A New Drive Against German Jewry

Southland Times, Issue 23540, 21 June 1938, Page 6

A New Drive Against German Jewry

In the last few days cable messages have brought news of further action against the Jews in Germany. It was reported on Saturday that hundreds of Jews were being arrested or manhandled in the streets, and a new batch of decrees has been issued against various forms of Jewish enterprise. According to the Berlin correspondent of The Daily Telegraph these measures are part of a campaign aimed at “the final elimination of the Jews from Germany’s economic and social life.” The Jewish population of Germany numbered about 510,000 when the Nazis established their regime in 1933; at the end of last year the number was down to 350,000: in four years the community was reduced by almost one-third. A report for 1937 of the central body which organizes charitable and emigration measures for German Jewry stated that the total emigration has accounted for approximately 130,000 and adds that in the last few years the excess of deaths over births has risen to more than 5000. a significant com-

mentary on the hardship and brutality inflicted on this tragic people. Emigrants are handicapped by Nazi laws which have reduced the amount of convertible property that can be taken out in foreign exchange from one-fifth to one-tenth. But the Jews have an instinct for fellowship which seems, not unnaturally, to have grown stronger under the pressure of persecution. Communal organizations last year spent about 1,500,000 marks on assisted passages, and for the poorer families unable to escape from the country the congregations managed to collect 3,500,000 marks for winter relief funds. It has been estimated that over one-quarter of the Jewish population is in need of charity, and in addition to providing relief the Jews have removed several hundred children from small towns where juvenile persecution had become unbearable and taken them to Jewish schools in the larger centres. All this, and more, has been done in the face of increasing restrictions. In 1937 Jews were forbidden to act as cattle dealers; Jewish booksellers were not allowed to sell other than Jewish books or to serve Germans — which amounted to their expulsion from a trade in which they have always been prominent; and finally their employment agencies, which offered the only hope for Jews in search of work, were forcibly closed. The latest drive brings still further restrictions, and will increase the difficulties of relief organizations. Since the occupation of Austria the scope of persecution has widened. Many Jews from Germany established themselves in Vienna and, with characteristic enterprise, made new careers in business, the professions and the arts. Now they are being driven to the frontiers, herded in prisons and concentration camps, or subjected to insult and indignity. This has added new burdens to those who have been trying, inside and outside Germany, to help their less fortunate kinsmen. But the central organization is preparing a new “five-year plan” and continues, with admirable courage and energy, to meet the challenge of ignorance and cruelty. A writer in The Manchester Guardian describes the attitude behind the movement:

The community is even more closely knit, even as it is steadily impoverished. Tire spirit of solidarity and self-help and the method and order with which the communal and personal life of a stricken people has been adjusted during these years are an inspiring example, and give hope that the still acuter problem of Austrian Jewry may be handled in the same constructive way.

It is impossible not to feel admiration for a people that conducts itself in this way under a continued repression. And time is on the side of the Jews. It was suggested in a cable message printed yesterday, that public opinion in Berlin has been offended by the latest campaign. “In spite of every effort to whip up public resentment the crowds watching the persecution appear sympathetic towards the Jews.” If this is a genuine impulse of pity among the people it comes in spite of long and frenzied propaganda, and may convey to the Nazi leaders a hint that even a gullible public grows tired of blaming the Jews for everything. But it is too much to hope for a belated mildness in a regime that has been built on violence. What would the Nazis do without their Jewish scapegoat?