Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Historiography and Popular Understandings
- 2 Ghetto: The Source of the Term and the Phenomenon in the Early Modern Age
- 3 Ghetto and Ghettoization as Cultural Concepts in the Modern Age
- 4 The Nazis' Anti-Jewish Policy in the 1930s in Germany and the Question of Jewish Residential Districts
- 5 First References to the Term “Ghetto” in the Ideological Discourse of the Makers of Anti-Jewish Policy in the Third Reich (1933–1938)
- 6 The Semantic Turning Point in the Meaning of “Ghetto”: Peter-Heinz Seraphim and Das Judentum im osteuropäischen Raum
- 7 The Invasion of Poland and the Emergence of the “Classic” Ghettos
- 8 Methodological Interlude: The Term “Ghettoization” and Its Use During the Holocaust Itself and in Later Scholarship
- 9 Would the Idea Spread to Other Places? Amsterdam 1941, the Only Attempt to Establish a Ghetto West of Poland
- 10 Ghettos During the Final Solution, 1941–1943: The Territories Occupied in Operation Barbarossa
- 11 Ghettos During the Final Solution Outside the Occupied Soviet Union: Poland, Theresienstadt, Amsterdam, Transnistria, Salonika, and Hungary
- 12 Summary and Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - First References to the Term “Ghetto” in the Ideological Discourse of the Makers of Anti-Jewish Policy in the Third Reich (1933–1938)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Historiography and Popular Understandings
- 2 Ghetto: The Source of the Term and the Phenomenon in the Early Modern Age
- 3 Ghetto and Ghettoization as Cultural Concepts in the Modern Age
- 4 The Nazis' Anti-Jewish Policy in the 1930s in Germany and the Question of Jewish Residential Districts
- 5 First References to the Term “Ghetto” in the Ideological Discourse of the Makers of Anti-Jewish Policy in the Third Reich (1933–1938)
- 6 The Semantic Turning Point in the Meaning of “Ghetto”: Peter-Heinz Seraphim and Das Judentum im osteuropäischen Raum
- 7 The Invasion of Poland and the Emergence of the “Classic” Ghettos
- 8 Methodological Interlude: The Term “Ghettoization” and Its Use During the Holocaust Itself and in Later Scholarship
- 9 Would the Idea Spread to Other Places? Amsterdam 1941, the Only Attempt to Establish a Ghetto West of Poland
- 10 Ghettos During the Final Solution, 1941–1943: The Territories Occupied in Operation Barbarossa
- 11 Ghettos During the Final Solution Outside the Occupied Soviet Union: Poland, Theresienstadt, Amsterdam, Transnistria, Salonika, and Hungary
- 12 Summary and Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As for [the Jews'] social life, today we can rightly speak of an invisible Jewish ghetto.
From the situation report (Lagebericht) summarizing 1937, submitted by the Hamburg office of the Department of Jewish Affairs in the SDThe anti-Semitic discourse of the early years of the Nazi regime so far has not been the subject of a systematic linguistic analysis. The best conclusion that can be drawn from the available information is that the term “ghetto” first came into use, in rather vague fashion, in the mid-1930s. For example, in the confidential situation reports (Lage- und Stimmungsberichte) produced by the Gestapo and SD, which tracked popular sentiment in Germany to help the authorities direct their steps, the term appears from time to time in expositions of the Jews' changing situation as a result of the anti-Jewish measures, chiefly in descriptions of how the Jews themselves were interpreting it. According to a report for May–June 1934, written at the SD Main Office (SD-Hauptamt) and referring to the emergence of separate Jewish cultural organizations, the ultra-right-wing German Jewish group Nationaldeutschen (German Nationalists) was still opposed to “a ghetto in any form whatsoever” (Ghetto in jeder Form). Sixteen months later, in a survey of the Jews' reaction to the Nuremberg Laws, the Security Police (SIPO) office in Cologne reported that
the [members of the National Union of] Jewish Frontline Soldiers feel particularly wronged by these laws because they feel themselves to be first of all Germans and only afterwards Jews. [The situation is that] a ghetto is being created for them, something they had not anticipated.
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- The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust , pp. 36 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011