Speaker: Dr Joseph Hajdu - Author of ‘Berlin Today’ and retired faculty member of political geography at Deakin University

Free event; all welcome but please RSVP to: [email protected]

There had been a Jewish presence in Berlin since the 17th Century, they had been drawn to the city by its degree of religious tolerance. Its commercial and industrial growth from 1850 onwards accelerated the movement of Jews to Berlin so that by 1930 every twentieth Berliner was either fully or partially Jewish.

Their role in banking, finance, retailing, law, medicine, publishing and the press, not to mention the visual and performing arts was out of all proportion to their relative number in the overall population. The members of the Jewish community were socially and  culturally highly diverse in the extent to which they practiced their religion and the extent to which they sought to immerse themselves in mainstream Berlin society. The year 1933 changed everything. From the very beginning
Hitler and his Nazi regime set to implementing a staged policy of excluding German Jews.

Read more in the flyer below.