[4.18. Other
countries for German Jewish refugees and emigration
overseas 1933-1938]
[Other countries]
Jewish refugees went to other European countries as well.
In Italy there were 1,000 refugees in 1935; and varying
numbers of people were temporarily stranded in other
countries. But most of these small groups of Jews found
their way sooner or later to countries overseas where they
could hope to establish a new life. During the first two
years of Nazi rule those who could find no way to emigrate
usually had to return to Germany.
[1000s have to return to
the Reich - 1000s Polish Jews coming into the Reich]
Thousands returned not only from Western Europe, but also
from Poland, because they "preferred the bitterness in
Germany to the misery in Poland."
(End note 94: R16, monthly bulletin, March-April 1935)
[6000 German Jews go to
Poland - and come back, or they continue on]
Apart from the repatriates from Germany, one report puts
the German Jewish refugees in Poland between 1933 and 1938
at 6,000. These were either German citizens, some of them
of Polish origin, who had lost all contact with Poland,
its language, and its Jewish population, or else actually
German Jews proper. Most of them either returned to
Germany or left Poland for other havens.
The total number of Jews who returned to Germany in 1934
was put at 11,000.
(End note 95: Executive Committee, 3/26/35 [26 March
1935])
[Returning Jews are sent
to concentration camps - overhanded Jews by the police]
It was not until early 1935, when the Nazis began sending
returning Jews to concentration camps, that the stream of
returnees dwindled to a trickle; most of these were people
who had been deported from countries of refuge to Germany
by the police in those countries. (p.177)
[Czechoslovakia as a
temporarily stay for German Jewish refugees - Mrs. Marie
Schmolka]
One country that served as a transit point for thousands
of Jews in the 1930s was Czechoslovakia. In 1933, with the
first wave of refugees, some four thousand Jews arrived
there. At first there were separate refugees (2,500) were
cared for in Prague. By 1933 a Comité National
Tchécoslovaque pour les Réfugiés Provenant d'Allemagne had
been founded to represent Jewish and non-Jewish political
refugees to the government. The chairman of this committee
was Mrs. Marie Schmolka, head of the HICEM office at
Prague. Up to 1936 a total of some 6,500 refugees passed
through Czechoslovakia, but most of them left the country.
In 1935, when only 800 Jewish refugees remained, Mrs.
Schmolka became the head of a central Jewish refugee
committee, the Jewish Social Institute (Sociální Ústav),
which in effect became the equivalent of the Dutch and
Swiss type of centralized community efforts.
(End note 96: JDC Library 13, 1933/4 report. See also:
Kurt R. Grossmann: Emigration; Frankfurt 1969, pp. 41 ff.;
Also: R14, Kahn report for 1935)
Indeed, there was much in common between the energetic and
resourceful individuals at the head of each of these
committees: Gertrude van Tijn, Saly Mayer, Marie Schmolka;
and JDC trusted them fully. In Czechoslovakia, JDC
contributions were very small, and until 1938 the Czech
Jewish community itself paid for the help it gave to
German Jews under the fairly benevolent protection of a
government, whose intense dislike of the German
contributed to its humanitarian attitude toward the
refugee problem.
