Neither Black Nor White: Intermarried Jews and Mischlinge during the Third Reich

Vocabulary

o       Privileged Intermarriage: This classification was given to intermarried couples that consisted of a Jewish wife and a Christian husband. This classification also referred to intermarried couples which raised their children as Christian (Aschheim 82).

o       Simple Intermarriage: This term referred to an intermarried couple with a Jewish husband, or a couple who brought up their children in the Jewish faith (Aschheim 82).

Herbert Goering, head of Germany’s four-year economic plan, and Nikolaus Horthy coined the terms “simple” and “privileged” intermarriages in December 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht (Stoltzfus 102).

o       Rassenshande: Racial shame, referred to Aryans having intimate relations with Jews

o       Judenhaus: Housing designated specifically for Jews; Jews were required to move into such housing after April 1939, when the Law of Racial Relations was passed.

o       Schutzjuden: Jews who were placed on “protected lists,” either by Hitler himself, or because of their special contributions to society.

o       Mischlinge: Half Jews. See Nuremberg Laws for a more detailed description.

o       Geltungsjuden: A category of Mischlinge. See Nuremberg Laws.

o       Lebensborn: Literally “spring of life.” A program initiated by Heinrich Himmler on December 12, 1935; it was meant to create a pure race of Aryans by allowing German officers to make children with pre-selected racially pure German women. Often, in the name of Lebensborn, children from “unfit” families were kidnapped to be “germanized” and raised by Nazis (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org).

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A kidnapping of a child for the Lebensborn project