Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Peter Longerich [essential books to read TXT] 📗

welfare, allegedly of Jewish origin, and which was concerned with the improve-

ment of the state of the nation’s health across the board, without respect to the

racial categories of patients. The link between Entjudung and the implementation

Interim Conclusions

75

of racial hygiene approaches was expressed programmatically in 1935 by a spokes-

man for National Socialist medicine: ‘All forms of eugenics, every attempt to

improve our race will be in vain if we cannot achieve the complete emancipation

of questions of medical politics from the influence of Judaism and its spirit.’13

Just how closely the demand for the complete Entjudung of the health system

was linked to the idea of the wholesale improvement of the health of the German

nation can be shown particularly clearly in one area of health provision, in natural

medicine, which under the National Socialists improved its standing vis-à-vis

traditional academic medicine under the banner of ‘New German Medicine’. 14 In a 1938 issue of the periodical Heilpraktiker we can read that ‘the exclusion of Jews

from the medical professions’ would also ‘detoxify the relations between doctors

and the practitioners of natural medicine’ because ‘the Jew . . . has always been the

strongest opponent of natural medicine, which is down-to-earth and socially

aware’. 15

The double process of Entjudung and the transformation of medicine along

racial hygiene lines was part and parcel of the total occupation of the medical

professions and the health system by the National Socialists. Doctors were con-

trolled by Nazi organizations, new institutions were designed along ‘popular

health’ lines, institutes and professorial chairs dedicated to racial hygiene were

founded: this all contributed to a fundamental alteration of the structures of the

health system and the dominance of National Socialist medicine.

The Anti-Jewish Bias of the German School

System and its Nazification

Since 1933, and even more so after the second wave of anti-Semitism in 1935,

Jewish pupils at state schools had been exposed to growing discrimination: the

goal of these measures was first the exclusion, and finally the expulsion of Jewish

pupils from general schools. 16 This occurred in various ways: Jewish pupils were progressively excluded from particular school activities, such as swimming lessons, visits to rural school halls of residence, outings, school parties, and so on.

The more everyday school life was made to express National Socialist ideology by

rituals (such as the flag ceremony), by symbols (such as the communal Hitler

salute at every lesson), and by festivities and memorials, the clearer it became that

Jewish pupils could not belong to the ‘community’ that was to be strengthened by

all these measures. On the other hand, they were denied certain benefits such as

reductions in school fees17 or training grants. 18 The introduction of ‘Theory of Heredity and Racial Science’ as a compulsory, cross-disciplinary subject in all

types of schools19 as early as 1933, the enforcement of political education as well as the increasing pervasion of the various subjects with National Socialist content,

76

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

particularly in the subjects of Biology, German, and History, but also in Geog-

raphy, Art, and Music, 20 stamped the Jewish pupils as ‘inferior’ outsiders. As a rule, Jewish pupils were forbidden to make the transition to higher education; they

could sit the school leaving certificate, but did not generally receive the higher

education entrance qualification required for enrolment in university studies.

To this was added the fact that the racist and anti-Semitic content was often

represented by teachers who victimized and humiliated their Jewish pupils in

class, reducing them to exhibits that could be used to ‘prove’ the correctness of the

racial theory that was being taught.

In turn, non-Jewish pupils increasingly kept their distance; the role played in

this by the growing presence of the Hitler Youth in schools should not be

underestimated. Jewish pupils were humiliated and tormented in a great variety

of ways; assaults on Jewish fellow pupils were part of everyday school life, and for

many Jewish pupils the daily journey to school became a torture. 21

The stigmatization, ostracism, and expulsion of Jewish pupils, in spite of the

small number of those affected—in 1933 the 45,000 Jewish pupils in public schools

constituted less than 1 per cent of the whole pupil body22—formed a significant element in the Nazification process of the German school system, and were almost

seen, from the NS point of view, as the precondition for it. 23

From the viewpoint of the National Socialist regime Jewish pupils, as expressed

in a statement by the Reich Education Minister published in the press in Septem-

ber 1935, were a ‘major obstacle’ to the ‘united stance of the class community and

the untrammelled implementation of the National Socialist education of the

young’. 24 Consequently, as the Reich Education Minister announced in the relevant decree from the same month, ‘clear separation according to race’ was

the precondition for the ‘creation of National Socialist class communities as the

basis for youth education based on the idea of German nationhood’. 25

A closer analysis of the new educational guidelines demonstrates above all the

great difficulties involved in communicating the desired harmonious image of a

homogeneous ‘Aryan’ race and culture in a convincing way. The constant refer-

ence to the negative effect of the Jews, who were said to have done their best to

prevent the emergence of the genuine German Volksgemeinschaft in the past,

hence became part of the indispensable repertoire of education as practised on

National Socialist terms. National Socialist teachers went so far as to demand the

exclusion of Jewish pupils from lessons, since their mere presence irritated them

and represented an insuperable obstacle to the communication of National

Socialist educational content. 26

The efforts of the regime to create an entirely ‘German’ school system were thus

essentially based on the propagation of anti-Semitic education content and an

educational practice directed against Jewish pupils. The anti-Jewish orientation of

school was thus an indispensable part of the implementation of National Social-

ism in schools.

Interim Conclusions

77

From the beginning of 1936 Reich Education Minister Rust expressly attempted

legally to expel Jewish schoolchildren from general schools; at this time about half

of the 45,000 or so Jewish pupils still living in Germany attended general schools.

But Rust’s plan was initially thwarted by the veto of Hitler, who plainly did not

wish to go ahead with this plan in the Olympic Year 1936. 27 In 1937 the Education Minister returned to the plan; once again, in 1937, he suggested the establishment

of ‘special schools