Jewish émigrés faced pressure not to testify against Nazi-era academics

Evidence

Denazification proceedings are going on at the moment against Rector Platzhoff. The chairman of the court has written to tell me that he had heard I was here, and asks me to come and see him and assist him with the matter. But I shall have to give serious consideration to the question whether I should appear as the only real prosecution witness and make an enemy of the university. There is honour but no advantage in such affairs. There is no shortage of people who were pigs just as much as Herr Platzhoff was, and who have long since been allowed to go back to educating German youth. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1713

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A vivid first-person case of the impossible position of the returning exile: asked to be the prosecution witness in a denazification trial against the university that drove him out, knowing his testimony means making a permanent enemy, and that far worse people have already been quietly reinstated.
• XREF: connects to: Nazi purges targeted academia out of ideological hatred, not political necessity — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 522; Nazi decrees stripped Jewish academics of teaching rights step by step — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 634; Horkheimer and Adorno opposed ex-Nazi sociologists through private academic maneuvering, not public critique. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2316