Timeline
Biblical Times: Jewish dyers and weavers enjoy high status within the temple.
Diaspora: Tailoring skills migrate with families, following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, 70 AD. Jews find a niche in the repair and trade of used clothing.
1295: Weavers of Berlin are forbidden to buy yarn from Jews.
1348: Jews are blamed for The Plague in Berlin and expelled from the city. It is the first of repeated expulsions and readmissions.
15th Century: Prussia forbids Jews to enter many professions, own land or join trade guilds. Jews earn a meager living trading in used clothes and tailoring.
1644: In Vienna, Christian tailors complain that Jewish tailors are making readytowear garments and employing Christian sewers.
1867: New Austrian constitution integrates Jews into society, giving them access to Austria's social, cultural and economic life.
1871: With German unification, Jews were granted full citizenship.
1881-1883 & 1903-1905: Pogroms force mass emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe to Western Europe, especially Berlin and Vienna.
19th Century: German Jews establish department stores and move into large scale manufacturing of clothing.
1920s: Berlin Jews are highly influential in fashion and culture.
1929: Jews own half of the German clothing manufacturing firms, especially in konfection, the readytowear branch of the industry.
1933: The first Nazi laws exclude Jews from the civil service, medical and legal professions, and the arts. Schools and universities are Aryanized. Jewish children are denied access to public education.
April 1, 1933: The first statedirected boycott against Jewish businesses is held.
May 1933: ADEFAThe Association of German Clothing Manufacturers is established under the Reich Ministry of Economy to Aryanize the fashion industry.
1933-1935: Later decrees exclude Jews from cultural life and journalism. Nazi party members and government employees are prohibited from buying in Jewish owned stores. Welfare recipients are not permitted to use their food stamps in Jewish stores. By 1935, newspapers are forbidden to publish advertisements for Jewish enterprises. Certain park benches in Berlin's " Tiergarten " are painted yellow, for Jewish use only.
September 1935, Nuremberg Laws: Jews become second class citizens and sexual relationships between Jews and nonJews are forbidden. Aryan women under age fortyfive are forbidden to work as domestics in Jewish households.
April 27, 1938: Goring orders the registration of all Jewish businesses, bank balances, accounts and real estate holdings. Sixty to seventy percent of Jewish businesses in Germany are liquidated.
November 9, 1938: Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") is the first statedirected riot against Jews, destroying Jewish businesses and synagogues. Following Kristallnacht, Jews were forced to pay for damages caused by the Nazi rioters.
1939: Clothing manufacturing is Judenrein (free of Jews).
Late 1941: The Final Solution, the Nazi policy to exterminate all Jews, begins. Concentration camp inmates are used as slave labour in weaving and dressmaking shops to fabricate uniforms and civilian clothing.
January 1942: Jews receive no clothing rations. All their warm clothing is confiscated.
Summer 1942: Jews forced to give up all suits, blouses, skirts, hats and undergarments as well as all fabric and wool remnants, including the cloth yellow stars required to be worn by Jews.
1942: Mass deportations of millions of Jews to the concentration camps provides the Nazis with warehouses of confiscated property, including clothing and other valuables.