Summary

Be­gin­ning at the end of the 18th cen­tury, the spread­ing idea of human rights, the new, Enlightenment-​era way of think­ing about the state, and the so­cial change from a cor­po­ra­tive so­ci­ety di­vided into es­tates to a bourgeois-​capitalist so­ci­ety led to a de­mand for so­cial in­te­gra­tion of the Jews in all Eu­ro­pean states. As a legally au­tonomous cor­po­ra­tion, their po­si­tion in so­ci­ety was that of out­siders. From the be­gin­ning, legal equal­ity for Jews was op­posed by many so­cial groups. Aside from tra­di­tional re­li­gious and eco­nomic mo­tives, cul­tural, na­tion­al­ist, and proto-​racist ar­gu­ments were used early on in order to fight – some­times vi­o­lently – legal equal­ity for Jews. This form of hos­til­ity against Jews in­ten­si­fied in the course of the crises caused by so­cial and cul­tural changes in the sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tury and even­tu­ally took the shape of a so­cial and po­lit­i­cal move­ment bear­ing the new name of an­ti­semitism. Al­though an­ti­se­mitic par­ties and or­ga­ni­za­tions re­mained po­lit­i­cally mar­ginal in Im­pe­r­ial Ger­many, they did man­age to es­tab­lish an­ti­se­mitic ide­ol­ogy in cer­tain so­cial mi­lieus.

The First World War and its im­me­di­ate post­war con­se­quences (rev­o­lu­tion, a new po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, the Treaty of Ver­sailles) shifted rad­i­cal­ized an­ti­semitism from the pe­riph­ery to the Weimar Re­pub­lic’s po­lit­i­cal cen­ter, where it com­bined with an un­scrupu­lous and often vi­o­lent fight against the democ­racy de­famed as a “Jew re­pub­lic” [Ju­den­re­pub­lik]. Anti-​Jewish hos­til­ity took on in­creas­ingly ex­treme forms in the early 1930s until it led to com­plete dis­en­fran­chise­ment and so­cial os­tracism and even­tu­ally to the mur­der of the Eu­ro­pean Jews dur­ing the Na­tional So­cial­ist regime. “An­ti­semitism after Auschwitz” picked up on themes of ear­lier an­ti­semitism and also added some new mo­tifs such as guilt-​denying an­ti­semitism [Schuldabwehr-​Antisemitismus], which de­nies events or re­jects re­spon­si­bil­ity for them. After the found­ing of the state of Is­rael, an­ti­semitism first arose in the East­ern bloc states and, after the Six-​Day War of 1967, also in the West where it took the form of crit­i­cism of Is­rael and anti-​Zionism.

Anti-Jewish riots in the 18th century

The his­tory of Ham­burg, one of the cen­ters of Jew­ish life in Ger­many since the 17th / 18th cen­tury, re­flects the phases of anti-​Jewish hos­til­ity out­lined above. At the same time, both the sen­ate and the city as­sem­bly had long pro­moted the Jews’ so­cial in­te­gra­tion since they played an im­por­tant role for this port and mer­chant city and its over­seas trade due to their in­ter­na­tional con­nec­tions. Even be­fore de­bates on legal eman­ci­pa­tion began, there had been dis­putes be­tween the city coun­cil and church or­tho­doxy about the pres­ence of Jews in the city, in the course of which the Jews re­peat­edly bore the brunt of un­fold­ing so­cial con­flicts. There were vi­o­lent riots out of protest against legal con­ces­sions to the Jews, such as the 1730 “Ju­den­tu­mult” (“Geseroth Henkelpöttche”) in Ham­burg’s Neustadt [New Town] which again be­came the scene of anti-​Jewish vi­o­lence in 1746 and 1749.

Jewish emancipation and violent protest in Hamburg

Since the end of the 18th cen­tury, the new de­f­i­n­i­tion of the Jews’ so­cial po­si­tion ne­ces­si­tated by po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic re­forms such as re­li­gious free­dom and equal­ity for all cit­i­zens (in Ham­burg in 1819), free­dom of trade, the re­moval of eco­nomic bar­ri­ers, the es­tab­lish­ment of a state-​run school sys­tem, com­pul­sory mil­i­tary ser­vice, and the right of domi­cile led to a decades-​long dis­pute which was fought in par­lia­men­tary de­bates, writ­ings, but also by means of vi­o­lent protest. Until the Jews’ com­plete and na­tion­wide legal equal­ity in 1871, the process of eman­ci­pa­tion was char­ac­ter­ized by a zigzag­ging be­tween legal im­prove­ment and set­backs. The pe­riod of eman­ci­pa­tion saw re­peated anti-​Jewish riots which were an ex­pres­sion of op­po­si­tion to the grant­ing of civic rights and the eco­nomic op­por­tu­ni­ties for Jews as­so­ci­ated with it. The Jews had gained full equal­ity in 1806 after Ham­burg was con­quered by Napoleonic troops, but the fall of Napoleon prompted a bat­tle for the re­vi­sion of these “more lib­eral laws for Jews” which was fought in a num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions. Lud­wig Holst, who since 1799 had made a name for him­self in Ham­burg as an eco­nomic ex­pert, in his 1818 pam­phlet “Über das Verhältniß der Juden zu den Chris­ten in den deutschen Handelsstädten” [“On the Re­la­tion­ship of the Jews to the Chris­tians in Ger­man Mer­chant Cities”] warned of the “so­cial ag­i­ta­tion” caused by the Jews’ eco­nomic suc­cess and de­mo­graphic growth, which might end in a “loud out­rage.” In an­other book pub­lished in 1821, Holst blamed the Jews’ eco­nomic power for the fi­nan­cial prob­lems crafts­men and middle-​class mer­chants were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing at the time. In the time be­tween Holst’s two pub­li­ca­tions, the wave of anti-​Jewish “Hep-​Hep”-​riots orig­i­nat­ing in Würzburg in the sum­mer of 1819 reached Ham­burg, where riots broke out when Jew­ish pa­trons vis­ited cafés in the pavil­ions along the Bin­nenal­ster, which was con­sid­ered both a trans­gres­sion of bour­geois so­cial di­vid­ing lines and a pre­sump­tu­ous claim of so­cial rights. The riots spread to other parts of the city and could only be ended by mo­bi­liz­ing the cit­i­zens’ mili­tia and de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency. Ham­burg’s upper classes sup­ported the civic eman­ci­pa­tion of the Jews while its op­po­nents, crafts­men and mem­bers of the re­tail­ers’ guild, feared Jew­ish com­pe­ti­tion in the trades and com­merce. The sen­ate used the riots in order to post­pone the grant­ing of full civic rights to the Jews by blam­ing them in part. Mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­nity con­se­quently left Ham­burg for Al­tona.

Brawl be­tween Jews and Chris­tians dur­ing the anti-​Jewish riots in Ham­burg 1835
Source: State Archive Ham­burg, 720-1, 220-1.

The causes of the anti-​Jewish riots of 1830 and 1835 hardly dif­fered from those in 1819. Crafts­men and re­tail­ers or­ga­nized in guilds felt threat­ened by the low­er­ing of im­port tar­iffs, de­bates on legal re­form con­cern­ing the struc­ture of guilds, a new de­cree on servi­tude [Gesin­de­ord­nung], and a re­form of the cit­i­zen­ship law. In 1834 a group of Jews around Gabriel Riesser had de­manded full legal equal­ity in­clud­ing free­dom of trade for Jews in Ham­burg in a pub­li­ca­tion ti­tled “Denkschrift über die bürgerlichen Verhältnisse der Ham­bur­gis­chen Is­raeliten” [“Mem­o­ran­dum on the Civic Cir­cum­stances of Ham­burg’s Is­raelites”]. The pro­test­ers’ crit­i­cism shows that when the Jews were made “scape­goats” for their dis­plea­sure with sen­ate pol­i­tics, they were not picked out ran­domly, but were seen as a po­lit­i­cally fa­vored group of for­eign el­e­ments steadily grow­ing through mi­gra­tion. Thus the 1835 riots can be seen as an ul­ti­mately suc­cess­ful at­tempt to pre­vent fur­ther eman­ci­pa­tion of the Jews. De­spite at­tempts to in­cite the lower classes in par­tic­u­lar to riot against Jew­ish mer­chants, Ham­burg re­mained un­af­fected by the so­cial protests trig­gered by the 1848 rev­o­lu­tion. How­ever, on May 13, 1848, the Ham­burg sub­urb of St. Pauli did be­come the scene of riots which orig­i­nated mostly among crafts­men and re­tail­ers.

Harbingers of political antisemitism after 1848

De­spite the turn to­wards restora­tion after the failed rev­o­lu­tion of 1848, a bur­geon­ing eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal lib­er­al­ism cre­ated a po­lit­i­cal cli­mate which fa­vored com­plete legal eman­ci­pa­tion of the Jews. In Ham­burg it did not occur until 1860, how­ever. Now it was for­mer left­ists and lib­er­als such as Richard Wag­ner or Bruno Bauer who, dis­ap­pointed by what they con­sid­ered the Jews’ lack­ing will­ing­ness to as­sim­i­late de­spite eman­ci­pa­tion, emerged as au­thors of anti-​Jewish pub­li­ca­tions. Among them was politi­cian and jour­nal­ist Wil­helm Marr, who was later dubbed the “fa­ther of the an­ti­se­mitic move­ment.” In Ham­burg, too, Jew­ish eman­ci­pa­tion be­came a point of con­tention in the emerg­ing po­lit­i­cal ri­valry be­tween “lib­er­als” and “rad­i­cals” after 1848. In his 1862 pub­li­ca­tion “Der Ju­den­spiegel” [“A Mir­ror to the Jews”], the “rad­i­cal” Marr pre­sented a neg­a­tive image of Ju­daism and ac­cused re­formed Jews of hav­ing re­nounced po­lit­i­cal re­form. The fact that the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate in Ham­burg was con­trary to Marr’s po­si­tion be­comes ev­i­dent in the pub­li­ca­tion of the satir­i­cal broad­sheet “Der Ju­den­fresser” [“The Jew Eater”] in June 1862 as well as in the out­rage against Marr among Ham­burg’s po­lit­i­cal cir­cles.

Antisemitism as a political-social movement

With the onset of the eco­nomic cri­sis of the early 1870s known as “Gründerkrach”, the at­mos­phere in the newly founded Ger­man Kaiser­re­ich started to change. Reich Chan­cel­lor Bis­marck re­acted with a pro­tec­tion­ist eco­nomic pol­icy and changed his po­lit­i­cal course to join the con­ser­v­a­tive camp. As sup­port­ers of lib­er­al­ism and So­cial Democ­racy, the Jews now found them­selves on the side of the po­lit­i­cal enemy. They were ac­cused of being re­spon­si­ble for the eco­nomic cri­sis and the ever more press­ing “so­cial ques­tion.” The an­ti­se­mitic move­ment had its ori­gins in Berlin; in Ham­burg both the city’s po­lit­i­cal cir­cles and the mer­chant class, who con­tin­ued to sup­port lib­er­al­ism and free trade, re­mained aloof to­wards it. It was not until the 1890s that some of its cit­i­zens’ as­so­ci­a­tions began to re­spond to po­lit­i­cal an­ti­semitism. In 1893, del­e­gates of the Ger­man So­cial Party Deutsch-​Soziale Partei were elected to Ham­burg’s city as­sem­bly, and in 1897 an An­ti­se­mitic Vot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion An­ti­semi­tis­cher Wahlverein was founded in re­sponse to the Christian-​social move­ment founded by Berlin court chap­lain Adolf Stoecker. Its first chair­man was Friedrich Raab, a del­e­gate to the city as­sem­bly as well as the Re­ich­stag, where he rep­re­sented the an­ti­se­mitic Deutsch-​soziale Re­form­partei from 1898 until 1903.

Supporters of antisemitism

In this phase an­ti­semitism mainly met with sup­port from crafts­men who felt in­se­cure due to the dis­so­lu­tion of their cor­po­ra­tive ties and the chal­lenges posed by a cap­i­tal­ist mar­ket econ­omy and who saw the Jews as re­spon­si­ble for their plight. The new pro­fes­sion of re­tail clerks, who had cre­ated their own spe­cial in­ter­est group in 1893 by found­ing the Ger­man Union of Com­mer­cial Em­ploy­ees  “Deutscher Handlungsgehülfen-​Verband (named Ger­man Na­tional Union of Com­mer­cial Em­ploy­ees Deutschna­tionaler Handlungsgehilfen-​Verband, DHV as of 1896) in Ham­burg, took its lead from the na­tion­al­ist and an­ti­se­mitic move­ment and re­fused mem­ber­ship to Jews. As a “na­tional labor union” the DHV op­posed So­cial Democ­racy, which it con­sid­ered “an­ti­na­tional,” as well as “Jew­ish High Fi­nance.” The DHV owned the Hanseatis­che Ver­lagsanstalt pub­lish­ing house, which served as its forum for spread­ing nationalist-​an­ti­se­mitic writ­ings. After 1900 the DHV sup­ported an­ti­se­mitic par­ties and as­so­ci­a­tions both per­son­ally and fi­nan­cially. Ham­burg be­came home to one of the most ac­tive an­ti­se­mitic ag­i­ta­tors of the time, Afred Roth, who worked as of­fi­cer in charge of ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial af­fairs at Ham­burg’s DHV head­quar­ters from 1900 until 1917 and was one of the dri­ving forces be­hind the found­ing of the Ger­man Na­tion­al­ist Pro­tec­tion and De­fi­ance Fed­er­a­tion, (DVSTB) Deutschvölkischer Schutz-​und Trutzbund, in 1919.

The radicalization of antisemitism after World War I

Mil­i­tary de­feat, fear of rev­o­lu­tion, eco­nomic col­lapse, and the bru­tal­iza­tion of po­lit­i­cal life all led to an un­prece­dented mo­bi­liza­tion of an­ti­semitism in Ger­many. It found its ex­pres­sion in writ­ings, pub­lic ag­i­ta­tion, and vi­o­lent riots and al­lied it­self with the fight against the Weimar Re­pub­lic de­famed as a “Jew re­pub­lic” [Ju­den­re­pub­lik] by an­ti­semites. In­deed, Jews were able for the first time to hold major po­lit­i­cal of­fice in this new de­mo­c­ra­tic state, such as Walther Ra­thenau as for­eign min­is­ter, Hugo Preuß as min­is­ter of the in­te­rior, Leopold Lipp­mann as state sec­re­tary, and Franz Cohn as sen­a­tor for fi­nance in Ham­burg. Sup­port for an­ti­de­mo­c­ra­tic and nationalist-​an­ti­se­mitic groups grew sig­nif­i­cantly. The main actor among them was the Ger­man Na­tion­al­ist Pro­tec­tion and De­fi­ance Fed­er­a­tion Deutschvölkischer Schutz-​und Trutzbund, which served as an um­brella or­ga­ni­za­tion unit­ing a large num­ber of right-​wing ex­trem­ist as­so­ci­a­tions and or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Ac­cu­sa­tions against the Jews re­gard­ing their sup­pos­edly in­suf­fi­cient par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war led to the so-​called “Jew­ish cen­sus” [Judenzählung] dur­ing the war in 1916, which the War Min­istry car­ried out under pres­sure from right-​wing ex­trem­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions claim­ing “Jew­ish shirk­ing.” De­spite refu­ta­tions of this claim by Jews as well as oth­ers, the stereo­type of “Jew­ish shirk­ing” stuck in the minds of many peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of the “stab-​in-the-back myth” [Dolchstoßlegende]. More­over, Jews such as Ham­burg ship­ping com­pany owner Al­bert Ballin were ac­cused of hav­ing en­riched them­selves dur­ing the war. Apart from books such as the “Pro­to­cols of the El­ders of Zion,” an­ti­se­mitic ag­i­ta­tion made use of mod­ern means of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion such as fly­ers, broad­sheets, and poster stamps, of which the DVSTB dis­trib­uted mil­lions and which were often pro­duced in Ham­burg.

Par­al­lel to this ex­pres­sion of or­ga­nized po­lit­i­cal an­ti­semitism, those forms of anti-​Jewish at­ti­tudes and prac­tices which had al­ready been present in Im­pe­r­ial Ger­many not only con­tin­ued to exist in the Weimar Re­pub­lic, but now be­came more dras­ti­cally ap­par­ent in daily life and man­i­fested them­selves in the ex­clu­sion of Jews from as­so­ci­a­tions or in the so-​called “Bäderantisemitismus” [re­sort an­ti­semitism].

Seal­ing band of a let­ter, 1933
Source: Col­lec­tion Wolf­gang Haney.

An­ti­semitism did not merely con­fine it­self to pro­pa­ganda and of­fen­sive songs, how­ever. Rather the early 1920s are char­ac­ter­ized by po­lit­i­cal as­sas­si­na­tions of promi­nent Jews such as Rosa Lux­em­burg or Walther Ra­thenau and by a na­tion­wide wave of anti-​Jewish riots, which spared Ham­burg, how­ever. The fact that Ham­burg’s city as­sem­bly de­bated an­ti­semitism as early as 1920 shows that its mem­bers con­sid­ered it a se­ri­ous prob­lem at this early junc­ture, as did Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tions, the Cen­tral As­so­ci­a­tion of Ger­man Cit­i­zens of the Jew­ish Faith (CV) Cen­tralverein deutscher Staatsbüger jüdischen Glaubens or the Zion­ist As­so­ci­a­tion Zion­is­tis­che Vere­ini­gung, all of whom spoke out against an­ti­se­mitic at­tacks. In Ham­burg, too, where some as­sem­bly mem­bers had formed an As­so­ci­a­tion for the Fight against An­ti­semitism Verein zur Ab­wehr des An­ti­semitismus, this as­so­ci­a­tion, in con­cert with the Jew­ish press and the Jew­ish com­mu­nity fought back by bring­ing charges of in­cite­ment of the peo­ple [Volksver­het­zung] or by re­port­ing signs of grow­ing an­ti­semitism in Ger­many to Ham­burg’s sen­ate.

Intensification of the antisemitic climate during the Great Depression

After an­ti­semitism had ebbed some­what in the mid-1920s, the Great De­pres­sion, which grew into a state cri­sis in Ham­burg as every­where else, and the rise of Na­tional So­cial­ism linked with it marked a turn­ing point. In the rad­i­cal­ized strug­gle for po­lit­i­cal dom­i­nance Jews be­came a pre­ferred tar­get. After 1928 / 29 and par­tic­u­larly with their elec­tion suc­cesses be­gin­ning in 1930, the NSDAP con­tin­ued its anti-​Jewish poster pro­pa­ganda, vi­o­lent at­tacks, threats, and boy­cotts. At schools for higher ed­u­ca­tion and uni­ver­si­ties, Na­tional So­cial­ist stu­dents ha­rassed Jew­ish stu­dents. Like other Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties, the Uni­ver­sity of Ham­burg was firmly under the in­flu­ence of Na­tional So­cial­ist state doc­trine in the 1930s and 1940s. Ex­treme right-​wing par­ties were able to win votes in Ham­burg’s 1928 city as­sem­bly elec­tion. In 1930 the NSDAP man­aged to win a spec­tac­u­lar 19.2% of votes there de­spite a rel­a­tively small num­ber of local party mem­bers. Thus Ham­burg’s city as­sem­bly, too, be­came a plat­form for an­ti­se­mitic polemics. Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tions in Ham­burg and sur­round­ing areas now also felt the grow­ing threat as van­dal­ism of ceme­ter­ies, street ter­ror, and even van­dal­ism of syn­a­gogues oc­curred ever more fre­quently. In No­vem­ber 1930, a “po­lit­i­cal com­mit­tee” was formed in order to de­velop de­fen­sive strate­gies. In the spring of 1932, lead­ing Na­tional So­cial­ists an­nounced a num­ber of anti-​Jewish mea­sures to be im­ple­mented once they would come to power, which led some of Ham­burg’s Jews to em­i­grate as early as 1932 and in in­creas­ing num­bers in the spring of 1933.

State-sponsored antisemitism 1933–1938: marginalization and plundering

After 1933 the dy­namic process by which vi­o­lent an­ti­semitism “from below” and the plans for legal ex­clu­sion of the Jews de­vel­oped by ex­treme right-​wing mas­ter­minds rad­i­cal­ized each other was ad­vanced fur­ther by the Na­tional So­cial­ists in the form of gov­ern­ment pol­i­tics. Im­me­di­ately after their rise to power, the NSDAP began the na­tion­wide im­ple­men­ta­tion of its an­ti­se­mitic agenda. In Ham­burg, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers con­sis­tently ex­e­cuted na­tion­wide or­ders and also car­ried out their own anti-​Jewish poli­cies. In late March, Karl Kauf­mann, the NSDAP’s head of the Ham­burg dis­trict [Gauleiter], in a radio broad­cast jus­ti­fied the call for an anti-​Jewish boy­cott cam­paign on April 1st, 1933. The boy­cotts were flanked by in­creas­ing an­ti­se­mitic pub­lic pro­pa­ganda and marked the be­gin­ning of the ex­clu­sion from Ger­man so­ci­ety which in­creas­ingly af­fected ever more areas of Jew­ish life. In the fol­low­ing pe­riod, Jews were morally de­famed in a del­uge of more than 2,000 laws and de­crees, they were ex­cluded from so­cial life, eco­nom­i­cally plun­dered, dri­ven out of the coun­try and phys­i­cally threat­ened. In Ham­burg, too, Jews were tar­geted by anti-​Jewish street cam­paigns or­ches­trated by the NSDAP and the SA in 1933 / 34, which vir­tu­ally es­ca­lated into “Jew hunts” in the Grindel quar­ter. Out of tac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, how­ever, Ham­burg over­all ex­er­cised re­straint with re­gard to rad­i­cal anti-​Jewish mea­sures to avoid jeop­ar­diz­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as a cos­mopoli­tan mer­chant city, which it re­lied on for its eco­nomic sta­bil­ity Mar­gin­al­iza­tion reached a new level when the “Nurem­berg Laws” were passed in 1935. The Law for the Pro­tec­tion of Ger­man Blood and Ger­man Honor [Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre] pro­hib­ited Jews from mar­ry­ing “Aryans“ or hav­ing sex­ual re­la­tions with them. This law opened the flood­gates for de­nun­ci­a­tions on the basis of “racial de­file­ment” [Rassen­schande], which could have ex­tremely dan­ger­ous con­se­quences par­tic­u­larly for the Jew­ish part­ner. In Ham­burg a spe­cial cham­ber of the dis­trict court pros­e­cuted in­frac­tions against this law with par­tic­u­lar sever­ity.

The year 1938 saw a new in­crease in rad­i­cal­iza­tion. In late Oc­to­ber, be­tween 15,000 and 17,000 Jews with Pol­ish cit­i­zen­ship were ar­rested and de­ported to Poland in the so-​called “Pole­nak­tion.” It was the Na­tional So­cial­ist regime’s re­sponse to the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­voke Pol­ish cit­i­zen­ship from Pol­ish cit­i­zens who had been liv­ing abroad for an ex­tended pe­riod of time, es­pe­cially Jews. Among those af­fected were 1,200 Jews from Ham­burg, who were taken to the Pol­ish bor­der and then forced to cross it. A short time later, the No­vem­ber pogroms of 1938 caused a surge in em­i­gra­tion among those Jews who had thus far re­mained in Ger­many. These pogroms “or­dered” by Goebbels with Hitler’s con­sent were mainly car­ried out by the SA, SS, and NSDAP mem­bers, al­though parts of the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion spon­ta­neously joined the cam­paigns in some places. Ac­cord­ing to Na­tional So­cial­ist doc­u­ments, 91 Jews were killed na­tion­wide, but today a much higher num­ber of ca­su­al­ties is as­sumed (be­tween 400 and 1,300) while about 1,500 syn­a­gogues and 7,500 Jew­ish busi­nesses were de­stroyed.

De­mo­li­tion of the Born­platz syn­a­gogue, 1939
Source: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, 971/2.

More­over, about 30,000 Jew­ish men were de­ported to con­cen­tra­tion camps and in­car­cer­ated for sev­eral months. In Ham­burg more than a thou­sand Jew­ish men were ar­rested and taken from the po­lice jail at Fuhlsbüttel to the Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp. These cam­paigns and the one bil­lion Re­ichs­mark in “repa­ra­tions” which “the Jews of Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship as a group” were ex­pected to pay for the dam­ages (done to them) were meant to be the final step in elim­i­nat­ing them from the econ­omy and dri­ving them to em­i­grate. The Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion in Ham­burg, which counted ca. 20,000 mem­bers in the mid-1920s, had lost half of its mem­bers by 1939. Among the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion re­ac­tions to the pogroms were split. There were abet­tors and on­look­ers who ap­proved of events, but there also are ac­counts of dis­ap­proval. The for­eign press and for­eign politi­cians ex­pressed out­rage at these vi­o­lent ex­cesses. The regime there­fore launched a mas­sive pro­pa­ganda cam­paign on the radio which also used the medium of cabaret to jus­tify events and vir­tu­ally ridicule them.

Shortly after the be­gin­ning of the Sec­ond World War, the first de­por­ta­tions of Ger­man Jews to Poland and France were car­ried out. In Oc­to­ber 1941 the final phase of the na­tion­wide pol­icy of per­se­cu­tion began: the sys­tem­atic mass de­por­ta­tion and mur­der of the Ger­man Jews in the East.

Entry of Han­nover­scher Bahn­hof, around 1941
Source: With the kind per­mis­sion of the Ger­man Cus­toms Mu­seum.

The total num­ber of de­ported Ger­man Jews is es­ti­mated at 160,000 to 195,000. The first trans­port of 1,000 Jews from Ham­burg to Lodz (then Litz­mannstadt) left on Oc­to­ber 25, 1941. Until 1945 there were 16 fur­ther trans­ports of a total of 5,848 peo­ple. Very few Jews sur­vived per­se­cu­tion within the bor­ders of Nazi Ger­many. A sta­tis­tic sub­mit­ted to the Gestapo a few days be­fore the end of the war by the li­ai­son of­fi­cer of Ham­burg’s re­main­ing Jew­ish com­mu­nity gives the num­ber of 647 sur­viv­ing Jews, al­most all of whom were mar­ried to a non-​Jewish spouse in a so-​called “mixed mar­riage” [“Mis­chehe”]. An­other 50 to 80 peo­ple had sur­vived in hid­ing or using a false iden­tity. The sta­tis­tic struc­tured ac­cord­ing to Na­tional So­cial­ist racial pol­icy shows to what ex­tent one’s chance of sur­vival de­pended on the sta­tus one was as­cribed. The total num­ber of vic­tims from Ham­burg is es­ti­mated at about 10,000. So far the names of 8,877 of them have been ver­i­fied.

Antisemitism in the postwar period

Early opin­ion polls car­ried out in Ger­many show that after the end of the war, an­ti­se­mitic at­ti­tudes, now “pri­va­tized,” con­tin­ued to exist among large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion; they man­i­fested them­selves in van­dal­ism of ceme­ter­ies, graf­fiti, and ver­bal in­sults. On the one hand, “post-Auschwitz an­ti­semitism” still bears all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of “clas­sic” an­ti­semitism. Yet the forms it took un­der­went a change since an­ti­semites now had to react to the geno­cide ei­ther by de­nial, by re­ject­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity or by pro­ject­ing guilt onto the Jews or the state of Is­rael. These pro­jec­tions were often linked to ear­lier con­spir­acy the­o­ries in the wake of the pub­li­ca­tion of the “Pro­to­cols of the El­ders of Zion.” While pub­lic ex­pres­sions of an­ti­se­mitic con­vic­tions were pro­scribed in the Fed­eral Re­pub­lic, they re­peat­edly caused an­ti­se­mitic scan­dals in the early post­war years and into the late 1950s be­cause the courts showed lit­tle will­ing­ness to pros­e­cute such de­lib­er­ate in­sults and the pub­lic openly dis­played their an­ti­se­mitic at­ti­tudes dur­ing court tri­als, for ex­am­ple by ova­tions for film di­rec­tor Veit Har­lan, who was put on trial in Ham­burg for his Nazi pro­pa­ganda film “Jud Süß” but was even­tu­ally ac­quit­ted.

Veit Har­lan after the trial in Ham­burg, 1949
Source: Ger­man Fed­eral Archives, item 183-R76220, Wiki­me­dia Com­mons, CC-​BY-SA 3.0.

The an­ti­se­mitic scan­dals of the later 1950s and a wave of an­ti­se­mitic graf­fiti in 1959 / 60 even­tu­ally prompted a change of mind in pol­i­tics, ed­u­ca­tion, law, and cul­ture which in the 1960s was re­in­forced by the Eich­mann and Auschwitz tri­als. This was ac­com­pa­nied by a de­crease in an­ti­se­mitic at­ti­tudes among the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion.

New forms of antisemitism

In the post­war years an­ti­semitism tar­get­ing Is­rael did not play a sig­nif­i­cant role in West Ger­many. Only after the June war of 1967 did a part of the po­lit­i­cal left react with a rad­i­cal anti-​Zionism which some­times had an­ti­se­mitic un­der­tones. In June 1969, Ara­bic and Ger­man stu­dents pre­vented Is­raeli am­bas­sador Ben Nathan from giv­ing a lec­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Ham­burg by shout­ing “El-​Fatah” and “Ben Nathan get out,” al­though the ma­jor­ity of stu­dents op­posed them by shout­ing “El-​Fatah get out.” In the 1980s the re­la­tion­ship to the Jews be­came part of the de­bate in the Fed­eral Re­pub­lic about memo­ri­al­iz­ing the Na­tional So­cial­ist past, which re­sulted in a num­ber of scan­dals and con­flicts. After Ger­man uni­fi­ca­tion, a new wave of xeno­pho­bic vi­o­lence, neo-​Nazi demon­stra­tions, and an­ti­se­mitic hate crimes oc­curred in the course of the de­bate on asy­lum law be­gin­ning in 1991. Mean­while the spread of an­ti­se­mitic at­ti­tudes among the pop­u­la­tion hardly changed at all. Yet an­ti­semitism since the 1990s was not lim­ited to the ex­treme right-​wing fringes. In ad­di­tion to an­ti­semitism out of a re­jec­tion of re­spon­si­bil­ity, Is­rael’s pol­icy to­wards the Pales­tini­ans has in­creas­ingly be­come a motif for anti-​Jewish re­sent­ment since the be­gin­ning of the new mil­len­nium. This Eu­rope-wide de­vel­op­ment has been la­beled “the new an­ti­semitism.” It is de­scribed as hav­ing found a new tar­get in Is­rael and being sup­ported not only by the ex­treme right, but also by the rad­i­cal left and Mus­lim mi­grants.

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