Actually, it isn't true that Hitler started killing Jews in 1933. And his preferred plan until taking Poland over was to deport Germany's Jews rather than actually kill most of them. After looting them, of course. But no one would take them. And if they wouldn't take 500,000 relative well educated, productive and well mannered German Jews, they certainly would take 3,000,000 Polish Jews. So the killing began in earnest....
My grandfather-in-law was picked up the Gestapo in 1935 and "detained" for two weeks, along with a dozen other Jews in his area (near Frankfurt). All of them were veterans of WWI. When he was duly returned to his family, he announced they were leaving Germany (they had lived there for at least several centuries before that, as a local Jewish graveyard which has been restored attests). They were gone within a month a returning, after he sold his business and house for a song. He convinced at least a couple dozen of others to leave as well, though most did not--they didn't want to leave their home, and believed he was being unduly alarmist despite the "superficial" dangers. Those remaining were all eventually killed, as far as I know. They aren't buried in the graveyard, although some Germans in the town paid for and erected a memorial to them in the 1980s. |
