Evening Post. SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1938. PLIGHT OF THE JEW

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1938. PLIGHT OF THE JEW

When Austria in one short week of the month of March fell from the ranks of independent sovereign States and was absorbed into the German Reich, the Jews of Austria immediately became liable to the treatment from which their fellows in Germany had suffered so grievously under the Nazi regime. Time has shown that their fears were only too well grounded. The security they had enjoyed disappeared almost overnight, and their already pitiable, cannot but be aggravated by.the more intensive persecution now directed against the Jews who remain in Germany by the heads of the Nazi Government. Dr. Goebbels, who shares with Marshal Goering the honour of the closest association with Herr Hitler, expressly stated in an address to a mass meeting in Berlin on Wednesday that "legal means would shortly be taken to suppress all Jewish shops." The Jews, he said, maintained that they were not harming the German people, but their very presence in Germany wa,s an irritation. Judged by this and earlier' speeches, the intention of the authorities is evidently to "liquidate" the Jew in Germany by depriving him of all means of making a living. As Austria-is now merely a province of the German Reich, the ban can be taken to apply there also. Wh« the Nazis came into power in 1933, there were half a million Jews in Germany. There are now, after five years of persecution, 350,000. The Jews in Austria number about 200,000. The outside world, with difficulty, accommodated the Jews exiled from Germany. The problem is immensely complicated by the fate of Austria.

But this is not all by any means. There are ten million Jews in Europe. According to a recognised authority, Dr. Norman Bentwich, only three million of these, who are citizens of the Soviet Union, "enjoy equality of opportunity but without individual or religious freedom, and less than a million in the Western democratic countries, with both equality of opportunity and individual and religious freedom, have a fair chance'in life." The rest, including three million in Poland, a million in Greater Rumania, and the balance in Germany and the other Central European States, "constitute an international social problem which cannot be solved by philanthropy alone, or by any efforts of the Jewish community alone, but requires the united efforts of the nations, such as was made by the States members of the League when two million Greeks in 1922 were uprooted from the Ottoman Empire." The plight of the Jews in Germany has been presented to the world by publicity on both sides, by the Nazis with their pseudo-Aryan doctrine, and by the friends of the Jews all over the outside world. Yet the condition of a far greater number of Jews in Poland and Rumania is hardly any better. The Minority Treaties, under the League of Nations, governing the treatment of Jews in this part of Europe, are rarely observed in their fullness. "Even where the States allow the minorities to speak their language and pray according to their religious rites," says Dr. Bentwich, "they have contrived to take away from them work-and bread. The new concep"tion of the totalitarian State denies not only liberty to the individual, but the right to live in minority groups." In none of these States are the Jews allowed to own land and grow food for their own maintenance. In the main they form a wretched proletariat in the larger cities, sinking into deeper poverty as time goes on. In the past the plight of the Jew has been mitigated by emigration to the United States primarily, and, to a lesser degree, to the countries of the British 'Empire and to South America. AH these outlets have since the War been more or less closed. Only Palestine remained open and that field for an overflow of population, small as it was, has been curtailed since the acute trouble with the Arabs. On top of this has come the frenzied propaganda against the Jew spread by the Nazis in Germany over the border into countries suffering from the aftereffects of the long depression and I only too ready to make the Jew the scapegoat. No easy remedy is apparent. Nowhere in the world today can be found room for "national homes" for minorities. Even the small band of Assyrians, exiles from Irak, remains unplaced. What can be done with millions of Jews? Emigration would make a substantial alleviation, thinks Dr. Bentwich, "if the gates of Palestine are again opened, according to economic absorptive capacity, if the quota restrictions in the United States, South America, and the British Dominions are withdrawn." There is little hope just now of such "open doors." The great "empty spaces" of undeveloped countries are proving a myth for the unassisted migrant. "It is a popular fallacy," says Dr. Bentwich, "that emigration is easiest to an empty land. In fact, it is most difficult and more expensive; and it may be said that emigration, like Nature, abhors a vacuum."

The solution of the Jewish problem in Central and Eastern Europe must be found within each country where the Jews live. .The present persecution, more slupid even than it is cruel, will be found a blunder even more than a crime, and the phase will pass, as it has passed in the long centuries of Jewish history. There are signs recorded in the news that the atmosphere towards perse-

cution is changing even in Germany. "All classes," reported the Berlin correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" on Wednesday, "are disgusted at the anti-Jewish campaign and some people are saying they are almost ashamed to be Germans." England, with other Western nations, expelled her Jews in the Middle Ages, but the wise Cromwell let them back in the decade of his Protectorate. Only the other day Sir Samuel Hoare, in an address to the Rotary International Conference, could say:

■For time out of memory there has been no Jewish question in Great Britain. Anti-Semitism we have refused to countenance. Christian and Jew, we have lived together, side by side, as friendly neighbours, and whilst we are no doubt conscious of each other's infirmities, Great Britain has gained morally, intellectually, and economically from these long years of unbroken toleration. If we had refused to admit Jews into the circle of our neighbours, the Empire in general and the Conservative Party in particular would have lost the imaginative stimulus and constructive statesmanship of Benjamin Disraeli.

Disraeli's is but one name. Scores of others could be mentioned, covering every department of human life. The Germany which now exiles her greatest men, when the wave of antiSemitism has passed, as it has passed before, will regret it. Since the days when the Assyrian "came down like a wolf on the fold" the Jews, as a race, have always managed to outlast their oppressors.