Fading Friendships and the ‘Decent German’. Reflecting, Explaining and Enduring Estrangement in Nazi Germany, 1933–1938

Abstract

When Hitler was sworn in as German Chancellor on 30 January 1933, it brought decisive change not only in the political sphere but also in the social lives of Jews in Germany. The literature focusing on their personal experiences after this date and their own assessments of what was happening around them come to fairly consistent conclusions: except for some smaller acts of kindness, what stands out in the testimonies is the decisiveness in which non-Jews ended relationships with former Jewish friends and acquaintances. In this article, I want to enlarge the set of possible interpretations and ascriptions Jewish Germans attributed to ‘friendly’ relations with gentiles. I will take a more detailed look at the often insular, but mutually corroborative reports and anecdotes Jews wrote about such threatened relations during the first years of National Socialist rule, when some friendships faded, some endured. Based on these stories, the article offers an insight in the way German Jews explained the behavior of non-Jewish Germans that helped them explain – and cope – with the situation in Germany after January 1933.