German Jews during the Holocaust

The onset of World War II brought accelerated persecution and deportation and later, mass
murder, to the Jews of Germany. In all, the Germans and their collaborators killed between
160,000 and 180,000 German Jews in the Holocaust, including most of those Jews deported out
of Germany.

Key Facts

1. By the start of World War II in September of 1939, over half of German Jews had
relocated to other countries. Approximately 304,000 Jews, emigrated during the first six
years of the Nazi dictatorship.
2. Between 1939 and 1941, Jews were systematically deprived of their property and their
ability to work. By early 1939, only about 16 percent of Jewish breadwinners had steady
employment of any kind. Life in Germany became increasingly difficult as a result of
many restrictive laws.
3. In 1941, Nazi anti-Jewish policy became more radical. Jews were marked with a Star of
David View This Term in the Glossary badge. The first deportations of Jews from
Germany to ghettos and camps in the east began.
1933–1939

Jewish refugee children leave Berlin

Jewish refugee children look out of the train window as they leave Berlin. They were
on a Kindertransport from Germany. Schlesischen train station, Berlin, Germany, November 29-
30, 1938.

Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library Limited

In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews by religious definition lived in Germany. Over half of these
individuals, approximately 304,000 Jews, emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi
dictatorship, leaving only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the
eve of World War II.

In the years between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi regime had brought radical and daunting social,
economic, and communal change to the German Jewish community. Six years of Nazi-sponsored
legislation had marginalized and disenfranchised Germany's Jewish citizenry and had expelled
Jews from the professions and from commercial life. By early 1939, only about 16 percent of
Jewish breadwinners had steady employment of any kind. Thousands of Jews remained interned
in concentration camps following the mass arrests in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (Night of the
Broken Glass) in November 1938.
World War II
Yet the most drastic changes for the German Jewish community came with World War II in
Europe. In the early war years, the newly transformed Reich Association of Jews in Germany
(Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland), led by prominent Jewish theologian Leo Baeck
but subject to the demands of Nazi German authorities, worked to organize further Jewish
emigration, to support Jewish schools and self-help organizations, and to help the German
Jewish community contend with an ever-growing mass of discriminatory legislation.

Following the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, the government imposed new restrictions
on Jews remaining in Germany. One of the first wartime ordinances imposed a strict curfew on
Jewish individuals and prohibited Jews from entering designated areas in many German cities.
Once a general food rationing began, Jews received reduced rations; further decrees limited the
time periods in which Jews could purchase food and other supplies and restricted access to
certain stores, with the result that Jewish households often faced shortages of the most basic
essentials.

German authorities also demanded that Jews relinquish property “essential to the war effort”
such as radios, cameras, bicycles, electrical appliances, and other valuables, to local officials. In
September 1941, a decree prohibited Jews from using public transportation. In the same month
came the notorious edict requiring Jews over the age of six to wear the yellow Jewish Star
(Magen David) on their outermost garment. While ghettos were generally not established in
Germany, strict residence regulations forced Jews to live in designated areas of German cities,
concentrating them in “Jewish houses” (“Judenhäuser”). German authorities issued ordinances
requiring Jews fit for work to perform compulsory forced labor