Dan Michman
Aryanization, which was a major facet of this campaign both in Ger-
many and in the occupied countries, raises a principle question: if Jews
as Volksfremde had improperly taken their wealth from the Volkseigen-
tum, the state as an institution could have decided, for instance, to con-
tiscate Jewish property and financial assets. And yet, Aryanization was
on the one hand a way to transfer belongings of private Jews to private
Aryans (which indeed activated among individual Germans — and later
also among non-Germans in occupied countries — the human character-
istic of greed, thus causing lots of people to embark on prey-journeys);
on the other hand, it was a process directed against the Jews as a collec-
tive, without exceptions. When looking upon those aspects as being two
sides of the coin it turns clear that each Jewish individual was perceived
as being the incarnation of some much larger Jewish threat. Beyond
Aryanization, the comprehensive campaign to eject Jews from their
positions in any economic institution, organization, enterprise or forum
— whether big, middle-sized or miniscule — also indicates that there was
an obsession to exclude Jews not just from society but from any influ-
ence on German economic conduct, for example economic thought and
behavior. Additionally, of importance is also the fact that economic
persecution of the Jews started at the very first moment after Hitler's
ascendance to power in January 1933 and lasted ull even after their
deportation* and death (because their money and belongings, and even
parts of their bodies such as hair, were taken from them shortly before
or after being murdered)* and dll the last moments of the Reich’s exis-
tence. That means that this was not one stage in a developing consecu-
of Economics and the Expulsion of the Jews from the German Economy, p. 215. See
also his comprehensive study: Fischer, Hjalmar Schacht und Deutschlands “Juden-
frage”.
44 For understanding this aspect, one should just follow on the one hand the ousting
process of individual Jews (which was often done in an apparently “polite” yet
assertive mode; see for instance Barkai, Oscar Wassermann und die Deutsche Bank,
pp. 92-102), and the many grassroots instances where groups of Jews were expelled
from a certain sector, as is demonstrated by the example of the German Council of
Municipalities, which coordinated “initiatives to chase Jewish merchants from town
markets even before Reich laws to this effect were enacted” (the conclusion of
Gruner, Der Deutsche Gemeindetag und die Koordinierung antijiidischer Kommu-
nalpolitik).
45 Scheren, Aryanization, Market Vendors, and Peddlers in Amsterdam.
46 Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen, chapter 21.
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