1938-40 Voluntary and Controlled Emigration

Emigration 1938-41

• From the early days of the Nazi movement, Hitler spoke of making Germany ‘Judenfrei’ - Jew free

• Culmination of this ideology was the mass killings of the Holocaust

• Byt the first method of achieving Judenfrei was through voluntary emigration

• This became forced emigration as the war approached and Nazi regime moved to more radical policies

• Nazi leadership saw emigration as the ‘solution to the Jewish problem’

Voluntary emigration

• 1933, 37,000 Jews left Germany, including many leading scientists like Albert Einstein

• Overall, 150,000 Jews voluntarily left Germany between March 1933 and November 1938

• The question whether to leave or stay was agonising and Jews frequently disagreed on this

Nazi encouragement of voluntary emigration

• Nazis both encouraged Jews to emigrate yet threatened to confiscate some of their assets

• Decision to leave was easier for Jews with easily-transferable skills, and those with family in another country

• Nazis were also willing to encourage Zionists to emigrate to Palestine, then under British rule

• However majority of German Jews weren’t Zionists and didn’t choose to do this

• Zionism - the movement for the return of Jewish people to their historic homeland in Palestine

German Jews’ views on voluntary emigration

• Most German Jews, especially the older generation, felt mainly German and wanted to stay

• Many Jews believed the Nazi persecution was another example of past anti-Semitism that had simply come and gone

Problems with voluntary emigration

• It was difficult to find foreign countries willing to accept large numbers of Jews

• As countries had begun to raise barriers to limit Jewish immigration

• Palestine could only recieve a small number of Jews, as the British who controlled the country were worried about Arab hostility to mass Jewish immigration

• Nazis policies towards this were contradictory, they pressured people to emigrate, but at the same time made it harder for them to do so by stripping them of their wealth

Reichkristallnacht’s role in voluntary emigration

• Made the voluntary emigration situation more urgent

• Jews now desperately sought refuge from the dangers they now faced in Germany

• Jewish parents were keen to get their children out of Germany

• 9,000 Jewish children were sent to Britain in 1938-39

Controlled emigration

• Controlling emigration was a key policy aim of the Nazi regime

• After the Anschluss in March 1938, Reinhard Heydrich used Austria as a lab for developing SS policy

• The Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up - 45,000 of Austria’s 180,000 Jews had been forced to emigrate

• The illegal seizure of Jewish property was used to fund the emigration of poorer Jews

• Heydrich took charch of the Reich Office for Jewish Emigration - and promoted the emigration of Jews

• Goering’s claims to have jurisdiction over Jewish affairs were bypassed

• SD set about amalgamating all Jewish organisations into a single ‘Reich Association of the Jews in Germany’