HeritageandHistory Zurich

Only from the 19th century onwards did Jews begin to enjoy civil rights in some duchies and counties and principalities that constituted the Union of German Nations. At the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte brought to the territories he conquered in this conglomerate of states a set of equal rights for all, which were maintained with German unification in 1871 and ratified with the Weimar Republic in 1918.

To understand the mindset, the mentality of many of the Jews who lived in Germany, and the process that culminated in the Night of Broken Glass (or Night of Shards), Kristallnacht, it is important to elucidate some concepts about the way of life in Germany, and recap events of the ARI community and its members, relating them to historical events.

The advantages of belonging to a nation were many for those Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The strong identification with Ashkenaz, the name in Hebrew for that region of Central Europe where Germany and surrounding areas are today, was not in vain. Being included as citizens in this new nation that emerged, Jews could regulate their existence as a minority in a national territory: eager for civil rights, security of physical integrity and the possibility of a peaceful existence.

This was not evident or obvious then as it is today for us in the contemporary world, such as here in Brazil. We all have a birth certificate, sometimes even two. We obtain documents, we have the right to the bureaucratic apparatus, to justice, we are Brazilian citizens, we obtain a passport, regardless of our faith. We profess our faith privately, we pay monthly fees to a synagogue, club and, thus, we make it possible to have our rabbis, cantors, celebrations, this event! And, more and above all, we have the modern State of Israel. The modern Jewish national home: a new post-war fact.

This belonging to German society required integration on a deep level with that new national situation. This, however, was not unprecedented, because this movement was already known in medieval Spain and in Jewish communities in the Near East. 

The spiritual connection with Zion, Jerusalem, would not weaken or break with the acquisition of a strong national identity: language, national heroes, culture, music. I dare say that this movement enriches both sides: German society was enriched by the ethnic and confessional multiplicity in its country, as well as Jews were able to reach a unique social and cultural level in the 20th century.

It is important to remember that this generation of Jews at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in Central Europe still had the psychic marks of the medieval persecution of the Jews and consequent existential instability, especially because they were in that same scenario. Not long ago, his parents or, at most, his grandparents had left ghettos or restrictive Jewish neighborhoods and still spoke German-Jewish, or even Yiddish.

The possibility of a extensive, civil rights-protecting national identity was a welcome alternative. They were German of Mosaic or Israelite faith. The engagement of German Jews in the First World War was perhaps the last and greatest example of this stance.

Part of this belonging is having duties and obligations towards the State: German citizens were and are, to this day, “meldepflichtig”, obliged to be registered with their city hall, which includes, in addition to their name, personal details and address , also his religious confession. And if you change your address, you notify the city hall, or even from one city to another. This registration ties you to that city and its social and fiscal obligations. 

The separation of the State from the Church in the Weimar Republic, that is, of political belonging from spiritual belonging, aimed, at least on the State’s part, at equality between religious confessions. The citizen informs the government which religious denomination he belongs to and, from his salary or gross earnings, a percentage is collected into a fund and passed on to his religious community. From this amount, temples, clergy salaries, cemeteries, charitable institutions and teachers were made viable. This came into effect in Germany from 1918 onwards for Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Jews.

One’s connection with the State was regulated, strong, transparent and egalitarian. This also applied to health funds and pension funds. You delegate your social security to the State and benefit from this scheme. This explanation is for me the key to a more tolerant and generous vision towards the many men and women who based their lives on this relationship of trust and interdependence. Today, we cannot judge that generation as complacent, passive or permissive. They were the victims! This must always be very clear.

And what does this have to do directly with us here tonight? Why do we remember that night in the context of this synagogue? Because the law is not enough to ensure our integrity, our security, our peace, our strength. The National Socialist regime that was established between 1933 and 1945 had its seal of approval in the law. But not in ethics. As Jews, we have an obligation to evaluate the events of history, of life, from an ethical perspective, in addition to the legal one. We are not a people of contracts, but of pacts. Pacts are deeper, governed by ethical foundations and allow adjustments and corrections. Pacts are signed by parties that, at some level, are fond of each other. Contracts not necessarily. We have a pact with God, not a contract.

In the 20th century, Nazi Germany broke its contract with the Jewish people. And on that night of November 9th, the Distraction was promulgated.

I research the life and work of Rabbi Dr. Lemle and biographies that revolve around him. Dr. Lemle belonged to the last generation of German rabbis who helped that generation navigate this storm in our history. In one of his texts, he emphasizes that perhaps the most difficult task of his rabbinical work in Frankfurt am Main between 1934 and 1938 was to convince parents that their children would not have a future in that country, that they would not have university careers there, would not become doctors, or lawyers, and that the best thing would be to give them the opportunity to learn a trade so that they could be prepared for immigration, whether to Palestine or anywhere else. He needed to convince these parents that the only possible path was to separate from their children and invest in the community emigration effort.

In Dr. Lemle’s own path it is possible to observe the constriction of people’s lives that will culminate in the Night of Broken Glass. And looking at his very history, I found some answers to a question that intrigued me a lot: Why in the federal capital, in Rio de Janeiro, ARI was the last of the German Jewish congregations to be founded, when it had the port with the greater influx of immigrants and an already established and successful Jewish community? SIBRA in Porto Alegre was founded in 1934, CIP in São Paulo in 1936, and União in Rio in 1937.

Over the years, it has been repeated, which is true, that the ARI could only be founded by native Brazilians and with the arrival of Dr. Lemle in Rio. In fact, the history of the founding of the ARI, different from the CIP and the SIBRA, is directly linked to the Night of Broken Glass. In Rio, Jews of German origin were already meeting at the beginning of the 1930s. In 1933, they formalized this interest group with the Centro33. This can be considered the milestone of the immigration of German Jews to Brazil. 

It is important to highlight some facts that occurred in Germany and Brazil following the rise of the National Socialist government:

• January 30, 1933: Hindenburg, president of Germany, names Hitler Chancellor.

• April 1, 1933: With the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service”, the Reich government imposed a professional ban on Jewish civil servants, and civil servants who criticized the regime. After an intervention by Reich President Hindenburg, Jews who took part in the First World War were exempted from the occupational ban. On this day, there was a boycott of Jewish establishments throughout Germany. That same day, Dr. Lemle took over the pulpit in the community of Mannheim.

• April, 1933: “Of course, we are deeply concerned about the clearly recognizable anti-Semitic aims that have recently emerged in a wide variety of economic and social areas. The Central Association continues to view the fight against them as an internal German matter. However, we are convinced that the equal rights of German Jews, which they have earned in their hearts through the sacrifice of blood and property in war and peace, will not be given up again, and that they will continue to be inseparably linked to the German fatherland and will be able to work with all other Germans of good will towards the advancement of the fatherland.” (Mitteilungsblatt des Landesverbandes israelitischer Religionsgemeinden Hessens, 8. Jahrgang, Nr. 4, April 1933, S.2)

• May 10, 1933: The German Student Union organizes book burnings of works by the opposition and Jewish authors. Several libraries are swept (“cleaned”) in the following days, especially in university towns.

• July 14, 1933: The Reich government bans the formation of parties. The “Hereditary Disease Prevention Law”, which allows the forced sterilization of people with so-called “hereditary diseases”, is approved.

• October 4, 1933: With the publisher law, all press in Germany is “conformed” and serves solely the interests of the Nazi party (Gleichschaltung).

• August 2, 1934: President Hindenburg dies at age 86. Hitler now also assumes the role of President of the Reich and from then on proclaims himself “Führer” and “Reichskanzler”. From now on, the Armed Forces are no longer sworn to the Constitution, but to Hitler himself.

Hired by the Frankfurt am Main community of the Westendstrasse in June 1934 as Rabbi for the Youth, one of the most prestigious in Germany, Dr. Lemle was already in 1935 formally equated with his two oldest colleagues. He also takes on services at the different liberal synagogues but remains increasingly involved in youth work. In 1935, he published his book “Jewish Youth on the Move. A word to everyone”, a version of a speech given to the three B’nai Brith lodges in Frankfurt am Main. (J. Kauffmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, printed by M. Lehrberger & Co.). In the book in memory of Dr. Lemle published in 1978, his contemporary and countryman Rabbi Egon Loewenstein-Levy, exiled in Chile, states that that book “contains the phrase that was characteristic of Dr. Lemle’s life: ‘People mature in relationships ‘. Relationships with God, with the people of Israel, with your community and with the people who are part of your life path.”

• March 31, 1935: Jewish musicians are prohibited from practicing their profession in public.

• April 2, 1935: In the Bulletin of the State Association of Jewish Religious Communities in Hessen, No. 8, April 1935, Volume 9, page 83, Article: Pesach 5675: “History not a mere memory, history as a place of eternally new confirmation. Peoples before our people experienced their God in nature, in nature alone. Peoples after our people experience their God in nature. The Jewish people experience their God again and again in history. Whenever history approaches this people, they experience their God. And again and again it is the same God who was dedicated to them in the experience of the first fundamental act of their history – in fact at the Red Sea. That is why for the Jew history can lose its harshness; it is never sister to death. For the Jew alone, history is not death in the end, but eternal confirmation.”

• September 10, 1935: At the Nazi party rally, Hitler promulgates the “Nuremberg Laws.” Discrimination against Jews is now legal based on biological criteria.

In Brazil, not only did the number of immigrants increase enormously, but their profile became, due to the circumstances in Germany, completely different from the already established communities in Eastern Europe: the assimilated and educated Germans arrived with different aspirations and life stories. German Jews then organized themselves into their own relief association. In Rio de Janeiro, German Jewish immigrants held the first Rosh Hashanah religious service in the liberal rite in 1936, with 20 participants, without Sefer Torah and without shofar. Ten days later, on Yom Kippur, there are already 40 participants.

In Frankfurt, the Lemles were already preparing to emigrate in 1937 – they just didn’t know how or where. Margot Lemle reports in her memoirs, “In 1937 we went on a research trip to Palestine. We were interested in emigrating there. In Frankfurt, the partial exodus from this famous and well-integrated Jewish community had already begun. We then learned that, in Palestine, a rabbi linked to the liberal movement had no chance of working: orthodoxy eliminated any attempt to implement this movement. And because Heiner was a rabbi by conviction and felt deeply called to do the work he believed in, we decided not to make aliyah.”

• January 1, 1938: The status of public law and utility corporations is withdrawn from Jewish cultural, religious and social associations. This definitively changes the relationship between Jews and the State through their religious confession. In March 1938, the Frankfurt am Main community bulletin carried a full-page warning about this change and what it would mean in everyday life. And it ends with an appeal: “The Jewish religious Federation and their associations as private law bodies will continue to dedicate themselves to their task of providing cultural and social support to their members. The legal and moral obligation of every community member remains unchanged to serve the community and the institutions of the Jewish community economically and morally through financial contributions and participation in community life.”

• February, 1938: “A significant part of the extremely aging Jewish population in Germany is unable to emigrate and will have to end their days in Germany. If they are not to become a victim of public welfare, theirs means of earning a living must not be completely closed to them. The continuation of orderly emigration – and this is the only way to keep the immigration gates open in the long term – is only possible if the economic viability of Jews in Germany is not further reduced. Now that the Jews have been eliminated from state, cultural and social positions, we therefore ask the Reich government to stop the reduction in employment opportunities for Jews in Germany. We also hope that the possibility of personal contact between emigrants and their relatives who have to stay behind in Germany will not be prevented.”

• March 13, 1938: Hitler enacts the law on the “Annexation” of Austria to the German Reich. State institutions in Austria are taken over by the German authorities.

• August 6, 1938: Dr. Lemle receives the following telegram in Frankfurt: “We confirm your call as rabbi, two-year employment contract follows by airmail, we await your arrival as soon as possible with your family.” This telegram is the result of the decision contained in the minutes of the CIP board meeting in São Paulo on August 1, 1938 regarding his hiring, “Dr. Lorch acknowledges two letters from him [from Dr. Lemle], addressed to him and Dr. Pinkus. To obtain an immigration visa, Dr. Lemle needs a contract. It is decided to send the aforementioned contract to Dr. Lemle, obliging him to officiate in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, in accordance with our resolution.”

The community of German Jews in Rio de Janeiro already knew since the High Holidays that they would soon have a rabbi: “(…) on the eve of the holidays, Dr. Loebl expressed the community’s feelings in eloquent words. On the night of Rosh Hashonoh, he spoke about the state of mind of those who came to Brazil from their former homeland, who felt the need to pray together that day and whose relationships with the people there were still alive and well. On the night of Kol Nidrei, he spoke about the human element in the Jewish religion, which allows the individual to come face to face with their God, and read a greeting from Rabbi Dr. Lemle, assigned to the future community of Rio de Janeiro.” (Crônica Israelita, October 4, 1938, SP: Rio de Janeiro)

• October 5, 1938: German Jewish passports are now stamped with the capital “J.”

• October 28, 1938: The German government deports 15,000 Polish Jews or of Polish origin. They are forcibly deported to Poland.

Night of November 9, 1938: Synagogues are vandalized and burned, Jewish homes and commercial establishments stoned and destroyed, people vilified and attacked on the Night of Broken Glass. Dr. Lemle was scheduled to speak at the Great Synagogue on Westendstrasse on Friday, November 11th. But no one can hear him. He was arrested like 30,000 other Jewish men on the morning of Thursday, November 10th.

Dr. Lemle will only speak again as a truly free man, in Rio de Janeiro, on Friday, April 4, 1941, at the Grande Templo Israelita on Rua Tenente Possolo. And as Rabbi of his own synagogue, which reflected his liberal tradition, his community aspirations and his spiritual convictions, only with the founding of ARI, on January 13, 1942.

Some testimonies that were read on the night of remembrance