Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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Prior to 1933, school life was relatively normal and most Jewish children
experienced few, if any, forms of antisemitism. 2 As children of highly
acculturated Jewish Germans, they felt no great attraction toward things Jewish. 3
These young pupils felt as German as their non-Jewish peers.
From all interviews conducted, the overall image of school life before 1933
was of a happy, secure and normal existence. As there were usually only between
one and three Jewish pupils in a class, most Jewish pupils socialised at school
with their non-Jewish peers and experienced normal relationships. Only a
minority had exclusively Jewish friends or non-Jewish friends. This situation
changed dramatically once the Nazis came to power.
On 25 April 1933, quotas were introduced to limit the number of Jewish pupils
attending public schools and Jewish students attending universities in Germany. 4
However, in Magdeburg, owing to exemptions for war veterans and their families,
no recorded cases of exclusion have been identified. This could also be due to the
small number of Jewish children in the city. In June 1933 exemptions from
attending school on Saturdays were retained for Jewish pupils. If their parents did
permit them to attend school, they were exempted from writing and drawing. 5
This enabled Orthodox Jews to maintain traditional observance and those who
were not from observant families to attend synagogue services if they wished. The
exemption stated that if Jews chose to take advantage of it, the relevant school
2 Levy, op. cit., 10 July 1997.
3 Levy, op. cit., 7 November 1996.
4 Meyer, ed., op. cit., p. 438. For a list of Nazi legislation enacted against German
Jews, see Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat. Eine
Sammlung der gesetzlichen Maßnahmen und Richtlinien – Inhalt und Bedeutung,
second edition, Heidelberg: C. F. Müller Verlag, 1996.
5 Correspondence from Der Preußische Minister für Wissenschaft, Kunst und
Volksbildung, 17 June 1933, Bestand Rep. C 28 II, Signatur Nr. 88, Band 2, LHASA
MD, p. 32.