Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland

The Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (for clear disambiguation also called the new Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, ) was an administrative branch subject to the Reich's government, represented by its Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). It was established on 4 July 1939 by an ordinance of the Reich's ministry of the Interior and assumed the so-called old Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, which was the name, under which the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden () had been operating since February 1939. 
The new Reichsvereinigung assumed the staff, installations and buildings of the old Reichsvereinigung. The RSHA subjected the new Reichsvereinigung to its influence and control, and confirmed Rabbi Leo Baeck as president, who had been elected as president of the old Reichsvereinigung. By the end of 1939 the RSHA appointed Adolf Eichmann as its Special Referee for the Affairs of the Jews (), officiating in a bureau in Kurfürstenstraße #115-116, Berlin. Eichmann had come to doubtable fame for expelling 50,000 Jewish Austrians and Gentile Austrians of Jewish descent within only three months after the Anschluß.Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938-1940", In: ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte. Geschichte und Wirken heute, Walter Sylten, Joachim-Dieter Schwäbl and Michael Kreutzer on behalf of the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte (ed.; Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted), Berlin: Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte, 1988, pp. 1–23, here p. 14. No ISBN. Thus he was commissioned to expell Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent from the old Reich's borders. The local supervision of the Reichsvereinigung was commissioned to the local Gestapos. 
==Compulsory Membership==
While its corporate members were gradually dissolved and their tasks partially incorporated into the new Reichsvereinigung itself, it comprised also natural persons.All Jewish congregations were gradually incorporated into the Reichsvereinigung. On September 11, 1941 the Gestapo ordered the closure of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, but excepted its publishing department, which was to be taken over by the Reichsvereinigung. Cf. Bernd Braun, "Bücher im Schlussverkauf: Die Verlagsabteilung des Jüdischen Kulturbunds", In: Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933-1941, Akademie der Künste (ed.), Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1992, pp. 155-168, here p. 166. ISBN3-89468-024-5. All persons categorised as Jews by the arbitrary Nazi practice (cf. the Nuremberg Laws and the Racial policy of Nazi Germany) were compulsorily enlisted as members. The mainstream Nazi anti-Semitism considered the Jewry being a group of people bound by close, so-called genetic (blood) ties, to form a unit, which one could not join or secede from. The influence of Jews had been declared to have detrimental impact on Germany, to rectify the discriminations and persecutions of Jews. To be spared from that, one had to prove one's affiliation with the group of the so-called Aryan race. 
Paradoxical was, that never genetic tests or racial features in one's physiognomy determined one's affiliation, although the Nazis palavered a lot about physiognomy, but only the records of religious affiliations of one's grandparents decided. However, while the grandparents were earlier still able to choose their religion, their grandchildren in the Nazi era were compulsorily categorised as Jews, if three or four grandparents were enrolled as members of a Jewish congregation, regardless if the persecuted themselves were Jews according to the Halachah (roughly meaning: Jewish by birth from a Jewess or by conversion), apostates, irreligionists or Christians. 
The Nazi categorisation as Jews, and thus compulsory membership, comprised 
# mostly Jews and apostates of Jewish descent, but also many 
# Gentiles of Jewish descent, such as Catholics, irreligionists, and Protestants, who happened to have had three to four grandparents belonging - according to the records - to a Jewish congregation. 
# further all persons of Jewish faith were included, as indicated by their membership in a Jewish congregation as of 1935 (passing of the Nuremberg Laws), even if they had less than three Jewish grandparents. 
# persons with one to two Jewish grandparents, who were married with an enrolled member of a Jewish congregation (the two of the latter groups used to be called Geltungsjuden; literally in ). 
Not included were persons, observing no or another than the Jewish religion, who had only up to maximally two grandparents, who were enlisted in a Jewish congregation (so-called Mischlinge). Also those persons, with three or four Jewish grandparents were excluded, who were married with a person classified as a so-called Aryan in a so-called racially mixed marriage (the couple did not necessarily have to be an interfaith marriage, because only the grandparents' religious affiliation counted, not the possibly common faith personally confessed by both partners). Later this exception was restricted to persons living in a so-called privileged mixed couple, characterised by the fact, that either the Gentile partner was the husband, having no children or children, who were brought up as Gentiles. Or that in a couple, where the Gentile was the wife, they had children, who were brought up as Gentiles. A male spouse, classified as a Jew, in a childless couple, suffered all discriminations. 
All persons included as compulsory members had to pay contributions for the maintenance of the bureaucracy and its tasks. They also all underlay the full discriminations and persecutions imposed by the Nazis and were publicly labelled by the Yellow badge from September 1st, 1941. 
==Reichsvereinigung controlled as a creature of the RSHA==
Different than the old Reichsvereinigung, which had been an umbrella of all different kinds of Jewish associations and congregations, representing their interests and organising self-help for Jews and Jewish organisations, the new Reichsvereinigung was meant to be a device to better control and discriminate against German and Austrian Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent. 
The new Reichsvereinigung was no organisation of internal autonomy any more. The members of its executive board were not elected, but appointed in consent with the Gestapo. The Reichsvereinigung made the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt its press organ, since all the other 64 papers of Jewish alignment had been forbidden after the November Pogroms in 1938. 
The government agencies, busy with discriminating and persecuting Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent, learned their lessons from public unease with the open terror in the November Pogroms.Secret service surveys on the public opinion about the November Pogroms had revealed widespread disgust and the opinion, that destroying other people's property and beating people in the streets as well as setting synagogues on fire, goes much too far. In order not to evoke any unease among the non-persecuted Germans with the increasing anti-Semitic discriminations, the Reich's government preferred not to publicise their invidiousnesses anymore. Thus the Reichsvereinigung was then in charge of announcing the ever-growing number of anti-Semitic discriminations to its persecuted members, and supervising their obedience. 
After the decision to murder all Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent was taken, the involved government agencies were worried - whether well-founded or not - about the acceptance of murdering Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent. In the Wannsee conference (January 1942) they prepared, among others, huge logistical efforts to transport the deportees over long distances to the East, instead of killing them by mobile squads - as practised in the occupied East -, wherever they would find them. In the East in occupied Poland and Lithuania, there the local population was anyway subject to open terror and public executions. 
Repeated deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent to the East had started on October 18, 1941.The deportations of Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent from Austria and Stettin (13 February 1940; both to Poland) as well as Baden and the Palatinate (22-23 October 1940; both to France) had remained spontaneous episodes, though not less tragic for the deportees. So one of the tasks of the Reichsvereinigung was - after it was announced the date and the number of deportees - to choose, who was to be deported and to collect the deportees in one of its premises, before heading for a train transport.Raul Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden: Die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocaust: 3 vols. [ The Destruction of the European Jews (11961, extended re-ed. 1985); German (11982)], Christian Seeger, Harry Maor, Walle Bengs and Wilfried Szepan (trls.), Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 91990, (Fischer Taschenbuch; No. 10612), vol. 2, pp. 452seqq. ISBN 3-596-10612-5. This could take up to a week of waiting. The Holocaust was then carried out, far away from most eyes and ears of the general German and Western European public. Within the Reichsvereinigung the officials used the terms migration and migrated to the East for deportation and deported. 
After most of its members had been deported, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt forcibly dissolved the new Reichsvereinigung in June 1943 and its remaining employees were deported to Theresienstadt. 
The only Jewish organisations, which then continued, were the few hospitals such as the Jüdisches Krankenhaus Berlin and the Israelitisches Krankenhaus Hamburg , mostly taking care of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent, who were not deported due to their so-called privileged mixed marriage with a so-called Aryan spouse.
==Notes==
Category:Nazi Germany
Category:Jewish German history
Category:Organisations based in Berlin
Category:The Holocaust in Germany
de:Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland
pl:Zrzeszenie Żydów w Niemczech