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Alt 11.09.2019, 23:43
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Some history.

Posen - A Jewish minority lived in the cities, even a majority here and there. These Jews - initially a tenth part of the entire population - were under Prussia's Germanization policies added to the Germans by the government statistics and, after their legal equalization in 1833 joined the German-speaking cultural world. In the later 19th century and early 20th century many of them left - of the initially 80,000 left only 10,000 - to other parts of Germany, especially Berlin, and the Rhein- und Ruhrgebiet or to America, where they had to build-up in new live. Ethnic Poles faced discrimination and forced Germanization. Special legislation was passed against the ethnic Polish and numerous oppressive measures, i.e. confiscation of Polish-owned property, civil service jobs were closed except at the lowest levels, were implemented to eradicate the Polish community's identity and culture.
Because of the Treaty of Versailles, on January 18, 1920, the center of the river Netze formed the border between Germany and Poland and divided Filehne in two parts. The majority of Lutheran Germans and Jews in the Polish Netze district left for Germany and other countries in the next decade because their rights were withdrawn and their property rights were confiscated.
Some of the emigrants, like Jews took the boat from the Netherlands to America and some stayed in or emigrated to the Netherlands for a better life.
Filehne (Wieleń) has a train station on the Prussian Eastern Railway, which ran from Berlin via Königsberg to Eydtkuhnen on the border with the Russian Empire.

Berlin - Berlin became the capital of the newly united Germany in 1871. Its population grown from 835,000 to two million on the eve of World War One. The growth had brought ambition. Berlin before WW1 was a dynamo of innovation and technological advance. Industry sucked in immigrants. Economic grievances and to widen the franchise brought workers out on strike at the beginning of the 20th century.

WW1 - The large mass of German Jews longed for recognition and acceptance. The Jewish hope for full integration was reinforced by the Kaiser's speech on 4 August 1914. He stated that different beliefs or parties no longer mattered, there was now one united German people. It was difficult for Jews to resist the urge to prove that they were as good if not better Germans than their compatriots. The war hysteria was especially strong in the big cities. An important factor for German Jews was that the war was directed against Russia, the despotic country with an anti-Semitic regime and many pogroms. At the end of 1916, eighty percent of the Jewish soldiers were in the front lines. As soon as the war went bad, Jews were blamed and made a scapegoat. By the end of 1916, most Jewish war enthusiasts had changed their minds. After the defeat of WW1 Jews were blamed for it, they had inflicted a "stab in the back" on Germany. Jews were now seen as part of a worldwide Bolshevik conspiracy.

The German reparations had their share in the inflation in Germany, because more money was pressed than economically justified. Even in the toughest years of the Weimar Republic, the German reparations were not a serious obstacle to economic reconstruction after the lost war. The reparations were used for agitation against the Weimar Republic, resulting in political and economic instability.

While a large part of the population continued to struggle with high unemployment and deprivations in the aftermath of World War I, the upper class of society, and a growing middle class, gradually rediscovered prosperity and turned Berlin into a cosmopolitan city. The roaring twenties were also the years of the hyperinflation in Germany, especially between 1921 and 1924. From the years of the boom, through the period of depression and inflation from 1929, and ending with the seizure of power by the Nazis. Around 1932 is the zenith of Jewish life and culture in Germany, particularly in Berlin. In many aspects, Jews had never lived better and prospered more than then.

In 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor and persecution of the Jews became an official Nazi policy. In 1935 and 1936, the pace of antisemitic persecution increased. In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were published. Jews were no longer citizens, but were still considered subjects of the German Reich. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from participating in education, politics, higher education and industry.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 many Jews escape into exile, typically at the cost of leaving all wealth behind. Although Jews could easily leave Germany initially, it was difficult to find countries that would take them, particularly after accepting the initial wave of immigrants in Europe, Britain, and the United States. One of the reasons that emigration was so difficult was that it began during the Great Depression. About 140,000 Jews left Germany between 1933 and 1937, many more fleeing after the November pogrom in 1938 (Kristallnacht). After Kristallnacht the Nazis continued to force the Jews to go abroad, but only after they had robbed them of all their possessions. Those who wanted to cross the border were not allowed to take more than ten marks.

In 1933 about 170,000 Jews live in Berlin, making up approx. 4% of the city's general population and about a third of Germany's Jewish population. When WW2 begins in 1939 most Berlin Jews have escaped. About 60,000 still remain in the city. Officially, Jews still can leave, if they manage to find a country that would accept them. Very few manage to do that.

Between 1933 and 1937 around 25,000 to 30,000 Jewish refugees came from Germany to the Netherlands, sometimes for a shorter period. Most Jewish refugees came from Germany. The vast majority had German nationality, the rest had Polish nationality or were stateless. A small proportion of the Jewish refugees came from Austria or other countries. From 1934 the Netherlands send some Jews back, especially Polish and stateless refugees. In the beginning more well to do Jews came, but later also the bereaved and poor.
In addition to Jews, about 7,000 other German (political) refugees came also to the Netherlands in the decade before the outbreak of the Second World War. Between 1920 and 1940 around 30,000 foreign women came to the Netherlands to work as maidservants. The large majority came from Germany, a small part from Austria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Some married and stayed in the Netherlands. Beside economic hard times also fear for more communism that could come with the refugees played a role in Dutch government.

The Jewish refugees were not liked in the Netherlands. Their further emigration was from the outset the goal of the Dutch government. Also the Jewish aid organizations, which took care of the new arrivals, joined this policy. In particular, concerns about their own labor market, hardly hit by the global economic crisis, led to increasingly restrictive refugee policies, which culminated in a temporary closure of borders in early 1938. Under pressure from the public, a further 7,000 people were admitted after the November pogrom in 1938, most of them in newly-built refugee camps. One of these was the in 1939 build Central Refugee camp Westerbork, which became in 1942 a ‘Durchgangslager’.

The 'Drang nach Osten', to make a new 'Lebensraum' for German people, did Nazi Germany invade Poland on September 1th, 1939. Russia invaded Eastern Poland on September 17th, 1939. Poland was divided according the previously agreed Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
The Netherlands hoped for neutrality like in WW1. When the German Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands on May 10th, 1940, there were around 15,000 German Jews in the Netherlands.

Geändert von els (16.09.2019 um 11:47 Uhr)
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