53 Facts About German Jews

1.

In 1936, German Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from participating in education, politics, higher education and industry.

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2.

Only roughly 214, 000 Jews were left in Germany proper on the eve of World War II.

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3.

Currently in Germany, denial of the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust is a criminal act; violations can be punished with up to five years of prison.

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4.

German Jews employed Jews for diplomatic purposes, sending, for instance, a Jew as interpreter and guide with his embassy to Harun al-Rashid.

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5.

Status of the German Jews remained unchanged under Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious.

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6.

German Jews were unrestricted in their commerce; however, they paid somewhat higher taxes into the state treasury than did the non-German Jews.

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7.

German Jews is described in Jewish historiography as a model of wisdom, humility, and piety, and became known to succeeding generations as the "Light of the Exile".

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8.

German Jews first stimulated the German Jews to study the treasures of their religious literature.

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9.

German Jews were alleged to have caused the inroads of the Mongols, though they suffered equally with the Christians.

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10.

Legal and civic status of the German Jews underwent a transformation under the Holy Roman Empire.

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11.

In 1342, he instituted the "golden sacrificial penny" and decreed that every year all the German Jews should pay the emperor one kreutzer out of every florins of their property in addition to the taxes they were already paying to both the state and municipal authorities.

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12.

German Jews made compacts with many cities, estates, and princes whereby he annulled all outstanding debts to the Jews in return for a certain sum paid to him.

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13.

German Jews was the first to speak out against the use of excommunication as a religious threat.

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14.

German Jews said that Jews must live in civil society, but only in a way that their right to observe religious laws is granted, while recognizing the needs for respect, and multiplicity of religions.

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15.

German Jews campaigned for emancipation and instructed Jews to form bonds with the gentile governments, attempting to improve the relationship between Jews and Christians while arguing for tolerance and humanity.

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16.

German Jews became the symbol of the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah.

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17.

Some of the crown lands, such as Styria and Upper Austria, forbade any German Jews to settle within their territory; in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia many cities were closed to them.

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18.

German Jews won over public opinion to such an extent that this equality was granted in Prussia on April 6, 1848, in Hanover and Nassau on September 5 and on December 12, respectively, and in his home state of Hamburg, then home to the second-largest Jewish community in Germany.

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19.

Court German Jews were protected by the rulers and acted as did everyone else in society in their speech, manners, and awareness of European literature and ideas.

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20.

German Jews's interests turned towards promoting the educational interests of the Enlightenment with other Jews.

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21.

German Jews valued reason and felt that anyone could arrive logically at religious truths while arguing that what makes Judaism unique is its divine revelation of a code of law.

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22.

Many Jews stopped adhering to Jewish law, and the struggle for emancipation in Germany awakened some doubts about the future of Jews in Europe and eventually led to both immigrations to America and Zionism.

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23.

Some German Jews responded to this antisemitism by campaigning for emancipation, while others joined revolutionary movements and assimilated, and some turned to Jewish nationalism in the form of the Zionist Hibbat Zion movement.

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24.

Many German Jews felt a tension between Jewish tradition and the way they were now leading their lives-religiously- resulting in less tradition.

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25.

In 1871, with the unification of Germany by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, came their emancipation, but the growing mood of despair among assimilated Jews was reinforced by the antisemitic penetrations of politics.

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26.

Jewish women attempted to create an exterior presence of German Jews while maintaining the Jewish lifestyle inside their homes.

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27.

Higher percentage of German Jews fought in World War I than of any other ethnic, religious or political group in Germany; around 12, 000 died in the fighting.

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28.

Many German Jews supported the war out of patriotism; like many Germans, they viewed Germany's actions as defensive in nature and even left-liberal Jews believed Germany was responding to the actions of other countries, particularly Russia.

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29.

For many Jews it was never a question as to whether or not they would stand behind Germany, it was simply a given that they would.

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30.

German Jews often broke ties with Jews of other countries; the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a French organisation that was dedicated to protecting Jewish rights, saw a German Jewish member quit once the war started, declaring that he could not, as a German, belong to a society that was under French leadership.

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31.

German Jews supported German colonial ambitions in Africa and Eastern Europe, out of the desire to increase German power and to rescue Eastern European Jews from Tsarist rule.

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32.

However, German Jews did not always feel a personal kinship with Russian Jews.

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33.

Many were repelled by Eastern German Jews, who dressed and behaved differently, as well as being much more religiously devout.

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34.

Victor Klemperer, a German Jews Jew working for military censors, stated "No, I did not belong to these people, even if one proved my blood relation to them a hundred times over.

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35.

For many Jews, the fact the census was carried out at all caused a sense of betrayal, as German Jews had taken part in the violence, food shortages, nationalist sentiment and misery of attrition alongside their fellow Germans, however most German-Jewish soldiers carried on dutifully to the bitter end.

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36.

However, the majority of German Jews had little sympathy for the strikers and one Jewish newspaper accused the strikers of "stabbing the frontline army in the back.

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37.

In 1914, German Jews were well-represented among the wealthy, including 23.

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38.

The majority of German Jews were only nominally religious and they saw their Jewish identity as only one of several identities; they opted for bourgeois liberalism and assimilation into all phases of German culture.

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39.

In 1933, persecution of the German Jews became an active Nazi policy, but at first laws were not as rigorously obeyed or as devastating as in later years.

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40.

In 1936, German Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry.

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41.

In particular, German Jews were penalized financially for their perceived racial status.

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42.

Provision of medical care to German Jews was already hampered by the fact that German Jews were banned from being doctors or having any professional jobs.

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43.

Joseph Goebbels issued instructions that demonstrations against Jews were to be organized and undertaken in retaliation throughout Germany.

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44.

Approximately 91 German Jews were killed, and another 30, 000 arrested, mostly able bodied males, all of whom were sent to the newly formed concentration camps.

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45.

Collectively, the German Jews were made to pay back one billion Reichsmark in damages, the fine being raised by confiscating 20 per cent of every Jewish property.

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46.

However, as Nazi legislation worsened the Jews' situation, more Jews wished to leave Germany, with a panicked rush in the months after Kristallnacht in 1938.

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47.

Some 100, 000 German Jews moved to Western European countries, especially France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

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48.

Commonly referred to as "dashers and divers, " the German Jews lived a submerged life and experienced the struggle to find food, a relatively secure hiding space or shelter, and false identity papers while constantly evading Nazi police and strategically avoiding checkpoints.

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49.

Some German Jews were able to attain false papers, despite the risks and sacrifice of resources doing so required.

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50.

Additionally, approximately 15, 000 German Jews survived the concentration camps or survived by going into hiding.

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51.

These German Jews were joined by approximately 200, 000 displaced persons, Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors.

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52.

Additionally, many of the Russian German Jews were alienated from their Jewish heritage and unfamiliar or uncomfortable with religion.

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53.

In Germany it is a criminal act to deny the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust; violations can be punished with up to five years of prison.

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