German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss

30 Emigration and Wiedergutmachung : The Social History of Jewish Entrepreneurs from Frankfurt,1933–1963

THI RTY Emigration andWiedergutmachung The Social History of Jewish Entrepreneurs from Frankfurt,1933–1963
Benno Nietzel 379 379 This chapter deals with the social history of the emigration of Jewish entrepreneurs from Frankfurt during the Nazi era and analyses the impact of restitution and indemnification on their lives in exile. First, the diminishing possibilities of property transfer from Germany are described. The loss of large parts of their property was responsible for the precarious economic situation of Jewish emigrants in their countries of exile and made a new entrepreneurial beginning difficult. Only few Jewish emigrants succeeded to re-establish themselves as independent entrepreneurs , while many failed completely to earn their livings on their own again. This group depended heavily on payments from the German Wiedergutmachung after 1945. Restitution and indemnification proceedings allow a deeper insight into the material circumstances of Jewish emigrants during the 1940s and ’50s, which were grimmer than has previously been described by emigration research. Restitution payments were usually low, but contributions granted through the indemnification program could serve as a pension for many Nazi victims who were no longer able to work. The expulsion of Jewish citizens from Germany during the Nazi era as a phenomenon of forced emigration has always been an important area of historical research. The different waves of emigration, corresponding to the changing policy of the Third Reich toward Jews, have been precisely described. But Jewish emigration was more than a 380 BENNO NIETZEL mere reaction to government policy.1 Despite the growing pressure on German Jews, the increasingly discriminating tax and currency laws of the Nazi government made emigration extremely unattractive and the progressive economic weakening of German Jews restricted their possibilities to find foreign countries that accepted them as immigrants.2 Most countries showed themselves indifferent to the persecution of Jews in Germany during the 1930s and restricted rather than opened up their immigration policy.3 With the outbreak of World War ii, the possibilities of emigration were reduced to a minimum. When the persecution in Germany reached its first peak in 1938 with mass arrests during the summer, the notorious November pogroms, and the final termination of Jewish economic activity, the majority of Jewish citizens were still in the country, and many of them failed to find a way to emigrate.4 While much has been written about the circumstances of flight and expulsion from Germany, historical research has only recently turned toward the life of Jewish refugees in exile. Traditional emigration research has concentrated mainly on the fate of prominent personalities from politics , arts, and sciences and for a long time neglected the masses of “ordinary ” refugees.5 The latest findings indicate that from the perspective of that majority, the end of World War II did not mean a caesura. For many emigrants, life in the free parts of the world meant economical suffering and social decline.6 Even well-to-do Jews usually failed to transfer significant parts of their property abroad. Jews who did not manage to escape from Germany until 1938 or later were often left completely impoverished . It took many of them years of hard work to reach an adequate standard of living again. After 1945, Jewish Holocaust survivors lived all over the world. In Germany itself, there were some 20,000 survivors of German origin, apart from masses of displaced persons.7 This group of Jewish survivors of German origin formed a nearly negligible minority in German postwar society , and their fate and needs were mostly ignored. However, the emigrants from Germany of the 1930s were not only ignored, but were almost completely forgotten, their stories suppressed and distorted. Many Germans believed in a grotesque stereotype of the Jewish emigrant, living a comfortable life abroad, while they themselves suffered during the war and afterward , and, therefore, felt as though they were the real victims of the Nazi dictatorship and World War ii.8 The forgotten lives of these emigrants, the material circumstances of their new existence in exile, and their difficult relationship to Germany are the subject of this chapter. The Jewish entrepreneurs of Frankfurt were forced to sell or liquidate their firms by the beginning of 1939. Those who managed to emigrate were scattered all over the world. This chapter examines the relationship of these Jewish emigrants toward Germany as their country of origin and, therefore does not follow the traditional questions of emigration research...