Aryanisation

Anchored in the Propaganda Nazi which claimed the existence of a higher race known as Aryan, the euphemism aryanisation indicates the total expropriation of the Juifs in Germany like in Austria for the period of the Nazisme, and by extension the spoliations endured by the Juifs of all Europe occupied during the Shoah. In a broader direction, are also arranged under the term “aryanisation” of other aspects of the exclusion of the Jews by the Nazis, such as their elimination of the cultural life or scientist.

To steal the Jews under IIIe Reich

Since January 1st 1938, any marketing activity (retail business, craft industry, any offer of goods and services) was prohibited to the Jews. Until the autumn of this same year, more half of some 100.000 companies of Jewish owners are seized. Those which remain then are liquidated or given by coercion to new nonJewish owners (thus “aryanized”), in accordance with the “Decree for the elimination of the Jews of the German commercial life” of November 12th, 1938 ( Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben ), whose Hermann Göring was the prime-contractor. The products of expropriation being confiscated with the profit of Reich, the rightful owners were found ruined for the majority. Moreover, all the Jewish employees are laid off.

Some of the “aryanized” companies, which were generally aligned well below their right value, strongly contributed to the economic advancement in the Après-guerre, which gives a taste of flight to famous “the Economic miracle”.

Aryanisation in occupied Europe

A form of aryanisation " spontanée" existed everywhere in Europe, when after the arrest of the Jews, a certain number of their neighbors did not hesitate to plunder their houses and their apartments. At the time of large the Raid of Vel' d' Hiv' (July 1942), the young person Maurice Rajsfus, escaped of the place of internment and income in the family apartment empties, discovered the caretaker plundering it.

With Amsterdam, from where were off-set without return 66.000 Dutch Jews, the Puls company cut a disaster reputation quickly while coming to move the goods of the victims of their empty apartments. The verb " pulsen" entered even the current language.

Aryanisation in France

The term is also used by historians about the spoliation of the French Jews, carried out jointly and jointly by the German occupant and the Régime of Vichy. It made following the law of July 22nd, 1942 of the French State, which itself made following " the aryanisation" decided by the Germans with the autumn 1940 in occupied zone. Neglected a long time, the spoliation of the Jewish goods became a research field very plowed as from the years 1990.

The dispossession of the Jews was from the start registered in the schedule of conditions of the General police station to the questions Jewish, created on March 29th, 1941 and directed by Xavier Vallat then Darquier de Pellepoix. As of the summer 1940, the various German services also actively got busy to conceal the Jewish goods. The ambassador Otto Abetz benefitted thus from the Exode to make hand-low on the collections of art of the Jewish owners absent.

The historian Henry Rousso estimates at 10.000 the number of aryanized companies ( Vichy. The event, memory, the history , p.148 sq.). One counted 50.000 nominations of an administrator of Jewish goods under the Occupation. As of 1940,50% of the Jewish community was private normal means of existence, under the terms of the laws of Vichy prohibiting the exercise of many trades the Jews as well as German ordinances - figures quoted by Olivier Wieviorka (" Political life under Vichy" , in the started again Republic , to dir. S. Berstein).

Aryanized French companies: Galleries Lafayette, editions Nathan, Calmann-Levy, Cluny, Ferenczy and Delage. The aryanisation touched also the press, the cinema, the theaters (thus the Théâtre of the Ambassadors to Paris, the Sarah-Berhardt theater being renamed as for him Théatre of the City). It did not save industry: with Saint-Denis, for example, according to the historian Daniele Fraboulet, 10% of the chemistry of this important industrial town were touched by the dispossession of the Jews. It extended well beyond from a simple will of " to reduce the juive" influence; , that propaganda anti-semite had proposed well before the war: in the Parisian East, one aryanisa also innumerable and extremely modest shops of hairstyle, tailors or of frippier… At the end of 1941, the Germans struck the French Jewish community of a fine exorbitant of a billion Francs, to pay inter alia the sale of Jewish goods, and managed by the Deposit and consignment office.

The chairman of the General society, Henri Ardant, played a driving role in the aryanisation of the banks. The company Michelin was honoured to boycott all the meetings relating to the dispossession of the Jewish goods.

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