The census of 1933 showed that there were only 499,682 Jews in the whole German Reich, Wirtschaft und Statistik, statistical organ of the government, declared, adding that since that time the number of Jews must have decreased still further as a result of “emigration and excess of mortality.” The census was taken on July 16, 1933.
In 1933. the paper wrote, the Jews constituted .77 of one per cent as compared with .9 of one per cent in 1925. In the same period the total population of Germany increased by 4.5 per cent, while the Jewish population diminished by 11.46 per cent. In Prussia alone. the excess of deaths over births among the Jews was 15,000. In addition several thousand Jews were converted to other faiths.
“The rest of the decrease,” the government paper wrote, “is to be attributed to emigration and re-emigration to those countries from which foreign Jews originally came to Germany, a movement which began with the economic crisis of 1927.
“In Bavaria, the Jewish population in 1933 was 41,939, a reduction of 14.6 per cent as compared with 1925. The largest decrease in the Jewish population was in the smaller cities and rural districts. In Brunswick for instance, the number of Jews decreased 33.03 per cent. In Mecklenburg, the decrease amounted to 28.71 per cent.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.