Documents 

At the turn of the twentieth century, a late Industrial Revolution led to a Golden Age in the German entertainment business, during this time the German Circus gained a reputation as the leader in the industry. There were three dominant Jewish families that factored into Germany’s success in the field, they were: the Blumenfeld, Strassburger and Lorch families. These circuses saw their apex in the inter-war years. The Blumenfeld and Lorch Circuses filed for bankruptcy at the onset of the economic downturn, as did the vast majority of German circuses. However, in the case of these Jewish circuses the question of the effect of German anti-Semitism must be examined. The Strassburgers were forced to sell their circus to their competitor Ring Mistress Paula Busch, in order to Aryanize their business in accordance to the Nazi Government in 1935. The coming years destroyed the Jewish circus in Germany. Only a few survived the atrocity of the Holocaust, but the Jewish circus failed to continue. This thesis focuses on the Lorch family and their experience in the Holocaust while contextualizing their story in the history of Circus Lorch, from conception, through the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism, to their ultimate destruction. Two Lorch brothers were arrested and transported to French internment camps, they wrote letters to their older siblings in hiding in Belgium. The bulk of primary resources for this project is based on these letters, which unfold the Lorch family experience in the Holocaust. Their experiences are typical of a German Jewish family, for example, some of the siblings stayed in their hometown, some fled, some hid, and still most perished in the Holocaust. But their circus network made the Lorch experience unique. The circus culture and network that the Lorches integrated themselves changed their experience in the Holocaust. Some of the siblings even hid within the circus, performing throughout the war, while others, like the brothers in the French camps, received food, money and other goods from the European network of circus people. The measure of success was not survival, rather it was the willingness of the circus community to help despite the danger presented by rising tides of Nazism. The Lorch experience in the Holocaust was singular, each family’s story leads to a better understanding of the history of the Holocaust.