Victims,Perpetrators and Bystanders in a German Town: The Jews of Osnabrück before,During and after the Third Reich

Abstract

Using the approach of Alltagsgeschichte, this article traces the history of the Jews of Osnabrück from the end of the Weimar Republic to the immediate postwar period. Using a variety of primary sources, contextualized within the historiography of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, it traces the rise of anti-Semitism during the 1920s and early 1930s, early Nazi policies and the eradication of the Jewish community during the Second World War, concluding with details about the situation in 1945. The majority of the article deals with the experience of the victims, most of whom actually emigrated. It concludes with an examination of the perpetrators and bystanders, concurring with recent research suggesting that while large sections of the German population may have had strong prejudices, the eradication of the Osnabrück Jews occurred due to the actions of a few bureaucrats, while most of the population did little.