How did the Jews in Nazi Germany respond to their persecution before the war?

German Jewry, the first victims of the Nazi regime, represented one of the oldest established Jewish communities in Europe. Until 1933, German Jews had been widely regarded as a virtual model instance of the success of emancipation, and of the creative interaction between the Jews and their non-Jewish environment. Most German Jews considered themselves no less German than any of their Christian compatriots. Some 12,000 of them had died on the battlefields of World War I, fighting for the interests and honor of their beloved country.

During the first days of the Nazi regime, it was difficult for them to grasp that anyone could strip them of their German rights and identity, that they could be turned into pariahs in their own land. "Germany remains Germany," stated a leading article in the newspaper of the organization that represented the majority, the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. "No one can deprive us of our homeland and fatherland." On the other side of the ideological divide, the German Zionists, who were more pessimistic about the viability of a German-Jewish synthesis, seemed better attuned to the new times. Even they, however, could not fathom the full extent of the Nazi threat to Jewish existence.

They, no less than other Jews, tended to assume that the revolutionary ardor of the Nazi regime would spend itself after the first months in office and that its bite would not prove to be half as dangerous as its bark. In a way, the first to be aware of the danger were those individuals of Jewish origin who were active in the Socialist and Communist movements and, for this reason, were doubly exposed to political and racial persecution.

After the initial shock, German Jewry began to reorganize in response to their new circumstances. Already in April 1933 the Central Committee for Help and Reconstruction was established, which coordinated the wide-ranging welfare activities of the beleaguered Jewish community. On September 17, 1933, the National Representation of the German Jews came into being and assumed responsibility for overall political representation.

As a small minority living under a violent authoritarian regime, German Jewry could not mount a political opposition against the Nazis. Their hope that through negotiations carried out between the Jewish leadership and the regime, the status of the Jews in Germany could be settled in a tolerable fashion proved to be futile. Thus, what remained was for the Jewish leadership to focus on the internal life of the Jewish community. An important by-product of this focus was a deepening of Jewish consciousness and a strengthening of inner bonds of Jewish solidarity under persecution.

As the isolation of the Jews increased, the Jewish organizations focused on social work and aid to the needy. They established a Jewish educational system for children who had been ousted from the German educational system. They fostered adult education and founded the Kulturbund, an organization in which Jewish artists of various types could find expression. By the mid-1930s, the Jewish organizations increasingly emphasized activities that fostered emigration. They disseminated information about various countries of destination, and they offered language and vocational classes. This wide range of activities continued until the advent of the pogrom of November 1938. After the pogrom, the Nazis circumscribed these activities, and the Jewish organizations were only able to continue them on a much narrower basis.