Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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other and capable of racial pollution and ruination through social contact and
sexual relations. Understandably, this led to fear and a sense of vulnerability on
the part of Jews, and particularly so in the public domain, where they
predominantly encountered non-Jews. The creation of this new crime also marked
irrevocably the official nullification of what had been the success story of the
much-loved and proudly nurtured German-Jewish identity.
The Destruction of the German-Jewish Symbiosis
In the early years of the Nazi regime the majority of the adult Jewish population
clung to their much-cherished German-Jewish identities. Magdeburg was no
exception. The majority of the community proudly boasted that they were German
citizens of the Jewish faith. With the onslaught of antisemitic polices and their
application in all spheres of life, many Jewish Germans wanted to maintain the
traditional symbiosis they had grown up to know and love, while the Nazis
intended its complete nullification. With the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws
the German-Jewish symbiosis was irrevocably destroyed. Whether Jews accepted
it or not became irrelevant, as the process of public vilification and incrimination
increased. In Magdeburg the very public destruction of this relationship was
perhaps best symbolised by both the judicial and the media campaigns against the
Jews. By the end of 1935 the Jews of Magdeburg were suffocating in their own
city. The pursuit of economic strangulation, of racial segregation and vilification
was undertaken with great energy by the judiciary and reported regularly in the
media. It is in this pursuit of media coverage of trials of Jews accused of
fabricated crimes that the end of this relationship is well viewed. In Magdeburg,
as elsewhere, the humiliation and the despair over this state-sponsored persecution