JEWRY'S PLIGHT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4190, 29 May 1939, Page 7

JEWRY'S PLIGHT

THE WORST IN HISTORY. “There has never been a period in the history of the Jews when their position in the world has been less secure than it is to-day,” writes Jacob Peltz, in “World Dominion.” “Jews have been subjected to persecution in every century during their exile, but seldom has their life been threatened in so many countries of their dispersion during any one perriod as to-day. “No people in the world have ever been called upon to endure such sufferings and martyrdom as the Jews are experiencing at present. In Europe one million Jews are virtually in concentration camp,” recently said Dr Chaim Weizmann, the world Zionist leader. “The plight of the Jews in Germany may be compared to the sufferings of their ancestors at the hands of the Egyptian task-masters, except that now there is no Red Sea to swallow up their enemies and no Canaan to which the pursued may flee for a refuge. “This, in fact, is the difference in the position of the persecuted Jews to-day from that in other countries,” adds Jacob Peltz. “In the past, when Jews were persecuted in one country they found a refuge, and often a welcome, in other countries. But to-day, when a major migration of Jews must take placb there are few countries ready t.o receive them.

“This is due to the fact that there are to-day unemployment problems in most countries, and chiefly because Jews are stripped of their possessions when forced to leave Germany. Then, too, the Nazis, who are very sensitive to criticism of any form, from any quarter, themselves spend about £21,000,000 a year in propaganda, some of which is directed to undermine Jews the world over.

“During my recent visit to Germany I found the Jews in a desperate and hopeless state. I saw something of the frightful consequences and pain of the anti-Jewish pogrom which reigned throughout Germany last November, following the murder of the German official in Paris. I saw some of the hundreds of synagogues which had been burned, the Jewish shops which had been wrecked and looted; and I talked to some of the Jews who had been brutally tortured, to others whose relatives had been murdered, and to still others whose loved ones had committed suicide.

“I had read that between 35,000 and 40,000 Jews had been arrested throughout Germany and placed in concentration camps during the reign of terror. I had thought this was incredible, but when I met Jewish women who begged me to get their husbands out of Dachau concentration camp, and girls who implored me to help to get their fathers or brothers out of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, I could no longer question the widespread horrors and sufferings that Jews are called upon to endure to-day in the Third Reich.

“To be a Jew in Germany to-day is to suffer mental and physical privations and cruelties which no human being can long endure. Hotels, cafes, restaurants, public parks and amusement places are barred to Jews. No Jew may be a civil servant or belong to the legal and medical professions. In fact, all professions in Germany are barred to Jews, including teaching and the ministry of the Gospel. And now, since the beginning of this year, Jews are no longer allowed to own shops or to trade; in fact, every means of livelihood has been taken from them.

“If a Jew is married to any Aryan, the marriage must be dissolved, even though there may be as many as six children who will have to suffer as a result of the breaking-up of the family. For a Jew to seek marriage with an Aryan is a criminal offence. “One .of the most heart-rending experiences for the visitor to Germany is to meet Jews who have been evicted from their homes, or who have received notice of such eviction. A Jewish family may have occupied a flat in a building with 30 or 40 other families for over 20 years, but an, Aryan tenant complains that he will no longer live under the same roof with a Jew; to do so is humiliating. All the Jews of this flat building arc, therefore, forced to move; but, where? To the newly-created ghettoes and into houses where there are already six Jewish families herded together, all sharing a common kitchen and toilet facilities. Who can fathom the pain, the humiliation, the sufferings, to which the Jew is subjected in Germany to-day? “In addition to the 500,000 Jews who are still left in greater Germany (there were 850,000 Jews in Germany and Austria when Hitler came to power), there are another million people known, as non-Aryans, who suffer the same fate as the Jews. For the Nuremberg laws apply not only to full-blooded Jews, but also to people who have as much as one-quarter Jewish blood in their veins or one Jewish grand-parent. Most of these non-Aryans are of the Christian faith, and their plight is even more tragic than that of the Jews.”