This edited volume is an important work that aims to revise our understanding of the economic process of dispossession perpetrated against Jews during the National Socialist era, and the aftermath of this dispossession. The book can also be seen as a response to the debate stirred by the controversial work of Götz Aly (Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State [2007]). As the editors explain in their thoughtful introduction, the volume is predicated on the premise that possession is fundamentally a political matter with profound implications. Modern societies have connected property to political rights, linking personhood to property ownership. In the case of Imperial Germany, the conflation of political and economic rights led to a three-tiered political system that ensured that propertied men enjoyed greater political power. By pointing to the intersection between political and economic rights and to the basic ideas of civic belonging and even personhood that the possession of property has come to imply, the introduction suggests a new understanding of Jewish emancipation in Central Europe and ultimately of its reversal. The editors argue that the dispossession of German and later European Jews should not be seen merely as a secondary outgrowth of the Nazis’ ideological and political aims but instead should be understood as a fundamental component of them: stealing the belongings and property of Jews “symbolically” took away “their belonging to the Volk” (5). By depriving Jews of their possessions, the National Socialists and their allies revoked Jews’ “right to belong and to belongings,” effecting an “economic assault . . . that was integral to their persecution and murder” (14).
The volume is divided into four sections and includes a total of fourteen essays. The first section explores the major legislation and financial institutions that made possible the process of dispossession. The first essay, by S. Jonathan Wiesen, seeks to present an overview of National Socialist attitudes to the economy and their goal of replacing supposedly destructive Jewish economic practices with more “virtuous” German ones. For Wiesen, “stealing Jews’ income and property was not an incidental byproduct of the Holocaust; rather it constituted a key component of the Nazi racial renaissance” (33). Here, ideological visions and economic programs (as well as economic realities) informed one another: antisemitism conditioned fantasies about Jewish wealth but also saw the solution in creating a new form of economic interactions that would somehow overcome “rampant materialism” (35). Albrecht Ritschl's essay on confiscatory taxation explores how German Jews were taxed “out of existence” (67). His statistical analysis not only confirms the profound devastation wrought by punitive taxation schemes but also lays to rest any lingering assumptions about presumed Jewish wealth (which was, as the author concludes, simply “in line with the Jewish population share,” 68). Christine Schoenmakers's contribution focuses on the German Gold Discount Bank, showing that it played an important role as both tool and agent in the process of dispossession by providing critical information to the regime and predatorily assuring its own financial advantage.
The second section of the book explores distinct sectors of the German economy. Pamela Swett's chapter analyzes the role of sales representatives of the shoe company Salamander in dispossessing Jewish store owners. Swett examines case studies of Jewish shop owners and how they confronted attempts at dispossession but also investigates the attempts by Salamander and its staff to brand itself as an “Aryan” company that engaged in “honorable salesmanship” (113, 121). Johannes Klass Beermann-Schön's powerful contribution on German freight forwarders focuses on how German moving companies went above and beyond to ensure that they would financially benefit from the liquidation of Jewish property. The chapter highlights the high numbers of individuals and companies that were directly involved in the practical dispossession of Jews and underlines the eagerness with which the task was carried out: “Commercial self-interest provided support for and even accelerated the Nazis’ ‘utopia’ of a Germany without Jews” (136). Dorothea Hauser's contribution on the Warburg Bank aims at correcting certain myths about the bank and its fate. The author dispels any suggestion that the Warburg bank existed as long as it did because of a supposed friendship between Hjalmar Schacht and Max Warburg. The author also points to the bank's role in actively aiding fellow German Jews. Unlike other Jewish-owned banks, the Warburg bank “emphatically underscored its Jewishness from 1933 onwards” and succeeded in helping German Jews flee Germany (in some cases, succeeding in circumventing some discriminatory financial policies) (149).
The third section explores cases of dispossession during the Second World War. Jonathan Zatlin's essay on spurious retirement-home contracts, which elderly Jews deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp were forced to sign, highlights the “sadistic” ruse that Adolf Eichmann orchestrated. Zatlin's essay ends with a reflection on Hannah Arendt's assessment of Eichmann, in which Zatlin argues that “Despite his performance of banality, Eichmann was no ordinary opportunist but rather a fanatic guided by an ideological antisemitism that viewed liberating Europe from Jewry as a moral imperative” (184). Tal Bruttmann's essay explores how property owned by Jews in France was identified and seized with disturbing speed. The major actors in the narrative are the French police, though the reader is left wondering what other state or private organizations participated in the process. Christoph Kreutzmüller takes the case of dispossession in the Netherlands to explore both the process of dispossession but also the tensions that existed between German and Dutch dispossessors. Stefan Hördler's contribution explores two levels of plundering within the concentration camp system: the official practice of dispossessing Jews of their last possessions and the widespread problem of corruption that emerged as individuals sought to enrich themselves. Returning to a major theme of the book, Hördler concludes that the last acts of theft perpetrated against concentration camp inmates were critical steps to their physical annihilation.
The fourth section explores the postwar challenges of restitution. Benno Nietzel's chapter takes the case of Frankfurt to explore the process of dispossession and restitution. While the author concludes that “in most cases, the companies were returned to the former owners or they were compensated financially” (though not adequately), he notes how those who had participated in the dispossession used the process of restitution to create narratives that allowed them to exculpate themselves. These claims also resulted in narratives that allowed for the “achievements of German-Jewish entrepreneurs” to fade from public memory (277). Mark Roseman continues the theme of restitution but does so through the story of one survivor's long fight for restitution, which required time, money, connections, and emotional strength. As the case study suggests, many if not all who sought restitution faced emotional burdens that were bound to the quest to seek justice for the dead. Jonathan Petropoulos's chapter on art dealers points to the secretive networks that continued after the war, allowing professional art dealers with connections to Nazi officials to continue to profit from stolen art. The volume ends with Zuzanna Dziuban's essay on cases of grave robbery in postwar Poland at the mass graves around Nazi killing centers. Although it was illegal and condemned on a national level, grave robbery around sites such as Bełżec became common practice, one that required individuals to forget “the fact that this appropriation was conditional on the death of the previous owners” (335). This act of forgetting influenced local authorities, too, as they appealed to economic (not moral) claims when decrying the practice. Yet, as the author shows through several anecdotes, many Poles expressed unease and guilt in their use of “post-Jewish” (336) property, even if they often failed to consider their own role in this dispossession.
Taken together, these essays present a multifarious picture of the economic, political, ideological, and human dimensions of dispossession. I would be remiss, however, if I did not address two curious editorial decisions. The first is the subtitle of the book, Plundering German Jewry, which is a bit of a red herring. The book does not deal exclusively with the case of German Jews. Instead—and to the volume's credit—several chapters focus on the plunder of property owned by Jews in France, the Netherlands, and across East Europe. Given the editors’ aim of exploring the links between economic dispossession and the Holocaust, a nod to the larger geographical scope in the title itself would have been more appropriate. Secondly, the editors go to lengths in their introduction to explain the problematic nature of the term “Aryanization” and propose instead the use of terms like “dispossession,” which they argue “re-embeds . . . the assault on the Jewish economic activity in larger social and political developments in Germany” (14). In practice, however, the term “Aryanization” (albeit in quotation marks) is regularly used by several authors. The use of terminology thus appears inconsistent and seems to undermine the editors’ goals.
The merits of the volume, nonetheless, outweigh these criticisms and remind us of the profound value of such collaborative projects. Students and scholars of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany will find useful material for both classroom and research. The overall conceit of the volume provides a powerful way to understand everyday forms of complicity and collaboration. The authors do not ignore ideology as a motivation, but in focusing on economic interests, the reader is made aware of the profound ease with which individuals and institutions implemented racial policy and worked towards these goals, all the while enriching themselves at the expense of a persecuted minority.
