Öffentliche Wohlfahrt und Judenverfolgung : Wechselwirkungen lokaler und zentraler Politik im NS-Staat (1933-1942)

Demonstrates that discrimination of Jews by local welfare agencies, as early as 1933, was not imposed by the Nazi Party but was an initiative of local bureaucrats, many of them not party members. This was in line with the change from the Weimar policy of care for the individual to Nazi cultivation of groups valuable to the Volk. The Deutscher Gemeindetag, the union of local communities, encouraged and coordinated its members' antisemitic policies and mediated between them and the Ministry of the Interior. Until late 1938, the central government, and particularly the SD, tried at times to curb these local initiatives because the Jews were left without means for emigration - the SD's central goal. But from 1939 on, the central government adopted what had long been local practice, and transferred responsibility for the care of the indigent Jews from the public treasury to the Reichsvereinigung. The latter's work was closely supervised by the Gestapo, which forced it to cut aid to a minimum in order to save funds to finance the deportations. Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-356) and index. 362 pages ; 24 cm