Intermarried Jews in the Holocaust
During the Holocaust, the German government was more lenient with Jews who were married to non-Jews. Generally, Jewish spouses in "privileged mixed marriages" were partially exempted from anti-Jewish legislation, and, until early 1945, were largely spared from being deported to ghettos, concentration camps, or extermination camps. The Nuremberg Laws, which forbade Germans from intermarrying with Jews, did not dissolve the marriages of existing German–Jewish couples, though they still came under immense pressure from the Nazi Party, which urged them to divorce in order to end the Jewish partner's legal protection. With a survival rate greatly exceeding that of other Jews, over 90% of intermarried Jews in Germany and German-occupied Europe were able to avoid being murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
Effects
Ban on intermarriage
The 1935
Exemptions
In Germany, marriages between a Jewish woman and a "German-blooded" man in which children were raised without Jewish faith were considered "privileged mixed marriages". Jewish women in such marriages received better rations than other Jews, and were exempted from a variety of Nazi decrees.[1] Even "non-privileged mixed marriages" brought important privileges, such as the Jewish partner's right not to be deported.[3]
With Adolf Hitler's approval, Hermann Goering established the privileged mixed marriages category in late December 1938. This category provided exemptions from certain persecution measures for families with gentile husbands and families with children raised as non-Jews due to their supposed closer ties to the German "Volksgemeinschaft". As a result, these families were spared from being ghettoized.[4]
During the onset of World War II, female Jewish spouses in privileged mixed marriages were exempted from food restrictions and were not required to wear the yellow badge, which was mandatory for all Jews after September 1941.[5] These exemptions were designed to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the Nazi regime's persecution of Jews and create a division within the Jewish community.[6]
In the Netherlands, all intermarried couples were exempt from deportation until September 1942, at which point Jewish men without children were no longer exempt. The families had to register with the authorities to receive the exemption.
Other forms of persecution
Instead of being deported, many intermarried Jews in greater Germany were instead drafted into forced labor battalions with
In some cases, the Gestapo would arrest intermarried Jews or their non-Jewish spouses on fabricated charges, often as a pretext to steal their property.[1][2]
Pressure to divorce
Intermarried families faced strong pressure to divorce, especially those in which the non-Jewish partner was female.[1][2] The non-Jewish partner often faced loss of a job or property due to Aryanization.[1] From the fall of 1944, many non-Jewish partners in mixed marriages were drafted for forced labor.[1] In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, some Czech men married to Jewish women were sent to a forced labor camp and promised release if they agreed to divorce.[2] In Greater Germany, the divorce rate has been estimated by historians between 7 and 10 percent.[11]
Statistics
In Amsterdam, intermarried Jews had a 59% lower risk of dying than those who were not intermarried.[7] By September 1944, 98 percent of surviving German and Austrian Jews were in mixed marriages, according to official statistics.[1][12] More than 90 percent of intermarried Jews from Greater Germany survived the war.[13] Benjamin Frommer estimates that most intermarried Jews in Bohemia and Moravia survived the Nazi occupation, if they were not divorced or widowed.[2]
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, intermarried families contended with the attitudes of other Jews and Jewish organizations that disapproved of intermarriage.[14][15]
References
- ^ S2CID 163076737.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4962-0211-6.
- PMID 31708684.
- ^ Strnad. (2019). A Question of Gender! Spaces of Violence and Reactions to Kristallnacht in Jewish-Gentile Families. In New Perspectives on Kristallnacht (p. 59). Purdue University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh9w1k7.7
- ^ . Decree of the Reichs Ministry of Alimentation and Agriculture, March 11, 1940, Nürnberger Dokumente (Institut für Zeitgeschichte), NI 14581; Police regulations on the mandatory identification of Jews, September 1, 1941, in Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl.) I 1941, p. 547
- ^ Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle, Die “Judendeportationen” aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945. Eine kommentierte Chronologie (Wiesbaden: Marixverlag, 2005).
- ^ PMID 28725097.
- S2CID 154244279.
- S2CID 54691262.
- S2CID 146326322.
- ^ Bukey 2010, p. 94.
- ISBN 978-1-139-49729-9.
- ^ Bukey 2010, p. 133.
- ISBN 978-1-78920-720-0.
- .
Further reading
- Strnad, Maximilian (2021). Privileg Mischehe?: Handlungsräume "jüdisch versippter" Familien 1933-1949 (in German). Wallstein Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8353-4626-0.