https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/18641600.pdf
OSNABRUCK
Victims, Perpetrators and Bystanders1 in a
German Town: The Jews of Osnabrück Before,
During and After the Third Reich
History, Memory and Sources
Studies of Jews in early twentieth-century Germany have become
legion, especially over the years covering the Third Reich.
Indeed, nearly seven decades after the Nazis seized power, virtu-
ally every aspect of their history has received the most detailed
attention, not just at a national level but also at a local and indi-
vidual level. This detailed research has filtered through to the
English language historiography so that some of the best work in
English has used local or regional case studies, above all that of
Eric Johnson and Robert Gellately, which focused upon the
examples of Krefeld and Würzburg respectively. 2
The town of Osnabrück, in western Lower Saxony, provides a
good example of the detail with which the history of all aspects of
the Third Reich has received attention. It also offers a good case
study of the history of a German town before, during and after
the Nazis, because it mirrored other medium-sized settlements
in Germany in its population size and composition and in its
economic, social and political development. In 1929 the town
numbered 93,800 inhabitants, making it the fifty-second largest
settlement in Germany out of a list of ninety-two with over
50,000 provided by the German statistical office.3 By 1949
Osnabrück had become the forty-sixth largest settlement in the
Federal Republic, with 97,745 residents, out of a list of 427 with
over 10,000. 4
In ethnic terms the town counted a population structure not
untypical of others of its size. It housed a small Jewish popula-
Panikos Panayi
European History Quarterly Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand
Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol. 33(4), 451–492.
[0265-6914(200310)33:4;451–492;040011]
tion when the Nazis seized power, resembling the size of Jewish
communities outside the big cities, counting just 435 in 1933, or
0.45 per cent of the population of the town, as well as an even
smaller Romany grouping. These minorities would virtually
disappear by 1945. In their place came a far larger number of
foreign workers and prisoners of war from Poland, Russia, the
Ukraine, France, Holland and Belgium, a small percentage of
whom would remain in the town after 1945. Once hostilities
ceased there followed several thousand German refugees who
came mostly from parts of Eastern Germany ceded to Poland.
Economically, the main activities of Osnabrück included
textile production, metallurgy and engineering. During the
course of the Nazi period and, especially, during the war, it
became, like most other German towns and cities, a centre of
arms production, which explained the severity of the bombing it
experienced. The postwar years involved a rebuilding of the old
industries. In political terms, Osnabrück followed the pattern of
other urban settlements in Germany between 1929 and 1949 with
the Nazis becoming the largest party by 1933. At the end of the
war the town went through the Allied (in this case British)-led
democratization process which characterized the whole of West
Germany, with the population rejecting its former Nazi alle-
giances. 5
The historiography of the town before, during and after the
Nazis reveals that local enthusiasts have studied virtually all
aspects of its history. Scholars and students at the University,
above all those working with the Professor of Modern History,
Klaus J. Bade, have deeply involved themselves in this process.
The first major published studies of the period covering the Third
Reich appeared in the 1960s, when Karl Kühling wrote two
books on the subject, dealing with the years 1925–45.6 More
recently, another local historian, Wido Spratte, has published
two books focusing upon the social history of the town, more
specifically the effects of bombing and the situation of
Osnabrück during the postwar dislocation which followed the
bombing and British takeover. 7 Subsequently, a study of the post-
war refugees who moved to the town has appeared, edited from
the Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien
at the University.8
This last volume indicates a further development which has
taken place in the historiography of Osnabrück: the increasing
452 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
focus upon specific subject areas and groups. This partly results
from the efforts of the local historical journal, the Osnabrücker
Mitteilungen, edited by the director of the archive, Gerd Stein-
wascher, which has published focused scholarly articles on the
Nazi period and its aftermath for several decades. Steinwascher
has also compiled one of the most important volumes on the town
and the surrounding administrative district during the Third
Reich, consisting of the reports produced by the local Gestapo
between 1933 and 1939.9
The present article evolves from a microhistory of Osnabrück
between 1929 and 1949, examining the experiences of all ethnic
groups in the town, both majorities and minorities. The approach
is that of Alltagsgeschichte, or the history of everyday life, a form
of German social history which involves piecing together the
experiences of ordinary people, usually at the local level, to build
a broader picture and to get to grips with ‘real life’.10 This
approach has become particularly important in the study of Nazi
Germany, 11 so that the historiography of Osnabrück discussed
above has its reflection in virtually every German town and city
and of individual population groups and experiences within
them.
Reconstructing the history of everyday life in Osnabrück dur-
ing the years under consideration has involved the use of a wide
variety of sources in the town archive, as well as in archives in
Münster, Hannover, Freiburg and London which held informa-
tion relevant to the project. In addition, it makes use of twenty-six
interviews involving thirty-three people, together with a variety of
local newspapers which came and went with the changing
regimes from Weimar to Nazism to occupation by British forces.
Three phases perfectly sum up the experiences of German
Jewry in the years between 1933 and 1945. In chronological
order Jews faced loss of civil rights, expulsion and extermina-
tion. 12 From a community remaining, in many ways, distinct
from mainstream German society because of its ethnic and eco-
nomic differences, precisely the reasons why the Nazis and their
anti-Semitic predecessors had singled out the group, Jews virtu-
ally disappeared from German towns by the early stages of the
Second World War as a result of emigration, deportation and
murder.
Our concern lies with the realities of the deprivation of civil
rights, deportation and extermination for both German Jews and
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 453
gentiles in Osnabrück. While the Jews in this town consisted of
‘victims’, bystanders made up much of the German population.
In the case of Osnabrück, trials carried out after the Second
World War had ended revealed that only a few locals consisted of
‘Hitler’s willing executioners’. 13 In fact, many of those responsi-
ble for the deportations did not even come from Osnabrück.
Interviews of residents in the town during our period also reveal
the presence of individuals prepared to stand up to Nazi thugs by
ignoring their orders and laws. Clearly, the interviewing process
did not discover any perpetrators because such people do not
traditionally make themselves available for discussions with
historians.
The present article fits into an enormous historiographical
tradition, which has encompassed virtually all aspects of the life
of German Jewry in the years l 933–45. On the one hand we have
monumental studies examining the national picture. 14 On the
other, virtually every Jewish community of any size has had its
history written in the period 1933–45, usually by a local enthusi-
ast or enthusiasts who have often produced empirical studies of
the highest quality, although on other occasions outsiders, includ-
ing Americans, have written such works. In many cases the
history of the Nazi period forms part of longer-term accounts of
Jews in particular locations. 15
From our own perspective, Marion Kaplan has produced a
major study which looks at the reality of everyday life for Jews in
Nazi Germany based upon a wide range of primary and second-
ary sources. 16 The title of her book, Between Dignity and Despair,
represents the reality of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Jews did
not simply experience suffering, but also attempted to ignore the
all-embracing racism and the threat of deportation and emigra-
tion surrounding individuals and to live life with some dignity
and normality. The existence of published and unpublished
accounts of German Jews under the Third Reich have allowed
the reconstruction of reality under the Nazis,17 as has interview-
ing.18
The Jews of Osnabrück have received considerable attention
from local historians, which eases the reconstruction of their lives
in the years 1929–49. The survival of official documentation also
facilitates this process. Similarly, the history of Osnabrück Jewry
in the Nazi period remains fresh in the minds of people who lived
in the town at the time. The sample of people interviewed nearly
454 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
all had some memory of the local Jews, often revealing their
abhorrence at the treatment of this ethnic minority in their midst.
The Germans interviewed included several bystanders, although
they might more accurately merit the description of innocents
because of their age.
The published material provides much information on the
evolution of Osnabrück Jewry. The earliest significant work con-
sists of a brief account covering the whole history of the local
community commemorating the reopening of the synagogue in
1969.19 There then followed another brief, unpublished, account
by K. Brenner, held in the local archive, covering the whole his-
tory of the community. 20 The first significant and detailed
account of the community, by Karl Kühling, which moves from
the medieval period to ‘The Great Death’, appeared in 1983, a
standard competent political and social history of the type pro-
duced by this scholar. 21 The year 1988 saw the appearance of a
book focusing on the Nazi period by Junk and Sellmeyer. This
will remain the standard work on the subject and represents one
of the best studies on a local German Jewish community under
the Nazis because of the meticulous detail and thorough research
involved. In an appendix, the authors have provided details of
the fate of every Jew living in the town at the start of the Nazi
period. The volume reappeared in 1989 and 2000. 22 Perhaps
because of the rigour of this volume, relatively little has appeared
on Osnabrück Jewry since 1988, with the exception of an article
jointly authored by Martina Sellmeyer (now Krause) and
Michael Gander.23 More importantly, Osnabrück’s most signifi-
cant Jewish son, and one of the major artists of the Holocaust,
Felix Nussbaum, has had a large book written about him. 24
The chronology of the above volumes strikes us and confirms
the silence about the Holocaust, which existed in Germany in the
early postwar decades. By the time the volume by Junk and
Sellmeyer had appeared at the end of the 1980s, discussion about
the murder of German Jewry, as well as research into the theme,
had become mainstream. This reflects the centrality of the
memory of the Holocaust in postwar German national con-
sciousness on both a national and civic level.25 The town square
in Osnabrück has two plaques which commemorate the victims
of the Nazis. One of these lists the Jews deported from the town
while the other contains the names of Romanies who suffered the
same fate.
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 455
The availability of both published and unpublished material on
the fate of Osnabrück Jewry allows us to reconstruct its history
from the 1920s until the 1940s. While the original Jewish com-
munity seems to have almost completely disappeared by the end
of the Second World War, a rebirth of Osnabrück Jewry occurred
almost immediately, as a result of the return of a small number of
survivors and the presence of some Polish and Yugoslav Jews
imported as foreign workers and prisoners of war respectively
between 1939 and 1945. We can contextualize the history of
Osnabrück Jewry in the years 1929–49 against the background of
the national picture. The survival of much archival evidence as
well as the memory of Jews by many gentiles allows us to take a
twin approach. In the first place, we can outline the fate of the
victims, Osnabrück Jewry, against the background of the rise of
anti-Semitism. Secondly, we can examine the views and actions
of Germans. These consisted of perpetrators, who carried out the
deportations, and bystanders, who felt they could do nothing,
usually because of their age.
Osnabrück Jewry before 1929
The history of Osnabrück Jewry until the end of the Weimar
Republic reflects that of German Jewry elsewhere. This involved
medieval settlement, persecution and expulsion, resettlement at
some time in the early modern or modern period, and emancipa-
tion and movement into the local business élites during the nine-
teenth century. A medieval community existed from the start of
the fourteenth century until the beginning of the fifteenth, when
it faced expulsion. Consequently, between about 1431 and 1800
Osnabrück and the areas around it remained Judenrein,26 there-
fore resembling similar sized settlements elsewhere in Germany,
with an early modern history without Jews. 27 The development of
the modern community in Osnabrück began in the early nine-
teenth century against the background of the emancipation of the
Jews taking place throughout Germany. By 1809 the town acted
as home to at least ten Jews. Full emancipation did not occur in
Hanover (where Osnabrück lay) until 1850, much later than in
many other German provinces. By 1871 a total of 138 Jews lived
in the town, increasing to 397 by 1900, when they made up 0.8
per cent of the total population. 28 The growth of the Jewish
456 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
population in Osnabrück meant, as elsewhere, the development
of a predominantly middle-class community, over-represented in
the professions and in trade and commerce. 29
During the first three decades of the twentieth century,
German Jewry reached its zenith. While anti-Semitism remained
a potent force, both before and during the Weimar Republic,
people of Jewish faith had become central figures in the eco-
nomic, cultural and political establishment in the new regime
established at the end of the First World War. Although the eco-
nomic crisis affected them, they remained a section of the popu-
lation over-represented at the higher echelons of German society
and overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas, particularly the
big cities. Their middle-class status also meant that they had an
older age structure than the rest of the population.30
An examination of Osnabrück Jewry in the early part of the
twentieth century reveals similar patterns to the national picture.
One of the main differences consists of the small size of the local
population, although, as 1,600 synagogue communities existed in
the country as a whole, living outside the bigger populations of
Berlin, Frankfurt, Breslau and Munich also represented normal-
ity for Jews in the three decades before the Nazis came to power.
The size of Osnabrück Jewry would determine some aspects
of its development, although the general picture after 1933
remained similar to that in other parts of Germany. The year
1906 represented an important one in the evolution of modern
Osnabrück Jewry because of the opening of the synagogue in
Rolandstraße, which the SA would symbolically destroy on 9
November 1938. 31
Following the national pattern, Osnabrück Jewry witnessed
an increase in numbers during the first three decades of the
twentieth century, as Table 1 indicates. While the size of Osna-
brück Jewry differs in scale and proportion of population from
the larger communities, 32 the evolution of this size mirrors the
national pattern. The declining proportion would reflect the
middle-class status of the local Jews, meaning lower birth rates,
exogamy, and, after 1925, migration to other locations.
The occupational patterns of Osnabrück Jewry reflect the
national picture, with an overwhelming middle-class community
which had moved into commercial occupations during the eman-
cipation era. Two lists of members of the Jewish community
in the Osnabrück Staatsarchiv33 suggest that hardly any of the
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 457
Jewish community involved themselves in any other than middle-
class occupations by the 1920s. The figures for 1923 (see Table
2) reveal the overwhelmingly bourgeois pattern. Four years later
the pattern remains the same (see Table 3). The figures from both
tables reveal that Osnabrück Jewry found itself highly concen-
trated in the commercial sector, with the largest occupational
group consisting broadly of businessmen. Unlike other locations
in Germany, Jews made relatively limited inroads into the pro-
fessions, with few doctors or lawyers. The presence of just one
person involved in the arts points to the status of Osnabrück as a
cultural backwater compared with Berlin or some of the other
major cities where Jews had a profound impact on the arts. The
information available also concentrates on male occupations.
Those in Table 2 exclusively so. The list of Jewish parishioners
for 1927 also lists women and children. The overwhelming
majority of the women simply attract the description of ‘wife’.
The two exceptions consist of a managing clerk, Johanna
Blumenfeld, of Markt 18, and a doctor, Sophie Prag, of
Wesereschstraße 22.
As local anti-Semites would emphasize, and as Tables 1–3
suggest, Osnabrück Jewry played a large role in local retailing,
particularly the ownership of department stores, concentrated in
Grosse Straße, the main shopping street in the town. In 1927, at
458 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
Table 1
Growth of the Jewish Community of Osnabrück, 1880–1933
Total Jewish Jewish percentage
Year population population of population
1880 33,000 394 1.20
1885 36,000 398 1.10
1890 40,000 423 1.05
1895 45,000 408 0.90
1900 51,000 397 0.80
1905 60,000 474 0.80
1910 66,000 399 0.60
1925 90,000 454 0.50
1933 95,000 435 0.45
Source: Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer, Stationen auf dem Weg nach Ausch-
witz: Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Juden in Osnabrück, third
edition (Osnabrück 2000), 11.
the age of 23, the artist Felix Nussbaum still lived with his father,
the businessman Philip Nussbaum, in the family villa in Schloss-
straße. Philip ran an ironware business with his cousin Simon
Coessels. The success of the business allowed Philip to build the
residence in Schlossstraße in 1922. 34
The files listing the occupations of Osnabrück Jews also give
information on their residential patterns, pointing to a concentra-
tion in the city centre and reflecting the national pattern with
at least two thirds of German Jewry ‘living in sophisticated,
upper-middle class districts’ of cities. 35 In the case of Osnabrück,
the main area of residence lay around the palace, as the list of
synagogue members from 1927 indicates. Johanisstraße repre-
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 459
Table 2
Occupations of Osnabrück Jews in 1923
Occupation Number of Jews involved
Barber 1
Lawyer 3
Opera director 1
Businessman 47
Railway assistant 1
Cattle and horse dealers 18
Managing clerk 1
Factory owner 1
Furniture dealer 1
General agent 1
Credit broker 1
Dentist 1
Butcher 2
Auctioneer 1
Pensioner 1
Bookkeeper 1
Shoe shop owner 4
Hat factory owner 1
Shopkeeper 3
Saddle maker 1
Teacher 1
Antique dealer 1
Factory manager 1
Engineer 1
Decorator 1
Source: NSO Dep-3b-IV-2170.
sented a particularly popular street. Jews remained largely absent
from the working-class areas of Sutthausen or Schinckel. 36
The list of synagogue members from 1927 also provides
information on the family structure of Osnabrück Jewry. In all,
165 family units existed, many of them with several children,
although the information also suggests the presence of numerous
households with just one person, often a widow. While we cannot
provide an exact age structure for Osnabrück Jewry, we can
build a picture of the size of households. As Table 4 indicates, the
local community had a typically bourgeois family structure. Out
of 165 units, fifty-eight lived on their own, consisting of one third
of the total. These would include both widows and widowers
together with younger people. Of the eighty-four family units,
making up half of the total, the most common consist of either
one or two children, far outnumbering those with three or more
children. At the end of the Weimar Republic, German and
Osnabrück Jewry therefore consisted of a mature middle-class
460 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
Table 3
Occupations of Osnabrück Jews in 1927
Occupation Number of Jews involved
Banker 1
Horse and cattle dealers 10
Businessmen 65
Factory owner 1
Managing clerk 3
Auctioneer 1
Precentor 1
Student 4
Lawyer 2
Rabbi 1
Pensioner 1
Doctor 2
Butcher 1
Railway assistant 1
Teacher 1
Business manager 1
Stage director 1
Business assistant 1
Source: NSO Dep-3b-IV-2169.
community, distinct in terms of its occupational structure, its
residence patterns and its family structure.
In addition, the existence of distinct ethnic organizations,
partly developed as a reaction against anti-Semitism and partly
evolving for religious reasons, also helped to distinguish Jews
from their German neighbours. While the Jewish community of
Osnabrück may have divided into Orthodox, Reform and Con-
servative, its size prevented the evolution of separate services.
Individual families chose the extent to which they practised and
adhered to their religion and its rituals, including attendance of
services. The synagogue also had a school attached to it. This
played an important role in the maintenance of Jewish identifica-
tion. The local community had evolved all manner of secular
organizations during the course of the emancipation process and
these increased in number under the Weimar Republic, partly as
a reaction against rising anti-Semitism. During the nineteenth
century several welfare bodies had emerged, including one con-
cerned with women. The Association for Jewish Literature and
Culture existed from 1913. The fact that the Osnabrücker Tennis
Association did not allow Jews as members led to the establish-
ment of the Jewish Tennis Association. Similarly, the expulsion
of Jewish members from the Osnabrück Sports Association in
1924 led to the foundation of the Jewish Sports Association. In
addition, a series of youth organizations also existed in Osna-
brück. However, we would be wrong to view Jewish society as
completely distinct from the rest of the population in the town.
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 461
Table 4
Size of Jewish Households in Osnabrück in 1927
Size of household Number of cases
1 person 58
2 people 20
3 people 2
4 people 1
Couple or one parent with 1 child 28
Couple or one parent with 2 children 35
Couple or one parent with 3 children 15
Couple or one parent with 4 children 3
Couple or one parent with 5 children 3
Source: NSO Dep-3b-IV-2169.
Jews played a major role in the local economy, while some of the
minority became members of the numerous Vereine in the town
and had predominantly gentile friends. 37
Anti-Semitism During the Weimar Republic
‘Anti-Semitism was endemic to Weimar Germany’ 38 and its
manifestations countless. At a time of crisis in the form of the
economic depression and the consequences of defeat in 1918,
Jews became the scapegoats for all of Germany’s ills for those
who could not delve deep enough into the real causes of the
country’s problems. At the start of the Weimar Republic there
existed 400 völkisch organizations together with 700 anti-Semitic
journals,39 while all manner of organizations had begun boy-
cotting Jews by the early 1920s. One of the most potent mani-
festations of the hatred of the Jews, connected especially with the
rise of the Nazis, consisted of violence, especially the desecration
of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. The Nazis and their anti-
Semitic ideas increasingly impacted upon the national conscious-
ness after 1929 as the party made its electoral breakthroughs.
Attacks upon Jews, and their synagogues and cemeteries,
became everyday occurrences. 40
In Osnabrück, the small size of the Jewish minority meant that
it could offer less resistance than the bigger communities in the
larger cities. It appears that both the synagogue and the cemetery
faced desecration in 1927. 41 Just before Christmas 1928, the
NSDAP launched a campaign against the purchasing of goods
from Jewish shops, which involved the distribution of leaflets,
one of which carried a picture of the way in which Jewish shops
had allegedly taken over the central area of Osnabrück over the
previous half century. It declared: ‘Whoever gives his money to
Jews, strikes himself with his own fists’. The leaflet asked: ‘In
fifty years time will the productive German live in backhouses
and cellars?’ Other leaflets called for a demonstration against
department stores. 42
In the last years of the Weimar Republic Jews still had power
to defend themselves, which the Third Reich would take away.
Following a pattern established at the end of the nineteenth
century by the Zentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen
Glaubens, an Osnabrück businessman, Ischel Schleimer took out
462 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
legal action against Dr Marxer, the local Nazi leader, and his
publisher, Wilhelm Hildebrandt, for libelling him and other
Jewish businessmen. He won the case resulting in a fine of 220
Reichsmarks for Marxer and twenty for Hildebrandt.43
Although the Nazis may have continued their anti-Semitic
activity between 1929 and 1933 in Osnabrück, the Stadtwächter,
a local anti-Semitic group led by a quack doctor, Heinrich
Schierbaum, became equally responsible for the spread of hatred
of the Jews. Anti-Semitism represented a core theme in the
propaganda of the group. It did not develop the racial sophistica-
tion of the Nazis, although similar racial ideas certainly surfaced,
but focused, instead, upon the issues which concerned the local
lower middle classes such as the financial power of the Jews,
which would have played a large role in the spread of popular
hostility towards this minority in the town. For instance, the front
page of its eponymous newspaper, the Stadtwächter, of 9 June
1929 carried the following headline: ‘Germany in the Paws of
International Capital. Pensioners in Need at a Time of Public
Extravagance’. While not focusing upon the Jews, but rather
upon the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles for German
family income, the use of the phrase ‘international capital’
carried a particular meaning. A few weeks later the newspaper
became more overt in its anti-Semitism, carrying an article which
linked Jews with venereal disease amongst Germans. 44 Even
more startling, pointing to the direction which the Stadtwächter
would take, a text box appeared on 25 August, reading as fol-
lows: ‘Warning! Every Christian who takes even a penny to a Jew
is a traitor to his religion and his people. He strengthens the
power of the brutal Jewish slave holder.’ Underneath in bold
letters followed the words ‘Middle Classes! Middle Classes!’ In
December 1929 the Stadtwächter, imitating the NSDAP cam-
paign of the previous year, chose to run with the festive theme of
‘Christian Christmas — Jewish Profit’. One article returned to
biblical themes, declaring:
It is a true Christian duty to buy the symbols of love and the celebration of
Christ’s birth from Christians. Otherwise Christmas has lost its meaning
and nobody has the slightest right to call themselves a Christian or even a
German . . .
For the last time: Keep Jewish greed towards Christmas at bay. At least shop
from Christians at Christmas.45
Another article came with an illustration of a stereotyped Jew
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 463
hanging the Stadtwächter and the leader of the local NSDAP,
Dr Marxer, on his Christmas tree as festive decorations. 46 In
electioneering during the summer of 1930 the newspaper turned
to another classic anti-Semitic stereotype of linking Jews with
left-wing politics and the SPD. An article on ‘Jews in German
Politics’ pointed their influence from Karl Marx to Walther
Rathenau,47 while another front-page headline ran: ‘German
Workers, Open Your Eyes!’ A subtitle to the article which fol-
lowed wrote of ‘Social Democracy, the Guards of Jewish
Capital’.48 More menacingly, another piece carried the title: ‘The
Jewish Question and its Solution’. It ran:
The Jewish question has never had as much urgency as it does today. It has
always been a problem throughout the centuries, which needed to be solved but
the situation in all states was still to a large extent bearable. But now the Jewish
question violently demands a solution in republican chaos . . .
As the Jews have brought the whole of the Reich into disorder the Jewish
question will be solved. The solution will not be comfortable for the Jews.49
Actually measuring the influence of such writing on the local
Jewish community proves difficult, but it would clearly have
made them more conspicuous to those who had not thought
about the position of this minority within the town. However,
while documentary evidence does not survive to allow us to break
down the readership of the Stadtwächter, we can assume that it
was, to some extent, preaching to the converted, i.e. small shop-
keepers, who felt threatened by the presence of Jewish depart-
ment stores, a constituency to which the Nazis appealed.
But the Stadtwächter did not have everything its own way as
far as the spread of anti-Semitism is concerned. A newspaper
appeared in February 1930 to oppose the organization. Although
it lasted for just two editions, a piece in the second under the title
of ‘The Germans and the Jews’ concluded, in a rather ambiguous
fashion:
We are of the opinion that it is very important for us Germans to learn from the
Jews how to stick together, how to become harmonious and how to become
enterprising, daring business people. If we better mastered these virtues the
struggle against the Jews would not be necessary. If we mastered these virtues
we would have won the struggle against the Jews. It is enough that we are
Germans, that we consider ourselves as Germans and conduct ourselves in a
German manner. 50
464 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
The Elimination of the Jews
The anti-Semitic manifestations of the final years of the Weimar
Republic simply prepared the way for the more dramatic actions
which the Nazis would take once they seized control of the state.
Germans now had a regime which turned the clock back.
Initially, it simply went back to the middle of the eighteenth
century, the period before emancipation. However, with the
Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938, Germany returned to medieval
anti-Semitic barbarity. Once the Second World War broke out,
the Nazis began to move forward to methods of brutality unseen
in European history as their march into Poland and the Soviet
Union resulted in the introduction of factory killing.
The new regime acted against the Jews immediately using both
legislation and force, a combination which directed all aspects of
Nazi policy until the outbreak of the Second World War, when
all pretence to legality disappeared. Violence intensified in the
first few months of 1933. In Worms, for instance, ‘Jewish stores
were tear-gassed’ on 12 February, while, on 9 March, several
Jews were brutally beaten by contingents of the local SA. Similar
incidents occurred in the town throughout March. 51 In the Upper
Silesian town of Cosel, a group of Nazis fired shots into the
houses and businesses of Jews on 23 February. In Breslau, on 13
March, Jewish lawyers and judges ‘were dragged from court-
rooms while cases were being heard, and some of the unfortunate
victims were beaten’.52
Osnabrück does not appear to have experienced such incidents
in March but, like the rest of the country, it participated in
Boycott Day on 1 April, called by the new regime against Jewish
businesses on 28 March, with the aim of forcing out Jews for the
benefit of their rivals. Previous publicity, particularly in news-
papers, as well as in the form of posters outside Jewish shops, had
alerted local residents of the action before 1 April in settlements
of all sizes throughout Germany. 53
The Osnabrück press reported the events. Of 31 March we
learn:
The protest movement against Jewish businesses, lawyers and doctors began
yesterday afternoon in Osnabrück, as in many other cities. At 4 pm SA people
went to the businesses in question and erected display boards outside the
entrances. At the same time a large gang marched through the streets with
placards encouraging a boycott. No unforeseen events occurred. 54
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 465
On the day itself:
At 10 o’clock there appeared SA people in uniform outside the shops in
question carrying placards in their hands and placing them outside the shop
windows advising about the character of the boycott and its necessity as a
defence against the Jewish-Marxist foreign propaganda. In total 42 businesses
in the town were affected by these measures. At the same time various persons
who, despite the boycott, made purchases in the shops, had their pictures taken.
In the morning the pictures taken on Friday were already being displayed in
Kolkmeyer in Georgstrasse.
While these actions were being implemented by the SA the SS were taking
action against Jewish lawyers and doctors. Four man patrols appeared before
the consultation rooms and declared that the entrances were occupied . . .
During the course of the morning a number of Jewish businessmen, doctors
and lawyers were taken into protective custody and handed over to the politi-
cal police.55
But those arrested soon regained their liberty as the Nazi regime
did not use concentration camps for any length of time at this
stage in its history. Although some Germans displayed indigna-
tion at the actions of the new regime56 the activities of 1 April did
‘legitimise anti-Jewish measures in the economic field’, 57 with the
ultimate aim of eradicating the minority from economic life in
Germany.
The street actions went together with legislation against the
Jewish communities. The most significant measure at this early
stage of the new regime consisted of the Law for the Restoration
of the Professional Civil Service, which dismissed non-Aryans,
overwhelmingly Jews, from government — including academic
— employment. 58 This had a limited impact on Osnabrück Jewry
because, as we have seen, the overwhelming majority of the local
community worked as self-employed businessmen. Perhaps the
most important of the 400 laws introduced against the Jews were
the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade Germans from marrying or
having sexual relations with Jews, Gypsies or Negroes and
restricted citizenship to those with ‘German blood’.59 Those
people who had mixed German and Jewish ancestry could claim
citizenship depending on their level of Germanness. 60
Between 1933 and 1938 Jews in most towns in the Reich lived
a life which involved a level of stability, even though this meant
a deterioration in their economic position and their constant
victimization through propaganda, which could result in out-
breaks of violence against them. While they may have made the
best of their situations, the legislation introduced against them
466 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
could have left them in no doubt about their position as pariahs
in the new German order. This reality meant that many Jews
attempted to challenge their legal position.
Jews also had no doubt about their new pariah status because
of the Nazi propaganda machine, which publicized their position
as such at both the national and local level. Book burning cam-
paigns, which singled out publications by Jewish authors, made
the status of the minority clear, as did copies of Der Stürmer,
available in every town and village. Similarly, the entire popula-
tion would have received reports about speeches made by Hitler
attacking Jews through the well developed newsreel and radio
broadcasts.61 Furthermore, numerous books appeared on the
position of the Jews.62
As well as these nationwide developments, local anti-Semitic
initiatives also emphasized the pariah status of the Jews, particu-
larly through the publication of newspaper articles and the
holding of rallies. While articles on the Jews did not appear on a
regular basis in the local press before November 1938, a daily
trawl through the Osnabrück newspapers reveals some pieces
attacking the Jews. Interestingly, anti-Semitism worked retro-
spectively even on a local level, as revealed in a piece in the
Osnabrücker Tageblatt from 23 July 1936 linking an outbreak of
theft in the town in 1769 with the arrival of ‘Begging Jews’. Two
years later, on 17 July 1938, the Neue Volksblätter published a
piece which appeared in the Völkische Beobachter the day before,
claiming to have discovered a paper revealing a Jewish plan to
take over Germany and published with the front page headline
of: ‘A Document of Jewish Hatred’.
Local anti-Semitic rallies must have proved more frightening
to the local Jewish community. For instance, ‘A Mass Rally on
the Jewish Question’63 took place on 20 August 1935, the local
manifestation of a 1935 anti-Semitic campaign, which culmi-
nated in the Nuremberg Laws in November.
Yesterday, on Tuesday evening there occurred in Osnabrück one of the most
enormous rallies that the city has ever seen. Between twenty-five and thirty
thousand comrades gathered at the Ledenhof which was surrounded by flags
with swastikas and lit up with floodlights in order to protest against Jewry’s
attacks upon National Socialist Germany.
As well as concentrating upon the international and national
power of the Jews, speakers at the meeting singled out local
Jewish residents for attention. 64 In the following month the
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 467
Osnabrücker Zeitung published an article with the title of ‘The
Jews Are Our Bad Luck’, describing the efforts of the local press
office to bring attention to the Jewish problem,65 while the
following January Pastor Grußendorf attacked Jews at an
overflowing meeting on the theme: ‘Is Christianity a Jewish
Religion?’ 66
The economic existence of Jews changed fundamentally as a
result of violence and measures passed in the first years of the
Nazi regime. Former doctors and lawyers found that they could
only make a living by turning to the pre-emancipation occupation
of itinerant peddling. Others found themselves in poverty and
consequently had to live off welfare benefits from the American
Joint Distribution Committee and Jüdische Winterhilfe.67 In
Osnabrück, those Jews who decided to stay managed to make a
living. Dr Fritz Lowenstein, for instance, continued to work as a
medical practitioner until 1936, while Dr Ernst Jacobson still
carried on as a lawyer until he committed suicide in October
1938 following the introduction of the ban on Jewish lawyers. 68
Despite pressure to persuade Germans to stop purchasing at
Jewish shops and also attempts to pass all businesses into Aryan
hands, many of the larger Jewish shops in Osnabrück survived
until November 1938, although they did not have the same level
of economic success as previously. 69 A police report for August
1935 mentioned an organized boycott which occurred. ‘People
who set foot in Jewish shops were photographed. The pictures
were displayed in public. Placards were placed outside Jewish
businesses with inscriptions such as: “Jewish Shop! Whoever
buys from here is a traitor to the people and will be publicly
denounced” ’. As the same report states, such actions had conse-
quences:
In the first place the boycott has had an impact on the clothing shop Alsberg
and Co. We are dealing with a concern which employs 151 people — including
eight non-Aryans. The business has today witnessed a fall of 70 per cent in its
daily takings and even more compared with the period before the boycott. The
owner has already informed the Regierungs Präsident in Osnabrück that he
cannot carry on running the business under these circumstances.70
In September 1935 we learn that:
The propaganda for the purpose of defence against the Jews reported in the
previous month has to a certain extent not failed in its aim. It is to be observed
that the majority of the population are avoiding Jewish shops. Several Jewish
468 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
business owners have consequently been struggling with business difficulties
and some of them intend to sell their businesses. 71
Meanwhile, we also learn that around thirty members of the
community received financial support from the Jewish Winter-
hilfswerk by November 1935. 72
While the measures of the Nazis may have had a significant
impact upon the economic activities of German Jews even before
Kristallnacht, religious, social and economic life continued to pro-
ceed almost as normal. Or as normal as possible, set against the
background of daily persecution. Religious attendance rose in the
cases of some individuals and communities, who now regarded
God as the way to salvation. At the same time theatre, music, art,
film and sport continued, especially in some of the large Jewish
centres with well developed cultural activities. 73 The Jewish
organizations established before 1933, including the Central
Verein, continued to exist and still displayed some defiance.74
Local police reports in Osnabrück during the first few years of
the Third Reich also reveal Jewish social and religious activity in
the town, most of which centred upon the synagogue. Although
some of it simply consisted of a direct reaction against the
measures which the Nazis had implemented, much did not. On l
October 1934, the Osnabrück branch of the Cultural League
of German Jews held a meeting in the synagogue attended by
seventy-five people and addressed by Dr Singer from Berlin on
Judas Macabaeus with the help of a gramophone and a piano.75 In
January 1935 we learn of meetings held by the National League
of Jewish Frontline Soldiers together with another organized by
a Zionist group. The speaker at the latter, Dr Hans Capell from
Düsseldorf, suggested emigration to Palestine as the only future
for European Jews in view of the strength of anti-Semitism on the
continent. Meanwhile, ‘A Jewish religious teacher has estab-
lished a history circle in Osnabrück, which meets on a weekly
basis. Furthermore, the Cultural League of German Jews orga-
nized a chamber music evening.’ 76 In March meetings of every
conceivable activity with every aim in mind took place. On 3
March the Cultural League of German Jews held an illustrated
lecture on ‘Rembrandt’s Jewish Models’. Seven days later a
recital evening of German and Jewish poetry took place. On 21
March the local branch of the Central Verein held a meeting
attended by forty-five people on the ways to deal with the boy-
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 469
cott. Seventy people attended a Zionist meeting on 30 March
addressing the theme ‘Is There Enough Room in Palestine?’ 77
The activities pursued by the Osnabrück Jews in 1934 and
1935 point to the reality of everyday life. Some semblance of
normality continued as the cultural events indicate. Yet the
Zionist meeting indicates one possible means of salvation, while
the events organized by the Central Verein point to the need for
self defence. Osnabrück Jews, like their counterparts throughout
Germany, also reacted in several other ways to the crisis which
they faced. As we have seen, suicide represented one way out.
Although this phenomenon had been higher amongst Jews than
Gentiles even before the Nazi era, it ‘took on the character of
a mass phenomenon’ after 1933.78 An investigation into 230
suicides in Osnabrück between 1932 and 1942 revealed that
three Jews had taken their lives, making up 1.2 per cent of the
deaths when they constituted less than 0.5 per cent of the popu-
lation. 79
Many Jews in Osnabrück, particularly those who had Aryan
ancestors, challenged the laws introduced by the Nazis, as
revealed in several case files in the city archive. The muddled
nature of Nazi policy towards ‘Mischlinge’ encouraged such
challenges.80 However, such challenges did not always succeed.
For instance, Moritz Vogel failed in having his adopted son
Günther, born illegitimately to a Jewish mother in 1920, freed
from the clauses of the Nuremberg Laws, which meant that
Günther could not carry out labour service or progress to Uni-
versity. The decision by the Ministry of the Interior was made
after a medical examination and a reconstruction of Günther’s
family tree. The doctor who carried out the medical examination
commented:
Because of the good physical and personal disposition I have no hesitation in
recommending the request to enter into labour service. I would also like to
recommend the request to study at a German University. On the other hand I
have hesitations about the request for later entry into the civil service. In any
case from my own personal point of view despite the positive characteristics of
Günther Vogel I am not sympathetic to the idea that German girls and boys
may in future be taught by a half Jew.81
Similarly, a joint attempt by the siblings Karl-Heinz, Hildergard
and Elfriede Samel for release from the terms of the Nuremberg
Laws because of Aryan ancestry also resulted in failure following
a similarly thorough medical investigation. 82
470 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
Some Jews simply ignored the Nazi’s legislation or actually
stood up to them, which would result in a prison sentence. For
instance, ‘On 23/7/35 a Jewess was arrested and taken into
custody for seven days for disturbing the peace. She insulted the
SA in the foulest way.’83 Two years later Siegmund Storch
received a prison sentence of one year and five months for
having sexual relationships with two women. 84
However, the most effective method of Jewish resistance to the
Nazis consisted of migration, a path which the Osnabrück Jews
in particular followed, largely due to the small size of the com-
munity, which meant that safety in numbers did not represent an
effective strategy. In the case of Osnabrück, movement did not
simply take place abroad, but also to other cities in Germany with
larger Jewish populations. This meant that Osnabrück Jewry had
shrunk dramatically by the time of Kristallnacht, in contrast to the
larger communities, which still largely existed because of the
greater original size. The Jewish population of Worms fell by 65
per cent (1,104 to 400) from 1933 to 1938,85 whereas the decline
in Munich was less than 30 per cent during the whole period, with
a numerical decline from 9,005 to 6,392. 86 About 150,000 of the
520,000 Jews living in Germany in 1933 had left the country by
the start of 1938.87 Peaks of emigration occurred at times of
greatest fear amongst the Jewish community such as the first
few months after the Nazi seizure of power and the immediate
aftermath of the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. 88
Index cards kept by the Gestapo, which survive in the
Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, allow the reconstruction of the
decline of Osnabrück Jewry before 1938, as well as a tabulation
of the destinations of individuals, as revealed in Tables 5 and 6.
The most striking fact about these statistics is that most emigra-
tion took place between November 1934 and October 1936. The
period between these two dates had seen the anti-Semitic cam-
paign of the summer of 1935 and the passage of the Nuremberg
Laws in November of that year, both of which clearly had an
impact. From their detailed researches on individual Jewish
residents of Osnabrück, Junk and Sellmeyer have divided the fate
of Jews according to their different geographical destinations as
indicated in Table 6, which confirms the picture in Table 5 of
most Jews escaping from Osnabrück but not necessarily, in the
longer run, surviving the Nazis if they moved to other German
towns or to Holland.
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 471
An examination of a few individuals will bring to life the
emigration statistics quoted in Table 6. The Katzmann family of
Möserstrasse 43, for instance, fell apart as a result of emigration.
The parents Herman and Paula still lived in Osnabrück at the
start of the war. The first son, Siegfried, born in 1912, moved to
Münster on 19 June 1933 and then further on to Basel on 10 June
1936. Their daughter Emmi, born in 1913, eventually migrated
to Palestine in March 1938, where she probably joined her
younger siblings Frietel and Liesel, who had already moved
there. Hete-Margret, born in 1919, went to Wartebach in 1936
and then on to Cologne.89 The Oppenheimer family experienced
a similar fate. The widow Emma moved to Cloppenburg in April
1935. She followed her eldest daughter, who initially moved to
Berlin in 1933 and then to Cloppenburg where she got married in
April 1934. Ingeborg Oppenheimer moved to Ludwigshaven in
1933, then returned to Osnabrück after a stay of six months,
before migrating to Bremen in May 1935. Siegfried Oppen-
heimer eventually moved to South Africa, while W. Oppen-
heimer went to Hengelo on 10 September 1935.90
Those Jews who still remained in Osnabrück in November
1938 would witness the first manifestation of the full rage of
Nazism. After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in November
1935 Nazi anti-Semitism had experienced something of a lull
in the following two years, partly due to the desire not to alien-
ate international opinion during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
However, by the end of 1937 and, more especially, the start of
472 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
Table 5
Decline of the Size of Osnabrück Jewry
Date Number of synagogue members
1 January 1933 457
22 November 1934 403
1 October 1936 198
15 November 1937 186
26 October 1938 182
17 May 1939 119
15 February 1941 69
Source: Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer, Stationen auf dem Weg nach
Auschwitz Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Juden in Osnabrück,
third edition (Osnabrück 2000), 73.
1938, this had changed, partly because, despite the official anti-
Semitism and the violence which had taken place, ‘Jews in
Germany at the end of 1937 were still relatively well off in eco-
nomic terms’.91 Nevertheless, the 50,000 Jewish businesses
which existed in Germany at the start of 1933 had declined to
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 473
Table 6
The Fate of Osnabrück Jewry
Remained in Osnabrück 106
Number who died in town 27
Number who committed suicide 2
Number murdered in Buchenwald in 1938 1
Number deported to Poland in 1938 and murdered there 4
Deported 66
Victims of euthanasia 1
Survived in Osnabrück 5
Migrated to other towns 189
Number who died there 5
Number who emigrated 82
Number deported 38
Fate unknown 64
Emigrated to Holland 83
Number who died in Holland 5
Number who committed suicide 1
Number who emigrated further 20
Number deported 40
Number who survived 11
Fate unknown 6
Emigrated to France 4
Number who emigrated further 3
Emigrated to Spain 3
Number who emigrated further 3
Emigrated to Shanghai 3
Number who emigrated further 3
Emigrated to Palestine 44
Emigrated to the USA 43
Emigrated to South America 17
Emigrated Austria 3
Emigrated to Sweden 4
Emigrated to Denmark 1
Emigrated to Italy 5
Emigrated to England 19
Source: Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer, Stationen auf dem Weg nach
Auschwitz: Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Juden in Osnabrück,
third edition (Osnabrück 2000), 72–3.
9,000 by July 1938. This was still too many for the Nazi leader-
ship.92
The invasion of Austria and the subsequent Anschluss gave a
boost to violent as well as official anti-Semitism in 1938. We
need to recognize this year as a fateful one in the history of the
Third Reich, the year in which the Nazis became bolder on
the international stage with the annexation of both Austria
and the Sudetenland and also the year of appeasement. The
Anschluss had allowed anti-Semitism in that country, historically
as strong as in Germany, to bring forth resentments which had
boiled for decades to overflowing, resulting in the public humili-
ation of the most exalted Jews, as well as widespread violence
and property damage.93 These events gave momentum to the
regime, which introduced further measures during the summer
and autumn: banning Jews from practising as doctors and
lawyers; forcing them to take the name Israel for males and Sara
for females; and making it compulsory to have their passports
stamped with a ‘J’. 94
On 7 November Herschel Grynzpan, a Polish Jew, murdered
Ernst von Rath, an official at the German Embassy in Paris. The
Nazi press publicized this event and the party hierarchy, meeting
in Munich to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the failed
Beer Hall Putsch, communicated to local SA branches suggest-
ing that they attack Jewish property.95 This led to a nationwide
explosion of anti-Semitic violence on the night of 9–10 Nov-
ember, which resulted in the destruction of 7,500 shops and more
than 250 synagogues, as well as 236 deaths, affecting Jewish
communities throughout the country. 96
A series of sources allows us to reconstruct the lead-up to and
aftermath of the Kristallnacht in Osnabrück. Just before the
murder of Ernst von Rath the local newspapers had carried
stories about Jews. For instance, on 5 November the Neue Volks-
blätter, under the title of ‘Thousands of Jews Expelled over the
Border. Energetic Measures of the Slovakian Government —
Boycott Movement by the Population’. On 9 November the same
newspaper carried a story about the confiscation of weapons held
by Berlin Jews, linking this with the murder in Paris. The entire
front page of the following day devoted itself to the killing of von
Rath. It began ‘Passage of the Victim — March of Victory’.The
Neue Volksblätter of 11 November also carried as its main front
page headline: ‘Saturday Funeral Service for Ernst von Rath’.
474 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
Meanwhile, the Osnabrücker Tagablatt had as its front page head-
line on 8 November: ‘Cowardly Jewish Murder Attempt. Attack
in the German Embassy in Paris — German Embassy Secretary
Severely Injured by Two Shots’.
As to the actual damage caused to Jewish property, the two
newspapers carried short stories. The Neue Volksblätter under the
headline of ‘Thus Answer The People. Justified Revolt in
Osnabrück’, ran a relatively short article, which began: ‘The sad
news from Paris that a young life full of hope had fallen victim to
a cowardly treacherous Jewish murder led to justified and
remarkable rage even in Osnabrück.’ It then described the
damage caused by rioters:
The inside of the Synagogue was destroyed and burnt out. The spontaneous
Jew hating demonstration then turned against the last Jewish businesses and
wholesale firms in Osnabrück. The shop windows were smashed and the goods
put in safe keeping. In the earliest hours of the morning the justifiably enraged
comrades gathered before the Jewish businesses in order to see how the goods
were taken to safety on lorries. 97
The report of the violence in the Osnabrücker Tageblatt provided
less rhetoric and more information on the damage caused by the
rioters.
The spontaneous anti-Jewish actions were initiated shortly after midnight with
the ‘smoking out’ of the synagogue in Rolandstrasse. A part of the interior
decorations and the pews were burnt. The Star of David was taken away from
the dome. Enormous placards indicating the status of the Jews as the enemy of
the world were placed before the synagogue. The demonstration then turned
against the still existing Jewish businesses, whose windows were destroyed:
shop and shop window display contents remained undisturbed, however. The
furious crowd also turned its attention against the homes of individual Jews.
The Jews still resident here were taken from their homes during the course of
the night and placed into protective custody; without causing them any injury;
women and children were obviously left in their homes. 98
The events of the night of 9–10 November represented the high
point of prewar Nazi anti-Semitism. They combined with other
official measures taken by the Nazis in an attempt to speed up the
persecution of the Jews and their eradication from the German
economy. The newspaper campaign which had begun at the start
of November continued for the rest of the month. The Neue
Volksblätter carried stories about the decision to eliminate Jews
from German economic life, 99 and one about the sentencing
of Hermann Behr to five years in prison for having a sexual
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 475
relationship with a German woman. 100 The Osnabrücker Tage-
blatt also carried the same economic headlines,101 as well as print-
ing stories about international opinion and the Jews. 102
As many as 30,000 German Jews faced arrest in the aftermath
of the pogrom. They found themselves taken to the concentration
camps in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Although
the surviving internees were released by the spring of 1939, up to
2,500 may have died within the camps due to a typhus epidemic
and mistreatment by their guards.103 Those who faced arrest
included Sigfried Heimbach, who was actually in Münster at the
time. His daughter, Irmgard, recalled: ‘The Gestapo knocked on
our door and wanted to know where my father was. My mother
had to give the address. He was put in jail in a really small prison
in a village. We travelled there and could take him food every
day.’ 104
As announced by Goebbels just after the pogrom, the other
major consequence of Kristallnacht consisted of the decision to
finally eliminate Jews from German economic life. His declara-
tion of 12 November compelled Jews to sell all their enterprises
and valuables. On the same day Göring ordered that all Jewish
business activity should cease from 1 January. 105 We can see the
confiscation of Jewish property through several surviving files in
the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv in Osnabrück. A list from 1
November indicates the existence of thirteen surviving Jewish
commercial establishments in the town. A report from 23 Dec-
ember indicates that virtually all of these no longer functioned by
then. For instance, ‘the garage concern Israel Stern, owner
widow Ida Stern, Seminarstrasse 31, has certainly not yet closed
down, but is practically standing still because no more cars are
parked there any more’. The owner was in the process of selling
the business. 106 A communication of 9 March 1939 provides
information on the following sale: ‘The warehouse of the firm
Samson David has been sold for RM77,000. Of this sum the
retail trade organization must pay RM27,000 and the firm
Nobbe RM50,000. RM67,000 of the entire price has been paid
up to now.’107 By the outbreak of the Second World War, the
local state, following the national pattern, had ‘aryanized’ virtu-
ally all business activity in Osnabrück. 108 On 2 March even the
land upon which the synagogue stood faced auction, accom-
panied by an article in the Neue Volksblätter declaring:
476 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
With this decision was spoken the final decision about the centre of Osnabrück
Jewry. From the outside the temple served cultural purposes but in reality it
was the place where the Jews came together in order to discuss how they could
bring the German people under their bondage. 109
An examination of the businesses in Grosse Strasse, the main
shopping street, in the address book of Osnabrück for the years
1934–5 and 1938–9 indicates some of the changes which took
place in ownership during the Nazi years. Most notably, one of
the largest department stores in the town, at numbers 27–9 had
changed from Alsberg and Co. to Lengermann and Triesch-
mann.110
After November 1938, the Jews also faced expulsion from
schools and from the general welfare system and could not enter
some public spaces. Furthermore, they could no longer drive or
use university libraries and faced segregation. 111 A dramatic
increase therefore occurred in the level of Jewish emigration
away from Germany. Despite obstacles put up by the Nazis and
the reluctance of other states to accept Jews, about 115,000 left
in the final ten months of peace.112 As Table 5 indicates, sixty-
three people left Osnabrück in the six months after Kristallnacht,
leaving a community of just 119 by May 1939.
The outbreak of the Second World War meant a further deteri-
oration in the position of those Jews who remained in German
towns. In Osnabrück, the local newspapers continued to peddle
anti-Semitic propaganda in the opening years of the conflict,
against the background of the decision-making process which
would result in the deportation of German Jewry to death and
labour camps in Eastern Europe. The propaganda peaked in
August and September 1941, centring around an exhibition and
mass meeting on the theme of ‘The Enemy of the World’.113
Some normality continued in the everyday life of Jews, although
this remained confined within the boundaries set by the Nazis.
Irmgard Ohl still attended school in Münster until 1941, while
her father, who had previously worked as a railway employee,
found himself employed in a factory and then in stone-breaking.
She recalled the implementation of a curfew for Jews. ‘One had
to be at home by eight, by seven in the winter.’114
The deportation of Osnabrück Jewry to Eastern Europe
occurred in several stages, the main one on 13 December 1941.
Irmgard Ohl remembered that she and her parents received a
letter about a month beforehand informing them that they would
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 477
face transportation to Riga and that they could take 50 kilos of
luggage with them:
We were picked up by the Gestapo a few days beforehand and taken to the
elementary school in Pottgraben. The children were told that they had a few
days off school because the heating was busted. Straw was spread out in the
gym. We spent the night there. The next day we had to get on the train.
She eventually reached Riga three days later without her luggage
and worked in various camps during the war. When asked how
the Gestapo explained the events in Osnabrück, she replied: ‘To
labour service. But how, what for and wherefore didn’t really
exist.’ 115 The Osnabriick war chronicle, compiled at the time,
described the deportation of December in matter of fact terms:
In the whole of the Reich people have set about to expel the Jews, if they still
remain, beyond German borders and to send them to the eastern zones.
Osnabrück also got rid of its Jews today. At 9.30 today the transport started
moving out of the station with Riga as its destination. Only those who were
over sixty years old, or who were married to an Aryan person as well as those
who were sick, were allowed to remain.116
A total of thirty-four Osnabrück Jews left on this day, joined by
others from locations throughout the Regierungsbezirk, so that
205 people boarded the train.117 In July 1942 another transport
took 28 Osnabrück Jews to Theresienstadt. 118 Of those people
deported during the Second World War, thirty-five had died in
the Baltic states and twenty-seven in Theresienstadt, while five
had returned from Riga, together with four from Auschwitz and
Theresienstadt. 119 Arrests of people with Jewish origins con-
tinued until the end of 1944, as indicated by the example of Paul
Wiesenthal, a ‘half Jew’ sacked from his employment as a teacher
and forced to work in armaments production with the Teuton-
werk.120
Osnabrück Jewry had therefore virtually disappeared by 1945,
following the pattern in other German locations. Munich Jewry
had declined to just 430 at the end of the war, a total which
included those who had gone into hiding and those not con-
sidered full Jews. 121 Smaller towns lost their Jewish communities
altogether, as in the case of Worms by the end of 1942.122 The
fifty-three Jews who lived in the East Frisian settlement of
Dornum at the start of the Second World War had all dis-
appeared by March 1940 on their way to the Polish death
camps. 123 By the end of 1944 just 14,574 full Jews lived within
the German borders of 1937.124
478 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
At the end of the war the number of Jews in Germany actually
began to increase. Releases from concentration camps meant that
about 50,000 lived within the territories of prewar borders,
although this had fallen to just 30,000 within a few weeks
because of high death rates.125 By 1947 the number of Jews in
Germany had actually grown to about 200,000, originating
mostly from Poland, which experienced serious anti-Semitic
pogroms. The Jews in Germany at the end of the war, particu-
larly those who had spent time in concentration camps, were
barely alive because of the physical and psychological trauma
from which they had emerged. 126
Although just a handful of Jews survived in Osnabrück, their
numbers increased in the early postwar years. By February 1946
a total of sixty-four lived in the city, consisting of thirty-one with
German nationality and thirty-three foreigners. 127 The second
figure received partial explanation by the presence of Jewish
prisoners of war amongst Yugoslavs held in a camp in Eversburg
during the conflict. 128 Those with German nationality included
Irmgard Ohl, who returned to Osnabrück with her mother in July
1945 and would subsequently marry a Christian.129 On 19
August the opening ceremony of the synagogue took place in
Rolandstrasse, which then held weekly services. 130
The history of Osnabrück Jewry from the end of the Weimar
Republic until the late 1940s therefore mirrors that of countless
Jewish communities throughout Germany, particularly those
which lived in medium-sized towns. To use the phrases of Junk
and Sellmeyer, they suffered as a result of loss of civil rights,
expulsion and extermination. Nevertheless, these phrases do not
account for every Osnabrück Jew, as many survived through
emigration. Unlike other locations, Jewry did not vanish forever
from the town as a result of the actions of the Nazis but survived,
albeit much smaller in size, to continue after the Second World
War.
Perpetrators
The Jewish victims disappeared as a result of the actions of
ardent Nazis and bureaucrats carrying out their jobs. Docu-
mentation from two trials which took place after the war allows a
reconstruction of the burning of the synagogue in 1938 and the
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 479
deportations to Eastern Europe. Both trials reveal the names of
those in the local Nazi hierarchy who ordered these actions to
take place. The evidence available would point to the efficiency
of the bureaucratic machine, and particularly the individuals
who controlled it, as central for the elimination of Osnabrück
Jewry. 131 While the local population may have been fully aware
of the disappearance of Jews from their midst, very few
Osnabrückers played a direct role in this process.
The trial of those involved in the burning of the synagogue
occurred in December 1949 and included most of the leading
figures in the Nazi hierarchy in Osnabrück, identified at the
scene of the action by local witnesses. The most surprising deci-
sion reached by the court concerned the Kreisleiter Münzer,
whom the jury accepted did not play a role in the burning and
may not even have had knowledge of the event. The main culprit
consisted of Erwin Kolkmeyer, Kreisleiter of central Osnabrück,
who, however, received a sentence of just ten months because
much of the evidence against him was rejected. Seven other men
received sentences of ten months or less for participating in the
Kristallnacht disturbances and their aftermath. 132
Between 1965 and 1967 an investigation took place into those
responsible for the deportation of Jews from Osnabrück, in con-
nection with the trial of Anton Weiß-Bollandt, head of the local
Gestapo. The investigation placed the blame on the shoulders of
Gestapo employees, who seem to have totalled no more than
forty-seven, covering the entire Regierungsbezirk during the
period 1938–45 and confirming the small numbers of people
actually needed for the enforcement of racial policy as revealed
by Gellately in his study of Düsseldorf. 133 To Gellately this
suggests the compliance of the local population in racial policy.
In the case of Osnabrück, it seems that the small number of Jews
dealt with by the Gestapo during the war, even including those
from the surrounding region, could have been managed by these
forty-seven people, although they would exclude people such as
train drivers. The investigation into Osnabrück provided more
information on the Jewish victims and their fate, as well as the
mechanics of deportation and its precise dates, than it did on the
perpetrators. Nevertheless, it concluded that nine individuals had
direct responsibility for the transportations. The two responsible
for Jewish matters had died by then. As to the others, the inves-
tigation concluded that they could not have had full knowledge of
480 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
the fact that the deportees would die when they reached their final
destination. Section 2 of the Osnabrück Gestapo, responsible for
the ‘Control of Political Opponents’, had organized the deporta-
tions. The investigation interviewed twenty employees of the
Gestapo, together with fourteen of their victims. As in the case of
all such trials of former Nazis, most of those questioned did not
admit to having knowledge of the ethnic cleansing of the local
Jewish population, and none of them accepted responsibility.
Fritz Kicker, a criminal secretary and an SS leader, admitted to
knowing about the deportation which took place to Riga in
December 1941, but claimed that the Gestapo office had never
discussed this action. He also stated that he did not know about
the ultimate fate of those making the journey.134
In the case of Osnabrück the surviving evidence makes it
difficult to directly apportion blame for the deportation of the
local Jewish community to Eastern Europe. We cannot, for
instance, reconstruct and place personal responsibility in the way
that Christopher Browning has done. 135 The death of the two
Gestapo employees directly responsible for Jewish matters
allowed their Gestapo colleagues to place the blame on them.
Neither does it seem, from the surviving evidence on the local
Gestapo, that the local administration contained ‘zealots and
vulgarians’.136 The individuals who most clearly deserve this
attribute consist of the Kreisleiters, Münzer and Kolkmeyer, who
clearly played a large role in Kristallnacht, even participating
personally in the riots against the synagogue (according to wit-
nesses in the trial which took place in December 1949). A lack of
credible evidence allowed them to escape with lenient sentences.
However, these two individuals did represent the most fanatical
of Nazis in Osnabrück, playing a large role in the organization
and propaganda machinery of the local state.
Bystanders
According to Hilberg, ‘In the course of the onslaught on Euro-
pean Jewry, some people in the non-Jewish population helped
their Jewish neighbours, many more did or obtained something at
the expense of the Jews, and countless others watched what had
come to pass.’ 137 Other scholars who have focused more directly
upon Germany have recognized different levels of compliance
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 481
and varying reactions at different stages of the anti-Semitic
campaign and ethnic cleansing within Germany. 138 As the case of
Osnabrück has revealed, the local population played a role in the
campaigns which took place, either by not buying at Jewish shops
or by attending some of the local rallies. If 25,000 people really
did turn up at the meeting held in August 1935, this would have
meant a high level of local participation even if they came from
throughout the Regierungsbezirk. Others clearly benefited from
the sale of Jewish businesses. On the other hand, some indi-
viduals ignored the wishes of the Nazis and continued to pur-
chase at Jewish shops as long as they survived.
The researches of Kershaw, Bankier and Gellately suggest
limited resistance to Nazi anti-Semitic policies.139 Bankier, who
points out that it ‘was much easier to conform than to swim
against the stream’ also states that, although ‘in general the
public recognized the necessity of some solution to the Jewish
problem, large sectors found the form of persecution abhor-
rent’. 140 Thus, for instance, after Kristallnacht: ‘All sections of the
population reacted with deep shock’, confirmed by Kershaw in
his study of Bavaria. 141 Nevertheless, this negative reaction did
not go as far as to manifest itself in public hostility towards the
regime, especially after the Germans had seen what the regime
could do to its enemies. When moving on to the Second World
War, Bankier claims that the majority of Germans were openly
hostile to Jews and that they knew of the deportations, especially
in small communities where ‘people do not just vanish un-
noticed’.142 Kershaw concludes that most Germans did not care
about the fate of the Jews in the war, although they probably
knew about what had happened to them.143 Gellately, who also
devotes much attention to informers, concludes that knowledge
of what was happening ‘got through in bits and pieces’. 144
How does the population of Osnabrück fit into these patterns?
The lack of archival material of the type used by Kershaw and
Gellately, makes our task difficult. Few police reports survive
after 1936, as in the case of Bavaria, and we certainly do not have
the extant Gestapo files from Düsseldorf and Würzburg used by
Gellately. However, cards kept by the local Gestapo do survive.
A sample of eighty revealed two individuals dealt with by the
secret police for matters relating to the persecution of the Jews.
For instance, during the peak of anti-Semitism in the summer of
1935, Pastor Johannes Bornschein held a sermon in which he
482 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
declared: ‘The Jews, yes we can relate to them as we wish. The
Jews are the chosen people of the Lord.’ He does not seem to
have paid any penalty for this. 145 On the other hand, Paul
Gerhardus was ‘warned in the severest of terms’ in March 1939
for describing the ‘action against the Jews’ as ‘vulgar’. 146 Clearly,
informers must have given information on both of these indi-
viduals.
Due to the absence of extant documentary evidence, interviews
carried out in 2000 and 2001 represent another way of gauging
reaction to anti-Semitic policies. These present problems, above
all the time lag. More importantly, the sample proves proble-
matic. Jew haters would not wish to speak about their views in
the Federal Republic, which has made anti-Semitism illegal. In
addition, all of those interviewed were either adolescents or
children for much of the regime, so we cannot really expect them
to have carried out heroic acts. As bystanders, their views do
confirm the ideas of Bankier, Kershaw and Gellately. Most were
disgusted by Kristallnacht, although some felt the need to stare at
the synagogue. As a mostly middle-class sample, many had
Jewish friends or acquaintances, and knew of their persecution
and often their fate. Some of them carried out some small acts of
resistance.
The interviewees either brought up the subject of the Jews
themselves or were directly asked about them. The most vivid
memories concern Kristallnacht, which remained fixed for several
people, most notably Maria Grün, born in 1922:
We found out about it at very close quarters because we lived in Arndtstraße.
There was a crossroads, Rolandstraße, in which a very big synagogue stood
. . . My mother woke us in the night and said children come now the synagogue
is burning. It was an unbelievable atmosphere . . . In front of the synagogue sat
the synagogue director and all who belonged to it in one corner and we all knew
that they were to be taken away, we all knew it more or less. It was terrible
. . . Today people say we really all should have defended the Jews. If my
mother had said something — but she had a family — she would have been
taken away instantly. She naturally did not say anything she was deeply
affected like all of us but we were not prepared for martyrdom. I don’t know if
we all failed there. In any case it was very bad.147
The younger Karl Mols, born in 1930, remembered making his
way to school the morning after Kristallnacht.
I was in the school year, that was my second year at school, where I had a long
school journey. One morning — I still really remember very exactly — we were
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 483
going through the shopping streets of Osnabrück to school, my friend and I,
and we saw how the Jewish businessmen were destroyed and plundered . . .
We were terrified and did not know what had happened but there were
people who whispered and explained what they had experienced. We also heard
that and we also then soon learnt that the Synagogue had been set alight. That
did not lie on our way to school but on the way back we passed by because we
wanted to know what had happened and it was really terrible.148
Günther Adel, meanwhile, claimed that he had been at the syna-
gogue the night it burnt down and remembers a man from the SA
or SS climbing on to the roof and throwing the star of David
down.149
All interviewees knew of the persecution of the Jews and were
aware of their disappearance or their emigration, especially if
they had connections with them. Werner Fischer, for instance,
recalled the fate of several of his Jewish friends and the fate of the
Jewish friends of his parents.150 Similarly Heinrich and Elisabeth
Wand spoke of Jews whom they knew simply not being there
anymore. 151 All of these interviewees, together with Günther
Adel, had a clear awareness of the disappearance of the Jews.
A couple of interviewees did help Jews in a small way. Hilde
Scholl, for instance, born in 1920, had two interesting stories to
tell:
My mother and I were travelling with the tram and on one seat sat a Jew. One
could tell. And in front me stood such an SA man, so clothed in brown and the
woman said to him: ‘Sit yourself down on this empty seat’. He said to her: ‘You
can’t expect me to sit next to a Jew!’ And what did I do there? I sat down there.
Because I felt sorry for the Jew. That really didn’t have anything to do with
politics. It only made me sorry because he said that.
She also recalled:
Once my friend and I wanted to buy a swimming costume. That was that, that
one shouldn’t buy from Jews. And in the window of the shop that is now
Lengermann, lay a swimming costume that she wanted. I then said to her:
‘Then let’s just go in. Then you can buy it.’ The big shop was empty. Nobody
was inside. Then a salesman came and said to us, although we knew, that we
should not buy from him. ‘Yes’, said my friend, ‘we have also already heard
that, but I want to have the swimming costume’.152
These were fairly petty childish acts, which made little difference
to Nazi policy, but must represent everyday reality. Even less
significant would have been the actions of the mother of Cilly
Stein, who looked after the photo album of a Jewish woman
‘during the Second World War. 153
484 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
The Typicality of Osnabrück
The history of Osnabrück Jewry therefore resembles the develop-
ment of Jewish communities in urban locations throughout
Germany between the 1920s and the 1940s, particularly those
focused upon smaller settlements. The example of Osnabrück
allows us to trace the rise of anti-Semitism, the emigration move-
ment, the deportations and the situation immediately after the
end of the war.
The town clearly contained perpetrators, as well as victims, but
the vast majority of the population consisted of bystanders. While
some of the middle-class interviewees had Jewish friends, the
majority of the population would have had little contact with
this minority other than when they used their shops, a pattern
reflected in the country as a whole. The local newspaper and
police reports suggest that a large percentage of the population
must have harboured anti-Semitic grudges, most obviously made
clear by the campaign which reached its peak in the summer of
1935. Similarly, while some individuals may have continued to
buy from Jewish shops, many would clearly not have done so.
When it comes to actual participation in anti-Semitic acts it
seems obvious that only a small percentage of people would have
involved themselves in Jew baiting or violence in 1933, 1935 or
1938. All of the evidence from Kristallnacht points to the fact that
a small number of local Nazis carried out the destruction. As
Kershaw and Bankier make clear, most of the population found
such acts intolerable, even though they may have sympathized
with milder forms of ant-Semitism.
It also seems obvious that the population of Osnabrück clearly
knew what was happening. Certainly before 1939 when the
propaganda meant that people could not get away from the fact
that the new regime hated the Jews. Similarly, responses to inter-
view questions also make it clear that local residents had a fairly
good idea that Jews were disappearing even though they may
well not have known what happened to them.
Osnabrück may differ from some of the larger Jewish com-
munities in the country because the small numbers meant that
people had more desire to get out, even if this just meant moving
to a larger Jewish community somewhere else in the country.
Nevertheless, the Jews here did not completely disappear as they
did from Worms, for example. A few survived at the end of the
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 485
war, partly helped by the presence of Yugoslav officers. Conse-
quently, unlike Worms, a community developed after 1945,
based on the one which existed before 1933.
Notes
I would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Leverhulme
Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Board for funding the project on
‘Life and Death in a German Town: Majorities and Minorities in Osnabrück,
1929–1949’, upon which this article is based.
1. From Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Cata-
strophe, 1933–1945 (London 1993).
2. Eric Johnson, The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans
(London 2000); Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford 1988).
3. Statistisches Jahrbuch deutscher Städte (Jena 1931), 11.
4. Statistisches Jahrbuch deutscher Gemeinden (Schwäbisch Gmünd 1949), 16.
5. Panikos Panayi, ‘Everyday Life in a German Town’, History Today, Vol.
52 (2002), 31–7.
6. The titles are: Osnabrück 1925–1933: Von der Republik bis zum Dritten Reich
(Osnabrück 1963), and Osnabrück 1933–1945: Stadt im dritten Reich, second edi-
tion (Osnabrück 1980).
7. The titles are: Im Anflug auf Osnabrück: Die Bombenangriffe, 1940–1945
(Osnabrück 1985), and Zwischen Trümmern: Osnabrück in den Jahren 1945 bis
1948 (Osnabrück 1990).
8. Klaus J. Bade, Hans-Bernd Meier and Bernhard Parisius, eds, Zeitzeugen
im Interview: Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene im Raum Osnabrück nach 1945 (Osna-
brück 1997).
9. Gerd Steinwascher, ed., Gestapo Osnabrück Meldet: Polizei und Regierungs-
berichte aus dem Regierungsbezirk Osnabrück aus den Jahren 1933 bis 1936 (Osna-
brück 1995).
10. For an introduction see: Alf Lüdtke, ed., The History of Everyday Life:
Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life (Princeton 1995); and Geoff
Eley, ‘Labor History, Social History, Alltagsgeschichte: Experience, Culture, and
the Politics of the Everyday — a New Direction for German Social History?’,
Journal of Modern History, Vol. 61 (1989), 298–343.
11. See the discussion in Institut für Zeitgeschichte, ed., Alltagsgeschichte der
NS-Zeit: Neue Perspektive oder Trivialisierung? (Munich 1984).
12. From Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer, Stationen auf dem Weg nach
Auschwitz. Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Juden in Osnabrück, third edition
(Osnabrück 2000).
13. Daniel John Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans
and the Holocaust (London 1996).
14. Recent examples include: Wolfgang Benz, ed., Die Juden in Deutschland:
Leben unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft (Munich 1993); Saul Friedlander,
Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–39 (London 1997); and
Klaus P. Fischer, The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holo-
caust (London 1998).
486 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
15. Good local studies include: Dieter Goetz, Juden in Oldenburg, 1933–1938
(Oldenburg 1988); Henry Huttenbach, The Destruction of the Jewish Community of
Worms, 1933–1945: A Study of the Holocaust Experience in Germany (New York
1981). Broader studies with good essays on the Nazi period include: Hebert Reger
and Martin Tielke, eds, Frisia Judaica: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in
Ostfriesland (Aurich 1988); and Christiane Heinemann, ed., Neunhundert Jahre
Geschichte der Juden in Hessen: Beiträge zum politischen, wirtschaftlichen und kul-
turellen Leben (Wiesbaden 1983).
16. Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi
Germany (Oxford 1998).
17. Two good accounts by children who escaped before the outbreak of the
Second World War are: Hannele Zürndorfer, The Ninth of November (London
1983); and Peter Gay, My Jewish Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin (Yale 1998).
18. Those who have used them include: Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit; and
Johnson, op. cit.
19. Z. Asaria, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Osnabrück und Umgebung. Zur Weihe
der Synagoge in Osnabrück (Osnabrück 1969).
20. K. Brenner, ‘Dokumentation über die Juden in Osnabrück’ (unpublished
manuscript, 1978).
21. Karl Kühling, Die Juden in Osnabrück (Osnabrück 1983).
22. Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit.
23. Martina Krause and Michael Gander, ‘ “Ariesierung” des jüdischen
Handels und Handel mit jüdischem Besitz im Regierungsbezirk Osnabrück’, in
Michael Haverkamp and Hans-Jürgen Teuteberg, eds, Unterm Strich. Von der
Winkelkrämerei zum E-Commerce: Eine Austellung des Museums Industriekultur im
Rahm des 175. Bestehen der Sparkasse Osnabrück (Bramsche 2000), 227–43.
24. Eva Berger, Inge Jaehner, Peter Junk, Karl Georg Kaster, Manfred Meinz
and Wendelin Zimmer, Felix Nussbaum: Art Defamed, Art in Exile, Art in
Resistance (Bramsche 1997).
25. See, as an introduction to this issue, Mary Fulbrook, German National
Identity After the Holocaust (Cambridge 1999).
26. Kühling, Juden, 14–57.
27. For instance, Alfred Lewin, Juden in Freiburg im Breisgau (Trier 1890),
101, points to the fact that Jews had not lived in Freiburg between 1442 and 1809.
28. Kühling, Juden, 58–76, Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit., 10–11.
29. For Osnabrück see Brenner, op. cit, 4–5. For the national picture see
Panikos Panayi, Ethnic Minorities in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany:
Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Turks, and Others (London 2000), 90–1.
30. Panayi, ibid., 133–7. The best accounts of Weimar Jewry include: Donald
Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge, LO 1980); and contributions
to Walter Grab and Julius H. Schoops, eds, Juden in der Weimarer Republik
(Stuttgart 1986).
31. Osnabrücker Tageblatt, 23 September 1931.
32. In 1933 Frankfurt Jewry totalled 26,158, making up 4.7 per cent of the
city’s population, while the figures for Breslau stood at 20,202 and 3.2 per cent.
No other community made up more than 2 per cent of the total population of any
city. See the table in Goetz, op. cit., 24.
33. The reference numbers are N[iedersächsisches] S[taatsarchiv] O[snabrück]
Dep-3b-IV-2169 and NSO Dep-3b-IV-2170. While they have no date, Junk and
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 487
Sellmeyer, op. cit., 330, place them at 1927 and 1923 respectively.
34. NSO Dep-3b-IV-2169; Berger, et al., op cit., 29.
35. Niewyk, op. cit., 85.
36. NSO Dep-3b-IV-2169.
37. This paragraph is based on Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit., 24–8.
38. Goldhagen, op. cit., 83.
39. Trude Maurer, ‘Die Juden in der Weimarer Republik’, in Dirk Blasius and
Dan Diner, eds, Zebrochene Geschichte: Leben und Selbstverstandnis der Juden in
Deutschland (Frankfurt 1991), 107.
40. Central-Verein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens, Friedhofs-
schändungen in Deutschland, 1923–32: Dokumente der politischen und kulturellen
Verwilderung unserer Zeit, fifth edition (Berlin 1932).
41. According to Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit., 31. However, this is not con-
firmed by the list of cemeteries which faced attack in 1927 in Zentralverein
deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, Friedhofsschändungen, 8–10.
42. Junk and Sellmeyer, ibid., 35; NSO Erw-C3 Nr 26, Flugblatt der NSDAP,
1928.
43. Osnabrücker Tageblatt, 19 October 1929; NSO Rep 430-101-7/43-331-
Band 6, ‘Politische Wochenberichte über die wirtschaftliche und politische Lage in
der Stadt Osnabrück u.a. an die Polizeidirektion Bremen, 1929’, 21 October 1929.
The two accounts give different facts and figures.
44. Stadtwächter, 30 June 1929.
45. Ibid., 8 December 1929.
46. Ibid., 22 December 1929.
47. Ibid., 27 April 1930.
48. Ibid., 3 August 1930.
49. Ibid., 7 July 1929.
50. PP, 18 February 1930.
51. Huttenbach, op. cit., 14.
52. Richard Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of the Nazis: The Storm
Troopers in East Germany (London 1984), 105.
53. Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of
the German Jews, 1933–1945 (Hanover, NH 1989), 17–18.
54. Osnabrücker Tageblatt, 1 April 1933.
55. Osnabrücker Zeitung, 2 April 1933.
56. Kaplan, op. cit., 23.
57. Barkai, op. cit., 23.
58. Friedlander, op. cit., 27–8.
59. Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany
1933–1945 (Cambridge 1991), 49–50.
60. See the thorough discussion of this issue in Jeremy Noakes ‘The Develop-
ment of Nazi Policy Towards the German-Jewish “Mischlinge”, 1933–1945’, Leo
Baeck Institute Year Book, Vol. 34 (1989), 306–15.
61. Burleigh and Wippermann, op. cit.
62. See, for instance, Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage, Die Juden in
Deutschland (Munich 1937).
63. Osnabrücker Zeitung, 22 August 1935.
64. Osnabrücker Tageblatt, 21 August 1935.
65. Osnabrücker Zeitung, 11 September 1935.
488 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
66. Ibid., 18 January 1936.
67. Barkai, op. cit., 77; Günther Plum, ‘Writschaft und Erwebsleben’, in Benz,
op. cit., 292–313.
68. Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit., 60–1.
69. Krause and Gander, op. cit., 231.
70. ‘Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das Geheime Staats-
polizeiamt für den Monat August 1935 vom 4. September 1935’, in Steinwascher,
op. cit., 250. The Regierungs Präsident was the head of the government in the
region of Osnabrück.
71. ‘Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das Geheime Staats-
polizeiamt für den Monat September 1935 vom 10. Oktober 1935’, ibid. 266.
72. ‘Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das Geheime Staats-
polizeiamt für den Monat November 1935 vom 4. Dezember 1935’, ibid., 305.
73. Volker Dahm, ‘Kulturelles und geistiges Leben’, in Benz, op. cit., 125–222.
74. Alfred Hirschberg, ‘Der Zentralverein deutscher Staatsürger jüdischen
Glaubens’, in Wille und Weg des deutschen Judentums (Berlin 1935), 12–29.
75. ‘Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das Geheime Staats-
polizeiamt für den Monat Oktober 1934 vom 3. November 1934’, in Steinwascher,
op. cit., 116.
76. ‘Auszug aus dem Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das
Geheime Staatspolizeiamt für die Monate Dezember 1934 und Januar 1935 vom
4. Februar 1935’, ibid., 133.
77. ‘Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das Geheime Staats-
polizeiamt für die Monate März und April 1935 vom 4. Mai 1935’, ibid., 165.
78. Konrad Kwiet, ‘The Ultimate Refuge: Suicide in the Jewish Community
under the Nazis’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Vol. 29 (1984), 135–48.
79. Werner Pelster, ‘Selbsmord in Stadt-u. Landkreis Osnabrück’ (unpub-
lished University of Münster medical dissertation 1934), 34.
80. See Noakes, ‘Development of Nazi Policy Towards “Mischlinge” ’.
81. NSO Rep 430-303-19/56-233. Real names have been changed.
82. NSO Rep 430-303-19/56-234. Real names have been changed.
83. ‘Lagebericht der Staatspolizeistelle Osnabrück an das Geheime
Staatspolizeiamt für den Monat Juli 1935 vom 4. August 1935’, in Steinwascher,
op. cit., 228.
84. Neue Volksblätter, 12 March 1937. It seems that Storch was a foreign Jew
with the real name of Schlamon.
85. Huttenbach, op. cit., 16.
86. Cahman, op. cit., 3.
87. Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth
Century (New York 1985), 129–30.
88. Juliane Wetzel, ‘Auswanderung aus Deutschland’, in Benz, op. cit., 417–
18.
89. NSO Dep-3b-IV-2167, Cards 216-216f.
90. NSO Dep-3b-IV-2167, Cards 341-341d.
91. Avraham Barkai, ‘The Fateful Year 1938: The Continuation and Accelera-
tion of Plunder’, in Walter H. Pehle, ed., November 1938: From ‘Reichskristall-
nacht’ to Genocide (Oxford 1991), 95.
92. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945 (London 2001), 131.
93. Friedländer, op. cit., 241–2.
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 489
94. Kershaw, op.cit., 131.
95. Uwe Dietrich Adam, ‘How Spontaneous was the Pogrom’, in Pehle, op.
cit., 73–94.
96. Anthony Read and David Fisher, Kristallnacht: Unleashing the Holocaust
(London 1991), 73–4.
97. Neue Volksblätter, 11 November 1938.
98. Osnabrücker Tageblatt, 11 November 1938.
99. Neue Volksblätter, 13, 14 November 1938.
100. Ibid., 16 November 1938.
101. Osnabrücker Tageblatt, 13, 14 November 1938.
102. Ibid., 15, 18, 20 November.
103. Read and Fisher, op. cit., 73, 134–5; Erika Weinzierl, ‘Schuld durch
Gleichgültigkeit? Zur Geschichte der Novemberpogrome 1938’, in Günther
Gorschenk and Stephen Reimers, eds, Offene Wunden — brennende Fragen: Juden
in Deutschland von 1938 bis heute (Frankfurt 1989), 20.
104. Interview with Irmgard Ohl, 28 July 2000.
105. Friedländer, op. cit., 281, 284.
106. NSO Rep-430-904-15/65-2, Letter from the Oberburgermeister to
Regireungs Präsident, 23 December 1938.
107. NSO Rep-430-904-15/65-2, Letter from the Oberburgermeister to
Regierungs Präsident of 9 March 1939. RM is an abbreviation of Reichsmarks.
108. See: Krause, op. cit., 233–6; NSO Rep-430-904-15/65-9; NSO Rep-430-
904-15/65-12.
109. Neue Volksblätter, 10 February 1939.
110. Addressbuch der Stadt und Landkreis Osnabrück 1934/1935 (Osnabrück
1934); Addressbuch der Stadt und Landkreis Osnabrück 1938/1939 (Osnabrück
1938).
111. Friedländer, op. cit., 284–5.
112. Konrad Kwiet, ‘To Leave or not to Leave: The German Jews at the
Crossroads’, in Pehle, op. cit., 146.
113. Neue Volksblätter, 29, 31 August, 6 September 1941.
114. Interview with Irmgard Ohl, 28 July 2000.
115. Ibid.
116. NSO Dep-3b-XV-3, Kriegs-Chronik, Band III, Sept. 1941 — Okt. 1942,
779.
117. NSO Rep-439-21.
118. Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit., 208.
119. Asaria, op. cit., 32.
120. NSO Rep-726-16.
121. Constantin Goschler, ‘The Attitude Towards Jews in Bavaria after the
Second World War’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, Vol. 36 (1991), 445.
122. Huttenbach, op. cit., 38–9.
123. Horst Reichwein, ‘Die Juden in der nationalsozialistischen Zeit’, in Reyer
and Tielke, op. cit., 275–7.
124. Benz, op. cit., 733.
125. Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, ‘Jüdische Überlebende als “Displaced Persons”:
Untersuchungen zur Besatzungspolitik in den deutschen Westzonen und zur
Zuwanderung osteuropäischer Juden 1945–1947’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft,
Vol. 9 (1983), 421.
490 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
126. Koppel S. Pinson, ‘Jewish Life in Liberated Germany’, Jewish Social
Studies, Vol. 9 (1947), 103, 110.
127. NSO Rep-430-201-16B/65-27-1, Letter from Regierungs Präsident of 8
February 1946.
128. The camp is discussed by: Junk and Sellmeyer, op. cit., 21–16; and
Asaria, op. cit., 33–9.
129. Interview with Irmgard Ohl, 28 July 2000.
130. Bistumsarchiv Osnabrück, 04-88-1; Asaria, op cit., 43.
131. The historiography on perpetrators and the role of bureaucracy in the
killing of Jews is massive. Good starting points include: Hilberg, op. cit.; Zygmunt
Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge 1989); and the works of
Christopher R. Browning, particularly his essays in The Path to Genocide: Essays
on the Launching of the Final Solution (Cambridge 1992) and Nazi Policy, Jewish
Workers, German Killers (Cambridge 2000).
132. The trial can be traced through the Niederdeutscher Kurier, 3, 7, 14, 15, 17
December 1949.
133. In March 1945 the Düsseldorf Gestapo employed 291 persons, 242 of
them bureaucrats, to control a population of approximately 500,000. Gellately, op.
cit., 45.
134. Details of the investigation are contained in two files: NSO Rep-945-42;
and NSO Rep-945-44.
135. See his essay ‘Bureaucracy and Mass Murder: The German Adminis-
trator’s Comprehension of the Final Solution’, in Path to Genocide, 125–44.
136. Chapter 5 of Hilberg, op. cit., is entitled ‘Zealots, Vulgarians, and Bearers
of Burdens’.
137. Ibid., 212.
138. See, for instance: Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the
Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945 (Oxford 1983), 224–77, 358–72; David Bankier,
The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism (Oxford 1992),
67–88, 116–38; Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi
Germany (Oxford 2001), 121–50.
139. Although Kershaw, ibid., 246–57, points out that the Nazis made rela-
tively little headway in rural Bavaria because of the influence of the Roman
Catholic clergy who stood up for them.
140. Bankier, op. cit., 68, 69.
141. Ibid., 86; Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 262–3.
142. Bankier, ibid., 121, 131.
143. Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 358–72.
144. Gellately, Backing Hitler, 149.
145. NSO Rep-439-19-116.
146. NSO Rep-439-19-334.
147. Interview with Maria and Hans Grün, 8 July 2000. The names of all inter-
viewees have been changed.
148. Interview with Karl Mols, 10 August 2001. The names of all interviewees
have been changed.
149. Interview with Günther Adel, 2 August 2001. The names of all intervie-
wees have been changed.
150. Interview with Werner Fischer, 16 August 2000. The names of all inter-
viewees have been changed.
Panayi, Jews in Osnabrück 491
151. Interview with Elisabeth and Heinrich Wand, 16 August 2001. The
names of all interviewees have been changed.
152. Interview with Hilde Scholl, 3 September 2001. The names of all inter-
viewees have been changed.
153. Interview with Cilly Stein, 28 June 2002. The names of all interviewees
have been changed.
Panikos Panayi
is Professor of European History at De
Montfort University, Leicester. His most
recent publications include Ethnic Minorities
in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany:
Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Turks and Others
(London 2000) and, as editor, Weimar and
Nazi Germany: Continuities and Discontinuities
(London 2001).
492 European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 4
