Read The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 Online
Authors: Robert Gellately
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #Law, #Criminal Law, #Law Enforcement, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Politics & Government, #International & World Politics, #European, #Specific Topics, #Social Sciences, #Reference, #Sociology, #Race Relations, #Discrimination & Racism
Not all personal bonds across the ethnic boundary dissolved under pressure, but all of them had to adjust. 'Mixed marriages' between Jews and non-Jews, still possible before the Nuremberg Laws prohibited any further-such unions, presented in microcosm the dilemma of living in a country where 'racial mixing' was anathematized. Mixed marriages were of two basic types, the 'privileged' and 'non-privileged'. Precisely who could qualify for which status changed in the years after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws. In general terms, a Jewish partner in a privileged marriage was not subject to most anti-Semitic laws, whereas a Jewish person in a mixed marriage that was labelled as non-privileged was treated as were all other Jews. In September 1941, when Jews in Germany were forced to wear the yellow star, those living in privileged mixed marriages were exempted, which in turn meant
that the Jewish person was less vulnerable to daily chicaneries and harassments. More importantly, such persons were not (initially) subject to the deportations which began with the 'star' decree. This decree gave special status to a Jew in a mixed marriage on condition that children born of the marriage would not be raised as Jews; it continued to apply if the marriage dissolved or if an only son was killed in the current war. In a childless mixed marriage, a Jewish woman, but not a Jewish man, would enjoy the 'privileges' for the duration of the marriage. The decree only incidentally favoured a Jewish woman and only so long as the marriage lasted; its effect was to protect the 'German' man in a childless mixed marriage from the pain associated with his spouse's having to wear the yellow star. It also ensured that a 'German' woman living in such a union would not be shielded from this indignity. In practice, a Jewish woman legally entitled to 'privileged' status, none the less found herself vulnerable.'
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By early 1943 there were sixty 'privileged' mixed marriages in Lower Franconia.14
In Germany proper (the 'Altreich') there were still 12,117 privileged and 4,551 non-privileged marriages."
The Gestapo monitored them closely, and a revealing record of what was involved in such relationships has been left by Lotte Paepcke, the Jewish partner in a mixed marriage. She was 'fortunate' because she had a child who did not count as Jewish under the law; even if her marriage had disintegrated she would, in theory, have been exempted from wearing the yellow star.
Paepcke discusses the fate of her friend Lilli, like herself a Jewish woman in a mixed marriage. Lilli and her husband Erich, both medical doctors who married during their university years before 1933, moved to the country, opened a practice, built a house, and had five children. As they lived far from the nearest city, they looked forward to occasional visits from other local notables, such as the pastor, medical colleagues, and the cultivated estateowner down the road; for culture there were trips to the city, vacations abroad, and so on. With the year 1933 much of this way of living began to change: the local SA band surrounded the house at one point and sought without success to place Lilli in 'protective custody'. Paepcke says that the villagers, while not abandoning the doctors overnight, were not entirely unhappy to see some of the 'high and mighty' taken down a peg or two. One day the estate-owner dropped by to say that in future ('no insult intended to you or your spouse') he and his wife would be avoiding all contact: 'In my exposed position, I simply cannot afford the risk,' he explained. Soon afterwards their medical colleagues made similar statements, and in six months
the pastor had to admit that he dared not visit any more because he had already been warned three times by the Party. This kind of popular accommodation, the result of formal and informal pressure to comply, had an unfortunate impact on Lilli's husband, a man who desperately wanted such things as security, peace, and honour; unwilling to do his part to maintain the marriage, he was more than relieved when Lilli took the children and moved to the city. However, upon registering with the authorities, she neglected to add 'Sara' to her name, as the law then demanded. This oversight was reported to the Gestapo, before whom she was repeatedly ordered to appear. After a fourth visit she served a gaol sentence, and worked in a factory; she was eventually sent to Auschwitz, where she perished. The adjustments of the husband, neighbours, and colleagues had contributed to Lilli's death. This is just one example: the story of the mixed marriages remains to be written."
2. SCRUPULOUSNESS IN POLICING RACE RELATIONS
Many of the allegations that turned out to have some basis were of a trivial nature. Anyone reading through the Gestapo files will inevitably be struck by the scrupulousness of the police in relentlessly following up information on the pettiest accusations.
Another case illustrates how far local authorities carried the enforcement of racial policy. On her rounds at various times in the course of 1941, nurse Bettina Werner of the Nazi Welfare Association (the NSV) in Unteraltertheim had on several occasions observed Jewish people in the homes of patients she visited. Suspecting there was more to it than met the eye, she decided to report the matter, incriminating both Jews and their non-Jewish associates. One of those she denounced was an elderly Jewish woman, Frau Julier (born 1876), who, it turned out, had recently helped a family at the time of the potato harvest, and had done some other chores. Irmgard Junge, a widow (born in 1876), who had accepted help from Julier as well as from a Jewish man (born in 1878), claimed in her defence that no other labour was available. After lengthy investigation by local police the case was forwarded to the Gestapo in Wiirzburg, where it was regarded as a serious matter. The case ended with the following note from the Wurzburg Gestapo official:
Others denounced by nurse Werner in this case were also interrogated, and, though nothing happened to any of them, Werner was responsible for getting six different people into trouble with the law on the flimsiest of grounds. Her denunciation of the Jews came after the deportations to the east had commenced, so that she could hardly have been unaware of the grave implications of her act. The scrupulousness with which the Gestapo enforced racial policy was shared by others outside police ranks.
By 23 September 1937 Blockleiter Treu, in Wurzburg's Goethestrasse, was determined to catch the widow Frau Cacile Heim (born 1888) and the Jewish merchant who lived across the street from her, Albert Kuppel (born 1873), in the act of `race defilement'. Blockleiter Treu, like these two neighbours of his, was a merchant, and they had all lived in the same vicinity for many years. Treu asked his immediate Party boss to request the Gestapo to put the couple under surveillance. Initially a secret agent of the Gestapo was sent (agent number 512 7A), on both 16 and 17 November 19 3 7. This person's meticulous journal survives; it records everyone's movements, their coming and going, opening and closing of curtains, switching on and off of a certain light (both thought by Herr Treu to be possible signals, for Heim and Kuppel lived in buildings facing one another). While carrying out this surveillance, from 8.oo a.m. to 6.oo p.m. daily, the agent learnt a great deal from cooperative neighbours, especially from Treu and his wife. The two people had been close before 1933, it was said, and Kuppel had helped settle Heim's estate when her husband died in 1925.
From 1933 both began adjusting their behaviour; visits to each other's apartments had been reduced and had now virtually stopped. Treu's unstinting efforts had been unable to unearth a single instance when anything compromising happened between Frau Heim and Herr Kuppel. The Gestapo, unwilling to let the case rest on the investigative talents of a mere agent, sent two full-time officials-admittedly not very senior ones-on 2 1 November to see if they could do any better. They were able to see Kuppel actually enter Heim's store. The police decided to wait a spell before breaking in to catch the couple in the act, but within a few minutes Kuppel left the store again. The officials could only report that they had overheard what sounded like an argument. Both agents returned on 22 and 23 November. The surveillance ended when Kuppel died suddenly of natural causes.
When it came to enforcing racial policy, the Gestapo did not stop at the border. Indeed, even after one trial for 'race defilement' was concluded and
the man (a Jew and Polish citizen) was deported, the 'German' woman was denied a passport when the authorities, informed by the woman's mother, found out that she planned to join the man, whom she had known for ten years, in Poland. The mother apparently approached the Party leader in Laufen (May 1937) in order to 'save' her daughter. (At a trial that had been held back in October 1935, incidentally, no sexual relations could be proven to have taken place after the Nuremberg Laws, so the couple had adjusted to the situation sufficiently to avoid the worst consequences.)"
In another case a woman from Amberg (born 1915), who in early 1936 applied to emigrate to Chicago to work as a servant to a Jewish family, was prevented from leaving; brought to Gestapo headquarters in Wurzburg, she admitted having known a Jewish man who had left for Palestine in mid-1934 (that is, before the Nuremberg Laws). The police suspected that she wanted to join him, and so refused permission on the grounds that it had to prevent 'prohibited relations'.23
One far-fetched Wurzburg case from March 1942 was initiated by an anonymous letter, which spoke of a person's connections with Jews in Basle; that case was checked repeatedly until io February 1945, at which time not only were the charges found to be false, but the identity of the original complainant uncovered. The Gestapo said of the latter that 'here was a case of an intriguer'.''