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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (21986)	3/22/2002 10:54:49 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

CB, of course you're quite right about the Jews being persecuted from 1933 on; but still, Kristallnacht marked a definite escalation from persecution to outright state-sponsored killing and destruction. Sending enemies of the Reich to prison, which is done quietly, is one matter; sending troops openly against one segment of your own population is another. And no civilized person could honestly believe that Hitler could and would do what he did, and that the German people would go along with it. Nor that the people in the occupied parts of Europe would cooperate. It was unthinkable. Apparently even to the Jews. It was unthinkable to the German Jews, who were mostly assimilated members of what had formerly been the most civilized state in Europe. The Polish Jews, tragically for them, could not believe it because the last time Germany had occupied Poland (in WWI), the Germans had behaved better to them than the Poles. Russian Jews, who knew what serious pogroms looked like, found it easier to believe, though no-one could believe that plans to wipe out the Jews (as opposed to driving them out) could be in earnest. Until the Nazis, Europeans and Americans believed that there were depths that civilized man could not fall to; I think our civilization is still trying to recover from the loss of that belief. I am talking to you today because my father belonged to a Russian Jewish family, who did see it coming.

To: Ilaine who wrote (21986)	3/22/2002 11:01:22 PM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 281500

About 1/2 of Germany's Jews did leave the country, reducing their numbers there to about 250,000 - 300,000. (The vast majority of the 6 million killed were from Poland and other Eastern European states.) Unfortunately, they had to go to places like France, Belgium, etc, which of course Hitler invaded and from which they were sent to the death camps. Few made it to safe havens like the U.S. or Britain because the quotas were so small and restrictive. Nobody wanted to let them in. I think it's true a lot hoped "this too shall pass." But even those that left Germany found themselves still trapped.

To: Ilaine who wrote (21986)	3/23/2002 12:00:19 AM
From: LLLefty	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>>.....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.