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German Jewish organization pre WWII.
How two different Jewish organizations, aiming to keep German Jews in Germany as Germans, not only failed, but where detrimental to Jewish survival.
Thread.
How two different Jewish organizations, aiming to keep German Jews in Germany as Germans, not only failed, but where detrimental to Jewish survival.
Thread.
By the end of the 19th century there were about 50 antisemitic European parties. The German Jews, being the most thoroughly assimilated, felt their newly-won emancipation and rights as Germans in the newly-unified state, were threatened.
The Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens aka: Centralverein, C.-V.) (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith), was founded by Jewish intellectuals in 1893 in Berlin, with the aim of opposing the rise of antisemitism in the German Empire.
CV became one of the most important Jewish organisations of the pre-Holocaust age (by 1933 the C.V. had about 50,000 members in a community of about 600,000). Its charter stated: to achieve “the protection of the civil and social rights of the German Jews”.
"Deutschtum" and "Judentum" in the Ideology of the Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens 1893-1914.
- Germaness and Judaism/Jewishness was central to both the Jewish identity internally, as it was to Europeans/Germans perception of its Jewish community.
- Germaness and Judaism/Jewishness was central to both the Jewish identity internally, as it was to Europeans/Germans perception of its Jewish community.
The powerlessness of the C.V. against German antisemitism became especially clear during the 1914-1918 war. CV assumed that focusing on legal definitions, and refuting antisemitism would work in a society that was poisoned by political antisemitism long before Hitler.
Liberal and socialist party leaders feared being branded as “Jewish parties.” In the final years of the Weimar Republic, they included fewer and fewer Jewish candidates on their lists while bashfully addressing antisemitism with little more than set phrases.
Even within the liberal Deutsche Demokratische Partei, which received a considerable number of Jewish votes, there were complaints that their loss of votes in the final phase of the Republic was a result of their image as a “Jewish party.”
CV realized that opposing antisemitism was part of their fight against National Socialism, & they also realized that any kind of public participation of Jews in this fight would be counterproductive. They preferred to quietly support organizations fighting the NSDAP.
CV distributed brochures & flyers without mentioning names. This flyer is an exception though: it follows the old patterns of so-called apologetics. https://jewish-history-online.net/article/barkai-flyer-centralverein
In 1921, a new Jewish organization was established under the leadership of Max Naumann. Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (League of National German Jews), called for the elimination of Jewish ethnic identity through Jewish assimilation. This was their solution to antisemitism.
The association's official organ was the monthly Der nationaldeutsche Jude edited by Max Naumann. The magazine had a circulation of 6,000 in 1927.
Standing in opposition to Zionist groups and Jewish organizations such as CV.
Standing in opposition to Zionist groups and Jewish organizations such as CV.
Naumann declared in an interview that Nazi action against Jews was justified. He stated that patriotic German Jews did not want the support of foreign Side.
“Unwilling to slough off their oriental traits, they are a disturbing factor to us who are bound to the soil.”
“Unwilling to slough off their oriental traits, they are a disturbing factor to us who are bound to the soil.”
Naumann was one of the Jewish activists summoned to meet Göring on 25 March 1933, to help prevent a rally against Nazi antisemitism in New York. Naumann responded to Göring by producing a list of abuses by Nazis, & said there was nothing that they could do.
Despite the extreme patriotism of Naumann and his colleagues, the German government did not accept their goal of assimilation. The Association of German National Jews was declared illegal and dissolved on 18 November 1935. Naumann was arrested by the Gestapo the same day.
Until 1933, the C.V. also opposed Zionism, even more so than most Arabs in the early 20th century. It attacked Herzl as a dangerous utopian dreamer, effectively serving the interests of antisemites, for he allegedly aimed to give up Jewish emancipation and return to the ghetto.
Zionism, which created at least the possibility of Jewish self-defence against antisemitism, was rejected by most assimilated European Jews as it required that they give up their patriotism & acknowledge a shared national identity with people with whom they felt no affinity to.
Herzl’s view that antisemitism was ‘the force we need’ for a Jewish national revival was anathema to the assimilated German Jews represented by the C.V.
In Germany even after 1933, the C.V. feared that Zionism endangered the standing of German Jews as loyal patriots.
In Germany even after 1933, the C.V. feared that Zionism endangered the standing of German Jews as loyal patriots.
Only when the Nazis forced emigration to Palestine, C.V. began to accept cooperation. Even then, the C.V. viewed emigration as unthinking panic, Fixed in patriotic devotion to Germany, they opposed Zionism with almost the same vehemence with which they fought antisemitism.
Until the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the C.V., like other German Jewish communal organisations, aimed to support Jews to remain in Germany and to limit emigration. They issued declarations of loyalty to the Nazi regime.
Their leaders, including Zionists, tended to see mass emigration as an abdication of responsibility, a weakening in the Jewish struggle for equal rights, and even a betrayal of the Fatherland. Even Rabbi Leo Baeck did not call for emigration.
By 1942, German Jewry was destroyed and Zionism was adopted by most Jews & Jewish organisations, or at least was no longer vehemently opposed. When the full dimensions of the Holocaust became known, Zionism was accepted faute de mieux as the only political answer to antisemitism.
