Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Historiography and Popular Understandings
- 2 Ghetto: The Source of the Term and the Phenomenon in the Early Modern Age
- 3 Ghetto and Ghettoization as Cultural Concepts in the Modern Age
- 4 The Nazis' Anti-Jewish Policy in the 1930s in Germany and the Question of Jewish Residential Districts
- 5 First References to the Term “Ghetto” in the Ideological Discourse of the Makers of Anti-Jewish Policy in the Third Reich (1933–1938)
- 6 The Semantic Turning Point in the Meaning of “Ghetto”: Peter-Heinz Seraphim and Das Judentum im osteuropäischen Raum
- 7 The Invasion of Poland and the Emergence of the “Classic” Ghettos
- 8 Methodological Interlude: The Term “Ghettoization” and Its Use During the Holocaust Itself and in Later Scholarship
- 9 Would the Idea Spread to Other Places? Amsterdam 1941, the Only Attempt to Establish a Ghetto West of Poland
- 10 Ghettos During the Final Solution, 1941–1943: The Territories Occupied in Operation Barbarossa
- 11 Ghettos During the Final Solution Outside the Occupied Soviet Union: Poland, Theresienstadt, Amsterdam, Transnistria, Salonika, and Hungary
- 12 Summary and Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Nazis' Anti-Jewish Policy in the 1930s in Germany and the Question of Jewish Residential Districts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Historiography and Popular Understandings
- 2 Ghetto: The Source of the Term and the Phenomenon in the Early Modern Age
- 3 Ghetto and Ghettoization as Cultural Concepts in the Modern Age
- 4 The Nazis' Anti-Jewish Policy in the 1930s in Germany and the Question of Jewish Residential Districts
- 5 First References to the Term “Ghetto” in the Ideological Discourse of the Makers of Anti-Jewish Policy in the Third Reich (1933–1938)
- 6 The Semantic Turning Point in the Meaning of “Ghetto”: Peter-Heinz Seraphim and Das Judentum im osteuropäischen Raum
- 7 The Invasion of Poland and the Emergence of the “Classic” Ghettos
- 8 Methodological Interlude: The Term “Ghettoization” and Its Use During the Holocaust Itself and in Later Scholarship
- 9 Would the Idea Spread to Other Places? Amsterdam 1941, the Only Attempt to Establish a Ghetto West of Poland
- 10 Ghettos During the Final Solution, 1941–1943: The Territories Occupied in Operation Barbarossa
- 11 Ghettos During the Final Solution Outside the Occupied Soviet Union: Poland, Theresienstadt, Amsterdam, Transnistria, Salonika, and Hungary
- 12 Summary and Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
From a police point of view I think that a ghetto, in the form of a completely segregated district with only Jews, is not possible. We would have no control over a ghetto where the Jew gets together with the whole of his Jewish tribe. It would be a permanent hideout for criminals and first of all [a source] of epidemics and the like.…The control of the Jews by the watchful eyes of the whole population is better than putting thousands upon thousands of Jews together in a single district of a city where uniformed officials will be unable to check on their daily activities.
Reinhard Heydrich at a meeting of senior German officials in Hermann Goering's office on November 12, 1938, two days after KristallnachtIt was long the scholarly consensus that, from the outset, the anti-Jewish policy of the Nazi regime had clear, well-articulated, and coordinated objectives that developed and escalated in a fairly consistent manner. This approach (which came to be called “intentionalism”), at least in its earlier and more simplistic version, has been challenged by the research of recent decades. Today it is clear that although the Nazi regime set itself an anti-Semitic objective from its very inception in 1933 – “dealing with the Jews” – it was not clearly defined and remained rather vague. This left bureaucrats and functionaries – from the most senior to the lowest echelons – broad scope in which to maneuver when implementing this policy.
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- The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust , pp. 31 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011