A HARRIED RACE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 302, 17 September 1936, Page 3

A HARRIED RACE

German Persecution of the Jews __* ' Hi' i.-.-r SCHOOL PUPILS NEXT The following extracts are translated from an article in the Nazi monthly, “Der Weltkampf,” in which Dr, Walter Scharrer urges the complete exof Jewish pupils from the German secondary schools. At present a percentage of 1.5 Jewish children is legally permitted, but Dr. Scharrer complains that “various administrative regulations have nullified this,” and he goes on to explain how a higher percentage can be achieved: First, every school may take one Jewish pupil annually, and, as on the average 25 to 33 Aryan children’ are admitted each year, taking an average of ell schools, that makes a proportion of three or four per cent Secondly, Jewish pupils already in the school may remain if the total number does not exceed five per cent. And a whole heap of Jews are not affected by tjiese restrictions, such as the children of ex-servicemen who served in the frontline trenches, and cross-breeds, if they are only half Jews. Moreover,’the headmaster is wholly unable to Insist on proof that the ex-serviceman’s papers are genuine, and, up to quite recently, was. not even able to insist on proof of Aryan origin being produced at the time of admission. This has recently been rectified. Nevertheless, it can happen that a school can have five per cent instead of 1.5 per cent Jewish pupils, taking into account those reckoned as such, and may have another five per cent or 10 per additional Jewish children outside the schedule. Thus one may find 15 per cent instead of the legal 1.5 per cent, and this is no rarity. Foiled by a Single Child. “If a complete purge is not to be hoped for,” the article continues, “we must at least ask that the 1.5 per cent be enforced without any exceptions whatsoever.” Then follows an illuminating passage on the reasons why a single Jewish child, however silent and sumbissive, is to be regarded ap-.a menace to the racial ideals of the Nazi movement;. But even more rigorous legislative measures would not strike at the root of our difficulties. Let us assume that even one Jewish pupil remained in a class, this single specimen is the stumbling block to proper National Socialist instruction. How can a class which includes a possibly in itself quite harmless Jewish child be brought to, a* proper pitch of racial pride and racial consciousness . How can such a class be rendered immune once and for all against Jewish sympathies, and how can it be enlightened about the unbroken series of crimes committed by world Jewry and Jewish Freemasonry? Both on tactical and educational grounds it is not always advisable to place Jewish pupils under disadvantages in class, to treat them roughly, to bully them, to keep on slanging them, or to give them bad reports. Meticulous correctness and painstaking justice have often proved more effective. ( . , The young teacher, consumed with zeal, unsheathes his sword and calls a. spade a spade. He quotes the Talmud, he refers to the stories about the Bible Patriarchs, seizes every opportunity for emphahising the criminal role played by Jews in politics, he posts up pictures from the “Stunner,” and combats the legend of so-called “decent Jew.” He misses no chance of instilling into the hearts of his children hatred and contempt for the foreign parasite. All this he does, arid yet, unless he is gifted with exceptional powers of carrying conviction, the result may too easily be exactly the opposite of what he intended. For at the farthest and hindmost desk sits a little Jewish urchin, the helpless target of all the attacks on world Jewry. He can make no defence, but sits there clenching his fists, and biting back his tears. Such a spectacle revolts the ever-chivalrous German spirit, and it may well be not the worst of his class comrades who, for this reason, feel moved to champion the cause of the persecuted. We arrive, therefore, at the conclusion that when a Jewish child is in the class a teacher must not go farther in his attacks than his pupils are prepared to follow him. As for the socalled “decent” teacher, a man encrusted with all the prejudices of yesterday’s pedagogic principles, he, under such circumstances, will make no progress at all. Unlike his enthusiastic colleague, he will wriggle about despairingly, will use paraphrases and circumlocution, unable to bring the words over his lips. Finally, with a deprecatory glance at the last row of desks, he will relapse into silence' and give up the task of using the lesson for anti-Semitic instruction. In both cases the little Jew, through the mere fact of his presence, emerges victorious. The Jewish child, devoid of any spark of honour or any feeling of . tact sufficient to make him realise that he ought under such circumstances to depart voluntarily, succeeds -in his obstinacy and mulishness in turning the tables on his opponents. He successfully adopts the martyr’s role, or, alternately. becomes the special protege of his guileless teachers.