The Nazis: Worms

[Moses]

In order to sell their properties, Jews had to turn to Aryan lawyers. These, however, counseled their clients to bow to "facts" and to sell to the advantage of the buyer. No attempt was made to represent the interests of their unfortunate Jewish clients. In criminal matters, the legal profession never came to the rescue of Jews abused by their fellow citizens. No lawyer in Worms came forward to appeal on behalf of those illegally incarcerated in Buchenwald and DAchau. They, like the clergy when the Jewish House of G-d was set on fire, cast a blind eye. By the time mass deportations began -- a complete violation of all civil and human rights -- the legal profession in Worms had grown totally insensitive, lacking the will to uphold the spirit of true law and the moral courage to defend justice. -- The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Worms 1933-1945. A study of the Holocaust Experience in Germany, by Henry R. Huttenbach

[Moses]

The moral and legal responsibility for the plight of the Jews of Worms falls squarely upon those who contributed both to the formation of policy, its execution and its condonation. The idea of the total removal of the Jews of Worms from the mainstream of the citiy's life [i.e. the ghetto] could not have taken place without compliance on the part of the local institutions and leaders and the tacit assent of the citizenry. Because of the absence of fundamental aversion to what was taking place in their midst and before their very eyes in Worms, the people of Worms collectively helped the anti-Semitic program initiated by Naxism. It wcould not ahve been sustained for so may years until the moment of expulsion in the face of popular sentiments against the treatment of the Jews. In calculating the degree of responsibiliyt, what happened in Auschwitz or in Belzec may not have been willed by the population in Worms. However, the genocidal crime that took place had its roots in a decade of terror operating in full view of the publi.c In condoning what happened to the Jews in Worms between 1933 and 1942, the population and its leaders signalled to those in power that the final acts that transpired in 1942-- deprotation and exterination-- would not disturnb the collective conscience as long as the ultimate deed -- liquidation -- took place elsewhere. (ibid. )

[Moses]

On 15 September [1942], the government appointed Michel Oppenheim from Mainz as the senior Jewish official for Rheinhessen. Shortly thereafter, orders reached several communities to prepare lists for "resettlement", a vauge term which simultaneously brought on anxiety of the unknown and hope for some improvement of life in another place. In the middle of October, positive word about Theresienstadt circulated even as disquieting news about transports "to the east" engendered a deep fear. The former came from calculated Nazi propaganda cynically designed to tranquilize the Jews; tha tlatter originated from relatives of deportees who feared for families and friends heading towards vaguely defined destinations. A month later, in mid-December, orers reached Worms to prepare tentive lists of the older and younger Jews, as well as a list according to family unites (parents and children.). From that moment on, everyone lived with packed suitcases in the event of a sudden order to leave. (No one could forget that a year earlier, the deportess from the Pfalz had received an hour's warning to aseemble their belongings andvacate their homes.)

One of the more onerous aspects of the deportation phenomenon lay in the Nazi insistance that Jews prepare the inital lists, therby giivng the outward appearance of ovoluntary compliance. In retrospect, entrusting this repsonbility to the local Jewish functionaries of the Reichsvereinigung unjustly burdened them posthumously with the terrible accusation of complicty. The doumentaiton, however, makes it quite clear that the orders stemmed directly from the government and non-co-operation would have n no way disrupted the deprotation process: all the data about each Jew in Germany had already been centralized and computed. (All data concerning Jewish demography went directly to the statistics Department of the Reichsvereinigung Centeral Office in Berlin. In turn, it had to forward all its information to Gestapo headquarters where deprtation plans were made according to the data received from the Statistical Department. ) (Ibid. )