African Mischlinge Treated Worse Than Jewish Mischlinge Pendas

Beyond the Racial State, by Devin O Pendas (Editor). 2017

Nazi German Definition of a Jew Was More Restrictive Than That of Jews Themselves! African-German Mischlinge Treated Worse Than Jewish-German Mischlinge

This book shows that, not only were Nazi-made racial categories often contradictory, but that they did not even rest solely on biological descent.

WHAT IS A JEW?

Adolf Hitler, as quoted by Richard Steigmann-Gall, commented, “‘We speak of the Jewish race only as a linguistic convenience, for in the true sense of the word, and from a genetic standpoint, THERE IS NO JEWISH RACE…The Jewish race is above all a community of the spirit. Anthropologically the Jews do not exhibit those common characteristics that would identify them as a uniform race…A SPIRITUAL race is harder and more lasting than a NATURAL race.’” (p. 277; Emphasis is Hitler’s).

Nazi Wilhelm Grau even spoke of “white Jews”: Those who were not Jewish but were totally saturated with a Jewish spirit of thinking. Von Humboldt was thus exemplified. (Dirk Rupnow, p. 301).

In the end, Rupnow concluded that, “In most anti-Semitic publications and documents of the Nazi era, no clearly defined or delineated concepts of race or Jewishness are to be found.” (pp. 301-302).

However, the fact that Nazi racial policies did not rely solely on genealogy is nothing new. For instance, when it came to the Mischlinge, the Nazis did not just ask how many Jewish ancestors one had. They also considered how much “Jewish traits” had “penetrated” to the surface and become manifest in the individual in question. See my review of Jeremy Noakes’ THE DEVELOPMENT OF NAZI POLICY TOWARDS THE JEWISH-GERMAN “MISCHLINGE” 1933-1945.

No doubt these considerations were partly driven by pragmatism. Thus, for instance, Jurgen Matthaus writes, “Hitler was quoted after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws as saying that the task at hand was ‘not to chase after utopias but to look squarely at political reality.’” (p. 261).

JEWISH MISCHLINGE (INCLUDING HALAKHICALLY-DEFINED JEWS) NOT TREATED AS BAD AS AFRICAN MISCHLINGE (AFRICAN-GERMAN INDIVIDUALS)

Top Nazi Wilhelm Frick and his RIM (Reich Interior Ministry) officials considered MISCHLINGE—those with fewer than 3 Jewish grandparents—as ones that should be assimilated. (Jurgen Matthaus, p. 261). Bernard Losener was also an advocate of Mischlinge being assimilated into German society, at least until the start of the Holocaust itself. (Matthaus, p. 263).

Although the Jewish Mischlinge were not treated equally with “purely Aryan” Germans, in no sense was their fate the same as that of the full-blooded Jews. Richard Steigmann-Gall comments, “Under the Nuremberg Laws, those defined as half- and quarter-Jews who had abandoned all signifiers of Jewish belonging, such as membership in a synagogue or marriage to a practicing Jew, received a special status. Although they suffered different degrees of formal and informal discrimination, like African Mischlinge they were not sent to concentration camps or death camps as such. In fact, unlike the African Mischlinge, they did not even fall victim to sterilization, even though many Nazis had wanted this (and Heydrich wanted them treated as full Jews).” (p. 277).

In other words, those of mixed African-German ancestry were treated worse than those of mixed Jewish-German ancestry!

THE NAZIS ACTUALITY SPARED SOME HALACHICALLY-RECOGNIZED GERMAN JEWS

Consider another implication—one not mentioned by the authors. Halakha (Jewish law) recognizes a Jew as one born to a Jewish mother who remains unconverted to another religion. This means that roughly half of the religiously-unaffiliated 1st Degree Jewish-German Mischlinge, and roughly a quarter of the religiously-unaffiliated 2nd Degree Jewish-German Mischlinge, were halachically Jewish.

This means that the Nazis were more lenient, in identifying German Jews as such, than were German Jews themselves. It also means that the Nazis knew perfectly well that some of the Jewish-German Mischlinge, whom Nazi policy was sparing, were recognized by Jews as fellow Jews. Yet the Nazis did nothing to “correct” this. Evidently, the Nazi enmity towards Jews was not as absolute or all-consuming as we had been led to believe.

For more on this, see my reviews of the following works by Bryan Rigg: HITLER’S JEWISH SOLDIERS, and LIVES OF HITLER’S JEWISH SOLDIERS.

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WHY THE KARAITES WERE SPARED: MULTIPLE REASONS, INCLUDING POLITICS

Dirk Rupnow has a fascinating discussion on the subject of how various Jewish-questionable groups in the German-occupied Soviet Union either were recognized by the Nazis as Jews, or were not.

Rupnow describes how Protestant theologian and Orientalist Karl Georg Kuhn (1909-1976) had been written an authorized report on the Karaites. In it, he concluded that the Karaites were Tatars, not Jews. (p. 306).

Consistent with the earlier-discussed Nazi mystical, and not only biological, definition of race, certain Nazi officials cited behavior and not just ancestry. Rupnow elaborates, “The Karaites military traditions and agricultural occupations were cited as evidence in favor of their classification as non-Jews. Both of these factors, a ministry official wrote, stood ‘in contrast to the inclination of the Jews’ and their ‘thoughts and values’. Moreover, the Karaites showed none of the ‘tendency towards the commercial and parasitic that is to be found in the Jews.’ Political arguments also played a part in this decision. The Germans did not want to disturb the consistently anti-Jewish orientation of the ‘racially similar’ Turkic peoples, even if the ‘Mosaic faith’ was undesirable.” (p. 306).

Finally, part of the Nazi decision, in the case of marginal groups, rested upon whether or not there had been a precedent for these groups being identified and rejected, as Jews, by the locals. Rupnow comments, “History was here used as an argument. According to Nazi racial policy, past discrimination and persecution were criteria for classifying a group as Jewish.” (p. 306).

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DOES THE CURRENT EMPHASIS ON FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM ACTUALLY CAUSE MORE ANTISEMITISM?

The Nazis were in no sense uncomfortable with being called anti-Semites. To the contrary. Rupnow quips, “Studies of the history of anti-Semitism could serve Nazi anti-Jewish policies by retroactively constructing a tradition. Analyzing past attempts to solve the Jewish question, in particular the failure of such attempts, could be useful to the Nazi project by constructing supposedly aporetic historical situations that justified ever more radical strategies as a way out of them.” (p. 302).