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The article examines the influence of sudden oppression on a racial minority. In the article, the author focuses the discussion around the German Jewry group. While other groups have grown up as racial minorities and are thus more or less adjusted to their situation, this group has been more or less integrated and assimilated, and has later become the object of sudden oppression. German Jewry can be regarded as a single group since 1933 in so far as its members were subjected to similar experiences after the onset of discrimination. The members of this group were mostly recruited from families, which had been assimilated for at least two or three generations. Their attitude toward the other Jewish groups was uninterested or neutral. They often exaggerated or overemphasized their patriotism and loyalty to Germany, both traits probably indicating a certain remainder of insecurity concerning their position and a desire to stress the fact of their assimilation. The first principal effect of the beginning of discrimination of the group was economic oppression.

The article discusses the problems of cultural assimilation of roughly eight million immigrants of German cultural background in Western Germany. The problem started because of an agreement for transferring Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria. The former nationals of the German Reich mainly from east of the Oder-Neisse line, ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and the 'Swabians' from south-east Europe--represent about 95% of the German refugee population in Western Germany. In spite of the diversity of their cultural and social background, their occupational structure and their historical traditions, in their relationships with the indigenous population they are one solid group. A feeling of solidarity between immigrants belonging to different nations were seen in the refugee camps. The causes for this were their destitution, the unfavorable housing conditions, less employment opportunities and unwelcoming behavior by the natives. The refugee feels that he is treated by the new community as a second class citizen and the hope to return to their homeland makes him resist the cultural assimilation in the new place.