Retired Major Friedrich Solmitz was a middle class conservative nationalist from Hamburg. When the Nazis seized power he volunteered for and received a position working in Air Raid Protection for his block.
In this position he did everything the regime asked of him including implementing the “Aryan paragraph” which meant excluding all Jews from any positions of responsibility.
In 1934 he wrote a letter to his local #Nazi party leader complaining about the repeated and direct criticism Solmitz regularly received from the leader. Solmitz could not understand why he was so often singled out for such harsh criticism.
…. Solmitz was Jewish.
I think about him a lot.
Patrick
in reply to Patrick • • •Sensitive content
This man and his family welcomed the Nazi seizure of power and greatly admired #Hitler.
By the time Solmitz wrote his letter to the local party leader, Jews were banned from the civil service, banned from owning farmland or engaging in agriculture, had their university enrolments severely limited, Jewish doctors were not permitted to treat “aryans”, they were excluded from full citizenship rights, and a process of denaturalisation had already begun. Not to mention the staggering amounts of violence faced by Jews in the streets.
Yet still, Solmitz still could not understand why his local Nazi leader hated him so much.
And he wasn’t a complete outlier. Many conservative, nationalist Jews in Germany supported the Third Reich as it came to power.
I wonder how many modern incarnations of Friedrich Solmitz there are in the world right now.