If you have ever been on a quiet street in Berlin and wondered how a modern, cosmopolitan city could have come to be among its own neighbors, you are asking the right question. The straightforward answer is unpleasant: it didn’t happen all at once, but in small, bureaucratic stages, each making the next step seem more normal.
This guide walks through that escalation the way a local would explain it to a friend, with the dates, the places, and the common misunderstandings people bring to the conversation.
It Started With Paperwork, Not Violence
In 1933, the number of Jews in Berlin was about 160,000, which was more than in any other city in Germany. Many were doctors, shopkeepers, lawyers, teachers, and civil servants. They were not outsiders but neighbors in the flats above.
At first, the actions seemed like mere administrative measures. On April 1, 1933, the regime organized a boycott of Jewish businesses, having uniformed men stationed outside the shops. A few days later, a law relating to the civil service forced Jewish people and those who were politically undesirable out of public sector jobs. In May, students and officials burned books at Opernplatz, the square which is now known as Bebelplatz. Today, a glass panel set into the pavement depicts an empty underground library, a quiet memorial to the books that were destroyed.
The pattern is important: people were first excluded from work, then from public life, and then from legal protection. At each stage it was presented as a measure intended to maintain order, not as an act of cruelty.
The Immigration Question Everyone Gets Wrong
One of the most common questions visitors and history readers ask is what the regime’s stance on immigration actually was between 1933 and 1939. The answer has two sides, and mixing them up causes endless confusion.
For ethnic Germans living abroad, the policy was welcoming. Under the banner of Heim ins Reich, meaning “return to the Reich,” people of German descent in far-flung communities across Eastern and Southeastern Europe were encouraged to relocate into the German sphere. This was about expanding the national body, not about open borders.
For Jewish Germans, the pressure acted in the opposite way. Although the regime wanted to get rid of them, it first demanded that their wealth be taken away. Those who tried to emigrate had to pay heavy taxes, watch their property sold under forced conditions for only a small part of its value, and navigate a complicated series of permits. At the same time, other countries shut their doors, so many people who wanted to leave could not find a country willing to take them. Queues at the Berlin consulates stretched around the block. This situation being driven out yet having no place to go is essential to understanding what happened next.
1935: When Discrimination Became Law
In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws turned prejudice into law by depriving Jewish Germans of their citizenship and prohibiting them from marrying or having relationships with other Germans; these laws established a legal criterion for deciding who was regarded as Jewish on the basis of ancestry and also covered people who had converted or had never practiced a religion.
In Berlin, this meant daily humiliations. Park benches, swimming pools, and cinemas posted exclusion signs. Then came the 1936 Olympic Games. For a few weeks, the city quietly took down some of the most visible signs to impress foreign visitors. Once the cameras left, the signs went back up. If you want one example of how performative the regime’s public face was, here it is.
Kristallnacht: The Night the City Showed Its Hand
On November 9 and 10, 1938, synagogues were set on fire all over Germany, Berlin being no different. The shop windows were broken, which gave the night its name, although many historians now prefer to call it the November Pogrom, since the broken glass was by no means the only issue. Approximately 30,000 Jewish men were arrested throughout the country and sent to camps such as Sachsenhausen, which is situated just north of Berlin, Buchenwald, and Dachau.
What a great many people fail to realize is that the consequences were just as revealing as the violence itself. The Jewish communities were fined a total of one billion Reichsmarks for the damage, and the insurance payments were taken. The victims were charged for the crime carried out against them. By then, emigration had ceased to be a pressure tactic and had become a race for survival.
Want to explore a story of resistance during Nazi persecution? Read our blog on Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind: A Story of Resistance in Jewish Berlin to learn about his efforts to protect Jewish workers.
From Exclusion to Deportation
Once war began in 1939, options narrowed further. Jewish Berliners were forced into designated housing, required to wear a yellow star from September 1941, and banned from using most public transport. Then came the step that turned persecution into removal.
On October 18, 1941, the first deportation train left from Berlin’s Grunewald station, carrying Jewish residents to the ghetto in Łódź. Over the following years, authorities deported around 50,000 Berliners. Today you can walk along Gleis 17 at Grunewald, where steel plates along the platform edge list every transport, with its date, its destination, and the number of people aboard. It is one of the most sobering places in the city precisely because it is so plain.
In January 1942, officials met at a lakeside villa in Wannsee to coordinate what they called the “final solution.” The meeting lasted about ninety minutes. The villa is now a museum, and the documents on display make clear how much of the machinery was ordinary administration.
One act of resistance deserves mention. In February and March 1943, non Jewish wives and relatives gathered for days on Rosenstrasse to demand the release of their Jewish husbands held after a roundup. Most of the men were freed. It is a rare and remarkable moment of public protest, and it complicates the lazy idea that nothing could have been done.
Why Accountability Still Makes Headlines
The story did not end in 1945, and neither did the arguments about it. A recent case brought the issue back into public view: a 95 year old man living in Tennessee, Friedrich Karl Berger, was removed to Germany after authorities found he had served as an armed guard at the Neuengamme camp system in 1945. The U.S. Justice Department said the removal showed America would not be a haven for people who took part in Nazi persecution.
The responses followed well-known patterns. A large number of Germans agree that the legal proceedings should continue regardless of how much time has passed, on the grounds that genocide does not lapse. On the other hand, some people doubt whether it makes sense to prosecute individuals in their nineties for actions they took when they were young. Critics also pointed to the inconsistent record of the postwar period, noting that some much older people were hired for their expertise rather than punished. That is a valid criticism, but it must be understood in the context that the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain all employed German scientists and engineers after the war, and none of those schemes successfully distinguished the innocent from the guilty.
A final word on a persistent myth. Stories circulate about breeding farms run by the SS for a “master race.” The Lebensborn program was real, and it was a sinister SS project that supported births to approved parents and, in occupied Poland, involved the abduction of children judged to look racially desirable. But the idea of simple stud farms is an exaggeration that makes the real history harder to take seriously. The documented facts are disturbing enough.
Want to understand the broader impact of Nazi persecution on Berlin’s Jewish community? Read our blog on What Happened to Berlin’s Jewish Community Under the Nazis? for a closer look at what happened during this period.
FAQs
- What was the Nazi regime’s stance on immigration between 1933 and 1939?
It depended on who you were. Ethnic Germans abroad were encouraged to move into the Reich under Heim ins Reich. Jewish Germans were pushed to leave, but only after losing most of their assets, and they found few countries willing to accept them.
- Does Germany still cover and pursue cases against elderly Nazi-era suspects?
Yes, cases involving former camp personnel are still in the news, and some elderly guards have been sentenced in recent years. Many Germans back the proceedings, arguing that time does not eliminate responsibility, even though some people think trying individuals in their nineties has little practical purpose.
- Do other countries besides the United States deport former Nazi participants?
Yes. Deportations or citizenship revocations have been pursued in several countries, including Canada, and people have also been sent back from Brazil and Argentina. Germany also holds court proceedings for those returned.
- Did countries really recruit Nazi-era figures after the war?
Certainly, it was not just one country that did so; the United States carried out Operation Paperclip, the Soviet Union carried out Operation Osoaviakhim, and Britain had similar programs. It is pointed out by critics that some of the people recruited had connections with forced labour operations, which is the reason why these programs are still controversial.
- Was Friedrich Karl Berger tried for war crimes before being deported?
No. He was removed for taking part in Nazi sponsored persecution as a guard at Neuengamme in 1945. At the time of his removal, no trial was waiting for him in Germany. They expected to question him rather than prosecute him immediately.
