Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

158
Jewish friends that ‘they [the Nazis] don’t mean you!’ 109 In discussing the
attitudes of non-Jews toward Jews before 1935, Gisela Kent remarked:
It is very hard to say, because the people I knew, they said: “They don’t mean
you! They mean the others!” And of course every Jew had a Christian who
said: “They don’t mean you!” With reference to outright Jew-haters, we didn’t
mix with them! They didn’t want us, and we didn’t want them! 110
Hemmi Freeman elaborated on who the perceived ‘other’ was:
There were certain types of Germans that were anti-Jewish from the
beginning; against non-German Jews more so. Let’s face it, Polish Jews or
Eastern European Jews looked slightly different, dressed slightly different,
behaved slightly different, and the Germans, that’s what they picked
immediately. They didn’t speak German properly, or with an accent or
with Yiddish German. That had an influence on some Germans. I remember
at school if somebody pronounced a word badly, a non-Jewish boy,
they immediately made an anti-Jewish remark: “You speak like a polnische
Jude! [Polish Jew!]” It really depended on the background. Generally, the
Germans that we came into contact with, business-wise or otherwise, they
said: “Well it’s not you; we don’t mean you.” They made this excuse; we all
know it. 111
However, it did not take very long for even comments like these to cease. In the
majority of cases, Jews often became invisible figures to those non-Jews who had
known them prior to 1933. In the case of children and youth, some parents even
went to the trouble of informing the Jewish parents as to why the friendship of
their children could no longer continue. Gerry Levy recalled the case of his friend,
Günther Hartwig:
At the Mittelschule [Middle Secondary School] I had a number of non-Jewish
friends. However, only a couple were real friends. I would go to their homes
and vice versa. This ceased, in any case, after a while. One of these friends,
Günther Hartwig, whose parents were Social Democrats, even came to my
parents and informed them that their Günther was no longer able to spend
time with me, due to the current political climate. 112
109
Kent, op. cit., 12 January 1998.
110
Ibid.
111
H. Freeman, op. cit., 13 May 1998.
112
Levy, op. cit., 10 July 1997.