The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, 1933-1945 ed. by Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel (review)

In this edited volume, Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel have compiled an invaluable source collection documenting the social death and the annihilation of Jews. Seeking to answer the question "What were the attitudes of the German population to the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime and what part did they have in it?" (p. ix), the editors present evidence for astonishingly cruel attitudes found within German society throughout the years of the Third Reich. The volume is organized chronologically, allowing the reader to travel the same route that German Jews did once Hitler became chancellor. The contemporaneous reports by regime/Party functionaries provide insight into the Jewish community's experience of ostracism, persecution, and deportation.

In documenting Jewish society in Nazi Germany, the reports reveal both a withdrawal from German social life on the part of the Jews and an increased level of Jewish community activity. Rather than presenting the Jews as passive victims of Nazi persecution, the various reports reveal an extremely tight-knit group of organizations, working assiduously to protect and provide for their constituents. Time and again, reporters noted that Jews with some knowledge of the law were being brought in to lead sessions on how to navigate the emigration process—with all its bureaucratic red tape. In addition, several reports describe a vibrant Jewish intellectual and cultural life; some reporters complained that it was impossible to survey all of these Jewish associational meetings. Along with the complaints came the usual suspicions that Jews were colluding to undermine the new National Socialist state: "The increased organizational activity among Jewish organizations in recent months has placed Jewry in a more fortified defensive position vis-à-vis the state and the National Socialist Party. The consequence is a generally more aggressive stance, and a tendency to intensified resistance against measures by the authorities or the Party offices" (p. 142).

The documents will force historians to re-think the way they portray Jewish experience during the period 1933-1938, possibly even to conclude that the radicalization of antisemitic persecution was driven in large part by public demand. This volume clearly reveals the escalation and radicalization of antisemitic behavior on the part of the average German citizen. Report after report details the public's demand that increased punishments be levied against the Jews; the awful incidents of destruction of houses of worship, places of business, and private homes; the attacks, insults, and accusations of race defilement; the demand for further separation between Jews and Germans in public spaces; and the calls for the elimination of the Jews—all well before the outbreak of war. Take, for example, this excerpt from a 1938 report:

In the past, Königshofen was totally infested with Jews. In the year 1935, the Jews here were still behaving like lords. On what is today Adolf Hitler Square, there was almost no house that did not belong to a Jew, or at least have Jewish residents. Today the Jews have not only disappeared completely from public life, but Adolf Hitler Square is also "judenfrei," and the former Jewish houses and stores all over Königshofen are now without exception in Aryan hands. . . . Most of the Jews have emigrated or moved away

(p. 306).

With the outbreak of war one can see the public's immediate desire to "settle" the Jewish Question. A September 11, 1939 report on the prevailing mood from Kitzingen noted violent attacks against the Jews in the district, as well as accusations that Jews were "spying." The reporter then made this final recommendation: "As I see it, the time has now come to gather all Jews together, confined in a concentration camp, so that they really will no longer be able to have contact with German Volksgenossen" (p. 476). Other reports chime...