Though the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews has become universally recognized, Germany’s terrible treatment of its Jews during and after World War I is not nearly as well known.
In most European states, Jews were historically barred from defending their countries and, even in the Germanic lands, Jews were prohibited from military service until the early 19th century. Jews served with distinction in the Prussian army during the German “Wars of Liberation” (1813); during the Second Schleswig War (1864); in the Austro-Prussian War (1866); and in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71).
Between 1880 and 1910, some 30,000 German Jews served in the Prussian army, but not one of them was promoted to officer’s rank – except for about 300 of the 1,500 Jewish servicemen who had converted to Christianity.
At the outbreak of World War I, the highly assimilated German Jews – who overwhelmingly identified themselves with the German nation, people, and culture – were eager to demonstrate loyalty to their fatherland – to be “more German than the Germans.”
They rallied to the war effort, and about 100,000 Jews – a substantial proportion of the entire German Jewish population (20 percent), which numbered less than half a million people at the time – served in the Kaiser’s German Imperial armed forces. However, even though 70,000 Jews fought at the front line, with 12,000 killed in action and 35,000 decorated for bravery – including 18,000 who were awarded the Iron Cross – Jews were accused both during and after the war of avoiding enlistment, dodging front-line service, and, of course, profiteering.
The German Military High Command through War Minister Wild von Hohenborn ordered the Judenzählung (1916), a despicable Jewish census designed to confirm the lack of patriotism among German Jews. Though the census categorically disproved all such allegations, the German authorities quashed the results – absurdly claiming the reason for keeping the results confidential was to “spare Jewish feelings” – but certain distorted and misleading data was leaked and published in an anti-Semitic brochure.
German-Jewish authorities, who had compiled their own figures regarding Jewish participation in the war effort, which substantially exceeded the numbers itemized in the brochure, were not only denied access to the government archives but also notified by the Republican Minister of Defense that the contents of the anti-Semitic brochure were correct.
The Judenzählung, a key event in the development of 20th-century German anti-Semitism, shocked many German Jewish soldiers, who expected that their service to their country would lead to equal treatment by their government and countrymen. Moreover, many Jews, who were strong German patriots, had been led to believe the war in the East against the Russian Empire would liberate their fellow Eastern European Jews and free them from pogroms and persecution.
As the result of the Judenzählung, many young and disillusioned German Jews turned to Zionism, as they realized that full assimilation into German society was unattainable, and many of their lives were saved when they later emigrated to Eretz Yisrael ahead of the looming Holocaust.
After being vanquished and humiliated in World War I, Germany found solace in the belief it had been the victim of internal traitors, with a particular focus on the Jews as the foremost turncoats. Again serving as the great scapegoats of world history, the Jews were blamed for the economic, political, and social chaos in post-war Germany.
Suspicions concerning Jewish loyalty were voiced even in England and the United States, since Jews did not hide their hostility toward the oppressive Russian autocracy, an important Western ally, and Jews of German origin were required to execute humiliating public declarations of loyalty in both countries.
While Jewish international associations, conspicuously including the World Zionist Organization, were officially “neutral” during World War I, most Jewish leaders, who were largely Polish and Russian, were sympathetic with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of the czarist abuse of Jews. Well aware of this, the German Foreign Office publicly exploited Jewish support to further German interests. However, in reward for the Jews’ sacrifice and support, the country they served so loyally wiped out the memory of Jewish soldiers by, among other things, removing their names from national and local memorials.
The Reich Association of Jewish Veterans was formed after World War I to fight the misconception among the German people that Jews had evaded military service during the war; to highlight the major contributions by the Jewish people to the war effort; and to insist that Jewish war veterans receive the rights and benefits promised to them. One of the association’s principal activities was to publish a monthly newspaper and other publications designed to counter anti-Semitic agitation. Ironically, less than two decades before the rise of National Socialism, their driving purpose was to integrate and assimilate German Jews into German society.
Exhibited with this column is a striking and rare leaflet issued by the Reich Association of Jewish Veterans, a copy of which is currently on exhibit at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. It was issued in the early 1920s in response to the growing wave of anti-Semitic fanatics in post-war Germany, who were publicly mocking the pain of Jewish mothers who had lost sons in the war:
12,000 Jewish soldiers died on the field of honor for the fatherland.
Christian and Jewish heroes fought together and lie together on foreign soil.
12,000 Jews fell in battle.Blind, enraged party hatred does not stop at the graves of the dead.
German women: do not allow the suffering of Jewish mothers to be mocked.The Reich Association of Jewish Veterans
Many German Jewish war veterans and their families presumed that their sacrifices for the fatherland would protect them from the persecution of Jews lacking such patriotic credentials. Indeed, after the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933, Jewish veterans were initially protected against dismissal from government jobs when German President Paul von Hindenburg intervened on their behalf. However, as early as 1935, Propaganda Minister Goebbels announced that “it is forbidden to list the names of fallen Jews on memorials for the fallen of the world war,” and things quickly changed dramatically after Kristallnacht (1938).
The Reich Association of Jewish Veterans advised its members to emigrate from Germany, but few heeded the warning – and, in any case, it was too late. The Jewish veterans who had so proudly and nobly served their country with distinction were deported to concentration camps and murdered together with their fellow Jewish German citizens. On June 22, 1942, the Gestapo arrived at the offices of the Reich Association in Kantstrasse and arrested all the employees and staff. They too were slaughtered.
The names of the 12,000 Jewish war dead from the First World War were published in Die Jüdischen Gefallenen (1932) under the direction of Leo Löwenstein. In 1968, the Jewish authorities in Germany decided to mark the 3,000 known Jewish war graves of the Western Front of World War I with special markers bearing the Star of David and a Hebrew inscription.
Germany for the first time formally acknowledged the Jewish contribution to the German effort during World War I in November 2010, when German officials attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt to honor the Jewish soldiers who gave their lives for Germany during the war. Attendees included Defense Ministry parliamentary liaison Christian Schmidt, who lamented that the deaths of the 12,000 Jewish soldiers had rarely been acknowledged; stated that remembering their sacrifice was an affirmative duty; and regretted that the many Jews who had entered the war out of patriotic conviction were denounced as “scapegoats” after the war.
