>>>.....One of the things we students could not understand was why the Jews did not leave long before Kristallnacht. Of course, some were in denial, and some were old, and some were poor, and some had small children or aged parents....<<<
I'm sure you could get dozens of views--and much has been written on the subject by those who are fa rmore famiiar with it than I-- but this might be a start:
1. Most of the German Jews had lived there for generations. They fought for Germany in World War I and, despite anti-semitism, considered themselves as German culturally as their gentile neighbors.They were totally (so they thought) assimilated into German life; many were secular and Zionism was never an urgent calling, as it was for the Russian Jews who had suffered pogroms.
2. It wasn't that easy just to pack up and leave. Einstein could do it; he did in 1933. But most, less known, weren't particulariy welcome elsewhere. As the persecution intensified, many countries closed their doors or set up quotas. The story of the ship, the St.Louis, is instructive
us-israel.org
3. It was an individual family decision. In some cases, the father left alone to find a welcoming haven for the family. But often it was too late to bring the family and they wound up in the camps. I have one friend whose father, a social democrat, left behind a daughter who was hidden throughout the war. Reunited with her after the war in Israel, he stayed there only a few years and returned to Germany, where he felt much more at home. She wrote a play about her experience; it had a long run in Germany. So many stories of this kind; if you permit a personal anecdote, one of my daughters is an actress in London; she played the lead in a West End show, which tells the story of a girl who was sent out of Germany before the war to be reunited later with her concentration camp father in New York. Ever the German, he belabors the daughter for taking on American ways. |
