Before 1933, Jews had lived in Germany for about 1600 years. Ironically it was there at the beginning of the 20th Century that Jews were best able to participate in the mainstream of intellectual and social life. Between 1905 and 1931, the Nobel Prize in various scientific fields was awarded to ten German Jews. Within this long-standing German Jewish community there were now strong movements towards religious reform and assimilation into the wider society, including through intermarriage.

German Jewish women athletes in Berlin, 1935

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 there were 500 000 Jews living in Germany, constituting less than 1% of the population. A third of them lived in Berlin, another 40% in other big cities. 60% engaged in trade and commerce, 25% in industry and manual trades, 12% in public service and the professions, especially law and medicine.

German Jews were centrist politically, non-Zionist (unlike their Eastern European counterparts), and overall, very 'German'. Over 80% of them were German born. They felt tremendously connected to the society of their birth and contributed greatly to its artistic and cultural life. Many, if not most, defined themselves as 'Germans citizens of the Jewish persuasion', rather than 'German Jews'. This was the reason that so many of them refused to leave Germany as the Nazi movement gained momentum; they felt that antisemitism was a 'given' in European history, but never believed that they would fall victim to it themselves. After all, they reasoned, Germany was their country and they were good Germans first and foremost. As Gerald Levy, a German survivor now living in Australia explains, "I didn't feel like I was Jewish as a nationality; it never really occurred to me…My father and his generation all felt that the whole episode of Nazism was just an aberration and would go away."