JEWS IN GERMANY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23200, 21 November 1938, Page 13

JEWS IN GERMANY

SPECIAL INTERCESSION VICTIMS OF NAZI HATRED SERVICE IN AUCKLAND In common with Jewish communities throughout tho British Empire, a special service of prayer and intercession on behalf of German Jewry was held at the Auckland Synagogue on Saturday. The Rev. Alexander Astor officiated, and there was a large attendance. Solemn memorial was offered for the victims of tho recent pogrom and prayers were said for the sufferers. During his address, Mr. Astor said the opening words of a psalm—"Out of the depths I cry unto Thee, O Lord hear my voice" —might have been written for their German brethren to-day. The latest outbreak of Nazi inhumanity had shocked the whole civilised world, and no amount of explanation could excuse the wholesale slaughter of innocent human beings, the burning of synagogues, the wanton destruction and brutality which had taken placo in Germany in the past 10 days. Repercussion in all parts of the world had shown in unmistakable terms the revulsion of feeling against tho Nazis. "Nazi Germany has become tho home of a new barbarism," Mr. Astor continued. "It preaches racial hatred as a religious duty. Tho pogrom started by Hitler five years ago is as unremitting as it is merciless and efficient. To-day the Jewish people of Germany are suffering at the hands of a Satanic oppression, not for any crime that can honestly bo asserted against them; their real offence in the eyes of the Nazi is that they are Jews. " That helpless minority in Germany is indeed helpless and rightless, but. it is not soulless; it is not without hope and faith." Mr. Astor expressed the thanks of the community to the many Christian bodies for their sympathetic messages, and to the large number of individual citizens who had offered their help in the settlement of refugees and had subscribed to the funds for relief. He prayed that the conferences which were taking place between representatives of Britain and the United States would result in the salvaging of as largo a number of refugees as possible.