Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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out of the question. 130 The minister finally remarked, in a bid to alleviate the
situation, that all male Jewish teachers still incarcerated in camps would be
released. In Magdeburg the subject of schooling arrangements for Jewish pupils
was not raised again until early January 1939. In the meantime, Jewish parents
were responsible for the education of their children.
The extent of the political use of the pogrom is evidenced with a further
attempt to confirm and/or incite hatred of the Jews endorsed by the Lutheran
Church. For example, on 23 November 1938, Bishop Martin Sasse of nearby
Eisenach edited a new celebratory edition of the pamphlet Martin Luther über die
Juden: Weg mit ihnen! [Martin Luther on the Jews: Be gone with them!] 131 Sasse
included in his antisemitic foreword that on Luther’s birthday, 10 November,
synagogues were burning and that the Jews had finally been extricated from the
financial life of the nation. He further commended the reader to heed the words of
Luther, when dealing with the Jews. 132 By the end of November this thirteen-page
tract was available for purchase at a cost of RM 0.10 all over the Reich, including
Magdeburg.
Of concern to the provincial government in the wake of the
Reichskristallnacht was the restoration of the cityscape. The government lodged
an official complaint with the police on 24 November 1938. It noted that as a
130 Betrifft: Schulunterricht an Juden, 17. Dezember 1938, Bestand Rep. C 28 II,
Signatur Nr. 88, Band 2, LHASA MD, op. cit., p. 72. The cited quotation is the
author’s translation from the original German which reads: ‘Die in den
Schulgebäuden der allgemeinen Volksschulen eingerichteten Sammelklassen sind
jedoch, wenn andere Räumlichkeiten nicht zur Verfügung stehen, aufzulösen, da ein
Unterricht an deutsche und jüdische Schüler im gleichen Gebäude nicht mehr in
Betracht kommen kann.’
131 Martin Sasse, ed., Martin Luther über die Juden: Weg mit ihnen! Freiburg im
Breisgau: Sturmhut Verlag, 1938, Collection JM, File 10625, YVA, op. cit., pp. 127–
135.
132 Ibid., p. 128.