As far as I have noticed, Jews are not very different from other Europeans. How could the Nazis determine who is Jewish if he has been living in Germany since birth, speaks German and has a German name?
Firstly, the observation about the slight difference between Jews and Europeans does not correspond to reality. Yes, the descendants of Ashkenazim (I use the plural, it is customary to say "Ashkenaz/Ashkenazim") do have a "European" appearance (especially if they are non-religious Jews wearing ordinary clothes for the Western world, speaking the languages of their countries of residence, etc.). But in fact, because of more than two thousand years of life in the diaspora (or "scattering", as this word is translated into Russian), many ethnic groups of Jews have appeared and exist, which are united by a common history, self-perception of Jews and traditions, but at the same time their appearance can be very diverse, from black Egyptian Jews "Falasha" and similar to their Hindu neighbors "Beni Israel" to Central Asian Jews indistinguishable from their Uzbek neighbors.
As for how the Nazis could determine who is Jewish if "a person has been living in Germany since birth, speaks German and has a German name," then this is not difficult - a person born in Germany has a passport, there are documents about his parents in the archives of the institution that issued him, in churches and other religious communities - metric books, according to which it was easy to reconstruct family history. In addition, at that time, a person most often belonged to a religious community in the country, and government agencies recorded the official religious affiliation of a person (even if he did not believe in anything), and his religious roots could be traced, especially if due to circumstances in accordance with the laws A bloodline check was required on the purity of the roof. As you know, since the adoption of these laws in Germany, marriages and sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans were prohibited, therefore, in order to enter into a marriage union, the bride and groom had to provide information about their origin. Due to the developed bureaucracy in the German states, this was not difficult. By the beginning of 1933, about 500 thousand people lived in Germany. Jews (believing Jews, baptized Catholics or Protestants, non-Believers), they all had documents in which the letter "J" was affixed in 1935 - it was the verification of documents that was the main way to determine the ethnicity of their owner.
The common tales about "take off his pants", as you know, are not relevant to what was happening - just because the removal of foreskin in men is common not only among Jews, but also among Muslims, some groups of Christians and is a fairly common surgical intervention. In this logic, a German born in the United States and who decided to repatriate to the Reich during Nazi times could very likely be called a Jew - simply because at the beginning of the 20th century, circumcision of boys there began to be promoted as a means of solving the "problems" of puberty and is still very widespread (up to the stereotype "if you see in the sauna / shower/ on the nudist beach of the circumcised is an American"). Until recently, circumcision (the surgical name for the operation to remove the foreskin) was the only way to cure phimosis (a disease that causes not only discomfort during sexual contact, but also potentially dangerous to men's health due to the impossibility of normal hygiene of the genitals). There are people who voluntarily perform such an operation for themselves - to expand their sensual sensations (there is such a prejudice among many men). Therefore, the presence of circumcision did not prove anything at all - some party functionary or a senior SS Fuhrer with a proven "Aryan" pedigree from 1650 could well have been the owner of a penis devoid of foreskin simply because he was operated on as a child from phimosis.
The definition of a person's "Jewishness" by appearance also did not give any guarantees of the truth of the conclusion. Yes, German "race scientists" (who can now be called simply charlatans) have developed and created a giant toolkit for determining race and the "shares" of a particular race in a person based on his appearance, but this in practice led to some kind of phantasmagoric confusion and a lot of unfair or, conversely, idiotic decisions. The story of Corporal Werner Goldberg, a Micheling of the 1st degree, whose photograph was distributed as a snapshot of a man with an exemplary appearance of an "Aryan", speaks for itself, but there were a lot of such stories. German journalist Theo Sommer, who in his youth was a pupil of one of the "elite" Nazi schools (this network of schools was created by the organizational head of the NSDAP and the head of the German Workers' Front Robert Ley and was based in four "order castles" - Vogelsang, Sonthofen, Kressingsee and Marienburg) recalled how a boy could not enroll in such a school "with a square head like old Hindenburg." The fact is that people with such a skull structure as that of the Reichspresident Field Marshal (as well as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck) were considered to belong to the so-called. The "Falid race" is a kind of subspecies of the European race, which was, in the opinion of Nazi racologists, "almost Aryan". It is impossible to say what did not suit the "racologist" of the Order castle during the medical examination of this boy - most Germans at such examinations (who brought a bunch of documents and extracts from metric books, where several generations of purely German relatives were recorded) were most often declared "harmonious carriers of traits of different races." In this system, a person of European appearance (with very widely varying features) with documents certifying his "Aryan" origin (and this was not necessarily German - citizens of the Reich of Polish, Russian, Czech and other European origins were recognized as "Aryans") could easily obtain the necessary conclusion even in the absence of foreskin.
In these circumstances, the best way to get rid of such problems was, perhaps, to create a "new identity" for oneself - making fake documents in someone else's name, creating a new pedigree for oneself, etc. In this sense, even some features of appearance that may be characteristic are stereotypical for Jews (I can say for myself - for me, an almost unconditional sign of a person having Jewish ancestors from Eastern Europe is the characteristic outline of the lower lip, as if constantly moistened with saliva, just such a lower lip was also that of Corporal Goldberg with the famous photos, some of my relatives had the same lip, through whom I could get the status of a Micheling 2nd degree with my Jewish great-grandfather in the German Reich) - the shape of the nose, a large-boned physique, slightly protruding lips, thick hair (as the Jews were caricatured in Julius Streicher's "Stormtrooper") could have been completely ignored by the "racologist". So the only way to verify a person's Jewish origin in the conditions that you yourself proposed - a person lives in Germany, speaks German and has a German name - is to check his documents and relevant archives that have preserved information about a person's ancestors (after all, without documents, including origin, it is impossible not only to conclude marriage, but also to rent or buy a house, get a job, get an allowance, join an organization - all German associations up to the "German Society of Budgie Lovers" - an absolutely real case is that you were subjected to the "Gleisshaltung", Nazi unification, and you could join the SS, even the voluntary society of firefighters, only by providing information about your origin, to receive cards for food or consumer goods, finally introduced in 1938, etc.). All other signs, as you could see from my story - circumcision of the foreskin, facial features, physique - did not give any guaranteed result and, depending on the circumstances, could be certified as a "harmonious combination of signs of several races."
As for how the Germans acted in such cases in other countries and in the occupied territories, this is a separate huge topic that requires special discussion.
Firstly, the observation about the slight difference between Jews and Europeans does not correspond to reality. Yes, the descendants of Ashkenazim (I use the plural, it is customary to say "Ashkenaz/Ashkenazim") do have a "European" appearance (especially if they are non-religious Jews wearing ordinary clothes for the Western world, speaking the languages of their countries of residence, etc.). But in fact, because of more than two thousand years of life in the diaspora (or "scattering", as this word is translated into Russian), many ethnic groups of Jews have appeared and exist, which are united by a common history, self-perception of Jews and traditions, but at the same time their appearance can be very diverse, from black Egyptian Jews "Falasha" and similar to their Hindu neighbors "Beni Israel" to Central Asian Jews indistinguishable from their Uzbek neighbors.
As for how the Nazis could determine who is Jewish if "a person has been living in Germany since birth, speaks German and has a German name," then this is not difficult - a person born in Germany has a passport, there are documents about his parents in the archives of the institution that issued him, in churches and other religious communities - metric books, according to which it was easy to reconstruct family history. In addition, at that time, a person most often belonged to a religious community in the country, and government agencies recorded the official religious affiliation of a person (even if he did not believe in anything), and his religious roots could be traced, especially if due to circumstances in accordance with the laws A bloodline check was required on the purity of the roof. As you know, since the adoption of these laws in Germany, marriages and sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans were prohibited, therefore, in order to enter into a marriage union, the bride and groom had to provide information about their origin. Due to the developed bureaucracy in the German states, this was not difficult. By the beginning of 1933, about 500 thousand people lived in Germany. Jews (believing Jews, baptized Catholics or Protestants, non-Believers), they all had documents in which the letter "J" was affixed in 1935 - it was the verification of documents that was the main way to determine the ethnicity of their owner.
The common tales about "take off his pants", as you know, are not relevant to what was happening - just because the removal of foreskin in men is common not only among Jews, but also among Muslims, some groups of Christians and is a fairly common surgical intervention. In this logic, a German born in the United States and who decided to repatriate to the Reich during Nazi times could very likely be called a Jew - simply because at the beginning of the 20th century, circumcision of boys there began to be promoted as a means of solving the "problems" of puberty and is still very widespread (up to the stereotype "if you see in the sauna / shower/ on the nudist beach of the circumcised is an American"). Until recently, circumcision (the surgical name for the operation to remove the foreskin) was the only way to cure phimosis (a disease that causes not only discomfort during sexual contact, but also potentially dangerous to men's health due to the impossibility of normal hygiene of the genitals). There are people who voluntarily perform such an operation for themselves - to expand their sensual sensations (there is such a prejudice among many men). Therefore, the presence of circumcision did not prove anything at all - some party functionary or a senior SS Fuhrer with a proven "Aryan" pedigree from 1650 could well have been the owner of a penis devoid of foreskin simply because he was operated on as a child from phimosis.
The definition of a person's "Jewishness" by appearance also did not give any guarantees of the truth of the conclusion. Yes, German "race scientists" (who can now be called simply charlatans) have developed and created a giant toolkit for determining race and the "shares" of a particular race in a person based on his appearance, but this in practice led to some kind of phantasmagoric confusion and a lot of unfair or, conversely, idiotic decisions. The story of Corporal Werner Goldberg, a Micheling of the 1st degree, whose photograph was distributed as a snapshot of a man with an exemplary appearance of an "Aryan", speaks for itself, but there were a lot of such stories. German journalist Theo Sommer, who in his youth was a pupil of one of the "elite" Nazi schools (this network of schools was created by the organizational head of the NSDAP and the head of the German Workers' Front Robert Ley and was based in four "order castles" - Vogelsang, Sonthofen, Kressingsee and Marienburg) recalled how a boy could not enroll in such a school "with a square head like old Hindenburg." The fact is that people with such a skull structure as that of the Reichspresident Field Marshal (as well as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck) were considered to belong to the so-called. The "Falid race" is a kind of subspecies of the European race, which was, in the opinion of Nazi racologists, "almost Aryan". It is impossible to say what did not suit the "racologist" of the Order castle during the medical examination of this boy - most Germans at such examinations (who brought a bunch of documents and extracts from metric books, where several generations of purely German relatives were recorded) were most often declared "harmonious carriers of traits of different races." In this system, a person of European appearance (with very widely varying features) with documents certifying his "Aryan" origin (and this was not necessarily German - citizens of the Reich of Polish, Russian, Czech and other European origins were recognized as "Aryans") could easily obtain the necessary conclusion even in the absence of foreskin.
In these circumstances, the best way to get rid of such problems was, perhaps, to create a "new identity" for oneself - making fake documents in someone else's name, creating a new pedigree for oneself, etc. In this sense, even some features of appearance that may be characteristic are stereotypical for Jews (I can say for myself - for me, an almost unconditional sign of a person having Jewish ancestors from Eastern Europe is the characteristic outline of the lower lip, as if constantly moistened with saliva, just such a lower lip was also that of Corporal Goldberg with the famous photos, some of my relatives had the same lip, through whom I could get the status of a Micheling 2nd degree with my Jewish great-grandfather in the German Reich) - the shape of the nose, a large-boned physique, slightly protruding lips, thick hair (as the Jews were caricatured in Julius Streicher's "Stormtrooper") could have been completely ignored by the "racologist". So the only way to verify a person's Jewish origin in the conditions that you yourself proposed - a person lives in Germany, speaks German and has a German name - is to check his documents and relevant archives that have preserved information about a person's ancestors (after all, without documents, including origin, it is impossible not only to conclude marriage, but also to rent or buy a house, get a job, get an allowance, join an organization - all German associations up to the "German Society of Budgie Lovers" - an absolutely real case is that you were subjected to the "Gleisshaltung", Nazi unification, and you could join the SS, even the voluntary society of firefighters, only by providing information about your origin, to receive cards for food or consumer goods, finally introduced in 1938, etc.). All other signs, as you could see from my story - circumcision of the foreskin, facial features, physique - did not give any guaranteed result and, depending on the circumstances, could be certified as a "harmonious combination of signs of several races."
As for how the Germans acted in such cases in other countries and in the occupied territories, this is a separate huge topic that requires special discussion.
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