physician’s experiences in Nazi Germany. On April 24, she describes a visit with her parents in her native Laupheim in Swabia. Many Jewish shops had been sold, and their owners had emigrated. The Nazis’ efforts to malign and isolate the Jews had been so successful that passers-by were afraid to greet her. Her father had informed her that he was not going to sell the company which had been in the family’s possession for four generations and that he would prefer that it perish along with their name. The degree of isolation experienced by German Jews at the time is also evident in another episode mentioned in the diary: Dr. Nathorff is amazed at the fact that her former professor had the courage to send her regards through a patient.
An ordinary eulogy in a time of immeasurable loss | MARCH 24
A mere 20 years had passed since the end of World War I, during which Dr. Max Kirschner, a Frankfurt physician, had been decorated with the Iron Cross—remarkably, for extending aid to enemy infantrymen. Yet the fact that Kirschner had fought in the War as one of 100,000 German Jews, 12,000 of whom lost their lives, did not in the long run improve his standing with the authorities. In his eulogy for Hedwig Wallach, scion of an old Frankfurt family, he praised the deceased’s quiet devotion to her husband, her lively interest in her children and the quiet bravery with which she had borne her illness.
“Degenerate” | FEBRUARY 24
In the traveling exhibition “Degenerate Art,” initiated in Munich in 1937, the Nazis used 650 works of art confiscated from 32 museums in order to force their idea of art upon the populace: newer trends like expressionism, surrealism, or fauvism, to name just a few, were regarded as “Jewish-Bolshevist” and roundly disparaged. The front page of the exhibition catalog shows a piece titled “Large Head” from the workshop of the German-Jewish artist Otto Freundlich, one of the first exponents of abstract art. It was created in 1912 to symbolize hope for a new beginning. Even apart from Freundlich’s Jewish background and his artistic leanings, being a communist made him politically unacceptable in the eyes of the regime.
The Fifth Column | JANUARY 24
In the 78th and last year of its existence, the orthodox weekly Der Israelit reports on measures of the anti-semitic, pro-German Goga-Cuza government in Romania: The country’s Jews were subjected to various chicaneries and occupational bans similar to those in Germany. As a result of gains in territory and population in WWI, about 30% of Romanians belonged to minority groups, who were seen as a “Fifth Column.” Jews especially were the object of fears and suspicions which easily turned into violent hatred.