Emigration from the Third Reich (1933-1945)

The last and most important chapter in the history of the German Jewish immigration to the United States started with the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. The state pol­icy of Nazi Germany was to ruthlessly encourage and accelerate Jewish emigration.

The Third Reich inflicted an escalating series of unprecedented blows on its Jews dur­ing the first years, from the exclusion of “non-Aryans” (Jews) from an ever-growing circle of professions, positions, and associations starting in 1933, to the endorsement of the racial Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which deprived German Jews of their citizenship and outlawed marriage and sexual relations between Jews and “Aryans.” This unbearable situ­ation in the first seven years of Nazi rule generated a relatively steady stream of emigrants. During these years a significant change occurred in the consciousness and self-confidence of the Jews and their vision of the future: Whereas in its early months, Nazi rule was per­ceived by most Jews as provisional, in the following years most would accept that, in the long run, Jews had no future in Germany. Accordingly, Jewish organizations and leader­ship, both in Germany and in the free world, embraced a policy aimed at preparing the prospective emigrants and rendering this almost-inevitable emigration as orderly as possi­ble. This was conducted without any panic: one envisaged a process of many decades, and thus in the mid-1930s a tenth of the Jewish emigrants had even returned to Germany.

Historian Herbert Strauss described German Jewish immigrants as “basically urban, an aging and overaged group, concentrated in commerce and selected professions” (Strauss 1980, 325). This professional profile was molded to a large extent by Nazi perse­cution policy in the 1930s that initially focused on select professions (e.g., Jewish civil ser­vants, academics, lawyers) earlier than on others (e.g., big business) out of pragmatic con­siderations. The need for an affidavit from American friends and relatives sustained the dominance of southern and western Germans among the Central European Jewish emi­grants to the United States. Compared to other destinations for Jewish emigration from the Reich, emigration to the United States seems to have included a larger percentage of entire families.

In 1938 a new Nazi policy turned this stream of emigrants to a wave of refugees. Fol­lowing the unparalleled actions of the SS in brutally forcing Jews from newly annexed Austria, Nazi Germany redefined its anti-Jewish policy, using unrestricted terror measures to force Jewish emigration from all over the country. This brutal policy reached new peaks at the end of 1938 with the October expulsion of 17,000 Polish-born Jews from Germany (October 28), and the Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) pogrom of November 9 and 10, during which synagogues all over Germany were demolished and set ablaze, as well as houses and enterprises of Jews. Hundreds of Jews were beaten, more than 90 mur­dered, and some 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps (Breitman and Kraut 1987, 53). At this stage, most German Jews wished to immigrate to nearly any place that would accept them.

American immigration policy remained strict all through these years, permitting but a small percentage of the fixed immigration quota and creating a years-long waiting list for American visas. According to the Hoover Directive, prospective immigrant affidavits from friends and family in the United States were needed under the LPC Clause.

During World War II, Nazi Germany moved from a policy of persecution to a policy of systematic murder. By late 1941—as Jewish emigration from the Reich was closed off

Number of German Immigrants, 1933-1944

Source: Straus, Herbert A.“The Immigration and Acculturation of the German Jew in the United States of America,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 16 (1971):68.

and the first deportations of Jews from the Reich were leaving to the camps and killing sites—most (around 60 percent) German Jews had already managed to emigrate (Rosen- stock 1956, 373).

In the summer of 1945, soon after the end of the war, there were some 100,000 Jew­ish survivors in Germany and Austria (Dinnerstein 1982, 24). By the end of 1946, their number rose to approximately 250,000 Jewish displaced persons (DPs), most of them of Eastern European descent (Dinnerstein 1982, 111,278). After the Holocaust they wished to rebuild their lives outside Europe—primarily in Palestine—but stayed in the central European DP camps until the gates of emigration opened. A directive by President Harry S. Truman provided very partial aid by enabling 28,000 of them (mostly German citizens) to enter the United States between May 1946 and June 1948. The solution to the refugees’ problem came with the establishment of the state of Israel (1948) and the implementa­tion of new U.S. immigration laws shortly thereafter. Some two-thirds immigrated to Is­rael, but a good third immigrated to the United States (Lavsky 1990, 377).

Physicist Albert Einstein, intellectual Hannah Arendt, novelist Franz Werfel, com­poser Arnold Schonberg, and future secretary of state Henry Kissinger are but a few ex­amples of the significant contribution of individual Jewish immigrants from the Third Reich to American life. At the same time, it is important to note the magnitude of Cen­tral European Jewry’s contribution in terms of the overall development of the American Jewish community. It was Central European Jews, wrote historian Naomi W. Cohen, “who laid the foundations of the modern American Jewish community. They set the in­stitutional framework and the codes of behavior that, with relatively few important qual­ifications, obtain today” (Cohen 1984, xi) on remained intact even decades after the Ger­man component became numerically minor among American Jews.

See also Antisemitism; B’nai B’rith; Einhorn, David; Einstein, Albert; Judaism, Reform (North America); Kissinger, Henry; Leeser, Isaac; Schiff, Jacob Henry; Schonberg, Arnold; Warburg, Felix Moritz; Wise, Isaac Mayer

References and Further Reading

Barkai, Avraham. Branching Out: German-Jewish Immigration to the United States 1820—1914. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1994.

Breitman, Richard D., and Alan M. Kraut. American Refugee Policy and European Jewry 1933—1945. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987.

Cohen, Naomi W Encounter with Emancipation: The German Jew in the United States 1830—1914. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984.

Diner, Hasia R. A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration 1820—1880. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1992.

Dinnerstein, Leonard. America and the Survivors of the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University, 1982.

Faber, Eli. A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654—1820. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Genizi, Haim. “New York Is Big—America Is Bigger: The Resettlement of Refugees from Nazism 1936—1945.” Jewish Social Studies 46 (Winter 1984): 61—72.

Gurock, Jeffrey S., ed. Central European Jews in America 1840—1880: Migration and Survival. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Lavsky, Hagit. “Displaced Persons, Jewish.” In Israel Gutman (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, vol. 1, 1990: 377-394.

Niederland, Doron. “Leaving Germany: Emigration Patterns of Jews and Non-Jews during the Weimar Period,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fur deutsche Geschichte 27 (1998): 169-194.

Rosenstock, Werner. “Exodus 1933-1939: A Survey of Jewish Emigration from Germany.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 1 (1956): 373-390.

Sarna, Jonathan D., ed. The American Jewish Experience: A Reader. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986.

Straus, Herbert A. “The Immigration and Acculturation of the German Jew in the United States of America.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 16 (1971): 63-94.

———. “Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses (I).” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 25 (1980): 313-361.

———. “Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses (II).” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 26 (1981): 343-409.

Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941—1945. New York: Pantheon, 1984.