Persecution of the Jews in Schleswig-Holstein (1933–1945) explained

Like other areas under Nazi Germany, Jews were persecuted in the northernmost German state Schleswig-Holstein. Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, an estimated 1,900 Jews lived in Schleswig-Holstein, mostly in Lübeck and Kiel. By the time of Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, many of Schleswig-Holstein's Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust.

History of the Jews in Schleswig-Holstein prior to 1933

Most of the German population of the Middle Ages were baptized Christians. The Jewish minority was subjected to a centuries-long persecution. This changed following the Jewish emancipation during the Enlightenment. In Prussia, under the rule of Frederick the Great, there was limited tolerance towards the Judenregal or Schutzjudea 'protected Jewish' status for German Jews granted by the imperial, princely, or royal courts. Jews were increasingly likely to assimilate into their Christian environment, for example, by receiving baptism and changing their names. During the Napoleonic Wars, the principle of Jewish emancipation, which had been applied in France since 1791, was applied to the occupied territories of Germany. For example, with the Prussian Edict of Emancipation of 1812, Jews living in Prussia became Prussian citizens, albeit with significant legal restrictions. The new constitutions of the North German Confederation (1866–1871) introduced a strict separation of church and state and thus placed Jews on an equal footing with German Christians. The Constitution of the German Empire (1871–1918) intendedat least in legal termsto make all German Jews full citizens.

The introduction of Basic State Law in Schleswig-Holstein on September 15, 1848, provided a limited framework for Jewish emancipation but was only valid until 1851. Jewish emancipation also occurred in Lübeck (1848, 1852), Schleswig (1854), and Holstein (1863), and emancipation was considered formally complete with the founding of the German Reich in 1871. Until 1871, Jews in Schleswig-Holstein were mostly restricted to living in small towns.[1]

However, the movement for legal equality for Jews met with limited approval among the Christian majority and was only hesitantly implemented in everyday life. A growing number of people, especially the bourgeoisie, held religiously motivated anti-Jewish views and believed in various anti-Semitic stereotypes. Thousands of citizens organized themselves in anti-Semitic organizations such as the Pan-German Leaguewhich was influential in the educated middle class and in politicsand later in the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) to obstruct formal equal treatment of Jews, or to oppose non-Aryans. This zeitgeist was described during a 2011 commemoration as: "In everyday life, the members of the Jewish faith community were excluded, professionally massively disadvantaged and isolated in their social environment."[2]

These anti-Semitic movements affected the willingness of Jews to emigrate. In 1925 in Germany, 563,733 people, or 0.9% of the population, considered themselves as members of the Jewish religious community; the proportion fell to 499,682 (0.8%) under the influence of the Nazi persecution of Jews in the census of 16 June 1933. By 1939, the number of Jews in the German Reich had drastically decreased to 233,973 (0.34%).

Nazi policies considerably expanded the number of persons officially registered as Jews, categorizing them according to line of descent rather than active following of Judaism. According to the German minority census of 17 May 1939, Jews had to state in detail on so-called 'supplementary forms', under threat of punishment, whether they had one or two Jewish grandparents. On this basis, the Nazi state classified them as either "full Jews" ("racial Jews") or "half Jews".

According to this racial delimitation, a total of 1,742 people of "Jewish descent" lived in Schleswig-Holstein in 1939, of whom 755 were so-called "full Jews", 473 "first-degree Jewish half-breeds", and 514 "second-degree Jewish half-breeds". Of the "full Jews", 575 were regarded as "Jews of faith", 136 as members of the regional Protestant or free churches, and 7 as Roman Catholics.[3] Under the increased pressure of persecution, many Jews emigrated. For example, 17,000 mostly male adult Polish Jews living in Germany were deported in trains from Germany to Poland on 28 and 29 October 1938, within the framework of the 1938 expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany.[4] However, the mass deportation of Polish Jews from Schleswig-Holstein initially failed due to bureaucratic mishaps; it resumed in the spring of 1939, when Jews were threatened with being deported to concentration camps if they did not leave Germany themselves in a timely manner. Most of those affected fled to Poland, Netherlands, France, and Belgium, where the German occupying power arrested them again after the start of World War II and deported them to extermination camps. The few Polish Jews who remained in the regional capital of Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel, were first deported by the Gestapo to a (in a ghetto) in Leipzig and from there to a concentration camp.[5]

The proportion of Jews was relatively higher in the big cities than in the countryside. This was not only due to the comparatively higher attractiveness of city life but also reflected the centuries-long official restriction of Jewish settlement. For example, Berlin had a Jewish share of 3.8%, Frankfurt 4.7%, Wrocław (Breslau) 3.2%, Cologne 2.0%, Hamburg 1.5%, Hanover 1.1%, and Kiel 0.2%. In general, there was a north–south divide in the proportion of Jews in the total population of Germany, with significantly lower proportions of Jews living in Northern Germany.[6] Moreover, 64% of the Jewish population in Schleswig-Holstein was concentrated in the two major cities, Lübeck and Kiel, while the remaining Jews were spread over 123 smaller towns and villages.[7]

In 1933, about 1,900 Jews lived in Schleswig-Holstein, a relatively small number. They made up only 0.13% of the state's total population, or 0.34% of all Jews in the German Reich.[7] Within a decade, the proportion continued to decline in the face of increasing persecution. In November 1942, only 59 Jews were still living in Schleswig-Holstein, spread over 18 towns. Over 1,600 had already been deported, most of them murdered. After the war, according to the census of 29 October 1946, there were again a total of 949 people of the Jewish faith in Schleswig-Holstein, 464 of them in displaced persons camps.[8]

Persecution of the Jews in the Nazi regime (1933–1945)

Persecutors

In addition to the main Nazi Party (NSDAP) members responsible for the Holocaust, some groups and persons from Schleswig-Holstein were involved in the mass deportation and extermination of Jews both locally and in occupied territories (for instance, in the Riga Ghetto, the Reichskommissariat Ostland, and the Minsk Ghetto). The following (incomplete) table details some NS groups involved in mass killings.

The table only includes larger and exemplary smaller mass shootings.[9] Abbreviations for Einsatzgruppen = EG, Einsatzkommando = EK, Lithuanian Activist Front = LAF, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists = OUN, Police Battalion = PB, Special Command = SK, Security and Order Police = OP. (source: Wikipedia).

Mass killing of Jews in Schleswig-Holstein (1941–1942)
Location Date Criminal unit victim
24 June 1941 Task Command Tilsit EK Tilsit 200 men, one woman
27 June 1941 2,000 men and women
30 June – 2 July 1941 OUN 4,000 men
1–2 July 1941 EC 1a 1,150 men
early July 1941 400
early July 1941 SK 4b, OUN, SS Vikings 2,000
7 July 1941 SK 4b, OUN 800
2 July 1941 SK 4a 1,160 men
2–6 July 1941 EC 5, 6, e.g. b. V. 2,500 men
4–6 July 1941 EC 3 2,977 men
6 July 1941 PB 307 4,000 men
8 July 1941 PB 316, 322 3,000 men
15 July 1941 EC 2 Jelgava massacres 1,550
25–28 July 1941 LAF 3,800
29–31 July 1941 OUN 2,000
7–8 August 1941 SS Cavalry Brigade 9,000
27–29 August 1941 PB 320, SS Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre 26,500
19 September 1941 EG C, D 3.145
29–30 September 1941 SK 4a, PB 45, 314 33,771
from October 1941 19,000
13–14 October 1941 PB 314 11,000
5–6 November 1941 EK 5, PB 320 15,000
30 November, 7–8 December 1941 all PB, Command Arājs 26,000
13–15 December 1941 EG D, Wehrmacht 12,000
from 1 January 1942 PB 314 12,000
28–30 July 1942 OP 10,000
19–23 August 1942 OP 14,700
1–3 September 1942 OP 13,500
15–16 October 1942 OP, PB 310 19,000
28 October 1942 PB 306, 310 18,000

Individual perpetrators in Schleswig-Holstein (1933–1945)

Perpetrators who worked in Schleswig-Holstein after 1945

Informers

Persecuted Jews were often only revealed to the Gestapo through denunciation. In the family context, men were by far the most frequent victims of denunciation. They were denounced most frequently by women, not least from their own families. In the area of the special court in Kiel, 12% of all complaints came from the family; 92% of them were reimbursed by women. Most of these so-called 'Judas women' were not held accountable after the war, but continued to live unchallenged.[40] [41] [42] [43]

Victims

For a list of names of persecuted Jews in Schleswig-Holstein in the period 1933–1945, see Gedenkbuch – Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft 1933–1945 (Memorial Book - Victims of the persecution of the Jews under the National Socialist tyranny 1933–1945').

Individual persecuted Jews in Schleswig-Holstein

Places of remembrance

Synagogues in Schleswig-Holstein

During Kristallnachtthe pogrom on the night of 9–10 November 1938violent measures against Jews were organized and controlled by Nazi Germany. Over 1,400 synagogues, prayer rooms, and other meeting rooms, as well as thousands of shops, apartments, and Jewish cemeteries were destroyed, at least four of them in Schleswig-Holstein. The pogroms marked a transition from discrimination against German Jews to systematic persecution, which culminated in the Holocaust almost three years later.

A list of synagogues destroyed in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 can be found in the German Wikipedia: . Those in Schleswig-Holstein include:

  1. Synagogue (Ahrensburg), destroyed in the November pogrom of 1938
  2. Synagogue Elmshorn, destroyed in the November pogrom of 1938
  3. Synagogue Goethestraße, Kiel, destroyed in the November pogrom of 1938
  4. Synagogue (Lübeck), the interior was destroyed during the November pogrom of 1938
  5. Synagogue (Rendsburg), the interior was destroyed during the November pogrom of 1938

Jewish cemeteries in Schleswig Holstein

The desecration of Jewish cemeteries with politically motivated slogans like "Jews out", "Heil Hitler", "we'll fill up the 7 million [murdered Jews]", or with Judensau, SS runes, and swastikas, took place en masse in Germany during the time of Nazi Germany. According to estimates by the historian Julius H. Schoeps, 80 to 90 percent of the approximately 1,700 Jewish resting places in the German Reich were desecrated during this period.[47] Statistical information on how many cemeteries were affected in Schleswig-Holstein is not available.

Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in various ways, first through direct damage, which had been frequent since 1938. From 1942, however, desecration also occurred through actions as part of the Reichsmetallspende, which offered a pretext for removing bars and other metal objects from Jewish cemeteries. SA men and Hitler Youth took the opportunity to smash stone graves.[48] The Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands had the deceased exhumed in order to carry out "skull and other bone measurements".[49] By desecrating the cemeteries, the perpetrators sought to destroy the religiously based durability of the burial sites and the memory of Jewish life. The Nazis wanted to erase its symbolic presence and violate the dignity of both the deceased and their relatives.[50]

For believing Jews, grave desecration is particularly serious because the grave is intended for eternity in a Jewish cemetery ('burial house' or 'house of eternity'). This corresponds to one of the most fundamental tenets of Jewish Halakha. The burial is mandatory and permanent peace of the dead is considered mandatory. Unlike in Christianity, a tomb may not be reoccupied. An exhumation or relocation of a grave isapart from very special circumstancesnot permitted. A disturbance of the peace of the dead causes a deep psychological dismay in the Jewish community and in some cases increases a 'persistent mourning disorder' among relatives. A tombstone (Hebrew: מצבה‎|[[Mazewa]]) symbolizes the obligation not to forget the deceased.

With the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany, over 2,000 Jewish cemeteries have again been desecrated since the end of the war. Commenting on the increasing desecration of Jewish cemeteries in the 1950s, Theodor W. Adorno said, "The destruction of Jewish cemeteries is not an expression of anti-Semitism, it is itself anti-Semitism."[51]

List of Jewish cemeteries in Schleswig-Holstein

(The following entries are only available in the German Wikipedia)

"Jews' houses" in Schleswig-Holstein

The were larger residential buildings from (formerly) Jewish property that the Nazi state converted into ghetto houses from 1939 onwards. Here, the Gestapo forcibly quartered people declared "of Jewish descent" according to the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935. The buildings were clearly marked on the outside and were subject to Gestapo surveillance. In Kiel, the Jews were concentrated in the Gängeviertel where two "Jews' houses" existed: at Kleiner Kuhberg 25, on the corner of Feuergang 2,[52] and at Flämische Straße 22a.

On 6 December 1941, the first 977 Jews from the Hamburg, Lüneburg, and the Schleswig-Holstein area were deported in a collective transport to the Jungfernhof concentration camp near Riga, including more than 40 from the Kiel area and 86 from Lübeck. A second collective transport with a total of 801 Jews from the same region led directly to KZ Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942. The last 'Jewish-born' residents of these houses in Schleswig-Holstein were deported in mid-1943. Most of the deportees who survived the Riga Ghetto and Minsk Ghetto later died in other extermination camps (see also [{{Lit|Jews' houses in the city of [[Braunschweig]]}}]). A total of around 240 Jews from Kiel became victims of Nazi persecution.[53]

Nazi concentration camp sub-camps in Schleswig-Holstein area

The following is a list of Nazi concentration camp sub-camps in the area:

  1. Kaltenkirchen concentration campa satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp
  2. KZ satellite camp Kiela temporary satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp
  3. Husum-Schwesing concentration camp, a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp; located in the Engelsburg district of Schwesingen, northeast of Husum
  4. KZ Ahrensbök (1933–34)an early ("wild") concentration camp for Nazi opponents: mostly communists, social democrats, and trade unionists
  5. KZ Kuhlen (18 July 1933 – 27 October 1933)early ("wild") camp in Kuhlen near Rickling, Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein; most of the prisoners were communists and social democrats
  6. KZ Eutin (July 1933 – May 1934)an early ("wild") concentration camp in Eutin, mainly for communists, social democrats, trade unionists, and others unpopular with the Nazi regime
  7. Concentration camp Ladelund (November 1944)located in Ladelund about 20 km northeast of Niebüll on the German–Danish border, as a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in connection with the construction of the Friesenwall ('Frisian Wall').
  8. Neustadt in Holstein Concentration Camp External Commandexternal work assignments in Neustadt in Holstein of the Neuengamme concentration camp; 15 concentration camp prisoners who were used for construction work in Neustadt from December 1944 to 1 May 1945.
  9. KZ-Fürstengrube-Death March (also referred to as "Death March from Auschwitz to Holstein")a death march by concentration camp prisoners as part of the evacuation of the concentration camp Fürstengrube subcamp in Upper Silesia (see a list of sub-camps of Auschwitz concentration camp sub-camps). The lack of nutrition, illness, exhaustion, abuse, and murder claimed numerous victims on this death march from January to May 1945, which had several intermediate stations.

Literature

References

  1. Jews in Schleswig-Holstein. Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, http://www.geschichte-s-h.de/juden-in-schleswig-holstein/
  2. Commemoration - December 6, 2011 - 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from Schleswig-Holstein. Background. Series of publications by the State Center for Political Education Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel 2011, pp. 10-21
  3. Jewish population in Germany on May 17, 1939. Statistics of the German Reich, Volume 552.4, Berlin 1944. 'The Jews and Jewish half-breeds in the German Reich and in the parts of the Reich according to descent and religious affiliation', German Reich, overview 1a, p. 4/6.
  4. The Jewish Population in the German Reich 1933–1945, ibid.
  5. Goldberg, Bettina (2016): Jews in Schleswig-Holstein - A historical overview. In: Hering, Rainer (ed.): The "Night of Crystals" in Schleswig-Holstein. The November pogrom in historical context. Hamburg: Publications of the Schleswig-Holstein State Archives, Volume 109, p. 45
  6. Book: Gedenkbuch . Gedenkbuch – Victims of the persecution of the Jews under the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany 1933-1945 . The Federal Archives . Koblenz .
  7. Goldberg, Bettina (2016), p. 29
  8. Web site: Jewish population in Germany on October 29, 1946. [Census of occupations and occupations of October 29, 1946, in the four zones of occupation and Greater Berlin, census table section, Berlin-Munich 1949]. Table VI. The population according to religious affiliation, (a) Germany, zones of occupation, states and local authority Greater Berlin, pp. 100-101''].
  9. Compiled from Dieter Pohl: Persecution and mass murder in the Nazi era 1933-1945. Darmstadt 2003, p. 73 and 96; Peter Longerich: Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. 2010, pp. 196-198.
  10. Schartl, Matthias (2003):A clique 'old fighters' - rise and fall of regional NSDAP elites in the city and district of Schleswig. In: Democratic History (DG), Volume 15 (2003), pp. 161-221, Malente: Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and Education in Schleswig-Holstein e.V., p. 195
  11. (German wikipedia: Gauwirtschaftsberater)
  12. German wikipedia: Reichswerke Hermann Göring
  13. Internment camps: contemporary witnesses - Heinz Behrens. MOOSBURG-Online, https://www.moosburg.org/info/stalag/behrens.html, accessed: 7 September 2022
  14. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 167
  15. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 173, 183–1985
  16. Wigbert Benz: Paul Carell. Ribbentrop's press chief Paul Karl Schmidt before and after 1945. wvb, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86573-068-X, p. 13.
  17. Cf. Preliminary proceedings by the public prosecutor's office in Verden against Dr. Paul Karl Schmidt and others for murder. File 412 AR no. 1082 / 1965; Federal Archives, Ludwigsburg branch, new call number (since November 2003): B 162 AR 650 1082; occupied by Benz: Paul Carell. Berlin 2005, p. 88 ff
  18. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 222
  19. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 175
  20. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 170
  21. Schartl, Matthias (2003): A clique 'old fighters' - rise and fall of regional NSDAP elites in the city and district of Schleswig. In: Democratic History (DG), Volume 15 (2003), p. 162, 201. Malente: Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and Education in Schleswig-Holstein e.V.
  22. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 166
  23. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 207
  24. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 204
  25. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 189
  26. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 205
  27. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 219–220
  28. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 181–182
  29. Cf. on this: Gerhard Paul, Miriam Gillis-Carlebach: Menorah and Swastika. Neumünster 1998.
  30. Bettina Goldberg: Away from the metropolises: the Jewish minority in Schleswig-Holstein. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2011, ISBN 978-3-529-06111-0, p. 445.
  31. Cf. on this: Irene Dittrich: Local history guide to the sites of resistance and persecution. p. 115/116.
  32. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 178
  33. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 194
  34. Schartl, Matthias (2003):Eine Clique 'Alter Kämpfer' - Aufstieg und Fall regionaler NSDAP-Eliten in Stadt und Landkreis Schleswig. In: Demokratische Geschichte (DG), Band 15 (2003), S. 163, Malente: Beirat für Geschichte in der Gesellschaft für Politik und Bildung Schleswig-Holsteins e.V.
  35. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 193
  36. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 162, 178
  37. Schartl, Matthias (2003): 169, 197
  38. Plöger: Von Ribbentrop zu Springer. Marburg 2009, S. 167.
  39. Benz: Paul Carell. Berlin 2005, S. 72–75; Plöger: Von Ribbentrop zu Springer. Marburg 2009, S. 322–326.
  40. Helga Schubert, Judasfrauen. Munich: Dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, TB, 2021, 176 pages, ISBN 978-3-423-14821-4
  41. Jan Ruckenbiel, ubsi/51/1/ruckenbiel.pdf Social control in the Nazi regime - protest, denunciation and persecution on the practice of everyday oppression in the interaction between the population and the Gestapo, dissertation University - Comprehensive University Siegen 2001, Cologne: 2003, p. 125–126
  42. Sigrid Weigel, »Judasfrauen«. Sexual images in the victim-perpetrator discourse on National Socialism. On Helga Schubert's case histories., Feministische Studien, Volume 10, Issue 1, pp. 121-131.
  43. Cynthia Apel, Helga Schubert's Judasfrauen: The Use of Narrative in Documentary Literature., Focus on Literatur, vol. 02, No. 02 (Fall 1995), pp. 139–147
  44. Nadine Schättler: Memorial stone commemorates Nazi victims. Kieler Nachrichten, November 10, 2019
  45. Elke Imberger: Resistance "from below": Resistance and dissent from the ranks of the labor movement and Jehovah's Witnesses in Lübeck and Schleswig-Holstein 1933-1945. p .87.
  46. Elke Imberger: Resistance "from below": Resistance and dissent from the ranks of the labor movement and Jehovah's Witnesses in Lübeck and Schleswig-Holstein 1933-1945. p. 87.
  47. Julius H. Schoeps . A stone on the grave. The destruction and desecration of Jewish cemeteries in Germany . . 46/1984 . 1984-11-09 .
  48. Andreas Wirsching: Jewish cemeteries in Germany 1933-1957. 2002, p. 19 .
  49. Quoted from: Andreas Wirsching: Jewish cemeteries in Germany 1933–1957. 2002, p. 23.
  50. Report of the independent expert group on anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism in Germany - manifestations, conditions, prevention approaches . 17/7700 . . 2011-11-10 . 36 ff .
  51. Book: Hans-Uwe Otto, Roland Merten. Right-wing violence in united Germany: youth in social upheaval. 8 March 2013. Springer-Verlag. 978-3-322-97285-9. 82.
  52. Bettina Goldberg: Kleiner Kuhberg 25 - Feuergang 2. - The persecution and deportation of the Schleswig-Holstein Jews reflected in the history of two houses. 2002
  53. Web site: Jüdische Gemeinde - Kiel (Schleswig-Holstein).

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