Foreign Nationals in Three Port Cities

Durning WWII Hamburg was the second-largest city in Germany and held the fourth-largest German Jewish community. Many Eastern European Jews arriving in the city, particularly Jews from Poland, found a German Jewish population that was integrated and assimilated into secular city life. Despite being fully integrated into the life and society of the city, Jews living in Hamburg began to experience Nazi persecution immediately following Hitler’s rise to power with anti-Jewish boycotts and the removal of Jews from government, health, and university positions. Many of Hamburg’s Jews fled the city, especially after the Kristallnacht Pogrom, but a significant number of German and Eastern European Jews remained with many more flocking to the city with recorded birthplaces in other German towns. Deportations from Hamburg began in late 1941 to ghettoes and camps in the East. The majority of Jews deported from Hamburg were of Polish origin. Of the 16,885 Jews living in Hamburg before the War, thousands fled the city, around 7,800 were murdered, and only 1,800 remained in Hamburg by 1943. [1]

Amsterdam received the highest influx of German and Polish Jewish refugees particularly after Kristallnacht and the invasion of Poland, and thus reflects the largest number of foreign nationals living in the city. Amsterdam had a demographic of Eastern European Jews similar to Hamburg, but it was also home to Western European Jews from France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. Germany occupied the Netherlands in May of 1940, and at the time, Jews made up 10% of Amsterdam’s population, and an estimated 10,000 of these Jews were refugees who had arrived in the 30s. [2]. In response to the occupation, many of Amsterdam’s Jews attempted to escape the Netherlands to Britain, but it was difficult to pass through France and Belgium, and only a few managed to reach Switzerland and or Spain. The first deportations occurred in February of 1941 when Jews were arrested and sent to Buchenwald and then to Mauthausen. The Netherlands was unique in that many Dutch citizens refused to collaborate and even initiated strikes against the deportations and anti-Jewish measures. In January of 1942, foreign and stateless Jews began to be sent to the Westerbork transit camp, but the mass deportations to the killing centers Auschwitz and Sobibor began in July of that year. By April of 1943, all of the Netherlands’ Jews were allowed to live in the Vught and Westerbork camps in Amsterdam. At least 80% of the Jews in Amsterdam were murdered by the time the Netherlands was liberated by Canadian forces in 1945.

Foreign nationals living in Marseille had greater success in leaving Europe. While France was occupied in 1940, Marseille remained the only large port in the Free Zone open to the rest of the world. As a port connecting areas across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Marseille was a significant port that held not only Jews from Western and Eastern Europe, but Jews from the French colonies in North Africa as well as from Southern Europe. For people from countries experiencing Nazi persecution, Marseille became a transfer site before emigration outside of Europe. Marseille accepted significant populations of German Jewish political activists, intellectuals, and artists, and it was overall a rescue site for many of Europe’s intellectuals such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt. The success of these stateless Jews leaving Europe perhaps reflects in Marseille’s smaller numbers of German and Eastern European Jews who are recorded as having been deported and murdered. However, Marseille’s sanctuary status did not remain, as Nazi control over Southern France tightened, and internment camps such as Camp des Milles became sites of arrest and deportation. The Nazis reached Marseille in November of 1942 and besieged the city until early 1943. At this time, Jewish families and refugees in Marseille were transferred to camps such as Drancy then deported to Auschwitz. Deportations from France would continue until France’s liberation in the late summer of 1944.

The overall population of these port cities during the war remains difficult to calculate as port cities are characterized by the large-scale movement of both goods and people. Within this data visualization, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Marseille each have distinct features determined by both prewar characteristics and the history of Nazi persecution in the regions.

Each city, however, experienced the mass migration of native Jews fleeing with the rise of the Nazi party and an influx of Jewish foreign nationals during the war. These cities, which initially served as areas of persecution for some and sanctuary for others, ultimately became traps in which the Nazis were able to control concentrated populations of Jews to be arrested, rounded up, and sent for murder.

References:  

[1]  Yad Vashem, “Hamburg,” Shoah Resource Center.

[2] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Amsterdam,” The Holocaust Encyclopedia.

[3] Yad Vashem, “The Netherlands,” Shoah Resource Center.

[4] Musée d’Histoire de Marseille, “From Refuge to Trap,” Ports of Exile Home Harbours.