Language:
English
Year of publication:
2006
Titel der Quelle:
Leo Baeck Institute Year Book
Angaben zur Quelle:
51 (2006) 193-207
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
World War, 1939-1945 Jewish resistance
Abstract:
Based on a paper delivered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in October 2005. Briefly describes the responses of the main Jewish organizations and movements in Germany to rising Nazism in the late Weimar period and during the first months of the Nazi dictatorship. The Centralverein was staunchly anti-Nazi, but realized that Nazi antisemitism could not be fought in isolation and was skeptical concerning Jewish defense. Center- to right-wing Jewish organizations, like the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten and Vortrupp, tried to find a formula for coexistence with the Nazi regime, but were ignored by the latter. The attitudes of the Zionists varied from acceptance of leftist German concepts by leftist Zionists to a kind of flirtation with fascists and Nazis by Revisionists. Leftists were staunch in their hatred toward Nazism, but downplayed its antisemitism. One of the Jewish responses to Nazism was satire, a passive form of resistance; the main form of active resistance was the participation of German Jews in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side in 1936-39, and later in the Allied armies.
DOI:
10.1093/leobaeck/51.1.193
URL:
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