User:Blazepizza22/1938 expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany

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On October 1938, about 17,000 Polish Jews living in Nazi Germany were arrested and expelled. These deportations, termed by the Nazis Polenaktion ("Polish Action"), were ordered by SS officer and head of the Gestapo Reinhard Heydrich. The deported Jews were initially rejected by Poland and therefore had to live in makeshift encampments along the Germany–Poland border.

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Origins

From 1935 to 1938, Jews living within Germany had been stripped of most of their rights by the Nuremberg Laws, and faced intense persecution from the state. As a result, many Jewish refugees sought rapidly to emigrate out of the Reich. However, most countries, still feeling the effects of a global depression, enacted strict immigration laws and simply would not address the refugee problem. According to a census conducted in 1933, over 57 percent of the foreign Jews living in Germany were Polish.

Following the German Annexation of Austria on March 13, 1938 the Polish government became worried that it would face a vast increase in re-migration of Jewish Poles fleeing Austria now that it had become part of Nazi Germany. In response, the Polish government passed legislation on March 31, 1938 that allowed Poland to revoke Polish citizenship if the person had been living abroad for more than five years since the establishment of Poland in 1919. As a response the German government, which did not want to be stuck with tens of thousands of stateless Jewish Poles, passed legislation in August that allowed it to deport any foreigner who had lost their citizenship from their home country. Additionally, a confidential directive was issued to not allow any new residence permits to be issued to Jews.

On October 6, 1938, the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs announced an ordinance requiring that Polish citizens living outside Poland obtain an endorsement stamp on their passports before October 30. Any passport without the stamp would become void and the owner of the passport would have his citizenship rights revoked. When thousands of Polish Jews in Germany presented their passports at Polish consular offices, they were denied the necessary stamp for various reasons. By enacting this decree and denying the stamp to Jews, the Polish Government made it clear that they had no interest in taking in Jews from the Reich, even those who were Polish citizens.

The Polish decree did not please the German Government. In 1938, Nazi policy regarding the Jews was heavily centered on emigration from the Reich rather than the mass extermination that would arise in 1942 during World War II. Thus, Nazi officials saw the Polish decree as a hindrance to their attempts at forcing Jewish emigration. In a letter to Hans Lammers, Chief of the Reich Chancellery, SS Obergruppenführer Werner Best wrote:

On the 6th of October 1938, the Polish Government issued and on the 15th of October published a decree whereby all passports must bear a control stamp in order to remain valid. Passports which do not have this stamp no longer can be used for entry into Polish territory. With this decree the Polish Government obviously intend to make it impossible for numerous Polish Jews living abroad – particularly in Germany – to return to Poland. This would mean some 70,000 Polish Jews in the Reich Territory would have to be tolerated permanently in Germany.

Fearing the prospect of thousands of Polish Jews unable to legally emigrate from the Reich, the German Government felt that it had to act. As head of the Gestapo, Heydrich ordered that Polish Jews be expelled from the Reich.