Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

strategies were no longer deemed long-term solutions. This becomes clear with
the high priority given to sending children and youth out of Germany, particularly
from 1937. The Zionist organisations continued to focus on emigration to
Palestine.
The final group to act in the practical defence of the community and to attempt
to ensure the survival of Jewish life was a number of organisations which
attempted to find solutions to their own problems. A number of communal
organisations that achieved this have previously been overviewed in this chapter.
Further to this, individuals who acted in this same manner will be explored in the
ensuing chapters, which incorporate their personal stories.
One such example of this, detailing both the efforts of Jewish organisations
and an individual can be found in the following two related incidents. The first
involved Hechaluz, the Synagogen-Gemeinde, the Magdeburg-Anhalt branch of
the Nationalsozialistische Handwerks-, und Gewerbe-Organisation (NS-HAGO)
of the Nazi Party and the Magdeburg City Mission of the Lutheran Church. Prior
to 1933 both Hechaluz and the Synagogen-Gemeinde had hired the Grotian
Steinweg Hall in the Lutheran Church’s City Mission for functions. In March
1935 a war of words and paper ensued between the Lutheran Church’s Bishop
Peter and the Kreisamtsleiter of the NS-HAGO in Magdeburg-Anhalt. On 8
March 1935, the Nazi Party learned that Jewish functions were still taking place at
that hall. A letter was sent to Bishop Peter, requesting that Jews be forbidden from
using the hall. The director of the City Mission, Pastor W. Lüdecke, together with
the bishop, replied that the local Gestapo and the city authorities had granted
permission for such events under certain provisions back in early 1933. Despite
the pressure and abusive tone and content of the correspondence from the NS-
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