Category Archives: Jewish life

Opinion polling in occupied Germany

11 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in Allies, Culture, Jewish life, Politics and government, postwar

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Polls are a snapshot of what people are thinking at any given time. We’ve drifted toward seeing polls as somehow predictive of how people will act, one reason polling in general has taken a hit since Brexit and Trump’s election.

But polling has been around a long time as a way to get inside the minds of groups of people. That info can be used to form policy or see the effects of policy. That’s why the US military government did a range of polling in the US zone after World War II. Batteries of questions asked Germans about their daily lives, family, work, their opinions about the allies and Germany’s occupation, and particular policies such as the dismantlement of German factories as war reparations.

If you want to read a full report of the polling, check out Public Opinion in Occupied Germany, The OMGUS Surveys from the University of Illinois Press, 1970.

One issue the Americans looked at was antisemitism.

In December 1946, the military government polled 3006 Germans in the US Zone of Germany and the US sector of Berlin. The questions floated around one main issue – What did the years of antisemitic Nazi propaganda leave in the minds of the Germans?

In general, the poll found that people with stronger antisemitic opinions tended to be less educated, from a lower socioeconomic class and less informed. They also tended to be more critical of the Allies, and thought National Socialism was basically a good idea.

The results were broken down into people with few prejudices (20%), Nationalists (19%), Racists (22%), Antisemites (21%), and strong antisemites (18%).

In other words, the numbers looked pretty awful.

To break it down, western Berlin had the lowest percentage of people classified as racists and antisemites – at 45%. Bavaria was the state with the lowest percentage – at 59%!

Women expressed stronger antisemitic opinions than men – 67% of the women versus 50% of the men.

An interesting question measured whether a person recognized that the Germans had tortured and murdered millions of innocent Europeans. 72% of people with few prejudices agreed with this, while only 41% of the racist/antisemitic people did.

Which goes to show you that there has always been a significant percentage of people who choose to believe what they want, against all evidence.

Filming the Holocaust

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by in Allies, Jewish life, Media, postwar

≈ Comments Off on Filming the Holocaust

Tags

, , , ,

Most of us have seen film footage of the concentration camps. Just the mention of them conjures up in our minds the piles of corpses, or the ovens. In the immediate postwar years, those images were new for most people, and even more shocking than they are for us now. Army film crews recorded thousands of hours of footage in an attempt to capture the scope of what happened.

The Allies guessed surprisingly early how important it was to present proof of the  atrocities in the form of film. The Germans were to see what they had allowed under the Nazi regime, and the world at large was to see the unthinkable acts committed in the shadows of an already dark war.

Earlier this year, HBO broadcast Night Will Fall, a look at what happened to the “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” a dry name for a horrific compilation of footage of Bergen Belsen, Auschwitz and Dachau. Alfred Hitchcock supervised the production, but his big name wasn’t enough to keep the project afloat. The British government canceled, and the footage was stored at the Imperial War Museum until it was unearthed in the 1980s, then digitized and restored in 2010.

Why was the original project canceled? “Night Will Fall” director André Singer told the LA Times that postwar priorities shifted quickly; the British saw the need for Germany to get back on its feet (no doubt in the face of the Soviet threat). Reminders of the camps wouldn’t help.  Authorities also worried the footage of the camps would create more sympathy for the Jews wanting to go to Palestine, a difficult political topic before the founding of Israel.

Some of Hitchcock’s footage was recycled for Billy Wilder and Hanus Burger’s short, finished documentary Death Mills, which was shown in the US and British Zones of Germany in 1946. Pregnant women were warned not to go see it.

Ten years after the end of the war, Alain Resnais directed what I consider one of the most moving films about the camps, Night and Fog. I saw it in high school and have never forgotten it.

A haven and a trap

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Jewish life, postwar

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

For many Holocaust survivors from Poland and other parts of central and eastern Europe, the route to freedom passed through the one country they probably didn’t want to set foot in.

It’s the immediate aftermath of the war, the first months after allied troops liberated Europe. Tens of thousands of Jews emerged from their hiding places (not many survived the Nazi camps). The joy at having survived was short-lived. They faced a new wave of anti-semitism in their homelands, and were forced to endure it or leave. The Jewish secret organization Bricha did its best to gather Jewish refugees and smuggle them to safety in a place a survivor would least expect it — Germany.

Not that it had anything to do with the defeated Germans. There was no great change of heart about Jews in the immediate postwar years. The refugees wanted to reach the American Zone. For that, they had to stop over in displaced persons camps in the US sector of Berlin. These camps were meant to be transitory, a short breather on their way to the US Zone. And eventually — they hoped — Palestine.

The wonderful blog by Rabbi Meyer Abramowitz describes his years as chaplain for the Jewish displaced persons (DP) camps in the US sector of Berlin. During his time there, the refugees turned into political pawns in the emerging Cold War.

To better understand that change I remind you that the Cold War was waged primarily in Berlin, with the Russians insisting that the American troops leave Berlin — an enclave within the Russian Zone of Occupation. The U.S. responded that it intended to remain there as stipulated by previous treaties. To demonstrate its determination to stay in Berlin, the United States declared that the DP’s would remain in Berlin’s Camps under the protection of American troops.

This decision brought an abrupt end to any further transports out of Berlin. The camps had now become holding centers for all displaced persons, Jews and non-Jews, pending their legal resettlement.

By the end of 1946, Jews were still entering Berlin’s displaced persons camps. But there was no way out. Camp Düppel, also called the Schlachtensee camp, grew to 5,000 people living in limbo. The camp expanded to include schools, recreational facilities and a synagogue. No one knew how long they would have to stay, largely cut off from the rest of Berlin. DP camps had a bad reputation among the Germans, who considered them hotbeds of crime committed by “foreign elements.”

Until 1948, the camps were both haven and trap for Jewish refugees. The Berlin Airlift and the founding of Israel finally ended the stalemate. After the Soviets cut off supply routes to Berlin, the Americans flew refugees out of the city. Numbers in the camps dwindled.

The people who lived in the DP camps endured helplessness and frustration. But they also enjoyed an unusual sense of community. They were the Surviving Remnant of a people decimated by Nazi Germany and its helpers. A recent documentary “From Hell to Hope” interviewed people who lived in the camps. It gives an unusual look at what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust.