Antisemitism in the Expulsion of Non-Aryan Students in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXX

The Role of Antisemitism in the Expulsion of Non-Aryan Students, 1933-1945

The article looks at the changing course of Nazi policy towards Jewish and part-Jewish students in the Third Reich. It focuses on the complex relationship between the state-supported antisemitism of hard-core Nazis both within the student organization and in the university administration and the more traditional and less violent forms of prejudices among average students and professors. The article also examines the motives of students and academic administrators who opposed the expulsion of Jewish and especially part-Jewish students. The article concludes that the resistance of these people to the Nazi regime, combined with the inability of the Nazis to reach a consensus on the concept of pure race, allowed some of the part-Jews not only to survive, but also to continue taking courses at German universities until the end of the war.