Institute of European Studies

The law on Foreign Exchange Control, which had been passed as early as 1931 in oder to fight the scarcity of foreign currency, was used to impede the transfer of Jewish property abroad immediately after the Nazis came to power. However, only from 1935 on, legislation on foreign currency aimed at the limitation of Jewish property transfers. After Reinhard Heydrich, in his capacity as the head of the foreign currency investigation office, intervened in the legislation from late 1936 on, the foreign currency laws in very short time were expanded into an instrument of discrimination for Jewish emigration. Even before the pogrom of November 1938, it prevented nearly every transfer of property abroad if the owners were Jewish.