Half Million German Jews Rendered Helpless By Nazis
• Can't Leave Country and
Living Conditions at Home Intolerabfe
MUNICH—The murder of Wilhelm Gust-loff, chief of the German Nazis domiciled in Switzerland, by a Jewish medical student named David Frankfurter, is being made the pretex for an intensification of the persecution of the Jews in Germany. Hitler himself has given the signal by stating at Gustloff's burial that he holds all the Jews in the world responsible for the murder. Dr. Goebbels advocates holding the Jews in Germany as hostages and to strike them down mercilessly if anything happens to any German abroad.
Swiss, Dutch, Czechoslovak and English newspapers hold the Nazis themselves responsible for Gustloff's murder, expressing amazement that it took three years of murder and torture of Jews in the Reich till one young Jew lost his mental balance and committed a murder in revenge.
Wherever the guilt lies, the Jews are already feeling the pressure. Not a single Jew in all the Reich dares to take the risk of being seen on the streets after dark. In the small communities Jewish families are virtually beleaguered in their homes. All shops run by "Aryans" have been forbidden by the local Nazi groups to sell them food. Yet from many quarters come reports of kindly persons leaving foodstuffs at backdoors and on window sills of Jewish homes.
Jewish parents in Munich dare not send their children to school because of the fear that they will be attacked by their schoolmates, as the teachers of all public schools have been instructed to explain the murder of GustloflE as the killing of "a noble, heroic German, one of the Fuehrer's best friends, by order of the Jews."
All Jewish social gatherings throughout the Reich have been forbidden until further notice. In Nuremburg the Nazi city council has gone so far as to propose a law whereby Jews must bury their dead at night so as not to offend the Aryans by their presence in the daytime on the streets.
• Olympics Stop Persecutions
Der Judenkenner, the new national anti-Semitic weekly appearing in Berlin (translated, the title means the Jew-knower or he who knows the Jews), advocates a distinctive garb for all Jews in the Reich, so that they may be
. spotted on first sight. This is going back to the middle ages, when Jews were compelled to
■ wear a large yellow disc on their clothes. What Der Stuermer, the most bitterly anti-Jewish paper, advocates I cannot say. Its tirades apropos of the GustlofF murder were so violent that the government confiscated this week's edition "for fear that visitors to the winter Olympic games get a wrong impression," it was said.
"If it were not for the Olympic games," says Dr. Goebbels* Angriff newspaper, "we would show the world what our feelings are. Now we must refrain from giving expression 'to our sorrow. All anti-Jewish signs and inscriptions, such as "Jew, do not let the sun go down on your head in this community," have been ordered temporarily removed, so that "no foreign atrocity mongers sneak in with visitors
By C0RAL8E VAN PAASSEN
In this story Coralie Van Paassen gives us an inside story of conditions in Germany. Both Coraiie and her husband, Pierre Van Paassen are non-Jewish but have always interested themselves in Jewish affairs. This article is published in the Jewish Western Bulletin by special permission of the Toronto Star.
to the Olympic Games and photograph or film the signs for anti-German propaganda abroad."
• Half Million Remain
Half a million Jews still remain in Germany and although 50,000 have emigrated and another 100,000 are virtually standing ready to leave at once, there is no place to go. The little dribble of immigration certificates granted by the Palestine government, five or six thousand at best every three months and these to be divided over Poland, Lithuania, Rou-mania, Yemen, the U.S.A., England, etc., makes no appreciable change in the German Jewish situation.
Jews may leave Germany, but they may not take their money out. No country, not even Palestine, takes in moneyless immigrants. There is a slight hope here today that the United States will take in some refugees be-
yond the usual immigration quota from Germany. Other countries, with empty spaces the size of empires, however, remain hermetically closed.
• Ghettos More Tolerable
I went to see a Jewish publicist today in Munich, who gave me the following summary of the situation: "We must leave the country. That is obvious and clear. The pressure against us will not relent as some had hoped after we were deprived of every share in the social, political and cultural life of the land in which we have lived for centuries; some families were here in the days of the Roman empire.
"We are not allowed to live even as a group of pariahs and untouchables. The middle-ages had the ghetto. The ghetto was more tolerable than our present condition. We had a social and religious life of our own in the ghetto's dark holes. There has been no massacre so far. But this is not the fault of the government. This is due to the fact that the German people really in their hearts do not hate us. All the high-pressured relentless uninterrupted excitation against us has not led to mass-murder yet. That does not mean it will not occur in the future. Slowly the ring is tightening around us. Today we are absolutely helpless. The slightest incident, at home or abroad—^and incidents may be easily provoked as we know— and the thing we all dread, but dare not name, may be over us. We are grateful to all who have tried to awaken the world's conscience. But that conscience is blunted. People are indifferent.
"There is absolutely no hope. We must quietly await our fate. Nobody in Germany can help us. I know there are schemes on foot to get us out. Many will leave, no doubt. But for most Jews now living in Germany, salvation will come too late. We are doomed and some of us know it. Only the youth has still hope. They see Palestine."
Reprmfed by special permission of The Toronto Star
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Just a Ring—
And America is Calling
Jerusalem—^This business of overseas telephoning is just a cinch acording to an aged Jerusalem merchant who has just had a call from America. His daughter, a Mrs. Weinstein of New York, who has not seen her father for a long time, had a sudden urge to hear his voice. It costs a minimum of $50 for the call, but what the heck?
Imagine the surprise of Mr. Reichman when he was told that morning by the sweet-voiced Hebrew exchange operator to "stand by" for New York that afternoon. The conversation lasted only ten minutes and was distinct throughout. He was overjoyed to be able to speak to his daughter 6,000 miles away. Luckily she got the right number. You don't always fare so well with local calls.
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9 Einstein Marks Fifty-seventh Birthday Quietly
Princeton, N.J.—^Alone except for members of his immediate family. Professor Albert Einstein observed his 57th birthday in his little house here without any celebration. He spent the day quietly at home.
9 Arnold Zweig Loses German Citizenship
Berlin—Arnold Zweig, world famous novelist who now lives in Palestine, headed the list of 25 more Germans who were deprived of their German citizenship in an official government decree.
Leonard Glickman, an eighteen-year-old Jewish boy, became the first recruit to enlist in the British Army in the reign of Edward VIII.
Man is like that vegetation which sprouts from the ground as a tender plant, and gradually grows until at last it withers away and perisheth.
The Jewish Western Bulletin, April 7th, 1936
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