There is no doubt that the Germans murdered millions of Jews during WWII, but if I was a practicing Jew who lived in Berlin was there a 100% chance that eventually I would have been round up and sent to a concentration or work camp? Were there any exceptions to the rule?
There was the Rosenstrasse protest, which led to some Jewish men being released from Auschwitz.
If they caught you, you were doomed, but a small number of Jewish people survived in Berlin, hidden in basements or gardens, the most prominent example being Hans Rosenthal, who later became one of the most popular show hosts in Western Germany. But cases like this were very rare.
Here is a unique example of a Jewish WWI war hero saved from deportation by order of Hitler himself. :eek:
Keep in mind that modern privacy is a very modern concept. Plus, societies like Nazi Germany were very regimented. Everybody was registered with the government, had identity papers, etc. especially in the big cities. In the days before tall apartment buildings and private automobiles for everyone (our concept of North American suburban life) every neighbourhood was a small town. You walked to and from work, your local neighbourhood busybodies saw you every day, they talked to the store owner you bought groceries from, they heard from others, they knew who you were, where you came from, where you worked, what your name and ancestry was. They knew when you did your laundry, what you ate for dinner, who your friends were. They knew your religion. They had their prejudices against the region you came from. If a child or woman suddenly appeared in a neighbour’s household, all the local tongues would get wagging. Saying “it’s a cousin” probably wouldn’t work, the locals probably knew your family history. Things were even worse in the small towns where everyone lived the same place for hundreds of years. Someone hiding in a house or apartment probably would eventually give themselves away through voices, shadows, etc. Even today, I’m told the German government tracks religion (to direct school taxes?). When it came time to track down “the Jews among us” someone would tell the authorities, even if they only suspected - some people could be nasty that way. If the local police and Gestapo picked you up they would quickly find out from government records if you were impersonating a Christian or really were one. I assume as the war got deeper and the need for recruits more intense, it would be difficult to be a single healthy male and not be drafted.
Keep in mind that someone eventually figured out Ann Frank and her family were hiding in an Attic and turned them in. That sort of thing happened, and they had help to stay hidden and fed.
Ask someone who’s lived in an isolated small town what it’s like. Everyone knows your business.
Various books like Ryan’s The Last Battle include eyewitness accounts of Jews (among others) who had been hiding in Berlin during the war and their experiences as it came to an end.
Many of those were hiding without coming out. Some actually lived more publicly, but kept their religious background secret.
Some others that Hitler personally intervened on their behalf:
Eduard Bloch was an old family physician who lived until June 1, 1945.
Rosa Bernile Nienau, a young girl he befriended before the war. She died during the war of polio but probably could have survived otherwise.
Ernst Moritz Hess was Hitler’s old CO. Lived until 1983, age 93. Oops, already noted.
Hitler’s immediate superior officer, Lt. Hugo Gutmann recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross First Class during WWI.
According to this article, after the Nazis came to power Gutmann was arrested by the Gestapo but supposedly freed after the SS (who knew his history) intervened. He later escaped to Belgium and eventually to the U.S.
There were exceptions, at least for a time, if you were converted to Christianity, married to a non-Jew and/or had volunteered in WWI (especially if you were decorated).
If you have the chance to read ‘I Will Bear Witness’ by Victor Klemperer, I cannot recommend it highly enough. He was a professor of French Literature at the University of Dresden and his book - his diary actually - chronicles his life as a Jew (married to a gentile and as a WWI volunteer) in Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was a brilliant man whose insights into the events are/were remarkable. You will read as if in real time how things change and life becomes as brutal as it does irrational.
I’ve heard some Jews survived the war by joining the German Army. They usually needed some kind of fake ID but the army didn’t ask a lot of questions to somebody who was looking to volunteer. And the army was one of the few institutions in Nazi Germany which could stand up to the SS when it tried to hunt for hidden Jews among its members.
Statistically speaking, being married to a non-Jew was the best way for a Jew to survive in Germany. For almost the entirety of the war, Jews in mixed marriages were exempt from being deported to the camps, and while this exemption was not always respected, it seems to have generally held. By the time the exemption was lifted in January 1945, the authorities were not in a particularly good position to enforce it. (The war was in its final months, the Reich was losing badly, and most local authorities had more pressing matters to attend to.) About 2/3 of the 15,000 German Jews who survived the Nazi regime within Germany itself (i.e., excluding those who fled abroad) did so by dint of their marriages to non-Jews.
The book IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black gives a lot of information about how the German government (and Austria & others) accumulated extensive machine-readable* records on everyone, so that when it came time to ship people off to the camps**, they knew who to go after.
*Not computerized – computers weren’t invented yet.
**52 days after Hitler became Chancellor, Dachau, the 1st one, was opened March 22, 1933. 87 years ago last week.