The Nazi Era, 1933-1939

"Every evening I sit in the big half-empty artists' cafe by the Memorial Church, where the Jews and left-wing intellectuals bend their heads together over the marble tables, speaking in low, scared voices. Many of them know they will certainly be arrested -- if not today, then to-morrow or next week. . . Almost every evening, the S.A. men come into the cafe. Sometimes they are only collecting money; everybody is compelled to give something. Sometimes they have come to make an arrest. One evening a Jewish writer, who was present, ran into the telephone box to ring up the Police. The Nazis dragged him out, and he was taken away. Nobody moved a finger." --

Christopher Isherwood, "Goodbye to Berlin" (1935)

(All images on this page, unless otherwise credited, are part of "A Voice Silenced," an exhibition of documents and photographs about the life of Leonore Schwarz Neumaier.)

For a timeline on the growth of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, click here

Leonore Schwarz Neumaier with son Hans, in Italy, March 1938

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Within a few months, anti-Semitic measures were being enacted into German law. In April 1933 laws passed by the government limited Jewish participation in most of the professions and barred most Jews from jobs in the civil services. Public institutions like orchestras, civic theaters and operas began dismissing any Jews in their troupes or casts.

Because Leonore Neumaier had already stopped performing with the Frankfurt Opera, these early actions had limited impact on her. However, her son Hans quickly learned how the "new order" intended to treat the children of Jews. "At first I encountered no personal animosity from my fellow students [in school]," he remembered. But the teachers followed directives from the Reich Ministry of Education when discussing subjects such as biology, and these directives were based on Nazi racist views. Hans' classmates, told by their teachers that Jews were to be regarded as inferior, soon began to follow their lead. They began playing "a schoolyard game in which a dozen or so boys would circle around a Jewish boy and kick him and call him names. It was then my parents transferred me to a small private co-educational school for Jewish children."

Leonore's life was further affected when Jewish civic leaders formed the "Jüdische Kulturbund" -- The Jewish Culture Association. Organized under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, headed by the rabidly anti-Semitic Joseph Goebbels, the Jüdische Kulturbund was designed to allow Jewish artists to continue performing in Germany, but only in front of entirely Jewish audiences. As a recent study has noted, the Kulturbund allowed Hitler's government "to show the world how well Jews were supposedly being treated under the Third Reich."

Leonore Neumaier gave some concert perfomances under the auspices of the Kulturbund. But even here she and her colleagues worked under severe restrictions. Kulturbund musicians and singers were not allowed perform the works of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, composers that the Nazis regarded as too purely "Aryan" to be "corrupted" by Jewish performers. Still, the Kulturbund groups persevered, hoping, in the words of one of the organizers, that they could "accomplish [their performances] so well that the Germans will have to be ashamed."

(right) -- a Kulturbund performance March 1935 in which Leonore Schwarz sang. (left) -- A Nazi street poster that urged German citizens to have nothing to do with "Jewish" music. Composers Mendelssohn, Mahler, Offenbach, Meyerbeer, and many others (all men with Jewish ancestry) were rejected by the Nazis; the government farbade perfomances of their works and German citizens were urged to destroy any recordings of their compositions. A statue of Mendelssohn was removed in the city of Leipzig.

However, despite the Jewish artists' efforts, step by step Jews were denied any part in the life and culture of Hitler's Germany. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped them of their citizenship. If they wished to emigrate -- and could find somewhere to go -- then the Nazis would happily hold the door for them -- provided they obeyed the Reich immigration law and gave up most of what they owned. Many hesitated to do this. They hoped that somehow Hitler and the Nazis would be removed from power and their rights would then be restored.

That hope was struck a crushing blow on the night of November 9-10, 1938, the night of Kristallnacht. That night the Nazis went on an anti-Semitic rampage in Germany, wrecking Jewish shops, burning synagogues, and killing Jews they found out on the streets. The devastation had been carefully planned in the highest levels of the German government, and the subsequent wreckage was used as an excuse to levy a fine of one billion marks upon the Jews in Germany. Thousands of Jewish men were also arrested and held in prison or at the Dachau and other concentration camps; some were never released from this incarceration, but others were let go after having signed a pledge to leave Germany. It was after this terrible anti-Semitic pogrom that Neumaier family determined to leave Germany.