Europa, Europa: A young continent’s journey from …
nope, can’t do it.
The enforcement of the policy might have been confusing, but the policy itslef was pretty clear. If you had Jewish ancestry beyond a certain degree, you were considered Jewish.
And keep in mind it was considered a genetic trait. A lot of people in this thread have mentioned how people would obviously be Jewish because they would light menorahs or tell the census-takers they were Jewish. These things are only true for people who are practicing Jews. But the Nazis were also going after people who had Jewish ancestry: somebody who had a single Jewish grandmother might have had Christian parents, been baptised as a child, spend his whole life going to church, and not even have known he had a Jewish ancestor - he’d be astonished when the SS showed up at his door one day to take him away.
Edwin Black, author of IBM and the Holocaust, and an award-winning, investigative journalist for the New York Times, painstakingly documented how IBM’s Dohemag subsidiary was integral to the Nazi killing machine by providing the necessary automation to ‘locate all the Jews of Europe.’ As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the Census, to identification and cataloging programs of the 1930’s, to the selections of the 1940’s.
From an article dated today here:http://www.mytwocensus.com/
Well, that didn’t happen (that much, anyway). Usually, nobody more than half-Jews was taken away, so having just one Jewish ancestor was not enough for them to whack you. Otherwise, a supirising segmenbt of German society would have been hauled off. They never even finished taking all the “half-Jews”, and someone living a “non-Jewish” lifestyle, not circumcized, and so forth, was not going to the death camps.
You are right about being considered, well, medical if not not exactly genetic, though.
Reform Judaism got its start in nineteenth-century Germany.
Mr. Neville’s grandparents came from Germany- his grandfather in the 30s, his grandmother after she had been in a camp in France for a while in the early 40s. They’re hardly Orthodox. I think not eating pork or shellfish is about the extent to which they keep kosher. His grandmother has talked about having a Christmas tree when she was growing up in Germany.
ETA: I don’t know if they were Reform in Germany, but they are now and were when Mr. Neville’s dad was growing up.
In 1939, Germany conducted a census of all persons living in Germany. The census required demographic information, including a question on “race”, which listed “Jewish” as a racial designation (the race question was first included in a 1933 census). The census also included the areas of Czechoslovakia that Germany had recently “annexed”. After that, it was pretty much a matter of rounding them up.
Cite from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Punch cards used in the census are among the very first exhibits you’ll see when visiting the museum.
According to the book Babi Yar, the Germans didn’t have to determine Jewishness for a whole lot of them.
The Germans didn’t tell people they were going to kill them, so a poster saying ‘all Jews report here tomorrow for deportation’ got a whole lot of voluntary attendance.
Several ways. Depends on which country they were doing it in, when they were doing it, etc.
Some background. Germany has historically asked for someone’s religion, not only for passports and other official papers, but to apportion distribution of money to various religious organizations in the country. Even today, if you say you’re Jewish, a portion of your taxes goes to your local Jewish organization.
When the Nazis came to power, they immediately set to work investigating everyone’s background. If you had more than 1/32 “Jewish ancestry”, you were Jewish, and subject to those parts of the racial laws dealing with Jews.
As others have said on this thread, it wasn’t difficult to figure out who was Jewish. If you didn’t go to church, identified yourself as Jewish, had a Jewish name, or “looked Jewish”, you were suspect. You then had to prove that you weren’t Jewish.
The Nazis were very thorough and bureaucratic. Nearly everything you did involved a racial background check. One way or another, the Nazis were going to find out if a German was “Jewish” according to their rules.
Of course, circumcision was another way. If you were circumcised and not Jewish, you had lots of 'splainin to do.
Not everyone who was “Jewish” by the Nazi rules got into trouble. Both Admiral Raeder, head of the German Navy, and his successor Admiral Doenitz of U-boat fame protected high-ranking Jews in the Navy for many years. Other German Jews, such as those who were WW 1 veterans, evaded persecution for many years. Even when they were rounded up, these people were sent to the strange “Jewish city” of Terezin (Theresienstadt). Of course, at the end of the war the Nazis transported everyone from Terezin to Osweicim (Auschwitz).
In other countries, Jews were rounded up with the assistance of the local governments, with various levels of cooperation. The Austrians and the Italians willingly participated. The French didn’t put up much of a fight as a government, although individuals did help out. Same goes for the Dutch.
Remember, though, that those governments were full of people that the Nazis thought were reliable. If you weren’t pro-Nazi, you weren’t in a position to officially resist. Even in Poland, historically not a good friend to Jews, individuals helped hide Jews and save their lives. Every time I think of what the Nazis or the occupied governments did, I remember that many people, Germans included, fought back.
The two countries hit worst by Nazi anti-Semitism were Poland and USSR. Unfortunately, the Jews were easy targets in those countries, which still had lots of physical segregation. In particular, most of the eastern border of the USSR was the “Pale”, a country-within-a-country in which nearly all the USSR Jews lived.
For this reason, in the USSR the Nazis could easily figure out who was a Jew; if your village was Jewish, you were too. In the initial phase of the invasion of the USSR in 1941, the Nazis emptied out these villages as they came upon them, shot all the residents, and then burned them. This was the job of the Einsatzcommando (Special Action Group), paramilitary organizations under the command of the SS.
The Nazis discovered that getting rid of all the Jews in Poland and the USSR (perhaps 3 million? I don’t remember the number) was a confused mess. They were putting the Polish Jews into overcrowded ghettos, and moving some German Jews in there as well, but they were shooting all the USSR Jews.
The shooting wasn’t going too well. Turns out that shooting thousands of innocent people at a time is a bit, well, stressful!:eek: That led to a conference of all the Nazi organizations involved to come up with a single organized way to get rid of Jews.
You’ve heard of this meeting: the Wannsee Conference, and its topic of conversation: The Final Solution. The result: death camps, gassing, the eradication of 12 million people from Europe, half of whom were Jews.
I think that to Hitler, everyone who wasn’t a Nazi was a “Jew”. If he had succeeded, sooner or later he would have purified the entire world by getting rid of all the humans.
I wish we had wiped out the concept of racism. I still see it in Africa, alas. But at least in the United States, it’s gotten the bad name it deserves.
The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution (Ind. University Press, 2007)
Also keep in mind (in these days of TSA and “Homeland Security”) things were not like freewheeling America of the 60’s through the 90’s that we associate with “Normal”. You needed papers for all sorts of things, and you could be stopped by the police for whatever reason and have them demand your identification. So people were registered and crossreferenced, including things like religion and ancestry, long before the idea of wholesale concetration camps (let alone genocide) came along.
(IIRC someone here mentioned that Germany has a church tax, to go to the church of your denomination. Assuming this is not a new thing, it is an obvious non-threatening reason why the government would have added religion to a person’s identity documents and registration.)
Also, the communities there were a lot less mobile than the last 50 years in North America. Many people lived within a few miles of where they were born, everyone knew everyone. In a place where everything is a collection of communities it’s like a thousand small towns in one, and there’s always gossip and nosy people. The idea that people could just move to another city 100 miles away and nobody would have a clue who they were, where they came from… is likely fantasy. Plus, your papers follow you. Maybe in 50’s USA someone could move across the country and pretend to be John Smith not Sam Jones, but I imagine it was a helluva lot harder in post-WWI Europe.
Maybe papers were somewhat easy to forge, I don’t know. However, like England, remember in regional old countries, your accent likely betrayed what area of the country you came from.
And… once the Nazis got to the point of rounding people up, posting notices - the implication was if you disobeyed the order, things could go badly. Even then, there are stories in the Jerusalem Holocaust Museum where people say “they would come door to door every so often” and many people arranged not to be home. It wasn’t efficiency on a German scale. One survivor said they knocked on the door, their mother hid them in a closet, and told the Gestapo she was home alone. They did a quick sweep of the house, the mother even reached into their closet to get her coat… and that was the last they saw her.
“I determine who is a Jew”
-Reichsairmarshal Hermann Goering
I get the feeling that it was pretty easy to get classified a “non-Jew”-if you knew the right people and had a lot of money.
From Agent Foxtrot, “A lot of times they just asked you. It’s a sin to deny one’s faith.”
I have to say as someone who is both Jewish and a person of faith, I consider it a sin for myself to deny my faith. In my mind, better a death camp than to deny my fundamental beliefs. As Gandhi said, “I am willing to die for my beliefs, but never to kill for them.”
As for what others may choose to do in such a situation, that is not mine to judge. We all answer for our own choices.
But even then, it wouldn’t have mattered, since the Nazis’ hatred of Jews was based on race, not religion. You could’ve been a priest or a nun, or even the Pope himself, but if you had a Jewish ancestor, in the eyes of the Nazis, that was enough.
Exactly these topics, as well as the mind numbingly bureaucratic classifications of who should and should not be considered a Jew, is dramatized in a 2001 HBO film: Conspiracy, with Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. Great film, horrifying topic.
I gotta say, if you were my mom, and you died rather than lie to a Nazi, I’d be pretty pissed that you picked principlel over me.
I know this is a zombie thread, but no one really mentioned before that a person’s religious affiliation used to be a much larger part of their identity; if you worked with people you’d know who was what type of protestant, or Catholic, or Jewish just as a matter of course. It was up there with sex, age, and race as a fundamental identifier. There’s just been a big cultural shift over these last 60 years.
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- And I wouldn’t consider it “honorable” either.
What if your choice condemned your own children to the death camps as well; would it still be the same? And I mean real children that exist at the time, not hypothetical children you may have in the future? And what if those children were old enough to make their own choice, but nonetheless had their fate tied to your choice?
We have ONE life. You as a potential and I stress potential child have no bearing on my decision.
I have to live my life within the moral constructs I have, so who gave you a vote? Today, you ain’t even worth a slide under a microscope and now, you are going to judge my decision.
Who are you to question my personal moral question in 1943?
I am a Jew. I will not spit on a Torah. Not for you, Ms ain’t shit in anyone’s mind.
This is nothing to do with you. I have a right to decide what is done with my dead, in the death camp body, why do you think you have a hypocritial voice in any of this?
I think death camp is better than to dishonor my God. Who are you to say a damned word?
My life is mine and damned to you, even after you are born. Who are you to say a damned word?
You straight up, better a death camp than trample on beliefs I hold this dear. My God, my God, my life is nothing.
Who are YOU to say a damned word otherwise? So…where are your beliefs in this about abortion when suddenly it is you?
I never said a thing about abortion, but who are you to question my beliefs about certain things being better than death?
Better a death camp than dishonoring my heritage and you be damned.
I will say to you all now… no hypothetical. My children, my wife, my mother…I will never dishonor God. Better a death camp than betray my beliefs, period.
Jew, Christian, Muslim, we all share this in faith…there are things worth dying for.
There is absolutely NOTHING that I would value more than dishonoring GOD. Nothing.
Kill me and I die…if I dishonor God, that is hell for an eternity.
Moderator Note
Mostly Useless, don’t tell other posters “screw you” or “you be damned” in General Questions. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
PS. Since I think the factual aspects of the OP have been addressed, and recent posts have veered into debate and witnessing, I’m closing this. If there are further specific questions a new thread may be opened in GQ. If you wish to debate aspects of the question open a thread in Great Debates. If you wish to insult other posters, open a thread in the Pit.