Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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confined to their terrorisation rather than their complete isolation and exclusion.
From mid-1935, in the months leading up to the implementation of the Nuremberg
Laws through to 1938, in addition to these behaviours, Jews were subjected
publicly to exclusionary measures, designed to vilify and segregate
simultaneously. 59 These measures ranged from the full application of the
Nuremberg Laws to the introduction of accommodation hostels for Jews only, the
revoking of hunting licences to Jews, the banning of Jews from public venues
such as cinemas and public baths to the complete segregation for health reasons of
Jewish patients in public hospitals.
All practices associated with day-to-day living increased in burden, whether it
involved attempting to take public transport from one place to another or to
undertake routine shopping. By November 1938 Jews in Magdeburg were so
isolated in their city that they avoided going out in public and, other than
attending to necessary daily affairs, they remained either indoors or only in the
company of other Jews. They were effectively living in a ghetto without walls
owing to the threats that surrounded them in non-Jewish space. By November
1938 only two public meeting places remained for Jews in Magdeburg – the
synagogue and the cemetery with its adjacent field.
Interviewees’ perception of daily life in public supports the view of an initial
transitional period of uncertainty. Both Jews and non-Jews in the city were unsure
about many of the antisemitic measures in 1933 and attempted to go about their
59 The cited phases and the ensuing levels of public exclusion and humiliation
correspond to a study by Michael Wildt on the small Franconian Jewish community
of Treuchtlingen. Whilst this community only numbered 119 Jews out of
approximately 4,200 townspeople, owing to its regional nature and the lack of
anonymity Jews faced in such communities, many similarities exist between its
situation and that of the Magdeburg community. See Michael Wildt, “Violence
against Jews in Germany 1933–1939,” in Bankier, ed., op. cit., pp. 181–209.