The Nuremberg Laws: The Ban Against Jewish Blood

At an assembly of the Nazi Party in September 1935, the Reichstag passed laws that stripped German Jews of their citizenship

From the moment of their appearance on the stage of history, the National-Socialist Movement, its leader, Adolph Hitler, and his immediate associates left no room for doubt regarding their racist views, mainly concerning Jews. The anti-Semitic assassinations carried out by the Nazis already in the days of the Weimar Republic was certainly not exceptions to the rule, and Hitler himself often referred to Jews in both his speeches and his writings. The Nazi leader and his supporters believed that the Jews were responsible for a long succession of ailments in German society in particular, and in human society overall.

These crude and unsophisticated ideas were fed by old anti-Semitic prejudices that had existed in various European societies from as early as the Middle Ages. Beginning in the last years of the 19th century, various racial theories gradually gained acceptance among Western anthropologists, and many believed that the health of the human race depended upon the preservation of “racial purity.” When this thinking even became a field of academic research, Nazi hatred of “the non-German races” found very fertile ground in which it could take root.

With the Nazi rise to power on January 30, 1933, aggressive anti-Semitism became a guiding principle for the official policy of the German authorities towards Jews. Already in April 1933, a law was passed enabling the termination of employment of all state employees of Jewish origin. The new rulers of Germany and the inhumane steps they took caused many German Jews to immigrate to other countries including the Land of Israel.

Beginning in 1927, members of the National-Socialist Party started convening in Nuremberg for their annual assemblies. Over time, Nuremberg became the permanent site of the party’s assemblies, which were held there consecutively from 1933-1938. For the seventh assembly of the Nazi Party, in September 1935, thousands of supporters of the regime gathered as usual, and at the last moment, all members of the Reichstag – the German parliament, or, more precisely, the grotesque political body that remained after the Nazis took care to fill the entire chamber from their own ranks – were also invited. In a supposedly democratic move, the heads of the Nazi party introduced three laws for a vote in the Reichstag: the law concerning the German flag, the Reich Citizenship Law, and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.

The three laws were brought up for vote with full Nazi regalia serving as the decorative backdrop, at a mass, showcase event. The members of the Reichstag, needless to say, approved the three laws unanimously. All three pieces of legislation received the status of “Basic Laws”, laws with a fundamental and special significance in terms of the constitutional structure of the country. For those living at the time in Germany – Jewish and non-Jewish citizens alike – the significance of the new legislation was not sufficiently clear. It quickly transpired, however, that the laws passed at Nuremberg, which later were named after the city, in effect brought an end to the process of the emancipation of German Jewry, while stripping them of their citizenship.

One of the first editions of the Nuremberg Laws, including legal interpretation. From the National Library collections.

The practical significance was that the laws derogated the basic rights of Jews, such as the right to vote in political elections, and prohibited marital and extra-marital relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. Persons caught in such relations with a Jew were subject to punishment, and new marriages between Jews and German became impossible. Any new couple of this type was considered guilty of “blood defilement” (Blutschande). Later, terminology was devised for various gradations of “Jewish blood” based on one’s family tree, and categories were established such as “full Jew” (Volljude), “half-Jew” (Halbjude) and “quarter Jew” (Vierteljude), in order to define to whom exactly the Nuremberg Laws applied. During the years of the Nazi regime, these categories determined who would live and who would die, and tremendous numbers of people were influenced by them since they were dependent on the legal status accorded to them by the laws.

Understandably, within Nazi Germany, no voice of protest against the Nuremberg Laws was sounded, but outside of Germany, the laws and their ramifications still aroused no outcry or noteworthy public response. Less than one year after the Nuremberg Laws went into effect, most of the world did not see cause to refrain from participating in the Berlin Olympic Games, and today, it is known that many of the delegations adhered to the racist German policy: not only did Germany prevent Jewish athletes from participating in the competitions, but even the American delegation hesitated to allow for Jews to appear in the games.

The Nuremberg Laws remained in effect until the end of the Third Reich and were also implemented in Austria after it joined Germany in 1938, as well as in all of the territories occupied by Germany during WWII. In September 1945, these laws were annulled by the Allied Powers while they were administering occupied Germany. Both the Nazi assemblies in Nuremberg and the demonstrative act of legislating the Nuremberg Laws in the same city, served as criteria for the selection of Nuremberg as a symbolic site for the foundational event at the end of the war: the trials against the heads of the Nazi regime and its chief criminals, which began in November 1945, were held in the same city whose name signified the race laws. Now, the city would be forever branded by the expression “The Nuremberg Trials.”

Wilhelm Stuckart and Hans Globke’s interpretation of the race laws, 1936. This copy was part of the chief prosecutor’s library in Vienna, even before Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, as can be seen by the seal.

In this context, it is fitting to tell the story of one Dr. Hans Globke, a legal expert who was among those quick to praise the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, yet when they were canceled with the defeat of Germany, his legal career did not end.

As a senior official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Globke was one of the first lawyers to publish a scholarly interpretation of the Nuremberg Laws. In 1936, together with Wilhelm Stukart, he published a detailed commentary with a long introduction, a text that exuded Nazi ideology. However, with the end of WWII, his great legal knowledge opened new horizons for him in the “new Germany.” After 1949, he became a close associate of Chancellor Adenauer and ultimately, and was ultimately even appointed Chief of Staff of the Chancellory of West Germany in 1953. Globke served in this key role until Adenauer’s resignation in 1963.

The burgeoning career of a person who had been an ardent supporter of the Nazi race laws aroused grave doubts among many in Germany and the world as to the reliability and validity of the “new Germany” that emerged after WWII and the Third Reich.

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Hermitage Exhibit to Display NLI Afghan Geniza Treasures for First Time

The exhibition "Life in Medieval Khorasan. A Geniza from the National Library of Israel" is on display at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia

Zack Rothbart | 09.09.19

Documents from the historic Afghan Geniza. Photo by Polina Aizenberg, the National Library of Israel

Some two dozen extremely rare treasures from the National Library of Israel’s Afghan Geniza collection are being displayed to the public for the first time as part of “Life in Medieval Khorasan. A Geniza from the National Library of Israel” at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The exhibition also features rare artifacts from the Hermitage’s collections that will give a fuller sense of life in Medieval Khorasan.

The exhibit featuring the National Library’s Afghan Geniza documents at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia

The Afghan Geniza presents virtually the only original documentation about this once-thriving Jewish community on the Silk Road, as well as the region’s Islamic and Persian cultures prior to the devastating Mongol invasion. The 11^th-13^th century documents provide an unprecedented glimpse into the day-to-day life, society, and economy along the Silk Road, the ancient highway which once linked Europe and China.

A page from an account book containing information about the economic activity of its owner, “Yehuda son of Daniel”, from the early 11th century. The many names of individuals and localities recorded in the book attest to strong ties between this Jewish trader and the Muslim rural and urban populations of Bāmiyān. The National Library of Israel

The National Library of Israel’s Afghan Geniza holdings comprise nearly 300 pages, some 250 of which were acquired in 2016 with the generous support of the William Davidson Foundation and the Haim and Hanna Salomon Fund. It is considered perhaps the most important find of Hebrew manuscripts since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-20^th century.

Much of the collection comes from an archive of the eleventh-century Abu Netzer family of Jewish traders living in and around the city of Bāmiyān, a once-bustling commercial center located on the Silk Road. One fragment represents the earliest evidence of a rabbinic text found in Persian-speaking lands to the East of the rabbinic centers of Babylon. The collection, written in Persian, Arabic, Aramaic, and Judeo-Persian, also includes legal documents, liturgy, poetry, texts of Jewish law, a historical chronicle, and biblical passages.

This fragment of Tractate *Avoda Zara* from the Mishnah represents the earliest evidence of a rabbinic text found in Persian-speaking lands to the East of the traditional rabbinic center in Babylonia. The National Library of Israel

“This is a particularly impressive find related to the lives and culture of Jews from this part of the world from the beginning of the second millennium,” explained Prof. Haggai Ben Shammai, a world-renowned expert on Jews of the Islamic world. According to Ben Shammai, the collection is of exceptional importance due to the previous dearth of first-hand accounts and evidence of Jewish life under local dynastic rule. Literary source materials had also been severely lacking until this discovery.

Another portion of the collection contains documents dating from the early 13^th century, chronicling the broader Islamic culture on the eve of the devastating Mongol conquests of 1221. As a result of the destruction wrought by Genghis Khan and his army, almost no documentation of the Persian and Arabic culture and language of the region exists besides these documents.

The first few lines of a letter sent by a woman named Nāzuk, daughter of Yosef, to Yehuda, son of Daniel. Nāzuk was either a member of Yehuda’s family or a close friend. For example, she mentions Bā (=Abū) ʿImrān Moshe, probably Yehuda’s son, who came to visit her. This is the only known letter from the family archive thus far to be sent by a woman, though it is not clear if she wrote it herself (early 11th century). The National Library of Israel

Many items in the collection had been part of a local administrator’s archive, and contain administrative documents and fragments of religious and literary works, mainly in Persian. This material provides an unparalleled view into the workings of government administration, politics, and law in the region.

Though later Muslim scholars have written histories of the Islamic dynasties who reigned over the region, this singular collection of primary sources has shed light on uncharted areas of research including economics and geography, as well as social and political history.

A tax receipt concerning the delivery of 240 mann of wheat to the “royal granary” (anbār-i khāṣṣā) by Aḥmad b. Abū Bakr, an inhabitant of Funduqistān (in the Ghūrband valley). The collection contains around thirty receipts issued in the years 564–566/1169–1171 and 579–581/1183–1185, which provide valuable information regarding the tax collection system of Ghurid Bāmiyān. The National Library of Israel

NLI has digitized the materials and made them available to the international community of scholars and the general public. They will be preserved and displayed in the National Library of Israel’s new landmark campus, now under construction adjacent to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in Jerusalem.

David Blumberg, Chairman of the National Library of Israel Board of Directors, said, “We are grateful to our partners at the Hermitage for this historic collaboration. The exhibit highlights the National Library of Israel’s role as a dynamic international cultural center dedicated to promoting discourse and opening access to knowledge. It reflects the timeless Jewish values of treasuring the power of texts to unify, educate, and inspire.”

David Blumberg, chairman of the National Library of Israel board of directors, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, officially open the exhibit

The exhibition curator is Anton Pritula, leading researcher in the State Hermitage Museum’s Oriental Department, PhD in Philology. You can read more about the exhibition here.

The exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of Barbro and Bernard Osher and The David Berg Foundation.

Information on the Afghan Geniza documents included in the captions above is based on research conducted by Ofir Haim.

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What Did Freud Really Think of Zionism?

Spoiler alert: The father of psychoanalysis was not the biggest fan of establishing a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine.

Ro Oranim | 08.09.19

Europe Gesher L’Europa History of Israel Land of Israel Life Before The Holocaust Zionism

So, as it turns out, Sigmund Freud was not a fan of the Zionist dream.

The good doctor was, in fact, vehemently against the foundation of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel and had no qualms about expressing his disapproval – something he did in a rather eloquent and sharp manner in a letter he sent to the head of the Keren HaYesod branch in Vienna in 1930.

Sigmund Freud, the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel.

Let’s take a step back for a moment.

The hostilities began on a hot day in the middle of August 1929. The longtime struggle between the Arabs and Jews in the Land of Israel over ownership and access to the Western Wall had officially come to a boiling point. On Friday, August 16, 1929, an Arab mob that had been riled up by the Supreme Muslim Council, descended upon the Western Wall, expelled the Jewish worshippers from the site and proceeded to burn holy books and Torah scrolls. This event unleashed a wave of violence in the Land of Israel and, in just one week, the Palestine Riots of 1929 saw more than 130 Jews killed and hundreds more injured in Hebron, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tzfat, Hulda and Be’er Tuvia.

In 1930, just a few months after the violence had come to a stop, Keren HaYesod, a fundraising organization established by the Zionist Congress to help Jews to immigrate to the Land of Israel, launched a public relations campaign for the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. The organization sent out letters to the world’s prominent Jews asking if they might be willing to issue a statement of support on behalf of the Jews living in the Land of Israel. One such letter, sent by Chaim Koffler, the head of the Keren HaYesod in Vienna, made it to the hands of one Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis who also happened to be Jewish.

The envelope that held the letter from Freud to Dr. Koffler, from the National Library of Israel archives.

Freud, it appears, took some time to consider this request. His response sent on February 26^th, 1930, came in a carefully crafted, subtly scathing but perfectly polite letter sent back to Dr. Koffler where he made his feelings on the subject of Zionism and Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel very clear.

Not only did Freud decline the request to issue a public statement of support, but he also made it very clear that he was, let’s call it – unsympathetic – to the plight of the Jews living in the Yishuv.

“I cannot do as you wish,” wrote Freud. “Whoever wants to influence the masses must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgment of Zionism does not permit this.”

The response from Sigmund Freud to Chaim Koffler, from the National Library of Israel archives.

Freud explained that, while he identified with the goals of Zionism in creating a home for Jews and found a measure of pride in the university that had been established in Jerusalem, he had no understanding of the Zionist movement. He believed that there would never be a state for Jews in the Land of Israel – an opinion he conceded as likely to be unpopular.

“I do not think that Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of the wealthy.”

As for expressing sympathy for the Hebrew pioneers who had suffered through the riots, Freud felt that “the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.”

Freud closed the letter with about as much sympathy as he started it.

“Now judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified hope.”

Upon reading Freud’s reply, Dr. Koffler, surprised by its contents, wrote in pencil in the top corner of the letter, “Do not show this to foreigners.” In fact, the letter remained unpublished for 60 years.

“Do not show this to foreigners,” added in the corner of Freud’s letter by Chaim Koffler. From the National Library of Israel archives.

Upon hearing of the letter, Abraham Schwadron whose vast collection is now kept in the National Library of Israel, asked Dr. Koffler if he might send him the correspondence so that it could be added to the Library’s archives. Dr. Koffler agreed to send him the letter for his perusal but asked for Schwadron to please do him the courtesy of returning it – for if the letter were to be kept in the National Library, its contents would certainly find its way into the public sphere.

Letter from Chaim Koffler to Abraham Schwadron, from the National Library of Israel archives.

“Freud’s letter may be heartfelt and warm, but it does not serve our purposes,” wrote Dr. Koffler in April of 1930 in response to Schwadron. “Even if at this time I was unable to help Keren HaYesod, I still see myself as bound not to harm it.”

They say that hindsight is 20/20 and in all fairness, views such as Freud’s were not unheard of among Western European Jews in the early 1930s. Of course, Freud could never have predicted the horrors that would soon befall the Jews of Europe with the rise of the Nazi party and the beginning of the Holocaust. He would never learn the important role those pioneers played in successfully founding the State of Israel. While his opinions may have been “unpopular,” he certainly had his finger on the pulse of issues that still impact Israeli society today.

For further reading on this subject, check out “Freud in Zion: Psychoanalysis and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity,” by Eran J. Rolnik, Karnac Books, 2012.

This post was written as part of Gesher L’Europa, the NLI’s initiative to connect with Europe and make our collections available to diverse audiences in Europe and beyond.

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The Jewish Connection of a Jamaican Almanac

An almanac published in Jamaica in 1798 containing a special page dedicated to Jewish holidays is preserved in the National Library collections – a glimpse of a forgotten Jewish island community

Chen Malul | 03.09.19

סודות כתבי היד העבריים

Towards the end of the 18th century, an almanac intended for traders was published on the island of Jamaica. It contains a special page dedicated to the holidays and festivals of the Jewish calendar. The Hebrew years 5558 and 5559 are cited near the top of the page, with the line “Every Shabbat throughout the year” appearing just below and alluding to the fact that every Shabbat is a holy day observed by those of the Jewish faith. Further down the page, the Jewish months, holidays, and festivals are noted: Purim, Pesach, Shavuot, Tisha B’Av, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Chanukah. Fasting holidays are also included: the Fast of Esther, the Fast of Tamuz, the Fast of “Guedalya”, and the Fast of “Tebeth”.

Jewish holidays and festivals, Jamaica, 1798

The British had captured the Caribbean island from the Spanish crown some 140 years before the publication of the rare almanac. The island’s Jews played an important role in the early stages of local British rule.

A small Portuguese minority lived on the island whose members were hated by the Spaniards, largely due to the fact that many of them were in fact Conversos (Sephardic Jews forced to convert to Christianity) who had immigrated to the New World in an attempt to escape the grip of the Spanish Inquisition. Thus, the Converso Portuguese were only too happy to help the British capture the island by feeding them valuable intelligence.

As fate would have it, in the same year that the British captured Jamaica (1655), Oliver Cromwell granted the Jews permission to resettle in England. This important development meant that Jews could now immigrate freely and openly to the English colony of Jamaica while the local Coversos could return to the free practice of Judaism without fear of persecution by the authorities.

Prior to the English seizure of the island, Jamaica was already an economic success story. The island produced copious amounts of sugar and its derivatives (relying, of course, on African slave labor, forcibly imported to the island). Over the years, as British rule took hold, Jamaica became an important commercial center for gold, silver, and precious gems. It was also a hotbed for piracy against Spanish ships crossing the Caribbean Sea on their way to Spain.

But let’s get back to the rare almanac acquired by the National Library:

Almanacs of the day were usually thick journals or small books that contained useful information for the calendar year. This almanac is entitled The New Jamaica Almanack and Register, and its content indicates that its target audience consisted of merchants who were involved in the maritime trade in Jamaica at the time. To this end, many of the almanac’s pages contain information about celestial bodies that were essential for navigation at the end of the 18th century.

It is quite evident that the printer who composed the almanac was not overly familiar with Hebrew. There are several glaring errors, presumably originating from the laying of individual letters one by one. Some of the letters appear out of order and some are altogether incorrect. For example, the nonsensical phrase “רח פכת” appears in place of “רח טבת” (meaning “The first of the month of Tevet”). In the case of the festival of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah (ראש השנה), the printer completely confused the order of the letters, resulting in the non-existent word “אשנההשר-” (“Ashanahhashar-“). The printer also apparently lacked the letter “י” (“yud”) in his collection, and opted to use an apostrophe in its stead – similar perhaps, but noticeable.

The Jamaican almanac’s curiosities extend beyond the page dedicated to Jewish holidays and festivals. This almanac was designed as an ever-evolving composition, a collection of information gathered over decades. We can track the life of the leather bound book by flipping through its pages: the dedication written by a man who gifted the book to his brother, documentation of its receipt in 1799, as well as various drawings and notes scrawled on the blank pages that were intentionally left at the end of each month. Different hands recorded events that occurred in the years following the printing of the almanac: the death of a beloved servant, repairs on ships in the harbor, and the strange remark – “I heard the cuckoo” – recorded twice in the same handwriting, in the month of April, in different years. May’s page is empty, perhaps because it is a month typified by rough seas and fierce storms in the Caribbean. Toward the end of the almanac, more pages were initially left blank but were later filled with fragments of Christian literature and hymns by the various owners of the almanac. One of the pages features a quote from Voltaire in French. The handwritten additions were all recorded in a beautiful cursive script, still easily readable today.

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