D. Kramer Jewish Welfare Work in the Third Reich Source: D. Kramer, 'Jewish Welfare Work under the Impact of Pauperisation', in: A. Paucker, (ed.), The Jews in Nazi Germany 1933 - 1943 , (Tuebigen, 1986), pp. 173 - 188. Introduction Jewish welfare work in Germany under the conditions of pauperisation 1933-1939 constitutes a remarkable chapter in the history of modern European social work 1 . One reason for this is the remarkable nature of the pauperisation to which German Jews were subjected under the Nazi regime. Pauperisation was the intended result of a dynamic government policy which, in time, affected all persons who could be identified as Jews, even those who would otherwise not only have been able to provide for themselves and their own families, but who could also have provided considerable support for the maintenance of less fortunate members of their own group at no direct cost to the government. Welfare efforts by Jews were not allowed to succeed in the sense of actually stabilising the economic foundations upon which the life of German Jewry rested. However, the achievements of German Jewry in the field of social welfare during the Third Reich were nonetheless remarkable. Despite the systematic destruction of the Jewish economic basis, Jewish welfare organisations were able to maintain - and partially even expand - some of the most important services, which had been built up during better times. In addition, strong emphasis was placed on helping Jews to emigrate from Germany - a task which proved to be the difference between life and death for tens of thousands of people, but which had little to do with traditional conceptions of welfare work. The heroic efforts of the Jewish welfare organisations to improve the lives of persecuted and traumatised people have been the object of relatively little systematic research - virtually none from the German side. This is probably in part because such efforts are overshadowed by the sheer enormity of the "Holocaust". In retrospect, one's attention seems drawn almost automatically towards those institutions and initiatives, which helped to get Jews out of Germany - everything else appearing illusory and futile. The purpose of this paper - without in any way wishing to detract from the central importance of emigration for German Jewry during the Third Reich is to help recover a perspective on the welfare efforts of an increasingly impoverished and stigmatised Jewish community within Nazi Germany. Such an undertaking relates not just to Jewish history and not just to the history of Jewish people in Germany: but also directly to a properly understood history of Germany itself. Nothing can undo the damage of the "final solution", but the recovery of elements of a multi-ethnic perspective on German history can help to expand the narrowness of mind which prepared the way for such a crime and which the Nazis did their best to foster during their wretched tenure. This is easier said than done. In the mid-1970s a research team at the Fachhochschule fuer Sozialarbeit und Sozialpaedagogik Berlin (FHSS) began a project on the history of social work in Germany with particular reference to state welfare services and the city of Berlin. The project, which made use of interviews with Zeitzeugen, engendered several publications, including a widely-used textbook on the history of German social work 2 , and it may even have made a modest contribution to the upsurge of scholarly interest in the history of social welfare work in Germany which has been observed in recent years. It proved impossible to investigate the development of welfare work in Berlin without coming to appreciate the prodigious achievements of Berlin Jewry in this field. Those of us involved in this research became acutely aware of the huge gaps in our knowledge concerning Jewish welfare work. We tried to close the gaps, where possible, but particularly with respect to the Third Reich it seemed almost as if the very traces of Jewish welfare work in Germany had been erased. Most of the actors had either been killed or had emigrated to far countries (and many of the emigrants had died in the meantime). The original documents were scattered and secondary work sparse. Two members of the original FHSS research team, Rolf Landwehr and the present author decided to prepare a special project on the history of Jewish welfare work within the German Reich. We had hoped to have advanced results of research on the topic to present to this historical conference in Berlin. However, the process of finding support for the project has proved more difficult than we had anticipated. So far, the FHSS Berlin is the only German institution to have actually committed resources to the support of the project. Thus the present paper reflects little more than our preliminary research among the fragments of information available in Berlin and the material in the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. It indicates the present state of our knowledge and points towards some of the areas, which we would like to investigate further. This is definitely not the final word on the subject. Demographic and Economic Problems of German Jewry in 1933 German Jewry was facing a number of demographic problems, which would have confronted its traditional institutions of social welfare with perplexing challenges even if the Nazis had never come to power. Of course, Nazi policy exacerbated these problems during the Third Reich and added new ones, which could scarcely even be imagined in the Weimar frame of reference. However, it would be a mistake to become so fixated on Nazi depredations as to forget the problems, which existed before they took control of the Reich government. Each of these problems has been described in greater detail elsewhere; the point here is merely to call attention to the importance of these factors as a context for Jewish welfare work in Germany during the 1930s. The official Jewish population of the Weimar Republic - i. e., those persons who declared themselves to be Jewish - was caught up in a process of both absolute and relative numerical decline which was a matter of deep concern to many Jewish officials. As a percentage of the total population of Germany, confessing Jews had declined from 1.25% in 1875 to merely 77% in 1933. The absolute numbers were even more disturbing: in less than a quarter of a century, from 1910 to 1933, the number of confessing Jews in the German Reich dwindled from 615,000 to 564,000. This development gave rise to a certain genre of alarmist journalism in some Jewish circles, which need not concern us here, but the question must be raised as to why German Jewry was in numerical decline. The problem is a complex one, which certainly cannot be dissected in a few sentences, but the following points seem relevant in our context. The birth rate among German Jews had fallen dramatically during the 50 years prior to 1933. Although this seemed remarkable at the time, it may be the usual pattern among people making a rapid transition to urban middle-class conditions. In any event, the death rate for German Jews remained nearly constant during the same years, so that by 1933 nearly twice as many Jews died annually in Germany as were born there. This was, at the most fundamental level, the biological basis of German Jewry's numerical decline. However, social factors were also at work, both indirectly and directly: indirectly in that the reproductive behaviour of the German Jews was certainly related to their quickly changing life-style in a rapidly modernising country; and directly in that mixed marriages between Germans and Jews were becoming quite common. The irony of this development in a country seething with anti-Semitism was not lost on one Jewish observer who commented towards the end of the Weimar Republic: "Despite National Socialism, [marital] connections with non-believers have increased in a puzzling way." 3 By the end of the Weimar Republic nearly four out of ten Jews who married were taking German partners. Moreover, between 1921 and 1930 the number of Jewish men taking German wivessurpassed the number of Jewish women taking German husbands by 10,617 to 6,020. In other words: assimilation was more than just a cultural attitude for many young Jews-especially young Jewish men-who documented their sense of belonging to German culture in their marital behaviour. Changes in reproductive behaviour always have long term effects, not only on the overall numerical strength of a population, but also on its structure and inner composition. The Jewish population of Germany in 1933 was characterised by a disproportionately large percentage of old people. 40% of the Jews were over 45 years old, compared with only 28% of the general population 4 . Since old people are usually more dependent upon welfare assistance than younger wage-earners and since welfare agencies often rely in the final analysis on contributions front, or taxes on, the wages and profits of younger people, the seniority-bulge in the demographic structure of German Jewry would have raised difficult challenges for the Jewish welfare agencies even without Nazi strictures. As a result of the mass-emigration of (mostly) younger Jews, which the Nazis provoked and partially encouraged, the age-structure of those Jews remaining in Germany, became an increasingly heavy burden for the Jewish welfare organisations. For reasons, which are still not entirely clear, the Jewish population in Germany at the beginning of the Third Reich also included a disproportionately large number of women. Among the population of Germany as a whole there were 106 women for every 100 men; among Jews there were 109 women for every 100 men 5 . Part of the explanation, of course, lies in the already mentioned greater inclination of Jewish men to marry across confessional lines; but other factors must have been at work as well. The implications for welfare work are obvious, given the greater likelihood of women- and especially older women- to require social assistance than men. A further important characteristic of German Jewry in 1933 was its extraordinary degree of urbanisation. Over 70% of German Jews lived in large urban areas. Greater Berlin alone had a Jewish population of over 160,000. What this meant for Jewish welfare services was "that all common institutions and organisations of Prussian and German Jewry were directly or indirectly dependent upon the financial support of the Berlin community." 6 In absolute size, the Berlin Jewish community was unparalleled, but in percentage of municipal population it was surpassed by the Jewish community of Frankfurt a. Main (4.7% to 3.8%). 7 Thus Jews were highly concentrated and highly visible in certain urban areas. The approximately 20% of German Jewry which belonged to the category of Ostjuden - emigrants from Eastern Europe - was even more densely concentrated in large urban areas than the more assimilated, old-line German Jews (the so-called Reich German Jews) 8 Urbanisation, too, was exacerbated during the Third Reich and presented Jewish welfare agencies with headaches such as absorbing new people in the urban areas while at the same time trying to maintain exanguinating smaller communities. According to Max P. Birnbaum, "abnormal distribution of population and abnormal occupational structure went hand in hand" 9 . The following table comparing the occupational distribution of Jews and the general population in Germany in 1933 shows the extent to which Jews were concentrated in certain areas of the economy: Table I Occupational Distribution of Jews and General Population in Germany 1933 occupation Jews (%) General pop. (%) I. Trade and transportation 61.3 18.4 2. Industry and handicrafts 23.1 40.4 3. Public and private services 12.5 8.4 4. Agriculture and forestry industries 1.7 28.9 5. Domestic services 1.4 3.9 100.0 100.0 Source: Herbert Kahn, Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Schichtung der Juden in Deutschland', in Juedische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik, Berlin 1936, p. 100. This concentration made it relatively easy for the Nazis to introduce discriminatory measures against Jews - or to exclude them altogether - without undue damage to the functioning of the economic mechanism 10 . It also meant that Jewish welfare organisations would face a very difficult task of occupational "re-education" under the conditions of the Third Reich . The specific occupational distribution of German Jews made them particularly vulnerable to the dislocations of the inflation at the beginning of the Weimar Republic and the depression at the end. Many Jews, having been ravaged by the Great Depression, were already in desperate economic straits when the Nazis came to power. However, Jews - in contrast to most other residents of Germany - did not benefit from the relative stabilisation of the German economy which was achieved during 1933-1935; instead they were increasingly subjected to boycotts, terror, discrimination and harassment. Thus their economic plight merely turned from bad to worse. Indicative of how bad it was, however, even before turning worse, is the fact that the Zentralstelle fuer Juedische Darlehnskassen E. V , an agency designed to stimulate loans at favourable conditions to support Jewish economic activity, was established in Berlin on 12th January 1933, more than two weeks before Hitler came to power 11 . Jewish Welfare Work after 1933: Organisation, Assumptions, Problems Jewish welfare experts recognised that the Nazi take-over confronted German Jewry with grave challenges; but it is understandable that most seemed to underestimate the profound changes which would be imposed upon Jewish welfare work by the regime. The lengths to which the Nazis would eventually go in their effort to destroy the Jews simply seemed inconceivable - even to notorious pessimists - in 1933. In a wide-ranging article from 1933 Max Kreutzberger tried to sort out the new agenda facing Jewish welfare work as a result of the political transformation of that year. His observations provide interesting insights into the mixture of ideas circulating at the time. Kreutzberger correctly believed that the first months of the Nazi regime were of "revolutionary" significance ("umstuerzende und umwaelzende Bedeutung") for Jewish social work 12 . The process of exclusion of Jews from the German economy could no longer be overlooked; and yet, Kreutzberger clearly did not suspect how much worse things would become. With respect to traditional welfare work, he wrote that not everything, which had been inherited from the past, could be maintained under the new conditions. The resources available to Jews should be concentrated in those areas which were "vital and necessary for life" 13 . Kreutzberger believed that special attention should be paid to the areas of occupational re-structuring and emigration, especially to Palestine. In this he was rather far-sighted, since the majority of German Jews at this point was clearly not interested in emigration. Of the 37,000 Jews who emigrated during the first year (the largest single group of any subsequent year during the Third Reich), many did so for political rather than "racial" reasons; and many returned after the "taming" of the SA in 1934 under the mistaken impression that legality had been restored in Germany 14 . It is a tribute to many Jewish welfare officials within and without Germany that they so quickly decided to support emigration. However, their perspicacity in this regard was not always matched by realistic assessments of the possibilities for welfare work within Germany. Kreutzberger, for example, assumed that the economic plight of a large portion of the Jewish middle class could be improved by Jewish lending organisations and employment agencies. This was wishful thinking. Even the Jewish lending institutes, which existed prior to, 1933 were described by Shalom Adler-Rudel as often having been little more than disguised relief institutions 15 . Impoverished older Jews who were in economic difficulty were granted loans which were not always repaid, but which did spare the recipients the indignity of having to apply for public welfare assistance. With the increasing pauperisatioof Jews after 1933, newly ruined members of the liberal professions and other formerly solvent persons joined the traditional clientele of the Jewish lending institutes. Over 12,000 persons received a total of RM 4,350,000 from the Jewish lending institutes from 1933 to the autumn of 1938 - before these institutes were liquidated at the "suggestion" of the Nazis on 1st January 1939 16 . This infusion of capital was clearly not adequate to reverse the economic destruction of the Jews which was intended by Nazi policy, and it is unlikely that any conceivable amount of money could have achieved that goal. It was assumed that the public (i. e.: state) welfare system in Germany would continue to guarantee a minimal level of support for Jews, so that the institutions of Jewish welfare could concentrate their energies on forms of "productive" assistance, rather than on mere maintenance. The demand was raised that the Jewish welfare organisations "... take the standpoint that as a rule the rates of support given by state welfare agencies must be sufficient" 17 . As it turned out, Jews were, in the final analysis, excluded from the benefits of public welfare, thus being left to the mercies of the Jewish organisations. Interestingly, however, Jews did have the same legal rights to public welfare as Germans until after 1938 18 . But the Nazis often found ways of excluding needy Jews from public welfare benefits long before the law was changed 19 . In the first place, enthusiastic Nazi officials at the local level could simply refuse to grant Jews the welfare benefits to which they were entitled. If no protest was lodged, that was the end of the matter. In the early years of the Third Reich protests were often successful 20 ; but as time went on, it transpired that Nazi policy was to exclude Jews from all forms of state and quasi-state benefits and to make their own efforts at self-help as difficult as possible. The financial basis of Jewish welfare work was laid by the system of community taxation rather than voluntary contributions. In Prussia, the so-called "Jewish Law" (Judengesetz) of 1847 granted the various Jewish communities the right to tax their members and the autonomy to spend the proceeds as they saw fit. Different Jewish communities varied greatly in their level of prosperity, their tax rate and the structure of their expenditures. Efforts had been made to find a way to equalise burdens and benefits somewhat, but they had not achieved the hoped for results 21 . The Nazis did not formally change this system when they came to power; they did however change it indirectly through the pauperisation of the Jews. A direct Nazi attack against Jewish welfare work was, however, mounted in the very first year of the Third Reich. The Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der deutschen Juden, a co-ordinating agency of Jewish welfare work, which had been founded in 1917, was excluded from the national council of private welfare agencies. This policy of isolation and stigmatisation would eventually be applied to all types of Jewish welfare work. However, for the time being, the Jews could consider themselves fortunate in this regard: at least their main welfare organisation was allowed to exist (two other large welfare organisations had been disbanded by the Nazis). Having been excluded from the national German family of welfare organisations, Jewish welfare work because even more strongly anchored in the life of the Jewish community than before. On 13th April 1933, leading Jewish organisations in Germany founded the Zentralausschuss fuer Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee for Help and Construction). The Zentralausschuss brought together not just the leading Jewish organisations in a visible form of Cupertino, but also greatly broadened the scope of work previously performed by the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle. Men such as Leo Baeck provided symbolic leadership as the historically fragmented elements of German Jewry, under the pressure of adversity, began searching for greater unity in areas of practical interest 22 . On 17th September 1933, Cupertino among the leading Jewish organisations in Germany reached a new level with the founding of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden. (The name was later changed at Nazi insistence to Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland). On 1st April 1935, the Zentralausschuss was integrated into the Reichsvertretung. Although the expanded Reichsvertretung had a broad spectrum of welfare and educational activities, its main emphasis lay in helping young Jews to emigrate from Germany. The relative weight of the various activities supported by the Reichsvertetung is reflected in the budget of the organisation. According to the budget for 1936, the Reichsvertretung spent a total of RM 4,296,565.15 that year. Of this sum, RM 1,461,462.92 was spent for "migration". This is only slightly less than the amount spent for economic aid (RM 1.085,876.05) and welfare work (RM 426,504.17) together. No less interesting than the distribution of the revenues is their origin. Only RM 1,691,119.55 was raised in Germany; RM 2,123,125.64 came in the form of grants from abroad (the rest was sheer deficit). The American Joint Distribution Committee alone sent the equivalent of RM 1,188,884.82 to the Reichsvertretung during 1936 23 . The Jewish Winterhilfe The Juedische Winterhilfe (JWH) was certainly the most extensive effort of the Jewish community in Germany to assuage the pressing material needs of impoverished Jews remaining in the Reich. Inasmuch as Nazi officials also conducted their own Winterhilfswerk as one of the most visible annual preoccupations of the regime, the whole area of winter relief provides interesting material for an examination of the extent to which formally similar welfare programs can be diametrical in content. The idea of a nation-wide campaign for winter relief was not a Nazi invention. The first large-scale campaign for winter relief was organised by Weimar authorities for the winter of 1931/1932. Some Nazi organisations joined in the campaign at the local level, but the party as a whole condemned the effort 24 . Jewish welfare organisations, on the other hand, participated in the original winter relief campaigns. The winter relief efforts during the twilight of the Weimar Republic did not live up to expectations. After total collections of about one hundred million RM in 1931/1932, the yield declined in the next year to merely ninety million RM. Despite a rise in purchasing power, this result marked an absolute reduction of public support at a time when the need for winter relief was more urgent than ever. However, despite such a disappointing track record, the Nazis recognised the potential propaganda value of a national winter relief campaign soon after coming to power. Dropping earlier hostility to such programs, Goebbels announced with characteristic modesty in September of 1933 that the government planned a new winter relief action, which would be "unparalleled" in the history of mankind 25 . The winter relief campaign was given the pompous name Winterhilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes (WHW) and rapidly advanced to one of the most distinctive features of each autumn and winter in Nazi Germany. During the first two winters of the Third Reich, the WHW was still supposed to provide relief to "non-Aryans" and to accept donations from them. It is not clear whether this was because of uncertainty or differences of opinion among the Nazi leadership or whether mere time lag was involved. In any event, as was often the case in Nazi Germany, anti-Semitic zealots in many local areas took matters into their own hands even without "legal" authorisation. Already in 1934/1935 needy Jews were excluded from winter relief in Hessen, Bavaria and the Palatinate, and donations from individual Jews were not accepted either in these areas. It is reported that in some instances negotiations with national officials led to a change in such behaviour at the local level 26 . In 1935, after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, the situation changed rapidly. Jews were completely excluded from the WHW - both as recipients and as donors (however, donations were still expected and often even extorted from "Jewish" businesses and corporations) 27 . Jews were allowed to organise their own Juedische Winterhilfe (JWH). The process of exclusion and ghettoisation mandated by the Nuremberg Laws now assumed new substance, even in the area of winter relief. The Jewish organisations reacted quickly to the challenge of setting up their own winter relief network. The Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle was given primary responsibility for the organisation of the Jewish effort. An appeal for support of the Jewish Winterhilfe was widely circulated in the Jewish press during October 1935, reflecting the willingness of a broad spectrum of Jewish organisations to cooperage on this issue. The goals of the JWH were summarised in the appeal as follows: "No hungry member of our community can be allowed to be without food this winter, no needy member without clothing, nobody without shelter! Our Jewish community (Gemeinde) and the broader Jewish communio n (Gemeinschaft) in Germany, which have been left to their own devices this year in the struggle against the need and cold of winter, will abandon nobody! However, everyone must demonstrate support of his communion through active commitment of his person and his financial resources!" 28 The first campaign for Jewish Winterhilfe was opened by a public meeting in Berlin on 20th October 1935. Leo Baeck, the president of the Reichsvertretung and Heinrich Stahl, the chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin explained the rationale behind the effort and tried to generate enthusiasm for it 29 . The guidelines for the Jewish Winterhilfe were drawn up by the Z entralwohlfahrtsstelle and required confirmation by the Reich commissioner ( Reichsbeauftragter) of the WHW, a relatively unknown Nazi hack named Erich Hilgenfeldt. Confirmed by Hilgenfeldt on 9th October 1935, the guidelines for the Jewish Winterhilfe resembled those governing the WHW except, of course, that the target group was different. The execution of the JWH was the responsibility of the Jewish communities and the provincial Jewish welfare organisations. As can be seen in the first yearly report on the JWH, from the very beginning no Jewish community in Germany failed to take part in the effort 30 . The JWH was supposed to be financed according to the same general principles, which governed the WHW. People with jobs and business people were expected to make contributions, collections in money and kind were carried out, benefit concerts and exhibitions were organised. The proceeds from these activities were then distributed among the poor who suffered particular hardship during the hard months of the German winter. During the winter of 1935/1936 approximately 83,761 persons received help from the JHW; since approximately 409,000 Jews were still living in Germany at this time, it can be concluded that around 20% of the Jewish population was living in rather severe deprivation. However, the statistics indicate that the distribution of deprivation among Jews was very uneven throughout the country. There were small Jewish communities in which up to 84% of the members were already needy. On the other hand, as the following table shows, only 14% of the Jews in Wuerttemberg required support at this time and the percentage of needy Jews varied widely in different parts of the Reich 31 . The highest percentages of needy Jews were generally found in those areas with the largest proportion of 0stjuden 32 . Table II Absolute Number and Percentage of Needy Jews in Various Areas of the German Reich, 1934/1935 area absolute number percentage of needy Jews Baden 3,063 18.12% Bayern 4,397 15.77% Hanse-Staedte 3,657 20.40% Hessen 3,263 24.43% Lippe-Detmold 69 18.16% Mecklenburg 143 23.83% Sachsen 3,272 18.84% Wuerttemberg 1,272 14.07% Berlin 29,986 19.72% Brandenburg 1,082 19.67% Grenzmark Posen-Westpreussen 635 33.85% Hannover-Braunschweig 2,114 20. 04% Hessen-Nassau 8,166 20. 96% Hohenzollern 55 22.54% Ost- und Westpreussen 1,577 24.55% Pfalz (Rheinpfalz) 936 16.57% Pommern 1,159 24.77% Rheinprovinz 8,421 20.90% Saarland 277 30.74% Sachsen-Anhalt 1,105 22.25% Suedsachsen-Thueringen 615 27.63% Schlesien 5,463 25.45% Schleswig-Holstein 985 24.20% Westfalen 3,629 22.55% Source: Rechenschaftsbericht der Juedischen Winterhilfe 1935/1936 Berlin [n. D.], p. 9. A significant number of needy persons found their first contact with the Jewish welfare organisations through the JWH. Of the 29,486 persons helped by the JWH in Berlin, 7,946 had their first contact with a Jewish welfare organisation. Some examples from other German cities were: in Mannheim 86 persons out of a total of 345, in Koeln 225 out of 2,535, in Stettin 117 out of 219. The JWH was an important conduit between the Jewish organisations and newly destitute Jews throughout the country. The operations of the JWH were carried out by a small paid staff assisted by numerous volunteers, many of whom were themselves unemployed; in this the JWH resembled the WHW. Approximately 13,000 volunteers worked on the first JWH. The appeals to German Jewry for support were not without resonance: in the first winter of the JWH RM 3,644,000 were raised. This meant that slightly more than RM 43 per needy person were available for winter relief viewed another way, this sum averages out to nearly RM 9 per potential donor. A comparison with the results of the WHW illuminates interesting differences between the two programs. However, before one compares such diametrical organisations as the WHW and the JWH, some words of caution are in order with regard to the financial claims of the WHW 33 . According to Nazi accounts, total collections of the WHW for 1935/1936 amounted to RM 364,500,000. Given a population of the Reich of nearly 65 million (not counting Jews), the yield of the WHW was thus less than RM 6 per potential donor. This performance gap is remarkable. Not only was the JWH restricted to collections among an increasingly disadvantaged and oppressed community, it certainly could not make use of the subtle and not-so-subtle political leverage available to the Nazi WHW. Only a few of the advantages available to the Nazis in their fundraising effort can be mentioned here. Party and government officials were required to participate in the WHW; often they were allowed to provide "voluntary" services to the WHW as part of their paid duties. In the early stages of the Third Reich, SA-led mobs could extort contributions from unwilling Volksgenossen with complete impunity. Later, uniformed troops - from the Wehrmacht and also from the SS - were deployed as "collectors", and the substantial resources of these organisations were otherwise placed at the disposal of the WHW. Various government records were made available to WHW authorities so as to allow accurate assessment both of need and of ability to donate. Government agencies such as the police and the tax collection bureaucracy were used to pressure reluctant donors towards greater generosity. Contributions were sometimes withheld from pay cheques without authorisation from the employees concerned. Welfare recipients who were required to perform certain tasks as a condition of their relief (Pflichtarbeiter) were often compelled to work as "volunteers" for the WHW. There were labour agreements in which low-paid workers were formally exempted (!) from their "voluntary" contributions to the WHW. People considered deficient in their support of the WHW were publicly pilloried, paraded through the streets, beaten, imprisoned and even subjected to "re-education" in labour camps. Government contracts were made conditional upon an "appropriate" degree of WHW support by companies. The post offices sold commemorative welfare stamps at a mark-up for the benefit of the WHW. The man with final responsibility for the WHW was none other than Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment; thus it is no surprise that the public was rather systematically "enlightened" about the importance of the WHW 34 . All these and many other forms of coercion and/or influence were available to the Nazi WHW but of course, not to the JWH. If anything, the JWH could expect mainly obstruction and hostility from the various levels of government and the NSDAP. Still, approximately 63% of the money available to the JWH came from sources with a strong resemblance to taxation: 1) contributions withheld on a pro-rated basis from paycheques and 2) contributions from the self-employed based on the amount of income tax they paid. Approximately 23% of the total money came from cash contributions; the rest came together in the form of contributions in kind and proceeds from benefits 35 . But there can be little doubt that an enhanced feeling of solidarity among Jews in Germany was the key to the relative success of the JWH. Max Nussbaum, rabbi of the Berlin Jewish community 1935-1940 reflected on how adversity can strengthen a community's commitment and sense of purpose: "It was a strange life we led, those last years in Germany: a very poor like in many ways, poor in material blessings, restricted in all activities other than Jewish, deprived of basic rights and freedoms, - a life of fear and trepidation, surrounded by a terror that grew more intense every day. And yet, there was a redeeming feature: we lived a fox-hole existence, and like among soldiers in the trenches there arose in us a feeling of mutual responsibility as it had never existed within German Jewry before this time. Nourished by an ever deepening Jewish consciousness, human relations became warmer, friendships deeper, and our impoverished lives richer." 36 There is no evidence that all the yearly hoopla in connection with the (German) WHW ever significantly increased the sense of Volksgemeinschaft i n Germany. In fact, there is some reason to suspect that disgust with Nazi arm-twisting, rumours of corruption and a diminished sense of economic urgency may have greatly reduced the propaganda value of the WHW after the first two years of Third Reich. It is ironic that just the opposite appears to be the case with respect to the JWH. The JWH certainly reflected (and may also have contributed to) a growing sense of Gemeinschaft among German Jewry. In the winter of 1936/1937 the number of needy persons helped by the JWH declined slightly to 82,067, however, when allowance is made for emigration and a high death rate among German Jews, it becomes clear that the rate of destitution among the Jewish population was still growing. Despite unfavourable economic and political conditions, the yield of the 1936/1937 campaign with RM 3,630,000 was nearly as high as the year before 37 . For the winter of 1936/1937 the JWH was obliged to assume new responsibilities. Its purview was now broadened to include not only Jews as defined by the Reeds Citizenship Law of 15th September 1935, but also "... families of mixed marriages between Germans and Jews... if the head of the household is a Jew in the sense of the aforementioned law" 38 . As we have already seen, by the end of the Weimar Republic nearly four out of ten Jews who married were taking German partners; the statistics show that marriages between Jewish men and German women were much more common than between German men and Jewish women 39 . Thus it can be assumed that the new burden placed upon the JWH was not negligible. Figures from Hamburg are suggestive: of 208 new applications for support involving 535 persons received there by the JWH in 1936/1937, 150 applications involving 457 persons were from mixed families in which the wife was non-Jewish 40 . Such cases had previously been handled by the general WHW. Even in the winter 1937/1938, RM 3,316,000 could still be raised by the JWH. Although the number of recipients declined to 77,231, the amount of support given to individuals had to be reduced. However, measured against the declining Jewish population in Germany, the contribution to the JWH pro potential donor actually increased. Indications are that, of the Jewish population financially able to contribute to the JWH, 83% actually did so. During the fateful winter of 1938/1939 the percentage of destitute persons rose to around 25% of the total Jewish population. By this time, 70,682 of 286,667 Jews still living in Germany required winter assistance. In Wuerttemberg the rate of destitution had more than doubled since the first JWH campaign of 1935/ 1936; in most other areas large increases were noted as well 41 . The JWH was caught in a scissors of increased need on the one side and dwindling resources on the other from which there was no escape. Conclusion In closing I would like to return to the question of why we, at a German School of Social Work, are interested in the history of Jewish self-help efforts during tile Third Reich. Certainly it is important to investigate this matter in order to round off our understanding of welfare work in modern society, but much more than that is at stake. I was born after the end of the Second World War. The events of the Third Reich not only seem distant to my personal realm of experience, I have seen how difficult it is for the younger generation of scholars in Germany to try to piece together the elements of Jewish life which were so brutally torn asunder by the Nazis. Moreover, the students we are teaching today at the colleges and universities in West Germany are even farther removed from tile events and personalities of the Third Reich. Most of them were born in the mid-1960s - in a prosperous, democratic country which had already drawn a veil of shame and guilt around a mysterious "Jewish problem" which no longer seems of much relevance to life in Germany. I have often experienced expressions of boredom and discontent on the part of young German students when the subject of the destruction of the Jews is brought up in lectures or seminars. And this, it seems to me, is precisely the problem: Whereas the destruction of the Jews is often alluded to - albeit usually in a highly ritualised and sanitised fashion - the rich tradition of German Jewry is, in fact, in the process of being forgotten in Germany. If anything, young Germans are usually confronted with the death of German Jewry, not with its life. I think that it behoves all of us to do what we can to be sure that the Nazis do not succeed, even from beyond the grave, in working their wicked will of extirpating the Jewish influence from Germany. Many of the scholars present at this conference have contributed mightily to the preservation of the heritage of German Jewry. And the achievements of the Leo Baeck Institute in this regard are internationally known and respected. Yet, I am still troubled. We must find ways of making the results of scholarship on German Jewry available and accessible to the younger generation of reasonably well-educated Germans. This is the only way that the moral and historical wasteland can be reclaimed, which was bequeathed to them by the madmen who ran their country for twelve years, a generation before they were born. In this sense I salute the Leo Baeck Institute for bringing this conference to Berlin. And I salute those of you who came to this city despite its central position in some of your most painful memories. The history of the Jews in Germany is not merely an exercise in antiquarianism or moral piety. The catastrophic failure of the Germans to find a modus vivendi with their - and I think this is the proper word -Jewish compatriots still casts a long shadow over the German future, which will inevitably be multi-ethnic. Some of the groups, which must now be accommodated in West Germany, are not nearly as close to German culture as German Jews once were. The resources of the past are thus indispensable for the future of this country. I hope that we will be able to draw upon the scholarship, wisdom and friendship of the participants in this conference in our efforts to recover as much as possible of that which was so nearly destroyed in Germany. References: 1. The author is indebted to Rolf Landwehr, one of the knowexperts on modern German welfare institutions, for critical assistance in the preparation of this paper. Interested readers are also referred to his essay on Jewish social welfare in modern Germany: Zur Geschichte der juedischen Wohlfahrtspflege in Deutschland', in Wolfgang Dressen (ed.), Juedisches Leben , (Berlin: Museumspaedagogischer Dienst), Berlin 1985, pp. 44¯53. 2. Rolf Landwehr and Ruedeger Baron (eds.), Geschichte der Sozialarbeit , Weinheim-Basel 1983. 3. Ernst Kahn, Ein historischer Wendepunkt im Judentum', in Juedische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik (JWSP), 1933/1934, p. 2. 4. Albert J. Phiebig, Die Bedeutung der Volkszaehlung von 1933 fuer die juedische Sozialarbeit', JWSP, 1936, p. 24. 5. Ibid. , p. 25. 6. Max P. Birnbaum, Die juedische Bevoelkerung in Preussen, Verteilung und wirtschaftliche Struktur im Jahre 1931', in Herbert A. Strauss, Kurt R. Gorssmann (eds.), Gegenwart im Rueckblick. Festgabe fuer die Juedische Gemeinde zu Berlin 25 Jahre nach dem Neubeginn , Heidelberg 1970, p. 126. 7. Ibid. , p. 118. 8. A. J. Phiebig, Die Glaubensjuden im Deutschen Reich', JWSP, 1937, pp. 96¯97. 9. Birnbaum, Bevoelkerung', loc. cit. , p. 123. 10.S. Adler-Rudel, Juedische Selbsthilfe unter dem Naziregime 1933¯1939. Im Spiegel der Berichte der Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland , Tuebingen 1974 (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 29), p. 7. 11. Ibid. , p. 127. 12.JWSP, 1933/1934, p. 89. 13. Ibid. , p. 93. 14.Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews 1933¯1945, Toronto etc. 1981, pp. 232¯233. 15.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , p. 127. 16. Ibid. 17.JWSP, 1933/1934, p. 132. 18.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , pp. 159¯160. 19.JWSP, 1937, p. 143. 20.JWSP, 1933/1934, p. 136. 21.JWSP, 1936, pp. 29¯30. 22.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , pp. 10¯11. 23.American Joint Distribution Committee, European Executive Offices, Jewish Constructive Work in Germany during 1936 , Paris 1937, p. 32. 24.David Kramer, Das Wohlfahrtswesen in der NS-Zeit', Soziale Arbeit (Berlin), Juni 1983, p. 298. 25.Thomas E. de Witt, The Struggle against Hunger and Cold: Winter Relief in Nazi Germany, 1933¯1939', Canadian Journal of History/Annales Canadiennes d'Histoire , p. 362. 26.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , p. 162. 27. Ibid. 28.Rechenschaftsbericht der Juedischen Winterhilfe 1935/1936 , Berlin [n.D.], p. 1. 29. Gemeindeblatt der Juedischen Gemeinde zu Berlin , 25. Jg., Nr. 41 (13th October 1935), p. 1. 30. Rechenschaftsbericht , p. 1. 31.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , p. 163. 32. Rechenschaftsbericht , p. 8. 33.The financial claims of the WHW should, in fact, be viewed with some scepticism. Accounting within the WHW ¯ as within the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV) as a whole ¯ was purposely vague. Nazi chieftains ¯ including Hitler personally ¯ used welfare funds for a variety of projects which had little to do with philanthropy. E.g., money siphoned off from the WHW was used to build some of the large structures at the site of the Nuremberg party parade grounds; see: T. de Witt, The Nazi Party and Social Welfare, 1919¯1939 , Ph. D. Diss., University of Virginia 1972, p. 218. After the war, NSDAP treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz complained to American interrogators that his efforts to oversee expenditures of the WHW and the NSV were frustrated by Martin Bormann. Schwarz thought it entirely possible that monies from the NSV and WHW may have gone into a slush fund which the Party Chancellery used for its own purposes; see National Archives MF T¯175: pp. 0332¯0336. One final bizarre footnote on the whole topic of Nazi hanky-panky with welfare funds: most of the financing for one of the Third Reich's most crackbrained schemes of racial engineering, the Lebensborn e.V. , came in fact from misappropriated welfare funds. Historians have generally referred to the Lebensborn as an SS organisation. This was no doubt true, in that it was conceived of by Heinrich Himmler as a source of 'racially valuable' children for adoption by SS-families which had not fulfilled their obligation of producing at least four children for the Fuehrer (who, by the way, was himself a little deficient n the procreation front). Most SS-men also performed miserably in this area: by the end of 1939, SS families had an average of only 1.1 children; see Heinz Hoehne, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Die Geschichte der SS , 2 vols., Frankfurt a. Main-Hamburg, 1969, II, p. 156. In any case: from the point of view of financing, the Lebensborn was anything but an SS undertaking. Only 8,000 of the 238,159 members of the regular SS paid dues to the organisation. In 1938 Lebensborn counted in all only 13,000 dues-paying members, who together contributed a paltry 27,000 RM for the year. This is where the NSV came in. Erich Hilgenfeldt ¯ yes, the same man who oversaw the Jewish Winterhilfe from the Nazi side ¯ contributed 1,000,000 RM of German welfare funds to the Lebensborn in 1936 and 1937, and pledged 700,000 RM each year for 1938 and 1939 as well. The point is that one must be very wary of Nazi claims in the area of welfare financing. And yet, even if one takes Nazi accounts at face value, the results of the German Winterhilfswerk do not measure up to those of the Jewish Winterhilfe . 34.De Witt, Nazi Party, op. cit. , pp. 184¯242. 35. Rechenschaftsbericht , p. 4. 36.Max Nussbaum, Ministry under Stress. A Rabbi's Recollections of Nazi Berlin 1935¯1940', in Gegenwart im Rueckblick, op. cit. , p. 239. 37.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , p. 164. 38.Erna Magnus, in JWSP, 1937, p. 83. 39.Ernst Kahn, in JWSP, 1933/1934, p. 2. 40.E. Magnus, in JWSP, 1937, p. 84. 41.Adler-Rudel, Selbsthilfe, op. cit. , pp. 164¯165. Back to the top