Rezensiert für H-Soz-u-Kult von PD Dr. Guido Müller
I don't dispute the central critiques of Mueller (and Leichsenring) on "Die Verlassene Kinder," but the implications of one sentence from Mueller perplex me: Jochen Klepper, the German poet married to a Jew, "ging mit der Ehefrau und der juedischen Stieftochter schliesslich in den Tod, als er sie vor der Deportation nicht mehr schuetzen konnte." At stake in the folds of this statement are issues relating to the role of ordinary Germans in the fate of German Jews, and the reputation of Germans married to Jews who refused to divorce. Also at issue is a key part of the question about the behavior of the churches in the Third Reich: to what extent did the churches provide intermarried Christians like Klepper reason for hope?
It seems to me that although Klepper had good reasons for perceiving that he would not be able to continue protecting his Jewish wife, this proved not to be the case. All but two percent of officially registered German Jews who survived the war were intermarried. Beginning with the earliest deportation of German Jews, Nazi leaders made a series of decisions to temporarily defer intermarried Jews from the deportations. They repeated this decision up until they were no longer in position to deport intermarried Jews at all. What role did the churches play, if any, in the regime's series of decisions to temporarily defer deporting intermarried Jews, including Klepper's wife if she had lived?
Klepper, who lived in Berlin, met with Adolf Eichmann in December 1942, one day before his suicide. At this point Eichmann was devising possible plans and guises for deporting intermarried Jews in segments. This was to begin with Jewish men in intermarriages who had the least number of "Aryan" relations ("non-privileged" intermarried Jews without children). And in late February of 1943, intermarried Jews from non-privileged couples in Berlin were arrested in preparation for their deportation. These intermarried Jews, however, were released about a week later and survived. Nazi decision-makers had once again decided to "temporarily defer" deporting intermarried Jews - this time, for the first time, after they had actually arrested them.
Without some outside pressure at the time, the Gestapo would hardly have released Jews it had arrested in the course of deportations, despite directives. The language in deportation directives ordering the temporary deferment of intermarried Jews illustrates the deliberate ambiguity Nazi officials used as a means of maximizing flexibility in the service of their goals, at local levels. In any case, the Gestapo was so arbitrary and beyond the letter of the law or regulations by this radicalized point of the Third Reich in late winter of 1943 that a letter of law or regulation could not have prevented the Gestapo from achieving its perceived historic mission.
So it is safe to conclude that certain pressures influenced Hitler to defer the murder of intermarried Jews until it was too late for the regime to do so. If the Gestapo and Nazi leaders themselves are not to be credited with voluntarily abridging Nazi racial ideology, in order to make an exception for intermarried Jews, what outside pressures persuaded them do so? What is the role of the churches in accounting for the fact that 98 percent of German Jews who survived, and who the Gestapo knew how to find, were intermarried? If the Gestapo policy for the duration of the Holocaust was to deport intermarried German Jews only after the non-Jewish partner agreed to divorce, is it correct to write that Klepper decided on suicide after he could no longer protect his wife?
Nathan Stoltzfus
Florida State University
nstoltzfus@worldnet.att.net
Quelle = Email <H-Soz-u-Kult>
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