Germany - 1938 (Part I)The level of persecution for Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe escalated during 1938. The Nazis invaded and annexed Austria, an action that came to be known as the "Anschluss," and suddenly all 190,000 of Austria's Jews were in mortal peril. They "would find themselves targeted by a campaign of persecution, expropriation, and forced emigration that moved more rapidly and thoroughly than anything the German Jews had as yet experienced."
Sigmund Freud, 82, left his home in Vienna when German troops crossed the Austrian border. His home was searched twice by the Gestapo, his daughter, Anna, was interrogated by the Nazi thugs, the Nazis seized family property and made Freud pay an emigration tax.
Freud was coerced into signing a paper saying that he was not mistreated. He did, but risking arrest, added to it these words: "I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone." Nothing like a bit of ironic humor when facing the threat of imprisonment and death.
The annexation of Austria, while a triumph for Hitler, gave the Nazis a headache in that now they had a huge Jewish population with which to deal. But deal with it they did, and they were pleased to have the assistance of the International Business Machine corporation (IBM) to identify and move Jews out of Austria into other countries or concentration camps.
* By the end of 1938, about 200,000 of Germany's 500,000 Jews had emigrated.
* 1938 - Jozef Tiso, a right-wing Catholic priest, becomes prime minister of Slovakia and immediate establishes ties with the German Nazi regime.
* 1938 - Hitler tells Hans Frank, the Minister of Justice, that "he has come to fulfill the curse imposed by the Jews themselves in the New Testament: 'His [Jesus's] blood be upon us and upon our children..'
Hitler, born and raised a Roman Catholic, had a great fondness for Martin Luther and said that Luther , had he been fully aware of the Jewish threat, would not have criticized the Catholic Church, but would have energetically attacked the Jews.
* January - The Dachau Concentration Camp is enlarged.
* January - The Swedish government enacts rigid immigration rules.
* January 31 - Romanian Jews are stripped of their citizenship.
* February 4 - Hitler names himself supreme commander of the Wehrmacht. In Austria, the Nazis prepare to take over all Jewish-owned businesses.
* March - The Polish government says it will likely revoke the citizenship of Polish Jews living in Germany.
* March 12 - The Anschluss - German troops move into Austria. Jews in Austia are immediately subject to all anti-Semitic laws in effect in Germany. This also means that Jewish organizations and congregations are forbidden.
* March 28 - The German government refuses to recognize Jewish commmunity organizations in Germany.
* Apri 5 - Anti-Jewish riots run rampant across Poland.
* April 15 - A number of Jews are killed during a progrom in Dabrowa Tarnowska, Poland.
* April 21 - Germany enacts a law that allows the seizure of Jewish assets, and essentially removes Jews from the country's economic life.
* April 23 - This was a Sabbath day. Jews are rounded up by the Nazis and forced to eat grass at the Prater, an amusement park. Many of them suffer heart attacks; a few die.
* April 26 - All Jews in Germany with real estate or other assets valued at more than 5,000 marks must register with the authorities...this the first step toward expropriation of Jewish property.
* April 29 - A number of Jews are killed during an anti-Semitic program in Vilna, Poland.
* May - Jewish men and women are forced by Austrians to scrub streets with small brushes and the women's fur coats.
* May 3 - The Nazis set up another concentration camp at Flossenburg, Germany.
* May 28 - In Frankfurt, Germany, Jewish businesses are boycotted.
* May 29 - The proportion of Jews working in commerce, industry, the liberal professions and the government in Hungary is reduced to 20 percent.
* May 31 - A German law forbids "decadent [read Jewish] art."
* June 9 - Munich's most prominent synagogue is burned to the ground by the Nazis.
* June 14 - All Jewish busnesses not previously registered, now must register.
* June 15 - All Jews previously convicted of any crime (even a traffic offense) in Germany are arrested.
* June 22 - Joe Louis knocks out German heavyweight boxer, Max Schmeling, who Hitler thought symbolized "Aryan superiority." A PR win for the good guys.
* June 25 - Jewish doctors now may treat only Jewish patients.
* June 6-14 - An international conference is called by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Evian-les-Bains, France, to deal with the Jewish refugee problem. The 32 nations attending decide they will accept only a very few Jews. Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic want exorbitant sums of money to take a small number of Jews. The conference is a failure!
More to come.
1 comment:
It amazes me that the world has forgotten what the loss of six million European Jews has meant. Many people think there are still many millions of Jews in Europe and in most countries in the world. There are many with zero Jews and many where no Jews are allowed to visit, own businesses or live or work. It amazes me that there is still anti Semitism in the world, including lands with no Jews. Jews are blamed or given credit for all sorts of things. They control businesses, banking, governments, medicine, movies, music, publishing, and media all over the world. It doesn’t matter that no one can back up such claims, they are believed anyway. At the moment the only Jewish State in the world is accused of causing the unrest in the Middle East, even though there are only six million Jews in Israel plus about one million Arabs plus a half million “others”. No one cares that the Christians of the Middle East have been killed off in large numbers in most Muslim countries and almost 60% of the Christians of Bethlehem have left since the Palestinian forces have taken over control. Iraq threw their Jews out in 1950 and Christians have been leaving ever since. They understand that after the Jews, they are next. The Holocaust of six million Jews (2 out of every 3 in Europe) was not the full death toll of WW2. The full numbers are over 52 million people died! No one seems to mourn the non Jews. That is sad! The Jewish history is replete with massacres so it becomes part of their genetic memory, I guess. Once we learn to live with six million Jewish dead, it is easier to ignore Darfur, Rwanda, Armenians, and Gypsies. (I am sure I left out many other groups of victims, and I apologize)They are just numbers after awhile, not human beings. Six million is probably more people than anyone has ever seen in their entire life, so they are unreal.
We are too used to such hatred and the uses people put to hatred based on so little real reasons beyond ignorance.
Bob Poris
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