Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
November 2017
Identity card from the year 1938
Historical Context
On November 9th, the memorial day for the Reich pogrom night takes place, as it does every year. On the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, members of the SS and SA set synagogues nationwide on fire and vandalized Jewish businesses and homes. The toll of the terror: 91 dead, 267 destroyed places of worship and community houses, as well as 7500 devastated businesses. Around 30,000 Jewish men were deported to concentration camps.
The assassination of Legation Secretary Ernst vom Rath at the German Embassy in Paris was used as a pretext for the allegedly spontaneous act of ‘popular anger’ directed against the Jewish population. He was shot by 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, who presumably wanted to draw attention to the deportation of Polish Jews to Poland, including his parents. This event was immediately inflated by Goebbels’ propaganda as an attack by international Jewry.
The Jewish population had to bear the costs for the damages incurred and was required to pay a reparations amount of 1 billion Reichsmarks.
Short Biography
On August 15, 1858, Sandel Moses Kirchheimer is born as the son of Jewish parents in Nieheim. He follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes a merchant. In 1888, he marries his wife Caroline, with whom he would have eight children. Unfortunately, a girl is stillborn, and three sons, Karl, Ludwig, and Felix, die young. The couple moves to Bremerhaven in 1895, and Moses appears as a voting member in the community records of the synagogue community Lehe-Geestemünde.
As early as 1900, he opened a book and stamp shop. He ran this business for over 30 years until the anti-Jewish legislation of the National Socialists forced him to close it. By this time, two of his sons had already emigrated to the USA and urged their father and remaining siblings to leave Nazi Germany. The mother had passed away in 1931. Despite his sons’ urging, Moses Kirchheimer did not want to leave his homeland. Later, his son Siegfried recalled: “My father, obeying necessity and not his own desires, did not follow his instincts in August 1939, becoming a true Bremerhaven resident, although a Westphalian by birth like all our ancestors back to the 17th century (…). He had to witness how on the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, the synagogue, that old one dating back to 1879, went up in flames.”
Ultimately, Moses decides to emigrate. On July 5, 1939, he receives his visa from the U.S. General Consulate in Hamburg. This arrived just in time, as the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, would have made his emigration impossible. The costs for the journey and necessary formalities were paid by his sons from America. He spends his last days in freedom and with his family and dies on March 1, 1942, in the USA.
Significance of the object
In Germany, the flight and expulsion of the German Jews began with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. From then on, a policy was pursued aimed at the rapid exclusion of Jews from all areas of society and life in the German Reich – a policy that institutionalized anti-Semitism and ultimately implemented it with murderous consequences.
The Kristallnacht in 1938 was until then the peak of state anti-Semitism and clearly showed the Jewish population that their lives in Germany were in danger.
Moses Kirchheimer also experienced the anti-Jewish policies firsthand, which forced him to close his business, tore his family apart, and required him to carry an identification card marked with a “J” for “Jew.” These identification cards became mandatory for the Jewish population starting in 1938. The identification card issued by the city of Bremerhaven on December 27, 1938, for Moses Kirchheimer includes a photo and fingerprints.
Do You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de