How did Nazis determine if whether or not someone was Jewish or Gay?

How did Nazi's know if someone was Jewish? One didn't have to be apart of the Hebrew faith in order to be executed (from what I understand), for example Albert Einstein (whom is Jewish for those who don't know) didn't really believe that their was a higher power but had he not moved to America it would have been likely he would have been killed. So I'm guessing that maybe they would look at traits from the Israeli area. But then what if that person didn't have records tracing him all the way back to the Israelis? And How did they know if someone was a homosexual? Did they just take the word of a neighbor or did they have to find proof?

 

In Germany they had been openly Jews so that was easy to know when they started the Putsch.Many even believed they were just taken to east to work in a camp, not killed in the gas chambers.
Also the Jew hatred was in many countries surprisingly high. The local citizens brought the Jews to the market place and the Germans just needed to ship them away.
In the 1930´s many actors and comics were still quite open and even made jokes during their acts about nazis. So later they were easy to trace. I guess many Homosexuals and anti-nazis also suffered the same fate as they could not believe that Hitler would do a horrible thing like this.
During the war there was a an exposer in every block who told the Gestapo if someone listened to foreign radios etc, or spoke against the government.

 

Thanks Kai for covering the first part of the question. I will try to deal with the other, more delicate part.

"Detection" of Jews was quite straightforward but persecutions of homosexuals were rather impaired because those who were supposed to hunt homosexuals had similar suspicious sexual orientation. It is now well known that the cream-of-the-cream of the brown shirts, Stormtroopers, were homosexuals almost without exception, including their boss Ernst Röhm – the "Queen" of the Nazi regime. By the way, Adolf himself was an intimate friend of Röhm and had difficulties in relationships with women. Who knows what he did with Röhm in private? :goldmedal: You never know who is who.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9OO0S5w2k[/media]

 

The Nazis claimed the decisive criterion was membership in the Jewish race, but in practice only membership in the Jewish religion was important.
A grandparent who belonged to the Jewish religion was held to be a member of the Jewish race, nothing else mattered.

Initially the Jews were required to declare their Jewishness in selected official dealings with the State, later they all were required to register.
In the occupied territories they were required to register with their own administrative agencies - Judenrats.
And all of them actually did it, so the Nazis only had to consult the records to select the people to be deported/murdered.

Then he wasn't a Jew.

Homosexualism was a crime, like theft, fraud, robbery - so the same rules applied.

 

@wm.
I must admit, you are an expert on anti-Semitism. Quite a "remarkable" tallent. :green:

 

[SIZE=10.5pt]It was nice for the Nazis if the Jews would register but from what I understand there physical attributes that were believed to show "Jewishness", The shape and the size of the skull was an important tool to the Nazis in determining "Jewishness". Maybe a good German head had 4 corners hence the nick name "square head"?[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=10.5pt]Nose, ear, eye location and shaped were also used to determine "Jewishness".[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=10.5pt]I am not too sure how common the practice of circumcision was among non-Jews, but I would have to believe it was fairly widely practiced back then as the adherent’s believed it promoted cleanliness.[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=10.5pt]KTK[/SIZE]
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Inspection of penises would have been rather unpleasant procedure, well, except for Ernst Röhm and similar individuals. Also, that would have solved just a half of the enigma as female children couldn’t be circumcised.

There was much easier way to enlist the Jews – from the Civil Register which was introduced between 1792 and 1876 in majority of German states. Before 1876 data were rigorously collected in Parish Records. However, the most of the Reich Jews migrated to Germany from the Pale of Settlement. Polish state, which wass incorporated in the Reich, inherited their Jewry by the secession from the Russian Empire. Vast majority of Jews in the Reich were "Polish" Jews. It should be noted, that the"Polish" Jews before formation of the Second Polish State were subjects of the German Empire and were included in Civil Registers. There were practically no "Russian" Jews because they could not settle in Proper Russia – only in Pale of Settlement.

 

Until the advent of the Nazis, there was no particular secrecy about who was Jewish. Germany was actually one of the more liberal nations with regard to Jews; of course no place in Europe was completely free of anti-Semitism.

Until recently, Germany had a 'church tax' by which a portion of one's income tax was given to the church of one's affiliation (Hitler was registered as Catholic for this purpose). I don't if the government actually gave money to synagogues - kinda think not - but tax records would be another means of identifying Jews.

Circumcision for health reasons was relatively rare in Europe at that time, more common in the US. I've read that during riots or pogroms, mobs would pull down mens' pants to 'determine' who was Jewish - could be bad luck for gentiles who had done it for health/cleanliness.

 

@Carronade
That it true for the “German Jews” which were approximately just about 1% of the Reich population. It is interesting to note that the most of mass murders took place on territory that once was the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. At that territory Jews lived in rural communities, alongside other population. East European Jews were these who suffered the most. East European Jews were victims of their nasty countrymen. In East Europe everyone knew everything about their neighbors and they knew exactly where to find their “own Jews” - they didn't need books. Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians were the most horrible executioners of Jews among all.

 

Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich! (Hermann Göring)
(It's up to me to decide whether someone is a jew or not!)
The church tax still exists in Germany and priests are paid by the state. So someone who doesn't pay church taxes was most likely a jew. Guilds didn't allow jews to join, so most jews had typical professions.
Forget about the noses and nonsens like that, Heydrich looked like a jew and Ephraim Kishon like an arian.

How did they determine gypsys?

And for the gays, I guess only the ones which refused to support the regime were sent to concentration camps. As mentioned, the SA was full of them.

 

I wasn't popular at all, although there were some medical conditions that, it was believed, required this procedure.
It was something the doctors were well aware, the people rather not.

 

@OhneGewehr: Vielen Dank für diese ausführlichen Informationen.

It is not so well known but I think it is worthy mentioning: besides Jews, Germans were the most exposed ethnic group in the East Europe.

The Germans, who had once been the dominant people in so much of Central and Eastern Europe, feared reprisals from the new masters of
the successor states. And with good reason. German communities came under attack by Polish mobs in Bydgoszcz (formerly Bromberg) and Ostrowo (formerly Ostrow). In Czechoslovakia the Germans were effectively excluded from the 1919 elections; in clashes with Czech gendarmes and troops - the so-called massacre of Kaaden of March 14, 1919 - fifty-two Germans were killed and eighty-four wounded. A list of crimes against German population is endless.

Germans are somehow "forgotten" victims of the twentieth century.

 

Mainly by their clothes, facial hear, customs. They simply looked and lived like Gypsies.

Unlike the Jews they couldn't be identified by their birth certificates or marriage certificates. So usually they were judged by their appearance. They were murdered because the Nazi believed they were antisocial elements, born criminals.
So if you didn't look/behave like Gypsy you were safe.

 

Not true, anecdotal evidence is not proof.
Bromberg was one time event in a city already on edge because of the Nazi 1939 aggression on Poland.

 

Not true, and impossible to prove.
Jews were sent to their deaths after a long process of collecting them in ghettos, and isolating from the outside world. The isolation was more and more severe with time.
They didn't have to bother with that, didn't have to expend substantial resources to achieve that if the allegation was true.

 

@wm.

Denial does not elliminate well documented facts.

 

I would never relate any movie to life itself but the European movie "Europa Europa " addresses both of these issues. It was filmed in 1990 and I thought well worth watching. It was based on a true story, it goes without saying that means "Loosely" and I saw it 25 years ago . It has many improbable moments but so does life and I remember it for it's cinematography, color and acting. I do imagine that life for anyone pursued by the Nazis was more complex that I am capable of imaging.

An illustration and this was long before the Nazis. I have a good friend, a Jewish woman born and raised in NYC who now lives in East Alabama.
Her great grandmother was the youngest of four daughters of a Jewish family in Krakow in the early 20th century well before WW1. They decided she showed the most promise of all of them and arranged by mail for her to be raised by a cousin in NYC. At 15 she took a train to Odessa. Got a berth on a freighter that carried a few passengers. She made her way thru the Black Sea, the Mediterranean to London to NYC. Think of the conditions, languages, safety and difficulties this would have entailed. Her new family thrived, the Polish branch did not survive WW2.
Now I am designing her a house and her husband took me flying in his Yak 9 ! Unbelievable..

Gaines

 

Thanks Gaines for sharing this story with us. Just few lucky have managed to survive. Here is a similar, indeed touching scene where celebrity Jerry Springer meets in Teresienstadt a relative living today in Israel. They weren’t aware of each other. Two escapes from death and re-union owing to the BBC crew of series “Who Do You Think You Are”.

Jerry Springer Meets A Distant Relative From Israel - From BBC series "Who Do You Think You Are"

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD5z951jjCk[/media]

 

It wasn't that difficult.
From that province (called Galicia and known mainly for grinding poverty) the routes to the US were well established, and followed by millions of Jews. There were lots of agencies/firms taking care of everything, for a fee.
Frequently they were ran by criminals or gangsters exploiting their victims mercilessly, but the Kraków Jews were mainly middle class folks - I'm sure they knew how to choose their helpers wisely.