JEWS IN GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 4

JEWS IN GERMANY

‘Paradise —With a Reservation” FRESH CONFIDENCE 'The visitor who seeks information in Frahkfort-on-the-Main on the situation of the Jewish population is met with a continual assurance that Frankfort is “a paradise”—with this significant reservation; it is a paradise in comparison with, say, Cologne or Nuremberg, writes a correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” The same assurance is heard in Hamburg or in Wurzburg, that idyllic Franconian university town set amid vineyards. The assurance was given to me again and again by Jews themselves—by intellectuals able to carry on their practices as doctors or lawyers, subject to the familiar restrictions and difficulties; by shopkeepers, big and little; by the poor Jews dependent on the charity of their co-religionists. In recent months there has not been a single known case of maltreatment of Jews or of damage to Jewish shops and houses, apart from occasional scrawling on walls by young roughs, who do not even spare the synagogues. On those days on which the regular

parades of S.A., S.S., Hitler Youth, the German Girls’ Union, or the Labour Front are not taking place, public life goes on with the peaceful rhythm characteristic of Frankfort. But there are always liable to be sudden transformations, as on the afternoon on which the crowds of Storm Troopers poured into the various stations from the party congress at Nuremberg. Suddenly the streets belonged to the Brown Troops. On both sides along their route the population stood five deep, mostly women, as the S.A. men marched past like soldiers coming home from a victory on the battlefield. A New Comradeship. But the normal street scene is scarcely altered any longer from past years. Men and women are less smiling and carefree; but they no longer give the impression of people apprehensively awaiting some blow which may strike at any one'of them. What' blow could • there be still to come? People have got used to the restriction of personal freedom, to the übiquitous informer, to the distinction between ‘Aryans” and “nonAryans,” between acknowledged citizens and those who are only tolerated.

People have also got used to the fact that the share of the good things of life, material and moral alike, has been greatly reduced for everybody, and the realisation of this mitigates the moral impression inevitably made on the Jew by being declassed and “sent to Coventry.” He feels, moreover, a new eomradeship—in an almost grotesquely heterogeneous company—with all the others who are being gradually but de-

liberately pushed out of the community; the old officers, the old civil servants, the former German Nationalist politicians, the convinced monarchists, and a large section of the students. He is no longer alone. With the sharpened senses of the persecuted and expropriated he perceives that the number of the privileged and pampered section who are admitted to full citizenship is steadily diminishing, and the number of those who stand outside that favoured circle or have been thrust out of it is steadily growing. This discovery has brought him renewed confidence. In spite of all the anti-Semitic excesses, the cramping regulations, and official chicanery, he no longer bows before the storm, he can lift his head again, he begins once more to teel that he is a member of a human community.

Several times 1 had the impression that the Sabbath services are once more becoming sunnier, the rabbi s message more confident, the congregational singing more unrestrained, and the prayers imbued with firmer faith. The Jew who perhaps for many years shunned the synagogue now draws from it once morehls moral strength and the means of keeping himself nure in spite of all defilement. . The growing self-confidence . is observable everywhere in publ: life, lhe Jew goes now into the cafes and restaurants as a matter of course, as of old. More striking are the cases of recovered confidence in dealing with the authorities. The Jew is able to stand once more in quiet dignity as a Jew before the official on whose decision some part of his fate depends.

Still more significant, the Jewish lawyer has no hesitation in repelling an anti-Semitic outburst on the part of an “Aryan” colieague with a refreshing energy and decision. The result has been that a judge who would have allowed the demagogy of a National Socialist lawyer to pass without comment has remembered his duty and followed the Jew’s manly self-defence by administering a rebuke later on. t am writing only of Frankfort, where I was in a position to make exhaustive investigations. What fob lows, and what has been said already, must not, therefore, be generalised. The Jew to-day finds justice at the hands of the Frankfort courts. There are occasional exceptions, and striking ones, but they apply almost exclusively to the younger judges and lawyers, and they go to prove the rule. It is true that the Jew only goes into court when he knows that the justice of his cause is as clear as daylight. Then he is able once more to tiemand justice. I am assured by Jewish lawyers that for months past there have been ns cases of deliberate twisting of the law to the qjst>dvantage of Jews.