The Daily Life of the Jews in Hessen in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXII

The Daily Life of the Village and Country Jews in Hessen from Hitler’s Ascent to Power to November 1938

Kaufman reviews the situation of Hesse’s Jews and their relations with their German neighbors before the Nazi ascent to power; these relations in the first years of the Nazi regime and then from 1936 to 1938; the attitudes of the general population, the local authorities, and the Churches, both Protestant and Catholic, to the Jews; and Jewish reactions to Nazism. He shows that between 1933 and 1935 the situation of the Jews depended on the locality; by 1936 and into 1938, it not only deteriorated but became uniformly bad. Rural Jews suffered from official and popular antisemitism more than Jews in the large cities and emigration was more difficult for them. The main direction of migration for these Jews was to the cities. Kaufman surmises that the Nazis favored the concentration of the Jews in large cities.