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Remasculinizing the Shirker: The Jewish Frontkämpfer under Hitler

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2018

Michael J. Geheran
Michael J. Geheran*
Affiliation:
United States Military Academy
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Abstract

This article examines the impact of Nazi persecution on the gender identity of German-Jewish veterans of World War I. National Socialism threatened to erase everything these Jewish men had achieved and sacrificed. It sought to destroy the identity they had constructed as soldiers in the service of the Fatherland, as well as the high status they had earned as Frontkämpfer (front-line fighters) in the Great War, upon which their sense of masculinity identity rested. Although diminished and disempowered by Nazi terror, Jewish veterans were able to orient themselves toward hegemonic ideals of martial masculinity, which elevated military values as the highest expression of manhood, giving them a space to assert themselves and defy the Nazi classification Jew. For the Jewish men who fought in World War I, the Nazi years became a battle to reclaim their status and masculine honor. They believed that the manner in which they handled themselves under the Nazis was a reflection of their character: as men who had been tried and tested in the trenches, their responses to persecution communicated their identity as soldiers, as Jews, and as Germans.

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird untersucht, wie sich die Verfolgung unter der NS-Zeit auf die Geschlechtsidentität deutsch-jüdischer Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs ausgewirkt hat. Durch den Nationalsozialismus wurde alles, was diese jüdischen Männer erreicht und geopfert hatten, in Frage gestellt. Das galt für ihre Identität als Soldaten im Dienst des Vaterlands ebenso wie für den hohen Status, den sie als Frontkämpfer des Ersten Weltkriegs verdient hatten und auf dem ihr männliches Selbstverständnis beruhte. Trotz des von den Nationalsozialisten ausgeübten Terrors waren jüdische Veteranen aber in der Lage sich an hegemonialen Idealen martialischer Männlichkeit zu orientieren; militärische Tugenden wurden zum Sinnbild von Männlichkeit stilisiert und gaben den Veteranen die Möglichkeit sich—trotz der nationalsozialistischen Stigmatisierung als „Juden”—selbst zu behaupten. Die NS-Jahre waren für die Juden, die im Ersten Weltkrieg gekämpft hatten, um die Aufrechterhaltung ihres Status und ihrer männlichen Ehre. Sie waren überzeugt davon, dass ihr Verhalten unter der Herrschaft der Nationalsozialisten ihren Charakter reflektierte: Als Männer, die sich in den Schützengraben bewährt hatten, war ihre Reaktion auf Verfolgung somit Ausdruck ihrer soldatischen, jüdischen und deutschen Identität.

Type
Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 51 , Special Issue 3: Masculinity and the Third Reich , September 2018 , pp. 440 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Thomas Kühne, Benjamin Ziemann, and Jason Crouthamel for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this work. My gratitude also goes to the editor, Andrew I. Port, and to the anonymous reviewers at Central European History, for their assistance in improving this article and bringing it to completion, as well as to the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for its support during research conducted for this article.

References

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47 USHMMA, CV, RG 11.001M.31, reel 633 (SAM 721-1-2155,1225), “Memorandum: Zur Begriffsbestimmung des ‚Frontkämpfers,’” June 20, 1933.

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55 Ibid., 87 (July 3, 1933).

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid., 68–70 (April 29, 1933).

58 Ibid., 149 (May 16, 1936).

59 Connell, Masculinities, 79.

60 On the emergence of a “new” hegemonic ideal under the Nazis, see Reichardt, Sven, Faschistische Kampfbünde. Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002)Google Scholar, esp. 660–95; Mosse, Image of Man, 155–80.

61 Among the most important works on Nazi antisemitism are Confino, Alon, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Volkov, Shulamit, Germans, Jews, and Antisemites: Trial in Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 67–155CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedländer, Persecution, 87–112; also see the collection of essays in Bankier, Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism.

62 On the expulsion of Jews from the Kyffhäuserbund and other veterans’ associations during the Third Reich, see Führer, Karl, „Der Deutsche Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser, 1930–1934. Politik, Ideologie und Funktion eines ‚unpolitischen' Verbandes,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 36, no. 2 (1984): 57–76Google Scholar.

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65 According to official sources, ninety-one Jews were killed and over 7,500 businesses were destroyed. In reality, the number of victims murdered by the Nazis was much higher, especially if one takes into account those who committed suicide. See Friedländer, Persecution, 269–84.

66 Schwerin, Erinnerungen, 32.

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69 On the concept of male honor, see Suderland, “Männliche Ehre.”

70 Georg Simmel described war as an “extreme” experience. Quoted in Langewiesche, Dieter, “Nation, Imperium und Kriegserfahrungen,” in Kriegserfahrungen. Krieg und Gesellschaft in der Neuzeit. Neue Horizonte der Forschung, ed. Schild, Georg and Schilling, Anton (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), 214Google Scholar.

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72 LBINY, ME 46, Hans Berger, “Erinnerungen an die Kristallnacht und meine Erlebnisse im Konzentrationslager Buchenwald,” 1939.

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76 Ibid., 84.

77 Ibid., 79, 84.

78 LBINY, ME 1555, Heinrich Lichtenstein, “Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach dem 30. Januar 1933,” 1940.

79 Ibid.

80 Yad Vashem Archives (YVA), O1/49, Hans Block, “Buchenwald,” 1938.

81 Harvard University, Houghton Library bMS 91 (261), Kurt Sabatzky, “Meine Erinnerungen an den Nationalsozialismus,” 1940.

82 ITS Digital Archive, 1.1.0.2/82340054, Reinhard Heydrich, memo (“Betr. Entlassung von jüdischen Häftlingen, die Frontkämpfer waren”), Nov. 18, 1938. The order was disseminated the following day to all local law enforcement agencies; see Staatsarchiv Würzburg (StAW), LRA Kissingen 3101, order from Gestapo Würzburg to all Landräte, Nov. 29, 1938.

83 LBINY, AR 1441, Karl Guggenheim, “Der jüdische Widerstand,” n.d. The same incident was described by Julius Meyer, who was also a prisoner at Buchenwald; see YVA, 02/407, Julius Meyer, “Buchenwald,” 1940.

84 Jeffords, Remasculinization, 51.

85 Wünschmann, “Konzentrationslagererfahrungen”; Hájková, “‘Poor Devils.’”

86 On the construction and shaping of biographical narratives, see Dausien, Bettina, “Erzähltes Leben—erzähltes Geschlecht? Aspekte der narrativen Konstruktion von Geschlecht im Kontext der Biographieforschung,” Feministische Studien 19, no. 2 (2001): 57–73Google Scholar.

87 Tausk, Breslauer Tagebuch, 208 (Dec. 11, 1938).

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89 Benz, Theresienstadt, 38.

90 See ch. 4 of Murmelstein, Benjamin, Theresienstadt: Eichmann's Vorzeige-Ghetto (Vienna: Czernin, 2014)Google Scholar.

91 Adler, Theresienstadt, 543.

92 LBINY, AR1249, Edmund Hadra “Theresienstadt,” Teil II (1946).

93 LBINY, ME 329, Jacob Jacobson, “Bruchstücke 1939–1945,” 1966.

94 Manes, Philipp, Als ob's ein Leben wär. Tatsachenbericht: Theresienstadt 1942–1944 (Berlin: Ullstein, 2005), 88Google Scholar. An abridged version of the German original has also been translated into English: As If It Were Life: A WWII Diary from the Theresienstadt Ghetto, trans. Janet Foster, Ben Barkow, and Klaus Leist (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are taken from the English edition.

95 Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, II:27 (March 16, 1942).

96 Prisoners held more than 2,300 lectures at Terezin, and they were an integral part of the cultural life at the camp. See Adler, Theresienstadt, 594–604.

97 Ibid. Also see Manes, As If It Were Life, 131.

98 See Part I of Hadra, “Theresienstadt.”

99 Hájková, “Deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden”; Wünschmann, “Konzentrationslagererfahrungen.”

100 Carey, Jewish Masculinity, 85–127.

101 See the entry of Nov. 3, 1942, in Redlich, Egon, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Friedman, Saul S. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 82Google Scholar.

102 Manes, As If It Were Life, 103.

103 USHMMA, Theresienstadt Collection, RG-68.103M, Reel 12, letter from Walter Unger to Löwenstein, Aug. 11, 1943.

104 Manes, As If It Were Life, 103.

105 Ibid., 219.

106 Ibid., 97–98.

107 Ibid., 98–99.

108 Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, II:49–51 (May 8, 1942).

109 Ibid., II:49–51 (May 8, 1942).

110 Ibid., II:88 (June 28, 1942).

111 Ibid., II:193 (July 27, 1943), II:192–194 (Jan. 27, 1943).

112 Ibid., II:108 (July 26, 1942), II:265–67 (Sept. 30 and Oct. 7, 1943).

113 Ibid., II:48–49 (May 8, 1942); Manes, As If It Were Life, 219.

114 Karny, Miroslav, “Die Theresienstädter Herbsttransporte 1944,” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 2 (1995): 7–37Google Scholar; Benz, Theresienstadt, 92.

115 See Part I of Hadra, “Theresienstadt.”

116 Connell, Masculinities, 35–37.