Esther Clifford Testimony Analysis

Esther Clifford was born Esther Ebe in Munich, Germany in 1920. Her story is not dissimilar to those of other German Jews and yet remains important because of the distinct and fundamentally different pressures the Ebe family was affected by: both social and political changes. While the Nazi Party ultimately would make the extermination of European Jews a goal of the state, in the early years of the regime, the treatment of German Jews by their peers was as impactful as any new Nazi policy. Esther’s story helps to illustrate the effects that these two forces had on their lives, and how both the Nazi state and its citizens contributed to the building isolation of German Jews before deportations started— in Frankfurt, where Esther would grow up, they would begin in 1938.

Esther recalls that before 1933, her parents paid little serious attention to the growing popularity of Hitler. This was despite Hitler’s overt criticism of German Jews and their contributions to the nation— she recalls one of Hitler’s campaign messages being something along the lines of, “all we have to do is have a better life is to get rid of the Jews.” (Clifford S20) The Ebes treated the rise of Hitler with levity even, Esther recalls her father referring to him as a clown— der clown. “There were concerns, but not everybody was terribly worried because [we didn’t believe] that the Germans would let him get in power.” (Clifford S21) Esther alludes to a common “we” in this quote— that the German people, or even the more conscientious among them were as a whole too educated and influential and accomplished to allow the rise of someone as boorish as Hitler. Thus, Hitler’s takeover in 1933 came as a shock to the Ebes— Esther describes his rise to power as, “like waking up one morning and he was the leader… like overnight.” (Clifford S21) There was the belief even at this point that Hitler’s Chancellorship could not last, but it was also at this point that Esther began to notice changing social norms around Frankfurt— people knew that she was Jewish and were treating her differently.

At first, discrimination began subtly— she describes a Holiday tradition of her family where they would have Christian friends over during Hanukkah and their family would go to visit on Christmas. This sort of neighborly friendship stopped after 1933— non-Jewish families began to associate less and less with Jewish families out of fear for their own safety. She relates that “as soon as Hitler came on power, I could feel that they didn’t want to play with me anymore.” (Clifford S22) This type of discrimination— motivated by self-preservation— quickly gave way to more overt acts of antisemitism. Esther remembers seeing a bonfire outside of a local shopping mall where books written by Jewish authors were being burned. She remembers being “depressed… [by this] not so much [because] the grown-ups threw the books in the fire but the children [did as well] and I even recognized some of them.” (Clifford)

This immediate change in the treatment of German Jews was not limited only to Frankfurt. In the Spring of 1933, the local NSDAP group staged a city-wide boycott of all Jewish businesses. They claimed that “Germany will force Judah to his knees,” (Allen 260) and included in their pamphlets a list of all Jewish owned/run businesses In the early days of Hitler’s regime these instances of local discrimination began to become more common across Germany— certainly the attitude of the Nazi Party was instrumental in its rise, but many of these events happened independent of State-endorsed discrimination against Jews such as refusing to issue work permits and the changing of German school curriculums.

In fact, although Esther recalled the changes to their curriculum (and the presence of a Nazi officer in her classroom) as, “ominous” (Clifford S31), it was ultimately the mistreatment from fellow Germans that she found most impactful. She remembers the impact of roaming Hitler Youths on her commute to school, “I would see them come around the corner, [immediately] I would turn around or go on the other side… many times I came to school very late just to avoid the Hitler Juden.” (Clifford S27) Eventually, the Hitler Youth would come to recognize Esther and other Jewish children and would pelt them with rocks and yell insults as they walked home. By 1935, Esther and her brother would leave formal schooling to instead stay at home and work a trade. She recounts one incident that led to her parents making this decision— her brother, Leo Ebe was late returning home from a violin lesson— “when somebody wasn’t home on time, we always worried… but nobody would show it.” (Clifford S28) Esther left the house to find her brother being assaulted by a group of Hitler Youths; they had smashed his violin. These were the beginnings of drastic changes for the Ebe family— and they were ultimately the result of social, not political change. Certainly, the organization of the Hitler Youth fell upon the state to some degree, but for the actions of children and teenagers to already have such a salient impact on a family shows that German Jews faced significant pressure from both their peers and the government in combination.

Esther describes this practice— parents voluntarily removing children from formal schooling— as common by 1935 in Frankfurt, but not all Jewish students experienced the same treatment as she. In Northeim, a principal recounted having little trouble with discrimination in 1944, “There were never any difficulties with them in any way. The children graduated from school with the other children. And to the best of my knowledge, the other children never insulted or harassed them in any way.” (Allen 260) The principal also noted that “even pupils sympathetic to Nazism felt enough of a sense of solidarity with fellow-students of the Jewish faith so that they refused to sing the “Horst Wessel Song” in their presence.” (Allen 260) These regional differences in the ways that German Jews were treated in the early years of the Nazi regime show that although the state had created an environment where discriminating against Jewish people was allowed— even encouraged, the impact felt by Jewish families was more of a function of local political groups and individuals as opposed to the state.

The involvement of the Nazi Party in the lives of individual Jewish families would continue to grow. Esther recounts that in late 1936, her father’s work permit was not renewed on the grounds that he was Jewish. He would continue to work from the secrecy of their home for two more years before they were deported in 1938. The Ebes, like many other families, were now both socially isolated and financially fragile; the mistreatment they endured was the product of a confluence of pressure from other German citizens and the government itself.

Works Cited

Allen, William Sheridan. The Nazi Seizure of Power in a Single German Town, 1930 to 1935. Echo Point Books, 1962.

Clifford, Esther. “USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.” VHA Online, 2003, vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=22689&returnIndex=14.

Gordon Goodwin