One of the odder German plans was to send the Jews to Palestine.
Another odd plan (originating in the USA!) was to invite Jewish refugees to Alaska. I learned of this when reading the “alternate history” novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, and was surprised that the novel was based on fact: a proposal by secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes.
see this article for a short synopsis of the plan:
A Thanksgiving plan to save Europe’s Jews
Also, as has been discussed here on SBMB before, Switzerland (as a whole) is just not very welcoming to foreigners in general, and in my experience is about the most insular country in W. Europe.
Including the Vatican?
If you are a tourist with sufficient $ or € the Swiss will welcome you with open arms.
I forgot about them 
And as far as Switzerland being ready willing and able to seperate a tourist from their disposable income, you are spot on.
The average prices in Bern or Zurich make cities like Brussels or Frankfurt look like bargain basement destinations in comparison.
The thing is, most countries did the same, for much the same reasons.
Maybe, but “the other kids are doing it too” never worked as an excuse for me with my mother.
Well, while I realize this might be more of a GD answer, I think if you asked a Swiss government official at the time, he’d probably tell you that there’s no national interest in allowing large numbers of foreign refugees, large numbers of whom are poor, into the country. If the Germans are persecuting their citizens, that’s certainly unfortunate for the people being persecuted, but it’s a German internal matter, and not Switzerland’s problem.
If I’m not terribly mistaken, every country had people’s religions on their passports, at least until the early 1970s. IIRC, when I looked at my mother’s passport, issued in 1970, it had Roman Catholic printed on it.
Could be wrong, tho.
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The Nazis also seriously looked into sending Jews to Madagascar, off the SE coast of Africa: Madagascar Plan - Wikipedia
The Soviets did their foul part, as well: Katyn (rural locality) - Wikipedia
My grandfaather left Germany in the mid 1930s- I’m not sure exactly of the year, but it was after 1935 and before 1939.
His wife wasn’t Jewish, and after the Nuremberg laws of 1935 made marriages between Jews and non-Jews illegal she had their marriage annulled to protect their two adopted sons (who were of non-Jewish parentage biologically).
My grandfather was a low level judge- from what we can gather he was approached by Nazi party officials and told that his Jewishness could be forgotten and he could keep his job if he did as he was told at work.
He packed a bag and left that night- overland through Luxembourg and then to Britain- which promptly denied him entry. He ended up in South Africa, working initially as a chicken farmer and thereafter as an accountant and book-keeper in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
His wife and their sons were killed during the war- she had tried to join him but was overtaken by the occupation of the Netherlands, where we believe they all died during the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940. He married my Grandmother in 1944.
His brother wasn’t so lucky- he was a neurologist and psychiatrist and managed to stay safe for quite a long period of time because he had some patients who were Nazi high-ups (which is why he didn’t leave when my grandfather did). Of course that only lasted for a while and he ended up in the camps- he died either at Auschwitz itself or in the train on the way there.
Our family is only piecing this together now- he never really spoke of this when he was alive, there must have been tremendous guilt about his brother and about his wife and sons. I know he felt that he would have been killed or imprisoned if he had refused the offer, and he could not accept it (obviously).
I have a photocopy of a book with a German name that does not correspond to my keyboard. My best guess is aihnenpafs. Or may aufentafal. search engines have not been helpful.
At any rate, what I have been told is these documents were compiled by non Jewish people in German controlled areas to document that they had no Jewish heritage going back five generations.
It is a wealth of genealogy information too! It has been a great source for a line I am working on.
If only I knew the correct word in English for the source.
Valeriejs
The word you’re looking for is Ahnenpass (ancestral passport).
According to the Wiki article at any rate, the Ahnenpass was used by citizens of Germany and not in “German controlled areas”.
As an aside, the criteria for its possession were much the same as, and maybe even identical to, those required to join the SS. Do you know anything about the original owner?
You think that Hitler was supported by the left?
The Nazis and the Communists were mortal enemies. The SA stormtroopers had a lot of streetfights with them even before Hitler came to power and communists were sent to KZs later. The opposition to Communism is one reason why Hitler was supported by the industrialists and old elites.
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In the small town where I went to school in, there was a Jewish shop owner who was very well integated with the ethnic Germans. He was a commited member in most of the clubs in town, and wrote the songs for the carnival and the gun club which are still used today.
He thought he would be safe in that environment, but he was boycotted and harrassed; I’ve spoken to people who were around in that time, and they felt it was too dangerous to support him in a meaningful way. He commited suicide in 1939.
The elementary school is named for him today.
In universities they were simply kicked out and Echtdeutsch appointed in their place. When someone asked David Hilbert, the greatest mathematician of his era, how was mathematics in Gottingen now that it was judenrein, he replied that there was no mathematics in Gottingen any more. This was sometime in the 30s. The publishing firm Springer-Verlag (founded by Julius Springer in the 19th century, no relation to Axel Springer), was simply confiscated from the Springer family and given to an “Aryan”. After the war, the Aryan gave it back, although he was under no legal obligation to do so under German law. It had been seized according to the law at the time. About 15 or 20 years ago, the last member of Springer family retired from the company (and it has gone to pot ever since).
For the Nazis, the important thing was the Jewish “blood” not the religion. That’s why Jews who had converted to Catholicsm or who were liberal/ agnostic (a lot of intelligent, mid-class people like lawyers and doctors) believed themselves to be safe and were suddenly targeted.
In general, the Nazis followed the Salami-tactic: slowly increasing measures. Each measure by itself targeted only a certain group, so protests were not loud, but one after another stripped Jews from their rights.
From the German Wikipediaarticle (the first I could find, there’s a more detailed timeline of the laws passed elsewhere)
- That used to be April’s fools day.
** A state official is a lifetime job.
Part of the last paragraph about the trade organizations also points at the disjointed applications. In the last decades, many organisations, whether it’s the Alpine Club, a big company like Siemens or an University, have finally decided to look at their own history and what they did to their Jewish members. Some clubs disbarred Jews before 1933, some universities got rid of Jewish and Communist professors as soon as the law was passed, esp. when there was already a lot of political fractions and fights at that university (some professors did not mind to get ahead in their subject by getting rid of the opposition, esp. those that were not as good as the opposition, but by sliming up to the Nazis, got ahead despite their own inadquacies).
Other universities or hospitals kept their members and employees as long as they could, breaking the law beyond the stretching point.
I just shortly leaved through a thick tome with the documents from Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis about the Jewish question. The summary basically said that they flip-flopped on how to deal with the Jews: on the one hand, they wanted to get rid of them because they were vermin and not only poisioning the German race, but also destabilising the German country, economy etc., and even exiling wouldn’t stop them - they would continue a hate campaign from abroad, both from the US, who was being run by the Jewish-capitalist conspiracy, after all, and from the USSR, which was being run by the Jewish-communist system, after all.
On the other hand, they wanted to get money and loot from the Jews, and realized that killing millions of people had practical problems and would encounter disquiet from the normal German population. So one month it was “All Jews who pay thousands of Marks can go to Palestine, good riddance” and next month it was “the foreign press, riled up by those Jews in exile, is slandering Germany again - off with their heads!” It wasn’t outspoken, but there was an idea to use the German Jews as bargaining chip or hostages against the foreign powers.
The other problem was: most countries didn’t want them. Visas were only given in limited numbers. Partly this was the logistics problem - taking in several millions of people is a strain on the economy and ressources. And partly it was that anti-semitism was ripe in other countries at that time, too. “No Jews, Niggers, dogs allowed at the swimming pool” was written on signs in New York (I think even after WWII).
Thirdly, it took a long time for the Jews in Germany to realize that they weren’t being harrassed, they would be killed; and the rest of the world didn’t believe it for even longer. After all, in WWI, horror stories about German soldiers maiming Belgian children had been passed around, and those had turned out propaganda lies; surely the Nazis weren’t killing people? And we don’t want immigrants!
One of the most famous Nuns would be Edith Stein- she was born Jewish, but converted to Catholiscm. Again, because it was about blood and race, her religion didn’t save her (and the Vatican didn’t protest).
There were also some Catholic Priests who went with their jewish school children whom they had taught into the KZ because they didn’t want to desert them.