The German-Jews' Identity and Reactions to the Nazi Policy

Abstract

In early April 1933, the racist laws went into effect in Nazi Germany. These officially dictated that all involvement with Jews should be severed by keeping a safe distance. On the eve of Hitler’s taking power, there were some six hundred thousand Jews in Germany. They enjoyed full civil rights and were deeply involved in social and political life. The German Jewish identity was clear-cut to most of them, and some were convinced that Nazi ideology had nothing to do with them. The following article, which focuses on the period between January 1933 and November 1938, will present some responses and identical dilemmas of those German Jews, who found it difficult to accept that Nazi laws include them as Jews only. It will describe their conduct within a community preparation that was gradually being formulated already in Zionist and German-Jewish responses and activities. Most of the sources and examples in this article are aimed to observe the German Jewish dilemma based on their dual cultural loyalty as Germans and as Jews as well. Describing these difficulties, and the German Jews' reactions to the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and after the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, intends to describe expressions of uncertainty and a sense of detachment that characterizes German Jews more prominently. This article deals with the Legal-Racial Lows experienced as German Jews and its future impacts on their fate during the war and afterward.