Wilfrid Israel, born in London in 1899 to an English Jewess and a German Jew, enjoyed a very privileged existence growing up in Berlin, where he inherited the family business, the famous N. Israel department store, with its 2000 employees. Whilst conforming to family expectations, he entertained interests in socialist Zionism, pacifism and internationalism. During the war years he became a secret intermediary, the confidant of such major figures as Chaim Weizmann and Albert Einstein, as well as hundreds of others, for whom he was able to arrange escapes, on account of his dual nationality and familiarity with Gestapo extortion techniques. On a return flight from Portugal in 1943, where he was effecting the rescue of more Jewish refugees, he died when his plane was shot down by German fighter aircraft.
The Volksbund für Frieden und Freiheit e.V. was an anti DDR propaganda and news organisation. It was founded under secret circumstances on 29 August 1950 in Gasthof 'Zum Patzenhofer' in Hamburg. The initiative came from Franz Wilhelm Paulus (publisher of the Hamburger Allgemeine Zeitung) and the journalist 'Dr. Erwin Kohl' (cover name of the former Goebbels' assistant Dr Eberhard Taubert). A number of former functionaries in the Nazi propaganda apparatus were involved from the outset. The foundation of the organisation was also supported by the US secret service, CIC. The presidents of the VFF were from 1950 to 1951 Jürgen Hahn-Butry and from 1951 to 1966 Fritz Cramer.
Interradio AG was a holding company comprising numerous German-owned foreign broadcasting stations and was owned in equal share by the Nazi Foreign Affairs Department and the Propaganda Ministry. On 22 October 1941 it was merged with the Nazi radio monitoring service 'Seehaus' (named after the building in Berlin where it was located).
The NS Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude, the National Socialist Organisation Strength through Joy, came under the aegis of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, the national German labour organization. All members of the DAF were also members of the KdF, and as basically any worker was a part of the DAF, so too were they in the Kraft durch Freude. The KdF was essentially designed for the purpose of providing organised leisure for the German work force. The DAF calculated that the work year contained 8,760 hours of which only 2,100 were spent working, 2,920 hours spent sleeping, leaving 3,740 hours of free time. Thus the driving concept behind the KdF was organised 'relaxation for the collection of strength for more work.'
The KdF strived to achieve this goal of organised leisure by providing activities such as trips, cruises, concerts, and cultural activities for German workers. These events were specifically directed towards the working class, and it was through the KdF that the NSDAP hoped to bring to the 'common man' the pleasures once reserved only for the rich.
The collection was extracted from Polish archives in London. The precise details of the provenance precede each account (or group of accounts).
Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier was one of the founding fathers of the Federal Republic of Germany. A leading Christian Democrat during its first twenty years, he was president of the Bundestag from 1954-1969. A Protestant theologian, he came into conflict with Nazism in the 1930s and was among those arrested in the wake of an aborted attempt on the life of Hitler in 1944.
Gerstenmaier was born in Kirchenheim near Stuttgart, on August 25 1906. He left school at 14 and worked for 8 years as a clerk before embarking on studies in philosophy and theology at Tübungen University. His first clash with Nazism came in 1934 when he was arrested while still a student. His continued opposition to the regime cost him a teaching post at Berlin University two years later, and he turned to work in the Evangelical Church.
His post in the Church's foreign department enabled him to travel and make contact with various churchmen abroad during World War Two, and this later enabled him to accelerate the return of many POWs.
During the war he became a member of the Evangelical resistance group led by Graf Moltke which was involved in plotting against Hitler. After the failure of the assassination attempt on Hitler in June, 1944, Gerstenmaier was arrested and sentenced to seven years' hard labour, but was rescued by the advancing American army.
In the aftermath of the war he devoted his energies to the Evangelisches Hilfswerk, which, under his leadership, became a powerful Protestant welfare organisation in Germany. As an expert in church social work he also became the German delegate to the Ecumenical Church Council of Churches in Geneva.
With his election to the founding session of the Bundestag in 1949, however, he flung himself into the nascent political life of the new republic. He was a senior figure in the Christian Democrat Union and in 1954 became the first elected President (speaker) of the Bundestag. In January 1969 he resigned from the presidency. He died on 13 March 1986.
Lodz ghetto or the Ghetto Litzmannstadt was the second-largest ghetto established for Jews and Roma in German-occupied Poland. It was originally intended as a temporary gathering point for Jews but the ghetto became a major industrial centre, providing much needed supplies for Nazi Germany. Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until Aug 1944, when the remaining population was transported to Auschwitz. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated.
Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had run a Jewish orphanage before the war, was appointed 'Elder of the Jews' by the Nazis in 1939. He was a man of extraordinary energy and determination, who turned the ghetto into a hive of industry in the vain hope of securing the survival of most of its inhabitants by making them economically too valuable to the German war effort to be murdered. To achieve this aim, he agreed to the introduction and enforcement of a ruthless system of labour exploitation, a permanent state of hunger for most of his workers, and the creation of an utterly degraded class of Jewish collaborators and slave drivers. Having been responsible for the deportation of thousands of ghetto inmates to their deaths - which earned him the label 'collaborator' - Rumkowski was deported with his family to Auschwitz on 30 August 1944, where they were all murdered.
The League of Nations was an international organisation founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919-1920. The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global welfare.
Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc. was founded in New York by the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in 1947. The Commission was created in 1944 by the Conference on Jewish Relations, later known as the Conference on Jewish Social Studies. The historian Salo W Baron (1895-1989) was key player in all these organisations. He was also a close friend of the political theorist, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), whom he made executive director of the organisation - she is the author of some of the reports in this collection.
The organisation, which operated first from its base in Offenbach, later Wiesbaden, was entrusted with receiving, processing and distributing the considerable quantity of Jewish property, plundered by the Nazis. The property was classified according to origin and to type and wherever possible was restored to its original owners. Several hundred thousand books were distributed: 85% was shipped to Israel and to the USA to be allocated to institutions of Jewish learning. 8% was given to West European countries (half to Great Britain) and the remaining 7% was distributed to countries around the world. Other objects distributed included 1000 Torah scrolls to the Israel Ministry for Religious Affairs, 4000 ritual objects to Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem and archival material, chiefly from the Jewish communities in Germany, to the Israel Historical Society.
The Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (SD-RfSS, Security Service) was primarily the intelligence service of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Nazi Party. It was the first Nazi Party intelligence organisation to be established and was often considered a 'sister organization' with the Gestapo.
The Brussels Relief Committee was an organisation set up by the American Government to provide food aid to the people of Brussels during World War Two. Members include Mr Vhitlock, Honorary President and Millard K Shaler.
The Deutsche Arbeitsfront was founded on 10 May 1933 under the patronage of Hitler and directed by Robert Ley, Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP. It soon grew to be a giant bureaucratic machine with a membership of 25 million and staff of 40,000 with a considerable influence within the Nazi regime. Conceived as an alternative to trade unions, it was supposed to be representative of employers and employees alike. It became part of the NSDAP organisation in October 1934, having its base in Berlin and modelling its structure of Gaue and Kreise on the party.
Unknown
Lehrstrasse Prison was a prison in Berlin.
Einsatzgruppen (Special task forces) were paramilitary groups formed by Heinrich Himmler and operated by the SS before and during World War Two. They operated in the territories captured by the German armies during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Their principal task was to implement Hitler's 'final solution of the Jewish question' in the conquered territories.
This microfilm report detailing deportation to and conditions in Auschwitz- Birkenau, was written by two Slovakian prisoners who managed to escape. According to a preamble the authors withheld their names for reasons of security.
The author, Rolf Pakuscher, was the nephew of Frank Martin (formerly Martin F Salomon), a former Pioneers Corps comrade of the depositor. Pakuscher is described as being approximately 30 years of age in 1946, engaged to a young, non-Jewish woman.
The units involved were reserve Police Batallion 93; Police Batallion 322 and Reserve Police Batallion 109.
Hans Litten, the son of a Jewish father and a protestant mother was born in 1903 in Halle an der Saale. Despite his interest in art and music, he commenced his studies in law at the beginning of the 1920s. In 1928, having qualified, he began his career as a lawyer in Berlin. He worked closely with Ludwig Barbasch, lawyer for the 'Rote Hilfe', legal support group for the German Communist Party.
Litten became renowned for his defence of workers in the infamous 1931 'Edelpalast' trial, in which he sought to demonstrate how the deaths and injuries which occurred as the result of a group of Nazi stormtroopers attacking a gathering of workers, was the result of a deliberate policy of violence. He called Hitler as a witness in this trial.
On the night of 28 February 1933 he was one of the first to be arrested in a purge of political undesirables in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire. He was imprisoned in the following prisons and concentration camps: an SA Kaserne in Moabit, Sonnenberg, Esterwege, Lichtenburg, Buchenwald and Dachau. During this period he was tortured and he made several suicide attempts, finally succeeding on 5 February 1938 whilst in Dachau.
Throughout the period of his incarceration, his mother, Irmgard Litten, made every effort to get him released, writing to the Gestapo, the commandant of various camps, Göring, Hess all to no avail.
The Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda or Propagandaministerium) was the Nazi ministry dedicated to enforcing the Nazi ideology in Germany and regulating its culture and society. Founded on March 13 1933 by Adolf Hitler's new National Socialist government, the Ministry was headed by Dr Joseph Goebbels and was responsible for controlling the press and culture of Nazi Germany.
The Kulturbund Deutscher Juden was an organisation engaged in promoting culture and the arts among the Jews of Germany between 1933 and 1941. Its purposes were to enable the Jewish population to maintain a cultural life and to alleviate the distress of the thousands of Jewish theatrical artists and musicians who had been thrown out of their jobs when the Nazis came to power. The instigators were Kurt Baumann, a theatre director and Kurt Singer, a neurologist. The self-help organisation, which was funded by members' contributions, sought, in the first instance, to create work opportunities for the unemployed artists. The original title 'Kulturbund Deutscher Juden' had to soon be changed as a name containing the words 'German' and 'Jewish' was politically unacceptable.
After the initial foundation in Berlin, numerous branches emerged in other German towns and cities. By 1935 there were 36 regional and local 'Kulturbünde' (unions) with approximately 70,000 members. The individual branches were forced to affiliate to the 'Reichsverband jüdischer Kulturbünde in Deutschland' (Reich Assembly of Jewish cultural unions, RJK) by August 1935. The RJK was placed under the aegis of the 'Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda' (the Reich Ministry of Propaganda). The performances of these unions, which were censored and monitored by the Gestapo, had to be individually sanctioned by the 'Reichskulturwalter' (Reich Culture Chamber manager), Hans Hinkel. In order to facilitate the activities of the unions the RJK instituted self-censorship. In July 1937 there were 120 independent organisations, including synagogues and cultural groups united under the umbrella of the RJK.
Performances and events of the unions (above all in Berlin) took place on a daily basis. Between 1933-1935 the main venue was the Berliner Theater. The Hamburger Kulturbund was also very active. The programme included theatre and and opera performances, concerts, art, cabaret, film shows, lectures, and exhibitions. In order to ensure cultural segregation, non Jews could neither perform at nor attend these events. The works of German authors and composers could not be performed.
After the November pogrom of 1938 most unions were forced to close. Only the Berlin Kulturbund was given the permission by Joseph Goebbels, for propaganda reasons, to remain active. In 1939 the RJK was wound up and in its place the 'Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland e. V.', formed of the remnants of the Berlin Kulturbund, took responsibility for and organised all Jewish cultural performances thereafter. The emigration of many important Jewish artists had a detrimental effect on the quality and quantity of subsequent events. The union was finally closed down on 11 September 1941 by the Gestapo and many of its members and officials, including the founder, Kurt Singer, were deported and murdered.
Gerda Meyer (née Stein) left Prague by plane with 19 other Jewish children under the guardianship of Trevor Chadwick , who established a home for refugee children in Swanage, Dorset. Her parents, originally from Karlsbad, write to her from Prague and later (her father) from Lwow (Lemberg). Whilst his fate is not known - he was last heard of by Gerda in June 1940 in Lemberg, he is said to have died in a Russian camp near Moscow, her mother, Erna, died at Auschwitz.
Dr Erich Springer was born in Mariánské Láznĕ, in 1908; he attended secondary school in that town and in Planá, studied medicine in Prague, graduating in 1933. He then worked as surgeon at the clinic of Professor Schloffer. He was deported to Terezin in Transport AK II with a thousand able bodied persons on 4 December 1941 in Terezin from Prague, which included another 15 medical doctors. He was given the task of medical supervision of the women's barracks. After liberation in 1945 he returned from Terezin and became head physician at the Rumburk hospital, director of the District Institute of National health, and regional surgeon. He has received numerous rewards for his work.
Dr Walter Feuereisen was the Chief Medical Officer of the Jewish Kultusgemeinde, Prague, who later became a specialist in tropical medicine and the chief medical officer for the Jewish community in Prague.
Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich in southern Germany.
Opened on 22 March 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp established by the coalition government of National Socialist (Nazi) NSDAP party and the Catholic Zentrum party (dissolved at 6 July 1933). Heinrich Himmler, in his capacity as police president of Munich, officially described the camp as 'the first concentration camp for political prisoners.'
Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Its basic organisation, camp layout as well as the plan for the buildings were developed by Kommandant Theodor Eicke and were applied to all later camps. He had a separate secure camp near the command centre, which consisted of living quarters, administration, and army camps. Eicke himself became the chief inspector for all concentration camps, responsible for establishing the others according to his model.
In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau of which nearly one-third were Jews. 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps, primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide.
Eric Walters was an inmate of Dachau and Buchenwald until March 1939.
The NSDAP/AO was the Foreign Organisation of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). The party members who lived outside the German Reich were pooled in this special NSDAP department. On May 1 1931 the new organisational unit was founded on the initiative of Reich Organisation Leader (Reichsorganisationsleiter) Gregor Strasser and its management was assigned to Dr Hans Nieland. But Nieland resigned from office already on May 8, 1933, because he had become head of the Hamburg police authorities in the meantime and later on a member of the Hamburg provincial government. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle was appointed director of the 'AO', that served as 43rd Gau of the NSDAP.
NSDAP Local Groups (Ortsgruppen) comprised 25 party comrades at least, so called Stützpunkte (bases) had 5 members or more. Furthermore, big Local Groups could be partitioned into Blocs (Blöcke).
Ideological training and uniform orientation of all party members in the interest of the German nation were the principal tasks of NSDAP/AO. Only Imperial Germans (Reichsdeutsche) with a German passport could become members of the AO. Persons of German descent, so called ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), who possessed the nationality of the country in which they lived, were refused access to the Nazi Party.
Walter Laqueur was the former director of the Wiener Library
Jüdische Nachrichten (Jewish News), was founded by the Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund (Swiss Association of Jewish Communities), Zürich, as its press office in 1936, to confront Nazism but also to address growing anti-semitism in Switzerland. To this end it produced news bulletins in German and French and distributed them to numerous editorial offices throughout Switzerland.
Under the leadership of Dr. Benjamin Sagalowitz (1938-1964) JUNA amassed a large archive of documentation concerning the Holocaust and the fate of Jewish refugees and other related subjects. Parts of this archive were used to create the three dossiers in this collection.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War Two. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Otto Ernst Schüddekopf (1912-1984), historian, gained his doctorate in 1938 and became an English contributor to the Auslandsnachrichtendienst (foreign news service) and member of the Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Reich security main office) with the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. From 1953 he worked as a history lecturer and co-edited the International Jahrbuch für Geschichts- und Geographieunterricht. In 1973 he was awarded the cultural prize of the federation of tradesunions. He died in 1984.
The 'Hielscher Group' was named after Friedrich Hielscher, an anti-Nazi, who encouraged those sympathetic to his cause to oppose the Nazis from within the party. He was arrested after the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler.
Hechaluz, was an umbrella organisation founded in 1917 to propagate the settlement of Jews from the Diaspora to Kibbutzim in Palestine.
Dr Bela Berend was born in Budapest, 12 January 1911, the son of Adolf Presser and Regina Máriás. As a young Rabbi he was regarded as a non-conformist, anti-assimilationist, Zionist who, later with the threat of deportations, advocated emigration as the way to save the Hungarian Jewish population.
His role on the Hungarian Jewish Council brought him into contact with elements of the extreme, anti-Semitic Hungarian Right, in particular Zoltán Boznyák, who, paradoxically, shared the same desire to remove Hungary's Jewish population. This association resulted in his becoming one of the most controversial figures in the Hungarian Holocaust.
In 1946 he was tried for war crimes by the newly installed communist government, where he faced accusations of collusion with the Gestapo, stealing Jewish property and collaborating with the extreme right. After appeals he was finally exonerated and settled in the United States, where he changed his name to Albert B Belton. However, despite the court's final ruling he faced numerous accusations and libels over the course of the next few decades.
He was also a witness in war crimes trials and referred to in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, 1961. He was an ardent Zionist and defender of the state of Israel.
The Jewish Refugees Committee, later the German Jewish Aid Committee, was founded in the early months of 1933 by Otto Schiff under the aegis of the Central British Fund for the Relief of German Jewry. Its tasks were to arrange for the admission of refugees to Britain, their maintenance, training, employment or re-migration. A number of provincial committees were formed to deal with issues regarding Jewish refugees in these areas. The Leeds office trainee department was supervised by David Makovski.
Hermann Perl, was a German Jewish immigrant who arrived in Great Britain probably some time in the late 1930s. He had a number of friends and associates in Breslau (Wroclaw), Poland.
The Laterndl theatre opened on 21 June 1939 at the address of the Austrian Centre, 126 Westbourne Terrace. It was conceived of as a Kleinkunstbühne. Kleinkunst was a term created in the 1930s for a type of anti-Nazi cabaret. It is described as being at the serious end of the comic market, and whilst it included many of the elements common to cabaret, it didn't include the more frivolous and bohemian.
Martin Miller was responsible for production as well as being one of the main character actors. The writers were Franz Hartl, Hugo Königsgarten, Rudolf Spitz, and Hans Weigel. Kurt Manschinger dealt with the music, décor was by Carl Josefovics and costumes by Käthe Berl. The actors were Lona Cross, Greta Hartwig, Willy Kennedy, Jaro Klüger, Fritz Schrecker, Sylvia Steiner and Marianne Walla.
The theatre moved to 153 Finchley Road and then to 69 Eton Avenue by November 1941. One of the most famous achievements associated with 'das Laterndl' was the Martin Miller's spoof Hitler broadcast on April Fools' Day, 1940, in which Hitler claimed that Columbus had discovered America with the aid of German science, giving Germany territorial claim. A text of the speech is included in this collection.
Charles Joseph Singer (MA, DM, D.Litt.,Hon D.Sc., FRCP), born 2 Nov 1876, London; studied University College London, and from 1896-1899 studied zoology at Oxford, graduating BA, BCh.; qualified from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School MRCS LRCP, 1903. He gained other degrees honours during his career: MA MD; FRCP; Honorary DSc. From 1904-1908 Singer held various posts in England and abroad, including Sussex County Hospital; Brighton; Government House, Singapore; Abyssinia (Medical Officer to exhibition); Malta and Salonica, where he trained during the First World War when he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Singer held various posts throughout his career: Registrar to the Cancer Hospital, London; Physician to the Dreadnought Hospital; Lecturer in the history of medicine at University College London, as well as work abroad including Visiting Professor at University of California, Berkeley.
This collection comprises two deposits whose relationship to each other is not known. The first consists of correspondence and reports concerning participants in two famous acts of protest during the Third Reich: the Rosenstrasse Protest in which the (mostly) Aryan partners of a specially segregated group of Jewish prisoners protested at their detention by the Nazis in a former welfare office for the Jewish community in Berlin, 1943; Das Sovjet-Paradies Aktion in which 500 Jews and Germans were arrested, half of whom were subsequently executed for sabotaging an exhibition by the Nazis designed to pour scorn and ridicule on the Soviet Union, 1942.
This first deposit came from Annelore Leber, the former wife of the pre-1933 SPD MP, Julius Leber, who was tortured and murdered by the Nazis in the aftermath of the plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. It was donated to the Wiener Library after a meeting between Annelore Leber and Alfred Wiener in Berlin in 1958. The material, which consists mainly of personal accounts of participants, was collated as a result of an advertisement put out in the Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung der Juden in Deutschland, 18 February 1955, asking for eye witness testimonies of these events.
The custodial history of the second deposit is unknown. It consists of transcripts of interrogations of former Nazi military and officials and interviews with anti-Nazi German citizens, by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) Morale Division, June-July 1945. The object of the questioning was to ascertain the morale of the population in the wake of sustained Allied bombing raids.
The Reichsvertretung der jüdischen Landesverbände was founded at the end of 1932 and it was superceded by the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden as the first organisation to claim to be truly representative of all German Jews. Its principal achievement was the establishment of the Zentralausschuss für Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee for Aid and Reconstruction) which was to become the main social and economic instrument of German Jewry. The Preussische Landes Verband (The Prussian State League) was the largest regional Jewish organisation but had no legal standing.
The Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was founded in 1933 and became the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden in 1935, and later the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland in 1939. It came into being shortly after the Nazi seizure of power as the successor to the Reichsvertretung der jüdischen Landesverbände, a loose federation of Jewish organisations in Germany. Its main objective was to deal with the serious problems facing German Jewry from the new, antisemitic regime.
Rabbi Leo Baeck was elected president, and the driving force in the organisation was its chief executive officer, Otto Hirsch. The organisation's activities were to include all aspects of the internal life of the Jews of Germany, and it was to act as their representative before the authorities as well as Jewish organisations abroad. Its main spheres of operation, conducted through the Zentralausschuss der Deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee of German Jews for aid and reconstruction) were education, vocational training, support for the needy, economic assistance, and emigration.
The Reischsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Organisation of German Jews) came into being in February 1939 and, as far as its leadership and basic purposes was concerned, was a continuation of its predecessor, the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland. As a result of the intensification of the Third Reich's anti-semitic policies, its aims were increasingly linked to Jewish survival, and in particular, emigration. It was put under the control of the Ministry of the Interior, in practice the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office). It was the only organisation in Germany dealing with Jewish survival until its liquidation in July 1943 when its leaders, Leo Baeck and Paul Eppstein were deported to Theresienstadt.
The Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was founded in 1933 and became the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden in 1935, and later the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland in 1939. It came into being shortly after the Nazi seizure of power as the successor to the Reichsvertretung der jüdischen Landesverbände, a loose federation of Jewish organisations in Germany. Its main objective was to deal with the serious problems facing German Jewry from the new, antisemitic regime.
Rabbi Leo Baeck was elected president, and the driving force in the organisation was its chief executive officer, Otto Hirsch. The organisation's activities were to include all aspects of the internal life of the Jews of Germany, and it was to act as their representative before the authorities as well as Jewish organisations abroad. Its main spheres of operation, conducted through the Zentralausschuss der Deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee of German Jews for aid and reconstruction) were education, vocational training, support for the needy, economic assistance, and emigration.
The Reischsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Organisation of German Jews) came into being in February 1939 and, as far as its leadership and basic purposes was concerned, was a continuation of its predecessor, the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland. As a result of the intensification of the Third Reich's anti-semitic policies, its aims were increasingly linked to Jewish survival, and in particular, emigration. It was put under the control of the Ministry of the Interior, in practice the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office). It was the only organisation in Germany dealing with Jewish survival until its liquidation in July 1943 when its leaders, Leo Baeck and Paul Eppstein were deported to Theresienstadt.
The Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was founded in 1933 and became the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden in 1935, and later the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland in 1939. It came into being shortly after the Nazi seizure of power as the successor to the Reichsvertretung der jüdischen Landesverbände, a loose federation of Jewish organisations in Germany. Its main objective was to deal with the serious problems facing German Jewry from the new, antisemitic regime.
Rabbi Leo Baeck was elected president, and the driving force in the organisation was its chief executive officer, Otto Hirsch. The organisation's activities were to include all aspects of the internal life of the Jews of Germany, and it was to act as their representative before the authorities as well as Jewish organisations abroad. Its main spheres of operation, conducted through the Zentralausschuss der Deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee of German Jews for aid and reconstruction) were education, vocational training, support for the needy, economic assistance, and emigration.
The Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland (Jewish Aid in Germany) was an organisation established by German Jews in 1901 to engage in social welfare and educational activities among needy Jews. It remained in operation until 1941, and during the Nazi period it assisted German Jews trying to emigrate.
After World War One, the Hilfsverein concentrated its efforts on Jewish refugees from eastern Europe who were stranded in Germany while trying to emigrate overseas.
The help that the Hilfsverein was able to give encompassed all aspects of emigration; up-to-date information, based on reports received from hundreds of contacts abroad; vocational counselling, technical arrangements, bureaucratic formalities and financial advice. When the Hilfsverein began to assist Jewish emigration from Germany, a clear division of responsibility was made between it and the Jewish Agency. The latter, through the Palastina-Amt, dealt exclusively with emigration to Palestine, while the Hilfsverein dealt with emigration elsewhere.
The Hilfsverein continued to function as an independent agency until 1939, when it became a section of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland. In 1941, when emigration was prohibited altogether, that section also went out of existence.
The Council for German Jewry was established in 1936, in the aftermath of the Nuremberg race laws, with the objective of assisting German Jews to leave Germany through coordinated emigration. It succeeded the Central British Fund for the Relief of German Jewry, which was founded in 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power.
An agreement was reached between Zionists and non-Zionists for an emigration plan and in January 1936 a delegation of leading British Jews went to the United States in order to establish a partnership with American Jewry to raise $15 million to assist in the emigration of 100,000 German Jews aged 17 to 35. Whilst they succeeded to a certain extent, a number of factors combined to impede their efforts including British immigration policy in Palestine, emigration obstacles in Germany and the growing impoverishment of German Jewry. After the war the organisation became known as the Central British Fund for Relief and Rehabilitation.
The Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (RjF) was founded in 1919 to combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism during the First World War. From the outset it was both a defence organisation and a veterans' association. It endeavoured to be apolitical but was regarded as assimilationist when compared with other Jewish organisations such as the Zionist Centralverein. It became the second largest German Jewish organisation with 30-40,000 membership at its peak, publishing its own fortnightly newspaper, Der Schild.
By 1924, at its national congress the RjF resolved to include physical training for the young. Athletics and, in particular, boxing were promoted, the latter as a form of self-defence and a means to counter the claim that Jews were weak and cowardly.
As anti-Semitism increased during the Weimar years, links with other non-Jewish veterans' associations decreased. By the time the Nuremberg race laws had been brought into force, any privileges that the Reichsbund might have enjoyed, by virtue of members' service to the fatherland, were gone.
David Spector, a British born Jew, dedicated much of his life to fighting fascism in Britain, having experienced at first hand, the effects of Nazi persecution on Holocaust survivors.
In World War Two he enlisted in the Royal Artillery and within 2 years he was heading for the Middle East, where he became the youngest ever staff captain at a military college in Egypt. He then volunteered for the Jewish Brigade, and was appointed brigade major, training many of the men who were later to become senior officers in Israel's army. At the end of the war, Spector helped thousands of displaced Holocaust survivors make their way to Palestine.
After World War Two he returned to work in the City and became a leading figure in AJEX, the Association of Jewish Ex-servicemen, serving as its national vice-chairman and as a member of the Board of Deputies' Defence Committee. However he eventually resigned from these posts in protest at what he regarded as a soft attitude towards Moseley's post-war attempts to return to British political life. He died in 1997.
Around 1968 Grattan Puxon (Secretary of the Gypsy Council) was asked by Vanko Rouda (Secretary of the Comité International Tsigane) to collect material which might help Gypsies in their reparations claims. At about the same time the Wiener Library was advertising grants for research into modern history. The two strands came together and after a meeting at Reading University it was agreed that Grattan Puxon and Donald Kenrick would work jointly on collecting material on the Gypsy genocide during the Nazi period.
As a result a volume of material was prepared, known as Gypsies Under the Nazis (611/16).
The Komitee ehemaliger politischer Gefangener was founded in the immediate post-World War Two years to represent the interests of former political prisoners. In 1947 it changed its name to the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes to include all those who suffered under the Nazis. This anti-fascist organisation still exists with branches all over Germany.
Julius Kühl came from a Chassidic family in Poland from where he moved to Switzerland in early childhood. He completed his doctorate on Polish-Swiss trade relations in the summer of 1939 at the University of Bern. From 1938 until the end of the war he was employed by the Polish Consular service, Bern. Thanks to a sympathetic head of Consular service, Alexander Lados, a non-Jew, and with the use of the diplomatic pouch, Kühl was able to circumvent state censorship enabling news about the murder of Jews to reach America and to facilitate communication between Jewish relief organisations in their attempts to rescue Jews.
In 1949 he moved to America with his Swiss-born wife and 2 children where he eventually became a property developer.
During the course of his war-time activities he formed close ties with a number of individuals and organisations intent on rescuing Europe's Jews. There follows a brief description of two of those organisations which feature most prominently in this collection.
The Hilfsverein für jüdische Flüchtlinge im Shanghai (Aid Organisation for Jewish refugees in Shanghai)(HIJEFS) was founded by Recha Sternbuch and her husband, Isaac, in 1941, with the objective of assisting rabbinical students who had fled to the Far East. It soon expanded its activities to include the provision of passports to non-religious Jews from many European countries and changed its name to Hilfsverein für jüdische Flüchtlinge im Ausland (Aid Organisation for Jewish Refugees Abroad).
Va'ad Hahatsala (Rescue Committe) was established in 1939 and was based in the USA at the offices of its parent body, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States. It was an emergency committee formed initially to provide financial support to more than 20 Talmudic academies which had left Poland for Lithuania. It continued to provide relief throughout the war to Jews all over Europe. It had offices in Montreux, Switzerland. Both Julius Kühl and Isaac Sternbuch were on the committee.
Dr. George Bergmann was born the son of a salesman in Lissa (Posen) in 1900. He went to school in Lissa and then studied philosophy, economics and law in the universities of Heidelberg, Breslau and Munich. During this period he became a member of the Kartellverband jüdischer Studenten to which organisation he retained links for the rest of his life.
Gained his doctorate, oeconomiae publicae, at the Univeristy of Munich, 1922; became a lawyer, 1929; began working in the chambers of the lawyers Julius Heilbronner and Dr. Eugen Schmidt, 1930.
In June 1933 he went to France where in September he was struck off the register of lawyers as a consequence of the Nazi racial laws. Unable to obtain a work permit he supported himself through casual work. In 1935 he married F I Hilde Baum from Fulda.
At the outbreak of war he volunteered to serve in the French army. There followed periods of internment in a number of prison camps, service in the Foreign Legion and served in the British Army in North Africa, Italy and Austria, 1943-1947.
In January 1947 he was demobilised to Australia where he owned a delicatessen business, was one time secretary of the World Jewish Congress and having gained British and Australian nationality in 1950, became a permanent officer of the Commonwealth.