Henry Kissinger turns 15 | MAY 27
On May 27, 15 year-old Heinz Alfred (later Henry) Kissinger celebrated his birthday in his native Fürth one last time. Heinz had attended the Jewish elementary school and a Gymnasium in his home town. From 1933, Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend public schools, so that only the Israelitische Realschule was open to him and his younger brother, Walter. Elsewhere, too, the new times made themselves felt in the children’s lives. Suddenly, they were no longer allowed to join the other kids and swim in the river Altmühl when they were visiting with their grandparents in Leutershausen. Heinz was an avid fan of the local soccer team and a player himself, but under the Nazis, Jews were prohibited from attending their games. Even though his father, Louis, had been put on permanent furlough from his job as a teacher at a girls school when the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service came into effect in 1933, he was inclined to stick it out in Germany. It was thanks to his resolute mother, Paula (née Stern), that in April 1938, Louis Kissinger applied for passports. By May, the family’s preparations for emigration were in full gear. Relatives of hers had emigrated to the US already before 1933 and were now helping with the bureaucratic groundwork.
Soldier, pacifist, cabaret artist | MAY 24
After three decades of making his fellow Austrians laugh, cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum’s career was brought to an abrupt end by the Anschluss. His politics alone would have sufficed to make him intolerable for the new regime: Grünbaum had returned from action in World War I not only a decorated soldier but also an avowed pacifist. As for Nazism, he did not mince words. Since 1933, he had been getting more political, and when during a 1938 performance a power outage caused the stage lights to go out, he commented glibly, “I see nothing, absolutely nothing. I must have accidentally gotten myself into National Socialist culture.” His last performance at the famous cabaret “Simpl” in Vienna just two days before the Anschluss was followed by an artistic ban on Jews. Grünbaum and his wife Lilly, a niece of Theodor Herzl, tried to flee to Czechoslovakia but were turned back at the border. On May 24, he was interned at the Dachau concentration camp. Grünbaum was also known as a serious art collector, mostly of modernist Austrian works, and a librettist.
Despite everything, music | MAY 18
After stints with various orchestras in Germany and Austria, in 1930, the conductor Erich Erck returned to Munich, where he had studied music. The Nazis forced him to relinquish his stage name and return to his family name, Eisner. His application for membership in the Reichsmusikkammer was rejected, since his Jewishness was seen as more damning than his combat service for Germany in WWI was redeeming. After he was banned from employment in 1935, he initiated the establishment of the Munich branch of the Jüdischer Kulturbund and became the executive director of its Bavarian State Association. He also took over the Orchestra of the Kulturbund (founded in 1926 as the “Jewish Chamber Orchestra”), in which capacity he appears on this photograph from the ensemble’s May 18, 1938 performance at Munich’s monumental Main Synagogue on Herzog-Max-Straße.
Pedigree papers | MAY 15
After the so-called “Aryan Paragraph” of the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” of April 7, 1933 came into effect, members of certain professions were required to prove their “purely Aryan descent” in order to continue practicing their professions. The 38 year-old surgeon Dr. Walter Bernhard Kunze of Freiberg in Saxony was among those who had to fill in a form regarding his lineage for the “Aryan certificate.” The form, dated May 15, 1938, contains personal data reaching back to the generation of his grandparents. To the form, the corresponding documents from the civil registry office and the parish office had to be attached. Obtaining the numerous copies from the church and communal offices in the places of birth and residence of the grandparents often entailed a significant bureaucratic burden to the individual. The “Aryan certificate” was an effective tool of National Socialist racial policy by which persons seen as “non-Aryan” could be stigmatized and increasingly marginalized.
No time to lose | MAY 13
By May 1938, emigration seemed to be on the mind of every German and Austrian Jew. This article in the <i>Hannover Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt</i>, for example, exhorts prospective emigrants to lose no time and start studying English as soon as possible. According to the paper, at least two-thirds of German-Jewish emigrants were likely to settle down in English-speaking countries, and even those heading to Latin America would profit from a solid knowledge of English. On the other hand, proficiency in Spanish could be useful because of extensive trade relations between North and South America. The answer to the question “Spanish or English?” therefore was an emphatic “Both!”
Stuck in No Man’s Land | MAY 10
The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938 had brought an abrupt end to 1,000 years of Jewish life in the Burgenland region, Austria’s easternmost state. The expulsion of the small Jewish population, carried out by the SS, local Nazi officials, and civilian collaborators, commenced immediately. This article by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports on the League of Nations’ intervention on behalf of 56 expellees who had ended up in “no man’s land” in the border area between Austria and Yugoslavia. The League’s High Commissioner for German Refugees requested the temporary accommodation of the displaced persons by Yugoslavia, to be followed by permanent resettlement elsewhere.
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.
Starting over at 40 | APRIL 26
Marseille was one of the most important ports of departure for the refugees on their way overseas. It was here that Moses Wainstein obtained the papers he still needed for his emigration to Uruguay. This certificate of vaccination was written in Spanish for submission to the authorities there. The former Berliner had already had his belongings shipped to Marseille by a German company. Wainstein was 40 years of age at this point.
Race, not religion | APRIL 25
In gloomy times like these, a letter promising a work opportunity in Canada constituted a much needed ray of hope. Although in possession of what Heinrich Heine famously referred to as “the admission ticket to European culture”—a certificate of baptism—Anton Felix Perl was dismissed on “racial” grounds from his position as a resident at the General Hospital in Vienna in 1938. Luckily for Dr. Perl, he had the support of a prominent advocate, the Archbishop of Winnipeg, who gave him valuable advice regarding emigration to Canada as well as promising practical help in this letter dated April 25, 1938.
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.
Brain drain | APRIL 22
Jenny Brinitzer was born in Riga, Latvia in 1884. After studies in Berne, Berlin and Kiel, she managed to establish herself as the first female physician in Hamburg Altona. There, the mother of three worked for 20 years in a joint practice with her husband, the dermatologist Dr. Eugen Brinitzer. In 1933, Jews constituted about one fourth of Hamburg’s physicians. Jewish physicians who worked directly for health insurance funds or for the public health service had been dismissed within the first two years of the Nazi regime. Starting in 1935, the Nazis began circulating a list of 150 Jewish doctors in Hamburg as part of their campaign to separate Jewish doctors from their “Aryan” patients. In April 1938, Dr. Jenny Brinitzer and her husband left Germany and emigrated to Bangalore, India.
54 years | APRIL 18
After studies at the Academy of Art in Vienna, the printmaker Michel Fingesten had traveled extensively and ultimately settled in Germany. Neither the Austrian national’s Jewish descent nor his penchant for the erotic endeared him to the Nazis. The increasingly unbearable racial politics of the regime made him decide to stay in Italy after a family visit to Trieste in 1935. Fingesten is known mainly as an illustrator and as a prolific, imaginative designer of book plates. April 18, 1938 was his 54th birthday.
One man can only do so much | APRIL 5
Thanks to a Rockefeller fellowship awarded to him in 1933, the distinguished Viennese economist Fritz Machlup had left Austria years before the “Anschluss.” In 1935, he was appointed Professor of Economics at the University of Buffalo. As was to be expected, after the Nazis established their hold in Austria, friends and colleagues pinned their hopes on him as a guarantor. In this April 5 missive to his friend Alfred Schütz, he expresses concern that his letters of support might lose credibility because he had written so many, but nevertheless includes a note in English offering to assist Schütz in establishing himself in the US.
Hope for US leadership | APRIL 4
On April 4, 1938, Arthur Sweetser, a member of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, met with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the meeting, the two discussed the situation of German and Austrian Jews urgently seeking ways to emigrate. Roosevelt brought up the idea of an international conference. His reasoning was simple: only under determined US leadership could the problem be solved and other nations be convinced to take in Jewish refugees. It remains disputed whether the idea of a joint debate on the situation of the Jews under the Nazi regime came from Roosevelt himself or rather from high-ranking State Department officials.
Denied the right to make a living | APRIL 3
According to this JTA notice, April 3, 1938, marked an additional milestone in the curtailment of the professional freedom of Austrian Jews. From this day on, the Ministry of Justice could revoke at will the licenses of Jewish lawyers, with the exception of those who had been admitted to the bar before 1914 or were war veterans or the direct descendents of war veterans. Between 800 and 900 lawyers were estimated to be affected by the new provision. Another professional group that was impacted by the effects of Nazi policy was market vendors. Jews operating mobile as well as permanent stands were no longer entitled to make a living this way. Moreover, in the short period since the Nazi takeover, the first “Aryanizations” of Jewish-owned factories had already taken place.
Recommendation from Karl Bonhoeffer | MARCH 31
Prof. Karl Bonhoeffer, a psychiatrist and neurologist as well as the father of two prominent opponents of the Nazi regime, Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taught at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and was in charge of the Department for Mental and Neurological Diseases at the Charité Hospital. In this letter of recommendation, written in English for use in exile, Bonhoeffer praises the extraordinary achievements of his Jewish colleague, Dr. Herta Seidemann. While his attitude toward certain Nazi programs (such as the forced sterilization of carriers of certain congenital diseases and euthanasia) remains controversial, his efforts on behalf of several Jewish colleagues are indisputable.
A second Salzburg? | MARCH 29
The Austrian-born theater and film director Max Reinhardt emigrated to the US in October 1937, accompanied by his wife Helene Thimig, an actress. By introducing technical innovations and elevating the position of the director, Reinhardt played a pivotal role in the development of modern theater. With his production of H. von Hoffmannsthal’s “Jedermann” in 1920, he became one of the co-founders of the Salzburg Festival. Shortly after he settled down in the US, plans emerged to found “another Salzburg” festival in California. This time, he wrote his friend Arturo Toscanini, he would be working “under more favorable climatic and political conditions, and perhaps with greater financial means.” Among his achievements in the US were staging Werfel’s “The Eternal Road” (1937) and founding the Max Reinhardt Workshop for Stage, Screen and Radio, a theater and film academy in Hollywood (1937–1939). He did not think very highly of US audiences.
Parental Pride | MARCH 27
Wilhelm Hesse was the son of an orthodox business man. He resided in Hamburg with his wife Ruth and his two little daughters, Helen and Eva, whose early years he recorded in diaries that he kept for the children. The entries are interspersed with references to Jewish holidays and photographs of the children. In this entry, he documents proudly and in detail the progress of his daughter Helen, who is not yet five years old at this time. A lawyer with a doctorate, Hesse had been laid off already in April 1933.
Lost at home | MARCH 25
In another dramatic report from Vienna, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency describes panicked Jews flocking to the US Consulate hoping in vain to receive some kind of support. Especially prominent Jewish citizens faced harassment and arrest by the secret police. Austrian Jewish leaders were forced to inform the police about their activities, while their German counterparts were unable to come to their support due to border restrictions. The situation of thousands of Jewish actors had become so desperate that even the Nazi representative of the Austrian Theater Guild acknowledged it and permitted a campaign in their support.
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.
Soma Morgenstern | MARCH 23
Soma Morgenstern held a doctorate in law, but he preferred making a living as a writer, authoring feuilletons on music and theater. Born in Eastern Galicia and fluent in several languages, including Ukrainian and Yiddish, he chose German for his journalistic and literary endeavors. After his dismissal in 1933 from the Frankurter Zeitung, whose culture correspondent he had been while based in Vienna, he barely managed to stay afloat with occasional journalistic work. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany made his situation entirely untenable. He was forced into emigration, leaving behind his wife, a child, and many manuscripts. By March 23 he had made his way to safety in Paris, where he stayed at the Hôtel de la Poste with another famous Galician exile, his old friend, the author Joseph Roth.
Women’s Rights are Human Rights | MARCH 22
Since its founding in 1904, the League of Jewish Women had worked to ensure the dignity and independence of Jewish women and especially to protect them from sexual exploitation by facilitating professional training. By 1938, another issue had come to the fore: emigration. On March 22, 1938, the Group of Professional Women within the League, represented by Dr. Käthe Mende, hosted a discussion for “female youth” about questions of career and emigration. The guest speaker was Lotte Landau-Türk, and the discussion was moderated by Prof. Cora Berliner, a former employee in the German Department of Commerce and a professor of economics who had been dismissed from public service after the Nazi rise to power in 1933.
A new mission for World Jewry | MARCH 18
The entire front page of Bratislava’s German-language religious-Zionist “Allgemeine Jüdische Zeitung” is dedicated to the Anschluss. Jews are called upon to stand by their Austrian coreligionists. An anonymous source notes the impoverished state of many Jews in Austrian lands and the resulting need to restructure social services as well as address the increasingly urgent issues of occupational retraining and emigration. The reader is reminded that Austria is still a member of the League of Nations and that Austrian law stipulates equal rights for religious and national minorities. Among other sources quoted is the British Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Butler, who reports having received assurances that the German government would “endeavor to achieve a moderation” of its policy towards minorities. The paper also reports that the President of the World Jewish Congress, Rabbi Wise, has appealed to the League of Nations to help Austrian Jewry. The rest of the picture is bleak: newspapers suspended, prominent Jews arrested, a Jewish theater closed, Jewish physicians dismissed, and other chicanery. The paper calls upon Jews everywhere to come to the aid of their Austrian brethren.
Colleagues across continents | MARCH 16
Having barely begun his career as a teacher at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Frankfurt/Main, Hans Epstein lost his job shortly after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. After a brief intermezzo as a teacher at the famous “Philanthropin” in Frankfurt/Main, a progressive Jewish school with the motto “For Enlightenment and Humanity”, he became a co-founder of the “Anlernwerkstatt”, which prepared Jewish youngsters for emigration to the US. The mathematician Otto Toeplitz, a passionate educator who had lost his position at the University of Bonn in 1935, was now teaching children and organizing the emigration of students to the United States. In this letter, Epstein asks Toeplitz for a letter of recommendation and for contacts in the United States that might be useful for his endeavors.
Discrimination and arrests | MARCH 13
After their triumphant entry into Austria, the Nazis lost no time in intimidating the country’s Jews and forcing them out of positions of influence and out of society at large. Prominent bankers and businessmen were arrested, other Jews—especially those employed in fields that were considered “Jewish,” such as the theater and the press—removed from office and replaced by “Aryans.” At the same time that the atmosphere in Austria became unbearably hostile towards Jews, organizations aiming to facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine were raided and it was announced that the passports of “certain people” would be voided. It bears mentioning that the number of Jews in Austria in March 1938 was about 206,000—no more than 3% of the total population.
End of “The Eternal Road” | MARCH 2
Unwelcome in Nazi Germany as a Jew, a socialist, and a composer of music considered “degenerate” by the regime, Kurt Weill was able to celebrate his 38th birthday on March 2 in safety. After attacks in the Nazi press and targeted protests, Weill had already emigrated to France in 1933. Rehearsals for the premiere of his opera “The Eternal Road” (libretto: Franz Werfel) provided him with an opportunity to travel to the United States in 1935. Due to numerous technical difficulties, the premiere was postponed until 1937. Weill seized the opportunity and remained in America.
Destination Uruguay | MARCH 1
In the spring of 1938, the Berlin electrician Moses Wainstein was making arrangements to join the steady stream of Jewish emigrants. His destination was faraway Montevideo. He was planning to travel from Berlin to Marseille, where he intended to board a ship for South America. On March 1, he received the requisite French transit visa. Uruguay was regarded as a country with strong democratic traditions, little pressure on newcomers to adapt, and good job prospects for tradesmen. Jewish relief organizations and travel agencies advised prospective emigrants on choosing their new home, finding the best route possible, and procuring the required papers.
Heartache | FEBRUARY 25
By 1938, the Hirsch family from Hamburg had emigrated to Italy. In light of the volatile situation in Europe, members of the family began to look into options for emigration to the United States or South America. Julius Hirsch had met Elisabeth Schiff on a visit to Belgium in 1935 and fallen in love with her. The Schiff family had no plans to leave Europe, and when visas for El Salvador were procured for Julius and other members of his family, he must have been pained at the prospect of being so distant from his beloved. This letter from a friend in Hamburg reassures him that a temporary separation is not such a bad thing. Forced to remain in Italy because the US denied him the necessary transit visa, Julius ultimately reunited with Elisabeth in England.