Commenter “AesopFan” wrote this recently:
As Andrea Widburg posted recently at Bookworm Room, [liberal Jews in the US have] believed that their support for all the “catechism causes” of the left would give them some cover for being Jewish, but it didn’t.
The liberal Jews in 1930s Europe made the same mistake.
I’m a bit confused by that analogy, because liberal Jews in Europe wouldn’t have expected protection from the left in Europe during the 1930s, since the traditional left was being persecuted by the Nazis once the latter came to power. Unless you define Nazis themselves as “the left” (they had elements of both left and right as those sides are defined by Europe, but what they most had in common with the left was that they were statists), how could the more traditional left of Europe have protected the Jews when the left had trouble protecting themselves?:
In April 1933 communists, socialists, democrats, and Jews were purged from the German civil service, and trade unions were outlawed the following month. That July Hitler banned all political parties other than his own, and prominent members of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps.
However, at least early in the game, some German Jews apparently expected that their patriotism – for example, the fact that they had fought in WWI for Germany – might have protected them. But it is generally a myth that most German Jews didn’t see the terribly dangerous writing on the wall not long after the Nazis came to power, and certainly they saw it by the late 1930s.
I’ve written on this topic several times before, but I think it bears repeating. So please take a look at this post of mine, which has appeared already on this blog now and again over the years. There are other myths about the Jews of Europe, too, such as the idea that they didn’t resist going “meekly into the boxcars.”
If you study the history of what the Nazis actually did, they practiced all sorts of clever deceptions to make sure the people they were rounding up did not know what was happening and certainly didn’t know for sure. There were told they were being relocated, and to pack bags, and many believed them. The entire roundup apparatus was geared to maintaining the deception to the bitter end, including the false showers at the death camps, in order to forestall any chance of rebellion.
In addition, there were many women, children, and old people involved, and the Jewish populace, unlike that of the US, was not armed. In Germany, which had a registry of all gun owners, there were gun-confiscating surprise raids on Jews early on, and you can read more here about what was done by the Nazis to disarm the Jews. Furthermore – and this is also of the utmost importance to remember – where would the Jews have gone, even if they had been successful? Many of the Jews who did manage to flee without papers – and papers were very had to get – were turned back in droves, into the arms of the Nazis. Most of Europe would not accept them, nor would the US, and in the notorious White Paper of May, 1939 the British sharply limited Jewish immigration to Israel/Palestine.
As for other countries, the German blitzkrieg method of quickly conquering them left Jews there with little opportunity for escape. Recall, for example, that Anne Frank’s family had fled to Amsterdam from Germany back in 1934. But later the net closed quickly around them when the Netherlands was suddenly conquered, and they were trapped. This experience of fleeing to another European country erroneously assumed to be safe (The Netherlands, for example, had remained neutral during WWI) was a frequent occurrence for European Jews.
I can’t recall where I read the following – probably from various sources, almost certainly including Primo Levi – it’s not as though no one standing in line for deportation tried to resist. But those who did try to resist were shot on the spot or killed by guard dogs, and those people who were watching probably decided to take their chances with the unknown of deportation instead. By that time, many of them were also ill and weak and suffering from disease and malnutrition, having spent time in overcrowded ghettos created by the Nazis (see this) who gave them completely inadequate rations. The more able-bodied and young among them, however, sometimes joined partisan groups (for more information on Jewish partisans please see this). And most of you probably know about the heroic but doomed resistance of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
One likes to think there was a way out for those who didn’t – or mostly couldn’t – leave Europe early. But for most, it would have required 20/20 hindsight, perfect organization, knowledge, arms, good health, and a safe haven – none of which were possible for the remnant who had not been able to escape Germany earlier, and for the larger group in other countries in Europe. It is also not widely known how many Jews committed suicide rather than be taken to camps, but it happened quite frequently and is described by Victor Klemperer in his diaries from the Germany of the era.
[NOTE: Nothing here is an attempt to pick on AesopFan, who may indeed already know all of this. But I see misconceptions on this topic so often that I used AesopFan’s comment as a take-off point to discuss the issue.]
