In the first years of Nazi rule, it became increasingly difficult for Jewish newspapers to operate. Because the Third Reich was an authoritarian dictatorship that did not tolerate criticism in the press—and because Jewish life itself was under assault—Jewish newspapers found themselves in a precarious position after 1933.
Nazi propaganda often attacked the so-called "Lügenpresse" ("lying press"), claiming that a supposed "Jewish conspiracy" was manipulating news to turn the world against Nazi Germany. According to Nazi ideology, the presence of Jewish journalists and editors in German news media was evidence that Jews were controlling the press in Germany. From the early years of its rule, the Nazi regime stripped Jewish owners of their newspapers and fired Jewish journalists and editors.
The Nazi regime also imposed strict regulations on actual Jewish publications. The Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith), the largest German Jewish organization, ran its own weekly. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in Germany received this paper. It had to tone down its reporting—much of the pre-1933 reporting alerted its readers of Nazi antisemitism and related issues—but the newspaper continued its run into the Nazi period. Despite the threat of regime censorship and intervention, it strove to provide useful information to its readers.
The so-called "Kristallnacht" pogrom in November 1938 changed this radically. After Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime banned all Jewish newspapers and seized their assets. Simultaneously, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry mandated the founding of a single, Nazi-controlled Jewish information sheet, Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt ("The Jewish News Journal"), published by the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland. The organization was set up and tightly controlled by Himmler's experts on anti-Jewish policy. It became part of the SS Reich Main Security Office after September 1939.1 This "Jewish" newspaper would have a wholly different function than the pre-Kristallnacht Jewish press. The new, Nazi-controlled publication was designed to convey the key points of Nazi policy and restrictions placed upon Jews.
Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt offered news of increasingly strict Nazi regulations relating to Jews in Germany. Between 1938 and 1941, many articles were devoted to the possibilities of Jewish emigration. Much space in the journal was devoted to information about the emigration process and emigres' experiences. The newspaper also featured a busy section of advertisements and notices, which testified to the dire situation in which the Jews found themselves. Doctors unable to practice medicine sold their medical instuments and tools; single men and women hoping to flee looked for potential spouses who held visas and exit permits; people leaving the country sold entire households for next to nothing.
Published out of Berlin, the Nachrichtenblatt was supervised directly by the Propaganda Ministry, which approved all articles and print items in advance of publication. In two former capitals of countries swallowed up by the Reich—Vienna and Prague—other Nazi agencies supervised the publication of two "local" issues along the same lines and with largely similar content. Over time, emigration, deportation, and genocide shrunk the numbers of German Jews in the Reich and the journal's size and frequency decreased. By mid-1943, the publication of Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt ceased.2
This article, published in the Vienna edition of Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt a few months after Kristallnacht, illustrates the key features of the journal. "As an Emigrant in Shanghai" was one of the many articles on the topic of Jewish emigration from the Reich. Unlike German Jews who had been persecuted under Nazism since 1933, Austrian Jews had only begun to live under Nazi rule since the so-called Anschluss of March 1938. Many Jews from Austria were now eager to emigrate to countries that would accept them. The Nazi regime pushed Jewish emigration as a "solution" to the "Jewish question" in this period and were eager to promote the possibilities and benefits of Jewish emigration. Articles like "As an Emigrant in Shanghai" show how the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt played a role in this.
Emigration was a key topic in all editions of the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt in the period between Kristallnacht and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. After the failure of the Évian conference, the places where Jews could hope to flee became increasingly scarce and remote. The Chinese city of Shanghai under Japanese occupation was one of the few places that was open to Jews who managed to leave Europe and reach eastern Asia.3 These emigrants were mostly relatively wealthy and had been able to book around-the-world cruises that would make a stop in Shanghai. Many people also disembarked from these cruises in the Egyptian Mediterranean port of Alexandria in hopes of reaching Palestine.
The anonymous article featured here is a matter-of-fact early account of refugee life in a faraway land. It contains useful information about the cost of living in Shanghai, as well as interesting observations of a Central European middle-class man, reflecting the stereotypes and worldviews of the time.