During World War I, the German government carried out a census of Jews to prove that german Jews weren’t pulling their weight in the war effort. What they found out instead was that Jews were overrepresented on the front lines.

Judenzählung

Judenzählung (German for “Jewish census”) was a measure instituted by the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) in October 1916, during the upheaval of World War I. Designed to confirm accusations of the lack of patriotism among German Jews, the census disproved the charges, but its results were not made public. However, its figures were leaked out, being published in an antisemitic brochure. The Jewish authorities, who themselves had compiled statistics which considerably exceeded the figures in the brochure, were not only denied access to the government archives but also informed by the Republican Minister of Defense that the contents of the antisemitic brochure were correct. In the atmosphere of growing antisemitism, many German Jews saw “t… Continue Reading (4 minute read)