Introductory Note:
This column offers a paper on the emigration/immigration of European
Jews fleeing Nazi terror in the decade before the onset of World War II.
It was written by my father, Harold J. Jonas, and published in the
Contemporary Jewish Record in the Sept.-Oct. 1939 issue. Comparisons
with the contemporary world situation, from the Western border of
Myanmar to the Southern border of the United States, are purely
intentional.
People in Flight
THE GERMAN REFUGEES AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR
By HAROLD J. JONAS
THE
problem of political refugees is not new in the post-War period. As a
result of territorial adjustments and internal upheavals hundreds of
thousands of homeless people were thrown upon a war-worn world. The
groups most affected were the Russian "Whites," the Armenians, and the
Assyrians. The Russian "Whites" and the Armenians scattered into various
countries in both hemispheres. The Assyrians, driven out from their
homeland, following the assumption of independence by Iraq, were settled
mainly in Syria and Lebanon. Other post-War refugees were Greeks,
Bulgars, and Turks, whose problems were solved, though not fully, by
mass repatriation or exchange of populations.
International
cooperation was in every case a large factor in the eventual solution
of the problem created by these refugee migrants. By 1930, the most
crying needs had disappeared and the world was already beginning to take
an academic view of the problem. The rise of Hitler to power in 1933,
however, set in motion a new stream of refugees from Germany. Because of
the racial laws, Jews were the first among those who were faced with
the choice of exile or death. Others were political opponents, such as
the Catholic Centrists, Social Democrats, and Communists. Still others
feared the concentration camps and fled immediately. Christians of
"non-Aryan' descent, too, furnished a large proportion of those forced
to leave.
As
Nazi imperialism swept across other countries, many emigre's again had
to flee the terror of the Gestapo. Not uncommon are cases of men who
sought refuge, first in Vienna, and later in Praha, only to be trapped
there. While Germans, Austrians, and Czechs are not forced to leave
their homelands, a Jew or a Christian "non-Aryan," is faced with the
choice of leaving, or facing slow death by starvation or quick death in
the concentration camps. It is their lot to bear their sufferings grimly
and await the day of liberation.
JEWISH
mass migrations had begun even before the destruction of the Second
Temple and remained an important factor throughout Jewish history. The
emancipation period served to cement Jewish communities in Western
Europe, but in Eastern Europe economic pressure caused great waves of
Jewish migration. From the period of the 1880's onward, Jews fled in
large numbers from the intolerable conditions in the Russian Pale of
Settlement. Rumania, and other East European lands to new homes in
Western Europe, in South Africa, and the Americas. Restriction of
immigration after the World War, particularly in the United States,
served to choke off the flow of a harassed people and to aggravate their
condition. It must be noted, however, that German Jews were not at
first affected by this policy. It was their brethren in East Europe who
suffered.
Formerly,
the problem of immediate refuge for large numbers of migrants was not
pressing. While the threat of pogroms was not pleasant, the Jew was not
required by law to leave Russian lands. When he did come to America,
there were employment opportunities, although life itself was hard and
the process of adjustment to new surroundings difficult. Today, the Jew
in many European lands is forced, willy-nilly, to become a migrant;
often without adequate funds, and, in many cases, without a destination.
Previously even the lowliest Russian Jew had a reasonable expectation
of a job, food, and shelter in his new home.
Prior
to 1933, those who migrated as Jews were Jews, by birth, by custom, by
observance. The present situation is different, for a more inclusive.
definition finds many non-Jews and professing Christians grouped as
Jews. It has been estimated that from one to three million persons in
Germany may be affected by such legal definitions. Another
distinguishing factor is the problem of the ''stateless" Jew. The plight
of the post-War Russian refugee was alleviated by the Nansen passport,
but no such international action was undertaken until a rather late
period on behalf of the German refugees. Today some 56,000 persons are
tainted with "statelessness.'
A
rotten barge floating on the Danube, a wind-swept barn, a weed-filled
ditch, a canvas tent pierced by the cold--each of these in turn has been
the uncertain domain of migrant Jews in flight. These are the latest,
the unprecedented types of refugees--the residents of no-man's-land. At
one time more than 5,000 persons congregated in a no-man's-land at
Zbaszyn on the Polish-German frontier.
Source: OpEdNews
