HITLER AND JEWS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 666, 19 October 1933, Page 6

HITLER AND JEWS

NAZI PERSECUTION HELPLESS AND HOPELESS THOUSANDS AT MERCY OF STORM TROOPS ULIKE TOADS UNDER . HARRO W" The following summary of the extent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany and world reactions to tiie movement, has been circulariseci by the Auckland Hebrew congregation : — (1). No Jew is to enjoy any civic righis. No uew is to occupy any public position. No Jew is to be employud m any public position. All Jewish officials, clerks and hrtisans employed by the Government, the States, the municipalities, the local bodies, and in the whole field of public service are -dismissed. This decree was issued on April 8. (2). Jewish judges are dismissed from all the law courts in Prussia. No Jews are to be employed as jurymen. All Jewish state attorneys are dismissed. The number of Jewish lawyers is limited to one per cent. Three of the Berlin law courts were raided by Nazis, who turned out all the Jewish lawyers and judges. (3). The Hitlerist members of the Prussian Parliament have demanded: (a) That all Jewish teachers shall be dismissed. (b) That only one per cent. of the children in the school shall be Jewish. (4)^ Imprisonment for practising Shechita. On May 1, S'chechita or the provision of kosher meat was prohibited by law throughout Germany. The penalty for evading the law is imprisonment for six months or a fine. (5) "The official boycott is over, but the ruthless elimination of the German J ew from the public, the professional, and the social life of his native land continues unabated. Alongside of this deprivation of civic rights, there is an unbelievable trampling under foot of the human dignity of every Jew and Jewess in that land." — The chief Rabbi in a letter to the Times. (6) In Bavaria thousands of Jewish doctors and nurses have been relieved of their posts. All Jewish lawyers are forbidden to enter any court of law in Bavaria "until further notice."

(7) All Jewish doctors are to be dismissed from the Berlin hospitals. (8) The head of the municipal schools in Munich has declared that no Jewish child will be allowed to attend a Christian school." Humilation and Starvation In its issue of May 5, "The Jewish Chronicle" says: The humilation and starvation of the German Jew is exliibited as the law of the land, and a part of the State policy. The German Government declares and enacts that J-ws are to be excluded from the civil service, the universities and the high schools, that Schechita is forbidden and so on, along every avenue open to Ihe Nazi tyrants. The Hitlerist monsters just plant their heek on the necks of the Jews and slowly piess the life from out of them. Jews are being expelled from the Government service, the banks, the deparcment storvs, the wholesale trade and industry. Lawyers and doctors, clerks and shop assistants are thrown on ihe streets. "Thou shalt starve" is one c^mmand of the anti-Jewish decaicgue. They are being excluded from the schools and the universities. A demoralised and hungry community. crushed in body and mind, is being created in a great Westeim country, and it is believed that the figure will soon rise to 150,000 or 200,000.

rialr a Milxion bouls Lhokmg In its issue of May 12 in an editorial a British answer to Hitler, the Jewish Chronicle says: Have even the people of this country realised fully the intensity of the anguish? — education denied, talents crushed, rcligious scruples flouted, livelihoods taken away, insult heap- ■ ed 011 insult, and an ever present anxiety as to where the next blow may fall and how "frightful" it may be? Have they grasped what manner of a problem is being built up by rapid strokes in Germany — a problem of half a million soitls choking in an almost unbreathable atmosphere, condensed to eternal degradation and slow starvation amid the mockery of the torturer? There is no sign of relenting on the part of the oppressors. Not a single decree is abrogated, not a syllable of regret or repentanee spoken. The persecution machine grinds out its liourly toll of victims, and every day Ihat passes makes the problem more foimidable and menacing. Is this stark tragedy to go forward to its consummation? Is a great and cultured community to be coldly abandoned and ruthlessly sacrificed?

Deslitution and Misery The terror still goes on, says The Jewish Chronicle, and by one means and another more and more Jews are being driven to death. The number of suicides is increasing daily. The official attempt to wipe out the whole of German Jewry so that no trace is left has gone a stage further. Thousands upon thousands of professional men, professors, scholars, doctors and lawyers are now penniless and starving. Physical torture is being praetised. Jews are being beaten for hours and lashed with steel rods. A Berlin synagogue was raided and the scrolls destroyed. The purging of universities of Jews still continues. Twenty-one professors and lecturers at Berlin university and ten at Cologne universities have been •dismissed. Seventeen more Jewish professors attached to technical and agricultural colleges in Berlin and to the university of Munster and Griefswald have been dismissed by the Prussian Minister of Education. Six professors of the university of HalleWhittenberg have been dismissed. Professor Haber, Nobel prizeman in Chemistry head of the Department

of Physical Chemistry in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, who is a Jew, has resigned as a protest. AntiSemitic raids are being made on all Ihe Tewish professors in the German Universities. Three professors have beerc dismissed from Munster University, six from Halle University, eight from Breslau University and eight from Jena University. Herr Kaube, the leader of the Na^is in the Prussian Parliament in a statement to the press said: "The Jews are done for in Germany for centuries to eome." : The News-Chronicle, of London, in

an editorial' says: "If the Nazis are not open to other fo- ras of argument, they should at least begin to realise that their lists of the proscribed are rapidly bringing home to the world how much of her distinction in science, art, letters and medicine Germany owes to her Jews." Earl Grey in an address to the Liberal Council said: "Some of the men in music and science whom they honoured were certainly Germans, but also Jews . . . Germany is not prepared to give them even toleranee." World Wide Protests A million people attended services of mourning in the United States. In New York over a hundred thousand ' representatives paraded and were ad'dressed by well-known Christian and Jewish leaders who denounced Jewish persecution. Placards reading ! "Judaism will survive Hitlerism" and '"Hitler, remember what happened to /Spain" were conspicuous. Thousands 'of spectators lined the streets and ^cheered the marchers. All over Eur/ope and in Canada, South Africa and 'South America, huge meetings of protest have been held. British Protest Meetings ' On May 16 a great meeting of pro'test was held in Queen's Hall, London. Professor Gilbert Murray presided and Lord Melchett, Professor J ohn McMurray and other distinguished leaders were among the speakers. The meeting was organised by eleven of the great British non- Jewish organisations, including the British Federation of University Women, Sunday School Union, Students' Christian Movement and Y.M.C.A. In Manchester a huge meeting was held, the Lord Mayor presiding. The Bishop of Manchester, the Bishop of Salford, and the editor of the Manchester Guardian were among the speakers. Hundreds of great indignation meetings have been held all over Great Britain and Ireland. Lord Marley at a protest meeting held in London said that in Germany the position was daily getting worse. The voice of Jews in Germany was to be completely and absolutely stifled. Lord Mount Temple said it was impossible as human beings and Christian men and women, to look on in silence while 600,000 Jews were 'gravely threatened in their very existence. The civilised world must protest against the acts of a people which rejected the rudiments of eciualitv and risrhteousness, and pur-

"sued the course of hate and persecution. Sir George Jones said that Germany had suddenly gone back to mediaeval barbarism. Australia It is the duty of every civilised nation to denounce Hitler, said R. Hon. William H. Watts, former Prime Minister of Australia, at a monster protest meeting against Jewish persecution in. Germany, held in the Melbourne Town Hall. Ministers of the Government, the Chancellor of the Melbourne University, and leaders of religious, civic and social life and of all the political.parties were on the platform. £8000 was raised at the meeting for the relief of the victims. British Press Protests Not since 1914 has popular feeling been so aroused against a Government. "" In the debate in the House of Commons on the question of offering asylum in Palestine to perseeuted Jews in Germany Sir Austen Chamberlain said: "What is this new spirit of German nationalism? The worst of all Prussian Imperialism, with an added savagery, a racial pride, an exclusiveness which cannot allow to any f ellow subject not of 'pure' Nordic birth equal-

ity of rights and citizenship within the nation to which he belongs. Europe is menaced and Germany is afflicted by this narrow, exclusive, aggressive spirit, by which it is a crime to be in favour of peace and a crime to be a Jew." The English press continues to voice the overwhelming disgust at Hitler's anti-Semitism. The Manchester Guardian has been banned in Germany. A writer in the Daily Telegraph says: "The calling off of the official boycott and the cessation of the more lurid deeds of violence should not blind us to the ghastly catastrophe of Jewish poverty and destitution, that is now being engineered surely, and, it would seem, deliberately, by the Hitlerites in Germany." In the Sunday Times, Mr. Wickham Steed, who was formely editor of the London Times refers to what is happening as "a Dreyfus affair on a vast scale. The original Dreyfus case horrified Europe. There are now 600.000 Dreyfuses." The London Observer says: "The physical brutalities are fewer in most parts, but have by no means

ceased everywhere. In other torms the systematic cold-blooded persecution of the Jews throughout the Reich has only begun. Henceforth they are to be like toads under the harrow — not even 'second-class citizens'; not citizens at all so far as concerns any claim to human justice. They are cleared out of the state services. They are dismissed right and left from state employment. They are driven from the universities from the law, from all the professions, from the newspapers, from the theatre, from the cinema. Yes, even from the concert rooms, where music is the only common language of civilised mankind." The Berlin correspondent of the Times states: "The clearance of Jews from the State services and public positions has been nearly completed. Thousands of Jewish lawyers, notaries, doctors and dentists have been dislodged. Jewish professors and lecturers at the universities are likely to be entirely eliminated before the summer term begins. In big private undertakings, all Jewish employees have been given notice."