Institute for Study of the Jewish Question

The Institute for Study of the Jewish Question or Institute for Research of the Jewish Question (Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage) was a Nazi party-political institution, founded in April 1939.[1][2] Conceived as a branch of a projected elite university (Hohe Schule) of the party under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg,[1][2] it officially opened in Frankfurt am Main in March 1941, during the Second World War,[3][1] and remained in existence until the end of the war, in 1945.

When the Institute was founded the official journal "Ziel und Weg" (i.e. "Goal and Way") of the National Socialist German Doctors' League (NSDÄB), which was led by Leonardo Conti, welcomed the new institution and demanded: "The Half-Jew has to be treated like the Full-Jew ... so that he is no danger for the protection of the racial value of the European peoples."[4]

The institute cooperated with Walter Frank's "Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany", especially with its "Research Department for the Jewish question" which was led by the demographer Dr. Friedrich Burgdörfer, who had published the pamphlet "Are the White Nations Dying? The Future of the White and the Colored Nations in the Light of Biological Statistics".[5]

The institute's journal "The World-Struggle. Monthly for Global Politics, Racial Culture and the Jewish Question in all Countries" (Der Weltkampf. Monatsschrift für Weltpolitik, völkische Kultur und die Judenfrage aller Länder) was edited by Ernst Graf zu Reventlow; contributors included Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch and Johann von Leers.

Its effective aim was information-gathering for propaganda purposes in support of anti-Semitic policy and, later, the Holocaust. The institute became the recipient of looted books and other cultural materials from Jewish libraries and institutions in the occupied territories.[6][7]

The Institute's main librarian was Dr. Johannes Pohl, a scholar of Hebrew and Jewish studies, former Roman Catholic Vicar and alumnus of the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy (2005). "Roads to Ratibor: Library and archival plunder by the Einsatz Reichsleiter Rosenberg." Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 19, no. 3. pp. 390-458; here: p. 406.
  2. 1 2 "Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (IEJ)" In: Glossary. Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Jewish Museum Berlin). Retrieved 2015-01-18.
  3. ↑ Alan E Steinweis (2009). Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press. p. 12, 149. ISBN 0674043995.
  4. ↑ "Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart", Volume 6: Publications; by Brigitte Mihok, de Gruyter, ISBN 3110258722, page 780; Original German:"Der Halbjude muss wie der Volljude behandelt ... werden, daß er keine Gefahr für die Erhaltung des rassischen Wertes der europäischen Völker bildet."
  5. ↑ Friedrich Burgdörfer, Sterben die weißen Völker? Die Zukunft der weißen und farbigen Völker im Lichte der biologischen Statistik, Munich, Callwey, 1934, 88 pages.
  6. ↑ Grimsted (2005), p. 406-407, and passim.
  7. ↑ Kenez, Peter (2013).The Coming of the Holocaust: From Antisemitism to Genocide. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 96


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