Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

We saw them very little. They were invisible. Those people had nothing to do
with us. They were migrants and they gave us a bad name. We were good
Germans. They lived almost like in a ghetto. There was a street called
Jakobstraße and you knew if you went there you would meet a Polish Jew.
We just didn’t mix! There was no hostility between the two groups. However,
the German Jews were always belittling them. And they came with torn
clothes and it didn’t take them very long before they had a business and then it
went bankrupt, and then they put the business in the name of the wife. They
did all sorts of funny things that we good Germans never did! 46
These sentiments demonstrate the tensions between the two groups. The feeling of
superiority is present, yet simultaneously there is expressed a criticism of German-
born Jews, who quite clearly are capable of all the foibles they attach to the
immigrant Jews. What is interesting here is the description of the largely separate
world that the immigrant Jewish community occupied. It must also be noted that
socially, even as the persecutions unfolded, community members relied on their
already long established friendships and, prior to the pogrom of 9–10 November
1938, they generally did not move beyond their known and trusted religious and
social circles. However, after November 1938 many of the traditional barriers
collapsed. As Hemmi Freeman expressed, in reference to acceptance in the
community: ‘It became easier in the later years. I can’t complain about this.’ 47
A final area which separated the two groupings and is inter-related to all of the
subjects is the area of social mores. Quite clearly, the Eastern European Jews who
had settled in Magdeburg lived, ate, worked, prayed and socialised according to
the conventions of their former communities. For them, as with any immigrant
group, it would be one or perhaps two generations before the culture of the
adopted country would be integrated into their way of life. For most of the
members of the Synagogen-Gemeinde, foreign customs were not accepted and the
expectation was that, not dissimilar to what they themselves had all done in
46 Kent, op. cit., 5 January 1998.
47 H. Freeman, op. cit., 13 May 1998.
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