This is a postcard sent to Erna Guggenheim in Frankfurt, Germany 1934. The brown and white illustration on the left-hand side of the card depicts a worker carrying an anvil and marchers carrying large flags with Nazi swastikas with large brick chimneys in the background. The German caption below the illustration reads “National Holiday 1934” and the postmark reads “Fight unemployment, buy German goods.” The postcard was sent by Martin (Moshe) Goldmann from Dessau to his girlfriend (and later wife), Erna.
Erna Guggenheim was born in Frankfurt, Germany to a wealthy Jewish family with a large house and servants. Her father was a successful businessman but was badly affected by the hyperinflation of the 1920s in Germany. Erna’s grandparents were religious Jews, who attended synagogue, ate kosher, and observed Shabbat and the festivals. Nevertheless, her grandfather bought a Christmas tree for the non-Jewish staff and gave them Christmas presents. Her parents kept kosher but were less observant, as she states: “They were good Jews, but they were not religious,” and also identified as Germans. Erna attended the Jewish Samson Raphael Hirsch School which had both a religious and secular curriculum. After school she would meet her friends, take dance lessons, and attend meetings of the Zionist youth movement Blau-Wiess (Blue-White). This is where Erna met Moshe Goldmann, her future husband, who came from an Eastern-European family that had immigrated to Germany. At the time there was a wide rift between the Western Europeans and the so-called ostjuden, the Jews from the East. When the Nazis gain power, the situation for the Jews deteriorated and Erna together with other family members received a certificate to immigrate to Israel; fortunately, all of her close family managed to escape from Europe before the outbreak of World War II. Erna arrived in Israel in 1937, where Moshe, her then boyfriend, and her brother were already living.
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Jews in Nazi Germany (Pre-World War II) – The Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933. After World War I, Germany was faced with military defeat, social unrest and an economic crisis. Many Germans blamed the Jews for these disasters. The difficult situation in Germany and the ever- present anti-Semitic sentiments resulted in a rise in the popularity of the Nazi party, and on January 20, 1933 Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Immediately, the Jewish community experienced organised attacks, and anti-Jewish law were passed. Jews were prohibited from working in certain professions, participating in cultural events, purchasing products during certain hours, and even attending school. Jewish businesses were boycotted and looted, and many Jewish people lost their businesses or jobs. The first concentration camp was opened in Dachau, and many Jews were arrested and sent there and to other camps. In 1935 the Nuremberg laws were passed, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship. Jews lost legal protection and were left with all of the obligations but few of the rights of German citizenship. Persecution varied from city to city and peaked in the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9–10, 1938, in which thousands of Jews throughout Nazi Germany were attacked or arrested and thousands of Jewish-owned shops or businesses were looted and destroyed. Many Jews chose to flee Germany, and, until October 1941, German policy encouraged Jewish emigration. Jews moved to any country that would take them, including other European countries where many were later killed as the Nazis captured new territories, as well as the United States, England, and Israel.