By
– December 28, 2011
Based on correspondence written by the Kaufmann-Steinberg family that spanned two generations, the authors have pieced together an important account of how a Jewish family in Germany coped with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. The book is a valuable addition to the literature dealing with the unfolding tragic events that forced members of German-Jewish families to consider emigration from Germany to Palestine or the United States. The letters that constitute the basis for the book’s narrative describe the deteriorating conditions that the Kaufmann-Steinberg clan faced in Nazi Germany, as the Nazis pursued their objective of forcing Jews to leave Germany. The letters convey all the emotion of the danger that this particular family faced on a daily basis.
The daughter of parents who owned a dry goods store in Alternessen, Essen, Marianne Steinberg exchanged more than two hundred letters with her family. The correspondence brings to life how difficult it was for a bright student like Marianne to realize her ambition of becoming a physician as the Nazis passed laws that drove Jews from the professions.
The authors, both scholars of twentieth century German history and the Holocaust, place the letters within the framework of the Third Reich’s social, political, and economic policies toward the Jews. We learn many details of the obstacles placed before Jews. For example, the authors discuss the Reich Flight Tax, a measure that sought to facilitate the regime’s confiscation of Jewish emigrants’ property without discouraging Jews from leaving Germany. This was only one of the additional taxes Jews seeking to emigrate from Germany were forced to pay. There was also the Disagio, a fee based on a percentage of the last estimated tax value of a Jew’s property. Those hoping to emigrate had to deposit their money in a special ”blocked account” for prospective emigrants . Originally set at twenty percent in 1934, this fee was imposed at a rate of sixty-five percent of the value of the funds and valuables emigrants transferred out of the country. By the outbreak of the war in 1939, the regime increased the fee to ninety-six percent. Thus the contradiction in Nazi policy. On the one hand, the regime “encouraged” Jews to emigrate, and on the other, emigrants faced an ever-increasing number of taxes and fees that discouraged them from leaving Germany.
The daughter of parents who owned a dry goods store in Alternessen, Essen, Marianne Steinberg exchanged more than two hundred letters with her family. The correspondence brings to life how difficult it was for a bright student like Marianne to realize her ambition of becoming a physician as the Nazis passed laws that drove Jews from the professions.
The authors, both scholars of twentieth century German history and the Holocaust, place the letters within the framework of the Third Reich’s social, political, and economic policies toward the Jews. We learn many details of the obstacles placed before Jews. For example, the authors discuss the Reich Flight Tax, a measure that sought to facilitate the regime’s confiscation of Jewish emigrants’ property without discouraging Jews from leaving Germany. This was only one of the additional taxes Jews seeking to emigrate from Germany were forced to pay. There was also the Disagio, a fee based on a percentage of the last estimated tax value of a Jew’s property. Those hoping to emigrate had to deposit their money in a special ”blocked account” for prospective emigrants . Originally set at twenty percent in 1934, this fee was imposed at a rate of sixty-five percent of the value of the funds and valuables emigrants transferred out of the country. By the outbreak of the war in 1939, the regime increased the fee to ninety-six percent. Thus the contradiction in Nazi policy. On the one hand, the regime “encouraged” Jews to emigrate, and on the other, emigrants faced an ever-increasing number of taxes and fees that discouraged them from leaving Germany.
The letters are a valuable primary source that relate the daily fluctuations of hope and despair that characterized not only the Kaufmann-Steinberg family but probably most German-Jewish families caught in the ever-tightening noose of Nazi persecution.
Jack Fischel is professor emeritus of history at Millersville University, Millersville, PA and author of The Holocaust (Greenwood Press) and Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust (Rowman and Littlefield).
