M. Kaplan Jewish Women in Nazi Germany before Emigration Source: M. Kaplan, “Jewish Women in Nazi Germany before Emigration” in: S. Quack, (ed.), Between Sorrow and Strength, Women Refugees of the Nazi Period , (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 11 - 48. Part A, B, C, D, E Introduction "We were so German," "we were so assimilated," "we were so middle class" - these are the remains one reads over and over again in the memoirs of German Jews who try to explain to us (and to themselves) what their lives were Eke before Nazi barbarism overpowered them. They stress how normal their lives were, how bourgeois their habits and attitudes. German Jews - a predominantly middle-class group comprising less than 1 percent of the German population - had welcomed their legal emancipation in the second half of the nineteenth century and lived in a relatively comfortable, secure environment until 1933. Between 1933 and 1939, however, they saw their economic livelihoods imperilled and their social integration dissolved. Inexorably, they were engulfed in the maelstrom that led to the Holocaust: impoverishment and ostracism for most; emigration for many; hiding for a handful; and ghettoisation, forced labour, and extermination for the rest 1 . The calamity that hit German Jews affected them as Jews first, but Jewish women had gender-specific experiences as well. In addition to suffering the persecution that afflicted all Jews, Jewish women also had the burden of keeping their households and communities together. A gender analysis of the situation of Jews in Germany suggests that racism and persecution as well as survival strategies meant something different for women than for men - in both practical and psychological terms. This essay explores the increasingly difficult daily lives of Jewish middle- class women and the work of their main organisation, the League of Jewish Women ( Juedischer Frauenbund , or JFB), in pre-war Nazi Germany. By focusing on the 1930s, we can locate the intensification of persecution and its effects on women and their families in a time when few dreamed that developments would end in anything like Auschwitz. In fact, this period is often neglected; either the earlier, more hopeful era of the Weimar Republic (1918-33) or the later, shocking years of genocide are more usually emphasised. But the intermediate era - the fascistisation of daily life, when victims had to learn to cope while others looked on (or past), when even relationships among ordinary Germans were coarsened - is often far more instructive politically. Moreover, exploring the daily lives of Jews challenges the myths of political innocence with which so many Germans today surround their accounts of "daily hoe in Nazi Germany." 2 Most important for our purpose, gender specificity can be illustrated more clearly for these years than for later ones. Gender differences are also apparent in the desire to emigrate and in actual emigration patterns, another topic of concern here. Finally, a brief look at Jewish women's organisations shows how women responded collectively to increasing persecution. The focus is on housewives and mothers, largely because they are the ones who left the most memoirs. Still, they made up a large portion of the female community. In their twenties, thirties, and forties, these women had embarked upon marriage, created families, and, sometimes, started careen. Like the vast majority of Jews, they experienced the impending catastrophe from their situation as ethnically or religiously Jewish and politically liberal citizens, increasingly shocked by the abrogation of the rights and liberties they once had taken for granted. Other women receive less attention here: rarely did those who intermarried, who remained in Germany after the war broke out, or who died leave memoirs behind, at least memoirs that are accessible today. Of those who managed to escape, single women and the elderly are underrepresented in memoir collections 3 . Finally, memoirs, collections are often found in Jewish libraries and archives. Hence, writers who were more self-consciously Jewish might have deposited them there, possibly creating a sample of Jews who were slightly less integrated into German society than the actual range of women's situations 4 . Overview of German-Jewish Community In 1933, 500,000 people were registered as Jews in Germany (excluding those who had officially left Judaism), or about 0.77 percent of the population. Seventy percent lived in large cities with populations over 100,000 (whereas half of non-Jews lived in places with under 10,000 inhabitants), and a third (144,000) lived in Berlin, where they made up close to 4 percent of the population. Like every minority, the Jewish minority had a career profile that differed significantly from that of the general population. Historically prohibited from a variety of economic endeavours, almost 62 percent of Jews (compared with 18 percent of non-Jews) worked in business and commerce. They were underrepresented in agricultural careen, where less than 2 percent of Jews (but 29 percent of other Germans) were employed. The employment of Jewish women had gradually increased to 27 percent by 1933, but it was still less than that of non-Jewish women (34 percent). Of those who worked, over one-third were salaried employees; about one-fifth were assistants in family enterprises (mithelfende Familienangehoerige); another one-fifth were self-employed (this could include a large business or a tiny one); and about one-tenth were workers (mostly in industry but olden in the offices rather than on the factory floor) 5 . The socio-economic position of Jews was overwhelmingly middle class, although the inflation of the early 1920s and the Great Depression had definitely set them back. More and more women had to assist or support their families - a trend that intensified in the Nazi period - and more and more Jews had to rely on financial aid from the Jewish communities 6 . In addition, almost one in five Jews in Germany were a refugee from Eastern Europe. Most of these Ostjuden, as they were called, eked out humble existences as industrial workers, minor artisans, or peddlers. Among this group there was a larger proportion of women in paid employment than among those who were not refugees. In comparison with non-Jewish women, Jewish women generally had smaller families and more education. They were less likely to work outside the home and more likely to have household help. Although married Jewish women devoted themselves to their families, parents expected their unmarried daughters to study for a career. Many - seven times as many as Christian women - went to a university 7 . As we shall see, after 1933 career development was increasingly obstructed, just as wage earning became more urgent. During the Weimar Republic, strictly religious education and practices were on the decline and mixed marriages on the rise 8 . In the large cities, marriage to Christians was becoming so common - especially among Jewish men - that some Jewish leaders actually feared the complete fusion of their community into German society by the end of the twentieth century 9 . Jews eagerly joined non-sectarian organisations. For example, the Jewish feminist movement (League of Jewish Women) belonged to the German bourgeois feminist movement from 1908 until 1933, and individual Jewish women were prominent members of German women's organisations. Jews felt a deep allegiance to the ideals of German civilisation as they understood them - the liberal values of tolerance, humanism, and reason of the German Enlightenment. They enjoyed general acceptance in the worlds of art and culture, participated in centre and moderate Left politics, and excelled in the "See" professions of medicine and law. Possibly as many as one-third of all women doctors in the Weimar Republic were Jewish 10 . Although Jews adapted to the social, political, or cultural styles of their surroundings, "[quoting] Goethe [at] every meal," most also preserved a sense of ethnic solidarity and religious cohesion 11 . They did so through organreligious or secular Jewish groups and through maintaining tholiday celebrations in the family. Jewish women's organisations in particular fostered a sense of Jewish identity, including religious identity, throughout the Weimar years. Thus, the interest by women's organisations in their Jewish heritage during the Nazi period was not a sudden shift; it was an intensification of a trend already well under way. Finally, a small Zionist movement, although failing to make significant inroads into the assimilationist commitments of most German Jews, sharpened Jewish self-consciousness 12 . Jewish cohesion was also a response to a pervasive antisemitism with roots in Imperial Germany (1871-1918). Virtually all Jews knew of antisemites or of an antisemitic incident directed against someone in their immediate circle of blends or relatives. The mission of one of the largest Jewish organisations in Germany, the Central Association (CV) of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, founded in 1893, was to fight antisemitism politically and judicially and to strengthen Jewish and German consciousness within the Jewish communities as well. The loss of World War I and post-war political and economic instability magnified anti-Jewish passions. To the radical Night and its diverse followers, Jews became the scapegoats for all social and economic ills. Even more common and widespread was what Donald Niewyk has called 'moderate antisemitism, that vague sense of unease about Jews that stopped far short of wanting to harm them but that may have helped to neutralise whatever aversion Germans might otherwise have felt for the Nazis.' 13 This atmosphere could be found in churches, universities, political parties, and the government as well as in relationships between Jews and other Germans. Even those Jewish women who worked closely with other German women commented on the distance between the groups: 'We lived among each other, sat together in the same school room, attended university together, met each other at social events - and were complete strangers.' 14 There were exceptions, close and lasting friendships that extended until deportation or even until today, but for the vast majority of Jews, their tenuous friendships with other Germans dissolved as the Nazi terror grew. The Lives Of Jewish Women In Public And Private Social Ostracism With the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Jews as individuals had to begin to struggle for daily survival and Jewish organisations had to gear themselves up for providing unprecedented and massive economic, social, and cultural aid. Jews were forced into an era of "dissimulation" - a process of separation and then segregation - that took about six years, gradually gathering speed and thoroughness. A brief outline of this interim, before the deportations and genocide, provides necessary background for understanding the variety of Jewish responses. Soon alter taking power, the Nazis scheduled an official boycott of Jewish businesses and professional establishments for April 1. On that day storm troopers stood in front of Jewish stores, threatening and exhorting shopper to "buy German." As unofficial boycotts continued, the Nazis enacted discriminatory legislation. The "April Laws" of 1933 provided for the expulsion of Jews from the civil service, legal and medical professions, and post - primary schools and universities. This "legal" attack reached its peak in late 1935 with the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour," or Nuremberg Laws, which forbade sexual intercourse or intermarriage between Jews and "Aryans" (perceived as "pure" Germans) and made it unlawful for a Jew to employ an Aryan domestic servant under the age of forty-five. These laws were followed by more than 400 pieces of anti-Jewish legislation promulgated by the Nazis between 1933 and 1939 15 . The last stage before outright and organised violence was "aryanization," the attempt to drive Jews from the economy. Proceeding fitfully throughout 1936 and 1937, aryanization speeded up in 1938 and 1939 to the point at which the economy could be considered judenrein (free of Jews). Persecutions reached a new level of intensity in 1938, culminating in the November Pogrom, commonly called "Crystal Night." This milestone claimed the lives of at least 100 Jews; destroyed more than 1,000 synagogues and countless homes and shops. More than 30,000 Jewish men were incarcerated in concentration camps. Despite what appease in hindsight to be the increasing speed and clarity of persecution, Nazi policy followed what one historian described as a "twisted road to Auschwitz." 16 Contradictory pronouncements, regional variations, conflicting satrapies, lack of co-ordination at the top, and the attempt to appear moderate to other nations gave contemporaries profoundly mixed signals. It was only alter the pogrom that most Jews were finally convinced of their peril. At every stage, some Jews thought and others hoped that the government would cease its persecutions. As the Jewish community moved from a relatively porous relationship with the surrounding society to a severely encapsulated one, many believed they could make peace with the new circumstances. Even aver the Nuremberg Laws, for example, the central organisation of Jews was wilting to see them as a "tolerable arrangement" and to work for a modus vivendi with the Nazi State 17 . As dissimulation intensified, the concept of "normal" became increasingly elastic. This was a complicated process. For some there was the longing to make life "normal" within the ever-narrowing boundaries drawn by the Nazis. Women in particular, I would suggest, attempted to create an atmosphere of normalcy within the family. For others there was a denial of what they saw happening. For many there was a combination of both at the same time: the desire and need to believe that they could remain in their homeland, even under new and trying conditions. Today historians of daily hope in Nazi Germany are attempting to capture the double character of normality and terror, the effects on its citizens of both a normal bureaucratic state and an exceptional state. This double character is all the more pronounced - and more complicated - for its victims, whose perceptions of the conflicting signals were coloured by their anxieties but also by their hopes 18 . Life for German-Jewish women often changed dramatically with the beginning of the new regime. One of the first signs of a "new era" (even before one lost a job or one's husband, Other, or brother did) was the dissociation of former friends. One woman reported that she had enjoyed getting together with friends from her hometown in a cafe once a month: 'Since the Nazis came to power, I haven't taken part in these gatherings. I didn't want to cause difficulties for my friends as a result of my [Jewish] presence. One day she met one of her friends: She tried to convince me that they were all still my friends, so I decided to go to the next meeting . . . I couldn't sleep at all the night before the gathering. I was worried about my Christian friends, but I was also worried about myself... I knew I would observe them very carefully. I would notice even a shadow of their discomfort at my entry . . . But, I didn't have to read their eyes or note a change in their tone. The empty table in the booth where we had always met spoke loudly and clearly . . . But, I couldn't blame them. Why should they have risked the loss of their jobs only to prove to me that Jews could still have friends in Germany?' 19 Not all Germans abandoned their Jewish friends. In fact, it was often precisely an experience of loyalty - the friend who came by ostentatiously, the former classmate who went out of her way to shake hands with a Jewish woman in a crowded store 20 or the "sympathy purchases" after the April boycott 21 - that gave Jews mixed messages, letting some deceive themselves into staying on. Furthermore, in the early years, Jews experienced only isolated local ostracism or attacks that were often based on economic rivalries and resentments rather than on purely racial grounds 22 . But the government intended to completely isolate Jews and 'after months of a period of terror, fidelity and friendship had lost their meaning, and fear and treachery had replaced them.' 23 Moreover, the Nazis could count on grass-roots enthusiasm. Well before the Nazis prohibited friendly contacts with Jews, gossip and denunciations discouraged such associations. Based on Gestapo (Secret State Police) files, Robert Gellately has observed, '…an extraordinary degree and variety of accommodation … to the regime's doctrines on race. Friendships and business relationships going back many years were broken off' 24 Of interest here is not only the fear of terror but also the often zealous auto - surveillance by the Germans themselves. This had an effect on Jews, too. For example, in a small Rhineland town in late 1933, a Christian woman went to visit her Jewish friend. When she arrived at the door, her friend looked at her in horror: 'For God's sake, Frieda, leave, don't come in, we are already being watched.' With tears in their eyes, they turned away from each other 25 . Thus, companionship with non-Jews became the rare exception. Jews felt as if they were becoming society's lepers. Loss of friends was accompanied by general social ostracism. The Gestapo and the courts used charges of friendship and, more seriously, "race defilement", 'to discipline (or 'educate') society at large about the importance of the race issue …but beyond that,…to adjust all opinions to bring them into line with Nazi teachings.' 26 By 1936 the Nazis had "brought off a deepening of the gap" between Jews and other Germans, and companionship with non-Jews became the rare exception 27 . Loss of friends was accompanied by general social ostracism. Officials, neighbours, even the mailman looked past or through Jews as they crossed paths at the local market or in the corridors. I suspect that the loss of friends and the decline of sociability in the neighbourhood affected Jewish women more than it did men, because women were more integrated into and dependent upon the community and neighbourhood. They were more accustomed to neighbourly exchanges and courtesies. Their lives negotiated the inter-lace between family and community. Highly organised and active in communal, volunteer, or women's organisations, women suffered when they were ostracised. Moreover, women probably had more frequent contacts with the state than did men. They had more meetings with such state agents as post office and railroad clerks, social workers, and, for mothers' in particular, teachers. Men saw less of neighbours to begin with and had less time to engage in communal or volunteer activities. Also, although men now suffered the loss of even a modicum of courtesy at work, they were more used to competition and a certain degree of conflict in their everyday work life 28 . The pain of being the object of a general, hateful taboo affected most Jews long before the actual violence began. One woman recalled that when she travelled on the tram on the day of the April 1933 boycott, she felt self-conscious about being Jewish and feared that the people next to her might move away from her if they guessed her true identity 29 . Another woman wrote: 'Anxiety accompanied me wherever I went: if I had to talk to shop attendants I'd be afraid they would be hostile to me as soon as they discovered I was Jewish; when I waited for the tram, I always thought the conductor wouldn't stop for me if he knew I was Jewish...I waited for such events all the time and this Moiety tormented me unceasingly. Long before the Nazis forbade it, I had stopped going to movies or the theatre, because I simply couldn't stand being around people who hated us' 30 . To make matters worse, Jewish friends provided lithe respite. Most Jews, even those who had made genuine friendships with non-Jewish Germans, maintained a circle of Jewish friends and colleagues. But in the strained circumstances affecting the entire Jewish community, shadows hovered over social evenings with Jewish friends. 'When one met in Jewish company, it meant mostly that there was not the slightest relaxation, because every last person had either his own unpleasant experience or some sort of ill tidings to report from somewhere else.' 31 Moreover, when groups of Jews gathered in private homes, they feared that they were being watched by suspicious neighbours or, worse, the Gestapo. One writer describes the panic that broke out at a birthday party in January 1940 when two police showed up to check why the light was on during a black out. 'The eyes of the women . . . showed how cruelly one was once again from the illusion of a normal middle-class existence . . . That more and more each day the Jew was becoming fair game was the devastating realisation chat underscored every experience of this kind.' 32 In this particular case, the policeman himself seems to have been embarrassed by the dread his visit caused and left without farther ado. References: 1 About 235,000 out of approximately 525,000 Jews in Germany managed to emigrate. Not all of these people, however, escaped. Many were caught up in the Nazi net cast over Europe. 2 See Mary Nolan, “The Historikerstreit and Social History,” New German Critique 44 (1988): 51¯80. 3 Single women may not have had the motivation to write memoirs (since memoirs are often intended as family histories for future generations), and age may have impinged on the desire or ability of the elderly to write their stories. 4 People who were, or who considered themselves to be, on the edges of the Jewish community ¯ such as women who intermarried or whose ethnic, or religious identities or both were superseded by political loyalties ¯ were less likely to donate their materials to Jewish organisations. 5 The breakdown is for Prussia in 1925 but is also representative of Germany as a whole. Israelitisches Familienblatt (hereafter cited as IF ), Feb. 23, 1933, no. 8: 9. 6 Monika Richarz, ed., Juedisches Leben in Deutschland , vol. 3: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte , 1918¯1945 (Stuttgart, 1982), Introduction. See also Erich Rosenthal, “Trends of the Jewish Population in Germany, 1910¯1939,” Jewish Social Studies 6 (1944): 233¯73. 7 Marion Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany. The Campaigns of the Juedischer Frauenbund, 1904¯1938 (Greenport, Conn., 1979), 193, note 31. 8 Richarz, Juedisches Leben , 15. Twenty out of 100 marriages were mixed in 1930, but conversions were down in comparison with the Imperial era. 9 Karl Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy toward German Jews, 1933¯1939 (Urbana, Ill., 1970), 7. For gender-specific intermarriage statistics, see Usiel O. Schmelz, “Die demographische Entwicklung der Juden in Deutschland von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1933,” Zeitschrift fuer Bevoelkerungswissenschaft 8, no. 1 (1982): 42, 52¯3. 10 This is my estimate based on the number of Jewish female medical students before the war. Jews had received the right to become judges, diplomats, and civil servants only in 1918. 11 George L. Mosse, German Jews Beyond Judaism (Bloomington, Ind., 1985), 14. 12 Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 164. 13 Niewyk, 80. 14 Niewyk, 93¯4. 15 Joseph Walk, Das Sonderrecht fuer Juden im NS-Staat (Heidelberg, 1981); Schleunes, 109. 16 Schleunes. 17 Schleunes, 126. 18 Nolan, “Historikerstreit.” 19 Richarz, Juedisches Leben , 233; all quotations from this book have been translated by the author. 20 See the memoirs of Liselotte Kahn, Leo Baeck Institute (hereafter cited as LBI), 16. About her classmate's behavior, Kahn noted: “This I considered alreadz a heroic deed in 1933.” 21 Hans Mommsen and Dieter Obst, “Die Reaktion der deutschen Bevoelkerung auf die Verfolgung der Juden, 1933¯1943,” in Hans Mommsen, ed., Herrschaftsalltag im Dritten Reich (Duesseldorf, 1988), 374¯8. 22 Michael H. Kater, “Everyday Antisemitism in Prewar Nazi Germany: The Popular Bases,” Yad Vashem Studies 16 (1984): 129¯59. 23 Monika Richarz, ed., Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), 352. 24 In April 1935, Nazi Party members were forbidden from having personal relationships with Jews,unless in the line of duty. Still, even Nazi Party members kept business ties to Jews throughout 1935 and some until even as late as 1938 (see Mommsen and Obst, 387, 430¯1). Friendships with Jews were not officially a crime for non-party members until November 1941, but local laws frequently forced Germans to break all relations with Jews much earlier (see Mommsen and Obst, 428¯9). For more on denunciations, the “key link between the police and the people in Nazi Germany, [which made] the terror system work,” see Robert Gellately, “The Gestapo and German Society: Political Denunciation in the Gestapo Case Files,” Journal of Modern History 60, no. 4 (1988): 664, 669, 673¯4, 677. Gellately pointed out the centrality of gossip to the functioning of the Nazi terror system in “Terror System, Racial Persecution and Resistance in Nazi Germany: Remarks on the Historiography,” a paper presented to the GDR¯USA Symposium on Nazi Terror and Resistance, Princeton, N.J., May 4¯6, 1989. See also his The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933¯1945 (New York, 1990). 25 Francis Henry, Victims and Neighbors: A Small Town in Nazi Germany Remembered (South Hadley, Mass., 1984), 92. 26 Gellately, “Political Denunciation,” 677. 27 SOPADE report quoted by Peter Pulzer in a lecture on the anniversaries of the annexation of Austria and of Crystal Night, Harvard Centre for European Studies, April 14, 1989. SOPADE was the name of the Social Democratic Party in exile. 28 The author wishes to thank Peter Pulzer for this insight. 29 Memoirs of Hanna Bergas, LBI, 1. 30 Richarz, Juedisches Leben , 232. 31 Richarz, Jewish Life , 402. 32 Richarz, Jewish Life , 405. Part B Economic Strangulation Rapidly, more concrete dislocations began seriously to affect women. The loss of jobs - their own, their husbands' and fathers' - threatened economic well-being. In early April 1933 a teacher reported: 'Briefly before 8:00 A.M., when I arrived at the school building ...the principal, saying "Good morning" in his customary, friendly way, stopped me, and asked me to come to his room ...When we were seated, he said, in a serious, embarrassed tone of voice, he had orders to ask me not to go into my classroom. I probably knew, he said, that I was not permitted to teach anymore at a German school. I did know, but was it to happen so abruptly? … Mr. B. was extremely sorry, he assured me ...I collected myself ...I also collected my belongings ...There was nobody ...to say goodbye to, because everybody else had gone to the classroom ...I rode home ...in the afternoon ...colleagues, pupils, their mothers came, some in a sad mood, others angry with their country, lovely bouquets of flowers, large and small, in their arms. In the evening, the lithe house was full of fragrance and colours, like for a funeral, I thought; and indeed, this was the funeral of my time teaching at a German public school.' 33 . Immediately after the "April Laws" about half of Jewish judges and prosecutor and almost a third of Jewish lawyers lost their jobs. A fourth of Jewish doctors lost their German National Health Insurance (Krankenkasse) affiliation 34 . In September the Nazis excluded Jews from the Chamber of Culture and from the worlds of art, film, music, literature, and journalism, areas in which they had been disproportionately active. Restrictions, official and unofficial harassment, and economic boycotts all increased in their frequency and fervour. As a result, many Jewish businesses, particularly small ones, were forced to shut down or sell out. Unemployment began to plague the Jewish community. In 1933 about two-thirds of Jewish salaried employees worked in Jewish businesses and firms. With the disappearance of many Jewish firms, joblessness among Jewish employees became rampant. By the spring of 1933 nearly one-third of Jewish clerks - compared to one-fifth of the non-Jewish ones - were looking for jobs 35 . Because more than half (53 percent) of employed Jewish women worked in business and commerce, largely as family assistants (22 percent) and salaried employees (40 percent), they lost their jobs when family businesses and Jewish shops closed down 36 . Furthermore, Jewish sources estimated that three-quarters of Jewish women in business and trade were affected by the discriminatory laws and the early anti-Jewish boycotts 37 . By April 1938, over 60 percent of all Jewish businesses no longer existed, and Jewish social workers were trying to help 60,000 unemployed people. Furthermore, those businesses that lingered on tended to be either at the very top (a few banks and financial institutions) or at the bottom (independent artisans) 38 . Women rarely worked in either. Women's economic future looked bleak. The exclusion of Jews from German universities and institutions of higher learning restricted employment possibilities. Even new admissions to trade and vocational schools were limited to1.5 percent "non-Aryans." 39 By mid-1935 the apprenticeship office for Jewish girls reported that every second young woman applying aimed to be a seamstress 40 . Before 1933, these same young women would have looked forward to business or professional careers. By 1937, when young women had shined their focus to jobs useful in countries of emigration. 24 percent of graduates from Jewish schools planned to learn a craft, largely preferring tailoring (20 percent). Sixteen percent trained for domestic service, 13 percent for commerce, and 12 percent for social work 41 . Also, Jewish community welfare organisations often gave preferential treatment to boys seeking career training. In the lint six months of 1937, Jewish organisations reported that far more boys than girls were receiving subsidies for career training or retraining 42 . The newsletter of the Jewish feminist movement announced that one provincial welfare office had given subsidies to seventy-two boys and ten girls 43 . And, lest girls harbour unrealistic notions about continuing at a university abroad, they were warned 'that Jewish girls in and out of Germany have almost no chance to study [at the university]. The few scholarships available are only for young men and it is luck . . . if a girl gets to study.' 44 Migration: Setting Up New Lives and Leaving Old Friends Behind When the situation for Jews in Germany worsened, an internal migration took place. Economic strangulation occurred most quickly in small towns, where often more than 80 percent of the Jewish population was left destitute 45 . Furthermore, Jews attempted to escape from the personal hostility of villages and smaller towns by seeking the anonymity and, hence, relative safety of large cities. Thus, the Jewish population was in constant flux. For those left behind, the loneliness was of 'such a degree and so sudden . . . as had never before been experienced even in Jewish history.' Even the most intimate family and friendship circles shrank and those who remained did not offer solace to the lonely, for they too were suffering. One newspaper article concluded: 'We must learn how to endure loneliness.' 46 In an article on the same subject, a woman described the feeling of leaving a woman friend as "dying a little" (Partir c'est mourir un peu!) 47 . 'Female friendships depend on entirely different conditions than male friendships. There is something sisterly ...the basis is reliability and harmony of feelings, thoughts, and actions ...Parting from a friend! Last hour together. Suitcases and crates are packed, the Garniture stored, the apartment, where we celebrated happy days or quiet evenings, stands empty and ...appears almost hostile ...Will we elderly people ever see each other again? ...Will friendship last? ...Letters - what can they say! Parting from a friend! A personal story from an individual fate but also a community fate for us Jews; for who does not feel ...this tear, this shock ...during separation, emigration, departure! Partir c'est mourir un peu!' 48 Women who moved their families had to adjust their household to a new urban environment and deteriorating political circumstances and still try to maintain a relatively stable family life. There was little time to pine for those led behind. Women who stayed in big cities participated as never before in social welfare work within Jewish communities and Jewish women's organisations to integrate the steady stream of newcomers. Women often did this while preparing their own families for emigration. Stress and Stress Management in the Family To meet new and mounting economic hardships, Jewish housewives tried, when possible, to prepare less expensive meals, to make home and clothing repairs themselves, and to make do with less help around the house. The Nuremberg Laws (when "Aryan" household help was severely restricted in Jewish homes) left Jewish women to their own devices in running a household with greater problems, in shopping for food in increasingly hostile stores, and in doing these tasks with ever shrinking resources. The pain of their children, who often faced antisemitism more immediately than did their parents from classmates and teachers in German public schools, disturbed both women and men profoundly as parents, but women learned of and dealt with their children's distress more directly than did men. When children came home from school, their mothers heard the latest stories and had to respond. Mothers also supervised their children's homework. Imagine the contradictory emotions of a Jewish mother who was reassured to learn that her son had sung patriotic songs, said "Heil Hitler" to the teacher, and rpraise for his laudatory essay about Hitler: ' ...[his] gross political mis-education at school would keep [him] out of trouble.' About a year later the same child, now enrolled in a Jewish school, wrote a story about Jewish resistance as a Mother's Day gift for his mother. Upon reading it, she was frightened: '[his] political awakening . . . could lead to trouble for the whole family.' 49 Principals summoned mothers to pick up their children when they were expelled from school, and these mothers then sought new schools for their children 50 . Mothers were usually the ones whom teachers phoned when children were to be excluded from class events. One mother reported that her children were not allowed to participate in any special event: 'My daughter cried, not because she couldn't go to the theatre ...she cried, because she was ostracised from the group, as though she wasn't good enough for her classmates ...I believe that the Nazi teacher was ashamed of herself now and then, when she looked into the sad eyes of my little daughter, because she phoned me several times and asked that I not send the child to school on the days when something enjoyable had been planned for the children' 51 . On Mother's Day, Jewish children had to take part in the school festivities but were not allowed to sing along. When the Jewish children protested, their teachers responded: 'I know that you have a mother too, but she is only a Jewish mother.' 52 This kind of harassment provoked many families to enrol their children in Jewish schools. Still, about half of Jewish children between the ages of six and fourteen remained in the public elementary schools, subject to torment by teachers and other children, until November 1938, when the Nazis barred their attendance. Between 1934 and 1939 about 18,000 Jewish children left Nazi Germany for safer havens on what were called "transports of children" (Kindertransporte). Immediately after the November Pogrom, with husbands in concentration camps, it was mothers who made the excruciating decisions to send their children abroad 53 . About 8,000 children went to England, 3,400 to Palestine 54 , and the rest to other European countries and the United States 55 . There they received foster care (or, in the case of Palestine, lived on kibbutzim or in children's homes) until their parents could join them. Many parents never made it. "Children from into letters" was a phrase expressing the despair of parents who remained behind. The loss of daily intimacy with their children affected parents, but again, mothers most immediately. And, for those increasingly nervous and frightened children who stayed on - the children's transports, like other exits, never were sufficient - parents watched their opportunities dwindle. By the early war years, Jewish children found it difficult to play freely in the flesh air. The Nazis banned Jews from the parks and forests, and even small groups of children were no longer allowed to play in outdoor yards. They were permitted to play only in - and to maintain - the Jewish cemeteries 56 . Women's organisations urged women to preserve the "moral strength to survive" and looked to Biblical heroines for role models 57 . In the face of progressively worsening living conditions, it was women who were to "make things work." It became apparent increasingly that Biblical role models would not suffice in pro-Jewish women with either the courage or the help they needed. Jewish newspapers began to deal more openly (and honestly?) with the issues plaguing families, particularly women. For example, as families moved into smaller apartments, or as others took in boarder to make ends meet, tighter living quarters caused strain. The League of Jewish Women noted this but characteristically urged women to absorb it: 'It is the duty . . . of the Jewish woman to regulate the schedule and the organisation of the household so that everyone is satisfied. She has to give her husband, the head of the household, the necessary time to be alone to relax . . . She has to adjust without being subordinate. This is more necessary than ever, given today's living arrangements. Then, living together, even with many people in tight circumstances, will bring about that kind of communal feeling that will bring peace to the household' 58 . Among issues causing stress, cooking seemed to take a pre-eminent role because of tight budgets, limited household help, and the difficulties of acquiring kosher meat. Housewives were advised to consider vegetarian menus because they were cheaper and healthier. Although meat might be easier to prepare, demanding less time, women were told that 'good will is an important assistant in a vegetarian kitchen,' 59 and newspaper printed vegetarian menus and recipes for their readers 60 . After the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade the hiring of "Aryan" household help under the age of forty-five, a farther obstacle for Jewish housewives accustomed to some help, the C.V Zeitung ran articles entitled "Everyone Learns to Cook" and "Even Peter Cooks." 61 Highlighting cooking as a fine art, one writer compared food preparation to math, chemistry, botany, and zoology and warned against the demons lurking in stoves, on sharp knives, and in every pot. One woman, who had just begun to manage her own household in the past eight days, admitted: 'Previously I had always thought it somewhat difficult to translate Shakespeare into German . . . but today I know this is child's play compared to a five pound roast beef and a grill. I'd rather memorise several French irregular verbs (in the subjunctive!) than let myself in for the uncertain adventure of a roast goose' 62 . These articles emphasised how children, particularly daughters, could help their mothers 63 . They suggested introducing work as fun, giving children, especially small ones, permission to help out and warned against demanding too much. "Daughter exchanges," another innovation to help overworked mothers, provided a half year's training without pay to two young women who switched households. Ostensibly both girls would receive an apprenticeship and both mothers' some help 64 . It is unclear how many girls if any took advantage of these exchanges. At a time when everyone had to pitch in, authoritarian behaviour was frowned upon, even that of the "head of the family." The justification, "that it has always been this way," was no longer good enough. One writer noted that it stemmed from a time when 'men and fathers were overvalued in comparison to women and wives.' 65 Thus, male privilege was questioned, if not overtly challenged, because authoritarian behaviour was seen as crippling to children, making them incapable of performance. That it was questioned at all, however, indicates some shift in the perception of roles and rightful authority. Nevertheless, husbands were expected to pitch in only minimally. The League of Jewish Women, for example, suggested that since women felt called upon to do more and more for their families and more and more often became the sole support of families, men should begin to do some housework too 66 . Timidly it reminded its members: 'It won't always be avoidable, that our men will have to take part of the household duties, as is customary in North American homes. It is necessary to get together and talk about our resistance to this - a resistance found more in women than in men. . . in order to overcome it' 67 . More commonly, husbands were requested to limit their expectations. For example, one writer praised her husband for suggesting that they eat in the kitchen two nights a week, saving her the extra trouble of setting up, serving in, and clearing the dining room 68 . The writer viewed this concession as generous and a way of "simplifying" the household now that the servant had left. Moreover, husbands were urged to restrain their criticisms if the meals were not what they used to be; to try praising their wives once in a while; to close their eyes to some imperfections: 'A husband must also adapt ...We demand no sacrifices from husbands - only some consideration and ...adjusting to the changed circumstances!' 69 T, gender privilege within the family was barely modulated. Whereas writers urged a complete re-evaluation of the class privilege formerly permitted the leisured middle-class girl in light of her mother's increasing burdens, they continued to allow husbands their leisure at home. Although economic conditions had changed profoundly, with women carrying their full share of the burden, gender hierarchy remained. Why this was so is not difficult to explain: 'We must be clear that work for married women is only and may only be an expedient in an emergency . . .' 70 By proclaiming the crisis nature of women's new position, Jews, both male and female, could hope for better times and ignore the even more unsettling issue of male/female roles in the midst of turmoil. To lighten women's load, newspapers ceaselessly urged housewives to organise, streamline, and cut back on household tasks. The C.V Zeitung, for example, introduced Frank Gilbreth, the American efficiency expert, to its women readers and suggested that because their circumstances had drastically changed, his advice would be useful. Articles offered Gilbreth's guidance regarding kitchen design, that is, ways of making a smaller kitchen into a practical workspace. They included pointers on how to save steps and hand motions, how to complete two tasks at once (such as watching children and cooking), and how to prevent exhaustion. Authors emphasised that the success of a particular meal was not simply in its execution but in whether the housewife had preserved her energy. If she had exhausted herself, the meal had failed 71 . One such article, "The Question of Aptitude in the Household," gingerly maintained that books on household reform particularly recommended "group work" and that even though it might be hard to imagine a man in the kitchen (Kann man sich in manchen Familien ueberhaupt einen Mann in der Kueche vorstellen?) group work completed tasks more quickly, more efficiently, and was often a source of "cheerfulness and animation." 72 Probably most practically, the article warned against unnecessary work, the kind that some women continued to do - according to this writer - long after their circumstances had changed dramatically 73 . As late as 1938 women could continue to read articles suggesting that they purchase time- or energy-saving kitchen utensils 74 . Advice columns urged women to hire daily or hourly help when possible 75 . In what must have been desperation, leaders urged that young men be hired to help in the household. While leaving gender roles intact within the family, male helpers solved two simultaneous problems: relieving housewives and lowering unemployment for men. Although they could not be expected to do all the housework, they could certainly lend a hand. Men and women were reminded that the most important tasks in a household were often performed by men (e.g., cooks and butlers); that men had learned the rudiments of cooking, sewing, and cleaning as students, soldiers, and bachelor; and that men in North American households (allegedly) did a multitude of tasks from the most lofty to the most humble 76 . Despite such suggestions, very few housewives hired young men to help out 77. References: 33. Memoirs of Hanna Bergas, LBI, 2. 34. Schleunes, 109. 35. Rosenthal, “Trends,” 262. 36. Blaetter des Juedischen Frauenbundes (hereafter cited as BJFB ) 1 (1934): 7. IF , Feb. 23, 1933, no. 8: 9. Juedische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik [Berlin] (hereafter cited as JWS ), no. 2 (1931) 77¯8. 37. BJFB , March 1935: 2. By 1936, many areas of small business, particularly those associated with agriculture, were declared judenrein or “free of Jews.” Schleunes, 145. 38 Avraham Barkai, “Der wirtschaftliche Existenzkampf der Juden im Dritten Reich, 1933¯1938,” in Arnold Paucker, ed., The Jews in Nazi Germany, 1933¯1943 (Tuebingen, 1986), 156¯7. 39. BJFB , March 1935: 4. 40. BJFB , May 1935: 5. 41. BJFB , Feb. 1937: 2¯3. 42. Informationsblaetter , Aug./Oct. 1937: 59¯60. At that time 863 people (546 men and 317 women) received some support, that is, 63 percent of the recipients were male. 43. BJFB , March 1938, 3. 44. C.V Zeitung , March 3, 1938: 6. The article was written by Hannah Karminski of the Juedischer Frauenbund . 45. David Kramer, “Jewish Welfare Work under the Impact of Pauperisation,” in Paucker, ed., The Jews in Nazi Germany , 183. 46. “Erlebnis der Einsamkeit,” C.V Zeitung , March 10, 1938: 3. 47. “Abschied von einer Freundin,” IF , June 25, 1936. 48. Ibid. 49. Steve J. Heins, ed., Passages from Berlin (South Berwick, Mass., 1987), 73¯6. 50. Memoirs of Erna Segal, LBI, 78¯9. 51. Richarz, Juedisches Leben , 234. 52. Ibid. 53. Rita R. Thalmann, “Juedische Frauen nach dem Pogrom 1938,” in Paucker, ed., The Jews in Nazi Germany , 297. 54. Jehuda Reinharz, “Hashomer Hazair in Nazi Germany,” in ibid., 334. 55. Herbert Strauss, “Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book (1980): 328. 56. Richarz, Juedisches Leben , 378. 57. BJFB , Feb. 1935: 12. 58. BJFB , July 1938: 13. 59.IF , June 25, 1936. 60. IF , Feb. 27, 1936. C.V Zeitung , Feb. 24, 1938: 17. 61. IF , March 19, 1936. C.V Zeitung , Feb. 27, 1936. 62. C.V Zeitung , April 23, 1936. 63. “Junge Maedels lernen der Mutter helfen,” CV-Zeitung , April 9, 1936. “Haeusliche Erziehung,” IF , May 21, 1936. 64. IF , March 19, 1936. 65.IF , March 21, 1936. 66. BJFB , Oct. 1938: 14. 67. BJFB , Oct. 1938: 4. 68. IF , May 19, 1938: 19. 69. Ibid. 70. IF , July 14, 1938: 12. 71. CV-Zeitung , April 23, 1936. 72. CV-Zeitung , May 27, 1936. 73. Ibid. 74. CV-Zeitung , March 17, 1938: 11. 75. IF , March 19, 1936. 76. IF , March 26, 1936. 77. Illo L. Heppner told me that her mother hired a young male helper who seems to have done everything wrong. Conversation at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., Dec. 1991. Also, see the memoirs of Elizabeth Bab, LBI, 179. Part C Rationalising the hiring of unconventional helpers was at best a partial answer to the stresses and strains felt by women and families. After the Nuremberg Laws came into effect, articles addressed overworked, overwrought mothers. With titles like "Mommy, do you have time for me?" they pleaded with mothers not to neglect their small children in their overcrowded day 78 . After cooking and cleaning, articles suggested that women might want to turn to darning and repairing torn clothing. Then, they might try to help their husbands and consult with their children on schoolwork. There would be little time left for the youngest, but mothers should not overlook their needs either. "The baby-sitter is by far not my mother," thinks the little girl. Half a year later stories featured even more tension and strain. "Mommy is so nervous!" depicted a tense housewife whose small children were depressed as a result of her anxiety. She scolded them for small misdemeanours. Her husband, also overtired and overworked, tried to smooth things over when he came home. Eventually, she discussed her overreactions with him and he suggested that she should cry to control herself (nimm dich, wenn es irgend geht, zusammen . . . ) 79 . The happy outcome of this story was that 'although, she, like many of our mothers today, has a huge amount of unaccustomed work to complete every day and actually has every reason to be nervous,' she controlled herself and after a few weeks her child recognised 'mother, you haven't been so nervous in a while.' Obviously, these articles document the stress rather than the solution. It is hard to imagine that training daughters, streamlining work, taking on extra tasks, and repressing nervousness actually helped anyone. But then again, maybe exertion and repression did help. In August 1938 an editor summed up the theme of letters to a Jewish newspaper written by women who worked both outside and inside the home as: ' 'You have to do it' is the eleventh commandment for all of us now.' 80 Perhaps following through on this commandment did help. Women frequently took responsibility not only for the physical double burden but also for the psychological work necessary to raise the spirits of their children and husbands and to tide the family over until better times. As late as February 1938, one woman entitled an article she wrote in a newspaper, "Why so solemn?" She urged her women readers to 'laugh again, regain humour again! Don't let suffocating air in, or chase it away!' Reminding Jewish women that they had traditionally been the ones to light the candles, she urged them once again to brighten their homes 81 . These expectations even affected Jewish women whose husbands were "Aryan" and, therefore, safe. One woman who lived in constant dread of what could happen to her mother (before she admitted to herself that she, too, was in danger) restrained herself from sharing her worries with her husband. She confided to her diary: 'I can't burden my husband ...with my family problems.' 82 This heightened sense of familiar obligation, which was fostered by community and friends, was certainly an extra burden but also, perhaps, a source of solace and strength. Suffering a nervous breakdown around the time of the November Pogrom, one woman wrote: ' ...no doctor could help me ...I also was struck by a dangerous case of asthma, the attacks came ever more frequently and seriously ...Everyone tried to convince me that I alone had to be able to overcome my fear and desperation in order to help my family in these terrible times instead of lying there so helpless. They insisted on the urgency of this to such an extent that I finally gathered all my strength in the hopes of finding a way out of Germany' 83 Of course, all of women's efforts could not save some families from dissolution. The Nazi regime challenged existing marriage and familial relations. The Nuremberg Laws were only the beginning of a series of court decisions regarding family life, such as intermarriages, divorce, adoption, and foster care. In 1936 Jewish papers reported that in an Eheanfechtungsprozess (a court proceeding to contest a marriage) the Reichsgericht (supreme court of the Reich) decided a spouse could contest a marriage on the basis that the other's racial heritage was unclear 84 . Moreover, divorces between Aryan and non-Aryan spouses grew, although most marriages remained intact and the evidence here is largely anecdotal. Gershom Scholem related the story of his aunt, a physician, who married a non-Jewish colleague in 1911. He noted: 'The big test came in 1933. After a while my uncle discovered, following a marriage of more than twenty years, that he was an "Aryan" and asked my aunt Kaethe to release him so he could marry a German. Thus my aunt was later taken to the ghetto of Theresienstadt, where she died' 85 . The new laws threatened family ties between parents and children as well. "Aryan" foster children could be taken from families if even one parent was Jewish. Moreover, the courts had declared that 'it was unacceptable from a national socialist viewpoint' for a "non-Aryan" child to be brought up among Aryan foster parents 'in an environment in which it does not racially belong.' 86 Furthermore, after the Nuremberg Laws, adoptions of "racially" different children were no longer permitted. Family stress, referred to in newspaper articles, confirmed in oral interviews, and intensified by racial laws, Olsen overlapped with new job or vocational retraining for women. Many Jewish women who had never worked outride the home before now turned to the job market. Some did not have to look far afield for jobs. They worked for husbands who, facing economic decline, had to let paid help go. Not unlike their grandmothers, these women helped out in their husbands' shops, offices, and practices. One article commented, 'We find relatively few families in which the wife does not work in some way to earn a living,' and noted that women were also the sole support of many a family 87 . Praising women's flexibility and versatility, the writer continued that this was particularly the case once women emigrated: 'My wife got a job relatively quickly, while I . . .' Finding a job in new circumstances, particularly for women who had never worked outside the home before, could be demoralising. First, one had to assess one's abilities in midlife - abilities that were often little more than a typical girl's education and no marketable skills. Job ads, employment offices, friends and acquaintances held out little hope. Middle-class Jewish women frequently met the surprised responses: "A woman like you?"; "It should be easy for her"; "A woman like you should be able to advise and help herself" These phrases even placed the responsibility on women themselves, who were already frightened, nervous, and uncertain. Rather than help and empathise, women received the message that they should not be having the problems that faced them, or that they should manage on their own 88 . Discouragement notwithstanding, statistics indicate that women eagerly sought opportunities to train for new careers, and retrain where old careers no longer provided employment. They appeared "more versatile and adaptable," and had "fewer inhibitions" than men, were amenable to changing their lives to fit the times, and were willing to enter retraining programs at older ages than were men. In Berlin, for example, of those seeking career retraining, 51 percent of women and only 26 percent of men were over the age of chirps (of these, 15 percent of the women and 8 percent of the men were over forty). Leaders of the Berlin community noted that retraining for women was less costly, took less time (three to six months for women compared to about one year for men), and that although most women sought retraining from previous jobs in sales or office work, women had more background threlated to their new work (such as sewing or housework, one presumes) and that gave them a head start in retraining for jobs as seamstresses, milliners, or domestic workers. Moreover, jobs were available for young women 89 . Even though many had lost jobs incommercial fields, younger women (under the age of thirty-five) could find comparable jobs as other Jews began to emigrate. Also, the demand for help quickly picked up in the expanding Jewish social service sector and - after the Nuremberg Laws - in Jewish households. In Berlin, for example, Jewish employment services were more successful in placing women than in placing men 90 . In fact, one could speak of a shortage of Jewish household helpers, particularly in small towns 91 , and an even more serious scarcity of nurses in Jewish hospitals and homes. The latter caused the main Jewish social service agency to promote and support nurses' training 92 As the job market changed, so did the opportunities for young people, which was another factor in increasing family stress. Children were forced to re-evaluate their options: in other words, to change their former career plans with all the pain and disappointment that entailed. Parents and children often clashed regarding the vision each had of the children's plans for the future. This seems particularly to have been the case between girls and their parents. One school survey (1935) indicated that girls preferred jobs in offices or with children (such as kindergarten teacher), whereas parents thought they should become seamstresses or work in some form of household setting. Parents were more likely to go along with boys' choices of crafts or agricultural training, useful, for example, in Palestine. This tension must have been that much greater among girls who had high school education compared to those who attended only Volksschule and, therefore, had lower expectations from the start 93 . Moreover, the choices available to girls were more limited - if one excludes housework - than those open to boys. Welfare organisations suggested sewing-related jobs, such as knitting, tailoring, or making clothing decorations, whereas boys could consider many more options, including becoming painters, billboard designee, upholsterer, shoemaker, dyers, tailors, or skilled industrial workers 94 . To make matters worse, it seems that parents preferred to keep girls at home, either to shelter them from unpleasant work or to help out around the house. Jewish papers urged families to provide some household tracking for their daughters. In an article enticed "That, my daughter does not need!" (Das hat meine Tochter nicht noetig!), the writer described a young woman who had left her training program because she had been treated like a servant. The article reprimanded the mother's attitude, pointing out that the young woman need not "put on airs," that the more she knew, the better off she would be 95 . The old-fashioned idea that girls would not require a career because they would marry lingered on, even as that fantasy became more and more inconsistent with reality. We can only surmise that some young girls felt protected by such parental decisions and that others were no doubt seriously frustrated, their anxiety spurred by their lack of any kind of training that could prepare them for emigration. In July 1936 the emigration preparatory career training school at Gross-Breesen could not fill its girls' section but had to turn down 400 boys 96 . Perhaps the difficulties of family life or of finding a job in midlife caused or permitted a new appreciation of single women. The women's page of the Israelitisches Familienblatt, for example, praised the women's movement for rescuing women just forty years earlier from the terror of having to find a beau within three dance seasons or from the misery of spinsterhood and likely poverty. The writer opined that a new generation had emerged, "independent, in freely chosen work." Moreover, although single women might forgo marital comradeship and motherhood, they enjoyed more freedom to meet people in all walks of life and choose their own friends, see more of the world, pursue their intellectual interests without limits, and develop themselves independently. Alluding to the then-current situation, the writer speculated that some married women might envy the singe woman who could choose her own path independently 97 . Although the lifestyles of single women might appeal to harried housewives, the situation from the other side of the fence was, in fact, not really so green. As already mentioned, the disproportion between the number of Jewish women and men continued to grow so that newspaper wrote of an increase in surplus Jewish women of marriage age that spiralled upward by the emigration of young Jewish males 98 . Women And Emigration: Perception And Realities The Desire to Flee Emigration, which became more and more crucial as time wore on, was skewed toward men. Yet, women usually saw the danger signals first and urged their husbands to leave Germany. One women's memoir noted that, in a discussion among friends about a doctor who had just fled in the spring of 1935, most of the men in the room condemned him. The women protested strongly: they found that it took more courage to go than to stay . . . 'Why should we stay here and wait for our eventual ruin? Isn't it better to go and to build up a new existence somewhere else, before our strength is exhausted by the constant physical and psychic pressure? Isn't the future of our children more important than a completely senseless holding out?' All the women, without exception, shared this opinion, while the men, more or less passionately, spoke against it. 'Also, on the way home, I discussed this with my husband. Like all other men, he simply couldn't imagine how one could leave one's beloved homeland and the duties that fill a man's life. "Could you really give that all up?" The tone of his voice told me how upset he was at the mere thought of this. "I could," I said, without hesitating a second' 99 . The different attitudes of men and women described here seem to reflect a gender-specific reaction remarked upon by sociologists and psychologists: In dangerous situations, men tend to "stand their ground," whereas women avoid conflict, preferring flight as a strategy. A more important reason why women were more amenable to emigration than their husbands is that women were less tied to the public worlds of jobs or businesses. Women were, as Claudia Koonz has pointed out, less assimilated than men into the economy and culture 100 . The daughter of a wealthy businessman commented, 'When the Nazis appeared on the scene, he was too reluctant to consolidate everything and leave Germany. He may have been a bit too attached to his status, as well as his possessions.' 101 Although their decision to leave Germany was as fraught with practical consequences as that of their husbands (since they, too, would face the uncertainties and poverty associated with emigration), women did not have to tear themselves away from their life's work, whether it was a business or professional practice, whether patients, clients, or colleagues. But even business or career women were apparently less reluctant than their spouses to leave. One wife, a wealthy manufacturer whose husband managed her inherited business, wanted to pack their bags and flee immediately in 1933. In contrast, he refused to leave the business behind. Although the wife could not convince her husband that they should flee, she insisted that they both learn a trade that would be useful abroad. After his arrest and release from a concentration camp in November 1938, they managed to escape to Shanghai, where their new skills helped them to survive 102 . In short, because of men's primary identity with their work, they often felt trapped into staying. Women, whose identity was more family-oriented, struggled to preserve what was central to them by fleeing with it. Men and women led relatively distinct lives, and they often interpreted daily events differently. Although less integrated than men into work and culture, women were moreintegrated into their community. As noted earlier, there were the daily pleasantries with neighbours, regular exchanges with the grocer and baker, occasional visits to the school, attendance at concerts or local lectures, and, often, participation in local 's organisations. Raised to be sensitive to interpersonal behaviour and social situations, women's social antennae were more finely tuned than those of their husbands. They registered the increasing hostility of their immediate surroundings, unmitigated by a promising business prospect, a deep feeling for German culture (as experienced by their more educated husbands), or the patriotism of husbands who had fought in World War I. Women's constant contacts with their own and other people's children and with the community, probably alerted them to the warning signals that come through interpersonal relations - and they took those signals very seriously. Men, in contrast, scrutinised and analysed the confusing legal and economic decrees and the often contradictory public utterances of the Nazis. Men mediated their experiences through newspapers and broadcasts. Politics may have remained more abstract to them, whereas women's "business" - their neighbours, direct everyday contact, the minutiae (and significance) of ordinary details - brought politics home That men and women often assessed the dangers differently reflected their different contacts and names of reference. But decisions seem to have been made by husbands - or circumstances 103 . The widespread assumption that women lacked political acumen, because of their primary role in the private and domestic sphere rather than the public and political one, gave their warnings less credibility in the eyes of their husbands. Thus, one woman's prophecies of doom met with her husband's amusement: 'He laughed at me and argued that such an insane dictatorship could not last long ...he was so certain that there would be a positive outcome.' Even after their seven-year-old son was beaten up at school, her husband was still optimistic 104 . Some of the men who did not take their wives' warnings seriously were those who had received reprieves from the exclusionary decrees of April 1933 (although the reprieves proved to be temporary). In 1933, President Hindenburg interceded to protect those Jewish civil servants, laymen, doctors, and teachers who had fought in World War I, or whose father or son had served or who had been hired for their posts before 1918. The wives of these men typically could not convince their husbands that they were in danger. For example, Hindenburg's move restored one severely wounded veteran's faith in Germany. He would keep his job as a jurist, so he could not take seriously the idea of emigrating with four small children 105 . One woman, who argued with her husband in vain to leave Germany, noted that she was 'powerless against his optimism . . . he constantly fell back on the argument that he had been at the front in World War 1.' 106 Carol Gilligan's psychological theories may apply here: 'Men tended to view their situation in terms of abstract rights, women in terms of actual affiliations and relationships' 107. References: 78. “Mutti, hast du Zeit fuer mich?” CV-Zeitung , Feb. 27, 1936. 79.“Mutti ist so nervoes!” CV-Zeitung , Sept. 16, 1936. 80. CV-Zeitung , Aug. 25, 1938: 8. 81. IF , Feb. 17, 1938: 16. 82.Diary of Erna Becker-Kohen, LBI, 4. 83.Memoirs of Erna Segal, LBI, 93¯4. She and her husband and two children were unable to escape; three of them survived underground in Berlin. 84. IF , Feb. 27, 1936. In this case it was a man contesting the marriage because of his wife's uncertain lineage. 85.Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem . Memories of My Youth (New York, 1988), 30. 86. IF , April 23, 1936. 87. IF , Jan. 13, 1938: 13¯14; also see IF , July 14, 1938: 12. 88. CV-Zeitung , June 25, 1936. 89. JWS , 1933/34: 118¯21. 90. IF , March 19, 1936. 91. IF , May 21, 1936. 92.The agency was the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle (Central Welfare Bureau) of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden (Central Organisation of German Jews). BJFB , Oct. 1938: 14. 93. IF , July 14, 1938: 12. 94. JWS , 1937: 140¯3. 95. IF , Feb. 17, 1938: 16. 96.Werner T. Angress, “Juedische Jugend zwischen nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung und juedischer Wiedergeburt,” in Paucker, ed., Jews in Nazi Germany , 219. It may be that Eastern European Jewish women took greater advantage of these career programs than did German-Jewish women, a function of the more precarious economic situation of the former. Trude Maurer, “Auslaendische Juden in Deutschland, 1933¯39,” in Paucker, ed., Jews in Nazi Germany , 205. 97. IF , Feb. 27, 1936. 98.Ibid. 99.Richarz, Juedisches Leben , 237. 100.Claudia Koonz, “Courage and Choice among German-Jewish Women and Men,” in Paucker, ed., Jews in Nazi Germany , 285; see also Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987), chap. 10. 101.Memoirs of Marianne Berel, “Family Fragments,” LBI, 16. 102.Lecture by Evelyn Rubin, her daughter, at Queens College, Dec. 1988. Also, see The Long Island Jewish Week , Nov. 19, 1978, vol. 188, no. 25. This points in a different direction from Claudia Koonz, who suggested that women with strong business ties judged the situation much as men did. Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland , 364. 103.This does not mean that wives took no initiatives, but the ultimate decision seems to have rested with the husband. In early 1938, for example, Ilse Strauss's mother 'applied to the American authorities for a quota number without my father's knowledge; the hopeless number of 33,243 was allocated. It was a last desperate act and Papa did not even choke with anger anymore.' Her parents and young brother were deported and killed. Memoirs of Ilse Strauss, LBI, B32/54, chap. 8, 44. 104.Memoirs of Erna Segal, LBI, 45¯7, 61. 105.Memoirs of Charlotte Hamburger, LBI, 40¯1. 106.Memoirs of Erna Segal, LBI, 45¯6, 61. 107.Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1982). Back to the top