Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T01:39:35.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

RECONSTRUCTING A COLLECTIVE: ZIONISM AND RACE BETWEEN NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND JEWISH RENEWAL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2017

DORON AVRAHAM
DORON AVRAHAM*
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
*
General History Department, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, IsraelDoron.Avraham@biu.ac.il
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933, German Zionists initiated a public debate about the racial meaning of Judaism. Drawing on scientific racial, sociological, and anthropological definitions that emerged within Zionism since the late nineteenth century, these Zionists tried to counter Nazi accusations against Jews. However, as the Nazi propaganda against Judaism became widespread, aggressive, and dehumanizing, Zionists responded by traversing the academic outlines of racial categories, and popularized a constructive racial image of Jews, thus hoping to rehabilitate their status and consolidate Jewish identity.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 471 - 492
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jüdische Rundschau (JR), 31 Jan. 1933, Regierung Hitler.

2 JR, 16 Sept. 1932, Die Zionist. Aufgabe im heutigen Deutschland; Nicosia, F. R., Zionism and anti-semitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 60–1Google Scholar.

3 See Kwiet, K. and Eschwege, H., Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand: Deutsche Juden im Kampf um Existenz und Menschenwürde, 1933–1945 (Hamburg, 1984), pp. 61–139 Google Scholar; Boas, J., ‘Countering Nazi defamation: German Jews and the German tradition, 1933–1938’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 34 (1989), pp. 205–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weiss, Y., Schicksalsgemeinschaft im Wandel: Jüdische Erziehung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, 1933–1938 (Hamburg, 1991)Google Scholar; Mendes-Flohr, P., ‘Jewish cultural life under National Socialism’, in Barkai, A. and Mendes-Flohr, P., eds., German-Jewish history in modern times, iv: Renewal and destruction, 1918–1945 (New York, NY, 1998), pp. 292–303 Google Scholar; Kaplan, M. A., Between dignity and despair: Jewish life in Nazi Germany (New York, NY, 1998), pp. 50–73 Google Scholar; Nicosia, F. R. and Scrase, D., eds., Jewish life in Nazi Germany: dilemmas and responses (New York, NY, 2012)Google Scholar.

4 See on this matter Gruner, W., ‘The German should expel the foreigner Hitler: open protest and other forms of Jewish defiance in Nazi Germany’, Yad Vashem Studies, 39 (2011), pp. 13–53 Google Scholar; Wildt, M., Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft and the dynamics of racial exclusion: violence against Jews in provincial Germany, 1919–1939 (New York, NY, 2012), p. 85Google Scholar.

5 Nicosia, Zionism and anti-semitism, pp. 6–7.

6 Mosse, G. L., Germans and Jews: the right, the left, and the search for a ‘third force’ in pre-Nazi Germany (New York, NY, 1970), pp. 8–9 Google Scholar, 86–8, 114.

7 See Pickus, K. H., Constructing modern identities: Jewish university students in Germany, 1815–1914 (Detroit, MI, 1999), pp. 167–9Google Scholar.

8 About the Jews' discussion of racial identity, see Mosse, Germans and Jews, pp. 77–115; Doron, J., ‘Rassenbewusstsein und naturwissenschaftliches Denken im deutschen Zionismus während der wilhelminischen Ära’, Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Geschichte, 9 (1980), pp. 389–427 Google Scholar; Boas, J., The Jews of Germany: self-perceptions in the Nazi era as reflected in the German Jewish press, 1933–1938 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1982), pp. 177–221 Google Scholar; Kiefer, A., Das Problem einer ‘jüdischen Rasse’: Eine Diskussion zwischen Wissenschaft und Ideologie (1870–1930) (Frankfurt, 1991), pp. 37–95 Google Scholar; Efron, J. M., Defenders of the race: Jewish doctors and race science in fin de siècle Europe (New Haven, CT, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hart, M. B., Social science and the politics of modern Jewish identity (Stanford, CA, 2000), p. 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Endelman, T. M., ‘Anglo-Jewish scientists and the science of race,’ Jewish Social Studies, 11 (2004), pp. 52–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Falk, R., ‘Zionism, race, and eugenic’, in Cantor, G. and Swetlitz, M., eds., Jewish tradition and the challenge of Darwinism (Chicago, IL, 2006), pp. 137–62Google Scholar; C. Feit, ‘Modern orthodoxy and evolution: the models of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi A. I. Kook’, in Cantor and Swetlitz, eds., Jewish tradition, pp. 208–24; Lipphardt, V., Biologie der Juden: Jüdische Wissenschaftler über ‘Rasse’ und Vererbung, 1900–1935 (Göttingen, 2008)Google Scholar; Pegelow-Kaplan, T., The language of Nazi genocide: linguistic violence and the struggle of Germans of Jewish ancestry (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 4, 58–159 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See for example Efron, Defenders of the race, p. 180.

10 Miron, G., ‘Emancipation and assimilation in the German-Jewish discourse of the 1930s’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 48 (2003), pp. 188–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 It should be noticed that the common phrase ‘November pogrom’ was criticized by historians, who suggested instead the term ‘organized terror’ by the state. See for example Wiessmann, H., From horror to hope: Germany, the Jews and Israel (New York, NY, 1996), p. 41Google Scholar.

12 Auerbach, E., ‘Die jüdische Rassenfrage’, Archive für Rassen und Gesellschafts-Biologie, 4 (1907), p. 333 Google Scholar; Efron, Defenders of race, pp. 127–31.

13 Stoetzler, M., The state, the nation, and the Jews: liberalism and the antisemitism dispute in Bismarck's Germany (Lincoln, NE, 2008), pp. 199–200 Google Scholar.

14 Hart, Social science, pp. 74–5.

15 Geulen, C., Wahlverwandte: Rassendiskurs und Nationalismus im späten 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 2004), pp. 30–4Google Scholar, 55–6, 181–3.

16 Brenner, L., Zionism in the age of the dictators (Westport, CT, 1983), pp. 15–16 Google Scholar; Efron, Defenders of race, p. 7.

17 Sorkin, D., ‘Emancipation and assimilation: two concepts and their application to German-Jewish history’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 35 (1990), p. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Lowenstein, S. M., ‘Zionism: the Jewish national alternative’, in Meyer, M., German-Jewish history in modern times (4 vols., New York, NY, 1996–8), iii, pp. 290–9Google Scholar; Lavsky, H., Before catastrophe: the distinctive path of German Zionism (Detroit, MI, 1996), pp. 21–3Google Scholar; Volkov, S., Germans, Jews and antisemites: trials in emancipation (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 24–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nicosia, Zionism and anti-semitism, p. 3.

19 Hart, Social science, p. 17.

20 Sorkin, ‘Emancipation and assimilation’, p. 23.

21 Sandler, A., Antropologie und Zionismus: Ein populär-wiessenschaftlicher Vortrag (Brunn, 1904), pp. 16–17 Google Scholar.

22 Ruppin, A., The Jews of today (London, 1913), pp. 216–17Google Scholar. All references relate to the English edition.

23 Ibid., p. 213.

24 Zollschan, I., Das Rassenproblem unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der theoretischen Grundlagen der jüdische Rassenfrage, Dritte, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage (Vienna, 1912), pp. 149, 50, 57Google Scholar. On Zollschan, see also Gilman, S. L., Smart Jews: the construction of the image of Jewish superior intelligence (Lincoln, NE, 1996), pp. 104–6Google Scholar.

25 Der Jude, 1 (1920–1), pp. 49–57.

26 Ruppin, A., Soziologie der Juden (2 vols., Berlin, 1930–1), i, pp. 230–1Google Scholar.

27 Hart, Social science, pp. 56–73. For further analysis of the Jews' discussion about race during the 1920s, see Avraham, Doron, ‘The “racialization” of Jewish self-identity: the response to exclusion in Nazi Germany, 1933–1938’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 19 (2013), pp. 354–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar (especially pp. 358–9).

28 About the concept of race and its meanings, see Geulen, Wahlverwandte: Rassendiskurs und Nationalismus, pp. 55–56, 181–3.

29 Morris-Reich, A., The quest for Jewish assimilation in modern social science (New York, NY, 2008), p. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Efron, Defenders of race, p. 179.

30 Shavit, Y. and Reinharz, J., Darwin and some of his kind (Tel Aviv, 2009), p. 233 (Hebrew)Google Scholar.

31 Mosse, German and Jews, p. 98.

32 Efron, Defenders of race, pp. 145–7.

33 Miron, ‘Emancipation and assimilation’, p. 170.

34 A. Barkai, ‘Shifting organizational relationships’, in Barkai and Mendes-Flohr, eds., German-Jewish history, iv, pp. 277–80.

35 Brustein, W., Roots of hate: anti-semitism in Europe before the Holocaust (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 3–4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 125–8.

36 Barkai, ‘Shifting organizational relationships’, pp. 280, 305–6.

37 Freeden, H., The Jewish press in the Third Reich (Providence, RI, 1993), pp. 29–40 Google Scholar; Diehl, K., Die jüdische Presse im Dritten Reich: Zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Fremdbestimmung (Tübingen, 1997), pp. 126–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pegelow-Kaplan, The language of Nazi genocide, pp. 57–61, 121–4. On the Nazi press policy, see also Frei, N. and Schmitz, J., Journalismus im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1989), pp. 20–38 Google Scholar.

38 Nicosia, Zionism and anti-semitism, pp. 90–1.

39 Fraenkel, D., On the edge of the abyss: Zionist policy and the plight of the German Jews, 1933–1938 (Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 81–2 (Hebrew)Google Scholar.

40 JR, 24 June 1932, Glaube und Schicksal.

41 Buber, M., Drei Reden über das Judentum (Frankfurt am Main, 1916), pp. 22–6Google Scholar.

42 See on this matter Gelber, M. H., Melancholy pride: nation, race, and gender in the German literature of cultural Zionism (Tübingen, 2000), pp. 133–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Presner, T. S., Muscular Judaism: the Jewish body and the politics of regeneration (New York, NY, 2007), pp. 73–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 JR, 7 Apr. 1933, Die Judenfrage; Herzl, T., Der Judenstaat (Vienna, 1933), p. 14Google Scholar.

44 See for example Herzl, Der Judenstaat, pp. 13–14; Gelber, Melancholy pride, pp. 126–5; Pegelow-Kaplan, The language of Nazi genocide, pp. 80, 83.

45 JR, 4 Aug. 1933, Rasse als Kulturfaktor.

46 JR, 4 Aug. 1933, Stimmen des Blutes.

47 JR, 4 Aug. 1933, Stimmen des Blutes.

48 Prinz, J., Wir Juden (Berlin, 1934), pp. 154–5Google Scholar; and see also Nicosia, Zionism and anti-semitism, p. 93.

49 Calvary, M., Das neue Judentum (Berlin, 1936), p. 11Google Scholar.

50 JR, 11 Aug. 1933, Jüdische Rassenforschung. Ein Vorschlag an die Universität Jerusalem.

51 Morris-Reich, The quest for Jewish assimilation, pp. 41–3; Lipphardt, Biologie der Juden, pp. 252–8.

52 Zollschan, I., Die Bedeutung des Rassenfaktors für die Grundfragen der Kulturmorphologie (Vienna, 1934), p. 3Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

54 Stepan, N. L. and Gilman, S. L., ‘Appropriating the idioms of science: the rejection of scientific racism’, in Harding, S. G., ed., The ‘racial’ economy of science: toward a democratic future (Bloomington, IN, 1993), pp. 182–3, 185Google Scholar.

55 Weindling, P. J., ‘Central Europe confronts German racial hygiene: Friedrich Hertz, Hugo Iltis and Ignaz Zollschan as critics of racial hygiene’, in Turda, M. and Weindling, P. J., eds., ‘Blood and homeland’: eugenics and racial nationalism in central and southeast Europe, 1900–1940 (Budapest, 2007), p. 273Google Scholar.

56 Angress, W. T., ‘Jüdische Jugend zwischen nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung und jüdischer Wiedergeburt’, in Paucker, A., ed., Die Juden im Nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (Tübingen, 1986), pp. 211–21Google Scholar; Kaplan, Between dignity and despair, pp. 103–6; Lavsky, Before catastrophe, pp. 241–4.

57 JR, 8 Aug. 1933, Naturwissenschaftlicher Unterricht in der jüdischen Schule (in the supplement Blätter für jüdische Erziehung, no. 3).

58 Walk, J., Jüdische Schule und Erziehung im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), pp. 144–5Google Scholar.

59 For the importance of sport, see Hau, M., The cult of health and beauty in Germany: a social history, 1890–1930 (Chicago, IL, 2003), pp. 127, 176Google Scholar; Borut, J., ‘Jews in German sport during the Weimar Republic’, in Brenner, M. and Reuveni, G., eds., Emancipation through muscles: Jews and sports in Europe (Lincoln, NE, 2006), pp. 77–92 Google Scholar.

60 JR, 12 May 1933, Jüdischer Sport. In this context, see also Wahlig, H., Sport im Abseits: Die Geschichte der jüdischen Sportbewegung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (Göttingen, 2015), p. 106Google Scholar.

61 JR, 19 Oct. 1934, Die Kreistagung des Makkabi (in the supplement Sport-Rundschau).

62 See on this matter Mandell, R. M., The Nazi Olympic (New York, NY, 1987), pp. 59–60 Google Scholar; Krüger, A., ‘Breeding, bearing and preparing the Aryan body: creating supermen the Nazi way’, in Mangan, J. A., ed., Shaping the superman: fascist body as political icon – Aryan fascism (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 42–68 Google Scholar.

63 Nordau, M., and, ‘Muskeljudentum’ ‘Was bedeutet das Turnen für uns Juden?’, in Nordau, M., Zionistische Schriften (Cologne, 1909), pp. 379–81Google Scholar and 382–8; Bernett, H., Der jüdische Sport im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, 1933–1938 (Schorndorf, 1978), pp. 39–40 Google Scholar; Murphy, M. A., Max Nordau's fin-de-siècle romance of race (New York, NY, 2007), pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

64 Bernett, Der jüdische Sport, pp. 56–7, 72–3.

65 JR, 13 Feb. 1934, ‘Was kann die Frau für die Erneuerung des Judentums tun?’ (in the women's supplement Frauen Rundschau).

66 On Buber, see Gelber, Melancholy pride, pp. 20–8; Olin, M., The nation without art: examining modern discourses on Jewish art (Lincoln, NE, 2001), pp. 209–10Google Scholar; Presner, Muscular Judaism, pp. 74–5.

67 Weiss, Schicksalsgemeinschaft, pp. 11–12; Shavit and Reinharz, Darwin and some of his kind, pp. 232–3.

68 JR, 1 Apr. 1938, Der neue Jude.

69 JR, 19 Mar. 1937, Schrift, Volk und Land.

70 Lipphardt, Biologie der Juden, p. 178.

71 JR, 15 Sept. 1933, Die Auflösung des deutschen Judentums.

72 Freeden, Jewish press, p. 59.

73 Ruppin, Soziologie der Juden, ii, pp. 94–5.

74 Lipphardt, Biologie der Juden, p. 179.

75 Proctor, R. N., Racial hygiene: medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 79, 101–2Google Scholar.

76 JR, 20 June 1933, Auch unsere Rasse sei heilig?

77 Falk, ‘Zionism, race, and eugenic’, pp. 147–56; Lipphardt, ‘Jüdische Eugenik?’, pp. 151–64.

78 Lipphardt, V., ‘Zwischen “Inzucht” und “Mischehe” – Demographisches Wissen in der Debatten um die “Biologie der Juden”’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte, 35 (2007), pp. 45–66 Google Scholar; Lipphardt, Biologie der Juden, pp. 279–99.

79 Reichler, M., Jewish eugenics and other essays (New York, NY, 1916), p. 7Google Scholar; Hart, The healthy Jew, pp. 111–12.

80 Der Israelit, 19 Sept. 1935, Erbgesundheit. Eine Aufgabe der deutschen Juden.

81 Der Israelit, 26 Sept. 1935, Erbgesundheit. Eine Aufgabe der deutschen Juden.