Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T03:34:21.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Reprieve

Jews between Germany, Poland, and the League of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2018

Brendan Karch
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Get access

Summary

For a few crucial years after 1933, the fate of Jews and Polish speakers in Nazi Upper Silesia converged. The League of Nations Geneva Accord of 1922 primarily protected German and Polish minorities in Upper Silesia, but it also included provisions to protect religious minorities. The roughly 10,000 Jews in Nazi Upper Silesia invoked these minority protections. From 1934 to 1937, through appeals to the League, Jews used the Accord to gain a truly exceptional legal status: all Nazi anti-Semitic laws were voided in Upper Silesia. Economic and social freedoms unimaginable elsewhere in Germany remained commonplace in Upper Silesia. Jewish bureaucrats and doctors held onto their jobs, while Jews and non-Jews married despite the Nuremberg Laws. At the same time, the protections did not completely prevent extralegal violence or social exclusion of Jews. Nazi Germany nonetheless upheld the Accord out of fear that violating the treaty would give Poland pretext to retaliate against the German minority across the border in Polish Upper Silesia. With the end of the treaty in 1937, Nazi Germany immediately persecuted Upper Silesia’s Jews with the same virulence as elsewhere in the Reich.
Type
Chapter
Information
Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland
Upper Silesia, 1848–1960
, pp. 186 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Reprieve
  • Brendan Karch, Louisiana State University
  • Book: Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland
  • Online publication: 14 September 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560955.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Reprieve
  • Brendan Karch, Louisiana State University
  • Book: Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland
  • Online publication: 14 September 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560955.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Reprieve
  • Brendan Karch, Louisiana State University
  • Book: Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland
  • Online publication: 14 September 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560955.006
Available formats
×