Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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law was enacted obligating all Jews who did not already have first names that
were clearly Jewish to adopt the name Israel or Sarah, beginning 1 January 1939,
and to always give that name orally and include it in their signatures. 53 In the final
months prior to the Reichskristallnacht the frenzied activity of policy creation to
include any remaining areas continued. In August 1938 guidelines for the
activities of Jewish sports’ organisations were issued by the Gestapo and made
effective in Magdeburg on 1 September 1938. 54 On 3 October 1938, the Gestapo
ordered that henceforth the transcripts of all oral presentations to be given at any
Jewish organisation were to be submitted prior to the event for censorship
purposes. 55 This became effective in Magdeburg on 7 October 1938. 56 In October
1938 the provincial government ordered that ‘Jewish donations’ to any ‘Aryan’
institution could not be accepted on racial grounds and banned the practice. 57 The
volume and the pedantry of Nazi policy toward the Jews in this phase was
exhaustive and left Jews suffocating from a barrage of exclusionary measures.
From the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935 until the
Reichskristallnacht the application of Nazi policy toward the Jews was perfected
by the Gestapo and the local authorities. This phase of policy creation and
application was completely directed by the Nazi definition of race, by the ongoing
53
Barkai, “Exclusion and Persecution: 1933–1938,” in Meyer, ed., op. cit., p. 220.
54
Betrifft: Richtlinien für die Betätigung jüdischer Sportvereine, 24. August 1938,
Bestand Rep. C 20 I. I b, Signatur Nr. 1831, Band IV, LHASA MD, op. cit., pp. 113–
116. For a comprehensive discussion on the role of sport in Jewish life during the
Nazi period, see Hajo Bernett, “Die jüdische Turn- und Sportbewegung als Ausdruck
der Selbstfindung und Selbstbehauptung des deutschen Judentums,” in Paucker, ed.,
op. cit., pp. 223–237.
55
Betrifft: Vorträge bei Veranstaltungen jüdischer Organisationen, 3. Oktober 1938,
ibid., p. 121.
56
Ibid.
57
Betrifft: Annahme Jetztwilliger und anderer unentgeltlicher Zuwendungen von
Juden durch öffentliche Körperschaften, 13. Oktober 1938, Collection JM, File
10625, YVA, op. cit., p. 138.