(Photograph from National Archives collections)

Once the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, Jews were subjected to increasingly cruel legal and social restrictions. At first, signs such as the one above appeared throughout Germany, warning Jews that they were not wanted in numerous public areas: parks, theaters, stadiums, even businesses. The notice above can be translated "Jews enter here at their own risk." More and more, German police, commanded by officers who were members of the Nazi party, would turn a blind eye to party stormtroopers who assault German Jews in public areas. By 1935, laws were being passed that placed formal legal restrictions on the rights of German Jews: Jewish children were being denied the right to education, Jewish property was being confiscated on the flimsiest of pretexts, and Jewish culture was being ruthlessly suppressed. Worst of all, the National Socialist government had decreed that all German schools teach "racial purity classes" in which Jewish "inferiority" was constantly stressed. By the mid-1930s Jews clearly understood that, as the signs had said, they were "not wanted" in Germany.

As persecutions of these kinds increased, German Jews had to decide whether or not they should stay in Germany and hope for the best or try to leave the country. If they decided to try to leave, then where could they go?

This web site follows the fortunes of one extended Jewish family in Germany as they struggled with these questions.

The full story of Herman Stern has now been published:  "You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me": Herman Stern and the Jewish Refugee Crisis (North Dakota State University Press, 2008), by Terry L. Shoptaugh.  Copies are available at barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com