Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Benz, Wolfgang
• Hammel, Andrea

Titel

Emigration as Rescue and Trauma: The Historical Context of the Kindertransport

Ist Teil von

• Shofar (West Lafayette, Ind.), 2004-09, Vol.23 (1), p.2-7

Ort / Verlag

West Lafayette: Purdue University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2004

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• At the time of [Hitler]'s rise to power 550,000 Jews lived in Germany. Only 38,000 left in 1933. In 1934 the number of emigrants came to 23,000, whereas in 1935 20,000 German Jews emigrated. The Nuremberg Laws, which classified the Jews of Germany as second-class citizens without political rights, caused a small increase (25,000). During the year of the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, emigration declined again. The biggest exodus, amounting to 40,000 emigrants, took place in 1938 and was caused by antisemitic harassment following the Anschluss of Austria, which had a Jewish population of 190,000, and following the November pogrom in Germany. In 1939, 75,000 to 80,000 Jews left the National Socialist sphere of influence. By 1939 it was clear that anti-Jewish policies were being stepped up; this became apparent in the violent expulsion of 17,000 Polish Jews, in the pogroms of "Kristallnacht," and in numerous laws and policies including required registration of Jewish possessions and the compulsory addition of Sara and Israel as additional forenames for Jews. The increased pressure to emigrate from the National Socialist sphere of influence at the beginning of 1939 was, paradoxically, followed by more and more restrictions that culminated in an official emigration prohibition in the autumn of 1941. The desire to emigrate mounted even further because of the rising exclusion of and discrimination against Jews in public and economic life. The pogroms of November 1938 opened the eyes of even those Jews who had hesitated, not realizing the seriousness of the situation. Afar "Reichskristallnacht" a last-minute hunt for necessary papers began; desperate people pleaded in front of bored consulate officials for entry visas and fought with unscrupulous profiteers who offered visas and tickets of uncertain origin. The sale of dubious tickets and worthless entry permits to South American countries flourished. A lot of bureaucratic hurdles had to be overcome before emigration. Those wishing to emigrate were only allowed to apply for a passport after they had submitted tax clearance certificates from several tax offices staling that they had paid the emigration tax and the "Sühneabgabe" (literally, atonement payment), a cynical tax that had been imposed on German Jews after the November pogroms. The money was difficult to obtain, even for those who were not completely impoverished, because most Jewish capital had been confiscated after the end of April 1938.(5) [Norbert Wollheim] was one of the heroes of the Kindertransport. Because of his engagement he missed his own chance to flee. He repeatedly returned to Germany after he had accompanied a transport to Britain. He worked as a representative of the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (Central Representation for Jews in Germany), which had the task of retraining Jews who had been pushed out of their original professions in crafts and trade. In the autumn of 1941 he was ordered to report for forced labor. And then on March 8, 1943 he was arrested in Berlin-Halensee together with his wife and three-year old son, and on March 12 he was deported to Auschwitz via a transit camp in the Große Hamburger Straße. Upon his arrival in Auschwitz he saw his wife and son for the last time. As a prisoner he worked as a welder on the construction of the Bunawerk of I. G. Farben in Auschwitz-Monowitz. In January 1945 he was "evacuated" to Sachsenhausen and was sent on a death march from which he managed to free himself somewhere in the region of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.