Table of Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Varieties of Anti-Nazi Resistance 4 Sources of Resistance: Jewish, Youth, Leftist Movements 6 Chapter 1: Assimilation and Alienation: The Origins and Growth of German-Jewish Youth Movements 11 The Jewish Experience in Germany 12 Assimilation: An Uneasy Balance 14 German and German-Jewish Youth Groups, 1900-1933 15 German-Jewish Youth Groups, 1933-1939 19 Socialism and Jewish Youth Politics 22 Chapter 2: Neither Hitler Nor Stalin: Resistance by Dissident Communists and Left-Wing Socialists 27 End of Weimar Democracy and the Emergence of Left Splinter Groups 33 The “Org” (Neu Beginnen) 34 Decline and Demise of the Org 40 The Left Opposition in Berlin 41 Clandestine Activities of the Left Oppositionists 44 Jews in Socialism’s Left Wing 47 Chapter 3: Repression and Revival: Contradictions of the Communist-led Resistance in Berlin 57 Initial Setbacks and Underground Organization 58 Stalin-Hitler Treaty: Disorientation and Accommodation 61 German Marxism and the “Jewish Question” 63 Jews in Berlin’s Communist-led Resistance 67 Communist Politics: Weapon or Obstacle? 73 vi Jewish, Leftist, and Youth Dissidence in Nazi Germany Chapter 4: “Thinking for Themselves”: The Herbert Baum Groups 81 Herbert Baum: Origins and Influences 83 Baum and the Structure of His Groups, 1933-1942 86 Toward Anti-Nazi Action 91 Chapter 5: “We Have Gone on the Offensive”: Education and Other Subversive Activities Under Dictatorship 95 Persecution and Perseverance 96 Heimabende: Underground Self-Education 98 The Impact of Kristallnacht and the Non-Aggression Pact 104 New Opportunities, New Dangers 108 “We have Gone on the Offensive” 110 The Final Period of the Baum Groups 114 The Noose Tightens 116 Chapter 6: The “Soviet Paradise” and the Demise of the Baum Groups 125 Countering Goebbels’ Exhibit: Debates and Motives 126 The Attack on the “Soviet Paradise” 129 Arrests, Reprisals, Recriminations 131 Were They Betrayed? 135 Epilogue: Escape and Reunion 137 Chapter 7: The Baum Groups Remembered: Communist Martyrs or Jewish Resistance Fighters? 145 Official Memory in the German Democratic Republic 146 Antisemitic Campaigns in East Germany 150 Baum as East German Hero 152 Baum Veterans Remember Their Life in the Resistance 154 Other Baum Veterans 161 Replacing a Lost German Identity 164 Chapter 8: Jewish, Leftist, and Youth Resistance in Its Time and Beyond 177 Jewish Resistance and Memory 180 Legacies 182 Bibliography 187 Index 197 Acknowledgments Numerous colleagues and mentors have enriched this manuscript with their insightful critiques, but space allows me to single out only a handful of them: Konrad Jarausch, whose patience, wisdom, and trust were indispensable; David Carlson, who subjected most of these chapters to a challenging and incisive “ruthless criticism of everything existing,” as we used to say; Cora Granata, whose comments were especially helpful on Chapter Seven; and Chris Hamner and Sharon Kowalsky. I also wish to express my gratitude to several institutions and their respective staffs for supporting my research, travel, and writing: The Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, which provided a fellowship that allowed me to research this book; the Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina; and UNC’s Department of History. I profited greatly from the resources of the following archives and institutions: the Bundesarchiv in Lichterfelde, Berlin; the BA Zwischenarchiv at Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten; the Yad Vashem Archives; the Gedenkstätte deutscher Widerstand and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin; the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris; Amsterdam’s International Institute of Social Research; and the Wiener Library in London. I would also like to acknowledge the encouragement and guidance I have received from past professors, particularly Rennie Brantz, Christopher Browning, Don Reid, Jay Smith, and Jim Winders. Some of the most valuable and stimulating exchanges I’ve had in recent years have been with friends who happen to reside outside the world of higher education, so thanks also to Will, Tim, Edwin, Andy, and Martin. Michael Kreutzer was very generous in sharing his expertise at an early stage of my research. I would not presume to match the work of the leading authorities on the Baum groups—Eric Brothers and Regina Scheer, in addition to Michael—but I hope my chapters on Baum complement their efforts in some small way. I also owe a large debt to the veterans of the anti-Nazi underground who shared their viii Jewish, Leftist, and Youth Dissidence in Nazi Germany experiences with me. Thanks in particular to Gerhard Zadek, who up until his passing in October 2005 dedicated great time and energy to the memorialization of the resistance and of pre-1933 German-Jewish life. Above all I thank my parents, who instilled in me a love not only for education but also for justice, and my wife, Marty—also my dearest friend and most valued compañera, to whom this book is dedicated. She knows I can’t express here how much she’s meant to me throughout this process. John Cox April 2009 Abbreviations BA Bundesarchiv Lichterfelde, Berlin BAZw Bundesarchiv Zwischenarchiv, Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, Berlin CV Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith) DJJG Deutsch-Jüdische Jugendgemeinschaft (German-Jewish Youth Society) GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany) GdW Gedenkstätte deutscher Widerstand, Berlin (German Resistance Memorial Center) IfZ Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich (Institute for Contemporary History) KJVD Kommunistische Jugendverband Deutschlands (Communist Youth Association of Germany) KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany) SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei (Socialist Unity Party, East Germany’s Communist party) SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) Stasi Staatssicherheitsdienst (East German State Security Service) USPD Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) YVA Yad Vashem archives, Jerusalem Introduction On May 8, 1942, the Sowjetparadies (the “Soviet Paradise”), an exhibition staged by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels depicting the poverty and degradation of Russia under the “Jewish-Bolshevik” regime, opened with great fanfare in central Berlin’s Lustgarten square. Almost three years to the day before the real Red Army brought down the “thousand-year Reich,” a captured Soviet tank rumbled down the Unter den Linden boulevard to inaugurate the show. One newspaper predicted optimistically that it would be “the most successful political exhibition yet.... Several million people shall visit.”1 Not everyone was quite as enthusiastic. At approximately 8:00 p.m. on May 18, several explosives ignited around the periphery of the exhibition. Although fire trucks responded quickly, a portion of the installation burned that evening. “Again in our big cities a communist opposition…has established itself,” angrily wrote Goebbels in his diary the next day.2 Had the propaganda minister and his immediate supe- rior, Adolf Hitler, known the identity of the saboteurs at the time, they would undoubtedly have been even more enraged: This bold action was organized by young Jews, and, further, by German Jews who were members of far leftist organizations. In the very same location—the Lustgarten—four decades later, East Berlin’s city government unveiled a memorial to the Herbert Baum groups, a network of resisters that was coordinated by German- Jewish Communist Herbert Baum, who had personally led the sabo- tage of the “Soviet Paradise.” The organizers of the November 1981 event saw in the Baum groups a stirring example of Communist resis- tance to the Hitler regime, the continuous invocation of which was essential to the legitimacy of the East German state. An inscription on the square, granite memorial celebrated the “young Communist Her- bert Baum.” On the other side of the stone read the text: “Forever allied in friendship with the Soviet Union.” Two years later and only a few kilometers west of the Lustgarten, West German students campaigned to memorialize Herbert Baum on the campus of the Technical University of Berlin (TU). The Christian 2 Jewish, Leftist, and Youth Dissidence in Nazi Germany Democrats’ student organization vigorously fought the proposal, de- claring that “Herbert Baum fought a deeply inhuman system in order to establish a no less inhuman one.”3 The “Herbert Baum Building” would have been located on “June 17 Street,” which commemorates the 1953 workers’ uprising against the East German state—an event that the West German government never tired of citing to buttress its own narrative of Germany’s recent history.4 Weary of constant re- minders of Communist “totalitarianism”—and now enduring the second year of the Helmut Kohl government—some of TU’s leftist stu- dents wished to advance their own interpretation of Germany’s tumultuous twentieth century. How would Herbert Baum and his comrades have regarded all this? Probably in widely differing ways, reflecting the multiple identi- ties and political views that Baum’s network accommodated. Like many loose-knit circles of young dissidents, the Baum-organized groups were heterogeneous and should not be easily categorized. Al- though Baum was a committed member of the German Communist Party (KPD), his colleagues represented a variety of movements and influences