Emigration
Emigration is the (final) departure to another country, for political, religious or other reasons. There is a difference between emigration and flight, but it is difficult to indicate where the dividing line between the two lies. Refugees are people who have fled from mortal danger or violence, or the threat of these.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, many citizens left Germany for fear of persecution. Among them not only Jews, but also political opponents and dissenters, including many writers, artists and journalists.
Developments in Germany after 1933 triggered several waves of Jewish emigration from that country. Around the proclamation of the Nuremberg racial laws in September 1935, the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, the annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia in October 1938 and Kristallnacht in November 1938, there were waves of large groups of refugees.
Between 1933 and 1941, about 280,000 Jews fled Nazi Germany and 130,000 fled Hitler-annexed Austria. That was half of the total Jewish population of these countries. Many sought refuge in surrounding countries.[1] Several tens of thousands ended up in the Netherlands.[2] For many, however, this was just a stopover on their way to safer places.
Footnotes
- ^ Frank Caestecker & Bob Moore (eds.), Refugees from Nazi Germany and the liberal European states, New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2010; Deborah Dwork & Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight from the Reich: refugee Jews, 1933-1945, New York, NY: Norton, 2009.
- ^ Bob Moore, Refugees from Nazi Germany in the Netherlands, 1933-1940, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986.