The Nazi Expulsion of Professors
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The Nazi Expulsion of Professors |
The Expulsion of the Professors from the Universities in Nazi Germany, 1933-1941
The
expulsion of scholars from the countries of their birth has occurred repeatedly
in the course of human civilization. Notable examples are the migration of the
Greek scholars from Constantinople to Italy both before and after the capture of
that city by the Turks in 1453, the expulsion of the Huguenots from France after
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and their subsequent influence on
the culture of the court at Brandenburg, Prussia. Another example is the
expulsion and migration of the Russian
scholars from the universities of that country during the Stalinist purges of
the Academy of Sciences in 1937 when that institution was “...remodeled
on Communist lines.” These
examples indicate that revolutionary movements frequently promote the flight of
academicians. This occurs because such movements threaten the future of learning
and scholarship according to the traditions of the affected civilization, or
because the new masters of the subject civilization view intellectuals with
suspicion and hostility and as possible centers of resistance.
Scholars are often identified with religious or political beliefs not
acceptable to the conquerors, in which event these scholars leave or flee
because of their religious, rather than their scholarly functions. The latter
was undoubtedly the case with the Byzantine scholars who left Constantinople
just before and after 1453 when the Moslems conquered that outpost of
Christianity. There
were, of course, a number of Christian German professors who left their teaching
posts for similar reasons after the Nazi assumption of power in 1933. Thus, a
celebrated mathematician, said to be one of the few who at that time was able to
keep pace with Albert Einstein, resigned his university post as protest
against the removal of Jewish faculty members from all German universities.
Another prominent member of the philosophic faculty of the Prussian Academy of
Sciences in Berlin gave up his career as a protest against the practice of
Hitlerian authorities of removing professors for any but scholastic reasons.
Another professor at the University of Rostock demanded from the German
government, which controlled all universities, that he be given a clear
guarantee that an oath requiring all faculty to support the principles of the
National Socialist government leave unimpaired his freedom to seek and teach the
truth. Despite his prominence in his field, he was ousted from his position. Still
others left because they would not subject their conscience to the dictates of
the National Socialist ideologies as preached by the government. Since all
German professors were public employees, responsible to the Minister of Science,
Art and Public Education at Berlin, the following letter of resignation is a
good example of the motivation of those who left voluntarily.
May
5, 1933 To:
The Minister for Science, Art and Public Education, Berlin I
hereby advise the Minister for Science, Art and Public Education that I am
unable, for the time being, to continue my lectures. I have the honor of adding
these reasons: Since I have always adhered to the tradition
of German Humanism; and since these traditions have now been abandoned at the
Prussian universities to an extent and in a manner not known heretofore; and
since the University and its affiliates have ceased to function as fighters for
its very ideals; and since I have been asked to make sacrifices of conscience by
way of my official duties which I cannot view as valid in the light of German
traditions, I consider myself presently deprived of the opportunity to
administer my teaching post in a sensible fashion. It is
my hope to give a more detailed statement of my views at another occasion. Reinhardt This
letter was sent by Professor Karl Reinhardt of the faculty of law at the
University of Frankfurt am Main to the government. However, the number of
letters supporting the Nazi policy of “Gleichschaltung” far exceeded the
stand taken in the above example. In fact, the evidence indicates that most of
the former “Humanists” became “Nazis” almost overnight and hastened to
swear allegiance to their new masters. Such
evidence is visible through a brief review of some of the writings of German
professors of the 1930’s. Particular emphasis should be given to the views of
the professors of law because the German government clothed many of its acts of
persecution in a weird legalism as it sought to undergird its expulsion of
Jewish and other professors from the universities with a pseudo— legalistic
literature which the law professors readily endorsed in Nazi—style
commentaries. The following excerpts from the writings of some prominent German
professors highlight the widespread acceptance of the Nazi regime, not only
among the law faculties, but also in all academic circles. In
1933, Professor Ernst Forsthoff, a lawyer by profession, wrote as follows:
“The great political names of modern times are related to the politics of
domestic affairs: Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin. What has happened
so far is annunciation and prophecy, not finality and fulfillment. A new era has
erupted, a new Europe is being created. No European people is capable of
escaping the law of these times. The European peoples must fulfill the 19th
Century in a true National state or disintegrate.” A year later, Otto
Koellreutter, another professor of law suddenly interpreted the purposes of a
legal education in the following manner: .
. . The education and schooling of the young jurist in the German
leader—state [Führerstaat] must be placed on a different basis. I
know that many will be appalled by my contention that political education must
constitute the A and 0 of the young jurist in the leader—state, while
legal—technical training must take second place and can only have meaning upon
that basis. The jurist in the German leader—state must first be a political
man because the idea of the state and the idea of justice, politics and law are
only variations of the expression of the people’s unity. .
.What we need is only the political, national socialist [Nazi] man. To
educate him in the spirit of the ‘Führer’ and to contribute thereby
building blocks to the foundation of the German leader—state, that seems to me
to be today’s most urgent task for all German professors. Heil Hitler.” While
this type of knee—bending and “kow—towing” to a ruthless dictator may
appear in the main as an effort to hold one’s job, the following excerpt from
a German academic journal exhibits far more than that; namely an unreal,
pseudo—religious invocation which one would hardly expect from an academician
trained in the German tradition of free inquiry and scientific humanism. “… the Italians showed their leader their gratitude for his success in
saving them from Bolshevism and confusion in that they call him [Mussolini] a
‘gift from God’ and honor him accordingly. At one time, the Jews, honored
their Savior and Healer as the ‘Son of God.’ For the German soul it would be
appropriate to envisage in the ‘Führer’ a hero and guiding light who leads
the German soul from the depths into the light, and shows it the way to its
Walhalla, to God the Father by living as an example to his brethren in the true
Gothic manner, allowing them help to help themselves, so that all Germans can
become brothers before God the Father. . .
. The gothic soul becomes embodied in a great ‘Führer,’ who becomes the
savior of his nation in their need. He feels his calling to Gothesize his people
and knows with the eye of genius the way which leads to the nation. This way is
now Politics: National and Cultural politics. . . Many,
many more examples of a similar nature are available to indicate the manner in
which the Hitlerian cult replaced genuine scholarship. Further, it is also
evident that the Nazi Measures against Jewish professors were welcomed and
abetted by some of their non—Jewish colleagues, many of whom hastened once
more to endorse the actions of the Nazi fanatics with pseudo—scholarship such
as the following which was written in 1933, some years before all German
universities were made completely “Judenrein”: …
leadership as a total life process is only possible on the basis of existential
similarities of a kind as it develops from the mutuality of race, history and
national fate. When these prerequisites are absent, then an orderly community
must limit itself to outer discipline . . folk
is a community which rests upon a similarity of kind and similarity of being.
This similarity emerges from a similarity of race and national fate. The
political nation grows from the final unity of the will which develops from a
consciousness of kind. Consciousness of kind and national relationship becomes
realistic primarily in the ability to discern differences in types and to
distinguish friends from enemies. Thus, it is of particular importance to
recognize differences of kind where it is not easily recognizable through
membership in a foreign nation, as in the Jew who attempts to develop the
illusion of a similarity of kind and membership in a people by his active
participation in cultural and economic affairs. The rebirth of the German people
had to make short shrift of this deception, and take from the Jews the last hope
of living in Germany under any other circumstances than in the knowledge of
their typological difference, that is, with the recognition to live as a Jew. Humanity
is categorized into a large number of typologically different peoples. Between
these peoples there are friendships and enmities. Typological distinctions do
not therefore mean enmity——they only become enmities when typological
differences and existential differences touch upon the living space, or the
peoplehood, the spiritual living space of a nation. That is why the Jew became
an enemy, without regard to his good or bad intentions, good or bad beliefs; and
that is why he had to be made harmless.” Other
German professors called Jews “roaches,” held that so—called foreign races
had no legal status, that concentration camps were a legitimate exercise of
power and that Jews were unproductive and no room could be found for them in any
German setting. Innumerable examples of similar views can be found and
documented, so that there seems little doubt that the preponderance of German
professors who made any comment on Berlin’s policies, favored the Nazis and
furthered the aims of the movement. It therefore becomes necessary to explain how the tradition of German humanism, embodied in the concepts of “Lernfreiheit und Lehrfreiheit,” was so readily abandoned by professors who themselves became persecutors of their colleagues and perverters of the very principles they once professed. II In
1922, the famous German economist and sociologist, Max Weber, wrote an essay
entitled, “Wissenschaft als Beruf.” Here he put his finger, ten years before Hitler came to
power, on one of the major reasons for the eventual displacement of the scholar
by Nazi demagogues as proponents of academic values and goals. Without
reference to the Nazis or any other political party, Weber revealed how the
value void arose which would permit totalitarian dictators and other fanatics to
impose their iron rule over the universities. In
our time,” Weber wrote, “the internal situation, in contrast to the
organization of science as a vocation, is first of all conditioned by the facts
that science has entered a phase of specialization previously unknown and that
this will forever remain the case. Not only externally, but also inwardly,
matters stand at a point where the individual can acquire the sure consciousness
of achieving something truly perfect in the field of science only in case he is
a strict specialist.” Weber
went on to show how in the course of over—specialization the individual
scientist and the academic community as a whole, even including the social
sciences and philosophy, became more and more isolated from one another. The
relationship between scientific findings to political, ethical and cultural
values became matters of individual value orientation and personal decision. No
unified, or even systematic explanation of the connection between that which is,
i.e., objective science, arid that which ought to be, i.e., human values, was
developed even in theology. Thus, in the realm of individual decision making,
the arbitrariness of the demagogue became the decisive voice. Where scientists
would not, or could not develop a basic orientation, dictators did. In fact,
Weber pointed inerrantly to the possibility, that the very academicians who had
lost any sense of philosophical orientation and idealism, would welcome the
political unity which the Nazi system later provided. Therefore, the
“political University” seemed to attract many German professors including
the world— famous philosopher Martin Heidegger who, in 1933, delivered a
speech entitled “Die Idee der Politischen Universität.”
Here Heidegger stated: “The
National Socialist revolution is not merely the taking over of an already
existing power in the state by another party sufficiently large to do so, but
this revolution means a complete revolution of our German existence .
. . Heil Hitler!” It
is likely that this wish to replace the loss of unifying values with the power
of the state totally overlooked the fact that science itself rests on value
assumptions which such a state had to destroy; that is, free inquiry, critical
examination of all ideas, independence of investigation and investigators from
force or threat of force and total devotion to truth regardless of consequences.
How German professors overlooked these values became apparent when, in 1933,
Heidegger and eight of his colleagues published an “Oath of Allegiance of the
Professors of the German Universities and High Schools to Adolf Hitler and the
National Socialist State.” In
addition to this loss of value orientation and the wish to find support instead
from governmental sources, the evidence suggests that Nazi attitudes were well
entrenched in the German universities even before the 1933 takeover and that
many professors were receptive to Fascist views because they themselves had
taught and disseminated such views in the past. Thus Wilhelm Grau could
truthfully admit at the opening of the Frankfurt Institute for the Study of the
Jewish Question: “. . . The
institute acknowledges its indebtedness to the methodical critical school which
has been developed in German scholarship in the last hundred years and has
enhanced Germany’s reputation in the world as well as to the great
comprehensive force in exposition which the best and most gracious German
scholars possessed.” Such
prototypes of Nazi attitudes were particularly common in the field of history.
In an exhaustive study, entitled “German Historians and the Advent of the
National Socialist State,” Oscar Ramman concludes “that the German
historians, save for a republican minority, needed little ‘coordination.’
The Germany of the future which most historians had visioned and wished for
approximated in many fundamental respects the Nazi state of 1941. . . A
good review of these visions and wishes is given by Professor Iggers, who
writes: “. . . it is difficult to
escape the thought that the political ethics of historicism in its recognition
of the rights of the state and its denial of minimal universal norms of
political behavior contributed in a significant way to breaking down the
barriers against totalitarian aims in Germany.” Iggers’
view is supported by quotation from several important German writers. The
venerable historian Friedrich Meinecke (never a Nazi) argued that the human
psyche occupies the central point in history and that this psyche was
“determined not by reason or understanding but by will.” Therefore,
“Meinecke’s book . . . becomes a
hymn to the beneficient triumph of unreason in modern consciousness. This
emphasis on the irrationality of values is found even in the works of Luther who
argued that “there is no power but God: the powers that be are ordained of
God.” Elsewhere, Luther commented on “The Harlot Reason.” From such a
view, Luther concluded that the Christian owes absolute obedience to the state
which represents the will of God. An extension
of this type of teaching is found in Meinecke’s “belief in the central role
of the state in human culture and in [the fact that] the spiritual character of
political power was not merely a question of scholarly approach but a matter of
profound religious conviction.” Meinecke
therefore remained convinced that German nationalism was right, even after the
catastrophe of Nazism and the Second World War. Believing that “no basic
conflict exists between the power interests of the state and the principles of
ethics he concluded that ‘the state could do no wrong in any fundamental sense
as long as it followed its own judgement.
Interestingly enough, this comes from an historian who “abhorred” the
Nazis even while participating in developing the intellectual groundwork upon
which the totalitarian ideology could flourish. The rejection of reason was a
thread running through centuries of German philosophy. This became particularly
acute with the rise of the industrial age when reason was believed to be a mere
critical instrument which hindered the creative and productive aspects of life.
As the writer Wilhelm Stapel put it: “Feelings
become colder, imagination becomes weak, passion loses power and instinct
becomes thin and unsure, as reason prevails. The remedy was believed to be the
development of a state founded on nature, folk society, community and religion. This
attitude, which we term anti—intellectualism, is related to religious pietism.
Thus Leibniz is quoted to the effect that “not only through the human naturale
of reason, but also through instinct we find innate truths.” The nineteenth
century historian, Johann Gottfried Herder, also denied the rational in history.
Basic to his position were two concepts. First, that all values are historic and
individual and second that history is a benevolent process. In other words,
there are no
universally valid values but only such values as grow out of the spirit of
nations. In turn, they are viewed as the only relatively stable centers in
history. Consequently, Herder taught German historians to believe that an
objective approach to history is not possible since "all that has grown
naturally or historically is good.” This, of course, includes the
nation which “has its center of happiness within it.” Following
the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806, which stimulated nationalism, the
German attitude toward history developed the following three major concepts:
“First, that all values and rights were of historic and national origin and
that alien institutions could not be transplanted to German soil. Second,
Fichte’s view that Germans are an original nation that, unlike others, had not
lost touch with the original genius transmitted through its speech and thirdly
Humboldt’s Memorandum on a German Constitution in which Humboldt implies
that in following its own interests the state acts not only in accordance with a
higher morality than that represented by private morality, but also in harmony
with the basic purposes of history.” Thus,
Iggers argues that “the fatal weakness of classical German historicism rested
in its aristocratic bias. [Making] German historians and political theorists .
. . willing to view the state as an ethical institution whose interests
were in the long run in harmony with freedom and morality.” This attitude led
German liberal historians to prefer the state and its interests over the
interests of political liberty for the individual. The
publication in 1924, nine years before the Hitler regime took power, of
Lenard’s “England and Germany at the Time of the Great War” is another
example. As a Nobel Prize winner in physics before World War I, Lenard’s views
were quite influential. He not only believed that “England nearly always was a
political monster” but also that Albert Einstein practiced “Jewish
physics” which somehow differed from “German physics.” Similar views were
held by the famous German physicist Johannes Stark, the zoologist Golt, the
theologian Hirsch, the art historian Pinder, the surgeon Sauerbruch and
countless others. It is most essential to recall that these men were not only
the most famous and outstanding scholars in their fields in the world, but also
that all of them held these views before the Nazi government destroyed the
Weimar republic. “. . . It would be
the easiest thing in the world to extend this long list of highly respectable
guild scholars who fell in line with Nazism. But the names that have appeared in
the preceding pages certainly prove one thing: that national socialism was in no
way alien to German universities at the time of Hitler’s advent.”44 That
national socialism was well entrenched in the universities before 1933 was also
owing in part to the movement called “Germanophilism.” This movement in
German intellectual circles began early in the nineteenth century, became
Machiavellian in outlook centering upon the Weltanschauung that regarded
the State “as an instrument of power which had no higher purpose than itself,
a system of domination of men over men based upon force. .
.” Exponents
of such views were the historian, Leopold van Ranke (1795—1886), Otto von
Gierke (1841—1921), a renowned legal historian, and Erich Brandenburg, another
historian, who wrote in 1917, that the state “does not exist to protect the
interests of its citizens, it is rather the power organization of a people. .
. Germanophilism
also expressed itself in the preposterous belief that Teutonic civilization
could be divorced from interdependence upon other civilizations, a view which
was taught at the University of Göttingen by Professor Lagarde in the second
half of the nineteenth century. This view later culminated in the Wotan—cult
revivals of such writers as Felix Dahn and Ernst von Wildenbruch who wished to
replace Christianity with the “God of the Germans.” We meet such
views again in the utterances of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary,
who proclaimed in 1941 that “National Socialism and Christianity are
irreconcilable.” Moreover Hitler himself told the former president of the
German senate, Rauschning that “. . . one is either a Christian or a German. One cannot be
both.” Further examples of Germanophilism can be found in the
racial views of Langbehn, supported by a Jena philosophy professor, Eucken, as
early as 1890 and the anti—democratic effusions of the anti—Semitic Frantz
who in 1874 published “National Liberalism and Jewish Domination.” To this
could be added an endless procession of both well known and lesser known
professors and writers who influenced German academic thought for four
generations before Hitler. In view of the foregoing, it becomes evident that the
vast majority of the professors who left Germany from 1933 to 1941 were expelled
by force because the government objected to them, rather than the reverse. III Almost
immediately upon assuming power on January 30, 1933 Hitler and the Nazi party
began to use a variety of laws as means of enforcing their views within Germany.
In fact, the use of law from the Nazi point of view, accompanied even the most
brutal of Nazi acts so that in Nazi theory even the later mass murders in
Auschwitz and Buchenwald were given the stamp of legality. It
is therefore not surprising that the government passed a law as early as April
7, 1933 designed to exclude from the German Civil Service and hence from all
universities, those persons who in the view of the Nazi party were unfit to hold
office. This “Law for the Reconstruction of the Professional Civil Service”,
specifically excluded from employment by the government all members of the
Communist party or any “Communist Front”; all persons who in the opinion of
Nazi party officials might in the future become active in either Marxist or
democratic politics and persons whose past political behavior indicated that
they might be politically unreliable and “do not guarantee that they would in
all events stand up for the Nazi Party and the German State.” To this was
added all “Non—Aryans,” i.e., Jews. Since the word “Jew” had a special
meaning in the Nazi vocabulary, it is well to quote here Paragraph 3 of the law
of November 11, 1933 which constituted the enabling act permitting the execution
of the “Law for the Reconstruction
of the Professional Civil Service.” According to this act, published in the
Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 195: “Non—aryans are those who descend from
non—aryan, particularly Jewish parents or grandparents. It is sufficient, if
one parent, or one grandparent is not an aryan. . . .“ In 1935 this law was further amended by the decree of
November 11, 1935 in which the term “Jude,” was expanded to mean
“whosoever, at the time of the passage of this law was married or later
becomes married to a Jew, whosoever descends from the marriage of any Jew in the
sense of the Law of November 11, 1933 with reference to the protection of German
blood and German honor and whosoever was born illegitimately to a Jew in the
sense of that law. Consequently it is evident that German professors, expelled
for being Jewish, were frequently not Jews by religion or cultural association.
Hence, Jews were persons so defined by the pseudo— anthropological standards
of Nazi belief. Therefore, a good number of the professors who later migrated to
the United States did not consider themselves Jews and were not so considered
by anyone other than Nazis. “For example, one academician had to flee because
he was the grandson of a niece of Felix Mendelssohn and hence a ‘non—aryan.’
Another, . . . because his wife’s
grandmother was Jewish.” As
a consequence of these policies the dismissals of professors at German
universities began in earnest with the academic year of 1934—35. In that year,
1,145 professors were dismissed or pensioned early. These constituted 14.3% of
the previous year’s faculty at all German universities. This
meant, of course, that a considerable number of vacancies had to be filled in
the universities if these were to function at all. This was done by appointing
“reliable” persons, that is, Nazis. An excellent example of the anxiety with
which the German government rid itself of professors who did not suit them was
the field of International Law. This discipline, heavily influenced by Jews, had
an international character by the very nature of its interest and taught
therefore, matters objectionable to Fascist doctrine. Thus, in the four years
subsequent to the Nazi assumption of power in January, 1933, 1,145 professors of
International Law were compelled to retire or were dismissed outright. This
constituted a total of 16% of the 7,000 professors in this field. Since
the laws allowing these dismissals were so vague that they could be applied
almost at random, the very few female professors were dismissed simply because
the Nazi system was opposed to the presence of women in institutions of higher
learning, regardless of religion, political belief or “race”. Sometimes,
even professors who tried to appease the government by writing in a pro—Nazi
vein were dismissed. Thus, Professors Kraus and Verdross were dismissed from the
University of Berlin despite their belated efforts to write favorable comments
on the recent legislation. IV The
consequences of these dismissals for the professors were generally severe and
tragic. Some few found other employment in Germany. Specialists in chemistry,
physics and other natural sciences were on occasion given positions by private
industry, depending however, on their “political reliability” and on the
assumption that they were not considered “suspicious by the local “Gauleiter,”
i.e., county boss of the Nazi party.
Jewish professors, regardless of their field, were not employable
anywhere, since all Jews, according to the laws and regulations of the period
were forced out of all employment only to be forced into labor gangs, imprisoned
in concentration camps and finally murdered if still in German—controlled
territory. Non—Jewish
professors whose specialties did not have industrial potential were often forced
to find employment in entirely new fields of endeavor, cut off entirely from
their former colleagues, students and friends. Their isolation was made all the
worse by the heartless dictatorial policies of the government and not merely as
a consequence of their removal from educational and research activities. The
Nazi regime persecuted even those who were seen in the company of
“suspicious” persons, i.e., dismissed professors, particularly in small
college towns where those who survived the purge did not dare deal with the
dismissed group lest they too become “involved.” Thus the social life of the
unemployed professors suffered severely. Consequently, a number committed
suicide owing to loneliness, inability to have access to libraries and
separation from students, friends and colleagues. This was particularly the case
with men who were in the prime age group of 40 to 60, in the midst of their
greatest productivity. Perhaps the best evidence for the decline of intellectual
powers of these professors was the fact that after World War II there were
hardly any manuscripts waiting for publication by those who had been deprived of
their positions. Evidently, the loss of the structural relationships associated
with the prestige and honor accruing to a German professor also led to a severe
loss of functions ordinarily associated with academic life. Jewish
professors were of course also in physical danger, especially so after the
adoption of the German government’s “Final Solution” plan. Although
announced by Hitler on January 30, 1939, it actually had begun as early as 1933
and stepped up with particular ferocity on November 9—10, 1938 when a
“carefully organized pogrom against the Jewish population throughout Germany
was carried out. . . After
the “Kristallnacht,” 1938, it became obvious that the German government
meant to rid themselves of all German Jews and all other Jews in countries that
the government planned to occupy. Later, this plan was changed to mass murder.
While the truth of this intention was not documented until after World War II, a
good number of German professors of the so—called “Jewish” category as
well as those actually professing Judaism, long suspected this intention because
many of their colleagues were arrested, imprisoned in concentration camps and
murdered there. That these murders were well known to many segments of the
population is undeniable since the Nazi Storm Troopers often visited the widows
or families of the murdered men and gave them a box of ashes; the victim in a
cremated state. In addition, some of the concentration camp prisoners were
released before the beginning of the war, if they could prove that they were to
be admitted to another country and had the money to leave Germany forthwith.
Consequently, it was obvious to all but the most unrealistic Jews what lay in
store for them in case of a war, which seemed inevitable after Hitler reduced
the Munich Agreement of 1938 to a scrap of paper by occupying the rest of
Czechoslovakia. Therefore, for non—Jewish professors dismissed by the
government there appeared to be no choice but spiritual death or emigration. For
those whom Berlin regarded as Jews, the choice was death or emigration. While
an enormous amount of evidence exists to prove that this estimate was in fact
correct, and that the systematic killing of “Non—Aryans” and others was in
fact carried out by the German government, it suffices to mention the names of
just a few professors murdered by the Nazis, to indicate that neither
accomplishment nor age protected anyone thus marked for death. Thus,
the octogenarian Greek scholar, Otto Lenel, professor at the University of
Freiburg, and his 80 year old wife, were killed in the concentration camp of
Gurs, France. The famed professor of law Karl Neumeyer at the University of
Munich, author of “Das Internationale Verwaltungsrecht” and other important
works, was murdered in 1941 after having been expelled from his position and
forbidden to so much as enter a library. The same fate befell Professor
Friedrich Weissler of the University of Magdeburg, who was arrested for joining
the Christian Church and trampled to death in the concentration camp of
Sachsenhausen. An unending list of such brutalities is available. Nevertheless,
at the time of the perpetration of these crimes a good number of people outside
of Germany, and in fact, some inside Germany, would not believe that the Nazi
regime had actually begun to carry out the genocide which is now a matter of
historical record. Shalom
u’vracha. |
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