Jewish Women in Nazi Germany: Daily Life, Daily Struggles, 1933-1939 Author(s): Marion A. Kaplan Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 579-606 Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178020 . Accessed: 05/08/2014 00:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Feminist Studies, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Feminist Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 167.206.19.4 on Tue, 5 Aug 2014 00:42:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JEWISH WOMEN IN NAZI GERMANY: DAILY LIFE, DAILY STRUGGLES, 1933-1939 MARION A. KAPLAN "We were so German," "we were so assimilated," "we were so middle-class"- these are the refrains one reads over and over in the memoirs of German Jews who try to explain to us (and to themselves) what their lives were like before Nazi barbarism over- powered them. They stress how normal their lives were, how bourgeois their habits and attitudes. German Jews-a predomi- nantly middle-class group comprising less than 1 percent of the German population-had welcomed their legal emancipation in the second half of the nineteenth century and lived in a relatively comfortable, secure environment until 1933. Between 1933 and 1939, however, they saw their economic livelihoods imperiled and their social integration destroyed. Inexorably, they were engulfed in the maelstrom that led to the Holocaust: impoverishment and ostracism for most; emigration for many; hiding for a handful; and ghettoization, forced labor, and extermination for the rest.' The calamity that hit German Jews affected them as Jews first. But Jewish women had gender-specific experiences as well. In ad- dition to suffering the persecution that afflicted all Jews, Jewish women also had the burden of keeping their households and com- munities together. Racism and persecution as well as survival meant something different for women than men - in practical and psychological terms. This essay explores the increasingly difficult daily lives of Jewish middle-class women and the work of their main organiza- tion, the League of Jewish Women, JuedischerFrauenbund (JFB), in prewar Nazi Germany. By focusing on the 1930s, we can locate the intensification of persecution and its effects on women and their families in a time when few dreamed that developments would end in anything like Auschwitz. In fact, this period is often FeministStudies 16, no. 3 (Fall 1990).? 1990 by FeministStudies, Inc. 579 This content downloaded from 167.206.19.4 on Tue, 5 Aug 2014 00:42:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 580 MarionA. Kaplan neglected for either the earlier, more hopeful era of the Weimar Republic (1918-33) or the later shocking years of genocide. But the intermediate era-the nazification of daily life, when the victims had to learn to cope, and when even relationships among ordinary Germans were coarsened - is often far more instructive politically. Moreover, exploring the lives of Jews as they interacted daily with Gentiles challenges the myth of political innocence with which so many Germans today surround their accounts of "dailylife in Nazi Germany."2Most importantly for our purpose, gender differences in the experience of being a persecuted Jew can be illustrated more clearly for these years than for later ones. Finally, a brief look at Jewish women's organizations shows how women responded col- lectively to increasing persecution. The focus will be on housewives and mothers, largely because they are the ones who left the most memoirs. Still, they also made up a large portion of the female community. In their twenties, thirties, and forties, these women had embarked upon marriage, created families, and, sometimes, started careers. Like the vast majority of Jews, they experienced the impending catastrophe from their situation as ethnically or religiously Jewish and politi- cally liberal citizens, increasingly shocked by the abrogation of the rights and liberties they once had taken for granted. Other Jewish women will receive less attention here: rarely did those who inter- married, who remained in Germany after the war broke out, or who died leave memoirs behind, at least ones that are accessible today. Of those who managed to escape, single women and the elderly are underrepresented in memoir collections.3 Finally, memoir collections are often found in Jewish libraries and ar- chives. Hence, writers who were more self-conciously Jewish might have deposited them, possibly creating a sample of Jews who were slightly less integrated into German society than the ac- tual range of women's situations.4 OVERVIEW OF JEWISH WOMEN AND THEIR COMMUNITY In 1933, 500,000 people were registered as Jews in Germany (ex- cluding those who had offically left Judaism), or about 0.77 per- cent of the population. Seventy percent lived in large cities with populations of over 100,000 (one-half of non-Jews lived in places This content downloaded from 167.206.19.4 on Tue, 5 Aug 2014 00:42:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Marion A. Kaplan 581 with under 10,000 inhabitants), and one-third (over 160,000) lived in Berlin, where they made up close to 4 percent of the population. Like every minority, the Jewish minority had a career profile that differed significantly from that of the general population. Histori- cally prohibited from a variety of economic endeavors, almost 62 percent of Jews (compared with 18 percent of non-Jews) worked in business and commerce. They were underrepresented in agri- cultural careers, where less than 2 percent of Jews (but 29 percent of other Germans) were employed. The employment of Jewish women had gradually increased to 27 percent by 1933, but it was still less than that of non-Jewish women (34 percent). Of those who worked, over one-third were salaried employees; about one- fifth were assistants in family enterprises (mithelfendeFamilienan- gehoerige). Another one-fifth were self-employed (this could in- clude a large business or a tiny one), and about one-tenth were workers (mostly in industry, but often in the offices rather than on the factory floor).5 The socioeconomic position of Jews was overwhelmingly middle class, although the inflation of the early 1920s and the Great De- pression had definitely set them back. More women had to assist or support their families-a trend that intensified in the Nazi period - and more Jews had to rely on financial aid from Jewish welfare organizations.6In addition, almost one in five Jews in Ger- many was a refugee from Eastern Europe. Most of these Ostjuden, as they were called, eked out humble existences as industrial workers, minor artisans, or peddlers. In comparison with non-Jewish women, Jewish women general- ly had smaller families and more education. They were less likely to work outside the home and more likely to have household help. Although married Jewish women devoted themselves to their fami- lies, parents expected their unmarried daughters to prepare for a career. Many - seven times as many proportionally as Christian women -went to the university.7 As we shall see, after 1933, career development was increasingly obstructed just as wage earning became more urgent. During the Weimar Republic, strictly religious education and practices were on the decline and mixed marriages on the rise.8 In the large cities, marriage to Christians was becoming so common- especially among Jewish men - that some Jewish leaders actually feared the complete fusion of their community into German socie- This content downloaded from 167.206.19.4 on Tue, 5 Aug 2014 00:42:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 582 Marion A. Kaplan ty by the end of the twentieth century.9 Jews eagerly joined non- sectarian organizations. For example, the Jewish feminist move- ment (League of Jewish Women) belonged to the German bour- geois feminist movement from 1908 until 1933, and individual Jewish women were prominent members of other German wom- en's organizations. Jews felt a deep allegiance to the ideals of Ger- man civilization as they understood them-the Enlightenment values of tolerance, humanism, and reason. They enjoyed general acceptance in the worlds of art and culture, participated in center and moderate Left politics, and excelled in the "free"professions of medicine and law. Possibly as many as one-third of all women physicians in the Weimar Republic were Jewish.'o Although Jews adapted to the social, political, or cultural styles of their surroundings, "quoting Goethe at every meal,""'they also preserved a sense of ethnic solidarity and religious cohesion. They did so through organizing religious or secular Jewish groups and through maintaining traditional family holiday celebrations. Women's organizations, in particular, fostered a sense of Jewish identity- including religious identity- throughout the Weimar years. Thus, as we shall see, the interest by women's organizations in their Jewish heritage during the Nazi period was not a sudden shift; it was an intensification of a trend already well under way. Finally, a small Zionist movement, while failing to make signifi- cant inroads into the assimilationist commitments of most Ger- man Jews, sharpened Jewish self-consciousness.12 Jewish cohesion was also a response to a pervasive anti- Semitism with roots in Imperial Germany (1871-1918).