Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

Chapter Six:
The Reichskristallnacht and Its Aftermath until September 1939
The Prelude to the Pogrom
252
The ‘Polenaktion’ – the deportation of stateless, Polish Jews from Germany
sparked the incident that led to the November pogrom of 1938. Germany expelled
between 16,000 and 18,000 Polish Jews between 27 and 29 October 1938, 1
forcibly transporting them to the Polish border. Poland denied them entry. They
languished in a no-man’s-land between the two borders, in the cold and without
food and shelter, while their families and communities became more and more
desperate. 2
In Magdeburg foreign-born Jews represented approximately 37.9% of the
community’s population in 1933. 3 Whilst it is not possible to establish what
percentage of Eastern European Jews had left by the time of the so-called
‘Polenaktion,’ the figure was definitely high. One report by a local businessman
and Nazi Party member in August 1935 claimed that the majority of ‘the
immigrant Galician Jews’ had already left the city long ago. 4 The closest statistic
of the Jewish population at the time of the deportations is that of 1,256 in June
1 Estimates of the number of Jews deported range between these two figures. See
Barkai, “Exclusion and Persecution: 1933–1938,” in Meyer, ed., op. cit., p. 220 and
Friedländer, op. cit., p. 268.
2 For a detailed account of the ‘Polenaktion’ see Sybil Milton, “The Expulsion of
Polish Jews from Germany: October 1938 to July 1939 – A documentation,” Leo
Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. XXIX, 1984, pp. 169–199 and for an account of the
events prior, during and after the expulsion see Friedländer, op. cit.
3 Statistisches Reichsamt, Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, Band 451, Volkszählung:
die Bevölkerung des Deutschen Reichs nach den Ergebnissen der Volkszählung 1933,
Heft 5, Die Glaubensjuden im Deutschen Reich, Bestand R 3102, BAB, op. cit., p. 15.
4 Correspondence from the Magdeburg businessman and Nazi Party member, Rellum,
to the Reich Minister for the Interior, Dr Frick, 22 August 1935, Bestand Rep. C 20 I.
I b, Signatur Nr. 1996, Band 4, LHASA MD, op. cit., p. 321.