| “Der Ewige Jude, Munich: Zentralverlag der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP – “German National Socialist Worker’s Party,” the Nazis), Franz Eher Nachfolger publishers, a 1937 book called “The Eternal Jew.” The book consists entirely of photographs with brief captions. The photos chosen generally make Jews look as unpleasant as possible. “Grenadierstraße. In this Jewish district of Berlin, a German feels as if he is in enemy territory. He is watched, surrounded, followed. A half dozen Hebrew newspapers are printed. Here the police uncover breeding grounds of criminal and political vermin.” (page 18, Der Ewige Jude) It was Grenadierstraße — now named Almstadtstraße after Communist Bernhard Almstadt (August 23, 1897 – November 6, 1944) — that was the heart of the Scheunenviertel (“Barn Quarter” – Jewish Berlin): “there seems to be a constant crowd. The street is completely taken over by people; they come and go out of the gnarled, ancient houses. This is a totally eastern quarter, dominated by guttural Yiddish. The not so numerous shops carried Hebrew inscriptions. Grenadierstraße not only housed Jewish bookstores and kosher food shops, but also religious organisations. Running parallel to Almstadtstraße lies Max-Beer-Straße. At Number 5 (formerly Dragonerstraße 22), sits a building that was once the centre of the community’s intellectual life: the pioneering Jüdisches Volksheim, or Jewish People’s home. The Volksheim sought to provide education for Ostjuden adults and children. Established by the medical student Siegfried Lehmann (January 4, 1892 – June 13, 1958), it proposed to help the migrants of the Scheunenviertel assimilate into German society. The home represented a more active and personal form of Jewish philanthropy from the larger charities set up by German Jews; rather than simply give funds to help support these migrants, the driving idea behind the Volksheim was to create a renewed “East-West Jewish community.” German-Jewish intellectuals came there not only out of charitable desire; they also came to learn from the Ostjuden. The Volksheim was conceived as a space of exchange where German Jews would not only help the Eastern-European Jews to adjust to Germany but where the latter would also assist assimilated Germans in recovering the soul of their religion. (The assimilated German Jews were possessed of the fantasy that the Ostjuden had access to the soul of Judaism, the irrational that had been lost to Berlin’s Jewry, as it was the city of the Jewish Enlightenment). Jewish philosophers and intellectuals like Martin Buber (February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) gave lectures, held discussions and were generally active in the Volksheim’s life, as did Gerschom Scholem (December 5, 1897 – February 21, 1982) — then known as Gerhard — despite being no personal fan of Lehmann. With the increasing popularity of Nazism in the late twenties, the days of the quarter were numbered. And with Hitler’s Machtergreifung (“Seizure of Power”) in 1933, Jewish immigration to Germany ceased. After the escalating indignities and punitive anti-Semitic laws of the Nazi regime, a significant but unknown number of the Scheunenviertel’s inhabitants were taken to the Polish border in October 1938 — part of the 17,000 Polish Jews expelled from Germany. It was the 1st of the mass deportations, and worse, that would decimate the Jewish people who gave the quarter its distinctive life. By the time the war was finished, the quarter and inhabitants were almost totally destroyed; those who survived the Shoah scattered across the world. What buildings remained fell into disrepair under the East German government and were then bulldozed and rebuilt in the years after the Wall came down, casualties of the inexorable march of market capitalism as much as World War II or the Cold War. Perhaps there are so few memory stones in the Scheunenviertel because there would simply be too many to place. Or it could be that the records of so many of their lives, as refugees, as migrants, as people without papers, are too scant. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1733.jpg |
| Image Size | 125.41 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 840 x 1109 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Franz Eher Nachfolger |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | November 1, 1937 |
| Location | Grenadierstraße |
| City | Berlin |
| State or Province | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Calvin University |
| Record Number | https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/diebow.htm |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database